August 12, 2026 • 42 mins
With hundreds of hours of content uploaded every single minute, YouTube is is the world's largest video-sharing platform. Billions of users log on constantly, and you can, in theory find information on anything. Yet as Ben, Matt, and Noel discover in the first chapter of this special two-part series, YouTube's massive success also comes with controversy... and accusations of conspiracy. Tune in to learn more of the 'Stuff They Don't Want YouTube Know'.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
What's up at your Boys? Conspiracy stuff? My name is Matt?
Speaker 3 (00:29):
What is this smash that like or subscribed?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I'm know.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 5 (00:34):
We're joined as always with our super producer, Dylan the
Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are
here that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know. SOW For everybody tuning in on your podcast
audio platform of choice, one thing you need to know
from the beginning is that our show started as a
(00:58):
video series, and we owe a great deal of thanks
to the colleagues and the bosses at the time who
let us try out this mad cap escapade in the
first place. A tepid shout out, by the way, guys,
to Jonathan Strickland, who to this day, as we record
on Monday August third, remains convinced that he gave us
(01:22):
the name of the show.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
And he's right because I was in the room when
he said it.
Speaker 6 (01:29):
Was before my time. I cannot speak or I can
either confirm nor deny.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
These it was. It was in the break room at
one Capital City plause, I remember it like it was yesterday.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I thought it was Connall that said, he named the show.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
No Conall gave us the voice.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
And the interesting thing here is that now we are
somewhat old in the tooth.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
They're long in the tooth, right old in the day.
As far as podcastery goes.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
One of the things we have to point outright, I
want to be clear here, I'm always going to give
baby Jay a hard time because it's something we do,
uh for decades now, and the joke's not stopping.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Jonathan, So thank you for tuning.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
In the aka the Quizter of Ridiculous History. We are
grateful for everyone that brought us here, including you tuning
in now. Most importantly, we owe a huge debt of
gratitude to a little up and comer video platform called YouTube.
(02:33):
Without YouTube, there's a strong argument that stuff they don't
want you to know would not exist in its present form.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 6 (02:40):
Also, what is it shout out to Apple, Apple Video,
Apple Video iTunes?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
It was very video, not very clear.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Number one in the charts, Baby for like, I don't
even know three years when it existed.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 5 (02:56):
It's like we were the number one we want to know,
like competitive ski team in Jamaica exactly. It's it was
a smaller sandbox back in the day. Is what you
need to know, fellow conspiracy realist.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Well, Ben, even even to that point, think about what
we say at the beginning of every one of these
whether it's audio, Netflix, YouTube, every episode of stuff they
don't want you to know starts with what's the phrase? Ben?
We say our names and then you say.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
You can turn back now, or are you are you?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
You are here?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (03:31):
That makes this stuff they don't want you to know, Yes, don't.
That is like back when we were going to YouTube school,
which was a thing, right, we all got certified. Having
a catchy thing that happens at the front of every
video was a thing we were supposed to do, right,
and we came up with our own thing and we
made it ours and we do it every time ritualistically.
(03:51):
But that was a thing that we did to kind
of appease the YouTube gods.
Speaker 6 (03:58):
And then the question becomes, where are they suggesting doing
that based on like psychological analytics and focused testing and stuff,
or were they just trying to create the thing that
became the thing.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
I think it's I think it's the latter there, Noel,
because one thing that is important to us is that
you realize you are the most important part of the show. No,
Matt is absolutely correct. We had a bunch of hoops
that YouTube wanted us or our company wanted us to
(04:31):
jump through YouTube hoops. For that being said, we we
enjoy this sort of stuff, and we saw and see
it as a differentiation between some other shows that maybe
have less of a mission.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Not trying to downplay the sincerity or anything there that
we have, because it is there. It's just it's a
part of the rubrit that is required or was required,
or that YouTube at least said what is required to
be successful on their platform. Right, you've seen those videos before.
Everybody has their own little thing that they do a
little and it's time to go blah blah blah, and
(05:11):
then they get into their video. Every single creator out
there has that.
Speaker 6 (05:14):
And then they have like timing like he got to
ask for subscribe by this number of minutes into the video.
And it's all based on analytics, but it's also kind
of like in the early days that you're talking about, Matt,
I got a wonder too, Like without as much analytics
as they have now, it was sort of like them
kind of trying to set the tone for, you know,
what all online streaming video would look like.
Speaker 5 (05:37):
And I think that's a great point, Noel, because it's
sort of asking about whether Hama Rabbi was responding to
judicial precedent when creating the Code of Laws or was
h Hama Robbie and his team attempting to manifest it
by so many metrics. Right now, even as we record
(06:00):
in twenty twenty six, YouTube is the largest video platform
on the planet. And that being said, despite all the
amazing things that YouTube has done, and we'll have full
disclosure and disclaimers throughout this, you have to understand we
held off on this episode for a while, and now
(06:21):
we're going to give you what Upper Midwesterners in the
United States call the straight poop, because, as it turns out,
critics allege there's a ton of you guys knew I
was working on this pun for years. There's a ton
of stuff they don't want YouTube.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
No I think we got it. I think we got there.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
That's really good.
Speaker 6 (06:46):
Ben Well, it's so fascinating too, because YouTube is so
its own thing that like, compared to something like Netflix
other content distribution video streaming platforms, it kind of plays
by its own rules.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
And even those other companies like Netflix that we're on
right now.
Speaker 6 (07:03):
Of course, there's sort of a drive to sort of
be a little more like YouTube and kind of try
to capture some of that YouTube thing, but nobody quite
knows how to do it.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
Yeah, do that, Yeah, and then YouTube becomes at different
times in its history, YouTube becomes like Andy Warhol, staying
relevant by picking up new innovators like the bos Gayacht.
Here would be your TikTok or your short form video, right,
your Vine, your Instagram. Let's pause for word from a
(07:36):
sponsor and get back into it. Here are the facts, folks,
friends and neighbors, Tennessee pals, Rude Vegas conspiracy realist alike.
YouTube is undeniably a global phenomenon for a lot of people,
especially now in the age of streaming services sort of
(08:02):
reinventing cable packages. YouTube has replaced television. I think I
can speak for the group here when I say that
we all have our favorite YouTube channels, that we visit
on a semi regular basis.
Speaker 6 (08:19):
For sure, and some of them I watch or listen
to exclusively without having the video on, depending on where
I discovered a particular content creator, Like unless there's a
lot of like clips and you know, useful visuals, if
it's just folks talking in a room, I tend to
just listen to it. And YouTube knows that people do that,
and they make you pay a little extra for it,
(08:40):
and you have to be able to in order to
quote unquote mute the video and have the audio continue.
You got to pay for premio, which I think is
such an interesting little detail.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
How about you, Matt, Well, It's been a while since
I've been a massive YouTube user, but I lately I
have weirdly and perhaps contradictorily gotten into you reactors. And
it's because I'm I find myself in some kind of
strange nostalgia zone in my mind where I'm rediscovering music
(09:11):
that I love but through the eyes of others or
films that I vicariously cathartically.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
I do it all the time with I do it
all the time with rap hip hop. I love seeing
it's so crazy. I love seeing people who are not
the Billboard demographic for any kind of song or any
genre of music. Rediscovering it for the first time. A
grandmother makes my day when she hears Tupac Shakur's Dear Mama.
Speaker 6 (09:42):
Or you know, the flip side of that is, maybe
folks who grew up with hip hop had no exposure to,
say like heavy metal or just you know, indie rock,
like listening to Tool for the first time or Crimson
or something.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
I love.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Both sides of that are fabulous.
