YouTube's Uneasy World Domination — With Mark Bergen

Mark Bergen is a Bloomberg reporter and author of Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination. The book releases next week and Bergen joins to preview what's inside, delivering a wide range of insights on YouTube's battle with TikTok, its algorithmic programming, and its appeal (and peril) for kids. Stay tuned for the second half where we discuss whether old media can cover YouTube (and its fellow digital challengers) without bias. You can find the book here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  LinkedIn Presents.

• 1:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. We're joined today by Mark Bergen. He is a reporter at Bloomberg, a good friend of mine, and the author of Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination, coming out next Tuesday, September 6. So I encourage you to preorder it, but if you want to hold your judgment and listen to this conversation, by all means, but I think you're going to like a lot of what Mark has to say. Mark, welcome to the show.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me, Alex. Been waiting eagerly for years to be on the show.

• 1:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. Well, you know, it's a long time coming. You're definitely, without a doubt, the closest friend that I've had on the show, and it's really a thrill to be able to speak with you about the book. We've been talking about this since it was actually, you know, I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but initially you were going to write a book about self-driving cars, and you ended up settling on YouTube, which I'm stoked about. And I think there's so much good stuff in the book. I read it cover to cover, and YouTube is obviously a fascinating company, core to Google's revenue, competing strongly with TikTok at the moment. And also, just like this kind of massively underrated political force, and also a huge presence in the life of kids, which we'll get to.

• 2:35Speaker 02

  It's really interesting that you talk about it competing heavily with TikTok. Just so, like, something we weren't even having a conversation about a few years ago.

• 2:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I wonder if-

• 2:44Speaker 02

  Whole different topic.

• 2:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, well, actually, I think it's the topic, or core to the topic. Because, you know, the first question I wrote off you is, you know, basically a set looking at YouTube's competition with TikTok. And like, what you would do differently if you were to write the book today versus like, writing it two years ago. And it just gives us a bit of a sense as to how fast TikTok has grown. So, let's start with this. Can you give us a sense of YouTube's scale? How big is this thing, actually?

• 3:12Speaker 02

  I mean, the stat that they, I think the stat is almost like, two years, not more, years old now, right? The one they've trotted out, and they've trotted out every like, six months or so, updating it. You know, 500 hours are uploaded every minute to YouTube.

• 3:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  500 hours of video?

• 3:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Uploaded every day?

• 3:30Speaker 02

  And I'm sure it's more, maybe close to 600. You know, I think they, the company might sort of discontinue that stat. I'd be curious if they do. But it's just, that gives you like, one sense of the scale. Like, this sort of incomprehensible scale of the platform. I mean, I think, you know, there was a Pew study that came out a few years ago, or a few weeks ago, rather. About teens, looking at their usage of social media. You know, the big headlines, where the Facebook has obviously dropped off in the past seven years. And TikTok has risen, but TikTok, I think, was around 67% of teens said, "Yeah, we use UX teens. We use TikTok all the time." 95% said they use YouTube.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  It's like, the television, the like, primary screen for youth and for entire generations, right? And I think that is, those that make them go on with like, the sense of scale. Platform itself is just, it just has been growing since day one. And now, it's like, what we're doing today, right? Podcasts going up on YouTube. YouTube is leaning into podcasts that is just hours and hours of footage and audio that is added to the platform. And just continue to grow.

• 4:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you talk about the supply side, how much video is actually added to the platform every day. But what about the demand side? How much video is being watched every day? There was this goal that they wanted a billion hours, it's in your book, billion hours a day of watch time. They looked at the share of YouTube in people's day to day life, not in terms of how much digital video they were watching, but they called it like similar to the share of stomach that a Pepsi or Coke might figure how much, not just digital video, but video in general are they being watched. So have they surpassed that billion hours a day goal? And what does the demand side of YouTube look like in terms of watching?

• 5:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, that goal was set in 2012. And there's a really interesting chapter on that evolution. And that was a key moment, a really pivotal moment for YouTube when it switched from, in its first seven years, it was measuring the key metric, which was video playbacks, the number of times people clicked on a video. And then for a variety of reasons, chiefly like, okay, this is, we see that like people, there's clickbait, right? People are sort of using the system and they switched to watch time. We're going to measure how long people are engaged with videos. And at the time, they had this, the engineering team put together this graph trajectory of like,

• 6:10Speaker 02

  okay, we're going to hit this billion hour goal in four years, billion hours consumed a day. They called it the break the internet graph, just like the traffic will exceed the bandwidth of the internet at the time. And it's like a very Googly thing where it's like, this is, you know, the scale is so big, no one has done it before, but like we can do it and they did. And they haven't, as far as I know, haven't updated that stat. I'm sure that consistently still crossing a billion hours watched a day. And part of this is, you know, we mentioned podcasts. YouTube is also like the world's biggest music service that no one talks about. And so there, people will just...

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Behind in the background, it's playing music videos all day.

• 6:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  And that's just hours and hours of footage.

• 6:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  And when you talk about this is they they've switched to watch time. That's what powers the recommendation algorithm. Everything that you see recommended is because they want you to watch more. And that's what ended up getting them to that billion hour plus per day of watch.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  And and the search too, right? Which is like, not just recommendations, related video, but those search results on YouTube.

• 7:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  So anything the YouTube algorithm is trying to suggest to you, it's based off of how how likely you are you are to watch many minutes of it versus just click the title, which might be what Google wants.

• 7:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the chief metric. I mean, they've they've added a lot of, um, yeah, they've added a lot more signals and and in most recent years with in response to a lot of their business crises and then like

• 7:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 7:40Speaker 02

  A lot of pressure, which we get into. But yes, that's the chief one, even on on YouTube Shorts, which is their TikTok competitor. They're still measuring like prioritizing watch time.

• 7:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so let's talk a little bit, so you said about the TikTok threat. So 95% of kids are watching YouTube. 67% are watching TikTok. But a couple of years ago, 0% were watching TikTok for being honest about it. So that's actually a massive threat that's coming up against YouTube. We had one of your colleagues on, Shelley Banjo, to come and talk about her founder in TikTok podcast. And, you know, I say, OK, so tell me who does compete with Facebook or Instagram? And her answer was YouTube. So

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  It seems like TikTok is like this growing force and any consideration of YouTube's power. I mean, your your subtitle is, your title, I like it, like, comment, subscribe. But your subtitle is Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination. And the rise of TikTok is really making you question the fact that it has this world domination anymore, given how how much TikTok seems to be eating into its lead. Or maybe that's just a misconception from the surface. So you've written the book. How is TikTok threatening YouTube?

