YouTube case study

How much content is created everyday?

• 300-500 hours of videos get uploaded every single minute

• 30,000 videos uploaded every hour

• 720,000 hours of video are uploaded every day

Who Acquired YouTube and how much was spent?

• Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006

How was allowing people to monotise channels a major shift in the industry?

• In 2007, YouTube introduced the YouTube partnership program. This allowed users to monotise their own videos, "birthing" new careers that didn't already exist.

How were algorithms used to YouTube's advantage with subscribers? 

• YouTube was so successful due to the uprising of algorithms

• From these algorithms, it allowed people to research and find anything they were interested in

• The platform basically anticipates your needs based on who you subscribe to and what you watch regularly

Name some of the ways YouTube has changed and added aspects to their channel to increase audience/subscribers?

• As other streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu and Prime Video became popular, YouTube wanted to diversify the type of content on its platform. From this, they started creating their own films which is called YouTube Originals.

• It also introduced paid subscriptions, YouTube Red (now is called YouTube premium), YouTube Music and YouTube TV

• It now has over 30 million music and premium paid subscribers

• YouTube premium offers users ad-free content

• YouTube Kids - channels just for children with videos suitable for their specific ages

Why is content moderation hard for YouTube?

• As these platforms continue to grow at a massive scale, it has become challenging to manage the content being uploaded

• Early on, YouTube faced lawsuits around copyright infringement and faced a $1 billion lawsuit by ViaCom

• Content moderation has also become increasingly difficult - which ones to keep and which ones to take down

• They made a number of policy changes in 2019 that included banning material that would pronounce one group superior to another, but these policies changed after horrible backlash

• Misinformation was another hurdle YT came across, and they tried to ban things like false medical claims, but they can't catch everything with the number of content

• They now have the right to terminate and suspend channels where they see fit in regards to disturbing content etc.

Why is it an issue of power for YouTube to ban what it decides is 'misinformation'?

• YouTube barred Sky News Australia from uploading new content for a week, because apparently they had breached rules on spreading Covid-19 misinformation

• It issued a strike under its 3 strike policy, the last of which means permanent removal

• YouTube didn't point to specific items but said it opposed material that "could cause real-world harm"

• The TV channel's digital editor said the decision was a disturbing attack on the ability to think free

How is it a turning of the power tables to have a news company censored by YouTube?

• Sky News Australia is owned by a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp and has 1.85 million subscribers on YouTube

• The ban could've affected it's revenue stream from Google

• Now that YouTube has paid subscriptions, it now holds significantly more power which influences how companies will act

Write down some of the basic facts from this case to use as an example in your essay for the exam

• YouTube is the 2nd most visited site in the world.

• There are 51 million channels on YouTube, but only 38 million of those are considered ‘active.’

• A YouTube statement said it had "clear and established Covid-19 medical misinformation policies based on local and global health authority guidance

• A spokesperson told the Guardian it "did not allow content that denies the existence of Covid" or which encouraged people "to use hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin to treat or prevent the virus"

• The videos in question "did not provide sufficient countervailing context" the spokesperson said

• Sky News said it had found old videos that did not comply with YouTube's policies and took it's "commitment to meeting editorial and community expectations seriously"

• But it denies any of its hosts had ever denied the existence of Covid-19