Speaker 5 (09:57):
I also love when musical experts in a very specific
instrument or genre of instrument are listening to something and
they say, oh, this percussive riff is amazing, or oh
my gosh, they know how to do the fluke correctly.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
This this is a unifying thing.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
This is a very positive thing about video content that
was indeed popularized by YouTube. And just like our earlier
episode on Wraitheon, which I hope we can still have
titled three Guys Got into Refrigerators and then war, Yeah,
that's great.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Went for sure outside of time. I've been away and
I was so excited to come in and record the
raytheon episode today and I didn't realize you guys had
already done it, and it was the refrigerator early appliance
angle thing that I was so excited to talk with
you guys about and how everything turned.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
We can talk about it.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
It's still very much Also, it happens, as you know,
Matt from previous discussions, and as you know from previous discussions,
it happens whenever there's a large manufacturing base. And those
three nerds check out our previous episode. As they got
bigger and bigger, and before they invented the Patriot missile system,
(11:22):
they did end up buying a refrigerator company, Amana.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
I think I compared it to I forget the guy's name.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
He was portrayed sort of dramatized by Bradley Cooper in
Licorice Pizza. But he was Barbara Streisand's former hairdresser who
became a big movie executive and always wanted to fit
somehow a giant mechanical spider into movies and eventually got
there with Wild Wild West, which was of course a
massive flop. But he tried so hard to shoehorn that
(11:49):
giant mechanical spider, refrigeration, giant mechanical spider of Raytheon.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Sure there was there was there was one guy responsible
for that spider.
Speaker 5 (11:59):
Well, check out check out Mitchell and Webb's amazing sketch
that politely refers to the problem of civilian manufacturers meeting
wartime stuff and check out car Stuff for more of that.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
We know.
Speaker 5 (12:17):
The reason we're making the raytheon oor RTX Corporation comparison
here is that in February of two thousand and five,
more than twenty one years ago, as we record, there
were these three guys from PayPal. They were named Chad Hurley,
Steve Chen and Jawad Kareem. They created a site that
(12:41):
would allow users to upload and then interact with videos
user generated content.
Speaker 6 (12:49):
And the interesting thing is not like that was the
most unique idea in the world. And I think that's
why YouTube is so universally important because it's just like,
what if we had a way where people could contribute
videos and share them with each other. It was all
a matter of the technology and the Internet bandwidth and
speed becoming fast enough to support that, And then who
(13:10):
was going to be the ones that kind of figured
out how like smart way.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
To do it?
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (13:13):
Yeah, they figured out how to not just build a
sandbox but allow people to play more nimbly and more
actively in that sandbox interact. In this sense, it means
you could rate a video, you could comment, you could
share it. If you didn't like it, you could block it.
If you super liked it, you could add it to
(13:34):
a playlist. This was all very, very cool at the time,
and it's still cool now. They crowdsourced the stuff that
a lot a lot of previous outfits would have in
house moderators for, and at the same time they rode
the wave because technology, as all four of us know
(13:55):
and hopefully all five of us counting you tuning in.
At the very same time, there was something in the zeitgeist.
Technology was becoming increasingly affordable. Microphone equipment, cameras, these were
just in the span of a few months after two
thousand and five. This was increasingly democratized. You no longer
(14:19):
had to be paramounts. You didn't have to be eight
twenty four. I don't even know if they were around.
You didn't have to be a film studio. You just
had had to have less than one thousand dollars and
you were off to the races.
Speaker 6 (14:32):
Yeah, we're talking early, you know, I mean DV camera
technology I mean, like, you can look back at YouTube
videos in those days and they look kind of like
crap compared to now.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
But at the time we thought that was all fantastic.
Speaker 6 (14:42):
I mean, y'all remember even some of those what was
it FX there was like a Sony camera that was like,
you know, top of the line, really really expensive digital camera.
By today's standards, the aspect ratio is all funky.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
And they just look really really dated.
Speaker 6 (14:57):
But at the time, it felt like you could approach
the level of production that you might get from like
a TV series or films.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
All right, let's do some show Intel.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
This is historical show and tell from our experience with YouTube.
The first House Stuff Works YouTube video that ever came out,
Ben and Nola and I were not a part of
it happened on March ninth, two thousand and seven. It
was shot with this PD one fifty. I have the
PD one fifty that shot that video. Then Ben, the
(15:31):
first stuff they Don't Want You to Know video that
came out on the House Stuff Works channel was Stuff
they Don't Want You to Know Dash Nikola Tesla March
twenty third, twenty ten. And by that time, just that
short amount of years, we moved on to this baby,
and we shot all of our content with this beautiful
(15:52):
sony HDV camera.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
What's the ronda member of that one, Matt, I'm sorry
to them.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Oh god, it's an HDV ten eighty I it's interlaced exactly.
Speaker 5 (16:03):
Oh yeah, so everybody pumped your brakes.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
We were serious.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Well interlaced.
Speaker 6 (16:08):
It was kind of like the same type of technology
that went into two TV broadcast. Like it was like
pan and scan almost right, And it was a form
of like a way to compress the video file by
having certain even lines and odd lines and things like that.
Isn't that kind of what interlaced It was?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Still, it was the old school thing, Ben that I
think you taught me about this as I was as
we were going through the technology. But the old school
CRT monitors that would give you different lines, you know,
as it's coming.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
In they take the filo Farnsworth.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah, yes, so this that's what the interlace just means,
like two separate channels of video and then odd frames.
Speaker 5 (16:47):
And before we even got there, like this is this
is interesting? I shouldn't say, like this is not as simile, folks.
Hear what Matt said, Well, it's two thousand and seven,
when the first video from How Stuff Works comes out.
It's two thousand and five, when YouTube is a thing,
and for posterity sake, as a fanboy of YouTube, I
(17:10):
would like to share the very first YouTube video, which
I have assurances we can play in part here on Netflix.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Ready remember this, can you guys? Guess? Can you guys? Guess?
Speaker 6 (17:22):
I remember only from reading the history of it. I
certainly don't remember from when it was a thing. But yeah,
it's historical at this point.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
And I didn't see it until we read it in something.
Speaker 6 (17:30):
But yes, this is like, this is crazy and there's
nothing to it.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
It is.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Those spoilers, folks.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
Remember we mentioned the three founders, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen,
Jawad Karim. The very first YouTube video is titled Me
at the Zoo.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
Will play it in part Oh.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
God, are we going to get a strike? All right?
Speaker 5 (17:56):
So here we are.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
These guys. Is that they have really, really really long.
Speaker 5 (18:06):
Funk And that's that's cool?
Speaker 3 (18:10):
What what an observation.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
That's all there is to say.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
That is a nineteen second video. It's the first, but
it's far from the last, and it is so endearing.
Obviously we are very biased because the first video on
YouTube was elephant content.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
We did just do it.
Speaker 6 (18:30):
Sorry you missed out on that one to Matt an
episode on Elephant Shows, which is a super bummer, unlike
that video, which seems to have a very pro elephant spin.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Was this?
Speaker 6 (18:38):
I know they did it with the first tweet, but
didn't they didn't they make this into an FT and
sell it?
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Or was that just the first tweet?
Speaker 4 (18:48):
Oh gosh, I don't know.
Speaker 6 (18:49):
I definitely did it with the first tweet. Someone they
sold it as an NFT. Remember those kind of came
Let's see did the first YouTube video get sold?
Speaker 5 (18:58):
And while you're looking that up, let's point out that
a little more than a year later, not even two
years later, on the current twelve month calendar, November two
thousand and six, Google bought YouTube dot com for one
point six y five billion dollars. That same year, Time
(19:19):
magazine named their person of the Year you, specifically you,
and they said we're naming it you the person of
the year because YouTube is the people's platform. It can
create international understanding, it can connect disparate people in communities
(19:40):
and demographics. We are changing the world. We have no idea.
What's going to happen in you know, ten years from now.
Speaker 6 (19:49):
And just to clarify, yeah, that was minted as an
NFT and sold on open c but the originals we
can see did remain on YouTube and the NFT does
not represent owner ship of the actual copyright.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
It is just of the reproduced.
Speaker 6 (20:04):
Token of it all, which still calls into question why
didn't FT even matters?
Speaker 2 (20:08):
But carry on, Just to say in two thousand and six, guys,
in December, December twenty first, to be exact of that
same year, a guy named Bo Burnham put up a
little video called My Whole Family. You should check it
out if you haven't seen. It's incredible.
Speaker 5 (20:24):
Yeah, we're big Bo fans, and not just for the alliteration.
You should also check out every song he's ever made,
some of which age better than others. But just a
phenomenal musician, classic earworm. Maybe we'll have him on the
show in the future. I think he'd be a good
hang this. This is also you know, it's two thousand
(20:46):
and five, two thousand and six. The two thousand and
eight financial crash in the West has yet to occur, Right,
these are the boom years for tech.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
You've got a good idea.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
You go to Silicon Valley, someone throws money at you
in your face like clowns throwing pies at each other.