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I'll give two different answers. One is the, it is the first viable threat that's really coming like both sides of YouTube market, right? It is competing for eyeballs and it's competing for creators. And Vine sort of did that, right? And there were other, you know, other threats before, remember Vessel? I don't know if anyone in the audience remembers Vessel.

• 9:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  That was Jason Kilarz.

• 9:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, at the time, it was sort of, they were like this premium paid service that was gonna put things behind a paywall. Sort of like a Patreon model in a way, but like exclusive footage from online creators. And this, it's sort of funny in hindsight, and people who told me about it were like, laughed about it in hindsight. But it was like this huge threat, right? Like YouTube sort of scrambled and started this big program because they were really worried about Vessel. And at the time, for a long time, they were chiefly worried about Facebook. I think what TikTok has actually done is it's created a way to pay creators in a meaningful way

• 9:58Speaker 02

  that Vessel didn't do, that Vine didn't do, that Facebook could, despite possible efforts, hasn't been able to do.

• 10:05Speaker 02

  You know, TikTok's sort of future there, there's been sort of fascinating stories about like how long that, like, the extent of their creator strategy, right? Like they have this big pool of money that they're paying out, and the more creators that get it, the smaller that the pool gets. Or the pool hasn't changed, rather the smaller the amount gets, right? And so like you talk to a lot of creators, it's like TikTok is where they get discovered. It's right now, it's where a lot of audiences. But YouTube is the reliable place to make money. And I think that, especially, you know, YouTube's about to flip the switch and turn on monetization for YouTube Shorts. And who knows how that will go, but given history, like YouTube is pretty good at monetization.

• 10:46Speaker 02

  So I think that the, like, that's the sort of bear case for like TikTok is this real big, strong threat. YouTube is clearly pivoting a lot of resources, Shorts, same way that Instagram is putting everything behind Reels. But YouTube is, you know, look, they're also moving really aggressively on TV screens. Something that TikTok is sort of trying to compete with, right? But YouTube is like... Both their streaming service and then just like people watching YouTube on their on Roku or Apple TV or something like that. It's a gigantic or growing audience. There are places like India where TikTok has been banned, that YouTube is, you know, YouTube has more users in India than TikTok has users around the globe. Sorry, than Twitter has users around the globe, right? Like, it's just massive.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  And if you look at the, you know, you talk about the kids, like this is what that whole of teens, if you look at a lot of actual like videos, popular video footage on YouTube, it is for toddlers, for really young children that are growing up, not watching television, they're watching YouTube. And then they might graduate to TikTok and, you know, I think it's, that's the sort of case where YouTube just has such scale and a variety of services and platforms and it doesn't seem like, I think Instagram, like it's more interesting like what TikTok is going to do to Instagram than I think what TikTok might sort of really like eradicate like eat into YouTube shares significantly.

• 12:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So you talked a little bit about like creators and of course, usage, but, but is TikTok actively eating into YouTube's usage? I mean, you know, put this into context because we just saw that YouTube had pretty disappointing earnings results over the past couple of quarters.

• 12:28Speaker 02

  I think that was Apple's turn more to damage YouTube and social media than anything else.

• 12:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. So it hasn't been TikTok.

• 12:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I think, you know, that, that recent, I think they're, what the company said, yeah, it is like war in Ukraine, they shut off their services in Russia, they got like a dip in advertising in Europe, but like Apple, as you've talked about a lot,

• 12:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 12:50Speaker 02

  has, you know, banned targeted advertising. That's like, Facebook has made a big stink about it publicly. I think like from when I talk to people inside YouTube, it's hit YouTube almost as hard, they just are like savvier and don't talk about it.

• 13:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. You don't think of Google as being hit by Apple's changes, but it is clearly being hit by those changes.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, Google's, their search business is not, and Google is still primarily a search business. And so that's why they're like, they're able to, to be like largely unaffected by it. But, but YouTube has been, and I think that's probably more than say like a waning audience or something.

• 13:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. So when we think about YouTube in context of its battle with TikTok, everything I'm hearing from you leads me to believe that TikTok is on the rise, but. It's still YouTube is the Goliath. YouTube is is the king of this world.

• 13:40Speaker 02

  My my sense from people on YouTube's advertising team is like, they're still like that. You mentioned that anecdote in the book about the share of the stomach like they were like, oh, our part in that. That one is like TV is like the big stunt like TV is the one we this was 10 years ago. They're like TV has, you know, five hours of the average American's day like we should see even that. I think they still think that way like they're they're business is still built around like TV advertising is moving online. We are the like primary place where those dollars are gonna gonna go. And so I think they're that's still the focus, even despite like all the attention that TikTok has.

• 14:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  OK, so if I'm hearing it right, bigger than TikTok, substantially bigger than TikTok. YouTube is, but also substantially smaller than television.

• 14:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now, YouTube's growth, go ahead, go ahead.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I think that's fair. I mean, obviously, like, oh, like, pay TV has been declining for a long time. And like, you know, that's where all the streaming, the streaming battles are going. And I think that's another interesting front, right? YouTube is sort of like has one foot in the like streaming wars and then and then other foot like social media and TikTok.

• 14:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. OK, and also, you know, one of the things that struck me is that that YouTube's growth is is not exactly organic. It does have this algorithm that it tunes. And as I read your book, I think the tension really is, and you know, they can decide how much they grow. But the question is how much it costs society, you know? They can, they can, you know, start putting these like, you know, videos that end up having very destructive effects. That seems to be the thing that people are most interested in, will spend more time on YouTube, where they can tail it back and just grow slower. So do you think that's the right way to look at it?

• 15:23Speaker 02

  Like you're saying that like the right way to look at it is sort of they have this balance between the the metrics they're trying to hit. And like the societal impact and and

• 15:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  uh, chaos to platform.

• 15:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think that if they didn't care, maybe if they didn't care about societal impact, they would be able to grow faster. But because they do, they're like trying to. Tune their algorithm to and the content that they show up. They show on the site to try to make it somewhat benign, but still grow.

