Official Blog
YouTube at 15: My personal journey and the road ahead
Friday, February 14, 2020
15 years ago today, YouTube took a small step toward starting something big. On February 14, 2005, YouTube was registered as a website. Its
founders
wanted to create a way for people around the world to share videos. Soon after, the first video
—
“Me at the zoo”
—
was uploaded, and before the end of the year, the site was receiving millions of views a day.
Just miles away at Google’s headquarters, I had begun working with colleagues to see how people would use online video. Much to our surprise, users all over the world wanted to upload their videos to share their stories. But what surprised me even more was that so many others wanted to watch these videos about everyday life: funny dances, kids making cute unexpected comments, and, of course, lots of cat videos. These videos entertained us, but they also showed there was something very human about connecting through online video. While traditional media often showed polished and perfected versions of life, this medium was different; it had a raw, honest, and authentic feel.
As YouTube began to take off, it became clear that the company would need significant capital investment to support its growth, so YouTube decided to sell to another company. I, along with
Salar Kamangar
, made the case to bring the companies together. After the acquisition, founder
Chad Hurley
became CEO, then Salar, and I was incredibly honored to become YouTube’s third CEO six years ago.
Fast forward to today, and YouTube has more than two billion monthly users around the world, and 500 hours of video uploaded every minute. Looking ahead in 2020, we’re focused on making YouTube a place where everyone has a voice and can see the world as we:
Grow the creator ecosystem to be the best place for creators.
Creators are the heart of YouTube, and they’re pioneering new content by vlogging about their lives, covering topics like gaming, fitness, comedy, hobbies, makeup tutorials, and every kind of How To imaginable. Want to fix that 10 year old refrigerator or car? YouTube likely has the video to replace every single part, and in multiple languages! Creators are at the cutting edge of culture and also becoming next generation media companies, boosting local economies with new jobs. Compared to last year, the number of creators earning five figures annually has increased more than 40 percent. And more than 170,000 YouTube channels around the world have over 100,000 subscribers
—
that’s hundreds of thousands of small businesses growing through the platform. YouTube is unique as a platform since we share the majority of revenue with our creators. Going forward, our goal is to continue to grow revenue and audiences of YouTube creators. We appreciate everything creators do to inspire, educate, and entertain their audiences. We know their fans appreciate them, too, and today we’re launching the third annual #LoveNotes campaign. Click
here
to show support for your favorite creators.
Partner with the music industry
to
grow revenue
, break new artists and promote music. YouTube offers twin engines for revenue with advertising and subscribers, paying out more than $3 billion to the music industry last year from ads and subscriptions. We’re also partnering with artists to support and amplify their work through every phase of their career.
Dua Lipa
was in YouTube's first-ever Foundry program — our initiative to develop independent music acts.
Justin Bieber
and
Billie Eilish
have built massive global audiences by directly connecting and engaging with fans on YouTube. At just 18 years old, Billie is now one of the world's biggest stars with five recent Grammy wins. And from its early days, YouTube has been a home for artists who found creative ways to use the platform to help expand their reach. In 2005,
OK Go
had one of the first viral hits with their music video, "
A Million Ways
." Fans posted their own versions of the boy band-inspired choreography, and OK Go decided to make it official with a dance challenge on YouTube. We continue to see unknown artists make it big with a single viral hit. Last year,
Lil Nas X
’s
"Old Town Road"
became a YouTube phenomenon and the longest-leading single atop the Billboard Hot 100.
Work with media companies to extend their audiences
through time shifting, new geographies and new users. We’re also boosting awareness of subscription services, sports and news highlights, long-form content, and movies with trailers and clips. And we’re connecting networks and media partners to a consumer base that is increasingly cutting the cord. Today,
YouTube TV
has more than 2 million subscribers, and our service has expanded nationwide in the U.S., offering access to more than 70 channels, including cable networks, live sports, and on-demand programming.