Bigger companies, leviathans are snatching up smaller groups left and right,
and often a lot of these companies end up going bust.
They end up losing millions upon millions of dollars. But Google,
(21:22):
later alphabet they made a really good bet here paid
off this user generated content site, which is what it
started as. It didn't just become successful, it changed the world.
It created countless subcultures. There are celebrities who entirely depend
upon YouTube for their success. There are controversies along the way.
(21:46):
Because we democratized a platform and we coupled it with
easily available technology and easy access, and then we had
a massive price drop that meant the old barriers to
video were quickly eroding. Anybody could be the next star
(22:07):
of the world. And you know, not surprisingly, people love
to talk about themselves. The people love to be seen
right especially now, so it's no surprise everyone was very
into the idea.
Speaker 6 (22:22):
And that democratization of technology can be applied to other
mediums as well, like recording equipment and garage band and
that also is for video, of course, because you got
a new MacBook or whatever, it came with iMovie. So
people didn't even have to buy Final Cut Pro, which
was you know, kind of pricey. We'll recall in the
early how stuff works days or I think Premiere. But yeah,
(22:45):
people automatically had a pretty reasonably you know, competent video
editing platform as well as like multi track audio.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Hey, we're going to take a quick break.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Don't forget to smash that like button.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Just quickly before we get into some of the more
modern things with YouTube. One of the reasons that Google
bought YouTube is because YouTube was struggling and it couldn't
make money. It couldn't make any money it had it
had these these versions of ads right now, they're called TrueView. Right.
This is the while you're watching a video, an AD
(23:27):
will pop up and it'll give you the option to
skip it in five seconds, but the advertiser only the
transaction only works if you go thirty seconds or more.
If you skip that ad, then it doesn't nobody gets
any money. Nobody makes any money. Right, and then there's
all the discovery videos that they put in there that
are sponsored that the platform gets paid for, but YouTube
(23:47):
could not make enough money to support itself for a
long time, and Google was kind of the savior that
came in because they're so big that they could just
absorb all of the essentially the money that YouTube was hemorrhaging.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
They could be a lost leader.
Speaker 5 (24:03):
Yeah, and that was also to be clear for our
three amigos, for our triumpht at the beginning, they were
baking in that kind of time window that is startup Logic,
that startup Calculus, and it's it's baffling because you're right, Matt,
Google alphabet did save YouTube because they we don't know
(24:27):
what happened to the back rooms, right, We were not
personally in the room where it happens. But we did
realize that Google made some sort of cost benefit analysis
that taught them this thing was a gold mine, or
now we would say a hydrogen helium mine, a platinum mine.
Speaker 6 (24:49):
Is you know, like oftentimes when an acquisition takes place,
it's because the potential of the thing is seen, but
the company under its current leadership and current funding levels
can't quite reach that you know.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Potential yet.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
And so Google not only saved them, not for like
you know, egalitarian reasons, because they knew they with their
algorithms and all of this stuff that they had control of,
they could make this the thing that it was always
meant to be, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Because Google had AdWords, and the way Google has always
made money was through search. Like that is just what
they did, right. You type anything into Google and you're
gonna get all kinds of responses that are sponsored, that
are paid for to be there. In those responses you
bring you add YouTube to the mix. Now when everyone
uses YouTube as a search bar and to find the
(25:39):
thing you want, right, you can do the same thing.
That was their thought. And they've been struggling and struggling
and struggling all the way to the point where in
twenty eighteen they started their own subscription service, right, which
is trying to find another way to make money, to
make revenue as a giant corporation that needs increasing profits.
Speaker 5 (25:57):
Because for so many online initials. You have to understand, folks,
the Achilles heel is often add income. Is that is
the that is the great truth of a lot of
this stuff.
Speaker 6 (26:12):
Well, you gotta wonder too if Google Like was part
of the reason that YouTube wasn't able to succeed on
their own steam because they were so in control of
the pipes and of search and of all of that
stuff that only once they absorbed them were they able
to be like, well, now you're part of us, so
we can give you the juice that you always needed
(26:32):
and lacked.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
You know, Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
They starved the beast almost you got I think.
Speaker 5 (26:38):
I like the referencing star of the Beast. I don't
know if it was quite at that level. It may
have been not so much algorithmic suppression at that point.
It may have been it may have been the boffin saying, hey,
we're seeing a lot of activity here because we obsess
about our metrics, so let's get this because we're projecting
(27:02):
more attention.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
And whatever the case may be.
Speaker 5 (27:05):
Google was correct, YouTube was correct as of twenty twenty three,
So again they started at two thousand and five. For
everybody playing along at home twenty twenty three, more than
five hundred hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every
single minute. Now where to point where roughly eighty two
(27:29):
human years worth of new video content of some sort
hits the platform every twenty four hours. That means there
is no way any single human person can watch everything. Statistically,
if you are human and you are tuning in, you
will not be able to watch even two days worth
(27:52):
of stuff. There are currently somewhere between two point five
eight billion to two point seven billion monthly active users.
So if all of those are individual cubans guys, that
equates to about thirty two point five percent of the
entire population of the planet. It's an impressive metric. It's
(28:16):
a terrified metric. We should also step it back a
little to let you know that those are Google's numbers,
and a lot of users have multiple accounts. Shout out
to everybody being creepy, we see you.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Well, I mean, on this machine that we're recording this on,
I have three YouTube channels subscriptions open at any given time.
So when I'm clicking through and depending on the browser
and in what context, I've got three different humans.
Speaker 5 (28:45):
Does that take you a user? Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's
why I think we have to copy on it.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Well, and they've got all these family plans too, right
where you've you can have up to five family members
on one thing. But each individual, you know, subuser within
that thing, is that a user? We don't know. There's
a lot of things in there that YouTube you know,
it's any company. They got to make the numbers look
as good as possible.
Speaker 5 (29:09):
Sure, like over AI, right, like every there's a great book.
Have you guys read the book Reverse Centaurs.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
We just talked about that with some way who do
we talk about that with? Oh? Well, we did it
on Strange News. We talked about the reverse centaur thing
of who's driving who?
Speaker 5 (29:26):
Basically right, Yeah, And there's there's a great exploration in
that book regarding how easy it is to construct metrics
that appear favorable or advantageous. And it harkens back to
the old Mark Wain stuff about how to how to
build statistics. We don't have to get into it.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
It's a great doctor the Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life
after AI.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
And we've got to get to and think of that map.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
We've got to get to audience distribution per YouTube. The
largest YouTube audience is in India, which makes sense. It's
a huge country. This the user stat active user stat
in India is like four hundred and ninety one million
(30:16):
to five hundred and eighteen million active users. That is
nearly double the size of the United States population. UH
number two, the United States Go team number three, Brazil
and for a long time, YouTube would champion this statistic.
(30:38):
They would say to advertisers, Hey, seventy seven percent of
everyone on the Internet who has aged between fifteen and
thirty five is on YouTube. And advertisers were like, you
know what would be awesome for this brain stuff video
if we had an unskippable sixty second an ad for
(31:00):
Harry's Racers or whatever.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Well, well this is why. And you can see maybe
if you imagine the boardroom, right or the whatever chats
they were doing on what they didn't use base Camp
or were they using probably Slack, the slack channels with
the upper echelons at both YouTube and Google talking about
these numbers and like, oh my god, look at the
(31:24):
money that is just sitting there waiting for us. We
just have to figure out how to capture it. And
they're seeing the ad sense, the you know, the the
money that they are trying to make with ads isn't
quite as great as it could be, but it is
pretty awesome, and we'll talk about that in just a moment.
But what they really saw was the data, right that
(31:44):
was being generated by all of those users.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Now I know where you live, I know what you like,
I know how old you are. I have a cool
sense of who's in your house.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Oh did put a credit card number in to pay
for your premium?
Speaker 5 (32:01):
I see you're watching a lot of videos on yacht.
That's more a more street level version, to steal a
term from MCU, would be, hey, you're watching a lot
of food videos.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Hmmm.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (32:20):
It's also I mean I was going to ask the
question or post the question earlier. Do you guys think
of YouTube as being a form of social media?
