Well, tbf I suspect that most of what you are seeing is indeed a design decision. Especially as Tiktok gets banned in the USA due to increasing tensions with China (John Oliver of Last Week tonight just did a whole special episode on this topic), this Loops alternative looks poised to try to offer an open source alternative. So the vertical placement is indeed reminiscent of not only YouTube shorts but of the wildly popular (especially among younger people) Tiktok platform - designed to be viewed from a phone rather than tablet or laptop/desktop.
For a more straight YouTube replacement than is open source, there are other tools e.g. Piped. But Loops is designed to be different from that, to mirror more the Tiktok style of extremely short-form, vertical video content that finishes in seconds rather than long-form videos containing actual substance.
Well, tbf I suspect that most of what you are seeing is indeed a design decision. Especially as Tiktok gets banned in the USA due to increasing tensions with China (John Oliver of Last Week tonight just did a whole special episode on this topic), this Loops alternative looks poised to try to offer an open source alternative. So the vertical placement is indeed reminiscent of not only YouTube shorts but of the wildly popular (especially among younger people) Tiktok platform - designed to be viewed from a phone rather than tablet or laptop/desktop.
For a more straight YouTube replacement than is open source, there are other tools e.g. Piped. But Loops is designed to be different from that, to mirror more the Tiktok style of extremely short-form, vertical video content that finishes in seconds rather than long-form videos containing actual substance.