Most of the posts are way longer than 1 minute reads...

The idea isn't that you read in less than one minute. It is to take all the bot/autovotes which happen anyway and stuff them all into one minute and get them over with. After that you can take as long as you like to read and vote and not be racing to compete with bots (but you will still be competing with other readers).

Most people not involved with vote bots and autovoting will be able to just ignore the timer now.