YouTube is an American online video sharing and social media platform launched by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim in February 2005. Its users watch more than one billion hours of videos each day.[7] YouTube content creators, popularly referred to as YouTubers, upload over 500 hours of content per minute.[8]
In October 2006, YouTube was bought by Google for $1.65 billion.[9] It has since evolved from a small video streaming platform to a large service influencing popular culture, internet trends, and creating multimillionaire celebrities. YouTube has reported revenues of $19.8 billion in 2020.[1] After Google, YouTube is the most visited website worldwide, with over one billion monthly users.[10] Google's ownership of YouTube has also changed its business model; it no longer generates revenue from advertisements alone. YouTube now offers paid content such as movies and exclusive content. YouTube and approved creators participate in Google's AdSense program, which generates more revenue for both parties.
YouTube has expanded beyond the website into mobile apps, network television, and other services like Discord and Nintendo to be linked to it. The range of videos on YouTube includes music videos, video clips, short films, feature films, documentaries, audio recordings, corporate-sponsored movie trailers, live streams, vlogs, and content from popular YouTubers. Most content is generated by
Even for content that appears to be aimed at children and appears to contain only child-friendly content, YouTube's system allows for anonymity of who uploads these videos. These questions have been raised in the past, as YouTube has had to remove channels with children's content that suddenly include inappropriate content masked as children's content after becoming popular.[347] Alternatively, some of the most-watched children's programming on YouTube comes from channels with no identifiable owners, raising concerns of intent and purpose. One channel that had been of concern was "Cocomelon," which provided numerous mass-produced animated videos aimed at children. Up through 2019, it had drawn up to US$10 million a month in ad revenue and was one of the largest kid-friendly channels on YouTube before 2020. Ownership of Cocomelon was unclear outside of its ties to "Treasure Studio", itself an unknown entity, raising questions as to the channel's purpose,[347][348][349] but Bloomberg News had been able to confirm and interview the small team of American owners in February 2020 regarding "Cocomelon", who stated their goal for the channel was to entertain children, wanting to keep to themselves to avoid attention from outside investors.[350] The anonymity of such channels raises concerns because of the lack of knowledge of what purpose they are trying to serve.[351] The difficulty in identifying who operates these channels "adds to the lack of accountability," according to Josh Golin of the
Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, and educational consultant Renée Chernow-O'Leary found the videos were designed to entertain with no intent to educate, leading to both critics and parents being concerned about their children becoming too enraptured by the content from these channels.[347] Content creators that earnestly make kid-friendly videos have found it difficult to compete with larger channels like ChuChu TV are unable to produce content at the same rate as these large channels and lack the same means of being promoted through YouTube's recommendation algorithms animated channel networks have shared.[351]
In January 2019, YouTube officially banned videos containing "challenges that encourage acts that have an inherent risk of severe physical harm" (such as, for example, the Tide Pod Challenge), and videos featuring pranks that "make victims believe they're in physical danger" or cause emotional distress in children
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Karim said the inspiration for YouTube first came from the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy when Janet Jackson's breast was briefly exposed by Justin Timberlake during the halftime show. Karim could not easily find video clips of the incident and the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami online, which led to the idea of a video-sharing site.[14]
Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not.[13][15] They created posts on Craigslist asking attractive women to upload videos of themselves to YouTube in exchange for a $100 reward.[16] Difficulty in finding enough dating videos led to a change of plans, with the site's founders deciding to accept uploads of any video.[17]
YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. The trio were all early employees of PayPal, which left them enriched after the company was bought by eBay.[11] Hurley studied design at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.[12]
Since around 2015, established media corporations such as Disney, ViacomCBS, and WarnerMedia have created and expanded their corporate YouTube channels to promote their content to a larger audience. Individuals, including collaborations between YouTubers and companies that sponsor them. YouTube also acts as a social network by allowing users with a Google account to watch and upload their own videos, comment on videos, rate and respond to comments, like or dislike videos, create playlists, and subscribe to other users and channels.
With billions of hours of content and thousands of niche groups, YouTube has also had a great social impact. As it has grown and evolved, it has become involved in many controversies that have made headline news, such as its self-censorship, alleged corporate favoritism, allowing its users to spread conspiracy theories and issues regarding child safety and wellbeing.
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