WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.780 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are recording 00:00:01.780 --> 00:00:05.980 this on February 2nd, 2026. And if you have looked 00:00:05.980 --> 00:00:08.060 at a calendar recently, or if you just, you know, 00:00:08.060 --> 00:00:10.039 feel that general sense of time passing weighing 00:00:10.039 --> 00:00:12.419 on you, you might have realized we are right 00:00:12.419 --> 00:00:15.359 on the edge of a pretty massive cultural milestone. 00:00:15.679 --> 00:00:18.600 A huge one. In less than two weeks, the platform 00:00:18.600 --> 00:00:21.160 that basically ate the modern internet turns 00:00:21.160 --> 00:00:25.239 21. 21 years of YouTube. It is officially old 00:00:25.239 --> 00:00:27.339 enough to walk into a bar in the United States 00:00:27.339 --> 00:00:31.859 and order a drink. Which is a terrifying thought, 00:00:32.020 --> 00:00:33.780 considering I still remember when it was just 00:00:33.780 --> 00:00:36.840 like grainy videos of people falling off skateboards 00:00:36.840 --> 00:00:39.859 and cats playing keyboards. Exactly. But we aren't 00:00:39.859 --> 00:00:41.759 just here to sing happy birthday. We've got a 00:00:41.759 --> 00:00:44.240 massive stack of research here. We do. We've 00:00:44.240 --> 00:00:46.340 got financial reports, old interviews with the 00:00:46.340 --> 00:00:49.979 founders, some really, really heavy policy documents 00:00:49.979 --> 00:00:52.799 from late 2025. Right. And the mission today 00:00:52.799 --> 00:00:55.320 is to figure out how a site that started as a 00:00:55.320 --> 00:00:58.000 failed dating service. A spectacularly failed 00:00:58.000 --> 00:01:00.240 dating service. How that failure evolved. into 00:01:00.240 --> 00:01:02.659 the second most visited website on the entire 00:01:02.659 --> 00:01:04.420 planet. We're going to look at the algorithm, 00:01:04.659 --> 00:01:07.879 the apocalypse, the geopolitics. But before we 00:01:07.879 --> 00:01:10.319 get into the weird history, and it is weird, 00:01:10.420 --> 00:01:14.159 I want to ground us in the present. Okay. Because 00:01:14.159 --> 00:01:16.079 I think people hear the word YouTube and they 00:01:16.079 --> 00:01:18.980 just think videos. They don't really grasp the 00:01:18.980 --> 00:01:21.359 sheer scale of the infrastructure we're dealing 00:01:21.359 --> 00:01:24.200 with in 2026. It's almost impossible to visualize. 00:01:24.280 --> 00:01:26.780 The word giant just doesn't cover it. We're looking 00:01:26.780 --> 00:01:32.000 at 2 .7 billion monthly active users. Okay. Let's 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:34.810 just pause on that number. 2 .7 billion. That 00:01:34.810 --> 00:01:36.870 is roughly one out of every three people on the 00:01:36.870 --> 00:01:39.709 planet. And that includes areas with poor or 00:01:39.709 --> 00:01:41.609 no connectivity. So if you look at the connected 00:01:41.609 --> 00:01:45.189 world, the saturation is it's nearly total. Right. 00:01:45.290 --> 00:01:47.069 But the metric that really matters isn't just 00:01:47.069 --> 00:01:49.049 who's logging in. It's the time they spend there. 00:01:49.150 --> 00:01:51.730 We're seeing over one billion hours of video 00:01:51.730 --> 00:01:55.510 consumed every single day. One billion hours 00:01:55.510 --> 00:01:59.010 daily. So what is that? Roughly 114 ,000 years 00:01:59.010 --> 00:02:00.989 of human attention is just poured into this thing 00:02:00.989 --> 00:02:02.890 every 24 hours. It's an attention black hole. 00:02:03.010 --> 00:02:05.430 It really is. And the library that's feeding 00:02:05.430 --> 00:02:07.909 that hunger is expanding at a rate that just 00:02:07.909 --> 00:02:11.129 it defies logic. What's the count now? Well, 00:02:11.250 --> 00:02:14.969 as of mid 2024, the total video count was somewhere 00:02:14.969 --> 00:02:18.949 around 14 .8 billion. But the upload rate is 00:02:18.949 --> 00:02:21.729 the killer stat. To one. More than 500 hours 00:02:21.729 --> 00:02:24.699 of content are uploaded every minute. So in the 00:02:24.699 --> 00:02:26.819 time it took you to say that one sentence, about 00:02:26.819 --> 00:02:29.620 three weeks worth of video was just added. Exactly. 00:02:30.080 --> 00:02:32.520 And that creates an engineering challenge, a 00:02:32.520 --> 00:02:34.759 moderation challenge, and, you know, a cultural 00:02:34.759 --> 00:02:36.819 challenge that no other company has ever really 00:02:36.819 --> 00:02:39.719 had to solve at that scale. And it is a financial 00:02:39.719 --> 00:02:41.819 monster, too. We're going to dissect the business 00:02:41.819 --> 00:02:44.020 model later, but just top line, we're talking 00:02:44.020 --> 00:02:46.840 about a platform generating over $50 billion 00:02:46.840 --> 00:02:50.379 in combined revenue. It's a geopolitical battleground. 00:02:50.520 --> 00:02:53.800 It's an economy. It's a library. And as we saw 00:02:53.800 --> 00:02:56.960 in 2025 with the age assurance rollouts and misinformation 00:02:56.960 --> 00:03:00.360 policy shifts, it's also becoming a highly regulated 00:03:00.360 --> 00:03:03.039 utility. It is not the Wild West anymore. Definitely 00:03:03.039 --> 00:03:04.599 not. We're going to get into the whole scan your 00:03:04.599 --> 00:03:07.080 face to watch a video controversy, which is very 00:03:07.080 --> 00:03:09.439 real and happening now. But let's rewind to the 00:03:09.439 --> 00:03:11.620 beginning. Every empire has an origin story. 00:03:11.979 --> 00:03:14.180 And usually that origin story is a little bit 00:03:14.180 --> 00:03:17.300 messy. With YouTube, it involves a wardrobe malfunction, 00:03:17.780 --> 00:03:20.319 a tsunami, and a dinner party that might be a 00:03:20.319 --> 00:03:22.680 complete lie. The mythology of Silicon Valley 00:03:22.680 --> 00:03:25.780 loves a good garage moment, right? And YouTube 00:03:25.780 --> 00:03:28.539 has two very distinct versions of its founding 00:03:28.539 --> 00:03:31.539 myth. Two competing myths. Competing myths. And 00:03:31.539 --> 00:03:33.740 to understand them, you have to look at the three 00:03:33.740 --> 00:03:37.370 guys who built it. Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and 00:03:37.370 --> 00:03:40.289 Jad Karim. The PayPal mafia. Right. And that 00:03:40.289 --> 00:03:42.810 label is important. They were all early employees 00:03:42.810 --> 00:03:45.370 at PayPal. They watched a small, scrappy startup 00:03:45.370 --> 00:03:48.530 get acquired by eBay for, what, $1 .5 billion? 00:03:48.990 --> 00:03:51.210 Yeah. So they walked away with capital, but more 00:03:51.210 --> 00:03:52.789 importantly, they walked away with a specific 00:03:52.789 --> 00:03:54.889 mindset. They understood that if you want to 00:03:54.889 --> 00:03:56.789 build something huge, you have to remove friction. 00:03:57.009 --> 00:03:59.310 Okay. PayPal removed the friction of sending 00:03:59.310 --> 00:04:01.870 money. Their idea was to remove the friction 00:04:01.870 --> 00:04:04.969 of sharing video. Because in 2005, sharing a 00:04:04.969 --> 00:04:07.729 video was a nightmare. A total nightmare. You 00:04:07.729 --> 00:04:10.349 had to compress it, email it, if the file wasn't 00:04:10.349 --> 00:04:13.389 too big, or maybe host it on a private FTP server. 