20 years of YouTube: 'We couldn't have predicted how the platform would evolve'
What toppled Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, launched the careers of Justin Bieber and Ed Sheeran, and gave the world Gangnam Style and K-pop, sneezing pandas, and Mr Beast?
Yes, YouTube. Happy 20th birthday to the video-streaming platform with three billion users in 100 countries, the world's second biggest search engine, and a billion hours of content a day. Crikey. Has it really been 20 years?
Beloved of everyone from primary school kids to their grannies and everyone in between (in our house it's a verb), the existence of YouTube came about thanks to two very different events in 2004 — the Asian tsunami and Janet Jackson's nipple at the Super Bowl.
Back then — for very different reasons – it was hard to find footage of these two events online. This gave three tech bros working at PayPal an idea for a video-sharing platform.
Originally launched on Valentine's Day 2005 as a potential dating site — the three co-founders, Jawed Karim, Steve Chen, and Chad Hurley were self-declared geeks in need of dates — its initial slogan was 'tune in, hook up'.
But the stampede of people uploading dating video profiles failed to materialise, so the three guys opened the platform to everyone — the first video, uploaded in April 2005, was a grainy 19-second clip of Karim at San Diego zoo in front of the elephants, titled 'Me At The Zoo'.
Not long after, in October 2006, Google bought YouTube for $1.65bn — a year after Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp had bought the now long-dead platform MySpace for $580m.
'We're the stage, you're the performers,' Hurley told the public. And behold, a new internet species was spawned — the YouTuber.
Nobodies in their bedrooms became somebodies earning serious cash — remember Zoella? PewDiePie?
Today's top three biggest YouTubers are Mr Beast (390m subscribers), T-Series (293m subscribers), and Cocomelon (193m subscribers).
You might not know who these people are if you're Gen X and use YouTube for music, film, or how-to tutorials rather than following the YouTube-famous.
Yet so many YouTube cultural moments are cross-generational — a YouTube 20th video in the form of a RickRoll has had a billion plus views to date (YouTube has its own constantly evolving language — the Rick in a RickRoll is Rick Astley).
In Ireland, some YouTube classics include The man who fell on the ice, Singing priest, Irish man fights with sat nav, and The Spark. Silly, fun, heart-warming, shared and shared and shared.
Alison Lomax, MD of YouTube in UK & Ireland: 'We've seen a lot of growth in the Irish YouTube community and economy and want to bring it together. If you're a YouTube creator and work on your own it can be quite lonely — having that peer group [of fellow creators] means people can learn from each other". Photograph Moya Nolan.
A LIGHTBULB MOMENT
Alison Lomax is CEO of YouTube for Ireland and the UK. After 11 years at Google — she's been working in tech and creativity since the days of dial-up — she moved to her current role at YouTube two years ago.
Based in London, she regularly pops over to Dublin — on the day I speak with her, she's here for an event celebrating Irish YouTubers.
'What's fascinating about my job is that no two days are the same,' she says. 'It's incredibly broad and varied, there's always a lot to think about — everything that's happening in the UK and Ireland is happening in my inbox.
'We've seen a lot of growth in the Irish YouTube community and economy and want to bring it together. If you're a YouTube creator and work on your own it can be quite lonely — having that peer group [of fellow creators] means people can learn from each other.
"When the first video was uploaded in 2005, there was no such thing as a creator, let alone a creator economy. People have gone from vlogging in their bedrooms to building studios and having meaningful careers off the back of their YouTube business.
'Another big difference we've seen is, as well as all the genres involved, is the breadth of partners involved — now we work with news publishers, sports partners, broadcasters like RTÉ, businesses keen to partner with YouTube to reach younger audiences and also reach a more global platform.'
This involvement of traditional media outlets began in 2005 when US broadcaster NBC had a lightbulb moment.
Early YouTube uploaded an NBC-owned Saturday Night Live clip, Lazy Sunday, and NBC sued — before realising that an SNL clip going viral on YouTube was actually a good thing. A very good thing.
'That change in decision making was quite a pivotal moment in YouTube's history. What we see now with big partners globally is their understanding of the role YouTube plays, how it can complement what they're trying to achieve. We are a redistribution platform,' says Lomax.
Creators — the people uploading self-created content — and YouTube split the revenue from the uploaded content 55%/45%.
'Over the past three years, we have paid out $70bn to creators, partners, and musical artists. YouTube is a unique revenue-sharing model that no other platforms have at this scale. It's what has allowed creators to build their businesses on YouTube. It's revenue that they get week in week out.'
Being famous on YouTube can open all kinds of doors. The Sidemen, a group of eight friends who post comedy, vlogging, and gaming content, are popular with teenagers — they're worth around $50m.
'The Sidemen launched 10 years ago, and are now probably the UK's biggest creators,' says Lomax. 'They have a vodka brand, chicken shops. They had a charity football match at Wembley recently and it sold out faster than any other football match, they raised £6m. They're celebrities.
'Anyone with a phone and an idea or a passion can build a business, which means the representation is from all over, from rural as well as urban areas, all over the world,' she says.
'Global distribution means that for a local creator, the majority of their content is watched outside of their country, so they can reach a global audience.
'Allie Sherlock is a great example, from the days of busking in Grafton St, she now has a huge YouTube channel [6.28m followers] and is well known in the US. I think YouTube is super-interesting when it comes to music, you have big artists who have launched their careers on YouTube, and genres like K-Pop. It's really positive.'
Well, mostly. But like every other corner of the internet, there's toxicity, particularly in the so-called manosphere.
