After Years of Band-Aid Solutions, YouTube Is Finally Making Extensive Changes
YouTube has made more than 50 policy changes in the last 24 months
Fifteen years ago, Jawed Karim, Chad Hurley, and Steve Chen registered the domain name YouTube.com. The premise of the platform, the co-founders explained at the time, was “giving you a glimpse into other people’s lives.” Like many nascent internet projects, the founders were pro-free speech and instilled a hands-off ethos about what users could upload to the site, according to an early employee who spoke to me on the basis of anonymity.
Today the platform is hugely different. YouTube is the second-most visited site on the entire internet, and a major media force of its own. It’s the hub of an entire industry, with managers, production companies, hangers-on, merchandise, and product developers all employed at keeping YouTube and its stars shining as bright as ever. Third-party data shows 560 channels have audiences of more than 10 million. Creators made more than $8 billion in ad revenue on the platform last year, according to parent company Alphabet’s financial returns published earlier this month.
As YouTube has grown, it has learned the hard way that the “hands-off” approach only works if everyone plays by the rules. And it’s hard to get 2 billion…