00:04:13.590 --> 00:04:15.250 It just wasn't something a normal person could 00:04:15.250 --> 00:04:18.730 do. It was technical hell. So, this brings us 00:04:18.730 --> 00:04:21.449 to the first origin story, the dinner party. 00:04:21.980 --> 00:04:23.980 The official story. For a while. The official 00:04:23.980 --> 00:04:27.680 PR story. The version that Steve Chen and Chad 00:04:27.680 --> 00:04:30.920 Hurley told to the press for years is that in 00:04:30.920 --> 00:04:33.839 early 2005, they were at a dinner party at Chen's 00:04:33.839 --> 00:04:36.480 apartment in San Francisco. They were shooting 00:04:36.480 --> 00:04:38.579 clips of their friends, having a great time, 00:04:38.740 --> 00:04:40.899 and the next day they wanted to share the files. 00:04:41.120 --> 00:04:43.579 But they couldn't. The files were too heavy for 00:04:43.579 --> 00:04:46.379 email. It's a classic problem -solution narrative. 00:04:46.660 --> 00:04:50.120 We had a problem, so we built the solution. It's 00:04:50.120 --> 00:04:52.040 very, very marketable. Incredibly marketable. 00:04:52.060 --> 00:04:53.600 It makes them seem like these relatable guys 00:04:53.600 --> 00:04:56.040 just trying to help their friends out. But there's 00:04:56.040 --> 00:04:59.259 a snag. Jod Kareem. Jod Kareem, the third founder, 00:04:59.420 --> 00:05:01.379 says the party never happened. He was invited. 00:05:01.699 --> 00:05:03.540 He says nobody was invited because the party 00:05:03.540 --> 00:05:06.180 didn't exist. He claims the dinner party was 00:05:06.180 --> 00:05:08.879 a fabrication by the PR team to make the company 00:05:08.879 --> 00:05:11.480 seem more approachable and less, you know, corporate. 00:05:11.800 --> 00:05:14.600 So what's Kareem's version? Because usually the 00:05:14.600 --> 00:05:16.990 unsexy version ends up being the truth. Kareem's 00:05:16.990 --> 00:05:18.750 version is fascinating because it's not about 00:05:18.750 --> 00:05:21.110 social sharing. It's about information access. 00:05:21.449 --> 00:05:24.649 Okay. He points to two specific events in 2004 00:05:24.649 --> 00:05:27.870 that frustrated him. The first was the Indian 00:05:27.870 --> 00:05:31.490 Ocean tsunami. A massive global event. Massive. 00:05:31.490 --> 00:05:32.990 People were talking about it everywhere, but 00:05:32.990 --> 00:05:35.509 he couldn't find any actual footage of it online. 00:05:35.829 --> 00:05:38.410 He wanted to see the scale of the disaster, and 00:05:38.410 --> 00:05:40.110 the internet just couldn't provide it. Which 00:05:40.110 --> 00:05:43.339 is so hard to imagine now. Today, if an event 00:05:43.339 --> 00:05:45.939 like that happens, there are 50 different angles 00:05:45.939 --> 00:05:48.420 of it on YouTube within minutes. Precisely. The 00:05:48.420 --> 00:05:51.319 second event was the Super Bowl 38 halftime show, 00:05:51.540 --> 00:05:54.680 Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake. Ah, the 00:05:54.680 --> 00:05:57.279 wardrobe malfunction. The moment that launched 00:05:57.279 --> 00:06:00.620 a million Google searches, Kareem couldn't find 00:06:00.620 --> 00:06:03.160 the clip anywhere. And he realized there was 00:06:03.160 --> 00:06:05.360 this massive gap. People wanted to see specific 00:06:05.360 --> 00:06:09.980 moments, news. culture, celebrity mishaps, and 00:06:09.980 --> 00:06:12.459 there was no centralized repository for it. If 00:06:12.459 --> 00:06:14.300 you didn't TiVo it, you missed it forever. You 00:06:14.300 --> 00:06:16.420 miss it. So you have this conflict in the DNA 00:06:16.420 --> 00:06:18.540 of the company right from the very start. Yeah. 00:06:18.660 --> 00:06:20.699 Is it a place to share personal moments with 00:06:20.699 --> 00:06:23.279 friends like the dinner party story suggests? 00:06:23.699 --> 00:06:26.560 Or is it a utility to archive the world's events 00:06:26.560 --> 00:06:28.699 like the tsunami story suggests? And the answer 00:06:28.699 --> 00:06:31.540 eventually was both. It was both, but not at 00:06:31.540 --> 00:06:33.819 first because their first attempt at solving 00:06:33.819 --> 00:06:37.240 this problem was... Well, it was seriously misguided. 00:06:37.300 --> 00:06:40.620 They didn't launch as a video library. They launched 00:06:40.620 --> 00:06:44.720 with the slogan, tune in, hook up. A dating site. 00:06:45.779 --> 00:06:48.100 I just love this detail so much. They looked 00:06:48.100 --> 00:06:50.199 at this revolutionary video streaming technology 00:06:50.199 --> 00:06:52.660 and thought, let's make a video version of Hot 00:06:52.660 --> 00:06:56.399 or Not. It seems completely absurd now, but you 00:06:56.399 --> 00:06:59.350 have to remember the context of 2005. Dating 00:06:59.350 --> 00:07:01.509 sites were one of the few business models on 00:07:01.509 --> 00:07:03.550 the web that were actually making money. That's 00:07:03.550 --> 00:07:05.610 true. So they built the architecture, they had 00:07:05.610 --> 00:07:08.490 the domain, and they needed content. But this 00:07:08.490 --> 00:07:10.670 is where they hit the classic cold start problem. 00:07:11.029 --> 00:07:13.629 You have a platform, but nobody's using it because 00:07:13.629 --> 00:07:15.310 there's nothing to watch. And there's nothing 00:07:15.310 --> 00:07:17.129 to watch because nobody's using it. The chicken 00:07:17.129 --> 00:07:19.290 and the egg. They were desperate. They actually 00:07:19.290 --> 00:07:23.399 ran ads on Craigslist? No way. Yes. They offered 00:07:23.399 --> 00:07:27.339 women $100 to upload videos of themselves introducing 00:07:27.339 --> 00:07:30.019 themselves to potential dates. That is a direct 00:07:30.019 --> 00:07:34.180 bribe. Please use our website. So did anyone 00:07:34.180 --> 00:07:37.040 take the money? Not a single person. Zero. It 00:07:37.040 --> 00:07:39.639 was a total failure. Wow. And this is such a 00:07:39.639 --> 00:07:42.720 crucial lesson in product market fit. They built 00:07:42.720 --> 00:07:44.620 the technology but they completely misunderstood 00:07:44.620 --> 00:07:47.439 the user motivation. People didn't want to upload 00:07:47.439 --> 00:07:49.360 videos to get judged on their appearance for 00:07:49.360 --> 00:07:51.660 a date. The barrier was too high and the reward 00:07:51.660 --> 00:07:54.240 was way too low. So the dating angle just dies 00:07:54.240 --> 00:07:57.370 on the vine. They have this code. They have the 00:07:57.370 --> 00:08:00.470 ability to upload and stream Flash video, which 00:08:00.470 --> 00:08:02.189 was the secret sauce, right? The fact that it 00:08:02.189 --> 00:08:04.730 played in the browser without needing a plug 00:08:04.730 --> 00:08:06.829 -in download. Yeah, it was the technical breakthrough. 00:08:06.990 --> 00:08:09.250 Before YouTube, you usually had to download a 00:08:09.250 --> 00:08:11.850 massive QuickTime or RealPlayer file and have 00:08:11.850 --> 00:08:14.250 the right codec. A total pain. A total pain. 00:08:14.589 --> 00:08:16.889 YouTube used Flash, which was already installed 00:08:16.889 --> 00:08:20.490 on like 98 % of browsers. It was one -click watching. 