It goes without saying that YouTube is having an identity crisis at the moment. Eschewing certain creators for being too controversial while aligning itself with political view-spewing late night talk show hosts and a vlogger filming dead bodies, the assumedly profitless Alphabet Inc. subsidiary has found itself struggling to hit its stride even at its perceived height in the early 2010s as a haven for content in a variety of forms. With the platform as the primary source of entertainment for Generation Z as polled by television network Awesomeness, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and perhaps even you are likely concerned for the future of the site, the former mainly to maintain her salary and the rest of us to avoid boredom when there are no more Snapchat stories to swipe through. With that concern, one has to wonder how the platform got here, and if any of its woes can be explained by economics.
YouTube is no stranger to life threatening crises. The years in between 2007 and 2010 saw YouTube nearly shut down in the excitingly dramatic case of Viacom International Inc. v. YouTube, Inc., where the court ruled in Google’s favor because Viacom was proven to have leaked and pirated their own works prior to their release in a guerilla marketing campaign in a case where they were suing YouTube for allowing piracy to occur. Other things have swept at the now media juggernaut left and right, harming its reputation and threatening to end its supremacy in original online content distribution for years with none-succeeding, but 2017 saw a more serious attempt at the website’s content creators who sustain it more direct than ever before. Following the still dominant YouTuber PewDiePie’s multiple controversial actions regarding certain topics that are not exactly things you’d include in a High School Econ Class’s blog, the Wall Street Journal, the Verge and its parent Vox, and other reputable news organizations were quick to report on the again breaking story of YouTube’s downfall. Whether or not you agree with their articles is irrelevant as the damage caused by them has already been done to those making videos. With a number of notable advertisers like GM, Amazon and Coca-Cola boycotting the site to avoid being associated with those responsible for such actions, YouTube losing a few more customers was obviously a preferable opportunity cost in not running ads when compared to having your company branded as a supporter of extremist beliefs. In a trend of changes implemented by YouTube that hurt the backbones of its community, YouTube would deal a near fatal blow to them through the automatic demonetization of videos that even reference topics deemed controversial by the site’s machine learning based algorithm, all the while partnering with a new generation of social media stars arriving from Instagram and the then recently killed-off Vine, Celebrities like Dwayne ‘the Rock’ Johnson and Will Smith, other online empires like Buzzfeed and CollegeHumor, and conventional TV networks to promise advertisers that it wouldn’t happen again and that there would still be plenty of rabid young consumers ready to be reached by companies’ ads and to buy their products. With YouTube actively promoting these channel’s content, their demand for their service may have been diminished with a departure of some of the site’s most loyal fans, but the continuous influx of new consumers with plenty of younger viewers getting phones and tablets capable of browsing YouTube and with emerging markets not having exposure to the site’s previous state.
In light of this, numerous creators tried and true in popularity openly expressed their frustration with the company that allowed their successes in an attempt to make a change. With the site acting as what is essentially a monopolistically competitive market, creators have to work hard to differentiate themselves form each other in an attempt to attract fans, with YouTube’s active manipulation of video outreach acting as an anticompetitive force for the aforementioned channels winning their favor. However, like something experiencing diminishing returns, creators who attempted to do something about this were usually only hurt more. Notably advertiser friendly and school favorite content creators John and Hank Green of vlogbrothers and Crash Course fame had their videos addressing historical topics demonetized as YouTube’s moderation algorithm again sought to rid from notability any videos remotely controversial. Most recently, YouTuber Mumkey Jones, a fairly popular creator on the site, had his channel completely terminated by YouTube’s algorithm. While the reasons for it are understandable given his content was centered around exposing and satricially ridiculing the perpetrator of a highly tragic event that I won’t mention here, the fact that the channel was entirely taken down by YouTube’s AI is indicative of the reality that YouTube doesn’t actually care about those using their site, but merely being able to keep itself afloat.
While many viewers and YouTubers alike may call YouTube’s intense and careless policing of content a violation of free speech, it’s important to remember that YouTube is a corporation, one who’s parent company’s shareholders do not care or even know about what happens on the site apart from what the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post report on, and one that, like any rational actor in an economy, wants to make a profit. It doesn’t exist for the creators or the viewers, but instead for the advertisers who sustain it and are the only worthwhile reason Alphabet likely keeps the site running.
