From the Arab Spring to Gangnam Style, YouTube has been instrumental in many of the key cultural moments of the past 18 years. But beyond baby pandas sneezing and Charlie Bit My Finger, there’s a darker side of the video sharing platform, which Alex Winter explores in his new documentary, The YouTube Effect.
The documentarian and actor, perhaps best known for his lead role alongside Keanu Reeves in the various Bill & Ted movies, has become something of a specialist in Hollywood when it comes to exploring some of the murkier parts of the Internet.
Winter’s past films include Downloaded (2013), which chronicled Napster’s rise to global fame and its spectacular crash in a corporate lawsuit. He also directed Deep Web: The Untold Story of Bitcoin and the Silk Road (2015), which followed the trial of Ross Ulbricht, creator of Silk Road, the notorious online black market.
This time Winter’s attention is focused on YouTube, which at first glance is very different to the underground networks created by Napster and Silk Road. Since Google bought the company in 2006 for $1.65 billion, YouTube has become an unavoidable part of the online landscape. Now 2.4 billion people watch YouTube every month, spanning pretty much every generation and every nationality on the planet.
However, with 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, content moderation has been difficult to maintain, making it a hotbed for both mis- and disinformation. According to Winter’s documentary, ten percent of recommended videos on YouTube promote conspiracy theories, which researchers say has driven polarisation, hatred and extremism.
In The YouTube Effect, Winter speaks to those harmed by the lack of control and regulation, as well as members of the YouTube community who value the freedom and reach it offers them.
“I went in with just the knowledge that I had, having told a lot of stories around the growth of online community,” Alex Winter tells VideoWeek. “And so I certainly knew that YouTube was very powerful. And I knew that Google had bought it back in the day. I was very interested in the implications of the platform on what had happened that led to the Capitol riots and other big events in our history.”
Following the attempted insurrection on January 6th, 2021, Google was questioned – alongside other major tech platforms – by Congress over the role of misinformation on their properties. The company spent the next two years taking down “tens of thousands” of videos promoting false claims about the 2020 election, before announcing in June it will no longer remove that kind of content.
“They’re doing that as we enter an election year,” notes the director. “I mean that’s crazy. They say content moderation is hard, but then you look at them deplatforming misinformation about the 2020 election, and then making a concrete decision to stop deplatforming that propaganda. That’s bad content moderation.”
I can’t believe you’ve done this
The film depicts a society shaped in part by the invisible hand of the YouTube algorithm; the recommendation mechanism that sent Caleb Cain, a YouTuber from West Virginia, down an “alt-right rabbit hole” when he was looking for self-help videos. Winter also looks at how the recommendation fuelled the “Gamergate” campaign, which saw right-wing trolls sending rape threats to Brianna Wu, co-founder of Giant Spacekat, a game development studio.
Winter interviews Cain and Wu rather than the YouTubers creating the offending content, whom he believes have already been given more than enough airtime.
Brianna Wu, co-founder of Giant Spacekat
“I have no interest in Steven Crowder’s opinion,” he says of the far-right shock jock, whose popular channel features racist tirades and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and COVID-19 pandemic. “He’s just a grifter. I think this idea that we’re supposed to debate these people is ludicrous. That’s what they want. They just want more eyeballs on them. And there’s a kind of ‘gotcha’ thing that people love in docs where you bring somebody hated on and you just deride them for the pleasure of the audience. I can’t stand those kinds of documentaries. They make me crazy.”
Instead, Winter sought to build an “ensemble cast of characters” showing the human side of the influencer community, including 11-year-old Ryan Kaji from kids channel Ryan’s World, and Natalie Wynn from left-leaning video essay series ContraPoints.
“YouTube has driven diversity in entertainment,” comments Winter. “While there’s a lot of misinformation there, there’s also an enormous amount of accurate information that’s extremely useful to people who may not have that access any other way. And it’s certainly given a voice to marginalised communities in a way that mainstream media was very resistant to doing for a very long time, and I would argue is still pretty resistant.”
And while incumbent media companies have been treading water, YouTube has been soaking up more and more viewing time on TV, prompting debate among advertisers as to whether or not the platform qualifies as TV content.
“The thinking there is backwards,” argues Winter. “We shouldn’t be trying to understand if YouTube is like premium television; we should be trying to understand how television fits into YouTube. Rather than trying to get streaming to fit into legacy models, how does legacy fit into new technology models? Because those models are what’s driving everything now. And that’s where the audience is. So I think we have to regulate and police these humongous social media and streaming platforms like YouTube, in the ways that worked on television.”
But like the broadcasters, regulators have also been slow to react to YouTube’s growing dominance. “I think that the government generally has not been very good at regulating the internet,” remarks Winter, “both because there’s so much lobbying power preventing them from doing that, but also because they don’t often really understand this stuff.”
He says this lack of technological knowledge among politicians “allows them to be hoodwinked by lobbyists,” or gives them unrealistic and unhelpful notions about shutting down entire platforms. “The pendulum swings between doing absolutely nothing and then doing the wrong thing. It’s like watching someone come up with a terrible plan in slow motion, and then you’ve got to wait for them to enact the plan for it not to work, and then for someone else to come along with an actual working plan.”
Bogus Journey
The crux of the issue for legislators in the US is Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which essentially says internet platforms are not liable for third-party content posted on their websites.
