[soft music playing] [dramatic music] Here we go!

[explosion] [upbeat music] [laughs] -Oh, my God.

-Oh, my God!

Whoa!

YouTube has video.

[man] I'm gonna spend the next 50 hours buried alive in this coffin.

[boys laughing] [woman] So I'm really excited to be launching this YouTube channel.

I run nine different YouTube channels.

[man] So hit that like button!

Smash that like button!

[upbeat music continues] Woo!

[upbeat music continues] Yo, it's just a prank!

[screams] -Whose streets?

-Our streets!

[upbeat music continues] -[repeating Donald Trump's name] -Holy s**t!

[upbeat music continues] Please don't shoot me, man.

[upbeat music continues] [crowd chanting] Stop the steal!

[upbeat music continues] [music fades] [static crackling] [horns honking] [soft music] [soft music continues] [Steve Chen] It's kind of an interesting past.

Born in Taiwan and traveled to the U.S. when I was eight years old.

[modem dialing] In 1992, 1993, we had exposure to the Internet.

So you had a bunch of 14, 15 year-olds without parental supervision, having access to the Internet.

And the Internet was new.

It was, I mean, even more experimental than what you know the Internet today.

People were still just trying to figure out, "What do you do with these interconnected machines?"

And so that began sort of already my long-term career of going to sleep at 3 a.m., 4 a.m. every night.

It's just getting online, talking with people and kind of just figuring out things all together.

[jet engine roaring] I left the University of Illinois in 1999.

Do you actually drop out of school and do the startup thing?

And, you know, that means it was a major life decision, but it was made within minutes of saying, "Okay, forget what I'm going to be doing.

I can always finish off my senior year if this startup doesn't work out, but I need to buy a ticket to get out to Silicon Valley as quickly as possible."

[dial-up modem connecting]] [female host] By now, you've heard the buzz.

[male host] It spans the globe like a superhighway.

Telephones, TV, and computers are merging.

Whoa!

[upbeat music] You know, people who had access to the Internet were able to communicate with each other across borders.

It was exciting, it was an enabler of really kind of a unique type of communication that hadn't been able to exist in that way before without travel.

Wave your hands, Brian, so we can get a sense of how this works.

Okay.

Hi there.

I was trying to describe to one of my undergraduates what the world looked like in '97, just 20 some odd years ago.

And I was explaining to them that the way we took pictures, the dominant medium was film.

They're like, "What's that?"

I was like, "Oh man, I have to define film."

So I explained, you know, there's this canister with this photosensitive material, and you put it in the camera, and you take 20 pictures, and then you take it out, and you take it down to the drugstore, and then, you know, somebody developed it, and four days later, you get your pictures.

I swear to God, I think they thought I was pulling their leg.

Like, they couldn't fathom what the world looks like today compared to that in '97.

[Jeff Bezos] There are gonna be lots of successful companies born of the Internet.

[boys cheering] [keys typing] Well, I was getting pretty depressed like towards the end of last week.

And I was like, "Dude, we have, like maybe 40, 50, 60 videos on the site, but..." [Steve] I started in PayPal in 1999 and I left PayPal in 2005.

So during the course of that period was when I met the two other co-founders of YouTube, Jawed and Chad Hurley.

[Steve] Of the search results, or of the set that the image came from?

Yeah, where it came from in the results, so... On of the guys that we met early on was the co-founder of another service.

And it was called hotornot.com.

This service can be explained pretty easily.

You look at a photo and there were two options.

You voted "Hot" or "Not" on the photo.

We just thought, "You know, what a great opportunity it would be if you created a video version of this instead of just seeing a photo.

[laughs] So that's the true story behind the YouTube service as we know it today.

[whimsical music] We started building the service.

And I would say that much of the work was on the engineering side.

What became of YouTube is not something that's fundamentally a new and novel idea in that people have considered and thought about, are there ways to be able to share video online?

Because plenty of people at the time had videos that they wanted to share.

It was just sitting on their hard drives, but there was no way to be able to share them.

[keys clicking] All right, so here we are in front of the elephants.

Cool thing about these guys is that they have... [Steve] A large part of it early on was actually looking through and kind of seeing what kind of videos would people want to be able to share that they didn't know were shareable before.

Look, here's finally a service where if you wanna get a political message out there, if you want to get some kind of message out there, you can use this platform.

You're not going to be able to turn on the TV and be able to see this.

I remember it showing up as like a place with goofy videos... [boy laughs] Charlie.

...that didn't strike me as something that would revolutionize the world... [crowd yelling] [boy laughing] [Talia] ...be livelihoods for so many people... [yells] 100 million subscribers.

Thank you, YouTube.

Ow!

[Talia] ...spawn everything from social movements...

I can't breathe!

[Talia] ...to really Baroque dramas.

I don't like 'em putting chemicals in the water that turned the friggin' frogs gay.

Charlie, that really hurt.

[Talia] That all came a bit later.

[baby laughing] [crowd screaming] [Anthony Padilla] I was like, "Video.

Video is the next big thing that's gonna be on the Internet.

This is so cool.

"Like, you could record something on God, you couldn't even record on a cell phone then.

It was like, steal someone's webcam.

[Power Rangers theme music] Well, we actually started making videos before YouTube even existed.

[lip syncing to music] [Anthony] We don't even have broadband Internet yet.

[lip syncing to music] Videos are not a thing that you do on the Internet.

[Mortal Kombat music playing] [lip syncing to music] [slapping sound effect] [Ian] You know, we had just graduated from high school.

We were 17 years old, all of our friends were going off to colleges, and we decided to stay in our hometown of Sacramento, go to community college.

[Mortal Kombat music] Then somebody took one of our videos and put it on YouTube.

I did a Google search, and I found that it was uploaded to this website called YouTube.

Someone just ripped it and posted it there.

[Steve] What YouTube really brought to the game was, I think, the ability to be able to utilize the latest technology that was available, and then building that into a cohesive system that made it much easier for the user experience.

Millions of viewers now from all over the world are logging on to view their short films and video projects, [female reporter] Their Pokémon video, the second most watched clip on YouTube.com, more than 15 million views so far.

[Anthony] I'm like this introverted kid who is terrified of speaking in front of a class of, like, 30 kids, but yet...

I'm like, I can do this on my own, in my bedroom, upload it, people can enjoy it.

[skates rolling] When YouTube first arrived, we didn't really have high-speed Internet connections the way we do now.

I didn't have a smartphone.

[documentary narrator] They're off.

[Jillian] And so back then, it was really exciting to be able to go online and watch a video that maybe you never would have been able to access before .

[documentary narrator] This competitor is determined to finish.

[Jillian] And yet at the same time, it was slow.

I think the first video I ever uploaded to YouTube was of my cat drinking out of my water glass.

And I'd taken it with maybe my first digital camera, and it took hours to get it online, and I don't even know why I did it.

But it was just this exciting moment to be able to share something with the world like that.

[cat licking] [bell ringing] These are from a gentleman at another table.

-What?

-Enjoy.

[Steve] " Dear sirs, we would like to buy your video sharing site.

Milkshakes on us!"

[bell ringing] Awesome.

Let's do it.

Hi, YouTube.

This is Chad and Steve.

We're the co-founders of the site.

And we just want to say thank you.

Today, we have some exciting news for you.

We've been acquired by Google.

Yeah, thanks.

Thanks to every one of you guys that, have been contributing to YouTube, the community.

We wouldn't be anywhere close to where we are without the help of this community.

Thanks a lot.

[soft tense music] [Brian Williams] There has been a big merger in the business world, One that may say a lot about our world these days.

[male host] Web giant Google will pay 1.6 billion to gobble up YouTube.

[soft tense music] [soft music] [Susan Wojcicki] The light bulb for me when I realized that YouTube was going to be really big, was with this very specific video, which was the first hit that I saw, actually, on Google Video.

[lip syncing to Backstreet Boys music] Of these two young students, singing the Backstreet Boys in their dorm room, and their roommate is doing homework in the back.

I still laugh when I see it today.

[lip syncing] And I realized, "Wow, this is going to be a big thing.

People wanna see other people like them on YouTube.

This is going to be important."

[soft tense music] One of the things that I did was I did this model where I forecasted that it was actually gonna be a really big business, and we could justify the price that we paid for it, which was 1.65 billion dollars, which was a huge price.

