Deep in the shadowlands: Check out YouTube's best-kept secrets
Most of YouTube looks nothing like the YouTube we know.
Dive below the surface layer of gaming clips, music covers, challenges and dares, product placement and stunt philanthropy, and one finds… Indian construction workers talking about how much they miss home, moving tributes to lost pets, children showcasing amateur but delightful rap skills through songs about the many moons of Neptune.
There are also intimate home-video-style vignettes of birthday parties, travel velfies, heartfelt messages to friends and raw footage from dashcams.
'YouTube is the default video arm of the internet, in large parts of the world,' says Ryan McGrady, senior researcher at the Initiative for Digital Public Infrastructure (IDPI) of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. 'Some of it looks familiar, some of it is strange, some of it is personal, and a lot of it is really just banal pieces of people's lives.'
McGrady stumbled into this vast landscape that most of us never encounter, in early 2022. He was setting out to study instances of hate speech on the platform, and thought he'd start by finding out how many videos YouTube actually hosted.
It turned out there was no official answer (YouTube has since released one estimate, this April, of 'more than 20 billion uploads').
'My co-author, (IDPI director) Ethan Zuckerman, calls these 'denominator problems',' McGrady says, 'in the sense that we have easy access to numerators — for instance, 10,000 videos that are popular — but denominators are hard to find.'
How does one go about gathering an estimate for a platform that sees about 20 million videos uploaded a day (according to more YouTube data from April)?
At IDPI, the attempt involved creating a software program that estimated the number of videos by randomly generating and testing tens of thousands of YouTube IDs. This is how they realised that most of YouTube — a world McGrady refers to as Deep YouTube — is made up of videos that have never been uplifted by an algorithm.
As of April, the scraper had found 19.4 billion videos hosted on the platform.
About 4% of these have no views at all, 74% have no comments, and 32% have no likes, the researchers found.
Videos with 10,000 or more views drive 94% of the site's traffic but make up less than 4% of total uploads.
While this clearly works as a business model— ad spend on the platform has risen sharply and consistently, and YouTube is the worlds second-most-visited website after Google — it also creates a sense of sameness that does not reflect the true nature of the content on the platform, McGrady says.
More than meets the AI
What is the true nature of the content on YouTube?
In a paper published in Journal of Quantitative Description: Digital Media in 2023, McGrady and his team traced a rich diversity in usage across the platform.
People who speak different languages, for instance, use the platform differently. A larger portion of videos in Hindi are intended for relatives and friends of the content creator (rather than a broader audience), their ongoing research shows. Many were photo slideshows set to popular music, IDPI found.
Videos uploaded in Korean and Russian, meanwhile, were found to contain more news-driven content. In Russia, the platform had emerged as the go-to resource for unfiltered news from around the world. 'Lately, YouTube has been throttled and is harder to access there, but it persisted for an amazingly long time. Perhaps it was too popular to ban outright,' McGrady says.
Meanwhile, worldwide, a fifth of all YouTube videos are videogame clips.
Fringe feeds
How strange are the strangest videos?
Some clips are just 10 seconds of part of someone's face as they try to figure out a new phone camera. There are snatches of inaudible martial-arts instruction. Two hours of choir practice.
The spookiest thing to him, McGrady says, are the videos with no views at all.
'You'd think at least the uploader would watch their own post, right?' he says. An explanation for this could be the third-party apps on phones and videogame consoles, which make it easy for people to create clips and upload them directly to YouTube in bulk.
Yet it is in these videos, the ones with few views or none at all, that real life is being archived, he adds.
A group of friends celebrating a birthday shouldn't have more than 20 views, as he puts it. It is only meant for, say, friends who couldn't make it. But it is such videos, more than the viral content, that serve as time capsules: of how we lived, what we wore, how we celebrated, the languages we spoke and people we loved.
Who we really were, in other words, when almost no one was watching.