In some instances this loophole has been distressing for families affected by gun violence. News reporter Alison Parker and photojournalist Adam Ward were murdered during a live TV broadcast in 2015. The gunman posted videos of the murder to his Facebook page and they quickly made their way onto YouTube.
Alison’s father Andy Parker has since become a campaigner for gun control and online safety, calling for reform of Section 230. He likens the 1996 law to the Second Amendment: a good idea at the time. The film features a scene in which Parker is telling Congress that the legislation enables Google to profit from violence and hate speech. He is still fighting the company to have footage of his daughter’s murder removed from YouTube.
Google maintains that YouTube is “at least 99 percent” brand safe, as it only runs ads on videos that meet its standards for monetisation.
But Winter points out that the platform often runs ads against content that is far from brand safe. He cites how Google served ads on Steven Crowder’s videos during his racist rants and calls for violence, reinstating his monetisation privileges a year after they were suspended following instances of homophobic harassment. And just last month it emerged that billions of ad dollars intended for brand-safe YouTube placements were actually funding made-for-advertising and disinformation websites, including Russian propaganda promoting false claims about the invasion of Ukraine.
“There’s no way you’re going to get brands to stop advertising where there are so many eyeballs,” comments Winter. “YouTube is the largest media platform on the planet. It’s bigger by far than TV advertising and other forms of media. It’s way, way bigger than TikTok. It’s not even comparable. So there’s no reality in which advertisers are not going to want to capitalise on those eyeballs. And that is why the onus falls on the platforms to not be supporting brands on their platforms that are essentially driving hate speech and incentivising or calling for violence against marginalised groups.”
That said, putting the onus on the platform does not absolve advertisers from their responsibility to avoid funding harmful content, argues Winter. “No one’s got a gun to their head. They’re free to not advertise there.” But he also finds Google disingenuous by claiming that the continued flow of ad spend proves the content can’t be that bad. “That’s just not how advertising works,” he says.
On the whole though, the director found the company forthcoming in their participation in the documentary. Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki made “a very sincere attempt” to answer questions honestly, according to Winter. “I didn’t really want to go to disgruntled former employees because I always feel that there’s less validity, because they have a million reasons why they’re mad at the company, often personal.” He adds that he had more difficulty talking to engineers currently working at YouTube, who wouldn’t go on the record for fear of retribution.
Face the Music
Despite Wojcicki’s candour, Winter believes that those “high up in the food chain” can be insulated from the realities of how their platforms work. The film highlights that the gunman who murdered 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019, was radicalised by white supremacist content on YouTube. Winter notes that the CEO may not realise that fact.
At the same time, ignorance can be used as an excuse by Big Tech execs, such as Mark Zuckerberg claiming to not fully understand Facebook’s data sharing policies in 2018. “I think it’s baloney,” says Winter. “I think it comes down to non-algorithmic, non-technological issues that are 100 percent about profit motive. I think they’re being willfully vague in areas that they don’t want to adjust because it will cost them money. It’s not that complicated.”
Susan Wojcicki
But where Meta and Google have become unsafe in pursuit of profit, Winter suggests Twitter has done so for more ideological reasons. “I personally got off Twitter when Elon bought it because he fired everybody and many of them were friends of mine,” says the filmmaker. “He scrapped the trust and safety division and made the place extremely unsafe, and I just couldn’t support that.” He adds that not everyone has that luxury, given Twitter’s effectiveness as a communication tool, particularly among marginalised communities, which Winter feels Musk is deliberately shutting down.
“I think what Elon has done with Twitter is a really good example of someone literally physically coming in and saying, ‘I’m going to de-democratise this space. I’m actually going to yank away your ability to have a free space that isn’t run in an extremely patriarchal, authoritarian manner’,” he says.
AI goes viral
This month Musk launched an AI firm to compete with ChatGPT owner OpenAI, which he co-founded. AI is also playing a growing role in content moderation on social media platforms, while Snapchat recently came under fire for its new chatbot, which parent company Snap admitted could surface “biased, incorrect, harmful or misleading content.”
For Winter, AI represents an extension of the safety and regulatory issues surrounding social media companies. “I think that there is accountability on the part of humans who are behind these technologies that could absolutely make them safer, but these people are usually not incentivised to make these technologies safer because it makes them less money,” he says. “So I think that is largely what we’re up against, is that a profit motive is driving and incentivising these companies to not police their own technologies to make them safer for society at large.”
Bleak as the situation seems, Winter doesn’t think it is too late to rein in Big Tech. “I don’t think it’s ever too late to enact change,” he says. “It just means you’ve got a battle in front of you of some kind or another. But I certainly am not optimistic about it happening anytime soon. And I’m not optimistic about these companies policing themselves.”
To alleviate the more depressing aspects of his work, the director has developed a rhythm of alternating tech exposés and more relaxing music docs. Between Deep Web and The YouTube Effect, Winter made a third Bill & Ted film and an illuminating documentary about Frank Zappa.
“Zappa was like a six-year palate cleanser,” he says. “I’m planning to make another music doc or cultural doc, and another pretty hard-hitting politically oriented doc about what’s going on right now in other areas. So one is kind of fun, and the other is super depressing.” He may have beaten Death in a game of Battleship in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, but Big Tech is proving a tougher nut to crack.
The YouTube Effect is showing in the UK this week, with Alex Winter attending live Q&A screenings, and is available to stream from 8th August.
