Hey, mark, its good to see you. Thanks. Joining us today. Yeah, for having me. Yeah, well, it was a really fun read and i kind of wanted to just jump in to the conversation i have a lot of love questions, but just to start off, i wanted to just see if you can explain kind what what inspired you write the book obviously youve written on google and youtube for years but like what led you to to decide this is something need to write a whole book about. So i have been covering google since 2015 and then it became and and really its an expanding kind of business conglomerate an empire and during that time youtube its media division, became increasingly important. The companys bottom line. It also became increasingly important for the companys political hurdles and some of their Major Business problems in the past seven years. And so during time i was reporting on a lot of the major crises that that youtube and its Parent Company dealt with sort of fire after. And what i saw was a really fascinating in the short period of time this whiplash you have these employees at google and youtube who see themselves as an underdog to traditional media to traditional corporate world and hollywood. And then within a few short years theyre google and youtube viewed almost equivalent big tobacco. And youve seen the social media backlash. Google has faced intense amount of unprecedented political scrutiny. I thought was a fascinating story about this media platform. Thats really despite its size and influence. Its just not had the same level of attention as some of its peers. And i thought within that story that you have plenty of fascinating characters youtube and then inside the company have this whiplash of going from the underdog to sort of seen as tech and seen as something that for associated with a lot of problems in democracy, right . Yeah and im curious who you were able to speak at the company. I mean, who who they gave you access to, how you got all this inside baseball information for for the book. Yeah. Mean i came to the companies and since day one that i was writing this this was a i wanted it to be a definitive genuine and accurate depiction of the companies operations. What its gone through i and its responded i think my my case to them you know youtube is situated in the problems they face in part because they have this this major creator economy. You know, they are the only platform for a very long time that paid creators paid broadcasters. And so they have this gigantic engine that has ramifications for peoples professional lives. And thats, i think, characterize a lot of the challenges they went through. So i spoke to about a dozen sort of officially with company. This is ranging from everyone on, you know, marketing roles to engineering to products going up to number two at the company. And my additional reporting i spoke to over 100 people that have either worked there or had worked in the past in a variety roles, basically talking to anyone was willing to to share their time and their story. Mm. Yeah. I mean what found was interesting is you cited a google employee who said they viewed youtube as the video scaffolding of the internet and that also it is the number two Search Engine behind google. And i just think that was kind of the surprising information for me. Can you kind of share kind of how that youre talking about the underdog . You know, aspect . I dont know how widely known that youtube is, is the Search Engine itself even though it was one of the driving forces. Why google scooped it up. Yeah, it was it was early in youtubes life. So it was 18 months after it started in october of 2006. Google agrees to buy youtube for 1. 6 billion, which at the time was just enormous sticker shock for the financial, for the media world, for people inside google, certainly youtube by then had had already had sort of an enormous success finding an audience with viewers. It had started to become part of the wider culture or culture or pop culture, firmament and, and but google really saw youtube as a fantastic search property and in that way is as a threat in the sense that, you know, google is is wanted to become the best premier Search Engine remain on the internet. Its all youtube. People are going to youtube to look for just, you know, entertaining to pass the time and idol entertainment as well as to videos and seeking information in the same way that in commercial the same way they would go to google that changed that. I mean, youtube has only become stronger and deeper as a search platform, right . Its sort of weve all had this experience where its that like any specific thing were looking to do, whether its like fix, you know, a small part of your car or baker recipe. There is probably a Youtube Video out that explains how to do it means that theres someone whos taking the to upload that video and potentially made money from it its just the breadth of of the platform is really hard to come to terms with right and its its birth the creator economy so and youve alluded to that but can you kind of explain the significance that and how its really set the stage for all these other social media apps that have now started paying their creators. Im thinking tick tock instagram, facebook snap. But it really was the original there and and how that evolved over. Time yeah, i mean youtube of invented a new form of fame like we we now have online who are more recognizable to generations