YouTube was launched in 2005, when the World Wide Web was about 15 years old. In 2020, YouTube is now the same age the Web was when online video changed the landscape. In the course of those 15 years, YouTube has seen a number of defining moments, and each of these proved decisive in shaping the future course of the platform. At the same time, paths not taken raise substantial questions about the power of a planet-scale video (and commentary) site that does much to change how people are educated, entertained, manipulated, and commoditized as audiences. The history of these turning points illustrates both the issues of private control over crowdsourced contributions and the scale of the barriers to entry Google has erected with technical, behavioral, and economic engineering.
Note some of the common threads:
1) Monetization, whether by ads, donations, or merchandise. YouTube is in part a massive platform for commerce.
2) Content moderation, from copyrighted works to p*rn and terrorist materials, cannot be performed at human scale.
3) The mechanisms for finding content are continually evolving. While human gatekeepers – editors, publishers, etc – are less visible, algorithmic gatekeeping is obscured, overwritten, and has unintended consequences, especially at the scale of 80 years of content being uploaded to the site every day. At the same time, new voices and even media (eg TED talks and video game replay/commentary) break through and are reshaping culture.
4) A privately-owned digital platform is subject to very little legal regulation so a small number of managers (mostly in one zip code) end up making editorial decisions that affect billions of people, most of whom are not otherwise subject to Silicon Valley norms and laws.
2005
YouTube launches just as U.S. dial-up Internet access is being superseded by broadband.
Nike uploads “Ronaldinho: Touch of Gold,” which amasses 255,000 views, most ever on the platform.
2006
YouTube is serving 100,000,000 videos per day and litigation from copyright holders could potentially have forced it to shut down, as Napster did. Instead, Google buys YouTube for $1.65B, bringing scale to the site’s infrastructure and a fully mature legal department to the copyright discussion.
GoPro introduces its ruggedized high-definition video camera.
The Ohio-based motivational speaker Judson Laipply uploads “Evolution of Dance” which stands as the most-watched video in YouTube history for almost 3 years.
2007
Viacom sues Google for copyright infringement. Google relies heavily on a “safe harbor” defense from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. In coming years the suit would be repeatedly decided then partially overturned.
At some point Google promotes videos on view count. Video search is not parallel to web search insofar as _content_ is not crawled or indexed. Instead, user _behavior_ disproportionately contributes to which videos get promoted. Like web search, the algorithm evolves and is never made public.
Michelle Phan begins uploading makeup videos. Less than 10 years later her ipsy cosmetics company is valued at more than $500 million.
2008
Google releases Video Identification, a machine-learning tool to proactively identify copyrighted material.
2009
Samsung and Apple release smartphones with video cameras. YouTube videos get longer, on average, and uploads soar over the next decade.
Salman Khan quits his job to work full time on the Khan Academy learning platform.
Chicago-based OK Go release “Here It Goes Again” (AKA the treadmill video) via YouTube, then cut ties with their record label.
2010
Nike releases its “Write the Future” World Cup campaign including a 3-minute ad that airs on both conventional television and YouTube. Dutch yodeling re-enters the cultural lexicon.
TED impresario Chris Anderson shows how online video breaks print’s monopoly on large-scale spreading of ideas and uses TED talks as a case study.
Old Spice releases 186 follow-up YouTube responses to social media responses to “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” TV ads. Old Spice surges from mid-pack to #1 body wash.
2011
Twitch launches as a streaming service for video gameplay. YouTube offers numerous commentators on related channels soon thereafter and by 2015 most of the top 10 YouTube channels relate to game content (and YouTube launches a separate gaming app that same year).
2012
The Kony 2012 movie is released paving the way for later social activism such as the ice bucket challenge.
“Gangnam Style” by the Korean rapper/performer Psy is uploaded and becomes the most watched YouTube video of all time.
Red Bull's Stratos balloon takes Felix Baumgartner to 128,000 feet from whence he sets a world skydiving record. 8 million concurrent live streams on YouTube is also a record.
YouTube promotion algorithm is expanded to include time on site as a factor alongside view count.
2014
YouTube and Viacom settle out of court.
A Wired article draws attention to the content moderators (often contractors) who watch beheadings, terrorist recruitment, child endangerment, and other atrocities every day for work.
2015
HTML 5 replaces Adobe Flash as the common-denominator video playback tool that superseded Windows, Real, and Apple proprietary formats.
Kenyan Julius Yego wins the world javelin championship after having learned to throw on YouTube.
2016
YouTube's promotion algorithm switches from page views to length of viewing as part of a larger Google emphasis on machine learning.
2017
YouTube launches SuperChat, a donation mechanism for viewers to support the performers they are watching on live chat.
Pedophiles are found to be avoiding protections of sexualized children’s content. Major brands pull advertising from the platform.
“Dispacito” by the Puerto Rican artist Luis Fonsi is uploaded and becomes the most watched YouTube video of all time.
YouTube's promotion algorithm seeks to downgrade “inflammatory religious or supremacist” content.
2018
Logan Paul posts video of a human corpse in a Japanese park known for being the site of suicides (a clear violation of the service's rules of conduct). YouTube demonetizes him months later for an unrelated offense.
The YouTube promotion algorithm narrows the focus of monetization to top channels in hopes of ensuring quality, but 300 advertisers are found to be running ads on supremacist and similar sites they did not want to be associated with.
YouTube announces content moderators watching disturbing videos will work only 4-hour shifts, a pledge that had not yet been fulfilled more than a year later.
2019
Pedophiles are again found to be utilizing YouTube’s recommendation system and comments functionality. 3 major companies pull their advertising from YouTube.
Videos of a mass shooting in a Christchurch, NZ mosque (originally livestreamed on Facebook) are reposted to YouTube in huge numbers, defeating both bots and human moderators. Legislators call for regulation.
YouTube's promotion algorithm changes again, in the aim of banning “borderline content.”
2020
Google ends all comments and strips additional functionality from content aimed at kids.
Google/Alphabet release YouTube revenue figures: more than $10 billion in 2018 and more than $15 billion in 2019.
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