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (32:29):
Absolutely, Yeah, it's sort of this weird crossover though, right
like it, I mean, it is a content distribution platform
like in Netflix or like you know, Vimeo, which you
shout out is like, you know, mainly like a music
video kind of driven thing that still does quite well,
but it also has the social media aspect, and it
is sort of the early days of generating that kind
(32:50):
of algorithmic data that drives the way we're being served
up this kind of like echo chambery experience of the internet.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
Coughed off. Reddit is social media as well.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Copy comments, comments, really comments, and sharing, right, Yeah, you're
posting stuff, you're commenting on it, you're sharing it. Yeah,
that's us g The last thing with the advertisers and
trying to figure out how to make money. They've got
the data potentially stream there that they can sell at
the third parties. But the huge thing that changed our
(33:23):
experience with YouTube that really altered the way we look
at it as a show as you know, a company,
a larger company, and everything occurred around that the shifting
times like twenty fifteen to twenty seventeen, where there's a
realization that we have to require the stuff that's being uploaded.
We've got literally almost infinite content that's being uploaded right
(33:46):
by the minute. We have to make sure the good
stuff that we like that advertisers like gets the ads
on it and everything else doesn't, which just means it's
a it's a top down focus on the stuff that advertisers,
that advertisers are going to think is cool.
Speaker 6 (34:03):
And that's kind of the old school model of television too.
It's just you know, much more scaled like TV shows
at the end of the day aren't made to be
high art. They're made to satisfy advertiser categories and demographic
groups and things like that. But it's with the streaming
and the advent of this algorithm and all of this
new data that just kind of segments that even further,
(34:26):
or like laser focuses that even further.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
And those categories for YouTube are beauty and fashion and lifestyle, sports, music, gaming, comedy, parenting, science,
and news. You know what's not in there, uh, government
cover ups, society.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Advertisers don't go for that stuff.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Just putting that out there that has shaped controvers experience,
right then, I mean just when we look at especially
if we look at our specific YouTube channel and what
is approved or not approved to be advertiser friendly.
Speaker 6 (35:08):
Well, I look forward to getting into the conversation around
demonetization and a little bit and about like at what
point does the controller of the pipes kind of exercise
control over the content, even if they say that's not
what they do. They incentivize or de incentivize certain kinds
of content perio.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Which means it's what you get to see.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Right.
Speaker 5 (35:30):
So, in twenty twenty one, we know that advertisers loved this.
In their fourth quarter alone, YouTube not Google overall, YouTube
itself made seven point nine billion dollars in AD revenue.
Fast forward twenty twenty five, their global ad revenue was
(35:50):
four zero point four billion forty point four billion dollars
for anybody who doesn't love math, just trust me, that's
a lot of money. That's probably too much money.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
And then if you love money, you already kind of
knew that.
Speaker 5 (36:04):
And your number is projected now as we record on
August third, to hit upwards of sixty two billion dollars
in twenty twenty six active users, however you want to
dignify them, two point nine billion per month. Love it
or hate it, This thing is a leviathan. It's relatively unique.
(36:27):
No one has surpassed it. There are competitors. I love
vemeo sho, shout out Vimeo. I think all film nerds do.
But it doesn't seem like anybody is going to replace
YouTube in the near future. And that's the problem because
no matter what it is, okay, no matter how you
identify and please hear me well on this, folks, monopolies
(36:48):
aren't bad for you as a customer. They are double
plus one good. It's you could find analogs and brick
and mortar.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Right.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
There are a lot of.
Speaker 5 (36:59):
People who say YouTube is like Walmart. It moves into
a town or a space, and it can quash similar
businesses simply by economy of scale, their size, the war chest,
the fact that they like raytheon can lose more money
for a longer time than you can if you're making
(37:20):
radio tubes by yourself, dude.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
And it can homogenize things, right, I mean, and that's
one of the craziest things we imagine about what YouTube
provides for people, what you get to hear and see,
And this kind of monopolization kind of makes all the
things a.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
Little bit of the same.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Sure, yeah, and that's part.
Speaker 5 (37:40):
That's one of the things we hear a lot of
critics arguing about with regard to YouTube, from allegedly unfair
business practices like the way ad revenue is split between
a creator and the company, the accusations of unfair censorship,
which is a big thing Dracodian demonetization, and much much
(38:03):
more so, Our question is is their stuff they don't
want you to know. I'm keeping the butt. We'll be
right back.
Speaker 4 (38:17):
Here's where it gets crazy. Maybe maybe, guys, maybe a.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
Better way for us to say it, to get into this,
is that there is stuff YouTube doesn't want to be
responsible for, right like Google doesn't want to be responsible
for a mass shooting, even though someone used Google to
buy a gun, used Google to Maps to find a
(38:43):
location and then shot people.
Speaker 6 (38:46):
What a great opportunity to talk about raytheon for a second,
since Matt wasn't able to be in on that one,
and that was a big thing we discussed in terms
of the whole argument of like does a company that
manufacturers like weapons of mass destruction and mass murder and warfare,
are they themselves responsible for those deaths? As a similar
argument to like Smith's and Smith and Wesson and firearms
(39:06):
manufacturers not wanting to take responsibility for school.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Shootings, This is a similar situation.
Speaker 6 (39:12):
And you pointed out, Ben that the absolute volume of
content on YouTube is a feature, not a bug, and
there is no possible way that that could be policed,
so to speak, by YouTube themselves, except when it kind
of benefits them.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Right.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Well, that was one of the main things YouTube was
concerned with in the beginning, right, just like Facebook, just
like all these other social media platforms, about the terrible
things that could be uploaded if you give that tool
to everybody who can possibly make a video or put
video up, there's danger there, right, And is it their fault?
(39:50):
It might be their fault if it goes up and
everybody sees it, so we as a company have to
protect ourselves more than anyone, for sure, that kind of stuff, right.
Speaker 6 (39:59):
And I obviously there are safeguards in place that would
prevent someone from, say uploading a video of like murder
or violence sticking place or something really horrific like that.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
But then it gets a little more nuanced when.
Speaker 6 (40:11):
It comes to like ideological content and like what is
and is not okay and what is incentivized and de incentivized.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
And I love Ben that you point on on the
outline here.
Speaker 6 (40:21):
That's when we start getting into Acts of Congress and
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as well as Communications Decency Act,
and how those things kind of play into the way
YouTube needs to approach.
Speaker 5 (40:33):
This and folks, breaking news just as intrusive as an ad.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
You could say, we have.
Speaker 5 (40:42):
So much to get to that this is going to
be a two chapter series, so please please please tune
in as we get further into the deep water surrounding
the powerful forces that have set their i of sourn
upon YouTube as an organization. Guys, I think we're all
(41:07):
excited for chapter two here, m hm for sure.
Speaker 6 (41:11):
Yeah, way too much to get to for one episode.
So do tune in for the second one. In the meantime.
If you'd like to find us on the internets, you
can do so by reaching out to the handle conspiracy
Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on what social media
platform is your favorite, you'll find us.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Oh hey, do you have one of these phone things?
You can call us. Our number is one eight to
three three std WYTK. It's a voicemail system. You've got
three minutes. Give yourself a cool nickname and let us
know if we can use your name and message on
one of our listener mail episodes. That don't show up
here in Netflix Land, they're in the audio verse. You
can find them. Just search for them. You'll see if
(41:49):
you want to send us an email.
Speaker 4 (41:50):
We are the.
Speaker 5 (41:51):
Entities that read each piece of correspondence we receive. Be
well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void rights back, which
makes this one of the best ways to contact us.
Twenty four hours and evening, seven evenings a week, you
can find us out here in the dart Send us,
by the way, in lieu of a random fact your
(42:11):
favorite weirdest, strangest thing you've ever seen on YouTube. Conspiracy
at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Stuff They Don't Want You to Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
What's up at your Boys? Conspiracy stuff? My name is Matt?
Speaker 3 (00:29):
What is this smash that like or subscribed?
Speaker 2 (00:31):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I'm know.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
They call me Ben.
Speaker 5 (00:34):
We're joined as always with our super producer, Dylan the
Tennessee pal Fagan. Most importantly, you are you. You are
here that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know. SOW For everybody tuning in on your podcast
audio platform of choice, one thing you need to know
from the beginning is that our show started as a
(00:58):
video series, and we owe a great deal of thanks
to the colleagues and the bosses at the time who
let us try out this mad cap escapade in the
first place. A tepid shout out, by the way, guys,
to Jonathan Strickland, who to this day, as we record
on Monday August third, remains convinced that he gave us
(01:22):
the name of the show.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
And he's right because I was in the room when
he said it.