and teenagers and kids and people in their twenties than Hollywood Alisters and that has been the case maybe for for the past decade. You know, youtube began very early, remarkably, in 2007, sharing the ad revenue from its site with a small select group of popular creators that started to expand and become professionalized relatively quickly. And then to up to a point now where where they have over 2 Million People are on youtubes ads partner program. That was actually a larger number. A few ago because the company had to call that back for a variety of reasons but its just this incredibly robust economy it is launch its like new Media Companies many careers and now youre seeing especially during the pandemic right where where creators became a really valuable franchise for our value vehicle for companies to do marketing. The influencers just became you know, these very popular and profoundly they have a relationship with an audience that just celebrities on tv and conventional media dont necessarily. So weve seen twitch snap Snapchat Tiktok all the matter of properties spotify in particular are all kind of hurling at this creator class in war for talent thats been happening and i only see in its early stages right now totally and and going back kind of the basis of youtube itself you referred to it as like the three legged stool audience creator advertising. But throughout the book you mentioned so many tensions. Those three factors and how often the creator is left as the the the most uneven stool even though that as were referring to it, they are the basis of youtube. Theyre what created youtube. So could kind of talk about some of those tensions and how they changed over time. Yeah, its a wobbly stool for sure. Yeah, its you know, i mean, you talk to advertisers and think that creators are sometimes coddled on the platform and in some circumstances like giving more latitude than than an advertiser. Certainly like a more cautious conservative advertiser would want. You know. The other constituency is the viewer. And i think you can from my reporting shows that you can you can clearly make the argument that, you know what has done for viewers is this amazing mass of entertainment, free entertainment information never existed. Two decades before. And we kind of take for granted, take advantage of now. But its theres not a lot of transparency for you, a viewer. And ill give it like one one interesting example. So the past few years as youtube has responded to a lot of criticism, theyve instituted this policy called what they call borderline videos. And so these are videos that dont break their rules about hate speech, harassment, graphic violence and supporting kind of extremist positions. But they go right up to the line of them and this is a really arbitrary line and what youtube has done a pretty powerful tool which is okay were just not going to put these videos on our recommendation engine. So its the traffic on those once theyre removed from the youtube Recommendation System, it really plummets because that is a majority of views on videos as people being recommended footage and just kind of autoplay you know, one video that jumps to the next or that panel of videos is on the screen. If youre looking at a desktop computer, me as a viewer i have no idea that this video in front of me has been deemed borderline i have no idea this video, you know is is potentially violating some rules are in questionable territory and and you know that the creators at the same time dont necessarily have that indication either and thats sort of that part of the reason many one of many reasons why the creators feel shortchanged especially compared to traditional media, which is also on youtube right and and that all kind of came to a head you talk about in the book in 2017 with the ad pocalypse you call it and just that was just talking about the tensions with some violent extremist content being promoted on the platform by certain creators, that being tied to advertisers who who do not want to obviously be associated with that content other of you know videos that also viewed as offensive that ads were still running on so could you kind of talk about maybe what led to that, what there are some pretty dramatic changes that happened after after that time period. Yeah, i think there are there are a couple of things going on. One is sort of wonky business, right . Like google is a Digital Advertising company like it makes its majority of its putting ads front of your search results and then putting ads the web either on website or on Youtube Videos. This has been a Business Model that has fundamentally reshaped how marketing works and. You know, it kind of took this what traditionally like a handshake agreement on madison avenue, literally. Its you know, im a a company and i want my ad to run on this tv station and this show or on this billboard. Right. What youtube did. But google did. Was it this upended that and it said, like, we can will serve at your ad to where will reach the best consumer. What that did was and then they will do it in an automated way. So they built this fantastically complex Automated System equivalent to sort of Financial Markets that with all these exchanges and market and like basically these a lot of software to to determine when to serve you an ad that youre most likely to click on. So what happened in 2017 was you and i were reporters that found that some of