Reading 'Like, Comment, Subscribe'

Like, Comment, Subscribe by Mark Bergen is a fascinating book about the history and rise of YouTube into the second most visited website. The author has done amazing research into the company, making this a very engaging read.

Here are some of my notes as I read through it.

Rise and Importance

The creators of YouTube - Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim didn’t set out to build a video hosting platform. Initial thoughts included making it a dating-focused site.

There were multiple videos that helped YouTube’s rise and prominence. However, some of them were news to me.

• George Allen - Video of the Virginia senate-candidate mocking an Indian-American hurt his campaign
• 2009 Iran Revolution - YouTube became vital in sharing on-the-ground footage

Integration between Google and YouTube

Google purchased YouTube in late 2006. However, this wasn’t a smooth integration because of the backgrounds of the companies and their people. Google was filled with Ivy league graduates with impressive SAT scores, while YouTube had many state school alumni and dropouts. Even in 2013, YouTube was involved in fighting every part of Google.

People

It was very interesting reading about the different descriptions associated with key people through YouTube’s history.

• Salar Kamangar (former CEO) - Soft-spoken, introverted, cagey
• Dean Gilbert (former content executive)?- Table pounder, known for yelling
• Shishir Mehrotra (former executive) - Voluble, fiercely competitive, metrics fiend. Noted for playing poker till 4 AM but still energetic in the morning.
• Sridhar Ramaswamy (former executive) - Another metrics fiend who got into details
• Susan Wojcicki (CEO) - Mother of Google. Even-tempered, rarely imposing, big-picture thinker, ability to fade into backgrounds but could be shrewd. Lots of notes on motherhood.
• Sundar Pichai (CEO of Alphabet/Google) - Soft-spoken, ruminative, preferred consensus over confrontation
• Claire Stapleton - Bard of Google. Noted for expressive writing through various newsletters. However, over time was asked to cut down on personality in formal communications.

Working at YouTube

• The initial days at YouTube were noted for a Machismo culture - male-dominated environment with no talk of family lives or children.
• Steve Chen (co-founder)?had two brain aneurysms which he later attributed to working 80-100 hour weeks with little sleep and lots of drinking.
• Contractors - YouTube/Google used contractors in many areas including content moderation. Contractors had lower compensations and benefits and are noted to be regularly overworked. They?were mainly utilized to feed training data for the algorithms, so they would no longer be necessary.
• Contractors who worked on filtering content had limited mental health benefits. Many of them had to take their own PTSD treatment or medication, due to the content they had to see.
• As the company continued its focus on engagement to keep users always on its platform, some employees felt they were working for a ‘cigarette factory’.

YouTube Operations

YouTube initially had human curators to pick and showcase trending content on its homepage. The company eventually preferred algorithms doing this work.

The initial algorithms focused on improving clicks to a video (views). Some creators were able to game this with misleading titles and suggestive thumbnails. This later changed to a focus on watch time, which made the algorithms prioritize content that made users stay on YouTube longer. Long-form content (talk shows, gaming streams etc.) grew as a result.

The algorithms continued being evolved. They could identify the right points in the video to show ads once the audience was invested in the video (marketed internally as ‘the right combination of food and booze’). They could suggest videos based on if the user was on their phone or watching the TV.?

However, algorithms did not look for truthful, balanced or healthy content. It continued to focus on engagement at the expense of accuracy and civility.

There are a few theories to how YouTube got away from some of the scrutiny around similar sites like Facebook - Google spent $17m a year lobbying DC.

Policing Content

In the beginning, YouTube had smaller problems to deal with - mainly adult and violent content. They had human screeners to take care of this. Next, they had to deal with copyright which required legal expertise.

After that, they had region-based content to deal with. Eg: there was a criminal offense notice from the Thailand Government for a video that claimed to insult the king.

With the rise of ISIS propaganda and its influence, YouTube was under pressure to aggressively remove such content. Algorithms were eventually used heavily. They could spot frames for ISIS flags and take down content. However, the algorithms sometimes took down some videos just for being in Arabic or containing Islamic imagery. YouTube’s policing on Islamic content was not proportionate to the oversight on content from other faiths.

Unfortunately, similar efforts were not taken for other forms of aggressive material. The algorithms started grouping content around anti-Islam, anti-refugee, alt-right material, eventually evolving into outright conspiracies. This content gained in popularity more than actual news outlets. YouTube tried introducing ratings to recommend more healthy content, which was not effective as the audience for such content liked those videos. While noted as fringe content, they were also influential. The terrorist who killed 50 people in New Zealand felt YouTube was a significant source of information and inspiration.

The company got involved in these topics only when it became politically untenable.

There were a few initiatives to provide more balanced videos, but those efforts were shot down as YouTube had to appear neutral as a platform, to keep its liability protection. Efforts by employees and executives to report dangerous content were also chided.

The challenges around content got worse with the COVID-19 pandemic. The company now had to manage disinformation.

YouTube and its impact on kids

Officially, all users on YouTube are over 13 (as stated by its Terms of Service). However, kids were a significant source of views. Creators had multiple antics to keep children engaged on their videos. The algorithms worked well for kids as it was easier to keep them engaged, letting them click on video after video. There was limited oversight here, with many videos just being a form of glorified ads. The YouTube Kids app also did not help as it was also run by similar algorithms.

Some creators also used children’s favorite characters and placed them in weird or lewd or simulated torture situations. This content also got recommended with other children’s content, leading to a backlash.

YouTube Creators

The stars involved in providing the content and major source of revenue, also had to be managed and coddled. This was difficult for a company ‘that understood 0s and 1s but not people’. There are a few different examples in the book when the company was in difficult situations due to content by popular creators.

Creators worked with no benefits or job security. However, many people made YouTube as their primary income source (number of creators increased even further during the pandemic).

Some creators note the pressure to keep creating the same type of content, with increasing frequency. One creator says they were unable to go out with friends unless they could film content there.

Summary

Overall a very good read on a company that continues to search for ways to keep users, creators, companies all on their platform increasing their 'watch time'.