How YouTube became an ungovernable Frankenstein

Its leadership exists in a near-constant state of crisis but its creators show how readily humans can outwit machines. YouTube’s chaotic rise to world domination is one hell of a story.

Then New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern hugs a mosque-goer in Wellington after the shooting attacks on two mosques in Christchurch that were streamed on YouTube.

Immediately before firing on two mosques in Christchurch, NZ, killing 51 worshippers while live-streaming their agony, the gunman urged his followers to “subscribe to PewDiePie”.

PewDiePie is Swedish YouTuber Felix Kjellberg, who popularised key genres such as creators filming themselves playing video games. His prankster antics and lack of filter are catnip to his 111 million subscribers.

The Christchurch shootings showed just how intertwined YouTube’s success had become with the dark mirror the platform reflected back on humanity – a key tool by which pro-democracy activists fomented the Arab Spring, certainly, but also ISIS’s media soapbox of choice.

Mark Bergen’s Like, Comment, Subscribe follows YouTube from its incubation by three ex-PayPal staff in rat-run offices above a Santa Monica pizzeria, into the self-propelling, untameable machine that redefined media by turning anyone with a smartphone into a potential broadcaster.

But while Facebook and Twitter remain lightning rods to activists for reasons ranging from Covid misinformation to the mental health of teens, YouTube draws less attention from regulators. Long videos are harder to monitor than text-based posts and it helps that YouTube wasn’t key for Trump.

But temperate leadership also enables YouTube to avoid the crosshairs. Chief executive Susan Wojcicki’s modest profile contrasts with other glass ceiling-breaking tech icons like Yahoo’s ex-chief Marissa Mayer and former Facebook no. 2 Sheryl Sandberg. She surfaces in Bergen’s account as hardworking and level-headed but guarded with people and awkward around creators.

Founded in 2005, YouTube almost immediately outpaced its competitors by enabling its video player to be embedded in other websites. It became, as one early YouTuber put it, “a cool club for the kids that weren’t really cool”, presenting a new route to fame without the traditional gatekeepers, as creating became almost as easy as consuming. More than a decade before TikTok, YouTube ushered in mass media programmed by algorithms rather than editors, with audiences rather than executives as its kingmakers.

Google acquired the video blogging site at just 10 months old for US$1.65bn, as a surer way to win online video than its sputtering Google Video service. But it also inherited a company bleeding hundreds of millions quarterly, such that the chief financial officer Google hired soon after wondered about shutting it down. The platform was then so small that few blinked when Google acquired adtech outfit DoubleClick which, together with YouTube, would allow it to dominate internet advertising.

YouTube star Logan Paul in action. The former prankster has parlayed his success into a boxing career.

Bergen fascinatingly details the odd couple dynamic between the scrappy scale-up and its more gun-shy listed parent company. YouTube execs used to making decisions by instinct were often exhausted by the spreadsheets and metrics of its scientifically-minded overlords. Algorithms soon replaced YouTube’s teams of “coolhunters” who manually scoured the platform for trend-worthy videos to curate.

Meanwhile Googlers questioned videos featuring booty-shaking and “illegal activities” such as graffiti. But the corporate war rooms shifted focus when Thailand blocked YouTube in protest against a video that insulted its monarch and the platform butted up against other governments less enamoured with free expression.

The Google brass lacked confidence that dog-on-skateboard videos could get YouTube in the black, so began courting Hollywood to launch original and premium programming, tackling cable networks head on. Yet even as YouTube signed celebrities from Shaquille O’Neal to Madonna, its recommendation system continued to favour the grainy make-up tutorials and unboxing videos of native YouTubers. When Google introduced ads into YouTube, however – to the consternation of some OG staffers – the move quickly transformed the money pit into a cash cow.

This is no Shoe Dog, Phil Knight’s account of Nike’s long and tortuous path to riches. YouTube rises meteorically, and the book owes its drama to the organism transforming into such a behemoth that it becomes, Frankenstein-like, ungovernable. Its leadership exists in a near-constant state of crisis. To take the metaphor used by YouTube execs: “Their site had exploded from a small village into a big city, without the traffic lights, zoning or policing that cities needed”.

Since narrowly escaping a multibillion-dollar lawsuit from Viacom for copyright infringements in 2011, YouTube has been careful to position itself as a tech platform rather than a media company. But despite best efforts, YouTube will never be able to entirely avoid editorial responsibility.

CEO of YouTube Susan Wojcicki.

It would be impossible to manually police its 500 hours of video uploaded each minute, but YouTube defines the code intended to weed out hate-mongers and conspiracists and these concepts are rarely binary. Bergen shows how readily humans outwit machines, with YouTubers expertly adapting to algorithm changes. So, YouTube served as a megaphone for white supremacists even as it launched a USD $100m fund for black creators following Black Lives Matter.

Bergen’s heart is with the underdogs – creators whose earnings are depleted by shifts in strategy, or workers holding true to the idiosyncratic culture of early YouTube, who become disenfranchised as corporate culture takes hold. He sympathetically quotes former staff including a walkout agitator who calls YouTube “a rudderless ship without a clear point of view on its absolutely consequential role in the general geo-social political landscape”. Bergen gives credence to the view that Wojcicki’s consensus style is ill-suited to the quick moral reflexes required to steward such a powerful entity. But the anti-corporate streak can feel churlish given the platform’s success under Google.

So what of YouTube’s next chapter? Bergen focuses little on emerging threats, more interested in anecdote-rich history than business strategy. YouTube’s ad business shrank last year, for the first time since Google started reporting it, while TikTok could soon eclipse YouTube’s more than 2 billion active users and is quickly evolving its ad tech to catch up with Google. YouTube launched its shortform service Shorts last year while TikTok is pushing into longer form content.

Bergen also neglects to discuss emerging Web3 models of creator compensation. YouTube typically pays creators just 55 per cent of ad earnings, but blockchain-based mechanics allow creators to go direct to their fans, capture all their revenue, and even pay fans to share in the ad value they create to incentivise further viewing and sharing.

The creator class today is more empowered than ever. With platform privacy policies becoming more regulated, brands have less options for targeted advertising so increasingly look to “influencers” to unlock audiences. More and more the creator class will dictate terms to the platforms they help sustain.

Bergen interweaves through corporate skirmishes stories of the creators who made YouTube what it became and proved that kids in their bedrooms could amass audiences rivalling Hollywood stars. Teens like Brooke Brodack, a receptionist who uploaded a lip-synching parody of Internet meme Numa Numa (itself a lip-synch send-up of Moldovan pop group O-Zone), paving the path for today’s creator economy. This sprawling, meticulously researched account shows how it all began.

Ben Naparstek is Head of Growth, International, for fintech and consumer comparison platform Finder.