00:08:20.649 --> 00:08:22.870 It just worked. So they have the tech, but no 00:08:22.870 --> 00:08:25.529 content and no users. What triggers the pivot? 00:08:25.920 --> 00:08:27.699 They just gave up on the rules. They opened the 00:08:27.699 --> 00:08:29.779 back end. They said, forget the dating. Forget 00:08:29.779 --> 00:08:32.000 the gender requirements. Just upload whatever 00:08:32.000 --> 00:08:34.200 you have. They moved from a managed approach 00:08:34.200 --> 00:08:38.139 to a completely permissionless. Exactly. Broadcast 00:08:38.139 --> 00:08:40.600 yourself. That became the new mission. And the 00:08:40.600 --> 00:08:44.279 very first video to test this new open philosophy 00:08:44.279 --> 00:08:47.899 wasn't a viral hit. It wasn't a celebrity. It 00:08:47.899 --> 00:08:51.860 was Jawed Kareem at the zoo. April 23, 2005. 00:08:52.080 --> 00:08:56.340 The video is titled Me at the Zoo. It is 18 seconds 00:08:56.340 --> 00:08:59.919 long. It is grainy. The audio is terrible. So 00:08:59.919 --> 00:09:02.259 bad. It's just Kareem standing in front of the 00:09:02.259 --> 00:09:04.779 elephant enclosure at the San Diego Zoo. I rewatched 00:09:04.779 --> 00:09:06.820 this morning. The full transcript is literally 00:09:06.820 --> 00:09:09.799 him saying the cool thing about these guys is 00:09:09.799 --> 00:09:12.379 that they have really, really long trunks. And 00:09:12.379 --> 00:09:14.860 that's cool. That's it. That's it. That is the 00:09:14.860 --> 00:09:17.240 foundational text of the modern video internet. 00:09:17.399 --> 00:09:20.700 It is so profound in its banality. If they had 00:09:20.700 --> 00:09:23.080 launched with a polished commercial or a movie 00:09:23.080 --> 00:09:25.500 trailer, it would have signaled to users, this 00:09:25.500 --> 00:09:27.519 is a place for professionals only. Right, don't 00:09:27.519 --> 00:09:29.899 upload your junk here. But by launching with 00:09:29.899 --> 00:09:32.600 a blurry guy talking about elephants, it signaled, 00:09:32.659 --> 00:09:36.120 this is a place for you. It lowered the bar for 00:09:36.120 --> 00:09:38.500 entry to the absolute floor. And once that bar 00:09:38.500 --> 00:09:40.440 was on the floor, the floodgates just opened. 00:09:40.539 --> 00:09:43.659 The growth curve was vertical. By July 2006, 00:09:44.100 --> 00:09:47.080 barely a year later, they were serving 100 million 00:09:47.080 --> 00:09:49.600 views per day. They were growing faster than 00:09:49.600 --> 00:09:51.340 they could buy servers. They were burning cash 00:09:51.340 --> 00:09:53.860 on bandwidth like crazy. And this is where the 00:09:53.860 --> 00:09:56.639 predators start circling. Or rather, the suitors. 00:09:56.980 --> 00:10:00.340 Google had its own service, Google Video, which 00:10:00.340 --> 00:10:03.559 I vaguely remember being clunky. It was terrible. 00:10:03.639 --> 00:10:05.679 Google was trying to treat video like a text 00:10:05.679 --> 00:10:08.080 search problem, not a community problem. They 00:10:08.080 --> 00:10:11.039 realized they had completely lost the war. So 00:10:11.039 --> 00:10:14.360 in October 2006, just 18 months after that first 00:10:14.360 --> 00:10:19.259 upload, Google acquires YouTube. for $1 .65 billion 00:10:19.259 --> 00:10:22.559 in stock. Which at the time was considered absolute 00:10:22.559 --> 00:10:24.879 insanity. Mark Cuban, the billionaire investor, 00:10:25.200 --> 00:10:27.539 publicly said that Google was crazy. He thought 00:10:27.539 --> 00:10:29.480 they were just buying a lawsuit waiting to happen. 00:10:29.639 --> 00:10:32.220 He called it a bandwidth money pit. He did because 00:10:32.220 --> 00:10:34.960 of copyright. Because the site was, I mean, let's 00:10:34.960 --> 00:10:37.840 be honest, it was completely illegal. Users were 00:10:37.840 --> 00:10:40.399 uploading entire episodes of The Simpsons, music 00:10:40.399 --> 00:10:43.580 videos, sports highlights. None of which they 00:10:43.580 --> 00:10:46.080 owned. Google was buying a platform that was 00:10:46.080 --> 00:10:49.120 arguably the world's largest copyright infringement 00:10:49.120 --> 00:10:51.080 machine. That's exactly what it was. I want to 00:10:51.080 --> 00:10:52.700 talk about that cultural moment right before 00:10:52.700 --> 00:10:55.279 the sale, though. The Lazy Sunday moment. Yes. 00:10:55.620 --> 00:10:58.159 This is the proof of concept for the whole platform. 00:10:58.419 --> 00:11:02.440 It's late 2005. Saturday Night Live airs a digital 00:11:02.440 --> 00:11:05.919 short called Lazy Sunday. Andy Samberg and Chris 00:11:05.919 --> 00:11:09.200 Parnell. Rapping about eating cupcakes and watching 00:11:09.200 --> 00:11:11.539 the Chronicles of Narnia. The chronic wuckles 00:11:11.539 --> 00:11:14.679 of Narnia. It was huge. It aired on TV, but then 00:11:14.679 --> 00:11:17.059 somebody ripped it and put it on YouTube. And 00:11:17.059 --> 00:11:18.779 it just exploded. Millions of you. It was the 00:11:18.779 --> 00:11:21.379 first time people realized, wait, if I put a 00:11:21.379 --> 00:11:23.740 TV clip on the internet, it can get a second 00:11:23.740 --> 00:11:26.399 life. It can become its own cultural phenomenon. 00:11:26.799 --> 00:11:29.059 But NBC, the network, did not see it that way 00:11:29.059 --> 00:11:33.139 at all. No. NBC saw theft. They sent takedown 00:11:33.139 --> 00:11:36.159 notices and demanded the clips be removed. And 00:11:36.159 --> 00:11:39.039 that specific conflict, the lazy Sunday fight, 00:11:39.179 --> 00:11:41.980 really set the stage for the massive legal battles 00:11:41.980 --> 00:11:44.039 that would define the next decade of the company. 00:11:44.240 --> 00:11:46.379 It was the moment traditional media realized 00:11:46.379 --> 00:11:48.720 they were losing control of the distribution 00:11:48.720 --> 00:11:51.600 pipe. Totally. So Google buys them. inherits 00:11:51.600 --> 00:11:53.700 all the lawsuits, and now has to figure out how 00:11:53.700 --> 00:11:56.440 to actually make money. Because $1 .65 billion 00:11:56.440 --> 00:12:00.259 is a lot to pay for a site that just costs you 00:12:00.259 --> 00:12:02.799 money to run. The first few years, it was a total 00:12:02.799 --> 00:12:04.639 loss later. There were no ads. It was a free 00:12:04.639 --> 00:12:07.080 -for -all. The monetization engine, the thing 00:12:07.080 --> 00:12:09.039 that actually turned YouTube into a career for 00:12:09.039 --> 00:12:12.279 people, didn't arrive until 2007. The partner 00:12:12.279 --> 00:12:14.519 program. The partner program. This is arguably 00:12:14.519 --> 00:12:16.679 the most important business decision in the history 00:12:16.679 --> 00:12:18.940 of the modern web. That's a big claim. I think 00:12:18.940 --> 00:12:22.279 it holds up. Google took AdSense, their ad placement 00:12:22.279 --> 00:12:24.340 tech for websites, and figured out how to apply 00:12:24.340 --> 00:12:27.580 it to video. But the genius part was the revenue 00:12:27.580 --> 00:12:31.960 split. 