Help advertisers
big and small find more customers. Advertisers recognize the reach and effectiveness of YouTube to build awareness, improve consideration, and drive results. In 2020, we’ll continue to make our solutions simpler and more effective, while keeping responsibility front of mind. We’ve spent the last three years working to strike the right balance between what advertisers think of as brand safety and what creators think of as demonetization. We continue to develop tools that give advertisers confidence about where their ads run. We’re also working to offer more transparency and certainty to creators with more guidance on our advertiser-friendly
guidelines
and an expansion of our creator
self-certification
program.
Continue to be a place where users come to laugh and to learn.
YouTube has become the world's largest video library, a place where people come to be entertained, watch their favorite creators, get help with homework, learn a new hobby, see the latest music video and find community. We’ve seen the ways video is an effective medium for learning
—
users can see how to do something and repeat the lesson as many times as needed! Whether it’s help with a
math class
for college or learning
how to sew
and becoming an entrepreneur, we know YouTube is a key force for learning. To amplify this positive impact, we’re investing in quality family content, including our $100 million fund dedicated to the creation of thoughtful, original children’s content on YouTube and YouTube Kids.
With these new opportunities have come new challenges around responsibility. From the very first days, we realized the importance of setting the rules of the road with
Community Guidelines
. Over the years, we’ve built on our commitment to protect the YouTube community. While YouTube is clearly a platform
—
our focus as a company is to distribute the content produced by others
—
that doesn’t mean we don’t have responsibility. This is my number one focus, and we will continue to do the hard work to make sure that we’re on the right side of history.
We think about our responsibility efforts in terms of 4 Rs:
We
remove
content that violates policies as quickly as possible. In Q3 of last year alone,
we removed
more than 8.7 million videos.
We
raise
up authoritative voices in searches and recommendations for news and other types of sensitive information.
We
reduce
our recommendations of content that brushes up against our policies. We’ve reduced watchtime of borderline content from non-subscribed recommendations in the U.S. by more than 70 percent. Last year we launched these efforts in other markets, including Brazil, France, Germany, and Mexico. And we started 2020 with launches in Italy and Japan, with plans to continue to expand throughout the year.
And we
reward
content that meets our even higher bar for monetization.
We’re proud of the work we’ve done over the past three years to raise the bar on responsibility. Over the past two years, we've made more than 50 policy changes, often in consultation with relevant outside experts around the world who help us craft guidelines that will protect our community in the long run. Today, problematic content is only a fraction of one percent of what’s watched on YouTube, and we want to drive that number down even more. And as the U.S.
presidential election
approaches, we will continue to balance openness with responsibility by ensuring that YouTube is a reliable source for information. Our efforts include raising up authoritative election news and removing bad actors and misleading content.
Over the next few months, we’ll be celebrating the moments that led up to the public launch of YouTube in May 2005. As I look back on my journey with online video over the past 15 years, I feel incredibly privileged to have been part of these key moments. What inspires me as CEO of YouTube are the stories I hear everyday of how YouTube enabled someone to build a business, gain new skills, laugh, cry, and connect with others. While I don’t know what the next 15 years will bring, I’m certain that YouTube will continue to empower the next generation of storytellers and enrich all our lives.
Project Witness: Can VR create empathy?
Thursday, February 13, 2020
“We’ve allowed our most vulnerable children to be thrown away, to be traumatized and to be locked up in these jails and prisons, and we’ve got to change this narrative that some children aren’t children.” — Bryan Stevenson
As a human rights lawyer, I spent much of my time visiting girls behind bars. Many were arrested for child prostitution, even though they’d only lived 13 or 14 young years of life — not even close to the age of consent. They were not “child prostitutes,” but victims of child rape and trafficking. In prison, many of the girls were isolated for weeks, spending 23 hours a day in solitary confinement.
It was impossible for the struggles of these girls — and more broadly, the 48,000 U.S. children who are behind bars — to be witnessed. Their stories go unseen and unheard. So, to help these girls be more visible, I came to Google in 2015. And as Senior Counsel on Civil and Human Rights, I wanted to wield technology for the greater humanitarian good. YouTube and Google have always been a tool for people to change their own narratives.