the major household brands and names and even nonprofits were sponsoring terrorist videos, extremist neonazi, the kind of inappropriate that if you sat down a know chief marketing and said youre spending money on this, they clearly would not want to continue doing so. And they didnt want their names in the headlines associated with that and was you know it was a relatively small percentage of the budget. It just demonstrated how this this model had been built and built so quickly and wasnt prepared to deal with that kind of avalanche of advertisers exiting. Right and then after that, i mean, they did up having to change some of their their business and Digital Advertising modeling. Also, it led to some major changes in how they moderate content, i think as well. This was also, i guess the second point was this was the beginning early the Trump Presidency in the era. And you had, you know, major advertisers that were much more cautious about and id say even venture to say like did not want to go anywhere near remotely political issues and topics. And then you have and google that also wanted to steer clear of of anything of remotely political they were the beginnings this accusation that the company has a bias against conservatives in the u. S. So you know their their response was was pretty i would say was pretty severe like. The number of changes they made and youtube now versus youtube in 2017 looks profoundly different. And they put in effectively like safeguards and systems to make sure that their advertising business would continue to operate and and and on some level, that has worked very well that they are the earliest we have for youtubes financials from the company is that in 2017 they made 8 billion. Last year they made close to 29 billion. And advertising its been phenomenal growth. And so at least on one metric, they, you know, satisfied advertisers. Theres certainly open questions about whether or not theyve satisfied regulated or concerned from parents. So, you know, you name it. Right. And speaking of use of ai tools, theyre obviously deployed in advertising. Theyre deployed in the Recommendation Systems, but also around 2017, i think time period were deploying it to automatically moderate content to because because it seemed obviously more and more content was getting on the platform and never saw human review initially. So could you kind of talk about the evolution of content moderation and well talk about youtube kids next is an example of where they really had to build it up. Yeah i mean the content moderation theres theres a really telling anecdote the book that these teams early team is so they were they hired these early moderators on staff they it the squad which is the stands for an acronym and hopefully i get those right its like safety and quality of users forgive me not getting it exactly right but i remember squad detail in the book and and but these were like sort of the thing front line workers of the internet, right . This was in 2000, 5006, which was there was just beginning to have what we call the user generated content. And this proliferation of material that was to your point, not programed unfiltered and they had teams and like wrote these rules and they were i think pretty adaptive given the fact that they were in some ways inventing this on the fly warnings. The example is, you know, there was a early on this trend on the internet of like whats called the inspiration. So its women, young girls posting videos like pro anorexia material. And so there are people on youtubes policy team on they identified this and so this is a trend that we do not want on our community. Right . We dont want videos promoting and not for like this point. Keep mind like youtube basically didnt have commercial business or it was like britney nascent and. They then outlawed this this practice or at least set rules. They restricted it as far as restricting it for for younger viewers, of course, these like theres a big gap in the history of youtube. Like like all platforms between the rules that they write and what actually happens on the site and that enforcement is is incredibly difficult. Very difficult. And video like youtube has a unique problem that. Facebook and twitter have not had because facebook and twitter are largely text based. Its just its the the Software Works right now is far easier to analyze immediately text and identify like if youre looking for certain keywords, it is much harder to do that in a video and you also have to deal with visuals as well as audio. So at a certain point, you know, youtubes size began, i think just grew too large. Their for the moderation team, they started to outsource this this operation. And in late 2017, after like this the series of business crises and more regulatory pressure, they they went out and hired thousands of contract moderators to build up the team that they sort of still work with today. Right. Yeah. And that was really novel. I think what kind of inspired more dramatic human intervention think you explain was with elsa gay in the youtube kids era if you want to kind of describe broadly what what means. I mean it sounded like adults dressing up in kind a comical look of elsa was obviously from if someone did not know and taking of you know key keywords in the tagging but but also doing activities that kids should not be seeing it seemed like so that seemed to have gone out of control for probably too