24 | New Scientist | 24 August 2019
A
FEW years ago, the biggest
complaint about YouTube
was that if you left it
running, you would eventually
find yourself watching Psy’s
Gangnam Style music video for
the 40,000th time. How I long
for the days when all we had to
worry about was too much bouncy
K-pop. Now, YouTube’s algorithm
leads us in the opposite direction,
autoplaying ever more marginal
videos rather than more popular
ones. As a result, according to a
two-year investigation by the
New York Times, YouTube has been
one of the major forces pulling
fringe politics and conspiracy
theories into the mainstream.
To make matters worse,
allegations that children were
forced to perform for camera has
led to the closure of at least two
popular YouTube channels in the
US. And this is on top of recent
accusations from YouTube
employees, denied by the
company, that it won’t enforce
its content rules for prominent
YouTubers, allowing some
channels to get out of control.
Put simply, YouTube is a
garbage fire and it is high time
to throw the whole thing away.
Let me make one thing clear.
I love DIY video. Nothing is more
delightful than watching people
yell about anime, explain the
origins of the universe, melt
giant cubes of cheddar with red
hot nickel balls (look it up) and
dance to, well, anything.
The problem is that YouTube,
which is owned by Google, is
doing more than allowing people
to share fun stuff. It is working
hard to sculpt its users into the
ideal audience for video adverts.
And the ideal audience is one that
can’t look away. Ever.
This is where the algorithm that
chooses your next video comes in.
Sometime in 2016, someoneseems to have realised that the
average human would spend more
time on YouTube if the platform
could recreate the psychological
experience of seeing a horrific
auto accident. When the video
you want to watch is over,
YouTube will autoplay another
that is the same, just more so.
And so on, until you are watching
somebody in a hockey mask
explaining how aliens are
controlling the cheese economy,
and Brexit is the only defence.
Meanwhile, the quest to make
money encourages YouTubers
themselves to become more
extreme to garner more views.One popular YouTuber, Logan
Paul, filmed himself making jokes
next to the body of a man who
had hanged himself in a forest.
A recent Washington Post
investigation reported that
YouTube moderators allege they
are given one set of rules for top-
grossing YouTubers, and another
for smaller ones. It cited cases
such as that of popular YouTuber
Steven Crowder who was allowed
to remain on the platform after
what seemed to be clear violations
of its terms of service by posting
homophobic and racist abuse
about journalist Carlos Maza.
Maza received death threats from
followers of Crowder. YouTubedenies applying double standards,
but as a private company it isn’t
regulated by US free speech laws,
so there is no legal obligation for
it to allow Crowder to remain.
So how do we clean up this
mess? I have some modest
proposals. One is that we shut
down YouTube altogether. Some
US lawyers have argued that
YouTube is violating child labour
laws by making money on
YouTube channels featuring
children. These laws exist to
prevent backstage parents and
producers from abusing kids,
which is exactly what is alleged
to have happened in some cases.
Making YouTube liable for
violating these laws and others
would probably bring the
company to a standstill.
A more interesting possibility
would be to split YouTube into two
companies: a video-sharing site
for people who have no more than
a few thousand followers and a
professional video production
company that must abide by
child labour laws and follow the
Hollywood studio model, with
unionised actors and writers.
The video-sharing site wouldn’t
allow advertising and would cap
audiences at, say, 10,000 followers.
YouTubers who amassed a bigger
following could apply to work at
the YouTube Studio, and follow
labour laws accordingly.
And finally, what if we turned
YouTube into true public
broadcasting? Chop it up, hand
it over to PBS, the BBC, the CBC
or any number of other public
broadcasting corporations, and let
governments regulate the content
in their countries. The private
sector has failed, and it is time to
try a new model for video sharing.
When YouTube as we know it
goes away, I guarantee you won’t
miss it. And maybe we will get
REUTERS/DADO RUVIC something better. ❚This column appears
monthly. Up next week:
James Wong“ Put simply, YouTube
is a garbage fire and
it is high time to
throw the whole
thing away”Let’s shut down YouTube Some modest proposals for making
the internet a better place, courtesy of Annalee NewitzThis changes everything
What I’m reading
Tropical Forests in
Prehistory, History, and
Modernity by Patrick
Roberts, about how
human civilisation began
in the tropics.What I’m watching
John Wick 3: Parabellum,
an inexplicably wonderful
Keanu Reeves movie.What I’m working on
A short story about how
hacker drama causes the
robot uprising.Annalee’s week
Annalee Newitz is a science
journalist and author. Her
novel Autonomous won
the Lambda Literary Award
and she is the co-host of the
Hugo-nominated podcast
Our Opinions Are Correct.
You can follow her
@annaleen and her website
is techsploitation.comViews Columnist