Latest / Gimbal Podcast / Ex-YouTube Employee Explains “Shadowbanning”

Transcript

Ex-YouTube Employee Explains “Shadowbanning” · Gimbal Podcast

0:00
What is YouTube analyzing when deciding whether or not to show their videos to their users?
0:05
YouTube has this multi-layered system of reviews.
0:08
True or false, shadow banning is real.
0:16
Hi, I'm Alina Verbinchuk.
0:18
I'm a former YouTube product manager, and recently I published a book called How Platforms Work,
0:24
and it's based on my experience working at YouTube.
0:27
Okay, quick disclaimer.
0:28
this is a pretty intricate episode.
0:30
We're speaking with someone who actually worked
0:32
on the algorithm at YouTube.
0:33
And so we get really detailed about the nuances that take place there.
0:37
Alina, I am really excited to speak with you today because you know the back end of YouTube,
0:44
the mysterious YouTube algorithm and YouTube Studio and all those kinds of crazy things.
0:49
Let's say I just uploaded a video to the internet and everything went great, but I got the yellow
0:56
icon of the video getting flagged.
0:58
What led to that?
0:59
And what are the next steps if I want to
1:01
challenge that?
1:02
When you upload a video to YouTube, it kind of gets scanned across policies like
1:07
community guidelines, monetization policies, and copyright simultaneously.
1:11
So if you have something
1:12
that infringes any of those three things, you will see it after you upload your content.
1:17
And
1:18
you're either going to get, I don't know, your video might get blocked because you violated
1:22
community guidelines, which is probably the most severe one, or you might get demonetized,
1:28
or not suitable for all audiences to be monetized for all advertisers.
1:33
What goes into the analysis of the video during its upload that might cause it?
1:38
I assume the
1:39
transcript is helpful for finding inappropriate language, but also is it scanning the video
1:45
pixel by pixel and making assessments of whether something is safe or not safe?
1:49
All information that you upload to YouTube goes into the decision, into the verdict.
1:54
So A, your video file and video file has images that literally, this is like a fingerprint.
2:01
They're like, basically your video is like cut in, I don't know, millions of different images
2:06
and machine learning.
2:08
Basically the machine analyzes what is in the video.
2:11
Is it something
2:11
good?
2:12
Is it something bad?
2:13
Is it something, I don't know, inappropriate, harmful actions,
2:17
violence or it's absolutely normal then it's audio you're absolutely right so an audio might
2:23
there might be a lot of i don't know inappropriate language or i might encourage someone for
2:29
harmful actions all of that also goes into into information then and it's not just about the file
2:36
itself it's also the metadata the thumbnail the title the description everything goes into
2:41
information like into basically into the verdict about whether the video should be shown or not
2:46
There are some implications on how these things and how metadata influences the recommendations,
2:52
because some people are like, oh, description is not important, or the title is the main,
2:57
like, spoiler alert, the title is the key thing, and the thumbnail is very important.
3:01
But everything else still supports your, basically, how you're going to be recommended.
3:06
And if you, the more information you give to the algorithm, kind of the broader it can
3:11
be recommended, so the better.
3:13
So basically, you can add more information to your description to give algorithms more information about who this video might be suitable for.
3:22
This is a really interesting thread that I want to kind of go down, but I do want to come back to copyright in just a moment.
3:27
But let's let's go into that further.
3:29
So you mentioned you said spoiler alert.
3:31
Title is the most important.
3:33
Thumbnail is also exceptionally important.
3:35
I'm hearing description is important, like everything is important because you're trying to give it the best understanding of what content you're actually making.
3:42
A lot of advice out there is saying don't pay attention to tagging content.
3:46
Hashtags have kind of lost their energy.
3:48
Are you saying it should be everything?
3:50
You should go all in on all components, fill it out as best as possible.
3:55
Where does the hierarchy go beyond the packaging?
3:58
I would say don't over index on description.
4:01
So description is like a supporting material.
4:04
It's not the most important thing.
4:07
Basically, try to put as much effort and as much attention to the title and to the thumbnail.