• 15:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, I mean, there's a new, the sort of new company PR language that they've been rolling out. It's like, you know, our, so they made this, this, you know, the book goes through this in like, in detail, like that rocky period where they have this big advertising boycott in 2017, remember? A series of boycotts, right? And like around brand safety. And they put it in a bunch of, a place like they, they put in a bunch of safeguards there. Like YouTube doesn't really have those brand safety problems anymore.

• 16:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. One of the things that struck me about that is, is that that actually works. Those ad boycotts work, which I was like astonished by. Usually I think they do nothing, but in YouTube's case, they actually did.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that, in, in, in that case, it did work. I think it's hard to say how much of it was the threat of regulation, right? Because around the same time, we were getting, especially in Europe, like Google was facing a lot more pressure. So, right, it could, it could have been the, the business pressure. It could have been the regulatory issue. It could have been just the employees were starting to, to speak out about this. And it was just like a general sort of mayhem of, of the Trump era. But so the, the talking points they have now is like, this is good for our business. Like being, like brand safety and like responsibility is, is good for our overall business, which I think is like partially true, right? Like YouTube, you know, the history of, like, there's, there's been this, I think what's really fascinating

• 17:21Speaker 02

  in the, in the book is like this big gap between what the company sees YouTube being, what its executives see YouTube being and what it actually is, right?

• 17:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  And what are the, what is that?

• 17:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think like, you know, you hear like Susan Wojcicki as CEO and

• 17:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Who's the CEO?

• 17:36Speaker 02

  Sue, Sue Nerebichai as CEO of Google. It's like, you do this amazing learning platform, right? It's just like a cuddly fun place, sort of like the, like a Disney channel, but like a little bit like edgier, right? Like it's Facebook, Mark Rober doing like cool, like it's a sort of, it's a, if you ever seen their brand cast, right? It's their YouTube's big event and they, they roll out there. They're like star creators that they want to that are like really advertisers, everybody's safe and like have all the best parts and qualities of YouTube. And I think, you know, it is both that and it's this like massive, like sort of all these different niches and it's like a big political mess and this like it is, you know, their

• 18:21Speaker 02

  drama channels that do really well, there's like toy unboxing, there are all these sort of, there are all these niches on YouTube that the company typically ignores. So I think to answer your question, like, I, yes, I think they were, they have taken, like they've chosen to make decisions in response to whether it's like advertiser boycotts or regulatory pressure or employee pressure that have to scale back some of their, like if they were just running a pure engagement, right? Like they've made choices that have got less engagement. I mean, what a really interesting example is their originals program. You remember that? The, um, this was their attempt to do like a YouTube version of House of Cards, right?

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Like YouTube, this was 2015, we're really YouTube originals, we're going to like come out with a bunch of shows starring some of our YouTube creators, like they gave a show to PewDiePie, they give like shows, Cobra Kai was one that actually like has had like a life afterwards. They, that, that program sort of died on the vine and eventually shut down earlier this year, but my sense from people was like those episodes, which were YouTube shows, subscriber only to like YouTube premium, didn't drive as much watch time. Like when, when YouTube tried to feature them, um, like tried to recommend them to viewers or put them on the homepage, the watch time actually went down. And so there's this really interesting internal tension in the company, which is like we

• 19:46Speaker 02

  need, our chief metric, right, is to just drive more watch time. That's what, that's what sort of pays the bills. And then there are all these programs like, oh, we need to say respond to regulation in this way, or oh, we have this effort to do like original programming that kind of competes with, I mean, competes with the core metric. This is like something that's interesting about Google too, is as we know, like. You know, Google has like eight different messaging apps, right? Like there are all these different competing teams that sometimes don't work all together.

• 20:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, and that's kind of what I was getting at earlier, which is that like you can have this like high glass produced type of video, or you can have like the underbelly. And if you emphasize the high glass, you're probably going to get less watch time. And if you push the underbelly, then you'll get more. And, and go ahead.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I think you hit on something that's, that's been, you know, this is, I think YouTube is sort of like, YouTube creators have dealt with this for a while, but there was a period where there was this, they were like, okay, we're, we're, in one way, we're being pushed to create sort of, YouTube wants us to do premium content and like daily, you know, they prioritize like daily, daily output. Um, so they spent a lot of money upfront to like increase our production value. Um, but on the other hand, we have to like churn out more and more because the algorithm wanted like daily content. And so, and then this is the same time when like the, for a long time, um, you know, TV basically wasn't on YouTube. But then, uh, YouTube's business team likes cut all these successful deals.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  And so you saw like Jimmy Kimmel, the Jimmy Fallon, all the Jimmies, uh, and like, um, you know, daytime television, like the pour on to YouTube. And like, these were big media companies with big budgets that churned out like daily content, right? Uh, there was a great video from this YouTuber named Matt Pat Game Theorist. Like, I think it was 2015, he had this like, he did this animation, this treadmill, right? And like YouTubers are like sweating on the treadmill and then like Ellen DeGeneres and like Jimmy Kimmel are just like,

• 21:46Speaker 02

  uh, just easily breezing past them. Uh, and so there's a belief, and I think it like totally, uh, justified that YouTube tends to, um, it, its systems and its preferences tend to like put, put, uh, more preference for traditional media over its online creators.

• 22:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. What is, what is, makes up the most of YouTube? Is it traditional media or is it amateur?

• 22:09Speaker 02

  No, I mean, I don't know. I'll ask Susan that question. Um, Dave, uh,

• 22:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Come on, you just spent three years working on a book on this. You better have a good answer.

• 22:18Speaker 02

  I, yeah, I don't have all the answers, Alex, unfortunately. That was, that was a good question, though.

• 22:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, your book dances around it, the entire 400 pages. So what do you think?

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, good, good. Press me, press me on it. Uh, I think that, well, the what, I believe that Wojcicki has said that about, that YouTube calls them endemic creators, right? Like creators that are sort of native species. Um, about half the viewership comes from them, uh, which in some ways is, is pretty gigantic.