'Humanity doesn't look like the most popular YouTube videos,' McGrady says. 'Humanity is much more like the family birthdays, selfies, work meetings, vacation footage… the bulk of the footage that actually makes up YouTube's content.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Mint
3 hours ago
- Mint
Meet Shubh, the second Punjabi artiste after Diljit Dosanjh to grace Billboard Canada and sell out North American arenas
Shubh, the India-born, Brampton-based Punjabi singer, has made history by becoming the second Indian and second Punjabi artiste to appear solo on the cover of Billboard Canada. The only other Indian artist to receive this honour is global icon Diljit Dosanjh. This milestone marks a turning point not just for Shubh, but for Punjabi music worldwide. It signals a growing global appreciation for regional Indian sounds, with Shubh at the forefront of this movement. Coinciding with his Billboard feature, Shubh is set to begin his debut North American tour this August. The tour will begin at Oakland Arena on August 22, followed by Vancouver's Rogers Arena on August 23, and a major show at Toronto's Scotiabank Arena on September 5 - a stage once graced by legends like Eminem. The tour wraps up at the Prudential Center in New Jersey on September 7. 'I never expected this,' Shubh says about the arena tour. 'But I'm very happy that we're performing in arenas.' He also recalls his first concert in 2023 at Indigo at the O2 in London. 'My voice was shaking,' he admits. 'I was very hyped up, but it also humbled me down.' Earlier this year, Shubh released 'Sicario', a 10-track album that debuted at No. 24 on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart. The album, with over 250 million streams, blends Punjabi lyrics with modern hip-hop. Tracks like 'Buckle Up' and 'Aura' highlight his versatility. Following Sicario, his single Supreme became a viral hit. It debuted on the Billboard Canadian Hot 100, hit No. 1 on Apple Music India and Canada, and continues to stream over 1 million times a day on Spotify. Shubh's rise shows that Punjabi music is not only thriving but going global.
Economic Times
3 hours ago
- Economic Times
From 'English' vegetables to desi roots
Agencies Indian vegetables, like regional languages, were long regarded as uncool and rejected in favour of "English" staples such as carrots, beans and cauliflower. "Indian" dishes promoted by the culinary devis of the 1960s and 1970s rather than the rustic staples of 'native places' became the hallmark of upward mobility and even homogeneity, especially in the growing metros. By the second decade of the 21st century we were well on the way to "One India, One Cuisine".Then, deracinated urban classes began to experience a yearning for their roots, aided by a growing pride in all things desi. Even as they lived out their American dream in suburban condominium complexes in Gurgaon or Goregaon, Indians began to show interest in eating local and understanding rural, subaltern culinary histories. That's also when social media happened, and suddenly their new-found appetite for culinary legacy could be sated by a myriad of content providers. This week I was fascinated by a video of a chirpy, toothless Bengali village granny with wispy grey hair tied in a bun and a creased cotton saree wrapped in the old-fashioned 'aatpoure' style, cooking a dish made with the green stem of the elephant yam and small shrimps, on a wood-fired terracotta chulha. Clearly her grandson (the cameraman) realised that gas cylinders which her family could access via the PM's Ujjwala Yojana would have spoiled the bucolic tableau! A well-used grinding stone, a sharp bonti (Bengal's traditional curved iron blade set on a wooden base), a few stainless steel and plastic utensils, and a spatula comprised her kitchen kit, set under a palm-leaf thatched shelter with a lovely view of greenery and grey rain clouds. No ingredient labels, no kitchen aid brands, no product placements. Just weather-worn fingers expertly slicing, dicing, grinding and stirring while she cheerfully answered her grandson's questions. The dish she made had minimal oil and spices: just green chilli-yellow mustard seed paste, poppy seed paste, nigella seeds and turmeric; no onion-garlic-ginger, no garam masala. Most people do not know this facet of homestyle Bengali cooking, given the decades of publicity for the stereotypical wedding fare of rich, oily kalias and kosha mangsho. She even dispelled her grandson's fear that