4:12
The reason for that is that these are the things that are visible when people are going
4:16
to click your video.
4:18
And basically, the more people click your video, the higher the CTR, the better.
4:23
But description is like supports it.
4:25
So basically, if I had, I don't know, one hour to spend on all metadata, I would spend
4:31
probably, I don't know, 50 minutes on title and thumbnails and the thumbnail.
4:36
and I don't know, 10 minutes on making sure the description kind of shows everything,
4:41
reflects everything that I have in my video.
4:43
But that's from like a creative strategy perspective, I think.
4:46
Like I think you're talking about it from, you know, how to get more clicks
4:49
or like what you should prioritize to make the audience more engaged with your content.
4:53
I'm curious about from like an algorithmic backend perspective,
4:57
like what is YouTube analyzing when deciding whether or not to show their videos to their users?
5:03
That's exactly the kind of the misconception creators have that basically the algorithm
5:08
and creativity, these are two separate things.
5:11
No, it's not because the algorithm essentially reflects the audience interest.
5:16
So whatever audience is interested in, whatever they believe they want to watch and they want
5:21
to click on, this is something that you should optimize because description is not visible
5:26
immediately.
5:27
You might spend a bit less time and effort on optimizing the description.
5:31
it still might be shown to people kind of like to look alike audiences let's let's call them that
5:37
way basically just similar audiences that would watch a video but the strongest predictor of how
5:44
the video is going to be recommended is still your title thumbnail and basically everything that is
5:49
visible on the surface because before a viewer clicks your video so basically creativity and
5:54
algorithm it's essentially the same thing and people think that oh there's this evil algorithm
5:59
that doesn't recommend my video.
6:01
No, it's actually people that are not interested
6:03
for some reason, for various reasons.
6:05
Yeah, I want to go on the record saying
6:07
that I am not anti-algorithm.
6:09
I don't think the algorithm's evil.
6:10
I regularly tell people that like this home
6:13
that I live in right now was purchased
6:15
thanks to the great work of people like yourself
6:18
on YouTube, creating a job for someone like me.
6:21
So I'm very grateful.
6:23
And I think the algorithm is awesome.
6:24
And I think this platform is awesome.
6:26
I want to make sure that's clear.
6:27
I want to double back to the videos getting flagged.
6:31
This is what we just talked about.
6:32
It has been decided that my video has something that goes against YouTube's policy.
6:38
What if I disagree?
6:40
I'm going to challenge that.
6:41
What happens on YouTube's side of things?
6:44
So, yeah, it's a great question.
6:46
And I think another myth is that if I appeal the decision, nothing's going to happen.
6:51
But actually something might happen because YouTube might change the decision.
6:56
YouTube has this multi-layered system of reviews.
7:00
And usually the first step of any review when you upload a video, this is the machine review.
7:06
And if machine flags something, it goes to the human review.
7:09
Like in simple words, let's just simplify it.
7:12
And then as soon as you, let's say, I don't know, you got some kind of a restriction on the video,
7:19
let it be monetization or community guidelines or even copyright,
7:22
You can appeal and you can dispute the decision.
7:26
And with that, it might usually go to the human review.
7:30
Unless it's like black and white and you clearly abuse some kind of policies that are very strict.
7:37
And clearly, it's seen from a technical perspective that you're circumventing the systems.
7:44
I think that's unlikely.
7:45
We obviously know what is a breach of policy.
7:48
policy.
7:49
But when it's when it's uncertain, that's where it gets a little bit weird when the creator
7:53
says, What are you talking about?
7:54
I didn't do anything rude or incorrect, or you know, nothing
7:58
illegal is being shown on camera that that's what I'm curious about.
8:01
So you mentioned that it goes
8:02
to a human review.
8:03
And is it a single person making a single decision?
8:06
Is it a group of people
8:07
coming together and scratching their heads and saying, Actually, no, I think this is okay.
8:11
Well, I can't give you all the details of like how it works.
8:14
Also processes change.