Speaker 6 (01:29):
Was before my time. I cannot speak or I can
either confirm nor deny.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
These it was. It was in the break room at
one Capital City plause, I remember it like it was yesterday.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I thought it was Connall that said, he named the show.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
No Conall gave us the voice.
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Okay.
Speaker 5 (01:43):
And the interesting thing here is that now we are
somewhat old in the tooth.
Speaker 4 (01:50):
They're long in the tooth, right old in the day.
As far as podcastery goes.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
One of the things we have to point outright, I
want to be clear here, I'm always going to give
baby Jay a hard time because it's something we do,
uh for decades now, and the joke's not stopping.
Speaker 4 (02:10):
Jonathan, So thank you for tuning.
Speaker 5 (02:12):
In the aka the Quizter of Ridiculous History. We are
grateful for everyone that brought us here, including you tuning
in now. Most importantly, we owe a huge debt of
gratitude to a little up and comer video platform called YouTube.
(02:33):
Without YouTube, there's a strong argument that stuff they don't
want you to know would not exist in its present form.
Speaker 3 (02:40):
Mm hmm.
Speaker 6 (02:40):
Also, what is it shout out to Apple, Apple Video,
Apple Video iTunes?
Speaker 3 (02:48):
It was very video, not very clear.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Number one in the charts, Baby for like, I don't
even know three years when it existed.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
Speaker 5 (02:56):
It's like we were the number one we want to know,
like competitive ski team in Jamaica exactly. It's it was
a smaller sandbox back in the day. Is what you
need to know, fellow conspiracy realist.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
Well, Ben, even even to that point, think about what
we say at the beginning of every one of these
whether it's audio, Netflix, YouTube, every episode of stuff they
don't want you to know starts with what's the phrase? Ben?
We say our names and then you say.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
You can turn back now, or are you are you?
Speaker 2 (03:30):
You are here?
Speaker 3 (03:30):
Yes?
Speaker 4 (03:31):
Yes?
Speaker 2 (03:31):
That makes this stuff they don't want you to know, Yes, don't.
That is like back when we were going to YouTube school,
which was a thing, right, we all got certified. Having
a catchy thing that happens at the front of every
video was a thing we were supposed to do, right,
and we came up with our own thing and we
made it ours and we do it every time ritualistically.
(03:51):
But that was a thing that we did to kind
of appease the YouTube gods.
Speaker 6 (03:58):
And then the question becomes, where are they suggesting doing
that based on like psychological analytics and focused testing and stuff,
or were they just trying to create the thing that
became the thing.
Speaker 5 (04:10):
I think it's I think it's the latter there, Noel,
because one thing that is important to us is that
you realize you are the most important part of the show. No,
Matt is absolutely correct. We had a bunch of hoops
that YouTube wanted us or our company wanted us to
(04:31):
jump through YouTube hoops. For that being said, we we
enjoy this sort of stuff, and we saw and see
it as a differentiation between some other shows that maybe
have less of a mission.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
Not trying to downplay the sincerity or anything there that
we have, because it is there. It's just it's a
part of the rubrit that is required or was required,
or that YouTube at least said what is required to
be successful on their platform. Right, you've seen those videos before.
Everybody has their own little thing that they do a
little and it's time to go blah blah blah, and
(05:11):
then they get into their video. Every single creator out
there has that.
Speaker 6 (05:14):
And then they have like timing like he got to
ask for subscribe by this number of minutes into the video.
And it's all based on analytics, but it's also kind
of like in the early days that you're talking about, Matt,
I got a wonder too, Like without as much analytics
as they have now, it was sort of like them
kind of trying to set the tone for, you know,
what all online streaming video would look like.
Speaker 5 (05:37):
And I think that's a great point, Noel, because it's
sort of asking about whether Hama Rabbi was responding to
judicial precedent when creating the Code of Laws or was
h Hama Robbie and his team attempting to manifest it
by so many metrics. Right now, even as we record
(06:00):
in twenty twenty six, YouTube is the largest video platform
on the planet. And that being said, despite all the
amazing things that YouTube has done, and we'll have full
disclosure and disclaimers throughout this, you have to understand we
held off on this episode for a while, and now
(06:21):
we're going to give you what Upper Midwesterners in the
United States call the straight poop, because, as it turns out,
critics allege there's a ton of you guys knew I
was working on this pun for years. There's a ton
of stuff they don't want YouTube.
Speaker 4 (06:40):
No I think we got it. I think we got there.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
That's really good.
Speaker 6 (06:46):
Ben Well, it's so fascinating too, because YouTube is so
its own thing that like, compared to something like Netflix
other content distribution video streaming platforms, it kind of plays
by its own rules.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
And even those other companies like Netflix that we're on
right now.
Speaker 6 (07:03):
Of course, there's sort of a drive to sort of
be a little more like YouTube and kind of try
to capture some of that YouTube thing, but nobody quite
knows how to do it.
Speaker 5 (07:14):
Yeah, do that, Yeah, and then YouTube becomes at different
times in its history, YouTube becomes like Andy Warhol, staying
relevant by picking up new innovators like the bos Gayacht.
Here would be your TikTok or your short form video, right,
your Vine, your Instagram. Let's pause for word from a
(07:36):
sponsor and get back into it. Here are the facts, folks,
friends and neighbors, Tennessee pals, Rude Vegas conspiracy realist alike.
YouTube is undeniably a global phenomenon for a lot of people,
especially now in the age of streaming services sort of
(08:02):
reinventing cable packages. YouTube has replaced television. I think I
can speak for the group here when I say that
we all have our favorite YouTube channels, that we visit
on a semi regular basis.
Speaker 6 (08:19):
For sure, and some of them I watch or listen
to exclusively without having the video on, depending on where
I discovered a particular content creator, Like unless there's a
lot of like clips and you know, useful visuals, if
it's just folks talking in a room, I tend to
just listen to it. And YouTube knows that people do that,
and they make you pay a little extra for it,
(08:40):
and you have to be able to in order to
quote unquote mute the video and have the audio continue.
You got to pay for premio, which I think is
such an interesting little detail.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
How about you, Matt, Well, It's been a while since
I've been a massive YouTube user, but I lately I
have weirdly and perhaps contradictorily gotten into you reactors. And
it's because I'm I find myself in some kind of
strange nostalgia zone in my mind where I'm rediscovering music
(09:11):
that I love but through the eyes of others or
films that I vicariously cathartically.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
I do it all the time with I do it
all the time with rap hip hop. I love seeing
it's so crazy. I love seeing people who are not
the Billboard demographic for any kind of song or any
genre of music. Rediscovering it for the first time. A
grandmother makes my day when she hears Tupac Shakur's Dear Mama.
Speaker 6 (09:42):
Or you know, the flip side of that is, maybe
folks who grew up with hip hop had no exposure to,
say like heavy metal or just you know, indie rock,
like listening to Tool for the first time or Crimson
or something.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
I love.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Both sides of that are fabulous.
Speaker 5 (09:57):
I also love when musical experts in a very specific
instrument or genre of instrument are listening to something and
they say, oh, this percussive riff is amazing, or oh
my gosh, they know how to do the fluke correctly.
Speaker 4 (10:17):
This this is a unifying thing.
Speaker 5 (10:19):
This is a very positive thing about video content that
was indeed popularized by YouTube. And just like our earlier
episode on Wraitheon, which I hope we can still have
titled three Guys Got into Refrigerators and then war, Yeah,
that's great.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
Went for sure outside of time. I've been away and
I was so excited to come in and record the
raytheon episode today and I didn't realize you guys had
already done it, and it was the refrigerator early appliance
angle thing that I was so excited to talk with
you guys about and how everything turned.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
We can talk about it.
Speaker 5 (11:00):
It's still very much Also, it happens, as you know,
Matt from previous discussions, and as you know from previous discussions,
it happens whenever there's a large manufacturing base. And those
three nerds check out our previous episode. As they got
bigger and bigger, and before they invented the Patriot missile system,
(11:22):
they did end up buying a refrigerator company, Amana.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
I think I compared it to I forget the guy's name.
