YouTube is disabling links on Shorts to cut down on spam
"Starting on August 31st, links that appear in the Shorts comments section, Shorts descriptions, and the vertical live feed will no longer be clickable."
Shorts views will now count the number of times a creator’s Short starts to play or replay.
In the past, a view had been counted after a Short was viewed for a certain number of seconds. As a result of this change, view counts will be higher moving forward.
With this update, YouTube Shorts will now align its metrics with those of TikTok and Instagram Reels, both of which track the number of times your video starts or replays.