8:16
but to simplify it uh it's it's always a mix basically it's a mix of kind of human review
8:22
of machine review and human review it might be um it might be clear it might require some uh
8:29
discussion in the team it's case by case basis this is why uh people sometimes uh like creators
8:36
sometimes are like why don't you clearly state it in the help center what's allowed what's not
8:41
allowed.
8:41
It's just impossible because every case is so different and is very unique.
8:46
And sometimes,
8:46
as you mentioned, it might require like a team of people coming together and making a decision.
8:51
Just one recommendation that I have is the more explanation you give, the better, because how
8:58
creators usually behave, they're like writing, oh, I'm not happy with the decision.
9:02
Please review.
9:03
No context at all.
9:04
So if you give them more context, especially about, I don't know,
9:08
actually about everything let it be copyright or community guidelines with copyright they might
9:13
require some legal documents and very often creators just don't have any kind of legal
9:19
support and they're like oh i'm i'm right you might be right but like can you prove it
9:25
true or false shadow banning is real
9:31
um false people perceive so many different things for shadow banning and they assume that they were
9:39
shadow banned for basically wrong reasons and there was no shadow banning and shadow banning
9:46
does not exist in the way that people think of shadow banning that that say there is a youtube
9:53
or instagram or tiktok employee that is like oh i don't like this account let's just shadow ban them
9:58
Is that what you mean?
9:59
Yeah, people feeling suppressed and particularly over multiple videos as well.
10:05
Maybe someone has had recent success for five or six videos and then all of a sudden nothing.
10:10
What I've seen in my practice as a creator, because when I was at YouTube, like I couldn't
10:15
experiment that much.
10:15
But when I became a creator, I started to experiment.
10:19
When I had this thought that basically I saw some video, for example, I was posting
10:24
consistently and then I stopped posting for like a couple of weeks.
10:27
And then I started posting again and my account was kind of shadow banned because I didn't get as many views as I expected.
10:33
And I was like, oh, this is probably how people feel and how they think of social media that this is shadow banning.
10:39
But it's not shadow banning.
10:40
It's just like I was absent for two weeks.
10:42
So here is like one reason, like I lost consistency in my posting.
10:47
Another example, I was talking about topic X and then I suddenly wanted to start to talk about the topic Y.
10:54
And this topic Y isn't interesting to my audience.
10:57
Nobody cares among my audience.
10:59
And I also see the decline immediately.
11:02
Or there is seasonality.
11:04
Or there is, again, change in my format.
11:08
There are so many things that are mistaken for shadow banning.
11:11
This is why shadow banning doesn't really exist.
11:14
There are things that can limit your, to your point about shadow banning,
11:19
what can be perceived as it and it was real,
11:23
are limitations and restrictions on the video.
11:25
And they might happen for policy reasons, for, let's say, age restrictions, mentization
11:30
restrictions.
11:31
But again, mentization doesn't restrict your reach.
11:34
Mentization is just usually there is a correlation between you violating or like you being, you
11:39
making borderline content.
11:41
And this content can't be shown to, let's say, underage audience, which means that people
11:47
who are logged out of YouTube, they won't see this content.
11:50
So YouTube doesn't show sensitive content when it doesn't, it's not sure in the age of the audience.
11:56
It's funny because you mentioned some characteristics that I would relate to human behavior.
12:02
Like if you post consistently for a week, every single week for a year on end, and then you take a two month break, and then you come back and you feel shadow banned.
12:11
I would suspect that's actually your audience not having like the repetition of seeing you pop onto their feed every Tuesday.
12:19
And so they've gone and they've done other things.
12:21
Yeah, and I'll give an example from, if I can give an example from Instagram, because I think on Instagram, people feel it even more than on YouTube.
12:30
I did this research for my book and like Adam Mosseri, or I think someone else in their help center, they literally wrote it out that by 2016 or something like that, like basically very early on in the history of Instagram, 50% of the audience or like 60% of the audience hasn't seen all the posts that their friends were posting, because it's already been too noisy.