YouTube and Google have also long supported efforts to improve our criminal justice system. Over the last four years, we’ve given over $30M in grants to criminal justice reform organizations, and partnered on projects like Love Letters, helping children send digital love letters to their incarcerated parents on Mother’s and Father’s Day. Through our philanthropy, and use of our platform, we’ve supported the work of those who are trying to do what's right.
That work continues today, with the launch of a project that uses immersive storytelling tools to build empathy through proximity.
Today, YouTube and Google, in partnership with the Campaign for Fair Sentencing of Youth (CFSY), are launching Project Witness — a campaign that allows us to learn from formerly incarcerated children using Virtual Reality.
It works like this: The VR film anchors the viewer in the experience of an incarcerated child. You’re able to see and hear the experience of being in solitary confinement from the viewpoint of a child in an adult prison. YouTube is a powerful platform for so much more than entertainment — from advocacy to education and awareness — that is open and accessible by everyone. VR is a unique format to pull the viewer into the story.
The film is available to everyone on YouTube, and can be watched on desktop or via a VR headset. We will also feature Project Witness at a number of YouTube Spaces and events throughout the year.
Project Witness is one part of YouTube’s ongoing criminal justice initiatives. On February 6, we released an episode of
BookTube
featuring Bryan Stevenson, based on his best-selling memoir “Just Mercy,” which is now also a feature film. And in the next few weeks we will release a documentary that explores the challenges of the cash bail system.
YouTube is a platform that seeks to give everyone a voice, and we're proud to support the voices who are changing the way formerly incarcerated children are perceived. That’s why I came here, and I haven’t looked back ever since.
Malika Saada Saar, YouTube Social Impact
Safer Internet Day: 5 ways we’re building a safer YouTube
Tuesday, February 11, 2020
Keeping you and your family safe online is a top priority at YouTube. Today on Safer Internet Day, we’re sharing some of the ways we work to keep YouTube safe, and how you can be more in control of your YouTube experience. From built-in protections to easy-to-use tools, we hope you’ll take advantage of these tips:
1. Learn more about the content available on YouTube
We work hard to maintain a safe community and have
guidelines
that explain what we allow and don’t allow on YouTube. Most of what we remove is
first-detected by machines
, which means we actually review and remove prohibited content before you ever see it. But no system is perfect, so we make sure if you see something that doesn’t belong on YouTube, you can
flag it
for us and we’ll quickly review it. If you want to know what happened to a video you flagged, just visit your
reporting history
to find out.
2. Learn more about what data we collect and how to update your privacy settings
Check out
Your Data in YouTube
to browse or delete your YouTube activity and learn more about how we use data. Your YouTube privacy settings include managing your search and watch history. If you prefer more private viewing, you can use Incognito mode on the YouTube mobile app or Chrome browser on your computer.
Learn more.
You can also take the
Privacy Checkup
and we’ll walk you through key privacy settings step-by-step. For YouTube, you’ll be able to do things like easily pause your
YouTube History
, or automatically delete data that may be used for your recommendations.
3. Check in on your security settings and keep your passwords safe
Head over to
Security Checkup
for personalized recommendations to help protect your data and devices across Google, including YouTube. Here, you can manage which third-party apps have access to your account data and also take the
Password Checkup
, which tells you if any of your passwords are weak and how to change them. In addition, you can access
Password Manager
in your Google Account to help you remember and securely store strong passwords for all your online accounts.
4. Learn more about how ads work and control what ads you see on YouTube
We do not sell your personal information
to anyone, and give you transparency, choice and control over how your information is used as a part of Google. If you’re curious about why you’re seeing an ad, you can click on
Why this ad
for more information. If you no longer find a specific ad relevant, you can choose to block that ad by using the
Mute this ad
control. And you can always control the kinds of ads you see, or turn off ads personalization any time in your
Ad Settings
.
5. Try the YouTube Kids app, built with parental controls
We recommend parents use
YouTube Kids
if they plan to allow kids under 13 to watch independently. YouTube Kids is a separate app with family-friendly videos and parental controls. We work hard to keep the videos on YouTube Kids suitable for kids and have recently reduced the number of channels on the app. The app also empowers parents to choose what’s the right experience for their kids and family, such as which content is available for their kids, how long they can use the app for and
much more.