long because sounded like youtube kids there wasnt i mean it was a platform in theory youtube want parents to be watching it with their children. But the reality was children were watching it on so could kind of explain the outcome of that and then i guess yeah so because of the way that that internet laws work i mean this is basically like, you know, the only way that that youtube was restricted by from from day one and that it had coppa, the restriction on like what you can what type of targeting and data you can collect from from minors 13 and for that reason site was very explicitly or well rather i dont know how explicit it was because it was the terms of service that as we know on the internet, like few people actually read but its like this is a very site for 13 and in over if youre a kid under 13 you are watching with your parents and it was 2015 there was like 2015 there was just so much abundant material on youtube that was clearly for toddlers and kids younger than 13 with a company that, as they said, they built an app called youtube kids. And this was their attempt to say this is sort of to make a safe space for children, i think for a variety of reasons that not taken off. And i think the traffic on that is just minuscule compared to youtube. Com they were criticized pretty on from from some outside groups for the because they didnt do they didnt curate an and like handpick the videos that were going in there was their videos in there that certainly parents found inappropriate that became in 2017 when there was just so much videos that were designed to get kids to watch. And enough people at youtube decided this like inappropriate and something that to be honest that they would want their children to watch. I think that was a major point in the company and keep in mind, i think like they were aware this was putting them close to close to uncomfortable territory as far as regulation. Right. And and and you have, you know, quotes from susan we just ski the ceo saying. You know, this was not what it was intended to do. And obviously directed the hiring of, you know, the goal was 10,000 content moderators humans that was that for google wide. Okay. It was one of the frustrating moments where youtube tends to like announce a figure like that i was like, that was a very large summer, read the fine print and. Its i mean, i think it was mostly youtube. But, you know, google also has teams moderate Google Search and images. And so on. So yeah, yeah. But me for that. Oh, no, no. Thanks for clarifying. But ultimately like it puts a lot of the burden on these content makers who are contractors. And i think maybe people arent aware. They dont get the big salaries and benefit of google and youtube employees and often work in different of the world. Could you kind of talk about the difficulties this this put on these individuals and and kind of the blowback that inadvertently happened and then that. Yeah. Mean there is it is to your point a lot of them are contracted out and to to vendors that the google hires rather than being full time youtube employees. The company says that the reason that they do that is because they just want to hire people very quickly i which is a in a sense that its accurate that that like the way that youtube tends to hire people takes some time for their hiring. So theyre i mean, for one, you know, certain types of and then i talked to the people who have these jobs right. Their job was to youtube calls it very violent extremism like this is some of the most graphic violence and a lot of it is you know youtubes goal here is to build software that can detect all of this without any human intervention but there are things that that obviously like fall through the cracks are really just strange calls that that the machine cant detect when not someones you know there was there was a its a macabre anecdote but there was something in the in this story about a moderator i spoke to who watched this video. And it looked like a beheading video. But then someone was like using a toothbrush instead, a knife. And so like that technically doesnt violate the rules, but it is traumatic there. The videos about Child Exploitation is another area where, for regulatory reasons and i think just the company obviously does not want that material on its but there are people that have to moderate it if its not been flagged by Automated Systems and you know youtube has built up the most advanced system for automating and and moderating and then the stat they share is something on the order of more than 90 of videos break the rules are taken down by is a Software System rather than the moderators but its still youre right it relies on moderators who are trying to understand and rulebooks that the company writes basically trying to train machines to operate in a particular way and many of them have fairly jobs. Right. Think one of the most significant examples of violent content that made it onto platform was christ the Christ Church shooting in 2019. And even in the book neil mohan their content, a lot of content was saying that that the, the tragedy itself was almost designed for the purpose going viral because while it may have been upload initially on facebook clips of it were reshared on youtube cons only and taken down and that was a big battle to get control of that. How would you say theyve managed since then . I mean, its just second. Isnt whacamole a battle . It seems