• 22:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Um, given like how popular music videos are, um, and, and just like traditional media on, um, they've never shared how much of their, uh, you know, they have this big stat about like paying out $30 billion to creators over a certain, but like that creators is defined very broadly, right? It's like, it is, you know, Casey Neistat, it is like you putting your video up there. Uh, and it's also the Jimmies from TV and it's also like, um, the new Taylor Swift video, right? Like, uh, so my sense is that it skews, um, I think it's, I think it's certainly like TikTok has introduced this new competition that has, uh,

• 23:30Speaker 02

  and in the past few years, uh, I mean, you have to keep in mind too, like in 20, it was before 2018, YouTube was sharing with millions, maybe like as close as 6 million of the creators. And then they, after a series of crises, dramatically cut that level down. So I think it's climbing back up. But for the past few years, it was almost certainly like skewed towards, towards, um, traditional media and record labels.

• 23:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And it's interesting to, so let's say that, let's say we'll take that 50% amateur content as, you know, a jumping off point, even though we're not 100%.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  Amateur is not the right word, but like, because they're professionals, but.

• 24:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Okay, non-studio produced, right?

• 24:08Speaker 03

  There you go.

• 24:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let's take that as a jumping off point. It is interesting because, you know, as I'm reading your book, you know, YouTube really does usher in this moment of anyone with a camera being able to pick up and, you know, create video. And everybody got a camera with phones.

• 24:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so, so what do you think the implications? And this is one of the questions that comes up as I read, as I read through. What do you think the implications are of giving everybody, A, camera, B, you know, definitely rudimentary editing software comes with everything we have? And then see the outlet to publish. How does that change society? How does that change the world?

• 24:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think the history of YouTube shows that, you know, we are pretty weird, willing to put some weird shit on there. Like, they, you know, YouTube has like dealt with the strangest things on the internet by far.

• 24:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, list, list a few of them.

• 24:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, early, you know, certainly early on, like porn was, was a, you know, like, you know, YouTube has built enough skin detection algorithms now to like porn and...

• 25:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, wait, hold on. Tell the story. There was a person in your book, there's a story of somebody writing to YouTube headquarters, being like...

• 25:18Speaker 03

  Oh, I think it was a voicemail. It was a voicemail, yeah.

• 25:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah, say, say it.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  Yeah. I have a big, my most crass anecdote here.

• 25:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, but at the time, this, I think this was early on, this is when they were, you know, this is before they were, they joined Google and they had like, it's a, when they bought, when Google bought them, they were a 60-person company. There's like 10 phone lines, like they were using like one piece of sort of moderations, like one piece of software for like customer response that they all had to like log into. So it was like very like shoestring. And, and someone called in and was like, when they had one of the outages, YouTube used to have a lot more outages.

• 25:57Speaker 02

  And angrily berated the company because he couldn't pleasure himself to their videos.

• 26:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  He said something like, get your shit together, I'm trying to masturbate.

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so it was obviously used for porn. What else? I wouldn't necessarily put porn in like the weird category because it gets a lot weirder.

• 26:13Speaker 02

  But I was gonna, that was my way of, my way of going into like, there was a funny running joke about octopuses coming out of videos in Japan. And my understanding was that like, the videos were like, you know, there's this great sort of cat and mouse game, great is not the right word, but there's this fascinating cat and mouse game between the platform and the creators, right? Like, where they like learn the rules and then they had to go right up to them. And that happens on every, like, you've seen that happening on hate speech, right? And originally it was, and it still does, like around sexual content. And so like, if you show the octopus like being inserted inside a person, but like you don't see the actual insertion, like is that, why like, like these were the,

• 26:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 26:58Speaker 02

  There was this great anecdote in the book about how they were like having this debate and like understanding because like a bunch of YouTube employees like looking at the screen of these octopus videos and then like, like Google's top lawyer walks by, right? And they're like, oh, like try to shield the computer being like, you just paid 1.6 billion dollars for this thing and we're looking at like, kind of octopus porn.

• 27:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  So that one was another one. There's like an endless amount of, of, you know, very early on dealing with things like videos about phrenology, like great, but the junk pseudoscience, like, if they're shot as a documentary, like someone talking about how it's like YouTube had this sort of, well, it's documentary, it's fine. Like is this hate speech, right? Is this, there were all these sort of gray areas. And it was a, this, this team that was basically building out this content moderation rulebook when it didn't, there wasn't precedence really, like it didn't exist. There was this beginning of user generated content. So like,

• 28:01Speaker 02

  you know, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, we're all setting these standards at the same time. And YouTube had the much more complicated, like not just obviously text, but like video and visual, which is still something that's, that's in like machine intelligence that's not been able to just say for like everything that happens inside the video, which is like not that competent yet.

• 28:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, so there was this, you know, the weird stuff, but also a lot of political content and a lot of race, racist content, a lot of terrorist.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  Everything, right?

• 28:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Everything is on there.

• 28:34Speaker 02

  The political content was so, sorry if you don't, this, I find this interesting, but the political content at the beginning was, you know, like, you remember Ron Paul's presidential run in 2008? Like, Ron Paul was like the first sort of like, had a bunch of online acolytes and like Ron Paul. And so like YouTube leaned in, they have these community managers early on, and one, Steve Groh, worked on news and politics and like, leaned in in like this way that it's sort of crazy to think about YouTube doing this now, but like going through and like picking out the most interesting political videos and blogs and like trying to like surface them on the homepage or service them. And

• 29:15Speaker 02

  then he like orchestrated the partnership with CNN where in the 2008 presidential debates, like YouTubers got to ask the Democrats questions, which was like.

• 29:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  That was a good debate.

• 29:27Speaker 02

  It'd be pretty funny if that happened now. I mean, YouTube carried, like YouTube carried it on with, they had YouTubers asking Obama questions, interviewing Obama the last two years of his presidency. That, as people will probably notice, did not continue with the following president.

• 29:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  And it's, you know, the story of YouTube is kind of, you know, jumping off this, the story of YouTube is kind of the story of the internet here, which is that, you know, you can, in the mainstream, like places like CNN or, you know, the New York Times or even Fox News, right? You can, you get a certain set of perspectives. And so because you can get those perspectives in the mainstream and the mass media, it's going to be less attractive to actually put those same perspectives up on the internet. And it's going to be less attractive to watch them there because you can watch the produced stuff online or you can read it in the Times or the Journal. And so the internet just becomes this haven for the alternative. And in some ways, that's good because orthodoxies should be questioned. But oftentimes, it just does spin into the grotesque.

