YouTube is a money machine for Google. While actual numbers are hard to come by, it’s estimated that the online video hub brings in upwards of $15 billion annually.With that much money at stake, it’s not surprising that its business model continues to put profits over people.
YouTube content is often offensive, violent and awful
In 2015, following the on-air murder of a television reporter and her cameraman, gruesome videos of the event were quickly posted on YouTube with with ads alongside. I wrote a post about it at the time:
It’s no secret that YouTube slaps advertising on pretty much anything without regard for subject matter or ownership, but making money off of last week’s on-air murder of WDBJ-TV reporter Alison Parker and her cameraman Adam Ward is a new low. A source tipped me off to the fact that a number of opportunistic (and shameless) YouTube “partners” have uploaded and monetized clips of both the station’s live broadcast and the video taken, (and uploaded to Twitter) by the deranged murderer as he executed the two journalists during a televised live-shot for the morning news.
4 years later, it’s as if nothing as changed.
This week Andy Parker, the murdered reporter’s father, wrote an emotional piece for the Washington Post describing how YouTube/Google’s business practices continue to damage his family to this day.
After establishing a foundation to support arts programs for underserved children in Virginia and advocating for gun safety to prevent events like that which took his daughter’s life, his family has become the target of conspiracy theorists.
They have taken the gruesome footage of my daughter’s murder, edited it into videos selling these lies and flooded YouTube with hate-filled diatribes maligning my family.
The vitriol directed at me and my family has been unbearable. So I was outraged to discover that recommendation algorithms for YouTube and its parent company, Google, have bolstered these conspiracy theories.
Parker puts blame for this clearly at the Google’s door, “As much as I want to blame the sick creators for the pain I feel, I blame Google even more. By surfacing this content and profiting from the data Google collects from those who view it, Google is monetizing Alison’s death and our family’s pain. “
Of course the Parker family’s experience is only example one in a long list of bad behavior by YouTube. In the past, the company has monetized everything from terrorist training videos to scenes promoting the sexual exploitation of children.
Algorithms making kiddie porn easy to access and money for YouTube
Just this past month, YouTube’s algorithms have come under more direct fire for “facilitating the sexual exploitation of minors” after YouTuber Matt Watson posted a video demonstrating how YouTube’s suggested videos took users to a series of videos showing children in various states of undress which featured comments with links to child pornography could be found. Watson told ArsTechnica:
“YouTube’s recommended algorithm is facilitating pedophiles’ ability to connect with each other, trade contact info, and link to actual CP [child pornography] in the comments,” Watson reported. “I can consistently get access to it from vanilla, never-before-used YouTube accounts via innocuous videos in less than ten minutes, in sometimes less than five clicks.”
Wired also ran an extensive report on YouTube’s ongoing porn video monetization problem and how pedophiles use its comment section as a virtual bulletin board.
Videos of children showing their exposed buttocks, underwear and genitals are racking up millions of views on YouTube – with the site displaying advertising from major cosmetics and car brands alongside the content.
Comments beneath scores of videos appear to show paedophiles sharing timestamps for parts of the videos where exposed genitals can be seen, or when a child does the splits or lifts up their top to show their nipples. Some of the children in the videos, most of whom are girls, appear to be as young as five. Many of the videos have hundreds of thousands, if not millions of views, with hundreds of comments.
Of course, when confronted with such evidence Google belatedly responds, but only in the short term. For a company with such massive reach and resources, why can’t safeguards be put in place to prevent such behavior? They certainly have the means. What the company lacks is the will. Clearly, for Google/YouTube, it pays to look the other way.
YouTube prefers money to the moral high road
We’ve seen this YouTube’s approach to online piracy of films and music for years and despite repeated calls for change, we’ve only seen these insidious tendrils of exploitation for the sake of profit continue to grow, not recede. Will Washington ever wake up? Well, maybe.
Today Senator Elizabeth Warren announced that if she’s elected president she will break up the big tech companies like Google and Facebook. In Medium post published today describing her plan she characterized the issue this way:
As these companies have grown larger and more powerful, they have used their resources and control over the way we use the Internet to squash small businesses and innovation, and substitute their own financial interests for the broader interests of the American people. To restore the balance of power in our democracy, to promote competition, and to ensure that the next generation of technology innovation is as vibrant as the last, it’s time to break up our biggest tech companies.
Warren’s proposal is an important beginning. It’s long past time for the U.S. government to take action against a tech industry that has managed to avoid any semblance of regulation by repeated the tired mantra that reasonable regulation would “stifle innovation.” In fact, regulating the industry would do the opposite. It would create a fair and sustainable marketplace not dependent on the exploitation of others for its success.
Innovation takes many forms. The version of “innovation” created and currently promoted by the likes of YouTube is not necessarily one a civilized society should aspire to.