not just youtube. These platforms face kind of that same i tragically we have a have another example more recent to to demonstrate the buffalo shooting which operated on and like a bleak you know almost a similar sort of manifesto inspiration of an avowed white supremacist for my understanding like youtube did not they they did have people uploading that footage i think there was less in less volume and i think the company is much more prepared now. Right. Yeah, this is just a like i think to be honest its is we can kind of them of being naive but certainly no when they started the Company Expected someone to live stream their mass shooting its just in some ways its unfathomable and that was i think whats really compelling and about the book is that is a company thats dealt with the darkest parts of humanity. Right. Yeah, i know exactly. And i mean, i do feel like the founder was who you talk about. And we havent really discussed, really the founders. So kind of talk why what their intent of the of the platform was and obviously they are no longer with platform so it seems to have gone in a different direction with advertising. But but did seem like the intent was just to share videos among family and friends and and a pretty you know maybe naive but you know obviously a intent for good obviously when it larger its less in control but yeah love to hear more about the founders and their personal and it seemed like chris was the longest one who stuck with the company. Oh, chad, chad, chad. Yeah, hurley. Yeah, yes. There were three. They had all worked paypal before where they met and this was i mean, this was a time in the internet of the dawn of like what web 2. 0. And so there were myspace. Um, you know, this was like my youtubes early success was, was really dependent on myspace. They kind of like wrote myspace virality. Its hard to believe that now, but facebook was founded a few months before youtube and and yet the central problem was that you know video video file sharing on the internet was cumbersome, expensive and they decided to that they were being an interesting Business Opportunity to solve that and to their credit they you know they they did develop and simple easy to use site like i think thats a major reason why youtube beat out a lot of its competitors yeah my from talking and i spoke to one of the founders and ive like talked to a lot of people who knew them and work with them at the time you know they its interesting like theyre not as well known so thats the third time that you i karim before google acquired them. Steve chen and chad hurley are sort like the coleaders of youtube at a time they both were gone by 2010 theyre not like obviously zuckerberg or dorsey at twitter these entrepreneurs that have had like a very and sometimes tight control and vision and like the company sort of seed certainly and facebook now meadows case like it a company run by one person. I mean and you know, the youtube founders like certainly had some probably google it in directions that they didnt love. My sense is they were like part of a panera the of the internet where youre like solving a consumer need which they did they they were sort of like describe this kind of this wild rollercoaster ride. Right . Like as soon as they joined google, theyre shipped around the world to open youtube offices. And in germany and russia and and in japan and and korea. And and it was this time euphoria. Someone in the book calls it the internet an awesome right like. And then we leave it to arab spring. Which when, when, when we like thought of social media as and was a revolutionary force, a platform for documenting and witnessing real actual revolutions, upheaval that media in a way that traditional media just in countries with state run media like thats where is is an incredibly powerful force. All right and and talk about kind of the leadership style under susan, which is one of the few female ceos in the tech world and one shes had i mean, shes there eight years since 2014, since you know, a lot of changes but but still there. And i dont know if. You have any sense how long shes planning to but im curious how thats i. I dont have a sense. Yeah ive heard varying i guess ill tell you the varying stories. Ive heard it in the sense that like on one extreme people wonder its why shes still in that job. I mean, its you are she google was founded in her garage. She is like tight with the founders of google who have by now left the company. Theyre still the majority majority shareholders but theyre effectively and but they they still have influence and sway so shes in an inner circle of a company that has basically been run by inner circles, a youtube ceos, a very difficult job like you have lot of different constituencies. You have to keep there. Was it improved this . But there was a point in time when sort of during some the crises you youtubers found it you youtubers its sort of a a rite of passage that a makes a video griping youtube which is totally fair but some youtubers found oh we can gripe about the this the ceo this company and like oh shes a woman and now shes a jewish woman like we can make harassment, we can make videos that where i think a borderline harassment and antisemitic certainly ones that were not hard for me to find so it is a difficult job. That being said ive also heard the argument that is a you know that she has you know youtube as a as a business has been growing