In addition to YouTube Kids, we also recently made
changes
to Made for Kids content on YouTube to better protect children’s privacy.
Finally if you have any questions or feedback, let us know! We are available 24/7 on @TeamYouTube, or you can always check out our
YouTube Help Community
to learn about the latest announcements. Responsibility is our number one priority, and together with you, we will continue our ongoing efforts to build a safer YouTube.
—
The YouTube Team
The YouTube AdBlitz Champion of 2020 is...
Monday, February 10, 2020
The confetti may have hit the field for the Kansas City Chiefs, but the Big Game isn’t over for the ads. Fans have been watching and re-watching their favorites from in-and-out of the game on
YouTube AdBlitz
, and it’s finally time to reveal our top five overall and most-viewed by content category.
Congratulations to Amazon! As the only brand to cross 60 million views, Amazon’s #BeforeAlexa Super Bowl spot, starring Ellen DeGeneres, charmed the pants off of football fans this year to be the top-viewed ad on AdBlitz 2020!
Here are the top five most-viewed Big Game ads on
YouTube AdBlitz
as of Wednesday, February 5, at 11:59 p.m. EST:
1. Amazon
Amazon gives us a blast-from-the-past by answering the question, “What did we do before Alexa?” With a medieval theme, people cover everything, from the temperature to news to jokes, all features on Alexa. (Features Ellen Degeneres and Portia)
2. Jeep
In celebration of Groundhog Day and playing on the movie featuring Bill Murray, Murray takes a groundhog and escapes in an orange Jeep for endless adventures.
3. HyundaiUSA
Hyundai pays homage to Boston by featuring Chris Evans, John Krasinski, Rachel Dratch, and David “Big Papi” Ortiz, who react to one of the Sonata’s newest and smartest features: Remote Smart Parking Assist.
4. GenesisUSA
Chrissy Teigen and John Legend host a party calling out and saying farewell to old luxuries, such as lying about plastic surgery, and saying hello to new luxuries like the Genesis GV80.
5. T-Mobile
Anthony Anderson's mama tests T-Mobile’s nationwide 5G network by video calling him at the park, in the kitchen and even at the club, showing that it works nearly everywhere.
Top-viewed ads on
YouTube AdBlitz
as of Wednesday, February 5, at 11:59 p.m. EST by content category:
Sentimental:
[ yellow tail ] Tastes Like Happy "Happy Hour" :15
Comedy:
Amazon Super Bowl Commercial 2020 - #BeforeAlexa
Inspirational:
The Secret Kicker | Super Bowl Ad #KickInequality
Dramatic:
Heinz - Find The Goodness - Four at Once
Action-packed:
Facebook Groups: Ready to Rock? | Super Bowl 2020
Informative:
#PassTheProtection
Be sure to visit
YouTube AdBlitz
to watch all of this year’s Big Game ads.
Gina Shalavi, Cultural Moments and Trends Lead, YouTube Ads Marketing
State of the Union 2020: Live on YouTube
Tuesday, February 4, 2020
From breaking news to key moments, people around the world have been able to access important content and news through YouTube. As President Trump begins his fourth year in office, YouTube continues this tradition.
Like we have in the past, YouTube will live stream the President’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, February 4 at 9 p.m. ET, as well as the response from the Democratic Party. You can tune in to live streams in both English and Spanish. Here are the channels where you can follow the coverage:
White House
ABC News
C-SPAN
CBS News
Fox News
NBC News
PBS NewsHour
Telemundo
Univision
USA Today
Wall Street Journal
Washington Post
How YouTube supports elections
Monday, February 3, 2020
As the 2020 election season kicks into high gear in the United States, people will visit YouTube to learn about the candidates and watch the election season unfold. Over the last few years, we’ve increased our efforts to make YouTube a more reliable source for news and information, as well as an open platform for healthy political discourse. Here is an overview of how this work helps us to better support elections.
