We’ve had YouTube around for so long — it turns 20 next year — that it’s easy to take the service for granted. Even though the world’s biggest video site is a giant business, a huge cultural engine, and, a bit weirdly, a growing cable TV operator.
This means that Neal Mohan, the CEO of YouTube, is also flying a bit under the radar. But you shouldn’t: Your decisions on everything from how YouTube will pay the other people who make your videos to how it handles misinformation have huge consequences.
I spoke with Mohan about those two topics, and much more, in a recent interview, and you can listen to the full one on Channels, the weekly podcast I host.
But in these edited excerpts, I focused on two things: YouTube’s long-standing practice of sharing half its revenue with many of the people who upload videos onto the site — which is unusual for a big internet platform — and how Mohan will handle claims of election fraud around the upcoming US presidential election.
Mohan is pretty smart about not saying things he doesn’t need to say (he spoke to me a day after testifying in one of the federal government’s two antitrust cases against Google, its parent company), but I think you can still get an idea. of what you are thinking here.
One thing I think about a lot is the fact that you guys are the only major non-pornographic platform to hand out a significant chunk of revenue to people who make the videos. [Your payout] is 55% for a regular video. Why do you think none of your competitors at Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat have instituted a system like the one you guys have?
It’s a good question. Why do you think that’s the case?
It’s expensive.
[nods]
You nod. This is audio support, you nod.
I guess what I would say is that we are proud of the fact that we are not only the original economy, but also the largest art economy.
And the creators, when they communicate with me, are essentially referring to two things. Of course, it’s about helping them locate and build an audience. Without that, nothing else matters.
But the issue today is that many creative people want to make a living. They need to start a business on YouTube. These are the two basic conversations we are having. And in the last three years, as you know, we have contributed 70 billion dollars to the author’s economy. This is something we are incredibly proud of.
But, to be devil’s advocate, don’t look at the other people on Instagram, the other people on TikTok and say, “They’re building huge companies. Creators seem to create things for themselves. They don’t get anything out of it, or we get very little compared to what we pay. I wish we could pay less. ” Are you having that conversation?
Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world that’s core to what we do. And you can’t do that in any meaningful way without also giving [creators] the means to build a livelihood on the platform.
But instead of 55%, it could be 25%, right? It would still be better than any other deal you get anywhere else. You’re still providing all those tools. People are still going to use you because you’re still cutting bigger checks than anybody else. Why not do that?
I am a firm believer that the real path to success here is to grow the overall pie … as opposed to thinking about whether the share should be X or Y.
You rolled out Shorts a couple of years ago. It’s your TikTok clone, and that has a different payout. It’s 45% instead of 55%. Why is that a lower percentage?
Well, the monetization mechanics of shorts work a little differently. The modality is the ingestion in a stream that you browse. So those dollars are bundled together, how they work in sort of a classic YouTube long form, with classified ads combined with videos. So even the concept of a shared plan, right there at the basic level, is a little bit different.
There are other things also that go into producing and having Shorts content created that are just different in terms of the cost structure. A lot of Shorts is about creation within the platform. So there’s a lot of resources we invest in to make it so that those creation tools are effective, that all those filters and effects work the way that they do, so that they get distributed in the feed. So it’s just a different set of services that we offer to creators vs. long-form, which, as you know, traditionally has grown up through people just uploading to YouTube.
So your costs are greater.
We’re offering a lot of equipment and in that context, the cellular authoring context, which classic long-form YouTube videos didn’t have in that space.
So here’s a hypothetical, but not that hypothetical scenario. I assume you have thought about it: We’re going to have an election in November, and there’s a scenario where Donald Trump loses — is declared the loser by news organizations — and Donald Trump and his allies say, “This is not true. We’re going to fight this. We’re going to basically replay Stop the Steal.” Have you thought about how you’re going to handle people saying that the election was fraudulent?
I’ll say a few things. First, as in 2020 and 2022 and the dozens and dozens of elections held around the world, accountability is our most sensible priority. I have a team that focuses on election integrity. We have just concluded the most important election in the world, which took place for six or seven weeks, in India, where we have experienced many things and have had to remain vigilant. And the United States elections will be nothing else in this context. And so, all the equipment that we have learned that has proven effective here are They will be equipment and functions that we will have in position.
I’ll explain the hierarchy [of our plan] from my standpoint, which is first and foremost — and really, where a lot of the action happens on a platform like YouTube — making sure that we’re actually raising up content that comes from authoritative sources.
You go to YouTube, you look for information. So you get it from those kinds of sources, whether it’s CNN, the New York Times, or Fox News. This will be the priority.
It’s not what gets talked about a lot, but it’s what users are experiencing.
Our standards of conduct regarding election integrity are clear. We are going to enforce them no matter what happens there.
But the other thing that’s also very important is we have these core principles, but we also need to remain flexible to what’s actually happening in the environment. And we will be in this case as well.
If we have a replay of 2020, where this year’s equivalent of Rudy Giuliani is running around with Donald Trump saying, “There’s fraud here, there’s fraud there,” making up claims — you guys aren’t in a position to evaluate whether they’re making up those claims. Do you allow them to put those on YouTube? Do you allow people to report on those claims?
Generally speaking, we are an open platform for a very broad political discourse. And, as you know, before and after an election, a lot of political discourse is very passionate and there is a lot of criticism circulating. And the foundation of how YouTube works is that we allow this content to exist and other people to access it. But what also happens is that this content comes from authoritative resources, from news resources that cover the details, the research comes up with the most sensible recommendations, but you also see it very prominently in the most recent news on the shelf when you open the app when you’re looking for this kind of information.
You keep asking about what stays up and what comes down. But what I’m trying to say is that a lot of what’s actually important to the user experience is a lot of these partnerships that we have with news organizations and whose content actually shows up.
This seems perfectly moderate to me, but I live in reality. I am a fact-based person. But there will be other people who will say, “What happened to this or that conspiracy theorist?” The video is still there, but it doesn’t bother me. Instead, it shows me biased news from ABC or ABC. CNN or the New York Times, and you don’t give me what I want. You are showing bias, you are engaging in a kind of censorship. »
We can do a couple of things. First is, we have to be clear in terms of our principles, like hopefully I’ve been able to articulate for you here. And then we have to be transparent about what our community guidelines are, and then we have to do our best to actually enforce against those. And we’re going to get criticized regardless of the types of decisions make, but our duty is to be principled about it, transparent about it, and to have really high-quality enforcement around our rules of the road.
Do you ever sort of look longingly over at Elon Musk and what he’s doing at Twitter and go, “Man, my job would be much easier if we just didn’t really involve ourselves in moderation very much at all?”
I think that our approach to responsibility, how we think about our community guidelines, is core to how YouTube operates. It’s what our users expect of us, it’s what our creators expect, and it’s what our advertisers and brand partners expect on YouTube. And you should expect us to continue with those core principles.
Amazon just acquired a virtual NBA package. You are a huge NBA fan. I had heard, and I believe there were reports, that you had made an offer on this package. Is this true?
Look, we talk to the NBA all the time. They have been a super longstanding partner for a couple decades now. They operate very large channels. The teams operate channels. I’m not going to comment on anything specific other than the fact that I remain a very ardent Warriors fan.
Jump to