5545. Exactly. The creator keeps 55 % 00:12:31.960 --> 00:12:35.190 of the ad revenue. YouTube takes 45%. Before 00:12:35.190 --> 00:12:37.570 this, if you put content online, you were paying 00:12:37.570 --> 00:12:40.049 for the hosting. Now, the host was paying you. 00:12:40.309 --> 00:12:43.529 It birthed the creator economy. Completely. Suddenly, 00:12:43.610 --> 00:12:45.330 a kid in his bedroom could make a living without 00:12:45.330 --> 00:12:48.029 a production deal, without an agent, and without 00:12:48.029 --> 00:12:50.509 asking anyone for permission. And that model, 00:12:50.590 --> 00:12:54.149 that 55 -45 split, held pretty steady for a long 00:12:54.149 --> 00:12:56.759 time. But if we fast forward to where we are 00:12:56.759 --> 00:12:59.220 now, the scale of the money is just staggering. 00:12:59.419 --> 00:13:01.799 You mentioned $50 billion earlier. Yeah, in 2023 00:13:01.799 --> 00:13:05.659 alone, ad revenue was $31 .5 billion. By the 00:13:05.659 --> 00:13:07.960 second quarter of 2024, they were pulling in 00:13:07.960 --> 00:13:11.899 $8 .66 billion just in that one quarter. Wow. 00:13:12.220 --> 00:13:14.139 But the composition of that revenue has changed. 00:13:14.179 --> 00:13:16.080 It's not just pre -roll ads anymore. They've 00:13:16.080 --> 00:13:18.500 pivoted hard to subscriptions. They had to. The 00:13:18.500 --> 00:13:20.600 ad market is volatile. And as we'll discuss, 00:13:20.740 --> 00:13:23.059 ad blockers became a kind of existential threat. 00:13:23.240 --> 00:13:25.509 So you see the rise of... YouTube Premium for 00:13:25.509 --> 00:13:27.970 ad -free YouTube music and, of course, YouTube 00:13:27.970 --> 00:13:30.789 TV. YouTube TV is basically replacing cable for 00:13:30.789 --> 00:13:33.309 millions of households in the U .S. It is. And 00:13:33.309 --> 00:13:34.950 they've become a storefront, too. I was looking 00:13:34.950 --> 00:13:37.450 at the Primetime Channels feature. You can buy 00:13:37.450 --> 00:13:40.129 a subscription to Paramount Plus or NBA League 00:13:40.129 --> 00:13:42.250 Pass without ever leaving the YouTube app. It's 00:13:42.250 --> 00:13:44.350 all about keeping you in the ecosystem. The crown 00:13:44.350 --> 00:13:47.350 jewel of that whole strategy is the NFL Sunday 00:13:47.350 --> 00:13:49.889 ticket deal. Right. They spent billions for that. 00:13:50.220 --> 00:13:52.539 Billions. And that was the signal that YouTube 00:13:52.539 --> 00:13:55.820 is no longer just user generated content. It 00:13:55.820 --> 00:13:58.679 is a primary broadcaster. It is competing with 00:13:58.679 --> 00:14:01.419 ESPN and Comcast, not just with TikTok. But being 00:14:01.419 --> 00:14:03.279 a primary broadcaster means you have to keep 00:14:03.279 --> 00:14:05.340 the advertisers happy. Yeah. And that brings 00:14:05.340 --> 00:14:09.480 us to the apocalypse. I feel like if you talk 00:14:09.480 --> 00:14:11.899 to any YouTuber who was around in 2017, they 00:14:11.899 --> 00:14:15.419 still have. like PTSD from this. It was the end 00:14:15.419 --> 00:14:17.840 of the golden age of unbridled freedom. In early 00:14:17.840 --> 00:14:20.840 2017, journalists at The Times in the UK found 00:14:20.840 --> 00:14:23.500 that ads for major brands, Coca -Cola, the UK 00:14:23.500 --> 00:14:26.080 government, Mercedes, were playing before videos 00:14:26.080 --> 00:14:28.379 promoting extremist views and hate speech. And 00:14:28.379 --> 00:14:31.159 the brands, they freaked out. They boycott it. 00:14:31.179 --> 00:14:33.299 They pulled millions and millions of dollars 00:14:33.299 --> 00:14:35.980 in spending like overnight. YouTube panicked. 00:14:36.019 --> 00:14:38.720 They realized their automated systems couldn't 00:14:38.720 --> 00:14:41.179 distinguish between a cooking video and a neo 00:14:41.179 --> 00:14:43.460 -Nazi recruitment video well enough to protect 00:14:43.460 --> 00:14:46.970 the advertisers. So they clamped down. Very hard. 00:14:47.190 --> 00:14:49.610 They instituted the new thresholds. You needed 00:14:49.610 --> 00:14:52.409 1 ,000 subscribers and 4 ,000 watch hours just 00:14:52.409 --> 00:14:54.429 to even apply for monetization. Right. That was 00:14:54.429 --> 00:14:56.909 huge. But more importantly, they introduced the 00:14:56.909 --> 00:15:00.250 concept of demonetization as a norm, the yellow 00:15:00.250 --> 00:15:03.809 dollar sign. If your video covered controversial 00:15:03.809 --> 00:15:07.549 subjects, war, crime, tragedy, political conflict, 00:15:07.769 --> 00:15:10.490 even if it was a legitimate news report, the 00:15:10.490 --> 00:15:12.769 ads were stripped. Which created this massive 00:15:12.769 --> 00:15:15.909 chilling effect. Creators started self -censoring. 00:15:15.990 --> 00:15:18.169 They stopped saying certain words like kill or 00:15:18.169 --> 00:15:20.470 suicide, using these weird code words instead. 00:15:20.730 --> 00:15:23.129 It literally changed the language of the internet. 00:15:23.309 --> 00:15:25.730 It sanitized the platform, it made it brand safe, 00:15:25.909 --> 00:15:28.830 but it killed a lot of the edgy, raw energy that 00:15:28.830 --> 00:15:31.289 made YouTube famous in the first place. So that 00:15:31.289 --> 00:15:33.190 was the war between creators and advertisers. 00:15:33.960 --> 00:15:37.360 But more recently, the war shifted fronts. Now 00:15:37.360 --> 00:15:40.320 it feels like it's YouTube versus the viewers. 00:15:40.580 --> 00:15:43.019 I'm talking about the war on ad blockers. This 00:15:43.019 --> 00:15:46.399 really ramped up in late 2023 and just exploded 00:15:46.399 --> 00:15:50.059 in 2024. For years, YouTube kind of tolerated 00:15:50.059 --> 00:15:52.659 ad blockers. It was a small percentage of users, 00:15:52.860 --> 00:15:55.460 usually the more tech savvy ones. Right. But 00:15:55.460 --> 00:15:58.080 as the platform grew and grew, that lost revenue 00:15:58.080 --> 00:16:00.759 became way too big to ignore. And they got really 00:16:00.759 --> 00:16:02.940 aggressive. I remember that pop up video player 00:16:02.940 --> 00:16:05.509 will be. blocked after three videos, it didn't 00:16:05.509 --> 00:16:07.570 feel like a suggestion. It felt like a threat. 00:16:07.690 --> 00:16:09.990 It was a threat. And when people tried to find 00:16:09.990 --> 00:16:12.570 ways to bypass it, YouTube escalated on a technical 00:16:12.570 --> 00:16:15.690 level. They started using server -side ad injection. 00:16:15.929 --> 00:16:17.429 Okay, we need to unpack that term because it 00:16:17.429 --> 00:16:19.450 sounds like technobabble, but the mechanism is 00:16:19.450 --> 00:16:21.629 actually fascinating. How is that different from 00:16:21.629 --> 00:16:24.049 a normal ad? So traditionally when you watch 00:16:24.049 --> 00:16:26.429 a video, your browser makes two separate calls. 00:16:26.789 --> 00:16:28.950 It asks the server for the video file, and then 00:16:28.950 --> 00:16:31.330 it asks an ad server for an ad file. An ad blocker 00:16:31.330 --> 00:16:33.350 just sits in the middle and says, I'll take the 00:16:33.350 --> 00:16:35.330 video, but I'm blocking the call to the ad server. 