12:51
it's already it's just too noisy and imagine like we're 2026 imagine how much content is produced
12:57
and uploaded every second on every single platform so you can't really say though all it's the
13:02
platform to blame is again people have their lives and people you're competing with so many creators
13:08
and so many things there's tiktok there's youtube there's netflix there's this there's that they're
13:13
like i don't know hbo there are so many entertainment sources that people are just like
13:19
it's not always gonna happen.
13:21
That's a great point too.
13:22
I think from, from like a creative
13:24
strategy perspective, personally, in my experience using social media, I am not as personally
13:30
attached to creators as I once was like 10 years ago.
13:34
I used to follow creators every single video
13:36
that they made, no matter what the topic was.
13:38
I was so excited because they were part of my life.
13:40
Now I'm much more interested in like topics.
13:43
And if a creator that I like touches on that topic,
13:46
I'm going to go and watch that video.
13:48
But if they touch on things that I'm not particularly interested in, there's so much out there now than there was 10 years ago that I'm not personally attached to people anymore.
13:55
So my behavior has changed.
13:57
And I suspect that's the case with many people.
14:00
Yeah.
14:01
And I think if I can add on that, like, I think short form videos changed the game for everyone forever in terms of, as you mentioned, like following a creator versus following the topic.
14:12
I don't really see this trend anymore that people are chasing kind of subscriber numbers,
14:17
followers numbers.
14:18
I mean, they correlate.
14:19
There is a strong correlation.
14:21
We can't deny it.
14:22
But this whole thing about the reach that one, let's say short or real or TikTok can
14:28
get viral and you might actually get more out of like one piece of content.
14:32
You're now thinking as a strategist, you're more thinking of assets rather than, okay,
14:36
channel.
14:37
and this channel is yes it is real estate real estate but like your asset is an asset and one
14:42
asset might be get might get so big yeah we we literally call videos assets now rather than
14:49
videos and it's like it's a little soul-sucking because i like the the old pure version of youtube
14:56
that i grew up on but the reality is like we think of things as assets now and we definitely
15:01
try to find ways to take a long form video and turn into a short form video and turn into a
15:06
carousel post on Instagram.
15:07
Like we're constantly, you know, repurposing that content.
15:11
So it is more
15:12
of an asset than a single video.
15:13
One of the things that I've been struggling with, with YouTube in
15:15
particular has been for the past 20 years, the value proposition from about YouTube, that's
15:21
different from Instagram, that's different from TikTok is it's a click to watch platform.
15:27
And
15:28
yeah, as a creator, you get people who spend six minutes, eight minutes, 20 minutes, an hour
15:34
of their time with you and you get a deeper relationship.
15:37
It was a little disheartening,
15:39
but I understand, but it was a little disheartening to see YouTube go the short form route
15:43
and kind of copy Instagram and TikTok and try and take up some of that.
15:47
There's been some
15:47
conversation online about YouTube steering further into shorts and like even removing some of the
15:53
long form options on the browse page.
15:56
Like there used to be eight tiles to click from, eight videos
15:58
to click from.
15:59
Now there's like three.
16:00
Now there's a bunch of shorts.
16:01
Now there's a bunch of games
16:02
as well, which is crazy to me on YouTube.
16:05
How do you think about the value prop of YouTube
16:07
compared to other platforms?
16:09
One thing before I start answering the question, I'll mention that
16:13
the homepage is personalized.
16:15
So what you see and what other people see might differ.
16:19
And there are
16:19
always some kind of experiments going on.
16:22
What I mean by that is that, let's say, shorts shelf
16:26
goes up, goes down, like the tiles, all that stuff might change.
16:31
It's normal.
16:32
So it means that
16:33
teams might be running some kind of experiments to see what is more interesting for the audience
16:38
or less interesting for the audience.
16:39
But in terms of the kind of strategy wise, it's hard to kind of
16:44
blame YouTube for going short form because also human behavior changed quite a lot.
16:50
And you didn't
16:51
mention it but I will mention it like what also came into question so we had desktop then we had
16:57
mobile and at least like 60% of the traffic came from mobile and obviously short form vertical
17:02
format is easier to watch on mobile and kind of not not necessarily obviously for kind of
17:08
competitive reasons YouTube wanted to go that way but from the even from human behavior reasons
17:15
it also went went there so from user experience perspective what YouTube I don't think they
17:20
accounted for and what changed in COVID was TV.