• 30:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  I mean, yeah, I do. I do think YouTube's history is a really fascinating reflection of of like the last 20 years of the internet. And like one storyline that's interesting is, you know, like, remember the Arab Spring like a decade ago, right? And that was, it was largely like Facebook and Twitter were sort of, this was the moment of, someone in the book calls it like the internet of awesome, right? Like, like we were toppling, we're toppling dictators, where the sort of, within countries where there is no,

• 31:02Speaker 02

  like, there's only like the sanctioned state media, like their social media, which is this power revolutionary force. And then obviously that like had this dark turn for a variety of reasons and the companies and YouTube included were like super naive about, about that. But I think, you know, we still like Russia is a really interesting use case right now, right? Like, so, you know, YouTube is still operating in Russia, probably the only American media company doing so. It is, like, there's been plenty of report, like Russia Today, like these Kremlin-backed channels were, before YouTube took action on them, like, very popular. Russia Today was like basically thrived as a YouTube network.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  But also YouTube is the place where the Russian descent and a lot of like critics of the Kremlin have massive channels, like people in Russia can go on and watch them. Like, it still has this sort of two sides of that, of that, of that equation and, and I think has been something that like was a big part of YouTube's growth early on and probably still will be.

• 32:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and it's interesting because like they, you have these like, of course, academics that drive people to extremes and you can watch their debates on YouTube, but there's also plenty of, and this is one of the things I keep coming back to as I was reading is there's, there's plenty of. You know, fascinating above board academic debates that you can watch on YouTube. So many other helpful videos that you can watch on YouTube. It's it's pretty amazing. You know, anything you need to do. I mean, I I don't know, like YouTube has helped me conquer fears. You know, I used to like worry about swimming in the ocean with sharks. And I watched enough shark encounter videos because everybody has GoPros on now and they're showing what happens when you're in the ocean with sharks. It's actually not so bad. Like, they're just curious animals for the most part.

• 32:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so, you know, there is there is this balance between the good and the bad.

• 32:58Speaker 02

  I also think you're hitting on the exact reason why YouTube has not had the they're one of the main reasons why YouTube hasn't had the same scrutiny that Facebook has had.

• 33:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Because?

• 33:08Speaker 02

  Because most people have like your experience with it, right? It's a it's a utility. It's it's.

• 33:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  So is Facebook for many people.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's fair. Uh, that's fair. I guess there's like the sense that, you know, amongst like some of my like, I have plenty of friends who are true to that are like, I mean, like, I wish I wasn't using Facebook. I were like, I wish I wasn't using Instagram as much, right?

• 33:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right, people love YouTube.

• 33:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, who's like, I really got to stop watching those YouTube videos, right? Like, um, I think there there for sure, there's like niche, there are like corners of YouTube with people that are addicted. And like, it has all the sort of trappings of of social media and endorphins and everything. But but yes, it does. I mean, like I said, or like that that version of YouTube that the platform likes, which is like, yes, helping you conquer your fears. And hopefully not like immediately showing you videos of like sharks eating people or something, right? But, um.

• 34:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Although there are plenty of those, too. You just learn not what not to do.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, there there it is unleashed, um, all sorts of new like creativity and like if you if you just like, I think one interesting lens to think about YouTube is like, um, what doesn't exist on TV? And like those videos about, you know, I mean, maybe except for Shark Week, right? But like those type of videos you're watching don't exist on on TV.

• 34:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, you have a channel like that. You have a chapter like the kite surfing channel, which has been like it's a niche interest. You're not going to find it on television, but you're going to be able to watch it.

• 34:31Speaker 02

  This is when so, um, that was a term of the YouTube second CEO, this sort of forgotten one, Sal Akomangar. Who has disappeared from from the public. But that was like his his term and that was very much like you the beginning of YouTube's like business growth was this this pitching itself to to advertisers and and so like media as like, look, we can have if you're interested in kitesurfing, which is a hilarious example, but given like the Google executive, but of like, or if you like, he was, you know, also really in the piano playing or like chess, right? Or like you, there's an endless amount of of niches that people can have. And of course, the downside of that is like

• 35:11Speaker 02

  the like echo echo chambers, right? And filter bubbles. I'm like, you get inside of a niche and that niche has like, um, you know, I I the book teases out this real, I thought, I learned this reporting the book, this world of of um, called YouTube skeptics. Remember this part?

• 35:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Like basically this community of atheists um, that like ten years ago. Um, it was the sort of beginnings of these early YouTube communities. Uh, and it was a lot of accounts that were, they were really into like Christopher Hitchens and um, Richard Dawkins and like, um, and and then they were like, a lot of them started making videos that like ta- taking down creationists, right? And then a lot of them started taking down like Muslims and and Jewish believers and like, sort of at the time, it was like, oh, these are, these are atheists, just like ripping into people of faith, right? Uh, and that sort of a lot, many of those accounts began like a few years later, it was like, oh, convenient uh, foil, a a thing that got the good attention was like social justice

• 36:12Speaker 02

  warriors, right? And like, taking on online feminists. Um, and so you saw that sort of, like, that moved into the sort of Trump era, like, oh, right. Um, and this really strange and and for a lot of viewers, like, unexpected way, uh, that within a few years, you went from like atheists talking about philosophy to like alt-right sort of setting the stage for Trump.

• 36:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and it it happens everywhere on YouTube, where you have these like Interesting discussions about important subject matter and they do oftentimes tend to drift into the extreme areas. Maybe we hear about the extreme areas because they're, even if 1% of the discussions go there, then that becomes a news story. But it is interesting. It's interesting how, is this the algorithm or the people that want to go from the skeptic stuff and debates about faith to rants about SJWs? And is it the algorithm or the people that take typical discussions about Islam, for instance, and potentially drive them

• 37:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  in areas that end up having people self-recruit to ISIS?

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm gonna give you the boring answer, maybe a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B. I mean, you've had some really great podcasts about, and Kevin Roos, The New York Times, and a great story on the rabbit hole, and there's been some pushback on that idea.

• 37:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, we just had Brendan Nyhan, who pushes back a bit on it.