00:16:35.570 --> 00:16:37.889 So it's like sorting mail. You keep the letter 00:16:37.889 --> 00:16:40.029 you want, you throw away the junk mail. because 00:16:40.029 --> 00:16:41.889 they come in different envelopes. That's a perfect 00:16:41.889 --> 00:16:44.830 analogy. Server -side injection changes the game. 00:16:45.210 --> 00:16:48.429 YouTube stitches the ad directly into the video 00:16:48.429 --> 00:16:50.570 stream on their server before it ever gets sent 00:16:50.570 --> 00:16:53.710 to you. So to your browser and to the ad blocker, 00:16:53.730 --> 00:16:56.929 it just looks like one continuous video file. 00:16:57.129 --> 00:17:00.149 There is no separate ad envelope to throw away. 00:17:00.409 --> 00:17:03.549 That is devious and really effective. And they 00:17:03.549 --> 00:17:06.509 combine this with Google Chrome killing off Manifest 00:17:06.509 --> 00:17:09.559 V2. Another tech term. What's the analogy here, 00:17:09.619 --> 00:17:11.900 Sarah? Okay, think of Manifest V2 as the blueprint 00:17:11.900 --> 00:17:14.940 that allowed browser extensions, like ad blockers, 00:17:15.039 --> 00:17:18.200 to have really deep and powerful access to modify 00:17:18.200 --> 00:17:20.339 what you see on a web page. It gave them the 00:17:20.339 --> 00:17:22.359 power to be very aggressive. Google replaced 00:17:22.359 --> 00:17:25.000 it with Manifest V3, which significantly limits 00:17:25.000 --> 00:17:27.480 that power. The official reason was security 00:17:27.480 --> 00:17:30.119 and performance, but, you know, it conveniently 00:17:30.119 --> 00:17:32.559 breaks the most effective ad blocking methods. 00:17:32.819 --> 00:17:34.900 They basically changed the locks on the house 00:17:34.900 --> 00:17:37.019 so the old keys don't work anymore. Essentially, 00:17:37.079 --> 00:17:39.519 it's a very clear message. You either pay with 00:17:39.519 --> 00:17:42.140 your attention by watching ads or you pay with 00:17:42.140 --> 00:17:44.740 your wallet for premium. The era of the free 00:17:44.740 --> 00:17:48.299 ride is officially over. Now, speaking of technical 00:17:48.299 --> 00:17:50.720 solutions to massive legal problems, we have 00:17:50.720 --> 00:17:53.460 to go back to the copyright issue. Because you 00:17:53.460 --> 00:17:55.720 mentioned earlier that Google bought a lawsuit 00:17:55.720 --> 00:17:59.279 waiting to happen. And it happened. Viacom sued 00:17:59.279 --> 00:18:02.640 them. for a billion dollars. The Viacom lawsuit 00:18:02.640 --> 00:18:05.920 in 2007 was an existential threat. If YouTube 00:18:05.920 --> 00:18:08.720 lost, they would have been shut down. Viacom 00:18:08.720 --> 00:18:11.680 argued, pretty convincingly, that YouTube was 00:18:11.680 --> 00:18:13.880 built on the back of stolen content from their 00:18:13.880 --> 00:18:17.240 networks like MTV and Comedy Central. So to survive, 00:18:17.660 --> 00:18:20.400 YouTube had to invent a way to police copyright 00:18:20.400 --> 00:18:23.200 at a scale that had never, ever been done before. 00:18:23.279 --> 00:18:25.720 Because you can't have humans watching 500 hours 00:18:25.720 --> 00:18:27.460 of video every single minute. It's physically 00:18:27.460 --> 00:18:29.539 impossible. So they built the engine. We know 00:18:29.539 --> 00:18:31.799 it as Content ID. Exactly. How does that actually 00:18:31.799 --> 00:18:34.079 work under the hood? Is it some kind of AI? It's 00:18:34.079 --> 00:18:36.660 a form of pattern recognition. It's a massive 00:18:36.660 --> 00:18:39.880 automated fingerprinting system. Copyright holders, 00:18:40.220 --> 00:18:43.779 movie studios, record labels, they upload their 00:18:43.779 --> 00:18:46.859 original files to a secret database. Content 00:18:46.859 --> 00:18:49.019 ID then creates a unique fingerprint of that 00:18:49.019 --> 00:18:52.000 file, both the audio and the visual data. Okay. 00:18:52.480 --> 00:18:55.279 Then, every single time a user uploads a new 00:18:55.279 --> 00:18:58.500 video, the system scans it and compares it against 00:18:58.500 --> 00:19:01.579 that massive database of fingerprints. And if 00:19:01.579 --> 00:19:05.059 it finds a match? A piece of a song? A clip from 00:19:05.059 --> 00:19:07.559 a movie? This is the genius part. In the old 00:19:07.559 --> 00:19:10.359 world, a match meant a takedown notice or a lawsuit. 00:19:10.579 --> 00:19:13.140 But YouTube gave the rights holders a menu of 00:19:13.140 --> 00:19:15.839 options. They could block the video, sure. They 00:19:15.839 --> 00:19:17.740 could just track the stats to see how popular 00:19:17.740 --> 00:19:20.660 it was. Or, and this changed everything, they 00:19:20.660 --> 00:19:23.190 could choose to monetize it. So if I use a Madonna 00:19:23.190 --> 00:19:26.410 song in my cat video, the system flags it. But 00:19:26.410 --> 00:19:28.269 instead of suing me, the record label can just 00:19:28.269 --> 00:19:30.630 say, OK, put ads on that cat video and send the 00:19:30.630 --> 00:19:33.230 check to us. Correct. It turned piracy into a 00:19:33.230 --> 00:19:35.490 revenue stream. It incentivized the entire media 00:19:35.490 --> 00:19:37.769 industry to stop suing and start collecting checks. 00:19:37.890 --> 00:19:39.410 It's probably the only reason YouTube still exists 00:19:39.410 --> 00:19:43.309 today. But it's not a perfect system. Not by 00:19:43.309 --> 00:19:46.029 a long shot. We've all heard stories of fair 00:19:46.029 --> 00:19:48.789 use getting just nuked by the algorithm. It's 00:19:48.789 --> 00:19:51.069 an automated system. It doesn't understand context. 00:19:51.130 --> 00:19:54.069 It doesn't understand parody or criticism or 00:19:54.069 --> 00:19:57.210 educational use. It just hears the song, sees 00:19:57.210 --> 00:19:59.369 the clip, and pulls the trigger. It puts the 00:19:59.369 --> 00:20:02.089 burden of proof entirely on the user to fight 00:20:02.089 --> 00:20:04.690 back and prove they are innocent. And speaking 00:20:04.690 --> 00:20:06.430 of features that put the burden on the user, 00:20:06.549 --> 00:20:08.910 there's another one that caused a massive user 00:20:08.910 --> 00:20:12.029 revolt a few years back. The dislike button. 00:20:12.170 --> 00:20:17.309 Ah, yes. November 2021, YouTube removes the public 00:20:17.309 --> 00:20:20.349 dislike count. I still hate this change. I really 00:20:20.349 --> 00:20:23.329 do. Most users do. YouTube's official justification 00:20:23.329 --> 00:20:26.289 was mob protection. They said that creators, 00:20:26.470 --> 00:20:28.650 especially smaller ones, were getting brigaded 00:20:28.650 --> 00:20:31.690 where large groups of people coordinate to dislike 00:20:31.690 --> 00:20:34.190 a video just to harass someone or bomb their 00:20:34.190 --> 00:20:36.390 channel. Which is a real problem, to be fair. 00:20:36.509 --> 00:20:39.250 Online harassment is serious. It is. But the 00:20:39.250 --> 00:20:41.250 counter argument is that the dislike button was 00:20:41.250 --> 00:20:43.549 an essential utility. It was the wisdom of the 00:20:43.549 --> 00:20:47.309 crowds. If you search for a tutorial on... say, 00:20:47.390 --> 00:20:50.809 how to fix my sink, and the video has a thousand 00:20:50.809 --> 00:20:53.710 likes and ten thousand dislikes, you know instantly 00:20:53.710 --> 00:20:56.960 that the advice is bad. or maybe even dangerous. 