Alison Lomax, MD of YouTube in UK & Ireland: 'Our view is that generative AI is going to power human creativity, not replace it. But with AI, there are obviously areas where the platform has needed to evolve, and areas where we've needed to look at our policies to see how they've needed to change." Photograph Moya Nolan.
THE DARK SIDE OF THE TUBE
Recent research from Dublin City University showed how the recommender algorithms on YouTube and TikTok fed 10 sock-puppet male-identifying accounts on blank smartphones 'masculinist, anti-feminist, and other extremist content irrespective of whether they sought out general or male supremacist-related content, and that they all received this content within the first 23 minutes of the experiment'. Yikes.
So what does YouTube do about harmful content — misogyny, white supremacy, far right extremism?
Why is the algorithm allowed to push toxic content with the potential to reinforce and influence harmful behaviours? To spread misinformation, to amplify the deranged toxicity of fringe groups and individuals? To proliferate far right content?
Is it because, as outlined in Facebook whistleblower Sarah Wynn Williams' book Careless People, spreading hate and far right extremism is extremely profitable?
'It's a societal challenge,' says Lomax. 'We have guidelines and policies about hate speech, and policies which prohibit content that has hatred towards any individuals or groups based on certain attributes, and we enforce this really rigorously. We have a 20,000-strong trust and safety team, and we work around the clock to make sure that any content which violates our policies is removed from the platform.'
Andrew Tate, the online face of toxic masculinity, was permanently banned from YouTube in 2022 (unlike on Elon Musk's X, where he currently has 10.7m followers).
'We terminated his channels for multiple violations. He cannot own or upload onto any YouTube channel, or reupload any content,' says Lomax. 'He has no channels.'
She explains how the platform deals with removing harmful content, which is done retroactively, that is, it has to be up there in order to be taken down. 'We have AI, which everyone thinks is new, but has been part of our platform for a long time. That's the first step.'
Content flagged by AI is reviewed by the trust and safety team which is made up of 20,000 humans.
'We publish quarterly reports where we share the percentage of content which violates our views — the last one was 0.1%. It will never be zero, but we want it to be as close to zero as possible. We have removed over 236,000 videos which violated our hate speech policies.'
YouTube Kids, launched in 2015, is aimed at tweens too young to have access to the platform (you have to be 13 or older), with parental controls around content, watch time, and search history.
'We also work with independent child development specialists and we have an independent youth and family advisory committee made up of independent experts who consult with us on our safety and age appropriateness from a content and platform perspective,' she says.
'We are always looking at ways we can protect children at all different stages. It's critical for us. Online safety is the most important thing for the platform.'
SHORT SHORTS
YouTube is famous for mutating to survive. When, for example, TikTok came along, YouTube responded in 2020 with YouTube Shorts, offering YouTube users a TikTok-like experience.
And while AI has played a long-term role in scraping harmful content from its millions of uploads, how is generative AI impacting the platform?
'Our view is that generative AI is going to power human creativity, not replace it. But with AI, there are obviously areas where the platform has needed to evolve, and areas where we've needed to look at our policies to see how they've needed to change.
"Last year, we launched creative disclosure labelling, which means there's a label required if someone has altered the content. It's now required that this is disclosed, and in some cases a watermark is shown on the content itself. So this means creators are transparent about which content is AI and which isn't.'
Another innovation is content ID — if you own content, and someone else uploads it in a user-generated content way, you can claim it and monetise it.
'It's protected under your copyright. Which is a good source of monetisation for creators and partners. It's a way of expanding systems we've built over the years to protect creators, because ultimately our business is only successful if it works for creators. It's an ecosystem based on trust. We want users to know what is real and what has been created by AI. And deepfakes are subject to our community guidelines the same as any other content.'
As tech and our human responses to it continue to develop at warp speed, it's impossible to predict what YouTube, and the digital ecosystem in which it exists, will look like in the future. Or does Lomax have a crystal ball? She laughs.
'Looking back over the past 20 years, we couldn't have predicted all of the different changes and how much the platform has evolved.
'We're constantly responding to user behaviour changes and also to changes within the media landscape as well. We've made so many big pivots over the years that it's really difficult to predict the next 20 years.'
She'd like to see more acknowledgement for the role of YouTube creator as a legitimate career path. 'How do we and businesses and the government support this creator economy and recognise its growth potential within the creative industries? It's a real incubation for talent. We want YouTube to be the most rewarding platform, creatively and financially.'
Cork busker Allie Sherlock has been one of Ireland's great YouTube success stories. Pic: Marc O'Sullivan
IRELAND'S MOST-FOLLOWED YOUTUBERS
1. jacksepticeye - 30.9M
The Athlone-based gaming YouTuber started his channel in February 2012, achieving a milestone one million subscribers just two years later in August 2014. More than a decade on, he is Ireland's most-followed creator. He's also got his own coffee brand, Top of the Mornin' coffee.
2. Nogla - 7.41M
After 12 years on YouTube, the Limerick YouTuber has cemented his place as our second most-followed content creator.
3. Allie Sherlock - 6.29M
The 20-year-old Cork native regularly draws crowds busking on Dublin's Grafton Street, but her astounding success on YouTube has given her a global reach. She went viral smashing covers, but now she's releasing her own original music.
4. Inventor 101 - 5.89M
This DIY channel says its based in Ireland, but its creator has kept their identity a secret. They upload "inventions and science experiments" every week.
5. Kauczuk - 5.24M
The Meath-based 27-year-old has gained a following sharing videos of himself creating stunning pieces of art.
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