• 37:45Speaker 02

  And the Times' research is really fascinating. What I think that, like, what I found interesting, and I hope readers get it from the book too, is like this sort of other side of the algorithmic equation, like the rabbit hole effect, the how much you and I go on and then we see one video leads to the next. How much of the actual programming, like the content that is made on YouTube, is dictated by the company's algorithms? I think that's a really important and often overlooked thing.

• 38:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  What do you think?

• 38:18Speaker 02

  I think a lot of it. Like, I think that YouTube is sort of a media programmer by default. Like, they don't think of themselves consciously as being a media programmer, right? But they are, by the way that they've structured their systems.

• 38:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  But they would say that humans are clicking, humans are watching.

• 38:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 38:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so, "Stop looking at us." So, who is it? The people or the algorithm?

• 38:42Speaker 02

  There's a really good example, sort of midway through the book, about Minecraft. So Minecraft comes, like, Minecraft is, I forget when Microsoft buys it, but that's this big explosion, right? And some, like, it becomes like, around the time when video gameplay was huge on YouTube, so like, I think it was 2014, around then. Like, there's, I'm gonna go back to this YouTube or Matt Pat, people should go out and watch this video.

• 39:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  2014.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  And be like, "Fine, is it, what's that?"

• 39:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  2014 for 2.5 billion.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Um, that, thank you. I think it was in 2014 or 15, he like goes to the, so the YouTube logged that homepage is sort of like, and this barometer for, um, you know, what, what is sort of the, the YouTube serving up? And there's a lot of people that, that like don't, you know, not logged into YouTube account, Google accounts and visit YouTube. Uh, so at one point, like, I think it was more than half or something. It was an absurd amount of the videos on the homepage were Minecraft videos, right? Uh, now it's like mostly Mr. Beast, but like, um, at the time it was like Minecraft was huge. And then, uh, and, and then all of a sudden, like within a few months, like Minecraft just disappears from the homepage, right?

• 39:48Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  And traffic on Minecraft videos plummet. And there was this great, like in YouTuber, they have this sort of like urban legend that like some executive at YouTube walks past the screens, like what the hell are all these Minecraft videos doing? We need to get rid of them. Um, it turns out, at least from like, I talked to the VP of Engineering, uh, and then raised this theory by him and he's like, man, that's not how it works. But at the time, uh, Susan would just, had just taken over. YouTube was like looking at their stats and they were like, okay, we have like the dedicated viewers. It's like people who want to watch Minecraft play, right? But what we don't have is like, we don't have a mainstream audience. And like, think about the story of YouTube in many ways is like, they're trying to get to the main television mainstream audience, right? Like, keep that in mind.

• 40:34Speaker 02

  Uh, and so like, they're like, okay, well, if you were a, you know, uh, the, the VP gave the example. He's like, if you're my mom, going on YouTube.com, you're like, what the hell is Minecraft? Why am I going to watch Minecraft videos, right? Um, and so they, rather than like pulling the plug on Minecraft, they just tweak the algorithm. It's like, okay, we're going to start trying to push people that aren't like, having these sort of people that are coming back on a regular basis, that aren't these sort of dedicated fans. And the consequence is then that like fewer videos, views on Minecraft. Less people start making Minecraft videos because that's where the views, right? Like, that is just a really fascinating example. It happens like millions of times across YouTube. It's where like these tweaks happen.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  You know, a few years later, like Spider-Man Elsa, like bad baby, like weird kids video were really popular and like YouTubers were like, well, I might as well jump in on this trend, right? Like.

• 41:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  You have some great examples of that in the book.

• 41:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, and like you had families that dressed up like superheroes and then they put up these blogs and like, we don't know, not sure why we did that. And it was actually kind of weird, but like, that's what the algorithm was telling us to do. Like, I think to a certain extent, like, yes, people are like, viewers are viewers and will click on things and like, content creators are not just like, they're not chained to, like, they're not forced to do something, right? They make choices. Uh, but this, there is a system that rewards certain type of content that's constantly changing. Um, and I think in that way, uh, we sort of, you know, there was a really great, uh, this like New Yorker writer and talk about this term like algorithmic anxiety.

• 42:12Speaker 02

  I thought that's like such a great term for like describing what it's like to be a YouTuber um, for such a long time. And part of it's like, the ground is like constantly shifting beneath their feet.

• 42:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  The book is Like, Comment, Subscribe by Mark Bergen, who's here with us, uh, joining us for a long discussion about the nature of YouTube. And, uh, why don't we take a quick break and we'll come back, talk a little bit about why an old media guy like Mark Bergen is talking about a new media company like YouTube and, um, whether his criticism is fair or unfair. We'll be back after this. This episode is brought to you by App Point. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what App Point does.

• 43:03Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 43:46Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 44:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's ironwell.com/bigtechnology. Learn how to stop online threats before they become real-world attacks. The link's in the show notes.

• 44:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Mark Bergen from Bloomberg. His book, Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination, is available for preorder and comes out next week. So if you preorder it today, you'll be able to get it by next Tuesday. I recommend it. It's definitely a great book. I really enjoyed it. And Mark?

• 45:07Speaker 03

  I can't vouch for delivery times, by the way, on Amazon, but...

• 45:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  Mark, you're trying to sell a book here.

• 45:15Speaker 02

  Soon as possible.

• 45:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, tell us about the title, like, comment, subscribe. It seems, well, obviously, it's like the call that every creator does, you know, like, comment, subscribe if you enjoyed this video. Are you, are you doing that somewhat mockingly? Or, you know, what, what sort of commentary are you making on YouTube?

• 45:32Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, to be very clear, I'm like not intent to, I'm mocking creators at all. Um, and like, I think, uh, I, I think it's like, it's a somewhat of a, of a commentary. You're right. It's like this, this, um, I'll give my agent credit for coming up for this one, actually. Uh, but it's like this, um, uh, when you kind of in rapid succession, right? And like everyone, it's, it's become this thing that, uh, you know, if I said that phrase to you in 2005, like, it would have no meaning, right? And like now it like immediately shorthand, uh, for YouTube and like the online attention economy. Um, and so that was, that was the intent. And I thought it was like a great catchy phrase that like enough people know, uh, what it means.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  And the idea is like, oh, I understand you, like, I know YouTube, but I don't really like, understand what goes on behind the, uh, behind the pixels, as it were.