00:20:57.240 --> 00:20:59.720 Without the dislikes, you have to actually watch 00:20:59.720 --> 00:21:01.859 the video to find out it's garbage. It wastes 00:21:01.859 --> 00:21:04.380 our time and exposes us to scams and misinformation. 00:21:04.859 --> 00:21:07.619 And this brings us back to our friend Jod Kareem. 00:21:07.700 --> 00:21:09.619 He actually came out of retirement for this. 00:21:09.779 --> 00:21:12.559 He went back to the Me at the Zoo video, the 00:21:12.559 --> 00:21:16.059 sacred text of YouTube, and he edited the description. 00:21:16.319 --> 00:21:18.640 What does he say? He called the decision a stupid 00:21:18.640 --> 00:21:22.019 idea. He argued that the platform relies on feedback 00:21:22.019 --> 00:21:24.740 loops between creators and the audience. And 00:21:24.740 --> 00:21:26.960 if you break that feedback loop just to protect 00:21:26.960 --> 00:21:29.400 feelings, the quality of the entire platform 00:21:29.400 --> 00:21:32.160 degrades over time. He essentially said the process 00:21:32.160 --> 00:21:34.220 breaks when the platform interferes with it. 00:21:34.279 --> 00:21:36.619 He did. And it was a huge statement coming from 00:21:36.619 --> 00:21:38.460 one of the founders. It's that classic tension 00:21:38.460 --> 00:21:41.200 between safety and utility. And honestly, looking 00:21:41.200 --> 00:21:43.259 at the amount of clickbait on the platform today, 00:21:43.400 --> 00:21:45.720 I think Kareem was probably right. It's hard 00:21:45.720 --> 00:21:47.299 to argue again. against him when you click on 00:21:47.299 --> 00:21:51.200 a promising looking tutorial and watch 10 minutes 00:21:51.200 --> 00:21:53.759 of complete nonsense because there was no warning 00:21:53.759 --> 00:21:56.200 sign. Let's shift gears to the content itself 00:21:56.200 --> 00:21:59.759 because the what of YouTube has changed just 00:21:59.759 --> 00:22:02.839 as much as the how. We went from broadcast yourself 00:22:02.839 --> 00:22:05.940 to what I kind of call the Mr. Beastification 00:22:05.940 --> 00:22:09.140 of the Internet. It's become highly, highly professionalized. 00:22:09.140 --> 00:22:12.079 We moved from vlogs recorded on grainy webcams 00:22:12.079 --> 00:22:14.759 to what you could call visual journalism. You 00:22:14.759 --> 00:22:17.559 have creators making full -length documentaries 00:22:17.559 --> 00:22:20.619 that rival anything on Netflix or the BBC. And 00:22:20.619 --> 00:22:22.980 education. I mean, I think about Khan Academy. 00:22:23.200 --> 00:22:25.700 Sal Khan started out just tutoring his cousin 00:22:25.700 --> 00:22:27.869 over the Internet. Now, Khan Academy on YouTube 00:22:27.869 --> 00:22:30.069 is arguably the largest school in the world. 00:22:30.190 --> 00:22:32.390 It has democratized learning in a way that is 00:22:32.390 --> 00:22:35.609 hard to overstate. And music. I mean, Gangnam 00:22:35.609 --> 00:22:38.109 style. That was the turning point for music on 00:22:38.109 --> 00:22:40.150 the platform. It was the first video to hit 1 00:22:40.150 --> 00:22:42.710 billion views. It actually broke YouTube's view 00:22:42.710 --> 00:22:44.890 counter. I remember that. Yeah, the engineers 00:22:44.890 --> 00:22:46.829 hadn't programmed the code to handle a number 00:22:46.829 --> 00:22:48.950 that big. They had to upgrade the integer limit 00:22:48.950 --> 00:22:51.589 in the code because of one music video. But now, 00:22:51.789 --> 00:22:54.829 the content is shifting again. And it feels like 00:22:54.829 --> 00:22:58.079 it's because of the competition. YouTube is terrified 00:22:58.079 --> 00:23:00.400 of TikTok. Everyone is terrified of TikTok. And 00:23:00.400 --> 00:23:02.720 that is why we have YouTube Shorts. Launched 00:23:02.720 --> 00:23:06.220 around 2020, 2021, but they have been aggressively 00:23:06.220 --> 00:23:08.759 pushing it ever since. And just recently, in 00:23:08.759 --> 00:23:11.740 October of 2024, they extended the length of 00:23:11.740 --> 00:23:14.539 Shorts to three minutes. Which completely blurs 00:23:14.539 --> 00:23:16.720 the line. Is it a short? Is it a regular video? 00:23:17.140 --> 00:23:18.880 Doesn't matter. It doesn't matter to them. They 00:23:18.880 --> 00:23:20.619 just want you to stay in the app. If you have 00:23:20.619 --> 00:23:23.119 30 seconds, watch a short. If you have 30 minutes, 00:23:23.259 --> 00:23:25.359 watch a video essay. If you want to watch the 00:23:25.359 --> 00:23:31.880 game, buy some. Right. I saw that snake game 00:23:31.880 --> 00:23:34.839 pop up the other day. It feels a little bit desperate, 00:23:35.039 --> 00:23:37.000 doesn't it? Trying to be everything to everyone 00:23:37.000 --> 00:23:39.519 at once. It's the super app strategy. They don't 00:23:39.519 --> 00:23:41.420 ever want you to have a reason to close the YouTube 00:23:41.420 --> 00:23:44.640 app. I do miss the days when the platform felt 00:23:44.640 --> 00:23:47.480 a little less corporate. A little weirder. Do 00:23:47.480 --> 00:23:49.920 you remember the April Fool's pranks? Oh, the 00:23:49.920 --> 00:23:54.180 golden era of internet pranks. 2008. They rickrolled 00:23:54.180 --> 00:23:56.960 the entire homepage. Every single video you clicked 00:23:56.960 --> 00:24:00.200 on the front page took you to Rick Athle's never 00:24:00.200 --> 00:24:02.619 going to give you up. Or Snoopavision in 2016. 00:24:03.180 --> 00:24:05.759 The promise that you could watch any video in 00:24:05.759 --> 00:24:09.140 360 degrees with Snoop Dogg sitting next to you 00:24:09.140 --> 00:24:12.380 providing live commentary. It was silly. It felt 00:24:12.380 --> 00:24:13.980 like the engineers were having fun with their 00:24:13.980 --> 00:24:17.420 own creation. Yeah. But now, well, things feel 00:24:17.420 --> 00:24:19.819 a lot more serious. Much more serious. And that 00:24:19.819 --> 00:24:21.720 brings us to the political battlefield. Yeah. 00:24:22.190 --> 00:24:24.410 Because YouTube isn't just a video host anymore. 