Why I Will Never Watch that YouTube Video You Posted on Social Media
YouTube is one of the most popular websites on the internet, with the company reporting over 2 billion monthly unique active users worldwide1 (equivalent to one third of all internet users worldwide), who watch collectively[1] billion hours of videos per day[2]. A quick back of the envelope calculation will tell you that is an average of 30 minutes spent on YouTube by each user every day. Unsurprisingly, as overall YouTube consumption increases, so does the breadth of videos available. Gone are the days of endless cat videos and flash animation — now you can find anything from how-to explainers to movies (both small budget ones and those from major studios) to endless hours of video game streaming. Over 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute[3], meaning a quick search can find a video of almost any subject. One reason for this proliferation is the rapid reduction in cost to make even high-quality videos. The need for a hundred thousand dollar television studio is no longer a barrier to entry to producing content — a budding YouTube star with a budget of less than $1000 can buy a brand-new mirrorless camera that can take video in 4K resolution, with plenty left over for microphones, tripod stands, editing software, and even a good looking desk to sit behind. But there are potential costs to the democratization of video production.
There are many guides that have been written that will help you build a hierarchy of how trustworthy a piece of information is, ranging from published peer reviewed published research in a reputable journal all the way down to something you remember your drunk uncle saying at a neighborhood bar-b-que five years ago. A good example is one from the library of the University of Georgetown[4]:
1. Author — who are they, and are they an expert in the field
2. Purpose of the article — who is the expected audience for the article, and why is it being written?
3. Objectivity — is the purpose to provide objective information or propaganda?
4. Accuracy — can you verify the sources of information or data used in the article?
5. Reliability and credibility — similar to accuracy, can you verify the information independently?
6. Currency — how old is the information?
7. Links and annotation — used to verify accuracy and reliability
In addition to these factors, I would add a couple more helpful hints:
8. Anything that has to go through a peer review process by other subject matter experts is going to be more accurate than something that is not peer reviewed.
9. Information published by a major book publisher (like Penguin or Random House) or a major newspaper with a large readership (BBC, New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, etc.) has a reputation to protect. For this reason, they will engage in rigorous fact checking and editing. This leads back to #6, credibility. This does not mean they will be without bias, but having a bias does not mean the works they produce are factually inaccurate. It just means they are more likely to publish facts that support that bias.
10. Opinion pieces are inherently more biased than other, pure news articles. As the name implies, the author has an opinion they are trying to convince the readership to agree with. They are often still rigorously fact checked, but they are likely to be more biased than the rest of the publication, and should be examined with a more critical eye than other sources of information.
11. It should go without saying, but novelizations are inherently not based on fact. They should not be cited or treated as facts. No matter how lifelike a fictitious world may seem, it is still fiction.
And this brings us to YouTube videos. In the past, only public news organizations had the budget or ability to produce slick, believable, topical news videos. Until 1987 US news broadcasters were subject to the Federal Communication Commission’s Fairness Doctrine[5], stipulating that the news they produced was fair, balance, and devoted equal time to opposing points of view. The only people able to produce the news were obligated to educate the public with the idea that a well-informed electorate was in the best interest of the nation. If we were to judge traditional video news sources from the 1960s and 1970s on the previous criteria, they meet nearly every criterial for trust. The authors are experts at producing the news, and the purpose of every news broadcast was to educate the public. They were legally bound to be objective, and they had teams of fact checkers to ensure accuracy and reliability. The organizations had a reputation to protect, and with only three news broadcasters, they were in heavy competition to be the most accurate and reliable. Sources for the information were also easy to verify, since they were generally being interviewed live on the air.
Let us compare this to YouTube content creators. There are content creators who are true experts, but few subject matter experts have time to produce slick YouTube videos. Instead, YouTube producers are generally experts at entertainment, not education. The purpose of their videos is to gain subscribers, and the best way to gain subscribers is click bait, controversy, and constant video production (leaving little time to gain actual expertise). Popular YouTube content creators have shrugged off lies, sexual harassment, racism, and anti-Semitism as “jokes” or “pranks”, with few repercussions[6,7]. This is not a medium that incentivizes accuracy or objectivity. A conspiracy video is just as likely (if not more so) to garner views as a well-researched and truthful one and is much quicker to create since it requires no background work. There is no larger organization governing individual content creators, and no brand to protect (other than the individual themselves), so there is little incentive to maintain reliability or credibility. Many videos are little more than stream of consciousness speech, with links and references being rare. There are content creators who buck every one of these stereotypes, but they are not the norm, and YouTube does nothing to help elevate their videos. With so much inaccurate content glutting the platform, it hardly seems worthwhile separating the wheat from the chaff. In conclusion, no, I will never watch that YouTube video you are using to justify your opinion on social media.
References:
- https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/youtube-2-billion-users-tv-screen-watch-time-hours-1203204267/
2. https://www.youtube.com/about/press/
3. https://www.statista.com/statistics/259477/hours-of-video-uploaded-to-youtube-every-minute/
4. https://www.library.georgetown.edu/tutorials/research-guides/evaluating-internet-content
5. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fairness-Doctrine
7. https://www.seventeen.com/celebrity/movies-tv/g18753797/youtube-scandals-controversies/