• 46:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And so one of the, the big themes that has come up on YouTube, one of the most popular pieces of subject matter that I see on YouTube about YouTube, because all these platforms are always self referential, is this, you know, we've kind of been a through line through this whole discussion, but the competition between YouTube and mainstream media, YouTube and TV. Um, you know, your, your book is, is great. It has a lot of criticisms of YouTube, a lot of criticisms of creators. And, you know, there's been this back and forth with people like PewDiePie in the Wall Street Journal, for instance, who point out his, his faults. And, you know, oftentimes the creators are like, um, you know, the, the news media is just jealous of our success and trying to take us down a peg.

• 47:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  So how did you think about, about that, you know, back and forth? And then contextualize yourself and how you come to this, given that you actually are, you know, a player in this discussion now?

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, good question. I think that like, you know, that The PewDiePie thing, just to do like a quick recap, right? So the Journal writes a story that became like, it started off sort of YouTube's terrible year in 2017, and it's like he was making these videos on Fiverr that like, "Gig for Hire." The Journal discovers like, "Oh, there's this neo-Nazi website, Daily Stormer, that's like a big fan of PewDiePie, because he made this video that convinced these two guys to unfurl the sign that said 'Death to All Jews.'" And then in the subsequent melee about that, like, he's like, you know, the Journal and public and media is just jealous of creators. And what's the interesting context there is like-

• 48:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  By the way, he's just, he's the biggest YouTuber in the world at this point with 100 million subscribers.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  He was 100 million, yeah.

• 48:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  On his way.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  Over 50 million, yeah. But still, he had the title since 2012, so, um, yeah, good context.

• 48:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  And he does games and stuff?

• 48:19Speaker 02

  Uh, at that point, he was doing myriad-

• 48:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Ridiculous stuff.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  Uh, but versatile YouTuber. So I think it's fair that the mainstream media had like, uh, sort of treated YouTubers as a novelty act. There was this like rubbernecking, uh, like, "Oh, they make..." Uh, look, you know, the previous, he had pointed to a prior Wall Street Journal story he did that was like much more, like, it was sort of like, "Meet this YouTuber who makes..." The headline was like, "This guy plays video games, he makes 4 million a year," right? It's like crazy. Um, you know, there were people also, sort of, part of the book gets into the multi-channel networks, which were these studios that came up and were on YouTube, and they were like, "One of the goals that they want is like, we want a YouTuber to basically be accepted as George Clooney." Right?

• 49:05Speaker 02

  Like, and they think, you know, when George Clooney goes on late-night TV, they're not like, "How much money do you make, George?" Right? Like, and yet, that's like the question that every YouTuber got. And part of it was, I think, like, trying, the media was trying to process, uh, this sort of new phenomenon.

• 49:25Speaker 02

  And I think it's admittedly like, and I'm sure I've been guilty of this too, like disrespectful to an online creator and a professional in media of dismissing them as sort of like, wow, you make this much money just playing video games, right? Like, I think that's, you know, the other context here is that in the advertising, the boycotts in YouTube had a serious consequence for the company, much more serious, I think, people realize in the book. And also it's serious, kind of like a lot of YouTubers, their incomes immediately plummeted, like as much as 80%. And I think they had this idea, I've talked to a lot of them, like the story, which was, you know, you like, the problem was like, there were household brands sponsoring like

• 50:09Speaker 02

  terrorist content and neo-Nazis and you name like that stuff on YouTube. And like the way that you understand this well.

• 50:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  But like, yeah, but sometimes like, not to stand up for the, you know, people who they were sponsoring, but oftentimes like, they're going, you know, let's say a P and G ad or like some sort of ad, you know, goes on one video that, you know, is, is, is against, you know, their values. But it's like, it's a fraction of a cent and a newspaper.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  This was Google's defense.

• 50:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, a newspaper then screenshots that and then their company, you know, is, makes this.

• 50:45Speaker 02

  So I think this was the reason, this is not the reason for the animosity between like, like myself, old media and YouTubers. You know, I think, I know YouTube like contributed in some ways, because like YouTube was like, well, you know, the reporters out there were basically hunting, right? You like go on some websites, you get some cookies on your, on your browser.

• 51:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Go like search on YouTube for the worst things, you take a screenshot, like, yes, like that, that is a structure of the story. But, but to be like, in, in the defense here, like. The like the advertiser, the advertising companies could have said like, yeah, this is like the nature of online advertising and like, I'm, they were under the impression like YouTube was charging them basically rates for their premium section on par with television. And there were many complicated, like this was a battle about like all the things we used to cover when we worked at that age, right?

• 51:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Um.

• 51:38Speaker 02

  Uh, more, more so than, than you like advertising agencies taking some sort of moral backbone. But like, the point remained, like YouTube had built this system that was no longer sustainable for their, their primary customer, which is advertisers. And it had like massive consequence for there, these millions of creators that they built this like pretty unstable economy around. So I think like, yeah, yes, I, I think it's, it's fair to say like the criticism, if, if you're, if the story's coverage were like going out and finding these needle in the haystacks and saying this is all YouTube, I think that, that's valid, but I, but I do think the whole premise is like, oh, look, like the world's biggest advertising company has, does these things fairly often.

• 52:23Speaker 02

  The, the thing about YouTube is like needles in the haystack. YouTube is such a big haystack that.

• 52:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  At scale, that makes a difference.

• 52:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like, there, even if you have like some needles, there's a lot of sharp needles, right?

• 52:35Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  Metaphor, but um, yeah, I, I still think that was a really, I, I, I just, I pushed back on that, that idea that it was just the media going for, um, old media, I mean, for new media, I think it was media, uh, um, shining a light on a very unregulated industry. Um, that had like this system where its primary customers like didn't understand how it operated. Right? Talk to brand advertisers and they're like, oh my God, we like can't, we, at the time, we're like, we didn't understand YouTube, which is their own fault too, but like.

• 53:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  No doubt. I just think that the stories that that covered this stuff like they have the journalists who cover this stuff have a response, not to lecture, and I don't think you've been guilty of this, but journalists that cover this stuff have a responsibility to put it into the proper context.