00:24:24.769 --> 00:24:27.650 For a huge chunk of the population, it's their 00:24:27.650 --> 00:24:30.769 primary news source. And that power comes with 00:24:30.769 --> 00:24:34.390 massive, massive scrutiny. For years, the dominant 00:24:34.390 --> 00:24:36.789 narrative was about the rabbit hole. Right. The 00:24:36.789 --> 00:24:38.990 idea that the algorithm was specifically designed 00:24:38.990 --> 00:24:41.009 to radicalize you. You click on a video about 00:24:41.009 --> 00:24:42.910 fitness and 10 videos later, you're watching 00:24:42.910 --> 00:24:45.029 a conspiracy theory about the government putting 00:24:45.029 --> 00:24:47.349 chemicals in the water. But the actual data on 00:24:47.349 --> 00:24:49.250 that is actually pretty nuanced, isn't it? It's 00:24:49.250 --> 00:24:51.839 not that simple. It's not. The old theory was 00:24:51.839 --> 00:24:54.519 that the algorithm pushed extreme content because 00:24:54.519 --> 00:24:56.799 that content had higher engagement and kept you 00:24:56.799 --> 00:24:59.839 watching longer. But YouTube made significant 00:24:59.839 --> 00:25:03.900 changes around 2019 to actively suppress what 00:25:03.900 --> 00:25:07.720 they call borderline content. They started hard 00:25:07.720 --> 00:25:10.220 coding the system to recommend authoritative 00:25:10.220 --> 00:25:15.579 sources. CNN, Fox News, BBC, Reuters over some 00:25:15.579 --> 00:25:18.380 random guy ranting in his basement. So is a rabbit 00:25:18.380 --> 00:25:22.339 hole dead. Not dead, but different. More recent 00:25:22.339 --> 00:25:25.500 studies in 2022 and 2024 suggested that the algorithm 00:25:25.500 --> 00:25:27.920 isn't necessarily converting people to new extreme 00:25:27.920 --> 00:25:30.759 beliefs. It's mostly just reflecting and reinforcing 00:25:30.759 --> 00:25:33.279 a user's existing bias. So it's less of a rabbit 00:25:33.279 --> 00:25:35.579 hole and more of an echo chamber? A very powerful 00:25:35.579 --> 00:25:37.559 echo chamber. If you're already looking for that 00:25:37.559 --> 00:25:39.259 content, it will absolutely give it to you. In 00:25:39.259 --> 00:25:41.039 fact, one study showed it often pushes mainstream 00:25:41.039 --> 00:25:43.579 conservative content, like Fox News, to users 00:25:43.579 --> 00:25:45.299 who aren't even interested in politics to begin 00:25:45.299 --> 00:25:46.900 with. But when we talk about governments, the 00:25:46.900 --> 00:25:48.759 stakes get much, much higher. Let's talk about 00:25:48.759 --> 00:25:51.369 Russia. Russia is the perfect example of the 00:25:51.369 --> 00:25:53.450 splinternet, the fracturing of the global internet. 00:25:53.849 --> 00:25:56.529 After the invasion of Ukraine, YouTube blocked 00:25:56.529 --> 00:26:00.230 Russian state media channels globally. RT, Sputnik, 00:26:00.410 --> 00:26:02.910 they were just gone. And Russian did not take 00:26:02.910 --> 00:26:06.069 that well. No. In late 2024, they started throttling 00:26:06.069 --> 00:26:08.250 YouTube speeds within the country, making it 00:26:08.250 --> 00:26:10.930 painfully slow to use. But the headline that 00:26:10.930 --> 00:26:14.099 grabbed everyone was the fine. A Russian court 00:26:14.099 --> 00:26:17.619 fined Google two undecillion rubles. I have that 00:26:17.619 --> 00:26:18.880 written down here because I couldn't believe 00:26:18.880 --> 00:26:21.940 it. Two undecillion. That's a two followed by 00:26:21.940 --> 00:26:25.019 36 zeros. It is more money than exists in the 00:26:25.019 --> 00:26:27.980 entire global economy. It's a completely meaningless, 00:26:28.180 --> 00:26:31.299 symbolic number. It's symbolic. It's Russia saying, 00:26:31.420 --> 00:26:34.319 we reject your jurisdiction and your rules completely. 00:26:34.700 --> 00:26:37.319 Exactly. It shows the complete breakdown of relations. 00:26:37.859 --> 00:26:39.859 Russia is trying to build its own sovereign Internet. 00:26:40.180 --> 00:26:42.700 And in that world, YouTube is the enemy. But 00:26:42.700 --> 00:26:45.019 it is not just Russia. We have to talk about 00:26:45.019 --> 00:26:47.099 the Middle East. And this gets into some very 00:26:47.099 --> 00:26:50.579 heavy, very recent history from 2025. This is 00:26:50.579 --> 00:26:52.900 a critical development and it shows the real 00:26:52.900 --> 00:26:56.200 world consequences of platform power. In October 00:26:56.200 --> 00:26:59.619 2025, we saw a direct collision of U .S. foreign 00:26:59.619 --> 00:27:02.579 policy and platform neutrality. What happened? 00:27:02.859 --> 00:27:05.299 To comply with sanctions from the Trump administration, 00:27:05.680 --> 00:27:09.160 YouTube removed 700 videos and the accounts of 00:27:09.160 --> 00:27:11.660 several prominent Palestinian human rights groups, 00:27:11.839 --> 00:27:14.420 including Al -Haqq and Al -Mazan. And we need 00:27:14.420 --> 00:27:16.519 to be clear, we are not talking about violent 00:27:16.519 --> 00:27:19.000 propaganda here. No, absolutely not. We are talking 00:27:19.000 --> 00:27:22.599 about archival footage, videos documenting the 00:27:22.599 --> 00:27:25.059 killing of the journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, 00:27:25.180 --> 00:27:28.210 testimonies from detainees. This was historical 00:27:28.210 --> 00:27:31.009 record being erased. This highlights the fragility 00:27:31.009 --> 00:27:33.049 of that broadcast yourself promised, doesn't 00:27:33.049 --> 00:27:35.009 it? Yeah. YouTube presents itself as a global 00:27:35.009 --> 00:27:36.470 platform, but at the end of the day, it's an 00:27:36.470 --> 00:27:39.109 American company subject to American laws. That 00:27:39.109 --> 00:27:41.329 is the key. When the geopolitical winds shift 00:27:41.329 --> 00:27:43.490 in Washington, D .C., the digital archive in 00:27:43.490 --> 00:27:46.269 San Bruno, California gets deleted. It's a stark 00:27:46.269 --> 00:27:48.750 reminder that your cloud storage is subject to 00:27:48.750 --> 00:27:50.869 U .S. sanctions law. And speaking of Washington. 00:27:51.339 --> 00:27:53.720 The pendulum on censorship is swinging wildly 00:27:53.720 --> 00:27:57.200 here at home, too. We saw a major, major reversal 00:27:57.200 --> 00:28:00.480 in September 2025 regarding misinformation. We 00:28:00.480 --> 00:28:03.380 did. Alphabet, Google's parent company, announced 00:28:03.380 --> 00:28:05.700 they were reinstating creators who had been previously 00:28:05.700 --> 00:28:08.359 banned for spreading misinformation about COVID 00:28:08.359 --> 00:28:11.420 -19 and the 2020 U .S. election. This was a huge 00:28:11.420 --> 00:28:14.200 U -turn. For years, they were playing the role 00:28:14.200 --> 00:28:16.819 of arbiter of truth. If you say the election 00:28:16.819 --> 00:28:20.019 was stolen, you are banned. So why the sudden 00:28:20.019 --> 00:28:23.130 flip? Political pressure, plain and simple. J 00:28:23.130 --> 00:28:25.789 .D. Vance, the vice president, explicitly defended 00:28:25.789 --> 00:28:28.849 this move. He framed it as a victory for free 00:28:28.849 --> 00:28:31.890 expression over facts. He alleged that previous 00:28:31.890 --> 00:28:34.210 Biden administration had pressured YouTube to 00:28:34.210 --> 00:28:35.990 censor that content. And this was a correction. 00:28:36.089 --> 00:28:37.910 So we are moving from a platform safety model 00:28:37.910 --> 00:28:40.190 back towards a more chaotic town square model. 