Bored? YouTube Tests “Play Something” Button To Entertain You

Bored? YouTube Tests “Play Something” Button To Entertain You

YouTube is testing a feature similar to what Netflix introduced some time ago: it’s called Play Something, and it does what it says on the tin by bringing the user to a random video. This was first spotted by Android Police, and it’ll only show up in the home page’s feed to some users right now.

Based on tests done by Android Police and The Verge, it looks like this button can either bring you to YouTube Shorts, or just a regular full-length video. That being said, many aspects of this feature are unclear – including whether the app takes into account a user’s watch history or various interactions on the platform.

This certainly looks like a tactic – a convenient one at that – to keep users glued to the platform for longer, as this boosts the app’s usage time, which in turn convinces advertisers (Google’s main business) to invest more in the platform. It’s worth noting that YouTube has recently expanded its anti-adblock efforts to the global level, though the effect is still unclear right now.

In any case, it’s worth noting that references to this feature were seen as far back as May this year as spotted by a Reddit user. Netflix has already introduced this feature back in 2021, which provides users a random content to watch during the height of the pandemic (though the feature stayed).

Pokdepinion: I likely wouldn’t use this feature, but that’s more to my tendency to avoid random content as much as possible.