Happy 20th, YouTube!
On 23 April 2005, a grainy 19-second video clip(opens in new window) was uploaded on a platform that was initially conceived as an online dating service. It shows YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo’s elephant exhibit. Little did he know that this new platform would revolutionise how we consume and share content online over the next two decades.
A space for every voice, one view at a time
“We can never underestimate what a big thing YouTube was when it came out,” Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television and Popular Culture in the United States, told the ‘Los Angeles Times’(opens in new window). “When that debuted 20 years ago, that was a sign of major important changes, not only in the way that we watch TV, but in what we even thought of as TV.” He added: “YouTube was the place where you went to for an exciting new art form. This idea of the user-generated video, whether it’s something somebody made, whether it’s some clip they just found and posted, it was different. It wasn’t just another sitcom or reality show.” Ever since then, in one form or another, the scientific community has been using YouTube as a source of information in their research. A journal article(opens in new window) from 2022 presented 15 years of YouTube scholarly research. Fast forward to today and the figures are staggering. According to YouTube(opens in new window), there are over 20 million videos uploaded daily. In 2024, users averaged over 100 million comments on videos on a daily basis. Videos received over 3.5 billion likes from users per day.
The way we watch things
Two professors at the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication explore YouTube’s effect on cross-cultural connections and the explosion of social media influencers. “To be sure, YouTube’s immense popularity and reach also means that the platform is part of a digital ecosystem in which companies and governments relentlessly track, gather, and monetize users/citizens’ data with little to no regulation and oversight,” commented Aswin Punathambekar in a university news item(opens in new window). “YouTube also occupies a prominent place in networks of right-wing influencers and propaganda in multiple countries around the world. It is also a dazzlingly creative and sociable world in which activist networks – such as those that cohered around the ‘Arab Spring’ from 2008 onwards, or #BlackLivesMatter beginning in 2012-13 – do emerge and thrive for crucial periods of time. YouTube’s 20th anniversary is a good reminder of the work we need to do if we are to make our digital world more open, hospitable, joyful, and just.” Jessa Lingel explained the key ways the platform has documented digital culture’s major trends. “One is the commodification and professionalization of content creators. It started off with videos that were often unpredictable and unpolished, but now viewers expect content that is slick and highly produced. YouTube was also an innovator in establishing a model for actively cultivating partnerships with content creators, which other platforms have followed.” She continued: “Another thing that YouTube’s trajectory shows us is the extreme difficulty of content moderation, misinformation, and algorithmic bias. There have been so many controversies around this platform, but their longevity means you can see different waves of approaches to these issues, from flagging to policy changes to tweaking algorithms.”