Works Cited
Asarch, Steven. "Creators with Controversial Content Struggle to Survive on YouTube." Newsweek, 19 Dec. 2018, www.newsweek.com/youtube-censorship-bots-mumkey-jones-algorithm-1265776.Awesomeness, Multiple. "Gen Z: The Audience You Can't Ignore." Awesomeness, Awesomeness TV Network, May 2017, awesomenesstvnetwork.files.wordpress.com/2017/05/awesomeness_report_final1.pdf.
Docket Alarm, Inc. "Viacom International, Inc. Et Al V. Youtube, Inc. Et Al, 1:07-cv-02103 (S.D.N.Y.) Via Docket Alarm." Docket Alarm, www.docketalarm.com/cases/New_York_Southern_District_Court/1--07-cv-02103/Viacom_International_Inc._et_al_v._Youtube_Inc._et_al/.
Levine, Zahavah. "Broadcast Yourself." Official YouTube Blog, YouTube, youtube.googleblog.com/2010/03/broadcast-yourself.html.
Rolfe Winkler, Jack Nicas and Ben Fritz. "Disney Severs Ties With YouTube Star PewDiePie After Anti-Semitic Posts." WSJ, The Wall Street Journal, 14 Feb. 2017, www.wsj.com/articles/disney-severs-ties-with-youtube-star-pewdiepie-after-anti-semitic-posts-1487034533.
Sherman, Erik. "4 Reasons YouTube Still Doesn't Make a Profit." Live, Breaking News Today: Latest National Headlines, World News and More from CBSNews.com and Watch the CBSN Live News Stream 24x7, 27 May 2015, www.cbsnews.com/news/4-reasons-youtube-still-doesnt-make-a-profit/.
Statt, Nick. "YouTube is Facing a Full-scale Advertising Boycott over Hate Speech." The Verge, Vox Media, 24 Mar. 2017, www.theverge.com/2017/3/24/15053990/google-youtube-advertising-boycott-hate-speech.
Vlogbrothers. "35 Minutes on YouTube Demonetization." YouTube, vlogbrothers, 6 Oct. 2017, www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouMeAaAWUEg.
Wikimedia Foundation, Multiple. "Viacom International, Inc. v. YouTube, Inc." Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viacom_International_Inc._v._YouTube,_Inc.
I like how you are getting to the point the Youtube has a market economy on top of the actual market economy, where in this case what channels are competing for are views. Thousands of people make careers by producing entertaining or educating content for viewers and because Youtube has total control over their website any change they make has the possibility of interfering with this market and destroying livelihoods. Youtube has a situation where they are pressured into overreaction by advertisers to distinguish what the content of the uploaded videos are and while I'm not arguing for a completely unregulated creative space the system of demonetization hurts revenue for legitimate channels while only marginally improving Youtube's revenue, causing inefficiency. Any video in which an automated system identifies something suspicious, be it words or phrases or images, is immediately demonetized. Most channels get the vast majority of their views and income from the first two days a video is uploaded so when a channel wants to educate people on, for instance, how bad the holocaust was their video is flagged and demonetized for having sensitive content leading to a counterproductive effect that if actual educators are caught while trying to weed out inappropriate content the effect is that less people will be aware of what is trying to be caught.
ReplyDeleteYou're completely correct. While YouTube was a free market before its intense policing of content, the reality of it is more similar to a mixed-market economy, where YouTube, like a government, supports certain individuals in a mutually beneficial fashion for the creator and YouTube. However, unlike any economy, YouTube doesn't exist naturally because of the decisions made by individuals, but rather as a firm itself and, unlike an entire market, has its own interests which have created the inefficiencies you mentioned.
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It's really interesting to see how YouTube acts as an economy itself. It kind of demonstrates the complexities of economics - revealing how small economies can reside within larger ones. I agree that YouTube has been in a phase of identity crisis and with its constantly changing algorithms, it negatively affects the creators within the community. The schizophrenia that YouTube's algorithm is experiencing also causes a negative externality to the viewers because they aren't receiving consistent content from their favorite channels. Channels are focusing on making videos that apply to the algorithms, hence making the most amount of money, rather than staying true to themselves. I think that YouTube should figure out the one formula that they want to use on all their videos and stick with it in order to create some consistency for the creators and the viewers.
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