I had a hundred percent conviction.

There was no doubt in my mind that this was gonna be a huge trend of the future.

But there were many around me that questioned it, for sure.

I mean, we saw it in the press, we saw other people who were supposedly, like, tech experts say, "This was, like, one of the stupidest acquisitions ever."

Like, someone told me how that day they were with a bunch of different Nobel Prize winners in economics, and they were all talking about what a bad acquisition this was, and how could have Google made such a huge mistake?

So I think people across the board did not, like, recognize that this was gonna be a really, really big opportunity.

[Chad] This is the dinner at YouTube.

This is what it's like to work here.

We're gonna feature this video tomorrow so... [soft tense music] [indistinct chattering] -[man] Cheers.

-[All] Cheers.

Woo.

I find it fascinating the way I think younger Millennials, and certainly Gen Z use YouTube almost the way the rest of us use Google search.

You know, that's where they go to find information.

For those of you that are new here, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, I like to talk about the news, world events, and then Friday, it is all about the conversation.

[Nitasha] I think that it can be really wonderful, but it's just always been baffling to me that here is the most massive video platform influencing billions around the world, [horns honking] and, you know, for years, Google wouldn't even break out, like, basic statistics about it in its quarterly earnings calls.

[Nitasha] And even just from a financial standpoint, how did they just tuck this under the Google umbrella as though this is just a, like a side bet, when it is, like, kind of the default portal to information?

[Steve] Yeah, the making of YouTube...

Here's your new keys to your new office.

- [Steve] All right, thanks.

-[Chad] Present you your key.

[Steve] When Chad and I were pointing some things, they still gave us the decision-making power to utilize the resources of Google after the acquisition, but we were allowed to make the decisions of where we wanted to take the product.

[soft music] I think when it got acquired by Google, the general narrowing of the Internet, where like, there used to be web surfing where you would just, like, bounce around all these different sites from all these different creators, and really be looking at different things.

And now we're much more centralized on our social media feeds, and there's a sense of much more controlled chaos.

Like, everyone's talking and talking over each other and contributing, but within these silos, there's the central platform of the whole Internet.

[calm music] [male narrator] The wheels of the tech industry never stop turning.

And in 2007, we saw glimpse after glimpse of new technology.

[soft music] That was, like, the pinnacle of the moment when everyone was so excited about the potential of technology and social media to change the world for the better.

This is one device... [crowd cheering] and we are calling it iPhone.

[Becca] There was this idea, of, like, organizations, these old bureaucratic institutions aren't going to matter anymore because people can kind of come together just using the Internet, and can change the world that way.

[crowd chanting] [police screaming] [woman] I like to think of this as the beginning of the revolution.

So this is a bunch of people coming together to create a new cultural impulse.

[engine buzzing] [Jillian] States would control what foreign media can do, and I think we really saw this at the beginning of the Egyptian uprising, when there were only a few networks that already had people in the country.

And those networks, they didn't have the same kind of access that people posting to YouTube did.

I think because of a lack of trust that the people had in foreign media and reasonably so, because foreign media had, whether intentionally or not, had ignored a lot of these issues for a long time.

[crowd screaming] [interpreter] President Mohamed Hosni Mubarak has decided to wave the office of the president of the Republic.

[crowd cheering] [male reporter] A voice which ushered in a social revolution in Egypt where the most powerful weapon was social networking.

[crowd cheering] [calm music] We were able to connect with people all over the world.

We were able to have these conversations that would expose things in our country, that helped us to understand the connections between all of our countries and the things that we had in common.

[calm music] This on?

I'm Fred and...

Mom, I'm not using your camera!

[Steve] I think one major change that happened after the acquisition, what eventually led to this concept of the YouTuber.

-Hey bitches!

-What's happening, forum?

Hi, we're the Fine brothers.

For those of you who don't know me, I'm Brookers, and I'm an Internet celebrity.

[woman] He's an international superstar, the most downloaded man on the planet.

You pretty much can stop anyone here and ask them how they found out about K-pop, they found out on YouTube.

[K-pop music] [Steve] Korean K-Pop, that's all possible because all of a sudden you have content that was being created in one part of the world that just happened to have viewers from the rest of the world.

[upbeat music] Pow!

You became able to see actual people living in other parts of the country, other parts of the world.

Hi, everyone.

[speaking Korean] ...who were experiencing the same things you were, and maybe, you know, we're boldly speaking about them in a different set of terms than you'd been able to access through mainstream media.

I'm back, Black, and ready to lay the facts.

[Jillian] If you're a person of color who's not living in a major city, who doesn't have connections to other people who look like you, then YouTube enables you to see people who look like you who might share your perspective or who might have a totally different perspective.

And so it allows you to see a spectrum of people who maybe had some of the same features as you, or the same proclivities as you, but who were engaging in different activities than the people in your own community were.

Y'all are gonna be my best friends.

-Oh, my God!

-Oh, my God.

-Oh, my God!

-Oh, my God.

[Anthony] It was a couple of years into us doing what we were doing that we ever met anyone else that created content on YouTube.

-I'm Toby.

-Hey everybody.

It's Michael Buck from the What the Buck Show.

What's up?

It's Brittani Taylor.

I'm here at VidCon with Josh Rhymer.

[Anthony] And it was such a surreal experience, like, seeing someone face to face who also had a following, who understood this world.

'Cause before that, it was really, it was a lot of talk about, like, how can you use this to get into mainstream media?

Like, New Media wasn't a term, it was like, YouTube was just a place for trash, is how they saw it.

So get yourself onto Nickelodeon or MTV.

And like, we literally had a meeting with MTV and we pitched all these ideas and they didn't know what to do with us.

Hey, everyone.

Welcome back to my channel.

It's your girl Jackie Aina.

If you are new here, welcome.

[Susan] We've really had no gatekeepers that have said, you know, "Send me your script and I'll decide whether or not we fund you."

We just say, "Hey, post it on YouTube."

Tonight, my guests are two transgender YouTubers from opposite ends of the political spectrum.

But I've brought them here together to engage in a rational, free-thinking debate about a timeless... [Natalie Wynn] YouTube is so individual, right?

Generally, video is something that is produced with a big team of people.

[piano music] It's a very solitary project for me.

Like, I write the script, I'm doing the wardrobe, I'm doing the makeup, I'm setting the camera up, I'm positioning the lights, I designed the set.

I turned the camera on, I'm sitting in a room alone talking to the camera, and then I edited it myself.

I mean, it's a very solitary project.

[piano music] [piano music continues] I don't know, maybe this is a little bit of vanity, but it's like, it feels like a very personal like, more like writing a book would feel than directing a movie, you know?

[piano music] I think I first uploaded to YouTube in 2007.

And it was a video of me playing the piano.

So YouTube as a website has been in my life a long time, since I was in high school.

What do I look like to you, some kind of philosopher?

[harp notes] I majored in philosophy and psychology, then I started getting a PhD in philosophy, got two years into that before realizing "I don't want to be an academic.

This does not suit me at all."

Gentlemen of the Academy, it is my duty to submit to you the findings of my latest mimetic research.

What are traps, and be they gay?

I was using a philosophy background and making arguments, but I'm also making entertainment.

[crowd cheering and cameras clicking] [male reporter] YouTube celebrities are laughing along with their fans all the way to the bank.

The last one of you take your hand off this million dollar stack of cash, keeps it.

[female interviewer] How do you go from working in a supermarket five years ago to earning more than 12 million pounds this year?

Part of me is not sure.

I just do something that I absolutely love and put it out there for anyone to watch.

♪ I don't need money I don't need cars ♪ ♪ Girl you're my heart ♪ [Steve] You know, some of the most recognized musician names out there, they created their content when they were 13, 14 years old, uploading it as sort of an amateurish piece of content onto YouTube.

What's up guys, my name is Shawn Mendes.

[Steve] And then you fast forward a few years, and they're performing in front of hundreds of thousands of people.

[crowd screaming] [female newscaster] It's amazing making money off of YouTube, and two Sacramento 20-somethings are on that list.

[Anthony] Our channel was one of the first ten channels to ever be monetized.

They said we will give you $10,000 dollars each month if you have these ads as part of this partnership program.

Obviously, that's a s**t ton of money for, God, we were 19 years old.

[crowd screaming] [Natalie] In the early days, no one was doing this professionally, or very few people were.

And if they were doing it, it's because they were making ad money.

-[man] What the heck?

-I've never seen a dead person.

- You haven't?

-No, bro.

[Natalie] That really affects the kind of content that you can make Because it incentivizes you to make as much content that gets as many clicks as possible by any means necessary.

[reporter] For more than a month, Mona Lisa Perez said her boyfriend had been begging her to launch his YouTube channel with a bang.

I may fail, but if I fail, I wanna die trying.

[Boy] He has a microwave stuck to his head.

I know this sounds like a prank call, but he was trying to film a YouTube video.

[Natalie] It doesn't have to be good.

People don't have to wanna pay for it.

You just have to get eyes on the video.

Dear fat people.

Ah!

Some people are already really mad at this video.

What are you going to do, fat people?

What are you gonna do?

What are you, gonna chase me?

All right, pull up with the gang.

You know, and look at who they offer partnerships to.

No channel grows to hundreds of thousands or millions of followers incidentally.

Be sure to drop a like, hit that subscribe button.

15,000 likes on this video.

[Talia] So much of it is about generating clicks.

Like, it's even rougher than the news clickbait economy because you sink or swim based on your impressions.

And for a lot of people, it's their sole livelihood, And so everything is this capital letter, everything's sort of in bold, and italics, and exclamation points.

We've been getting 50,000 likes on all of my videos, so go hit that like button.

[soft music] [music continues] Everything on YouTube changed when the recommender algorithm was introduced in 2011.

YouTube started rewarding the content that had the highest click-through rates and the highest watch time.

And like, some kind of combination of that.

[upbeat music] [Anthony] The algorithm doesn't differentiate between a positive piece of content that makes you feel good, walk away with a smile on your face, versus something that pisses you off and makes you super angry.

In fact, it tends to sway toward the stuff that makes you angry, because you're more likely to click on other videos to learn more about this subject that's upsetting you, you're more likely to respond to a negative thing that gets under your skin if it's in the comments.

Unless you are sort of seeking out specific content, what YouTube serves you is sort of a stew of the stuff that's meant to excite and engage, you know, whether positively or negatively.

[Anthony] YouTube also didn't want clickbait to be the number one thing that was dominating the platform.

I think that they cracked down by saying, "Well, we'll reward whoever sticks around the longest."

So you can't just have that enticing thumbnail and trick people into getting there.

You have to also captivate them and keep them around.

Part of me is scared about what impacts these algorithms will have on the future because the algorithm is a beast that really can't be tamed once it's been unleashed and it's already been unleashed.

We have some really big projects, we got Food Battle, of course, coming up, we've got some big music videos we're working on.

-Yeah.

-We're upping our game.

[Anthony] But it's like, it's an endless loop.

You step away from YouTube for a little while as a content creator and you feel a little... pain in your heart.

Like, what if people stop... What, are people gonna forget about me if I take two or three weeks off?

or even a month off, are people...?

Is the algorithm not going to show my content to anyone again?

So the algorithm is controlling the creator in that sense.

It makes you feel obligated to continue your momentum.

You can't break your momentum is kind of the feeling that most people have.

[eerie music] These platforms are in the engagement business.

At the end of the day, they're giving away their products for free.

And the way they make money is by keeping you on the platform for as long as possible, extracting data from you, and delivering ads.

Now Facebook, it's very easy to see the recommendation algorithms.

Your newsfeed is 100% curated for you to provide you with articles that will keep you on the platform for as long as possible.

YouTube, it's a little bit less obvious, But if you look at the viewing patterns on YouTube, a full 70%, 7-0, of all YouTube videos that are watched today are recommended by YouTube through Watch Next, so the autoplay that is by default on, and then the Recommended For You panel and the recommendations on the right hand side.

How's it choosing those?

So of course, part of that algorithm is, "This is something that is relevant to this."

But some of it is that, "Look, we know people will click on this, and if you click on it, I get more data and I get more ads."

And that has led to lots of problems.

The rabbit hole effect, the echo chamber.

So for example, if you go on to YouTube today you click on moon landing, within a couple of clicks, you will be in La-la Land talking about conspiracy theories around that the moon landing is faked.

A full 10% of recommendations were conspiratorial.

That's insane.

Well, I just got kicked out of Starbucks for asking NASA employee questions because he's lying.

[Hany] So it's not just that these platforms are neutral.

You know, it'd be one thing to say, "Hey, look, we are sitting back, people can upload videos, you get to look at what you want."

That's not how these platforms work.

They are choosing to amplify things that engage.

And what we know is that the more conspiratorial, the more hateful, the more divisive, the more it engages.

Dips**t. And get that camera out of my... [engine roaring] [calm music] [Caleb Cain] I realized that the Internet was a place where a lot of people describe it as escapism, and I kind of resent that.

Because it's not just that, I had video games for escapism.

I had, you know, going out with my friends for escapism.

But what the Internet had was, especially in the early days of YouTube, you could find dissident information, You could find information on there that was outside the culture.

And the reason that's so important is because you can't see contradictions in your society unless you get outside the culture.

[calm music] Suddenly, I could start to see how things in my life weren't working because I could see what was going on in other places.

It didn't always lead you to the right place.

And sometimes the truth comes with a lie and a price tag.

But you had freedom that you never had before, and that I never experienced in my day-to-day life.

Hi, everybody.

My name is Caleb.

You know, welcome to my channel.

So you can probably tell by the description on the video, in the title, what this is gonna be about.

So I'm just gonna get right into it.

I fell down the alt-right rabbit hole.

So it begins.

You're in a death battle, New World Order.

We know.

If I lived in Saudi Arabia, they'd kill me.

If I lived in China, they'd kill me.

You still gotta sell your soul.

You gotta write your name in blood.

[man] Whites are getting fed up, Whites are getting tired of being disenfranchised and neglected.

Hail our people.

Hail victory.

[laughs] [screams] [Caleb] Well, at first I was kinda just depressed skimming the web.

But I think at some point, I had found this video called "God is in the Neurons," and it was from this YouTuber that I used to watch in high school, And it gave me this concept that I could rewire my brain and really self-improve.

[man] Our beliefs have a profound impact on our body chemistry.

[Caleb] And that took me to self-help content.

And then the algorithm just started feeding up more self-help content.

There is no such thing as mental illness.

[Caleb] You start with someone like Stefan because you're looking for self-help.

And so we call that an on-ramp, right?

In the study of extremism, we would call that an on-ramp.

And you go from that self-help, which has now validated your identity, it's given you a direction to go, it's given you an algorithmic list, to use the word a bit ironically, of things that you have to do.

And I'll tell you what, people are looking for that in a complicated world and especially young men are looking for that.

It's now time for the return of men.

[Caleb] It seems that the algorithm would always pull you towards the more hyperbolic content, towards the content that was a bit more extreme.

Muslims by the million have been pouring into Europe.

And you can see the terrible problems that have arisen as a consequence.

[Caleb] And there was an uncomfortability when you went a bit deeper into this specific ideology, because not only is it depressing, but it's hateful, That specific rabbit hole, I feel like what it was truly doing was, it wasn't radicalizing me, I was already radicalizing because of how my life was going.

But it was killing my empathy.

It was turning me into a sociopath.

[insects buzzing] YouTube is now like a Walmart in a town where there's a Walmart and a Dollar General and a CVS.

Like it's one of the sole organizing destinations.

And in the case of the far right, and like, right-wing political content, radicalizing political content, it's like Walmart having a big old gun aisle.

[Natalie] Well, I think a lot of people come to YouTube to do commentary, to do politics because they feel like their perspective is not represented elsewhere.

Words like racist, misogynistic, and transphobic are not insults, nor are they stereotypes or generalizations.

Rather, they are facts about the way we are socialized in a Western society.

I'll be honest with you, if I hate anything about Black culture, it's that it's such a victim culture, almost a victim cult.

[Natalie] I do think in general that people who feel marginalized or who feel like they're on the fringe, tend to gather on YouTube.

You don't deserve to get laid.

[Caleb] Then come along the alt right, and they really took that whole dynamic and just revolutionized it and innovated it.

And then they took many of those Internet nihilists and they took that radical energy, and they directed it well, towards dominance, and fear, and hate, to be honest with you.

[sigh] Well, this is my last video.

It all has to come to this.

You forced me to suffer all my life, and now I'll make you all suffer.

[female TV host] An angry and psychologically twisted young man whose public rantings exploded into sheer terror.

[gunshots] [policeman] Shots fired.

Shots fired.

[female TV host] Taking six young lives and injuring 13.

A virgin vowing revenge in a twisted video he posted Friday, addressed at his perceived enemies, young women he says rejected him.

You will finally see that I am, in truth, the superior one, the true alpha male.

[woman] Aggression, violence and unbridled ambition can't be eliminated from the male psyche.

They can only be harnessed.

Rape, murder, war.

They all have two things in common.

Bad men who do the raping, murdering and warring, and weak men who won't stop them.

We need good men who will.

PragerU is an interesting example because they pitch themselves as an educational channel.

They very much mimic online course stuff, but what they're feeding you is very, very, quite radical right wing ideology.

My message has been simple.

Islam is not a religion of peace.

[Talia] I think one of the things to debunk is this idea that it's solely an algorithm issue.

One big mechanism of radicalization, it's not just algorithmic, it's very deliberate.

These channels, they build parasocial relationships with their viewers so they feel a deep connection with you.

I think it's more visceral with video content.

I think it's more intense with video content.

My name is Candace Owens, and you are watching my vlog series.

[Talia] You know, the sort of confessional vlog-y, casual, "This is my living room, you're looking at me," kind of style, really, really facilitates that kind of parasocial relationship.

I just wanted to say thank you.

I've seen some of the comments.

Some of you are a marvel.

You send actual letters.

[Talia] And it's just, like, a Suggested Follows, And that's its own issue.

Because these are very well-funded channels, these are big moneymakers.

[Steven Crowder] There are two videos completed here, Louder with Crowder.

This team never would've been able to do, if not for this man, Kevin, lending us his personal plane.

[woman] My skin's been pretty good, to be honest.

I think YouTube is a very intimate format.

If you're watching a YouTube video, people tend to watch it by themselves, you watch it while you're eating, you watch it while you're going to bed.

You're watching one person talk to you.

There's something very intimate about that.

You feel like you know this person.

It's a little bit uncanny, you know, because they feel that they know me, but I don't know them.

We've talked about some heavy stuff on this channel.

But I was gonna say, "Oh, it's one of th..." You know, if someone's broadcasting from their bedroom, you feel this real sense of intimacy with them, you feel like you know the intimate details of their lives.

I remember once I had a girlfriend who was not jealous to begin with, but became kind of jealous, particularly as I became more successful as an entrepreneur.

She became more jealous and more insecure.

[Becca] And then when they start kind of telling you about their beliefs and views, that packs a real punch that other delivery mechanisms wouldn't.

The right are the producers, the makers, and the left are the takers or those who manage that taking and thereby gain political power by being able to hand out gifts that they have not earned but are taking from the makers.

[Becca] And so there's become this kind of cottage industry of far-right creators on YouTube who take advantage of that and broadcast to their audiences and are quite effective at radicalizing them.

I'm a weapon.

I'm made to be thrown at you.

[laughs] [uplifting music] Just between you and I, I know the cameras aren't on right now, right?

-Say, "What?"

-What?

I know the cameras are not on right now.

-Keep saying, "What"?

-What?

[laughs] [Anthony] Yeah, I mean, it was really hard for me to, like, even think about where YouTube was going because we're so caught up in it.

But I definitely thought that it was going to replace mainstream media.

All right.

Love you guys.

Thanks again for supporting.

-Thank you.

-Love you.

Bye.

I knew that this was going to be the way that the Internet was going to go.

I've had offers to do a show for Netflix, or for Amazon or cable TV, or whatever.

I always declined them.

Because I don't really see why I would give up my own creative control, and this, like, child that I've raised, basically.

you know, I want to keep it.

[saw buzzing] [Susan] We're a platform that enables creators who are really next generation media companies.

Welcome back to my channel, everyone.

Today I wanna show you guys some life hacks.

Now, before... [Susan] We've seen so many people take their passions, whether it's about cooking, woodworking, music, and turn that into a business and become a creator and become a global media company on YouTube.

Hello.

Hi.

How's it going?

I finally got it.

I got the 10 million subscriber plaque But this is special because it represents, like, how far we have come as a community, and it represents, you know, how much we have accomplished.

[birds chirping] [Brianna Wu] What I thought was so amazing about YouTube when it first came out is it really allowed this hyper-segmentation.

So if you were a gamer that wanted to understand tricks from an obscure Japanese game from 20 years ago, [upbeat music] boom, that exists out there.

[upbeat music continues] And it was just this massive explosion.

But I think for me, obviously Gamergate was when I really realized something was going off course.

[dramatic music] I had just finished shipping my very first game.

And, you know, getting into a political fight with the Internet was the last thing I wanted to do.

But people on YouTube had started to come together in a way to silence women in the game industry that were starting to ask for more representation, asking to be higher, asking to be given more opportunity.

[gentle music] It started out with this kind of Tumblr-style call-out post about Zoë Quinn.

[Natalie] I guess her ex-boyfriend accused her of sleeping with journalists and cheating on him.

And I started to speak out against it.

[calm music] I was sitting at my home one day, and I get this really credible list of death threats that went mega viral on the Internet, and they are burned into my brain.

[gasps] "Guess what, bitch, I know where you and your husband live."

They give my address.

"You're going to die tonight."

"I'm going to rape you with your husband's tiny Asian penis until you bleed."

"If you have any children, they're going to die, too."

That was the moment that I decided I wasn't safe at my home.

And I left, and I got the police and the FBI involved.

Brianna Wu is a games developer who says she was forced to leave her home over the weekend after receiving targeted threats.

She joins me now from Boston.

[Zoë] Instantly, they dived in to, "Find where she lives.

Find where all these people live.

What are we going to do about her?

Can we hack her e-mail?"

Like, instantly?

[mouse clicks] And then all of these accounts started being made to talk about really disgusting personal details and talk about like, make really disgusting sexual comments.

And it's the first thing you lose is all perspective.

[soft tense music] [Brianna] There was an organized effort to basically do SEO warfare, search engine warfare.

You know this as well as I do.

If I type your name into the Internet, a bunch of YouTube videos are going to be the first thing listed.

So what Gamergate figured out was that they could gain the SEO and start putting out these videos, you know, Brianna Wu is a terrible person for A, B, C, D, and E, and basically malign my name.

YouTube was a major part of the harassment that I received.

[seagulls squawking] [horns honking] [engine revving] [horns honking] [Carrie Goldberg] Yeah, I hear that a lot where people are like, "Listen, the Internet, it's just a mirror on society.

And so why should we be focusing on fixing the Internet instead of on society?

And the thing is, that, in my opinion, and my experience as a lawyer for people who've been f****d over by tech, is that it is itself the weapon.

The Internet has created this, like, really convenient mechanism to harm.

and the platforms are making, just like they're minting money off of it.

And so I don't agree that it is just a reflection of society.

It's changed society.

[dramatic music] The thing about the algorithm is what they're recommending is a harm.

Their lust for hijacking people's attention is an additional harm.

The other issue of them publishing content that is itself harmful, that they're not removing.

[Norah O'Donnell] We begin with breaking news in Virginia.

A gunman opened fire during a live TV news interview.

A reporter and photographer with our CBS affiliate WDBJ in Roanoke were killed.

[male reporter] Andy Parker couldn't get video of his daughter's murder off of Google's YouTube.

[soft tense music] [birds chirping] [Andy] I went to YouTube, typed in Alison Parker, and literally there were pages and pages and pages.

There must have been 25 to 50 pages of, you know, thankfully it didn't autoplay, but you knew what it was.

And in the titles of it, a lot of it was, "See, the whole thing was fake."

You know, it was, like, one thing after another.

It's not like you can just call up Google customer service and go, "Hey, you know, I got a problem here."

[soft tense music] [Susan] Well, we've invested a huge amount in the area of responsibility.

We also have thousands of people who help us with the enforcement.

We have machines that remove, you know, almost 90% of the videos before anyone has to see them.

So we have a huge initiative across the board to make sure that we're staying current in terms of the creation of the policies as well as the enforcement of those policies to find those videos as quickly as possible, and make sure they're removed.

If you need me to work on the op papers, I'm free and available.

It just makes me feel like individuals don't stand a chance.

You've got this like, multi-billion dollar company that's saying, you know, that's just like lording over, like, ownership of your dead daughter's murder video over you, that are saying, "We're not going to take it down because, you know, like, you aren't the copyright holder of it.

And even though our terms of service says that we ban this kind of violent imagery, we don't have the legal requirement to even enforce our terms of service.

Like, you can't make us do anything."

We have kind of a mantra of don't be evil, which is to do the best things that we know how for our users, for our customers and for everyone.

And so, I think if we were known for that, it would be a wonderful thing.

[Larry] When Google, the two founders said, "Our motto is don't be evil."

And for a while they weren't.

But now they are the personification of evil, and they don't care.

You can flag this stuff, and then you can make that go away, but then something else will pop up.

That's why I said we have to go after the great white whale, Google.

[soft piano music] So YouTube likes to say it's a completely different company from Google.

What's your opinion about that?

My experience is the two have always been treated as synonymous in every interaction I've ever had at Google.

I can tell you the impression I've gotten is that these products are kind of all under one umbrella.

I realize it's more complicated than that when you get to, you know, product managers and who owns what, but, I personally don't find that excuse credible.

[tense music] I think that Google has really been far ahead of the game from its competitors in terms of anticipating these legislative fights.

[Alan Davidson] We've realized that we need to have a larger presence here, that the Internet is affecting a lot of how people live today.

And we need, our industry needs to be here to help explain that to members of Congress.

[Nitasha] You know, the company has spent more than a decade kind of cultivating politicians on the right, on the center.

If you look at pretty much any policy decision where Google could potentially be impacted, you know, sometimes I think about it as like a big circle, and you know, you have the left and the right, and Google has given money to just everyone involved in the debates.

[laughs] [Eric Schmidt] Google's mission is to connect the world, right, to get all that information out.

We want a free open Internet for every citizen of the world.

[somber music] [male] Leaders in government and tech want to rewrite a law that shapes the Internet.

Why we're sitting here today, it's Section 230.

Because there's only so much you can do.

We filed a complaint with the FTC claiming that Google violates their own terms of service, which they do, and they don't care.

[somber music] There's the Communications Decency Act, Section 230, which completely protects the websites, the search engines from any responsibility to users.

When they talk about kind of maximizing speech on their platform , that also means maximizing monetizable content for them.

With Section 230, what it means is that they can do that without any real legal responsibility for what happens on the platform.

Section 230 has two key components.

So, one of them is that it gives us, protection from liability from content that's posted on our platform.

But the second is that it enables us also to remove content that could be harmful to our community.

But I think now, 20 plus years on, we have to look at 230 and say, "Look, guys, 230 made sense when you thought about platforms as neutral platforms."

[man] Listen, Operator, it's a very private call.

Now, you're not going to be listening, are you?

[operator] Well, I won't even be on the line.

Just... [man] You're going to get off the line as soon as I get the party, right?

- Right.

There will be no one on the line.

- Okay.

[Hany] It's like the wire on the telephone, right?

I'm just creating a mechanism for people to communicate.

If they're planning to commit a crime, you can't hold AT&T responsible.

Well, sure, that makes sense.

But that's not what social media is anymore, and it hasn't been for a really long time.

They are not a neutral arbiter of the material that is uploaded to their sites.

They pick and choose the winners and the losers through the recommendation algorithms.

Yeah, it raises a lot of questions like is kicking someone off Twitter censorship?

Are we okay with that?

Like, I think that, you know, a kind of obvious response is to say that, "No, the First Amendment protects speech, protects from the government, doesn't give corporations an obligation to host your content."

If there is no Section 230, there is no free speech, period.

I think we need to be tremendously skeptical and careful in tearing this up, because it is the foundation of the Internet.

That said, I do think that we can look at amending it and changing it and updating it in different ways.

[Carrie] They don't see us as important, we're not their actual customers.

We're just their money makers.

They advertise at us.

They collect our data.

If there's content that we want down because we own the copyright as an individual, that is not meaningful to them.

This week, I got myself a death threat.

This is messed up stuff that people are saying, [sobs] Like, people telling me to hang myself, people just, like, blatantly disrespecting the fact that I'm still a human being is not okay at all.

[sobs] I'm kind of simplistic in this, it all goes back to us having the right to sue if we're injured.

Because most people, like, most of the time on these websites, are not injured.

When I told him to leave me alone and asked if he had a knife, he didn't respond.

And when I... [Carrie] But the rare occasion when somebody is, which on scale is a lot of people... You are an ugly, untalented, fat [bleep] [laughs] [Carrie] ...we need to be able to hold them responsible.

The algorithm, it really fostered this community of videos that people would kind of love to watch because they loved to hate the thing that was in there.

They'd be like, "Yeah, that person f*****g sucks."

And I think it's time we take a look at what canceling really is.

I am so used to reading mean things about myself online.

Most of you probably can't even begin to imagine how used to it I am.

[gong clangs] It was just kind of driving this community of, like, pent up rage.

[music building] [somber music] [music continues] [man] So YouTube has set up spaces around the world where YouTube creators can go and create their own videos.

[Susan] We're a video-first platform and everything we do is about video enabling new content creators to come onto the platform and to be successful.

And so I expect us to continue to really focus on the video.

I think technology will, of course, will continue to change how we communicate and the content that we see.

But YouTube will stay focused on video.

[mouse clicks] [Anthony] They want growth.

Growth.

Growth.

Everything's about growth.

There's so much content on YouTube right now that it's completely overwhelming to ever seek stuff out.

You're not just going into a search bar looking for things, you're clicking on what's being presented to you.

So I think that YouTube is going to have to get to a point where they make people feel safe to be on the platform.

But then also, they're having to tread really murky territory where they can't be kind of, like, the arbiters of truth in the sense that they choose what is to be believed.

[crowd cheering] [crowd cheering] I'm going to fight to bring us all together as Americans.

We're living in a divided country, it's not going to be divided.

We're going to love everybody like we love the people in this room.

Specifically, YouTube, the algorithm was really rewarding the stuff that would get people up in arms and feeling like they had to fight against something for a cause.

America was built by and for the white Christian people of this nation.

[crowd screaming] [Anthony] And politically, that was a huge drive.

I know that having what felt like good versus evil, really gave people a reason to keep clicking on more and more of those videos.

So leading up to the 2016 election.

[male reporter] Donald Trump will be the 45th President of the United States.

[man] We have to get better at listening to each other, and challenging each other constructively and generously.

But I worry that the very architecture of the social Internet might make that impossible.

[male reporter] In the week or so since the election, there has been mounting criticism of whether web giants like Facebook and Google used enough discretion and editorial responsibility in screening out fake news sites.

Comet pizza.

Here we go.

[male reporter] According to police, Welch said that he had read online that the Comet Ping Pong restaurant was harboring child sex slaves.

Tell me why this pizza place isn't even open at noon.

[gentle music] [male reporter] DC police say Welch fired at least one round into the restaurant floor with an AR-15 rifle like this one.

[emotional music] [music continues] [Dave Lauer] There must not be a tipping point because there is no doubt that YouTube bore a huge responsibility for the spread of misinformation in 2016.

[Paul Joseph Watson] One expert told me that Hillary has high functioning autism with attendant sociopathy.

[crowd screaming] [Dave] Now we're in the sort of misinformation apocalypse.

[chanting angrily] I think there's blame on both sides.

[crowd yelling] What started off as this niche field in the burgeoning digital revolution, turned into the, "Crap, everything I read, see, hear online is now suspect."

Everything we're seeing in the news right now is just insane, fake news garbage.

If the Proud Boys are left alone to do their thing, they wave little American flags, and then go to the bar to have a drink, and nothing happens.

-You are fake news.

Go ahead.

-[Reporter] Sir, can you... [Brianna] There were people at YouTube that were aware that the tools that they built were being misused.

So they started to put together basically task forces, looking at the problem, talking to women like me, getting our experiences and doing what Google does, which is talking to experts and trying to come up with concrete, realistic things they can implement to solve the problem.

Unfortunately, despite participating in three of these task forces, none of them were successful in getting Google to change their policy.

My name's Anthony Padilla, and today I'll be spending a day with Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube, who began as one of Google's first employees.

If there's anyone in the comments right now angrily claiming that you, Susan, are the key reason that YouTube isn't the way they wish it were, what would you say to them?

It's much more complicated.

[laughs] It's not just me.

You're not going to blame someone else?

[both laugh] I'll take ultimately responsibility for everything.

But it has to do with the fact that these issues are much more complex than people understand, that maybe the changes that we implemented, for example, are due to regulation or they're due because these changes we've done will enable more advertisers to come and spend more revenue with YouTube creators.

I haven't been there for close to a decade now.

But I still think that the decisions that they make are often prioritized by what the end user wants, not necessarily by, you know, quarterly earnings, or quarterly, financial side of things.

If they wanted to, there's a lot of opportunity to be able to monetize, but it would be at the cost of the end user experience.

They are obligated to maximize shareholder value.

If they don't do that, they are exposed to liability and lawsuits.

When that's your incentive and you don't have liability for the content on your system, it leads to some very perverse incentives, such as building machine learning systems and algorithms that attempt to capture people's attention, addict them to content and keep them on your site, so that you can show them more advertising, because that's how you make your money.

Well, I would just disagree with that point of view.

And the reason I would is because when there is any kind of harmful misinformation, that is bad for us and bad for our business and bad for us financially and doesn't work with our business model.

We are an advertising supported platform, so no advertiser is going to want to be on that type of content.

And we have seen advertisers pull back their spend when they see that we're not managing our platform to keep our users and community safe.

That reason, along with wanting to be on the right side of history, wanting to do the right thing from a brand, from a PR, from our employee standpoint, from just thinking about what's the right thing to do for our users in our communities.

[upbeat music] [applause] [Robert Kyncl] Digital video is exploding.

Already the youngest millennials are watching more digital video than TV.

And in fact, it has overtaken social media as the top online activity.

If you were to ask college students, "What do you wanna bring when you have a small dormitory?

Do you want to bring a sort of a laptop that you can watch YouTube, or do you want to bring a plasma TV?"

It's always going to be the laptop with how many things that you can do with it.

[calm music] [waves crashing] [Ryan Kaji] It started when I was three.

I was seeing a lot of other people on YouTube and I wanted to be on YouTube too.

[kids yelling] So I asked my mom and she said yes.

[Loan Kaji] Okay, Ryan, are you ready to find the egg surprise?

Ready?

Go, go, go.

[Jared Reed] This kid, Ryan, who's on the top of the Forbes list, he earned $22 million this year.

-[Loan] Whoa!

-Whoa.

[reporter] He has more than 12 billion views on his YouTube page.

If you have children, you know him.

-[Loan] Ryan?

-What?

-I have a surprise for you.

-What?

-Look, look over here.

-Whoa!

[Loan] And you don't need much to get started on YouTube.

I started filming with just my phone.

-Hi Ryan!

-Hi Mommy.

And I still use it to this day.

And, you know, when I started to do more research, I didn't even know, like, what is a green screen when I started doing research.

We couldn't afford a green screen.

We just happened to have a tablecloth that was green.

And we're like, "Hey, we can make this work."

And that's what we use.

[Shion Kaji] Definitely after four months, we started the channel, we started seeing the tipping point in the viewership.

We started seeing views from, India, East Asia, all around the world.

Okay, guys, let's open up the Ryan's World World Tour Globe.

[Shion] Around the same time, we started our own channel and I think that timing really matched so well.

Which one?

Which one?

The purple one?

Are you sure you can do this?

Oh, good job!

[Loan] The most important thing we tried is just to make sure that he still has time being a kid.

And make sure that even though yes, he's well known around the world, to me personally, I don't think he notices it that much because, again, we really try to keep him grounded and really try to make sure that YouTube is not the essential part of who he is.

[all yelling] [child giggling] [whimsical music] There was this offering that YouTube had called YouTube Kids, and in 2017 it had 11 million weekly viewers, which is just a huge number.

Wow!

[Dave] Now, it was really maybe a couple years later that it came out that there was this effort by content producers to use YouTube and YouTube Kids to basically generate content that would leverage what they knew about the algorithm so that it would be recommended to children.

There were videos that were frightening and traumatizing children, that depicted abuse.

They were hijacking Disney characters or Paw Patrol and showing them being stabbed or hit by cars or killed or committing suicide.

And all of these videos were being promoted to children.

So it was really a disturbing phenomenon and really just goes to show how dangerous this kind of technology can be.

It really gets into this idea that when you codify something like that into a recommendation algorithm, results end up being dominated by particular behaviors and especially those behaviors that make YouTube the most money.

[Shion] I guess the biggest challenge of the parents and of the producers too, is the kids influencer business is still untouched territory.

It's still very new.

You know, the regulation is still not 100% perfect.

There are many things that we have to figure out as we go and then make sure it's a safe place for kids.

[Dave] There was this weird thing where, like, this scary character was just popping up in kids' videos.

A terrifying video that targets your kids.

The online challenge encouraging children to kill themselves.

[Dave] You know, that was something that happened after YouTube had supposedly gone in and fixed the problem.

When we talk about the YouTube recommendation algorithm, that's just a great example of something where the focus on fixing a system for recommending content, if we can just figure out that right piece of technology, everything will get fixed.

And that's a very Silicon Valley way of approaching things.

And I don't think it's the right one because these are not technology problems.

These are far broader problems.

Even putting up a stoplight at an intersection, It only gets made when there's like a certain amount of deaths or something or enough people complain and people are only complaining when there's a reason to complain.

And it's kind of like that here.

I don't, It's kind of dangerous how we are just waiting for there to be enough of these digital car crashes in this digital intersection with no stoplight.

[slow music playing] [sirens blaring] [reporter] Injured people are rushed to hospital.

They were gunned down during Friday prayers at Al Noor Mosque in the center of Christchurch.

[reporter 2] Police confirm the gunman was livestreaming the killings at one mosque on social media.

[woman] It was the most devastating... [singing "Imagine"] In December of 2020, the New Zealand government released the results of this research that they had done into the shooter and his radicalization process, and they found that he had donated money to a series of YouTubers.

He basically spoke about being radicalized on YouTube.

It wasn't in these, we like to talk about the deep, dark corners of the Internet.

You know, it conjures up these scary images of the dark web and all of these things.

But this was actually right out in the open, you know, right on YouTube is where he got radicalized.

We bring our ideas to you.

Our ideas have power.

Our time has come.

There is nothing that can stop an idea whose time has come.

And that time is now.

[applause] [slow music] [Caleb] That shooting, it really disturbed me.

And I, you know, I realized in that moment that this ideology would literally kill my friends, you know?

And so, yeah, I had to make a change.

I had two individuals message me and they said, "Hi, I'm not going to tell you who I am, but I'm inside all the far right chats and they're pissed off at you and they've got your address."

And then he posted my address and I was like, "Why are you telling me all this?"

And he said, "Because, man, you're a f*****g cuck.

But what they're saying, what they're talking about doing to you is f****d up."

I think what YouTube needs to do is they need to have very clear terms of service on their websites of what's acceptable and what isn't.

You know, I am a free speech advocate, but what I saw on the platform was people taking advantage of this algorithm.

And the algorithm does not care about what your politics are.

It cares about watch time and keeping you on platform.

And I think I left it the same way I went in it, is that I'm curious and I was always looking for, the world's really, really screwed up and how can I help make it a little bit better?

And so that was always the motivation going in and that was the motivation coming out.

[Destiny] Basically what you want to do is you want to find somebody that feels like they're f****d in some way.

"Make America Great Again," right?

You want to find somebody that feels like they're f****d in some way and you want to speak to that.

And when you hone in on that, you can bring a person onto your side to believe anything that you want them to believe.

[Caleb] And once I found, you know, content debating with these alt-right figures, found Destiny, later on I would find ContraPoints.

Hi.

In this video I'm going to talk about how to recognize a fascist.

[Caleb] Yeah, I got obsessed with learning about that, because how are these people disproving all my gurus, you know, disproving all these people who are supposed to be my warriors that are out there fighting to save my civilization?

How are they getting slayed on the rhetorical battlefield by a transgender woman?

The strategic fascist knows it's better to start with realistic, achievable goals, and that means focusing first on stopping non-white immigration, something they'll try to get you, the centrist, conservative or liberal, on board with by emphasizing the danger and criminality of non-white immigrants and refugees.

I always viewed the channel as a kind of attempted intervention that didn't assume that, I never assumed that YouTube was going to step in and save us.

I never assumed that these people were going to be banned.

The question was, is there some part of this audience that can be kind of pulled away from the edge of this extremism, basically?

I started to meet people, trans people, Muslim people, gay people, all these people.

And it's not just I met them and now I'm like, "Oh, I feel comfortable around you, because I was never, I never had a strict phobia of any individual.

But what I, when I would speak to them, I would get to hear their experience and I would actually listen to their perspective and I would ask them challenging questions.

If there's anything you guys can teach me, if there's anything I can teach you, let's correspond, let's get together, and let's figure this thing out, because it's a problem I believe that we can figure out.

They do it like Tyler Durden does in Fight Club.

They take you through your existential moment and destroy your old identity, which is your false identity that your masters gave to you.

Just let go!

[Caleb] And then they give you a new false identity, which you are now beholden to them.

Without pain, without sacrifice, you would have nothing.

[Caleb] And so now you just run down the pike.

That's what's kind of going on here.

And of course, the trick is they lie to you about a bunch of stuff, too.

They reframe the truth.

[man] There's been an awakening.

Have you felt it?

[male 2] Have you ever wondered why we go to war?

Or why you never seem to be able to get out of debt?

Why there is poverty, division and crime.

What if I told you there was a reason for it all?

What if I told you it was done on purpose?

What if I told you that those who were corrupting the world, poisoning our food and igniting conflict were themselves about to be permanently eradicated from the Earth?

[birds chirping] [Tyler] My mom started prepping for World War 3, apocalypse, you name it.

If you can imagine like a person just prepping for a natural disaster as such, she would go ten times beyond that.

She started arming herself with weapons, guns.

But she just started wearing the weapon around the house.

[door thuds] -[Alex Winter] Hey, Tyler.

-Hello.

You can just tell us a bit about when you first started experiencing the changes that were happening at home.

It was, conspiracy theories to me have always been just part of the social media platforms.

Since, you could say the dawn of time from the digital age and such.

Once it started approaching closer and closer to the elections itself, the conspiracy theories started becoming more and more wild from things like microchips and the vaccination.

China having troops at the borders.

Trump is basically fighting against the cabal or such.

[ominous music] She said that QAnon were two separate entities named Q and Anon, run by two quantum computers.

That they weren't even people, they were AIs that helped recruit Trump to fight the good fight.

From there, it just started getting even worse because now she started preaching these conspiracy theories like they're the Bible and started getting in my face about it all the time.

I couldn't say no.

I couldn't say yes.

Either one would trigger a confrontation between herself and me.

And especially since I didn't hold the same beliefs as she did.

She said things like, "Oh, I'm just trying to protect you."

And I'm like, "Yes, from what?

The neighbors are not going to harm us.

I'm afraid sometimes that you're going to go out there and start killing people or something."

She took offense to that and eventually it devolved to, the argument devolved into me saying, "I'm done.

I don't need you anymore."

And from there I just called up some friends and left on just whatever I can grab.

[reporter] The World Health Organization has now confirmed the coronavirus is a pandemic.

[reporter 2] A quarter of the world's population is now living under some form of lockdown due to coronavirus.

[Donald Trump] Now the Democrats are politicizing the coronavirus.

Let's raise the, raise the bed.

[doctors] And this is their new hoax.

The coronavirus pandemic was the perfect storm for radicalizing people.

There is no evidence that I can see that a pandemic exists.

[Robert Lewis] I don't personally know anybody that's had it.

I don't know anybody that knows anybody that's had it.

So you either wear the mask... And I'm not doing it because I woke up in a free country.

[Talia] It created a lot of isolation.

It gave people a lot more time to be on their computers.

You cannot make people wear a mask.

It's not our laws at all.

This is just made up by Bill Gates and them.

Go online and look it up.

[Talia] You know, there were these massive social disruptions, like over the nature of the fabric of reality.

-[woman] Are you laying 5G?

-Yeah.

[woman] You know, when they turn this on, it's going to kill everyone.

And that's why they're building the hospitals.

[crowd chanting] [Talia] In person, the reopen rallies like were attended by militias and white nationalists.

Texans know this is a Chi-Com globalist bio weapon meant to shut down our economy.

[Talia] The same was true on the Internet, that the people pushing reopen content or talking about COVID restrictions as state tyranny.

We're talking about the COVID lockdown.

What we're really talking about is the great reset.

Everything that you're seeing right now is a giant political conspiracy.

[machine beeping] We're going to do everything we can.

That's what I can promise you, okay?

[Anthony] When you meet someone that says, "Oh, I'm somewhere in the middle," which I feel like what many people were at some point, now it's like, "Oh, you're in the middle, then you're against me, f**k you."

And the algorithm really plays into that.

[yelling] Before we get to the topic at hand, which is COVID-19, we have to address the protests currently going on and the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police.

[crowds chanting] [reporter] The outrage over the death of George Floyd is global.

[woman] We're here to enact change.

We're here to say that our lives matter.

We need the community to understand that.

[crowd] We want change!

We want change!

Certainly, all of those factors were pumped up to 11.

[yelling and screaming] [reporter] Dozens of American cities up in flames after some protests turned into riots.

[crowd yelling] I think that the way that the platforms and YouTube in particular looked at these algorithms was much more from the perspective of, "Oh wow, let's find a way to get people to see content coming from like-minded people."

And I don't think it had occurred to them that like-minded people might be people who were angry... Start a riot?

Black lives matter?

[bleep] you!

[Jillian] ...and looking for the kind of content that would help them connect with other people who were angry in that same way and not oriented towards justice.

A lot of people turned to conspiracy for the first time.

This is experimental bio warfare on the people.

[Talia] Some of them became out and out white nationalists and some of them became sympathizers and others became QAnon supporters.

This is like a global takeover.

They're trying to create a new world order, right?

They thought they could easily get their great reset.

Little did they know!

Little did they know!

They thought they could easily have it.

Pandemic's a hoax!

[Talia] It grew and grew and grew and grew.

[Caleb] On January 6th, I went down to the Capitol.

[screaming] One thing that I've tried to understand is Internet subcultures.

And I was at the Capitol to take pictures of the different extremist groups.

[crowd] Stop the steal!

Stop the steal!

They chased me around, called me antifa.

Tried to get the normal MAGA people, because I could tell these were some Proud Boys types.

We're going to storm the f*****g Capitol.

F**k you f*****s. Bellingcat did a great study of looking at sort of neo-Nazis on Telegram who discussed how they'd been radicalized.

And just like so many of them, a majority of them, cited YouTube specifically as their means of radicalization.

This is probably our last opportunity to actually organize against the New World Order.

[reporter] Yesterday, conspiracy theorists, the alt right, the far right, QAnon followers, and others stormed Capitol Hill and livestreamed it.

[man] A lot of the blame for inciting these riots is being placed on social media sites.

[reporter] YouTube announced Tuesday it suspended U.S. President Donald Trump's channel as it violated policies against inciting violence.

[woman] He was suspended from both Twitter and banned from Facebook and Instagram as well.

It's a sad day when Big Tech has more power than big government, that they can censor the President of the United States.

[Harris Faulkner] YouTube extending its suspension of former President Trump's account now indefinitely.

[screaming] [Jillian] They saw that these democratic institutions that they were trying to protect through freedom of expression were actually being destroyed right in front of their eyes on their platforms for the whole world to see.

Patriots are inside Nancy Pelosi's office!

Hey, everybody, Stefan Molyneux from Freedomain radio.

[woman] YouTube is continuing to ban the accounts of white supremacists in an effort to combat hate speech on its platform.

We are going under digital martial law.

[Caleb] Oversaturation of social communication technology is going to cause a lot of conflict.

You know, radicalization getting played out on YouTube and everybody throws their hands up and says, "Oh, my God, it's the new satanic panic."

It's the same old thing that's been happening, except now it's hyperlinked.

If we don't figure out this problem, we're going to lose what it means to be human.

Your platforms have changed how people across the planet communicate, connect, learn and stay informed.

The power of this technology is awesome and terrifying, and each of you has failed to protect your users and the world from the worst consequences of your creations.

This is the first time the three of you have appeared before Congress since the deadly attack on the Capitol on January 6th.

That event was not just an attack on our democracy and our electoral process, but an attack on every member of this committee and in the Congress.

I want to start by asking all three of you if your platform bears some responsibility for disseminating disinformation related to the election and the Stop the Steal movement that lead to the attack on the Capitol.

Just a yes or no answer.

We always feel a deep sense of responsibility.

But I think we worked hard.

This election effort was one of our most substantive efforts.

[Mike Doyle] Is that a yes or a no?

Congressman, it's a complex question.

-We... -Okay, we'll move on.

[Natalie] It's an interesting situation where you have what has basically become the public forum is run by about three corporations.

That is a level of power, a level of political power and social power and economic power that is a little bit terrifying, I think.

[slow music] [Brianna] Google is one of the largest companies in the entire world.

So, you know, one of the reasons I ran for Congress was I thought that I could be a force of good.

Hi, I'm Brianna Wu.

And I'm running to be your congresswoman right here in Massachusetts District Eight.

I thought that having someone that had been affected by these issues, I hoped that I could make a difference directly.

Clearly just tweeting about these issues, it's not working.

We need legislators that really care about this issue and will put skin on the line for it.

I want to be very clear that the prosecution's decision to abandon my client's claims does not invalidate the truth of her claims.

Well, because I am a litigator, my whole like purpose is this idea that, you know, one lawyer and one client can pay $210 for an index number to start a lawsuit.

And that team of people can create law that rules the land.

And that process comes about by starting a case, appealing and appealing when you lose, and then petitioning to the Supreme Court.

And so that's why I think litigation to reform the Internet is really powerful and is like where I put my effort.

So, yeah, I do think it needs to go to the Supreme Court.

Can you bring it here?

I'd like to think I've been making a dent in it.

The NRA when I started was, you know, all powerful.

Now they're, they haven't gone away, but they're somewhat in retreat.

With Google, it's the same thing.

I have started a Change.org petition.

People are calling in to say, help Andy Parker, give him the co-copyright.

What good is it for you when he can at least use this in his fight against Google?

And so it's a worthwhile fight and I'm not giving up.

And whether it comes from the Supreme Court or Congress, I think it's more likely to come from legislation, congressional legislation.

Google profits massively off of lack of regulation.

If it cannot properly protect citizens from online harassment, hate speech and moment of death videos, I call on Congress to step in and make sure that proper protections are in place for private citizens like me who are continually harassed and exploited.

Well it's a great saying, with great power comes great responsibility.

We did tell him that you have, you have the influence, right, to influence kids.

So we, hopefully we teach him right and use that influence for good.

So what we did, partnered with the YouTube team, is we interviewed health experts.

If somebody sneezes or coughs and they have the coronavirus, how far can it spread?

That's such a cool question.

These particles are so tiny that they even happen when we talk.

They come out of our mouth when we talk.

I know that sounds really gross.

[laughter] [Shion] Ryan asks all those questions for his fans.

And now, until when do you want to do the YouTube thing?

Until when you're 20-something?

Yeah, 20, I think 6 or 5.

So he wants to continue this until at least he's 26.

Just for now.

[laughs] And why?

He had a reason why.

I don't remember.

I know you've probably already read the title by now, but I feel like we should just come out and say it.

I'm leaving Smosh.

I know a lot of you guys are probably going to assume he's leaving because we got in some sort of big fight or because we hate each other.

But I can guarantee you guys it has nothing to do with that.

-That did not happen.

-No.

[Anthony] I started to really look at what I put out there into the ether as... really having some kind of influence on the way that people go about their days after watching a piece of content.

My name is Anthony Padilla, and today I'm going to be sitting down with survivors of school shootings to learn what it's really like to live through such a traumatic and Earth-shattering event.

-Thank you so much, Shelby.

-Thank you!

I feel like I fully understand the wondrous world of asexuality.

-I'm so glad.

-And congratulations on coming out to the entire world.

-Oh my God, I forgot already.

-[laughter] [Anthony] It made me realize that the world would be so much of a better place if people came into any interaction first with, from a place of curiosity and trying to understand rather than judgment.

And it kind of made me feel like there was a point to what I was doing, which really helped.

[cork popping] You know what, America?

Things, things have not gone well.

Well, as long as I can remember being on YouTube, there have always been people who are prognosticating the end.

"Right, oh, this is the end of the free Internet.

Like the corporations are going to come in, they're going to take over."

Like it used to be the Wild West, it used to be fun, it used to be free.

But it's all about to end.

You know, I've been hearing people say that for 14 years.

[chuckles] As for me, Yeah, I'm not just some person filming on a webcam in my bedroom anymore, there's a budget.

There's, you know, a million subscribers, but it's still me.

And because I do commentary on multiple-year trends, is kind of the time frame I try to work on, I will respond to those trends as they happen.

Like, am I going to be agile enough that I can stay interesting and continue to know what I'm talking about?

I hope I can.

I intend to try.

[chuckles] Ideally, where do you see YouTube in the future?

And also just personally, where do you see the role of big tech in terms of the fact that it has had so much power?

What do you think the ideal scenario is moving forward as both someone who is overseeing YouTube and as a mom, as someone who's just a member of this crazy society we find ourselves in at this moment?

[chuckles] So I see, I mean, I see a lot of the benefits.

I see the benefits of the educational communities, of connecting diverse communities that otherwise could have never been connected and at the same time be thinking about what are the risks, what are the downsides, how can we manage that?

I know that right now there's a lot of discussion about it, but I see that for many reasons that will get worked out.

I think there's a demand from society, from the press, certainly from governments.

And I do believe that technology has a tremendous opportunity for good in the long term.

[upbeat music playing] [crowd counting down] [all cheering] [opening bell ringing] What I would like to see us do is to fundamentally rethink the business model.

I would like to see us to return to something more sane, which is say, look, if there is value to Facebook and to Twitter and to YouTube, I should just pay a subscription for it.

And if I'm paying a subscription, my business model looks really different.

My incentives look different.

At Google, the past year has given renewed purpose to our mission to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.

Building a more helpful Google for everyone.

[slow music] At other times in our history, we have seen dramatic changes, breaking up oil and railroad trusts.

Addressing big tobacco, you know, instituting automotive safety reforms.

We have stepped up and taken on corporate behemoths in the past.

But it was a very different time.

Until there's really popular momentum for some of these changes, they're just not going to happen.

[dramatic music] If YouTube, the company went down tomorrow, I think there would be a lot of harmful content that was no longer on the Internet.

But there also would be a ton of creators just trying to make a living who'd no longer have the venue to do that, right?

Days like this is why I started vlogging, because otherwise no one would see this.

It really just kind of depends on what your outlook in life is.

If you're the kind of person who's looking for differences, who's looking for ways to condemn other people and to divide us out, then you're going to see YouTube as an enabler of these terrible movements, right, as a way of justifying the things that you're doing.

Whereas if you're someone who's seeking those connections, who's seeking to find what we have in common or to expose injustice, then you're going to use it for those purposes.

And so really, it's the great enabler of all of these different things.

[man] Lift off of the 25th space shuttle mission, and it has cleared the tower.

I really feel like this is the commons.

YouTube is our public library.

[excited basketball commentary] [Brianna] It's a critical part of human civilization.

[Martin Luther King Jr] We've learned to fly the air like birds.

We've learned to swim the seas like fish.

And yet we haven't learned to walk the Earth as brothers and sisters.

[Brianna] But I think that corporations don't do the right thing until they're forced to do the right thing.

My greatest fear is that we all become citizens of big tech.

And that there comes a point where they're far more powerful than our courts or lawmakers and that they have more information than our law enforcers and that we're all just kind of at their mercy.

[dramatic rock music] We have built a technological grid system that we essentially can't destroy because we're relying on it now.

And they've got these things buried at the bottom of the ocean.

Is anybody stopping for a second and thinking about what it means to build something and rely on something like that and to never question it?

Are we speeding things up too fast?

And what are we speeding towards?

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