Speaker 6 (11:29):
He was portrayed sort of dramatized by Bradley Cooper in
Licorice Pizza. But he was Barbara Streisand's former hairdresser who
became a big movie executive and always wanted to fit
somehow a giant mechanical spider into movies and eventually got
there with Wild Wild West, which was of course a
massive flop. But he tried so hard to shoehorn that
(11:49):
giant mechanical spider, refrigeration, giant mechanical spider of Raytheon.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Sure there was there was there was one guy responsible
for that spider.
Speaker 5 (11:59):
Well, check out check out Mitchell and Webb's amazing sketch
that politely refers to the problem of civilian manufacturers meeting
wartime stuff and check out car Stuff for more of that.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
We know.
Speaker 5 (12:17):
The reason we're making the raytheon oor RTX Corporation comparison
here is that in February of two thousand and five,
more than twenty one years ago, as we record, there
were these three guys from PayPal. They were named Chad Hurley,
Steve Chen and Jawad Kareem. They created a site that
(12:41):
would allow users to upload and then interact with videos
user generated content.
Speaker 6 (12:49):
And the interesting thing is not like that was the
most unique idea in the world. And I think that's
why YouTube is so universally important because it's just like,
what if we had a way where people could contribute
videos and share them with each other. It was all
a matter of the technology and the Internet bandwidth and
speed becoming fast enough to support that, And then who
(13:10):
was going to be the ones that kind of figured
out how like smart way.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
To do it?
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (13:13):
Yeah, they figured out how to not just build a
sandbox but allow people to play more nimbly and more
actively in that sandbox interact. In this sense, it means
you could rate a video, you could comment, you could
share it. If you didn't like it, you could block it.
If you super liked it, you could add it to
(13:34):
a playlist. This was all very, very cool at the time,
and it's still cool now. They crowdsourced the stuff that
a lot a lot of previous outfits would have in
house moderators for, and at the same time they rode
the wave because technology, as all four of us know
(13:55):
and hopefully all five of us counting you tuning in.
At the very same time, there was something in the zeitgeist.
Technology was becoming increasingly affordable. Microphone equipment, cameras, these were
just in the span of a few months after two
thousand and five. This was increasingly democratized. You no longer
(14:19):
had to be paramounts. You didn't have to be eight
twenty four. I don't even know if they were around.
You didn't have to be a film studio. You just
had had to have less than one thousand dollars and
you were off to the races.
Speaker 6 (14:32):
Yeah, we're talking early, you know, I mean DV camera
technology I mean, like, you can look back at YouTube
videos in those days and they look kind of like
crap compared to now.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
But at the time we thought that was all fantastic.
Speaker 6 (14:42):
I mean, y'all remember even some of those what was
it FX there was like a Sony camera that was like,
you know, top of the line, really really expensive digital camera.
By today's standards, the aspect ratio is all funky.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
And they just look really really dated.
Speaker 6 (14:57):
But at the time, it felt like you could approach
the level of production that you might get from like
a TV series or films.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
All right, let's do some show Intel.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
This is historical show and tell from our experience with YouTube.
The first House Stuff Works YouTube video that ever came out,
Ben and Nola and I were not a part of
it happened on March ninth, two thousand and seven. It
was shot with this PD one fifty. I have the
PD one fifty that shot that video. Then Ben, the
(15:31):
first stuff they Don't Want You to Know video that
came out on the House Stuff Works channel was Stuff
they Don't Want You to Know Dash Nikola Tesla March
twenty third, twenty ten. And by that time, just that
short amount of years, we moved on to this baby,
and we shot all of our content with this beautiful
(15:52):
sony HDV camera.
Speaker 3 (15:54):
What's the ronda member of that one, Matt, I'm sorry
to them.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
Oh god, it's an HDV ten eighty I it's interlaced exactly.
Speaker 5 (16:03):
Oh yeah, so everybody pumped your brakes.
Speaker 4 (16:06):
We were serious.
Speaker 3 (16:07):
Well interlaced.
Speaker 6 (16:08):
It was kind of like the same type of technology
that went into two TV broadcast. Like it was like
pan and scan almost right, And it was a form
of like a way to compress the video file by
having certain even lines and odd lines and things like that.
Isn't that kind of what interlaced It was?
Speaker 2 (16:25):
Still, it was the old school thing, Ben that I
think you taught me about this as I was as
we were going through the technology. But the old school
CRT monitors that would give you different lines, you know,
as it's coming.
Speaker 4 (16:38):
In they take the filo Farnsworth.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Yeah, yes, so this that's what the interlace just means,
like two separate channels of video and then odd frames.
Speaker 5 (16:47):
And before we even got there, like this is this
is interesting? I shouldn't say, like this is not as simile, folks.
Hear what Matt said, Well, it's two thousand and seven,
when the first video from How Stuff Works comes out.
It's two thousand and five, when YouTube is a thing,
and for posterity sake, as a fanboy of YouTube, I
(17:10):
would like to share the very first YouTube video, which
I have assurances we can play in part here on Netflix.
Speaker 4 (17:19):
Ready remember this, can you guys? Guess? Can you guys? Guess?
Speaker 6 (17:22):
I remember only from reading the history of it. I
certainly don't remember from when it was a thing. But yeah,
it's historical at this point.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
And I didn't see it until we read it in something.
Speaker 6 (17:30):
But yes, this is like, this is crazy and there's
nothing to it.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
It is.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Those spoilers, folks.
Speaker 5 (17:38):
Remember we mentioned the three founders, Chad Hurley, Steve Chen,
Jawad Karim. The very first YouTube video is titled Me
at the Zoo.
Speaker 4 (17:51):
Will play it in part Oh.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
God, are we going to get a strike? All right?
Speaker 5 (17:56):
So here we are.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
These guys. Is that they have really, really really long.
Speaker 5 (18:06):
Funk And that's that's cool?
Speaker 3 (18:10):
What what an observation.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
That's all there is to say.
Speaker 5 (18:15):
That is a nineteen second video. It's the first, but
it's far from the last, and it is so endearing.
Obviously we are very biased because the first video on
YouTube was elephant content.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
We did just do it.
Speaker 6 (18:30):
Sorry you missed out on that one to Matt an
episode on Elephant Shows, which is a super bummer, unlike
that video, which seems to have a very pro elephant spin.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
Was this?
Speaker 6 (18:38):
I know they did it with the first tweet, but
didn't they didn't they make this into an FT and
sell it?
Speaker 3 (18:46):
Or was that just the first tweet?
Speaker 4 (18:48):
Oh gosh, I don't know.
Speaker 6 (18:49):
I definitely did it with the first tweet. Someone they
sold it as an NFT. Remember those kind of came
Let's see did the first YouTube video get sold?
Speaker 5 (18:58):
And while you're looking that up, let's point out that
a little more than a year later, not even two
years later, on the current twelve month calendar, November two
thousand and six, Google bought YouTube dot com for one
point six y five billion dollars. That same year, Time
(19:19):
magazine named their person of the Year you, specifically you,
and they said we're naming it you the person of
the year because YouTube is the people's platform. It can
create international understanding, it can connect disparate people in communities
(19:40):
and demographics. We are changing the world. We have no idea.
What's going to happen in you know, ten years from now.
Speaker 6 (19:49):
And just to clarify, yeah, that was minted as an
NFT and sold on open c but the originals we
can see did remain on YouTube and the NFT does
not represent owner ship of the actual copyright.
Speaker 3 (20:02):
It is just of the reproduced.
Speaker 6 (20:04):
Token of it all, which still calls into question why
didn't FT even matters?
Speaker 2 (20:08):
But carry on, Just to say in two thousand and six, guys,
in December, December twenty first, to be exact of that
same year, a guy named Bo Burnham put up a
little video called My Whole Family. You should check it
out if you haven't seen. It's incredible.
Speaker 5 (20:24):
Yeah, we're big Bo fans, and not just for the alliteration.
You should also check out every song he's ever made,
some of which age better than others. But just a
phenomenal musician, classic earworm. Maybe we'll have him on the
show in the future. I think he'd be a good
hang this. This is also you know, it's two thousand
(20:46):
and five, two thousand and six. The two thousand and
eight financial crash in the West has yet to occur, Right,
these are the boom years for tech.
Speaker 4 (20:56):
You've got a good idea.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
You go to Silicon Valley, someone throws money at you
in your face like clowns throwing pies at each other.
Bigger companies, leviathans are snatching up smaller groups left and right,
and often a lot of these companies end up going bust.
