[How about this book] The Everlasting Platform Empire 'YouTube' Chronicle

1 Billion Hours Watched Daily Worldwide
Ethics Overshadowed by Growth and Rewards Behind Knowledge and Information Sharing
Ignoring the Harms of False and Manipulated Information

"To be honest, I'm almost glad that I'm no longer part of YouTube. They probably wouldn't have known how to handle me."

This is a quote from Steve Chen, co-founder of YouTube, mentioned in the July 18, 2019 issue of the American weekly magazine The New Yorker. Chen did not anticipate YouTube's influence growing to such an extent, and he expressed relief that he had severed ties with YouTube beforehand. At that time, Chen had already been disconnected from YouTube for nearly ten years. Chen, along with Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, founded YouTube in February 2005. The trio sold YouTube to Google in October 2006 for $1.65 billion, just 20 months after its founding. Chen worked at Google for a while but left in 2010, officially ending his relationship with YouTube.

YouTube: The Empire's Birth is a book that chronicles nearly 20 years of YouTube's history from its founding. The author, Mark Bergen, is a reporter for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek. The book is written focusing on key figures who significantly influenced YouTube's history, much like a series of biographies. There are many interesting stories, such as that of a mother who persistently emailed YouTube staff in early 2007, asking them to feature videos of her young son singing on the homepage. That son was Justin Bieber.

The author interviewed about 300 people who were involved with YouTube over more than a decade to write the book. Naturally, the first figures mentioned are the three founders.

Today, it is no exaggeration to say we live in the era of YouTube, given its immense influence. However, according to the book, the three founders initially started YouTube with a lighthearted attitude. This can be seen in their discussions after purchasing the YouTube domain, debating the site's format: "Should it be like a dating site, or more like a photo-sharing site?"

The author seems to have written the book to reflect on the tremendous influence of YouTube today, which even the founders did not anticipate. In a brief note on the first page, the author mentions the words "Frankenstein" and "prank," implying that while the founders started YouTube as a playful experiment, it has now become a monstrous entity.

The author states that no company has contributed as much as YouTube to creating the current online "Attention Economy."

Currently, 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute, and people worldwide spend a total of one billion hours daily watching YouTube. While countless videos sharing knowledge, information, laughter, and emotion are disseminated through YouTube, the harm caused by false and manipulated information is also severe.

Recently in the United States, there has been active discussion about regulating social networking services (SNS) due to the serious harm caused by false and manipulated information. However, while discussions focus on regulating SNS platforms like Facebook and X (formerly Twitter), YouTube is somewhat excluded from these debates. False or manipulated information posted as text on Facebook or X can be easily detected, but it is much more difficult to identify such content within YouTube videos. The author points out that YouTube also causes serious problems due to false and manipulated information, but the severity is not fully recognized.

The issue of how to handle information shared on YouTube and how to deal with misinformation has been raised since YouTube's early days.

About five months after YouTube's launch, in July 2005, numerous videos appeared on YouTube that used TV commercials for the "Bud Light" beer brand without permission. Hurley judged that these videos infringed on the beer company's copyrights and could lead to lawsuits, so he deleted them. However, Karim disagreed and restored the videos, believing that although illegal, these videos were necessary to promote YouTube. This disagreement over copyright between the founders occurred in the process of pursuing profit.

This situation continued even after YouTube was acquired by Google. A decisive moment for YouTube's influence was when it began providing monetary rewards for videos shared on the platform. Initially, Hurley opposed the idea of financially compensating YouTubers. However, Eric Schmidt, then CEO of Google, promised to respect Hurley's management style as long as one condition was met: growth in users, videos, and views. Hurley believed the best way to increase users and views was to provide monetary rewards to motivate users.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the United States suffered massive casualties. The damage was exacerbated by false information related to COVID-19. In the book, former YouTube employee Maika Shaffer criticizes YouTube for supporting vaccine conspiracy theories due to its obsession with revenue. Because YouTube focused on profits, it failed to take proper action against the spread of false information about vaccines.

If the harm caused by false and manipulated information spread through YouTube is severe, how should it be regulated? Given that 500 hours of video are uploaded every minute, one might feel, as Chen said, overwhelmed by how to handle this monster.