00:28:40.369 --> 00:28:43.190 Exactly. The new argument is who is YouTube to 00:28:43.190 --> 00:28:45.579 decide what is true? But the risk, of course, 00:28:45.680 --> 00:28:47.559 is that the town square becomes so flooded with 00:28:47.559 --> 00:28:50.279 noise and deliberate lies that nobody knows what 00:28:50.279 --> 00:28:53.099 is real anymore. And that question, what is real, 00:28:53.240 --> 00:28:57.140 is the perfect segue to our final segment, the 00:28:57.140 --> 00:29:02.319 technology of 2026. Because with AI, reality 00:29:02.319 --> 00:29:06.049 is becoming a very, very flexible concept. It 00:29:06.049 --> 00:29:08.670 is. And YouTube is at the absolute forefront 00:29:08.670 --> 00:29:10.809 of this, for better or worse. First, let's talk 00:29:10.809 --> 00:29:13.690 about age assurance. This started in the UK with 00:29:13.690 --> 00:29:16.049 their online safety act. But in July of 2025, 00:29:16.549 --> 00:29:18.730 it went global. This is the selfie gate thing, 00:29:18.789 --> 00:29:20.710 right? That's what people are calling it. YouTube 00:29:20.710 --> 00:29:23.029 is now using machine learning to estimate your 00:29:23.029 --> 00:29:25.390 age based on your behavior, what you search for, 00:29:25.470 --> 00:29:27.150 what videos you watch, what channels you subscribe 00:29:27.150 --> 00:29:30.750 to. If its AI flags you as potentially being 00:29:30.750 --> 00:29:34.009 under 18, you lose access to personalized ads 00:29:34.009 --> 00:29:36.109 in certain categories of... mature content. And 00:29:36.109 --> 00:29:38.069 if the AI is wrong. Or if you actually are an 00:29:38.069 --> 00:29:39.930 adult and you want to watch that restricted content. 00:29:40.150 --> 00:29:41.990 You have to prove it. You can upload a government 00:29:41.990 --> 00:29:44.670 ID, you can use a credit card, or, and this is 00:29:44.670 --> 00:29:46.829 the new standard, you can take a facial estimation 00:29:46.829 --> 00:29:49.509 selfie. I have to hold my phone up to my face, 00:29:49.549 --> 00:29:53.390 let the camera scan me, and AI analyzes my wrinkles 00:29:53.390 --> 00:29:55.910 and my bone structure to decide if I'm old enough 00:29:55.910 --> 00:29:58.549 to watch a video. Basically, yes. It feels like 00:29:58.549 --> 00:30:01.410 something out of a sci -fi dystopia. Please present 00:30:01.410 --> 00:30:04.220 your face for verification. But this is the reality 00:30:04.220 --> 00:30:06.740 of a regulated internet. The era of anonymous 00:30:06.740 --> 00:30:10.099 browsing is dying fast. And while the AI is watching 00:30:10.099 --> 00:30:12.680 our faces, it's also changing the faces and voices 00:30:12.680 --> 00:30:15.380 in the videos themselves. Auto -dubbing. This 00:30:15.380 --> 00:30:17.099 is actually an incredible piece of technology 00:30:17.099 --> 00:30:20.160 that rolled out in late 2024 and got really good 00:30:20.160 --> 00:30:23.759 in 2025. YouTube's AI can instantly translate 00:30:23.759 --> 00:30:26.779 and dub a video into dozens of other languages. 00:30:27.220 --> 00:30:29.000 I tried this the other day. I was watching a 00:30:29.000 --> 00:30:31.369 Korean cooking channel. and the host was speaking 00:30:31.369 --> 00:30:34.730 perfect, natural -sounding English. Not subtitles. 00:30:34.789 --> 00:30:37.289 His actual voice was English. And the AI even 00:30:37.289 --> 00:30:39.789 adjusted his lip sync to match. It's mind -blowing. 00:30:39.970 --> 00:30:41.910 It completely breaks down the language barrier 00:30:41.910 --> 00:30:44.690 for creators. A creator in Brazil can now reach 00:30:44.690 --> 00:30:47.490 an audience in Japan instantly. It creates a 00:30:47.490 --> 00:30:50.029 truly global content market for the first time. 00:30:50.210 --> 00:30:52.130 But the dark side of that is incredibly obvious. 00:30:52.410 --> 00:30:55.730 If AI can generate new audio and new lip movements. 00:30:56.210 --> 00:30:58.569 Deepfakes. If you can make a creator appear to 00:30:58.569 --> 00:31:00.269 speak another language, you can make them appear 00:31:00.269 --> 00:31:02.750 to say anything. That's why YouTube had to publicly 00:31:02.750 --> 00:31:06.910 support... the No Fakes Act of 2025. They're 00:31:06.910 --> 00:31:10.250 building tools to watermark and detect AI generated 00:31:10.250 --> 00:31:13.250 content, but it's an arms race. If you can't 00:31:13.250 --> 00:31:15.769 trust your own eyes and ears anymore, the entire 00:31:15.769 --> 00:31:18.650 premise of video evidence just collapses. It's 00:31:18.650 --> 00:31:21.049 a brave new world for sure. And we have new leadership 00:31:21.049 --> 00:31:23.500 navigating it. We should mention Susan Warchicki. 00:31:23.660 --> 00:31:26.259 We should. She was the CEO for a decade. She 00:31:26.259 --> 00:31:28.779 was employee number 16 at Google. She really 00:31:28.779 --> 00:31:30.759 built the business model we've been discussing. 00:31:30.859 --> 00:31:33.819 She stepped down in 2023 and very sadly passed 00:31:33.819 --> 00:31:37.039 away in August 2024 from lung cancer, a massive 00:31:37.039 --> 00:31:39.400 loss for the industry. And now Neil Mohan is 00:31:39.400 --> 00:31:41.119 running the ship. He's been there since 2023. 00:31:41.460 --> 00:31:43.579 And his directive from the board seems crystal 00:31:43.579 --> 00:31:46.420 clear. protect the ad revenue at all costs hence 00:31:46.420 --> 00:31:49.240 the war on ad blockers and integrate ai into 00:31:49.240 --> 00:31:51.619 every single part of the product so let's try 00:31:51.619 --> 00:31:54.339 to wrap this all up we've covered 21 years we've 00:31:54.339 --> 00:31:56.440 gone from a failed dating site with zero users 00:31:56.440 --> 00:32:01.160 to a cultural archive to a 50 billion dollar 00:32:01.160 --> 00:32:04.599 business and now a political battleground it's 00:32:04.599 --> 00:32:07.680 the story of the internet in microcosm it started 00:32:07.680 --> 00:32:11.039 as this wild open frontier with a simple powerful 00:32:11.039 --> 00:32:15.470 promise broadcast yourself And it's slowly, inevitably 00:32:15.470 --> 00:32:19.609 evolved into a regulated, monetized, sanitized, 00:32:19.609 --> 00:32:22.250 and in some cases, weaponized global utility. 00:32:22.490 --> 00:32:24.529 It's completely indispensable to modern life, 00:32:24.589 --> 00:32:26.470 but it's also kind of terrifying. It's both at 00:32:26.470 --> 00:32:28.650 the same time. So here's a final thought for 00:32:28.650 --> 00:32:31.809 you listening. We talked about Jod Cream's warning 00:32:31.809 --> 00:32:34.349 about losing the wisdom of the crowds when they 00:32:34.349 --> 00:32:36.710 removed the dislike button. But think about where 00:32:36.710 --> 00:32:41.230 we are right now in 2026. We have AI that is 00:32:41.230 --> 00:32:43.490 starting to generate content itself. We have 00:32:43.490 --> 00:32:46.049 AI that is auto -dubbing that content into your 00:32:46.049 --> 00:32:48.650 native language. And we have another AI deciding 00:32:48.650 --> 00:32:50.609 if you're old enough to watch it based on your 00:32:50.609 --> 00:32:52.730 past behavior. It forces you to ask a really 00:32:52.730 --> 00:32:55.089 strange question. Are we actually watching YouTube 00:32:55.089 --> 00:32:57.910 anymore? Or is YouTube just watching itself with 00:32:57.910 --> 00:33:00.230 us as the passive passengers along for the ride? 00:33:00.430 --> 00:33:02.990 I want you to do something today. Go into your 00:33:02.990 --> 00:33:05.769 YouTube settings. Find your time -watched stats. 00:33:06.210 --> 00:33:09.410 And then ask yourself, what does this algorithm 00:33:09.410 --> 00:33:11.880 think it knows about me? Does it think I'm 18? 00:33:12.220 --> 00:33:14.660 Does it think I'm a radical? The answer might 00:33:14.660 --> 00:33:17.119 surprise you. It usually does. Thanks for diving 00:33:17.119 --> 00:33:18.619 deep with us. We'll see you in the next one.