Remove election-related content that violates our policies
Our
Community Guidelines
provide clear guidance on content that is not allowed on YouTube. One common question we get is how these policies apply to election-related content. Here are some examples of where our established
deceptive practices policies
apply:
Content that has been technically manipulated or doctored in a way that misleads users (beyond clips taken out of context) and may pose a serious risk of egregious harm; for example, a video that has been technically manipulated to make it appear that a government official is dead.
Content that aims to mislead people about voting or the
census processes
, like telling viewers an incorrect voting date.
Content that advances false claims related to the technical eligibility requirements for current political candidates and sitting elected government officials to serve in office, such as claims that a candidate is not eligible to hold office based on false information about citizenship status requirements to hold office in that country.
Additionally, we terminate channels that:
Attempt to impersonate
another person or channel, misrepresent their country of origin, or conceal their association with a government actor.
Artificially increase
the number of views, likes, comments, or other metric either through the use of automatic systems or by serving up videos to unsuspecting viewers.
As always, we enforce our policies consistently, without regard to a video’s political viewpoint.
The best way to quickly remove content is to stay ahead of new technologies and tactics that could be used by malicious actors, including technically-manipulated content. We also heavily invest in research and development. In 2018, we formed an Intelligence Desk to detect new trends surrounding inappropriate content and problematic behaviors, and to make sure our teams are prepared to address them before they become a larger issue. For example, in 2018, as a result of the Intelligence Desk’s work to detect the evolving online tactics and impending statements of terrorist organizations, we shared 100,000 digital fingerprints (also known as hashes) of terror content to the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism’s hash-sharing database.
To combat foreign and domestic coordinated influence operations looking to interfere in electoral processes, we coordinate closely with
Google’s Threat Analysis Group
(TAG) to identify bad actors and terminate their channels and accounts. Through TAG, we work with other technology companies to share intelligence and best practices, and share threat information with law enforcement.
Raise up authoritative election news
Political news and events can be subject to misinformation, so the availability of quality information sources is crucial. That’s why we
raise up authoritative voices
, including news sources, for news and information in search results and “watch next” panels. Millions of search queries and recommendations are getting this authoritative ranking treatment today, and we're continuing to improve and expand our systems.
Additionally, we
introduced
Top News and Breaking News shelves to highlight quality journalism, as well as
information panels
that indicate funding sources below videos from publishers that receive public or government funding. During breaking news events, we provide short previews of text-based news articles in search results, along with a reminder that developing news can rapidly change. Because of all these efforts, last year we saw consumption of content from authoritative news partners’ channels grow by 60%.
For the 2018 U.S. midterm and the 2019 EU Parliamentary elections, when users searched for a candidate on YouTube, we surfaced an
information panel
with additional information about that candidate—for example, party affiliation and district—above search results. We also highlighted the official YouTube channels of candidates when available. We will have a similar feature for candidates in the 2020 U.S. elections in the coming months.
Reduce the spread of election misinformation
Content that comes close to violating our Community Guidelines is a fraction of 1% of what’s watched on YouTube in the U.S. To reduce this even further, in January 2019, we launched
changes
to our recommendations systems to limit the spread of harmful misinformation and borderline content. The result is a 70% average drop in watch time of this content coming from non-subscribed recommendations in the U.S. These changes are now implemented in the U.S. and other English-language markets, and we’ve begun expanding this effort to non-English-language markets, helping us reduce recommendations of borderline content, including election-related misinformation, around the world.
Recognize and reward campaigns, candidates, and political creators
Politicians, commentators and news publishers can access a suite of YouTube features and resources, including support from our partnerships team. These specialists work with news organizations, political creators and candidates on both sides of the aisle to optimize their presence on YouTube, helping them more effectively reach viewers, engage their community and
keep their accounts secure
.
In addition to our work at YouTube to support elections, other teams at Google are also
working hard
ahead of Election Day—including by expanding our political advertising policies to provide users with even more
visibility
into who is buying election ads on YouTube, Google, and partner properties. YouTube remains committed to maintaining the balance of openness and responsibility, before, during and after the 2020 U.S. election. We’ll have even more to share on this work in the coming months.
Leslie Miller, VP of Government Affairs & Public Policy, YouTube
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