17:24
And now also YouTube goes into TV quite strongly
17:28
and long form.
17:29
So kind of coming back to the value proposition of YouTube is that you can find any
17:34
type of content, including the content for your living room, for your TV devices.
17:40
And YouTube is
17:41
kind of like 360.
17:43
You can watch it from your mobile phone, from your desktop, from TV as well.
17:47
and it can replace like any type of entertainment for you.
17:52
But in terms of the, I think, the ecosystem,
17:55
how the ecosystem is built is that it still has
17:57
the most advanced monetization mechanism
18:00
or like monetization ecosystem for creators.
18:02
It still pays more than any other platform.
18:05
It's still, the fact that it has long form content,
18:08
it's great both for creators in terms of the monetization
18:12
because you extract much more from long form videos.
18:15
It makes a lot of sense for brands who want to advertise because being remembered on 30 second video is so much harder than being remembered from like one hour video.
18:25
And all these platforms exist because of advertisers.
18:28
So while advertisers will be choosing longer format, long format will exist, which means better value for creators as well.
18:36
Yeah, I do agree that YouTube is the best place to monetize natively on the platform.
18:41
I do think that it's changed in the past five years.
18:43
And one thing that I'm realizing through this conversation is like I have so much affinity for what YouTube was.
18:49
And even from the monetization perspective, it was so easy, like not easy, but you're making so much more money than what's available now.
18:56
But I don't think that's because of YouTube.
18:58
I just think that's because marketing teams have now gotten much smarter and the surface of the creator economy has gotten much more broad.
19:04
And so there's more people to cover and marketing teams actually have budgets allocated.
19:08
So there's less money to be made as a whole for per creator.
19:12
that's just something i was thinking about as you were talking about monetization i do think
19:15
as a whole youtube is the best place for for native monetization um you talked about tv and
19:20
i saw that youtube is now assessing whether you're watching tv alone or with like three or four
19:26
people how are they doing that that's crazy to me i mean it's uh it's not that they're spying on you
19:33
i would say it's more of a calculation that goes into and again it's more on the ad basically
19:38
advertisers will feel this more than creators.
19:40
Creators might feel it slightly when they see
19:43
again like an uplift in their revenues when YouTube decides to kind of charge the advertisers
19:50
slightly more.
19:51
And it's a bit of a like a coefficient or like multiplier that YouTube
19:56
is figuring out.
19:57
And basically I can't provide more details whatever is like written on help
20:03
centers, etc.
20:04
I think it's the fullest information.
20:06
But it's it's math.
20:07
It's not like someone is
20:09
spying on you on like, okay, are you watching it?
20:12
The two people or three people?
20:15
I want to talk about YouTube Studio for a moment.
20:17
You worked on the back end of YouTube Studio
20:19
built out some of the data that's presented there, I assume it's gotten a pretty significant upgrade
20:25
in the last year in the ask feature.
20:28
Everybody has their own YouTube strategist.
20:31
Is it a fantastic
20:32
tool?
20:32
Is there any way that you're using YouTube's native AI that could give people the upper edge?
20:38
So I was there when the feature, the idea was just born.
20:43
And it was long, long before any AI
20:46
tools, before ChatGPT, like two years before ChatGPT, like a long time ago.
20:50
In terms of how
20:51
do I use that feature, what I can tell you for sure, for like 100% sure, and again, I respect
20:57
all the players in the market, there are various tools that are doing similar things.
21:02
But the thing
21:03
with kind of native YouTube tools is that they are built on internal data.
21:09
And this data is first
21:10
party data.
21:11
So it's not built on any kind of scrapping, APIs, assumptions, predictions,
21:18
machine learning models, because there are various platforms and players in the market and companies,
21:23
big companies that kind of building it as a prediction.
21:27
So with YouTube, you can be 100%
21:29
sure that it's built on your data.