the stem would give him an itchy throat, which sometimes happens with yams. Fear is the reason most cityslickers avoided eating shoots, roots, leaves and all 'unknown' desi ingredients till a new interest in rustic fare made them set aside apprehensions. Most took a cue, of course, from the West's foraged food craze. Mushrooms have an international appeal and yams do not, so Indian elites were willing to profess a liking for fungi even if they ranged from pricey truffles and morels to deathcaps, but steered clear of potentially itchy tubers. Until now! Earlier this month, an Indian restaurant in New York, helmed by a chef who unapologetically presents the humble ingredients but robust flavours of his Tamil village, was adjudged the best eatery in the Big Apple. In India, restaurant cuisine has moved beyond Mughlai and other mainstream genres to brilliant riffs by star chefs, and even homestyle regional cuisines by home cooks. Truly rural flavours, however, have remained largely untasted in cities barring a few pop-ups. But now social media has given rural Indians the chance to take their no-fuss, no-waste, hyper-seasonal and hyper-local food to far-away audiences. I found more rural Bengali grannies with thousands of followers posting cooking videos on social media with a little help from grandkids, like plump 'nonnas' popularised rustic Italian cooking. Today, rural India's cool, deft paatis, ajis and thammas are doing the same. Thanks to them we will remain "One India, Many Cuisines". Elevate your knowledge and leadership skills at a cost cheaper than your daily tea. How Vedanta's Anil Agarwal bettered Warren Buffett in returns Rivers are moving more goods than before. But why aren't they making a splash yet? Why Infy's Parekh takes home more than TCS' CEO despite being smaller Is India ready to hit the aspirational 8% growth mark? Aadit Palicha on Zepto dark store raid, dark patterns, and IPO Stock Radar: MCX rallies over 50% in just 3 months to hit fresh highs! What should investors do in June – buy or book profits? Metal stocks: Candidates for tactical and contrarian investing? 6 metal stocks with an upside potential of up to 39% Weekly Top Picks: These stocks scored 10 on 10 on Stock Reports Plus
News18
3 hours ago
- News18
Priyanka Chopra On How Malti Manages School When Actress Is In India For SSMB29: 'Her Schedule's Crazier'
Priyanka Chopra said that her daughter Malti Marie Jonas remains busy and loves to socialize with her friends. Priyanka Chopra recently appeared on Jimmy Fallon's show and reflected on raising her young daughter, Malti Marie Jonas, amid her busy schedule. Priyanka is married to Nick Jonas, who is a massively popular singer and actor. Due to her parents' busy schedule, Malti is going to school in New York, where Nick is performing on Broadway. Priyanka said that while she often has to fly to India due to a film shoot, Malti's schedule is even 'crazier'. Priyanka Chopra said, 'She's precocious, she's funny, she's a little comedian. She knows she's funny, so that's even better. Yeah, she's such a light of our lives right now. This is an amazing season for us. Nick has been on Broadway for the last five years. We were in New York, hunkered down." The actress added, 'I'm filming a movie in India, so I fly back and forth from there. So we're based in this East Coast summer right now, and she's (Malti) going to school here. She has her little clique of friends, and her schedule's even crazier than mine. There are so many classes. Kids do so much… She wants to socialise with other babies." Priyanka also revealed Malti's favourite movie and song. 'She, by the way, Moana has been a favourite. She loves… she wears a Moana dress all day and Moana 2 is her favourite. But she has a varied sense of music. She listens to… APT is her favourite song, by the way. Every morning. Morning song," the actress said. When asked if Malti listens to any Nick Jonas or Jonas Brothers' songs, Priyanka laughed and said, 'I mean, she doesn't identify them, but she calls them 'The Doughnut Brothers'… Isn't it amazing? We should merch that… Let's make that into the new Labubu." Priyanka appeared on Jimmy Fallon's show to promote her upcoming Hollywood film, Heads of State. The film also stars Idris Elba and John Cena. Meanwhile, Priyanka Chopra is also shooting her Indian comeback film with Mahesh Babu and SS Rajamouli. Recently, the actress has been frequently flying to Hyderabad to shoot key scenes in the film. First Published:
