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SMNTY Classics: What's Up With Youtube? · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha. All kind of stuff
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: I Never told you aflection of My Heart Radio and
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: in our continuing kind of look back on some technology things,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: I wanted to bring back this classic about YouTube because.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: I feel like a lot of.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: Things have changed with YouTube, even though this episode isn't
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: that old since we talked about it, and also just
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: hearing about how some of the creator creators we've interviewed
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: are using it differently, I'm just really intrigued and I
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: want to do a more in depth dive into some
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: of the things that's going on with YouTube now, especially
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: like I feel like all of our technologies and flux.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I just want to come back and talk about this.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: But I have noticed some things personally. I know I've
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: talked about this before, but I've noticed.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Some really.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: Really gendered ads that are shocking to me. So we'll
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: have to come back and revisit that. But in the meantime,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: please enjoy this classic episode. Hey, this is Annie and Samantha,
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: and welcome to Stuff I Never told you production of iHeartRadio,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: and today we are continuing our tech kick, which feels
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: like it's never ending.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: To be honest, we keep adding things you're right.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: We do, we do, but it's all fascinating stuff. And
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: I will say this one, which is about YouTube, was
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: very difficult to research because Google owns YouTube. So when
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: you type in like a YouTube women, all it is
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: is like videos from YouTube with women in there, right right,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: so stricky.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what. TikTok is similar to that. When
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: you try to find information on TikTok, it takes you
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: to TikTok and like things about that subject on TikTok.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: Mm hmmm, o yah, we're speaking of we have a
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: TikTok now, yes we do, thanks to Joey who has
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: been on the show, who is amazing and patient. You
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: can go check us out there at stuff Mom never
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: told you? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, so yeah we're
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: we're there as well. Do you use YouTube a lot, Samantha.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: So this is the thing. I do use YouTube a lot,
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: but it's very specific things. I have used it to
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: listen to music, so way back when before licensing was
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: a thing and people were really like and YouTube got
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: really aware of that, I would listen to songs that
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: I couldn't find. Now, of course Spotify has more songs,
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: but like some songs you couldn't find on Spotify. Beyonce
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: songs were not available there, so I would go to
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: YouTube and listen to it there at night. I like
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: their deep sleep sounds.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: Ooh, I set.
• 3:23
  Speaker 3: That on a timer and they have a lot of
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: dark screens. So I use it like that. My partner
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: uses it NonStop. But that's that's it. Like I don't
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: do things outside of that, huh.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: I use YouTube quite a bit.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Actually, it's a thing that I have a love hate
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: relationship with and we're going to talk about that because
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: I do feel like, as as a viewer who doesn't
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: pay for like the expensive buys and I don't know expensive,
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: but I don't pay for the service to not have ads,
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: I feel like they time the ads at the worst
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: specific place on purpose. And I've even looked up like
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: on Reddit, does YouTube do this purposefully?
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: There's no real answer yet.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I know it's gotten longer. That used
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: to be able to skip Now you don't have that
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: option as much. I do want a correction because I
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: do watch Hot Ones oh yeah, uh huh, And that
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: is a series I've watched a lot on there because
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: that's where they originated. Yes, so I love that series
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: as well as Binging with Babbage. Those are the two
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: shows that.
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: I will watch.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Yes, those are those are pretty great ones. There's a
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: lot of great stuff on YouTube.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: I watched. I watch a bunch of stuff.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Actually, it's one of my biggest Like probably every morning
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: I watch a bunch of YouTube videos, which.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: Is not the case for a lot of people. I've learned.
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: No, I don't do that.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah that is that is like my go too, that's
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: my morning routine.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Content warning before get into this one, general grossness.
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: The same thing in our past tech episodes. If you're
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: like a woman or marginalized person on the internet, you
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about. A brief discussion of very
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: disturbing content pedophilia, sexual assault. We're not gonna get too
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: much into detail, but just so you know. You can
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: see our past episodes on Airbnb, Twitch, Evan Rachel Wood
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: and Tech Accountability, YouTube beauty groups, single use, hate accounts,
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: and Megan Markle the Amber her trial is involved in
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: this where Jamantha knows I have a very hilarious, spicy
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: outline coming up about DC phantom.
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: Oh that's fun.
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh, it's gonna be great.
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: Also, we typically try to focus on intersectional feminist issues
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: in our episodes for what I hope for obvious reasons,
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: and I think pretty much everything could be that. But
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: YouTube has a lot of issues, so we're going to
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: discuss some of them. But just so you know, there's
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: a lot going on here that we could get into.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: We didn't have time for this, but there's a lot.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: It was one of those ones where I think I
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: was like, oh, I'll get this done in two days,
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: and I start opening tabs, I'm like, oh, no, oh,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: been there. And I did want to start with a
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: pretty brief explanation of my YouTube experience because a good
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: chunk of my job at in my current it's so
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: confusing because we've been acquired by so many companies, but
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: I've essentially been working with the same group of people
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: for a while. Was YouTube based and I ran the
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: stuff one never told you YouTube, and so I'm going
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: to be inserting a lot of personal experience in this one.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: Off the top, I will say that my bosses, some
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: of my bosses, treated this much more seriously than I
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: thought it had any warrant to be treated. Kristin, who
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: was in the videos and I was filming them and
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: editing them, well, she filmed a lot of them. I
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: was editing them primarily. She was told to like wear
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: makeup and get her hair done, all of this kind
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: of stuff. We were instructed on, like the best thumbnails
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: to use, which were generally like quote pretty looking thumbnails
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: or something so people would click on them. We did
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: run into a couple of copyright issues, which I'll talk
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: about more later. As you know, probably a lot of
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: people know by now because it's become sort of a
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: conversation topic. There's a lot of videos you watch that
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: look like it's just vlogging where they edited and do
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: it themselves.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: Are not.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: There's like a huge team behind it, and they don't.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: The team doesn't get credited. I was never credited on anything,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: I don't think. And that's just like how it is.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: I had to go through YouTube training every year and
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: it is the most boring thing you can imagine. Oh
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: and you can't skip it. Oh my gosh. But I
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: did get an award. I wont a YouTube award. I
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: still have it. It's pretty cool. I mean it looks
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: pretty cool. On the not so fun side, I did
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: experience a lot of harassment. One of my very favorite
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: comments as I've said before I've ever gotten was I
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: know the producer and she's a slut.
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: Cool? Wow?
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, whatever. And also I did get doxed.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: I got doxed based on YouTube video that we posted
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: that wasn't that inflammatory. And then accessibility was a thing
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: I was really passionate about when I was doing those videos.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: So I would you would listen to the video and
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: type out the closed captions, and that was something I
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: kind of did and didn't get compensated for, but it
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: was really important for me to do it. But that
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: is a big issue with you two, and that's a
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: big issue with the show, and we've tried to get
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: transcripts with middling success because for a while we had them.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Before you and I were hosts, there were transcripts, and
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: now they are not, so that's an issue as well.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: But yeah, that's kind of my brief encapsulation of my time.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: Like I said, I have a bunch of I have
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: a bunch of comments throughout this one. But okay, let's
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: start with a very quick rundown of the history of YouTube,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: which I found kind of surprising. So YouTube, which is
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: an online video sharing platform that allows for commenting, liking,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: and disliking, sharing, making playlists, all kinds of things. I
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: feel like you know what YouTube is was founded by
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jahwid Katam in early two
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: thousand and five. A little over a year later, Google
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: purchased YouTube for a staggering one point sixty five billion dollars,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: and it started.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: As a dating website.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So, the idea was users would upload videos of
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: themselves talking about their dream partners. The slogan was tune
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: in hook Up, and I was struck once again about
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: how humans and especially dudes, desire for sex really run
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: so much stuff.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: It's wild.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: The dating aspect failed even after they offered women twenty
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: dollars to upload videos, but the video uploading system was excellent,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: so they decided to open it up to any video.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: And they decided this in part because after the two
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: thousand and four Janet Jackson justin Timberlake Super Bowl incident,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: they couldn't find video of it anywhere, so they thought, hey,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: we could be the place people put videos like that
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: and you can watch them. Karim at the Zoo, a
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: short video of one of the creators at the Zoo,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: was YouTube's first official video.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Several studies have found that the reasons people use YouTube
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: are quote, information seeking, sharing, information, status seeking like that
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: whole first thing, social interaction, and entertainment.
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: Just by the way, So yeah, YouTube is huge. Behind Google,
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: It is the second most popular website in the world.
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: As early as two thousand and six, the site was
• 11:21
  Speaker 3: getting about twenty million monthly visitors one billion hours of
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: daily consumed content. As of twenty twenty three, about fifty
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: six percent mail to forty four percent female. That same year,
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: the first targeted ad campaigns launched by major companies took off,
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: and Time featured YouTube as Person of the Year, and
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: in twenty eighteen, YouTube made twice the amount of revenue
• 11:45
  Speaker 3: than any major television network. Numbers from twenty nineteen found
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: that five hundred hours of content was uploaded each minute,
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: and the company makes an estimated fifteen billion in revenue annually,
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: although a lot of that is to go back to
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: the creators. Twenty seven percent of Americans rely on it
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: as a news source.
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: Yes, and honestly, there are so many numbers we could
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: throw at you, so many awards we could throw at you,
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: and moments in history about YouTube, like did you know
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: Rickrollings started in two thousand and eight. Gongham Style was
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: the first video to pass a billion views in twenty twelve.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: But the basic takeaway here is it's a big deal
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: and it makes a lot of money. It has also
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: been the source of a lot of conversation and controversy
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: since its founding. One of the big things that has
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: hounded YouTube is copyright issues. How they handle copyright, what
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: you can upload, what will get you in trouble, will get.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Your videos taken down.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: When I was working there, it was a three strength system,
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: but it was very wild West and what you could
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: get away with and what random thing would get you
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: in trouble. Some times you would get mistakenly flagged or
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: a video would be taken down without warning or any
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: clear reason, which may or may not have had to
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: do with their massive copyright library.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: So basically they have like this huge.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: Library that just like searches for oh, you're playing this
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: copyrighted item, take it down. But it does make mistake.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: In my experience, it made some mistakes, so probably it's improved.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: I should say. It's been about a good yeah, about
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: like seven years since I've been doing this job, so
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: I bet a lot of things have changed.
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: Since I've been doing it.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: Another big problem YouTube has has to do with their
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: recommended videos function, because there have been reports about it
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: pushing things like conspiracy theories or lies, promoting violent or
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: sexual content to children, pedophilic content, and things like we
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: discussed in Bridget's episode about Evan rachel Wood that YouTube
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: is making money off of a video she alleges depicts
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: her sexual assault and they won't take it down even
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: though she said, like hey. In twenty nineteen, YouTube announced
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: they would recommend fewer videos that quote could misinform users
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: in harmful ways. This came after rising concerns that platforms
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: like YouTube relating to offline violence, death, and radicalization. This
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: of course led to heated discussion around free speech and
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: confirmation in some conspiracy theorist minds that they were being censored,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: like see here's the proof.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: Right right.
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: So this was after a Google engineer posted a ten
• 14:35
  Speaker 3: page manifesto in twenty seventeen criticizing the company's diversity initiatives,
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: claiming it discriminated against white men. That led to the
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: YouTube CEO's daughter asking mom, is it true that there
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: are biological reasons why there are fewer women in tech
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: and leaderships, but many pointed out that the engineer may
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: have been in part radicalized by YouTube and its algorithm.
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: He was fired and became an al right hero.
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: As far as the disturbing content served to children goes,
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: these videos often feature beloved children's cartoon characters in violent
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: and or sexual situations. One such video featured a woman
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: with a mini mouse head getting stuck in an escalator
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: and bleeding profusely. It got millions of views in one
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: day and could be viewed in the kid friendly mode.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: Other videos depict Pepa pig tricked into eating bacon, the
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: suicide attempt of a Paw Patrol character. A lot of
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: these videos are discovered through AutoPlay or the recommended video sidebar,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: so after you've watched legitimate content, you find these videos.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: Some tests found that a toddler went from viewing one
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: of his favorite legitimate videos to a video depicting stomach parasites,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: eye gouging, and kids setting each other on fire and
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: only a few clicks, and that video had twenty million views.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: And that's part of the problem is that these videos
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: get pushed because they have so many views, and that's
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: how YouTube's algorithm works. In part YouTube host millions of
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: hours of children's entertainment, and much of this content makes.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: A lot of money.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: YouTube claims is difficult to change their algorithm and largely
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: remove these videos on a case by case basis, which
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: isn't going to fix the problem. It also puts more
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: pressure on the guardian to view the media with the
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: child when it comes to when you know, that's something
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: you often do to keep a child busy while you
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: do something else. On top of that, it's kind of
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: complicated reporting a video in kids YouTube, and there's no
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: way to make sure it doesn't show up again. You
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: can delete it from your history, you can do all
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: kinds of things that still might show up again. YouTube
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: has been releasing improved reporting tools and methods for video
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: blocking in an attempt to improve the situation. There are
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: plenty of articles out there about what steps you can
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: take on your own if this is something you're worried about,
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: but again, that's sort of putting the impetus on you
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: to do that. In twenty nineteen, several articles reported on
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: pedophilic content running alongside ads for major companies, and the
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: videos showed children in their underwear and or their genitals
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: with what appeared to be pedophiles, timestamping content in the comments,
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: basically so other users could click the timestamp to go
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: to the part in the video where nipples were exposed
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: or something like that, and then recommending other similar videos,
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: sometimes exchanging numbers to exchange more videos with each other.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: These videos have thousands, if not millions, of views, hundreds
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: of comments, and yes, they are being monetized. You probably
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: heard about this because the advertisers were not happy to
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: learn their ads are running on this content. But to
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: be clear, a lot of these videos, though not all
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: of them, are pretty innocent, like girls playing Twister and confused.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: Girls who uploaded the video will respond to comments like
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: how old are you you'll answer or ask a comment?
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: Or what grow means. Many of the comments are about
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: the child in questions beauty, or claim that they're in
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: love with them, and sometimes they request specific lighting or outfits.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: For a while, searching twister girl on YouTube auto corrected
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: to little Girl, Twister and skirt.
• 18:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so the recommendation system was part of the issue too,
• 18:51
  Speaker 3: serving up other videos seemingly enjoyed by pedophiles. On top
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: of that, while some channels have been taken down over
• 18:58
  Speaker 3: child abuse. There are plenty as of writing this still
• 19:03
  Speaker 3: up dedicated to quote preteen models, girls bathing or doing
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: stretches or yoga swimming, things like that. YouTube enacted a
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: policy disabling comments on videos or the comments in question
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: or overwhelmingly inappropriate, but even so, the algorithm still would
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: serve up these videos alongside others teeming with pedophilic comments.
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: A lot of the comments aren't in English as a
• 19:29
  Speaker 3: way to get around the disabling, but several of them are.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: Another issue advertising because YouTube has a changing and not
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: very transparent policy on what type of content and videos
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: can be monetized on their platform, which is primarily how
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: creators make money.
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah. YouTube claims it's ninety nine percent effective at not
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: running an ad over inappropriate content, but advertisers have pulled
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: their ads after they ran against videos containing things like
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: rape apologist and does Semitism and terrorism. In twenty seventeen,
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: many big advertisers told YouTube they would end their relationship
• 20:08
  Speaker 3: if the platform didn't fix the issue. The solution decided
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: upon was that YouTube would work more directly with advertisers
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: to make sure their ads were only placed on the
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: desired content.
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: Yes, and a quick aside here, my experience was you
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: had very little control over the ads on your videos.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: As a creator.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: You could flag topics you didn't want running, like cigarettes,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: but what was served on your video could be fairly
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: random to downright offensive given the content. And this is
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: an issue we encounter pretty frequently as a Famis podcast
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: and what advertisers think of when it comes to women.
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: But basically it was pretty random with a very difficult
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: reporting system, especially if you didn't have a specific deal
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: with a sponsor. On top of that, this was how
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: you made money from a random pool of as again,
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: if you didn't have a specific sponsor, and plenty of
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: advertisers didn't want to run ads on feminist videos talking
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: about abortion or honestly feminist videos in general. Anyway, YouTube
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: announces it's going to work more closely with advertisers to
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: prevent something like these things we've been talking about happening again.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: One of their largest creators, PewDiePie, who had had preferred
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: advertising status, lost it after he posted a video with
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: anti Semitic language and imagery in it, and basically preferred
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: advertising is like, oh you want that's like top tier
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: you want to advertise with this?
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: This creator on the flip side.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Creators were worried about how this policy and demonetization would
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: impact their own revenue. Advertisers could opt out of specific videos,
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: meaning if a channel about news wanted to talk about
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: a tragedy, ads could opt out, which is a financial
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: incentive not to talk about darker things that we need
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: to talk about. I do understand that it's strange, like
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: the whole Applebee's Ukraine invasion thing where they were running
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: CNN had this disturbing imagery and then there was this
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: very in your face Outbe's commercial. It is weird, and
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: we've had these discussions ourselves about our darker episodes where
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: we don't want specific ads playing in episodes about sexual assault,
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: for instance, But at the same time, we have to
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: make money, so it's just like a it's a strange situation.
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: Creator Philip DeFranco reported an eighty percent drop in revenue
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: after the policy was enacted and argued that new creators
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: would feel the worst of it. To address the issue,
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: YouTube attempted to make it more transparent to creators what
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: videos were being monetized and which ones weren't. There is
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: a process for requesting a review about why a video
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: isn't being monetized, but it's tedious and not without human
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: bias because it requires a human to watch the video
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: and then kind of decide like I don't know. On
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: top of that, these reviews were prioritized for bigger creators.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: YouTube did update the algorithm later and the update decreased
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: demonetization by thirty percent. And this is something I remember
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: working with YouTube is every time a major company, not
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: just YouTube, would change their algorithm or policy, we would
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: have to have very serious meeting about it. Like we
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: would sit down and be like, what does this mean?
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: What do we have to do with our keywords? Like
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: what all of these things? And also, yeah, we just
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: kind of experienced a meeting like this because Sminty may
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: or may not be uploading episodes to YouTube soon of
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: like our whole our whole episodes, and yeah, we had
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: to talk about it.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: We had to have a whole breakdown of what we're
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: afraid of and what we want to avoid, including about
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: having control about ads because we tried really hard to
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: monitor that whether we want to or not, because there's
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: some things that we really miss out on, like ah dang,
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: who loved that sponsorship?
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: You know what?
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: I mean, but we want to be very aware and
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: it's hard to do that on something like YouTube when
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: it's so it has its own thing. God, each social
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: media platform it's so hard to learn because that's all
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: so different.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but I mean it's so different, but a
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: lot of the same issues.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: Right, the same issues, but like different standards. It's so weird. Okay,
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: But then the reports about pedophilic content broke and the
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: company was once again in crisis mode to keep advertisers
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: from bailing. Then logan Paul Yes, one of the most
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: popular vloggers, posted a video of a man who killed
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: himself and he was stripped of his preferred advertising status,
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: And in the wake of this, the platform announced new
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: policies detailing which creators were even eligible to make money.
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: And by the way, he's still one of their top
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: money makers and just had a whole controversy happen because
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: a pick that he had for clout has been shown
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: as being severely abused. Anyway, creators now had to have
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: over four thousand hours of watch time over the course
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: of a year and one thousand subscribers to receive ads.
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: Small creators were understandably hurt and outraged and there was
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: a whole host of emotional videos posted about the decision.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: A YouTube official set of the policy quote changes will
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: affect a significant number of channels. Ninety nine percent of
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: those affected were making less than one hundred dollars per
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: year in the last year, with ninety percent earning less
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: than two dollars and fifty cents in the last month.
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: Creators call the day the policy went into effect the
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: demonetization day. Yeah, that makes sense. Smaller accounts waited up
• 25:43
  Speaker 3: to have a year to have their accounts reviewed to
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: see if they could get ads. Multichannel networks dropped huge
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: amounts of small creators. Numerous creators quit. A lot of
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: the smaller or demonetized content is or was created by
• 25:57
  Speaker 3: marginalized folks or around less commercial topics, and many argue
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: that YouTube is losing what made it YouTube?
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because like it's different now, but when it started,
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: it was like when I was reading the history of YouTube,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: they had the first time a trailer from a company
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: appeared on YouTube, Like, it didn't.
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Used to be what it is now.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: It used to be like a much more kind of
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: hodgepodge random assortment of videos from various creators, and now
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: it's you know, it's got a lot of like movie
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: trailers or clips from these big companies, music videos, things
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: like that, which I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with,
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: but if you're losing all of these small creators, then
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: it's just like the scale is tipping in one way.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: And just for the record, Sminty had hundreds of thousands
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: of subscribers, tens of thousands, if not millions of views
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: on every video, and we made less than one hundred
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: dollars a year.
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: Right, I think you still have that. We think we
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: still have like two hundred and fifty around almost subscribers,
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: which is hilarious because there's not been a video we've
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: posted since I think brit and Emily introduced themselves as
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: a new host. I think that's the last video.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been a whole process finding out who owns
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: that channel.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: Now, now that's a whole different story.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: It is, it is, But I just wanted to put
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: that in there because like, we had the backing of
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: a pretty big company.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: There's a whole team dedicated.
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: To this pretty much, and we got a lot of
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: views and we didn't make that much money. So but yeah, okay,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: so a lot of the things we've been talking about
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: do impact women, but let's talk about women and YouTube specifically.
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: There are conflicting numbers when it comes to gender differences
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: in viewership on YouTube. One source reports sixty two percent
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: of users are male and seventy eight percent of men
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: use it in the US, compared to thirty eight percent
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: and sixty eight percent for women. Google's own numbers claim
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: that it's more like fifty to fifty, or at least
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: closer to that. Younger people are more likely to use YouTube,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: and location urban versus rural, is a big factor as well.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, YouTube CEO Susan Wojitski said or one
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: of the reasons for tech's lack of women is because
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: of its reputation as being quote a geeky male industry
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: which did not go overwhelmed no fighting words.
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: One of the ways these moves around advertising has been
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: theorized to impact women is around beauty. Both the pressure
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: of the creator to put on makeup, wear nice perhaps
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: revealing clothes, which are things that are time consuming and
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: often expensive, but also to make videos about beauty, like
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: makeup tutorials, because they know that those can be monetized,
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: they might be pressured to use a sexualized thumbnail like
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: who we Were. There's nothing inherently wrong with these videos,
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: these makeup tutorials. I know people who love them, but
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: if women are being pressured into doing them for financial
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: reasons and being pressured to look a certain way, that's
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: an issue. We've discussed before how the beauty industry has
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: pushed standards to sell products, telling women they have to
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: look a certain way, and that is partially at play here. Yeah,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: because you know, makeup can be great. We just need
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: to be clear, We need a clear picture of what's
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: going on here because a lot of women reported feeling
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: like they had to do this because it was the
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: only way they could get ads. Many women creators report
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: criticism around their appearance, their weight, clothes, and makeup. Further,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of the top channels created by women have
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: to do with stereotypical, more feminine topics like cooking, and
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: there's a bunch of research about this, and again it
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: seems to be that they feel there's nothing wrong with it,
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: but they feel like this is the only way they
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: can make money, which I think there is something wrong with.
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: That, right right, Although I mean we could come back
• 30:02
  Speaker 3: and have the conversation about how also, if you're a
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: woman creator, you can only be for women. Yes, so
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: that's I mean we run into that a lot. So yeah,
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: that's a whole different conversation. And by the way, women
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: are more likely to be subjected to trolling comments and harassment,
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: even stalking and threats, and it increases with every intersection race,
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, and having pain dismissed, not
• 30:28
  Speaker 3: looking sick enough, not looking pretty enough. Wait, there was
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: even a study specifically on YouTube comments that showed gender
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: differences in how we talk about intoxication. Women are often
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: sexualized in fell videos. Women creators have reported fear after
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: accounts have posted hate videos about them and called for
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: their followers to attack them, and this travels onto other platforms.
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: By the way, I've seen this, it's really interesting. In
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: twenty nineteen, YouTube rolled out updated harassment policies, but creator
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: they haven't mitigated the issue. A twenty twenty two report
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: found that harassment against women is not only alive and
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: well on YouTube, it's flourishing. Women creators who have gone
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: viral have described the deluge of harassments they encounter. Some
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: even cited the Amber Heard Johnny Depp trial as emboldening
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: misogynistic creators and allowing them to amass huge numbers of followers,
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: and that it helped normalize a toxic level of hate
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: towards women. And I don't think we talk about this yet,
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: but the including a Megan Thee stallion that also brought
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: a whole amount of misogynistic trolls that got some notoriety,
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: and similarly YouTube started de ranking Megan Markele hate channels
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: people like Men's Right activist Andrew Tait have amssed millions
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: in revenue, though he was recently banned, but by the way,
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: he's been making a lot of money on the backs
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: of harassing women. Just that and just recently got banned
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: women creators that because YouTube is monetizing these accounts and
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: not disciplining their top male creators who post misogynistic content,
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: it empowers commenters to harass women. So many women have
• 32:14
  Speaker 3: left because of this. The report concluded misogyny is alive
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: and well on YouTube. Videos pushing misinformation, hate and outright
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: conspiracies targeting women are often monetized.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is like within the year study of note
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: all the studies mentioned that there was a lack of
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: data and research around non binary folks, so that is
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: something that's missing.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: And I want to include this.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: These are actual guidelines from Google's anti harassment policy.
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: Quote.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Here are some examples of content that's not allowed on youtubo,
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: reportedly showing pictures of someone and then making statements like
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: look at this creature's teeth, They're so disgusting, with similar
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: commentary targeting intrinsic attributes throughout the video, targeting an individual
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: based on their membership in a protected group, such as
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: by saying look at this filthy slur targeting and protected group,
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: I wish they'd just get hit by a truck. Targeting
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: an individual and making claims they are involved in human
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: trafficking in the context of a harmful conspiracy theory where
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: the conspiracy is linked to direct threats or violent acts,
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: using an extreme insult to dehumanize an individual based on
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: their intrinsic attributes. For example, look at this dog of
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: a woman. She's not even a human being, she must
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: be some sort of mutant or animal. Depicting an identifiable
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: individual being murdered, seriously injured, or engaged in a graphic
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: sexual act without their consent accounts dedicated entirely to focusing
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: on maliciously insulting and identifiable and but.
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: It has to be the entire account.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: Well, and so I wanted to enclude this because it
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: feels like you're trying to teach a child how to
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: like behave right like that we have to say, like, hey,
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: don't gives an example, here's an example.
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: I was reading it like whoa, Okay, I mean there's.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: A part of me that's like, has there ever been
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: anybody who read these? Just like, oh, I see, I'll
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: start doing that, right But anyway, Okay. When it comes
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: to money making, as of twenty twenty two, only one
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: creator on the top ten list of YouTube was not
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: a man, and that was seven year old Naustria. In
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, she made an estimated twenty eight million dollars. Uh,
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: and this is in keeping with the trends of recent
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: years for YouTube. One woman on the list, but in
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, no women at all made it.
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: Wait, she's a seven year old? Yeah, what is her content?
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: Uh, because it's definitely not other seven year olds watching it. Well,
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: maybe I don't.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: Know, because there's also a ten year old boy on there.
• 35:13
  Speaker 2: I think I don't know that's concerning.
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you've also probably heard of the credibility gap when
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: it comes to women and science or news content. Many
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: women creators who are scientists have posted the man's planning
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: comments they get I'm sure you've seen some of them
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: or heard some of them, or sexualization or outright harassment
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: that they receive viewership on STEM related video sues mail.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: In some cases pretty drastically, This impacts interest in and
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: potential pursuit of STEM topics and careers, because several studies
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: have found that engaging in STEM content, especially at a
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: young age, can ultimately lead to a STEM career. Studies
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: have also found that, compared to an equally scientifically curious man,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: women are twenty six percent less likely to watch a
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: science video on YouTube. Science creator Emily Grassley famously published
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: a YouTube video in twenty thirteen called where My Lady's
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: At Where she just read some of the comments her
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: videos receive. And if you've never watched her videos, they're
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: pretty sweet. They're kind of like she works in a
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: museum and she talks about things in the museum, and
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: it was just all of this, like very sexualized hateful
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: comments she receives all these videos.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, who knows.
• 36:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was thinking about one of the YouTube channels
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: that my partner really wants, like like gets me to
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: watch Simone Geerts. Someone's gonna correct me and tell me
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: I'm completely wrong, because she's really, really famous and her
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: whole thing is trying to create unusual hacks in her
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: house through whatever tools she's gotten. She's gotten huge, so
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: she's gotten really cool tools, and I think one she
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: did was a chair for her dog to sit next
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: to her at the like as a desk chair, so
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: something big, and then creating something with tampons I forgot already.
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: But like, she has a lot, and she is technically
• 37:04
  Speaker 3: a tech slash stem creator and has millions of viewers,
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: so I would be interested to see what her comments
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: look like with her popularity.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:14
  Speaker 1: I think one of the things that really disheartened me
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: in this research was that back in the early days
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: when christ and I were doing YouTube, we worked with
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: a lot of big women on YouTube because it's like
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: how you kind of cross promoted and got more viewers,
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: and a lot of the women we worked with who
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: had like millions of views and followers left YouTube like
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: they would show up and a lot of the articles
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: I was reading more like here's why I left, and
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: they're like big creators and so it just only imagining
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: like the smaller creators. And also didn't you you showed
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: me that video girlfriend reviews. Yes, and now they had
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: to like respond to a lot of hate.
• 37:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah last years too. Hey, yeah, yeah, they had to
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: respond to a lot a lot of hate in general.
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: But a family. They're doing huge stuff in Twitch. But
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: the whole premises is pretty much the girlfriend is watching
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: her boyfriend play these games and doesn't commentary, and they
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: grew up to a huge success and is I think
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: living off of the content as content creators because they
• 38:20
  Speaker 3: have made sponsor deals. But yeah, they had to go
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: through some things where several video games, including the Last
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: of Us too, because they loved it much like you,
• 38:35
  Speaker 3: we always have to bring it back to Last of
• 38:37
  Speaker 3: Us or startar Wars're somewhere in here.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: So part of the issue is a production budget staff. Statistically,
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: mail run shows are able to secure more funds and staff.
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: Another is that women who are scientists often have families
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: and have more of the share and taking care of children,
• 38:54
  Speaker 3: which means yes, less time for actually making content and videos.
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which is something we heard during the pandemic with
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: why they were less scientific papers turned in by women.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: And also, have you ever heard the saying never read
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: the comments said, tell me.
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: That I said it to you a million.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Well researcher Enoka Amara Sakara, and I apologize if I
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: butchered your name. I could not find a pronunciation anywhere.
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: But they did read the comments, and they came out
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: the other side with a published paper about sexism and YouTube.
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: They looked at over twenty three thousand YouTube comments specifically
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: comparing the treatment of men and women when it came
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: to science content, and no surprise, the women were treated
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: more harshly fourteen percent negative comments versus six percent for men.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: I've said it a million times on the show, but
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: we once did this experiment at work where we had
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: a male host and a female host do the exact
• 40:03
  Speaker 1: same video and we compared the comments and it was
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: very clear it was very stark, which one they believed
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: was smarter, and all of the physical comments that the
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: woman got, and yeah, the women in the study got
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: a lot more sexually charged comments or comments about their
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: appearance in general, and the way YouTube comments work is
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: the most controversial ones rise to the top. And in fact,
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: I never personally would do this, but Kristen would sometimes
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: be like, let's do something really controversial because it'll generate.
• 40:37
  Speaker 1: It'll make you go to the top faster and make
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: you get more comments. And that's just how YouTube's algorithm works, which,
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: as I believe, one big YouTuber was like, this does
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: not facilitate healthy, helpful conversation, right.
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: I feel like that's for everything, including news, like getting
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: the worst and most controversy stuff out there first because
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: that's going to get the tension, which sucks. Yes. So
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: YouTube is trying to combat this, to varying degrees of success.
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: In twenty eighteen, they launched the first hashtag women to
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: Watch as part of the next Step program. In the
• 41:14
  Speaker 3: company's own words, this was the first time they had
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: focused on empowering female voices. In twenty sixteen, they formed
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: a year long partnership between Women Creators and the UN
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: to Advocate to Gender equality, and other organizations have been
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: trying to fight this as well. In twenty fourteen, you
• 41:32
  Speaker 3: Coalition now Uplifts together formed to combat sexual abuse, emotional manipulation,
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: and other forms of violence in the YouTube community.
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean with every tech topic we do, because
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: of the show we are, we focus on the negative.
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: There are a lot of positives about YouTube. It can
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: be a great place to find community, be great place
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: to share ideas, to educate all kinds of things.
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: But this is I just there's so much fluctuation.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: I can't say for sure the situation is getting better,
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: like people are talking about it, but and it's also
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: kind of it annoys me in so many of these
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: tech episodes where it's like the creators are the ones
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: making YouTube money and they're not getting paid anything and
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: are forced to leave or I don't know. It's just
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: like there's a lot of things that need to be
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: figured out with right situation.
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: I think in general, content creation and content creators is
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: such a new thing. We've talked about it before, We've
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: talked about influencers and the good and the bad.
• 42:44
  Speaker 2: But yeah, it is.
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of things that the law policies and
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: just human rights things haven't caught up with as fast
• 42:51
  Speaker 3: as this medium has become.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: Right, it is complicated.
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: Like to YouTube's credit, I get that it's complicated because
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: you know, you don't want an advertiser to be angry
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: about what they're at is running on. But you also
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: don't want a creator to not be able to make
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: money and leave. But right now it's not working at
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: least that's.
• 43:12
  Speaker 2: My view of it.
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: So I would love if anybody listening has more recent
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: experience with YouTube, has any thoughts or resources or numbers
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: anything like that, because this was one where I kind
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: of got overwhelmed. There's a lot more we could talk
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: about with this, and a lot is changing. Some of
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: the surveys I mentioned, even though they were recent. I
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: bet it's shifted. I bet the conversation has shifted since then.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: So if there's anything like that, you can email us
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: at Stuffmedia, Mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: find us on Twitter at Mom's taff podcast, or on
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Instagram and TikTok.
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: At stuff Well' never told You.
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: Thanks as always to our super producer, Christina, thank you,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: and thanks to you for listening Stefan Never Told You
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: his protection of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, you
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: can check out the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: regular listen to your favorite shows