21:31
It's first party data, it's real.
21:33
And whatever it tells you,
21:34
it's very close or like 99% true to what your audience signals to the platform.
21:41
Is there any other place in YouTube Studio that's more underrated than that tool?
21:45
I think the most underrated place, I'm biased.
21:48
Sorry, I was working on YouTube Analytics for
21:51
such a long time, YouTube analytics is the most underrated place in the whole YouTube studio.
21:58
I think it can tell you so much more than any kind of like AI research tool or any other content
22:04
planning tool, let it be internal, external, whatever.
22:07
What I learned being like working with
22:09
YouTube analytics is that YouTube analytics is a bit like, I would say like a performance review
22:14
to your work that is like happening every single minute.
22:19
It's live 24-7.
22:21
It kind of reviews your
22:22
work.
22:23
It's not a comfortable place to look at.
22:25
It's like as if your boss was there 24-7
22:29
overlooking your work as a creative strategist, right?
22:32
And giving you feedback every single
22:34
minute.
22:35
So emotionally, I think it's a hard place to look at because it's not always what you expect.
22:40
But then this is the place that gives you truth, whether it's like hard truth or good feedback that people are enjoying the content that you watch.
22:51
It's like a drug a little bit because when you get a win, it feels so good.
22:55
And then when you get a loss, you're like, no, that's not what I wanted.
22:58
That's what I mean.
22:59
It's underrated for a reason.
23:01
It's a bit stressful.
23:03
So you're like, I don't want to look there.
23:05
But you should.
23:06
Actually, I find the advanced panel of YouTube analytics to be kind of overwhelming sometimes.
23:11
And I have caught myself thinking I should spend more time in there, but not because it's too, it's pretty daunting.
23:18
That's what I'm saying.
23:19
It is daunting.
23:20
It is a bit intimidating.
23:21
And it's really hard to make it less daunting because there are people, basically, if you think about, I don't know, 80, 20 or 80% of people won't even look there.
23:32
They just like, we're happy with like basic cards and metrics.
23:36
We don't want to look in the advanced mode.
23:38
And 20% of data enthusiasts and people who are really into being very kind of analytical,
23:44
data driven, they will be there and being like digging into the data and being a bit
23:50
obsessed about optimizing the metrics.
23:52
And I know people like that.
23:53
And they still sometimes they approach me and be like, hey, this metric differs for
23:57
like one digit is like something changed.
24:00
I'm like, you can just relax because it won't, I don't know, change the whole game for you.
24:08
Like, yes, if it was, I don't know, 15, 20, 30% change, that's a difference.
24:13
But when it's just like, I don't know, a couple of percent doesn't influence anything.
24:17
What's tricky to me is it presents all this data.
24:20
But then the question after you look at this data, it's like, well, now what?
24:24
Like, I don't always know how to influence the data.
24:27
I remember one instance where I was trying to improve our AVP, our average views per viewer, and it was always stuck at like 1.2.
24:34
And then we would upload another video and be like 1.2 and we try another tactic.
24:38
It would be 1.2.
24:39
And it's just like, I don't know how to influence this any better.
24:42
It's one thing to have the data, but then also YouTube isn't necessarily recommending like, oh, here's how you improve this one particular data point.
24:49
And that is also kind of daunting to me.
24:51
I totally get it.
24:52
But I also think, unfortunately or fortunately, it's not necessarily YouTube's job to tell you how to improve your content and on the creative side of things.
25:03
And this is where human creativity comes into the play.
25:09
And you should probably think of it yourself strategically.
25:13
Also, every channel is different.
25:15
another reason why it's hard for youtube to do it is that every single channel every single creator
25:21
is different having they have different goals and they might optimize different metrics so what's
25:27
good for one channel might be absolutely disastrous for the other channel and people are doing
25:32
different things some people are chasing reach some people are chasing monetization some other
25:36
people like i don't know there is a let's say there is a cultural channel and they're like or
25:40
nonprofit channel and they're like we're not monetizing at all it's kind of crazy like i
25:45
started watching youtube when i was much younger i think it was like 2010 2011 and i was really
25:52
creative and i like taking pictures and making movies and all that kind of stuff and youtube
25:56
felt like a great place for that and then it's kind of gotten into this like that naive pure
26:03
movie making teenager everything has changed and everybody's gotten involved and now it's
26:08
trying to qualify creativity, which is inherently like subjective, but the data is making it
26:14
objective.