They end up losing millions upon millions of dollars. But Google,
(21:22):
later alphabet they made a really good bet here paid
off this user generated content site, which is what it
started as. It didn't just become successful, it changed the world.
It created countless subcultures. There are celebrities who entirely depend
upon YouTube for their success. There are controversies along the way.
(21:46):
Because we democratized a platform and we coupled it with
easily available technology and easy access, and then we had
a massive price drop that meant the old barriers to
video were quickly eroding. Anybody could be the next star
(22:07):
of the world. And you know, not surprisingly, people love
to talk about themselves. The people love to be seen
right especially now, so it's no surprise everyone was very
into the idea.
Speaker 6 (22:22):
And that democratization of technology can be applied to other
mediums as well, like recording equipment and garage band and
that also is for video, of course, because you got
a new MacBook or whatever, it came with iMovie. So
people didn't even have to buy Final Cut Pro, which
was you know, kind of pricey. We'll recall in the
early how stuff works days or I think Premiere. But yeah,
(22:45):
people automatically had a pretty reasonably you know, competent video
editing platform as well as like multi track audio.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Hey, we're going to take a quick break.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Don't forget to smash that like button.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Just quickly before we get into some of the more
modern things with YouTube. One of the reasons that Google
bought YouTube is because YouTube was struggling and it couldn't
make money. It couldn't make any money it had it
had these these versions of ads right now, they're called TrueView. Right.
This is the while you're watching a video, an AD
(23:27):
will pop up and it'll give you the option to
skip it in five seconds, but the advertiser only the
transaction only works if you go thirty seconds or more.
If you skip that ad, then it doesn't nobody gets
any money. Nobody makes any money. Right, and then there's
all the discovery videos that they put in there that
are sponsored that the platform gets paid for, but YouTube
(23:47):
could not make enough money to support itself for a
long time, and Google was kind of the savior that
came in because they're so big that they could just
absorb all of the essentially the money that YouTube was hemorrhaging.
Speaker 4 (24:01):
They could be a lost leader.
Speaker 5 (24:03):
Yeah, and that was also to be clear for our
three amigos, for our triumpht at the beginning, they were
baking in that kind of time window that is startup Logic,
that startup Calculus, and it's it's baffling because you're right, Matt,
Google alphabet did save YouTube because they we don't know
(24:27):
what happened to the back rooms, right, We were not
personally in the room where it happens. But we did
realize that Google made some sort of cost benefit analysis
that taught them this thing was a gold mine, or
now we would say a hydrogen helium mine, a platinum mine.
Speaker 6 (24:49):
Is you know, like oftentimes when an acquisition takes place,
it's because the potential of the thing is seen, but
the company under its current leadership and current funding levels
can't quite reach that you know.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Potential yet.
Speaker 6 (25:04):
And so Google not only saved them, not for like
you know, egalitarian reasons, because they knew they with their
algorithms and all of this stuff that they had control of,
they could make this the thing that it was always
meant to be, you know.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Because Google had AdWords, and the way Google has always
made money was through search. Like that is just what
they did, right. You type anything into Google and you're
gonna get all kinds of responses that are sponsored, that
are paid for to be there. In those responses you
bring you add YouTube to the mix. Now when everyone
uses YouTube as a search bar and to find the
(25:39):
thing you want, right, you can do the same thing.
That was their thought. And they've been struggling and struggling
and struggling all the way to the point where in
twenty eighteen they started their own subscription service, right, which
is trying to find another way to make money, to
make revenue as a giant corporation that needs increasing profits.
Speaker 5 (25:57):
Because for so many online initials. You have to understand, folks,
the Achilles heel is often add income. Is that is
the that is the great truth of a lot of
this stuff.
Speaker 6 (26:12):
Well, you gotta wonder too if Google Like was part
of the reason that YouTube wasn't able to succeed on
their own steam because they were so in control of
the pipes and of search and of all of that
stuff that only once they absorbed them were they able
to be like, well, now you're part of us, so
we can give you the juice that you always needed
(26:32):
and lacked.
Speaker 4 (26:33):
You know, Yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
They starved the beast almost you got I think.
Speaker 5 (26:38):
I like the referencing star of the Beast. I don't
know if it was quite at that level. It may
have been not so much algorithmic suppression at that point.
It may have been it may have been the boffin saying, hey,
we're seeing a lot of activity here because we obsess
about our metrics, so let's get this because we're projecting
(27:02):
more attention.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
And whatever the case may be.
Speaker 5 (27:05):
Google was correct, YouTube was correct as of twenty twenty three,
So again they started at two thousand and five. For
everybody playing along at home twenty twenty three, more than
five hundred hours of content are uploaded to YouTube every
single minute. Now where to point where roughly eighty two
(27:29):
human years worth of new video content of some sort
hits the platform every twenty four hours. That means there
is no way any single human person can watch everything. Statistically,
if you are human and you are tuning in, you
will not be able to watch even two days worth
(27:52):
of stuff. There are currently somewhere between two point five
eight billion to two point seven billion monthly active users.
So if all of those are individual cubans guys, that
equates to about thirty two point five percent of the
entire population of the planet. It's an impressive metric. It's
(28:16):
a terrified metric. We should also step it back a
little to let you know that those are Google's numbers,
and a lot of users have multiple accounts. Shout out
to everybody being creepy, we see you.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Well, I mean, on this machine that we're recording this on,
I have three YouTube channels subscriptions open at any given time.
So when I'm clicking through and depending on the browser
and in what context, I've got three different humans.
Speaker 5 (28:45):
Does that take you a user? Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's
why I think we have to copy on it.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Well, and they've got all these family plans too, right
where you've you can have up to five family members
on one thing. But each individual, you know, subuser within
that thing, is that a user? We don't know. There's
a lot of things in there that YouTube you know,
it's any company. They got to make the numbers look
as good as possible.
Speaker 5 (29:09):
Sure, like over AI, right, like every there's a great book.
Have you guys read the book Reverse Centaurs.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
We just talked about that with some way who do
we talk about that with? Oh? Well, we did it
on Strange News. We talked about the reverse centaur thing
of who's driving who?
Speaker 5 (29:26):
Basically right, Yeah, And there's there's a great exploration in
that book regarding how easy it is to construct metrics
that appear favorable or advantageous. And it harkens back to
the old Mark Wain stuff about how to how to
build statistics. We don't have to get into it.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
It's a great doctor the Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life
after AI.
Speaker 4 (29:53):
And we've got to get to and think of that map.
Speaker 5 (29:56):
We've got to get to audience distribution per YouTube. The
largest YouTube audience is in India, which makes sense. It's
a huge country. This the user stat active user stat
in India is like four hundred and ninety one million
(30:16):
to five hundred and eighteen million active users. That is
nearly double the size of the United States population. UH
number two, the United States Go team number three, Brazil
and for a long time, YouTube would champion this statistic.
(30:38):
They would say to advertisers, Hey, seventy seven percent of
everyone on the Internet who has aged between fifteen and
thirty five is on YouTube. And advertisers were like, you
know what would be awesome for this brain stuff video
if we had an unskippable sixty second an ad for
(31:00):
Harry's Racers or whatever.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Well, well this is why. And you can see maybe
if you imagine the boardroom, right or the whatever chats
they were doing on what they didn't use base Camp
or were they using probably Slack, the slack channels with
the upper echelons at both YouTube and Google talking about
these numbers and like, oh my god, look at the
(31:24):
money that is just sitting there waiting for us. We
just have to figure out how to capture it. And
they're seeing the ad sense, the you know, the the
money that they are trying to make with ads isn't
quite as great as it could be, but it is
pretty awesome, and we'll talk about that in just a moment.
But what they really saw was the data, right that
(31:44):
was being generated by all of those users.
Speaker 4 (31:49):
Now I know where you live, I know what you like,
I know how old you are. I have a cool
sense of who's in your house.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
Oh did put a credit card number in to pay
for your premium?
Speaker 5 (32:01):
I see you're watching a lot of videos on yacht.
That's more a more street level version, to steal a
term from MCU, would be, hey, you're watching a lot
of food videos.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
Hmmm.
Speaker 4 (32:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (32:20):
It's also I mean I was going to ask the
question or post the question earlier. Do you guys think
of YouTube as being a form of social media?