• 53:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  You do that in the second paragraph of the story. And these paragraphs never talk about how miniscule it was, or how, you know, how how infinitesimal this, you know, versus they always say like, you know, this shows that, you know, the devastating consequences of, you know, online advertising and stuff like that. So motivation or not, I just think they get it wrong sometimes, or at least, you know, at the, you know, in order to have a dramatic story, often overdramatize, you know, what's actually happening.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  I think that's, sure, that's fair. I mean, Casey Neistat, I didn't put in the book, but like, you know, he was also, like, advertisers didn't fail to appreciate this sort of new and profound relationship that YouTubers have with the audience that doesn't exist on TV, which I think you're absolutely right. Like, there, YouTubers have developed this really fascinating role with like, oh, they have like, very loyal audience, like PewDiePie is a canonical example of this, like, right? His audience is deeply loyal and like, tell him as being wronged, and like, got pissed off at YouTube about it, right? And like, I think that advertisers have like, I think a lot of them, like savvy ones have like, figured this out, right?

• 54:34Speaker 02

  Like, there's a different relationship than on the television show.

• 54:40Speaker 02

  But I, you know, like, sure, getting, I think you're right in the sense of like, these were relatively small, like, those sort of brand safety problems, and maybe like, were relatively small. And like, you know, YouTube has used this defense around political speech, too, like, politics is like, a really small section of YouTube, right? But again, like YouTube is still large.

• 55:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  I don't agree with. Yeah.

• 55:07Speaker 02

  Right. It's so like they can constantly, that can be an argument for many things, right? Like, oh, this is like, this is just really small incident. And I think that like, what was really telling about the brand safety crisis and maybe the reporting was a little overblown, but like, sure, like, you know, that's how online media works, but like, it was sort of exposing like, hey, this is how this business works, which is there's an automated system that like sprays P and G ads like everywhere on the internet. And like, oh, like this seems to be a broken system for the people who are spending money there. So like, that'll be my, my line. You can lecture me some more if you want.

• 55:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, no, no, no. It's not, not a lecture. Just pointing that out. What is the biggest scoop or bombshell from the book?

• 55:55Speaker 02

  Biggest scoop or bombshell? When is this coming out again?

• 55:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's coming out Wednesday.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  You know, the, the YouTube, the code for YouTube was actually allegedly Steve Chen wrote, the coin co-founders.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  They're people at Facebook. He worked at Facebook briefly before joining YouTube and he kept his corporate device. And there are people high up at Facebook at the time that thought he wrote the code for YouTube on that corporate device, which I think is really funny. The two worlds, the world's two biggest like social media companies may have come from the same corporate device. Or like the YouTube's code was written on the Facebook corporate. That is not the biggest scoop. That's just a fun one.

• 56:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. What about the kid stuff? The kid stuff is wild.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think like the, um, you know, one thing I learned there and it's revealed in the book is that the crisis around, around like inappropriate kids videos actually pushed like, at one point YouTube considered pulling the plug on all brand advertising, which was like their corporate. So they were basically like, we're going to like, stop shipping this product like no longer because it got like, got so mad. There was a meeting about that. What they ended up doing instead was, Dramatically, you're reducing the the number of of channels that could make money. They like raise the threat. You had like channels before then, this was in late 2017. You know, you upload to YouTube unless you break copyright rules or like hate speech or like sort of speech rules, you you can basically monetize.

• 57:27Speaker 02

  Um, and then they're like, oh, no, you have to have a certain number of of hours of watch hours and subscribers before you can like, in in part because of just how rampant uh the kids issue was. So, yeah, the the short version of the the kid stuff is, um, you know, I I think what's it's really telling is there's a pattern across YouTube. Like, YouTubers notice the weird stuff and troubling things on the platform much faster than the company. So there were like the YouTubers that like popular ones, H3H3 is a huge YouTube channel. They were making videos about these this trend of like Spider-Man, Elsa, like these trends of of adults like dressing up in superhero costumes and like doing sort of vaudeville acts for kids. And like, a lot of it was like, uh, some of

• 58:12Speaker 02

  it was just like strange, then it got like sexual and like perverse. And they were making videos about this in 2016. And and it was in the year, like a year and a half more later that the company finally acted. Um, in in part, you know, someone told me like it's just like kids, they were not um, like minding the store around around kids. Uh, and and in part was because YouTube had this for for a long time, uh, for legal reasons, like pretended that that no one under 13 was watching, watching the site. Uh, I guess they didn't want to violate copyright.

• 58:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Yeah, I was, one of the notes I just wrote was, I'm never letting my kids to use YouTube. I mean, I don't have kids yet, but um, when the day comes, they will not be on YouTube. Some of this stuff is so horrifying.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  I I mean, just to, so like, here's a, here's a, here's another takeaway that um, is interesting that that maybe convince you and you're in uh, you're uh, the mother of your uh, child to um, change your mind. Uh, um.

• 59:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wow, okay.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  The the. The only like, you know, as you've covered, like, big tech hasn't really like come after, or sorry, government has not really come after big tech in any whole meaningful way, except for like the FTC, which fined YouTube in 2019 for violating Children's Online Privacy Act. And that has like major consequence to the platform, the main one being like all videos, if we like either made as made for kids or not, YouTube is like dramatically like shifted resources to make sure that like none of those inappropriate kids videos happen again. Like, I think, yes, like YouTube's, like kids content on YouTube is like under examined,

• 59:55Speaker 02

  like no one really like, there are not many researchers to look at it, certainly not a lot of parents, it is like largely some like weird stuff is still on there, but like it has changed dramatically, the company is like so much more tuned to it now, in large part because like it was the first time that regulators got their act together and took action against that company.

• 1:00:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Interesting. So there is hope.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  Oh, and if you believe in power of regulation.

• 1:00:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, we haven't had a lot of evidence to show that that power actually works. Okay. Well, the book is called Like, Comment, Subscribe. You can get it now via preorder. Want to thank Mark for coming on the show. Appreciate you joining, Mark. Thank you, Nate Guatney, for editing the audio. Thank you, LinkedIn, for having me on your podcast network. Thanks to all of you, the listeners. Really appreciate all the five star reviews that have come on. They make a big difference. If you haven't done it yet, I'd encourage you to do it. If this is your first time, please subscribe. And that will do it for us this week on the show. So we will see you next week on Big Technology Podcast.

• 1:01:06Speaker 04

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