26:15
It just kind of fries my brain.
26:17
Yeah.
26:17
I hope it's not too kind of daunting or
26:20
intimidating because obviously part of it is just being creative and having fun or like enjoying the
26:26
process with the content because as content creators, again, like it depends if you, if you
26:31
are doing, let's say you're managing a business channel or a brand channel.
26:35
Yes.
26:35
You treat
26:36
everything as an asset, you treat everything as a business metric, you treat everything
26:40
kind of, you're extremely data-driven.
26:43
But if you're, let's say, an entertainment channel and
26:45
you're a creator, you're yourself on camera, you're engaging with your audience and you want
26:52
to build relationships with them, very often the content that you predict or you polish or like
26:58
you invest time and you like, you analyzed everything, average durations, I don't know,
27:04
dips, spikes, all the stuff.
27:06
Okay, I'm doing these best practices that worked for me,
27:09
not doing this stuff that didn't work.
27:11
And then that video flops.
27:13
And you're like, what did I do wrong?
27:15
And this is like part of kind of us being human.
27:19
We also remember that there are also humans on the other side.
27:22
There are also people.
27:24
And they might be interested in something
27:26
and might be completely ignoring some other thing.
27:29
And I still believe as much as I want to be like data-driven,
27:33
kind of authenticity rules.
27:34
If we're talking about like kind of personal channels
27:37
or personal branding channels,
27:38
it's not black and white.
27:40
It's like art and science.
27:41
So I always think of it as art and science
27:43
and with a big, big part of arts in it,
27:46
not just analytics.
27:48
I always wrap up my interviews by asking my guests
27:52
if there is any creator out there
27:54
that is really exciting to them,
27:56
someone who is on their radar
27:58
that's worthy of a shout out.
27:59
I'm really into,
28:00
because I'm also building my own company.
28:03
and I'm into like business content.
28:05
I personally love and I enjoy watching Cody Sanchez.
28:08
The business advice and all the stuff that she says
28:11
is very relevant to me.
28:13
Nice.
28:14
Well, I did work with Cody Sanchez for a number of months
28:16
and I was a strategist for her.
28:19
And every time I work with someone,
28:21
any thought leader, anybody,
28:22
I kind of like try and boil down
28:24
who they are into a single sentence
28:26
or to a single lesson.
28:27
And with Cody, it was speed.
28:29
She works so quickly.
28:30
She ships stuff at 80% good and then adjusts on the fly.
28:35
That was the one takeaway from her.
28:36
And I found her so fascinating to watch because she's juggling a hundred different businesses.
28:41
She's a YouTube creator, an Instagram influencer.
28:43
She's so many different things all at once.
28:46
And the only reason that she can do it is because she acts so, so quickly.
28:49
She put a video out like two or three days ago that completely outlines her social media
28:54
strategy.
28:55
I just found myself nodding to the entire thing.
28:57
Like what she said in that video is completely accurate to the way that she and I communicated and she communicates with her team.
29:04
It's a fantastic video.
29:05
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode.
29:07
Alina actually wrote a book called How Platforms Work, and I read it and found it super enlightening.
29:12
So if you enjoyed this episode, that's probably the next place you want to go.
29:15
Buy her book.
29:16
It's excellent.
29:17
If you're new to this channel, please consider subscribing or leaving us a review on the audio platforms.
29:21
We also interviewed a colleague of Alina who also worked behind the scenes at YouTube.
29:26
and it was a fantastic interview.
29:27
It got us over 100,000 views on YouTube,
29:29
which is crazy.
29:31
Her name is Nastia
29:31
and you can check out that episode here.
29:33
We will see you next Thursday.
29:35
Thank you so much.
29:36
See ya.