Speaker 2 (32:29):
Yeah?
Speaker 6 (32:29):
Absolutely, Yeah, it's sort of this weird crossover though, right
like it, I mean, it is a content distribution platform
like in Netflix or like you know, Vimeo, which you
shout out is like, you know, mainly like a music
video kind of driven thing that still does quite well,
but it also has the social media aspect, and it
is sort of the early days of generating that kind
(32:50):
of algorithmic data that drives the way we're being served
up this kind of like echo chambery experience of the internet.
Speaker 4 (32:58):
Coughed off. Reddit is social media as well.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Copy comments, comments, really comments, and sharing, right, Yeah, you're
posting stuff, you're commenting on it, you're sharing it. Yeah,
that's us g The last thing with the advertisers and
trying to figure out how to make money. They've got
the data potentially stream there that they can sell at
the third parties. But the huge thing that changed our
(33:23):
experience with YouTube that really altered the way we look
at it as a show as you know, a company,
a larger company, and everything occurred around that the shifting
times like twenty fifteen to twenty seventeen, where there's a
realization that we have to require the stuff that's being uploaded.
We've got literally almost infinite content that's being uploaded right
(33:46):
by the minute. We have to make sure the good
stuff that we like that advertisers like gets the ads
on it and everything else doesn't, which just means it's
a it's a top down focus on the stuff that advertisers,
that advertisers are going to think is cool.
Speaker 6 (34:03):
And that's kind of the old school model of television too.
It's just you know, much more scaled like TV shows
at the end of the day aren't made to be
high art. They're made to satisfy advertiser categories and demographic
groups and things like that. But it's with the streaming
and the advent of this algorithm and all of this
new data that just kind of segments that even further,
(34:26):
or like laser focuses that even further.
Speaker 2 (34:29):
And those categories for YouTube are beauty and fashion and lifestyle, sports, music, gaming, comedy, parenting, science,
and news. You know what's not in there, uh, government
cover ups, society.
Speaker 3 (34:50):
Advertisers don't go for that stuff.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Just putting that out there that has shaped controvers experience,
right then, I mean just when we look at especially
if we look at our specific YouTube channel and what
is approved or not approved to be advertiser friendly.
Speaker 6 (35:08):
Well, I look forward to getting into the conversation around
demonetization and a little bit and about like at what
point does the controller of the pipes kind of exercise
control over the content, even if they say that's not
what they do. They incentivize or de incentivize certain kinds
of content perio.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
Which means it's what you get to see.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
Right.
Speaker 5 (35:30):
So, in twenty twenty one, we know that advertisers loved this.
In their fourth quarter alone, YouTube not Google overall, YouTube
itself made seven point nine billion dollars in AD revenue.
Fast forward twenty twenty five, their global ad revenue was
(35:50):
four zero point four billion forty point four billion dollars
for anybody who doesn't love math, just trust me, that's
a lot of money. That's probably too much money.
Speaker 3 (36:01):
And then if you love money, you already kind of
knew that.
Speaker 5 (36:04):
And your number is projected now as we record on
August third, to hit upwards of sixty two billion dollars
in twenty twenty six active users, however you want to
dignify them, two point nine billion per month. Love it
or hate it, This thing is a leviathan. It's relatively unique.
(36:27):
No one has surpassed it. There are competitors. I love
vemeo sho, shout out Vimeo. I think all film nerds do.
But it doesn't seem like anybody is going to replace
YouTube in the near future. And that's the problem because
no matter what it is, okay, no matter how you
identify and please hear me well on this, folks, monopolies
(36:48):
aren't bad for you as a customer. They are double
plus one good. It's you could find analogs and brick
and mortar.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
Right.
Speaker 4 (36:58):
There are a lot of.
Speaker 5 (36:59):
People who say YouTube is like Walmart. It moves into
a town or a space, and it can quash similar
businesses simply by economy of scale, their size, the war chest,
the fact that they like raytheon can lose more money
for a longer time than you can if you're making
(37:20):
radio tubes by yourself, dude.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
And it can homogenize things, right, I mean, and that's
one of the craziest things we imagine about what YouTube
provides for people, what you get to hear and see,
And this kind of monopolization kind of makes all the
things a.
Speaker 3 (37:37):
Little bit of the same.
Speaker 4 (37:38):
Sure, yeah, and that's part.
Speaker 5 (37:40):
That's one of the things we hear a lot of
critics arguing about with regard to YouTube, from allegedly unfair
business practices like the way ad revenue is split between
a creator and the company, the accusations of unfair censorship,
which is a big thing Dracodian demonetization, and much much
(38:03):
more so, Our question is is their stuff they don't
want you to know. I'm keeping the butt. We'll be
right back.
Speaker 4 (38:17):
Here's where it gets crazy. Maybe maybe, guys, maybe a.
Speaker 5 (38:22):
Better way for us to say it, to get into this,
is that there is stuff YouTube doesn't want to be
responsible for, right like Google doesn't want to be responsible
for a mass shooting, even though someone used Google to
buy a gun, used Google to Maps to find a
(38:43):
location and then shot people.
Speaker 6 (38:46):
What a great opportunity to talk about raytheon for a second,
since Matt wasn't able to be in on that one,
and that was a big thing we discussed in terms
of the whole argument of like does a company that
manufacturers like weapons of mass destruction and mass murder and warfare,
are they themselves responsible for those deaths? As a similar
argument to like Smith's and Smith and Wesson and firearms
(39:06):
manufacturers not wanting to take responsibility for school.
Speaker 3 (39:09):
Shootings, This is a similar situation.
Speaker 6 (39:12):
And you pointed out, Ben that the absolute volume of
content on YouTube is a feature, not a bug, and
there is no possible way that that could be policed,
so to speak, by YouTube themselves, except when it kind
of benefits them.
Speaker 3 (39:28):
Right.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
Well, that was one of the main things YouTube was
concerned with in the beginning, right, just like Facebook, just
like all these other social media platforms, about the terrible
things that could be uploaded if you give that tool
to everybody who can possibly make a video or put
video up, there's danger there, right, And is it their fault?
(39:50):
It might be their fault if it goes up and
everybody sees it, so we as a company have to
protect ourselves more than anyone, for sure, that kind of stuff, right.
Speaker 6 (39:59):
And I obviously there are safeguards in place that would
prevent someone from, say uploading a video of like murder
or violence sticking place or something really horrific like that.
Speaker 3 (40:09):
But then it gets a little more nuanced when.
Speaker 6 (40:11):
It comes to like ideological content and like what is
and is not okay and what is incentivized and de incentivized.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
And I love Ben that you point on on the
outline here.
Speaker 6 (40:21):
That's when we start getting into Acts of Congress and
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as well as Communications Decency Act,
and how those things kind of play into the way
YouTube needs to approach.
Speaker 5 (40:33):
This and folks, breaking news just as intrusive as an ad.
Speaker 4 (40:40):
You could say, we have.
Speaker 5 (40:42):
So much to get to that this is going to
be a two chapter series, so please please please tune
in as we get further into the deep water surrounding
the powerful forces that have set their i of sourn
upon YouTube as an organization. Guys, I think we're all
(41:07):
excited for chapter two here, m hm for sure.
Speaker 6 (41:11):
Yeah, way too much to get to for one episode.
So do tune in for the second one. In the meantime.
If you'd like to find us on the internets, you
can do so by reaching out to the handle conspiracy
Stuff or Conspiracy Stuff Show, depending on what social media
platform is your favorite, you'll find us.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
Oh hey, do you have one of these phone things?
You can call us. Our number is one eight to
three three std WYTK. It's a voicemail system. You've got
three minutes. Give yourself a cool nickname and let us
know if we can use your name and message on
one of our listener mail episodes. That don't show up
here in Netflix Land, they're in the audio verse. You
can find them. Just search for them. You'll see if
(41:49):
you want to send us an email.
Speaker 4 (41:50):
We are the.
Speaker 5 (41:51):
Entities that read each piece of correspondence we receive. Be
well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void rights back, which
makes this one of the best ways to contact us.
Twenty four hours and evening, seven evenings a week, you
can find us out here in the dart Send us,
by the way, in lieu of a random fact your
(42:11):
favorite weirdest, strangest thing you've ever seen on YouTube. Conspiracy
at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 2 (42:36):
Stuff They Don't Want You to Know is a production
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