fairly well in the past five years. They certainly have regulatory challenges, but theyre not facebook. They googles advertising business effectively like runs keeps the does a lot of the keeps the fuel in that fire. So i dont i mean i think her record is certainly like wall street is very happy with the direction that shes taken the platform from there are critics that will point out many spots and i think people inside the company have admitted to me that moved late on on so many issues right and im thinking of your speaking of some of the sexism she personally faced but within the company there were allegations of Sexual Misconduct among staffers among leadership and staffers led to. November 2018 walkout 20,000 staff across the company around the world participate voted led by Claire Stapleton who you use interviewed and spoke with pretty. It seemed like she was a big player in book so and they she even brought the concerns to to susan herself so but claire is no longer there. So im wondering like how receptive you think youtube has been to these concerns raised about sexism among employees. Yeah so you mentioned that the claire was a major character in the book. Shes like have this fascinating at youtube and google i think that that through the what i mentioned in the reporting in the book is and in particular around the discrepancy in salaries for female employees youtube and people of color. I like the google reports those figures and still face criticism. You know theres now an Alphabet Workers Union that like regularly criticizes a company for there hasnt been any to my knowledge like any reporting on harassment claims specifically at youtube its involving its executives. Theyre certainly like it was part of the walkout some of the like there were certainly youtube employees there and half the actual walkout were worked at youtube. So i think they were in part its just a its a part of that is more attuned to pop culture and to news just by virtue of the fact that it is a Gigantic Media platform. Right. Exactly. And moving forward, another big that the platform continues struggle with is the spread of misinformation. We look back to 2020 and the spread of the big lie after the results and the eventual banning donald trump from the platform. But heading into the midterms and and next year how how do you foresee the platform. To address misinformation do you see many changes in their 20 midterm 22 plan that was announced the other week. So to be clear, trump is not banned se but hes actually indefinitely suspended. Indefinitely, yes. Yes. And and youtube is said they consider reinstating when they like the threat of violence has subsided which is an incredibly vague statement. But my sense is that they i mean, id be shocked if they moved before facebook, which has given similar to the trump i mean, youtube made this is an area where they made some some pretty dramatic changes. The sense that this type of policy around election misinformation didnt exist. A few years ago. Right. And, you know, i this is not in the book, but i think the hopefully the sentiment gets across like there are people talked to who worked at youtube who disagree that policy in part youtube is a global platform. And their argument was when theres a contested election in like where do we where do we as an American Company land this. I think thats a that argument falls apart a little bit in the sense that like the stakes of a of a us election are different and the idea of being if we operate in a country like unless youre prepared to make that decision, but that is i think a captures something about how the Company Thinks like they moved pretty reluctantly to do what they have and stay there are rules you know you cant make videos giving false claims about how to or you cant say the voters the elections on on wednesday when its actually on tuesday you cant make threats of violence around and now after so after six and before then but theyve ramped up the pay more attention to this since after january 6th like there are rules about youre saying that 2020 election is rigged and there was a recent example where i believe kerry blake is the name of the elected official or sorry, the one who is running for office in arizona. Anna. Right. And she was on high profile youtuber named steven crowder, conservative pundit and commentator, over 6 million subscribers is been a controversial and were lightning rod on that on the platform had her on it sort similar to a news show he is a hes a podcaster a talk radio host and she discussing the election and suggest and said it right out that it was it was and that video was removed and then the account was suspended something that the youtube would not have done. I think there they are a few years ago i think going into the the upcoming midterms itll be really interesting to see, you know, where they draw the line as far as is you know with that, she had said the same thing on fox news. Would they have treated that very differently . And i think i think youtube has pretty reluctantly lines where it or what they call authoritative channels. And so, you know, cspan has videos on youtube, right. Like cnn, these sort of established Media Companies are higher and Search Rankings are theyre trying to promote more to. A you saw this in the during the election where there were a couple protrump networks newsmax one america news that had fairly big audiences on youtube and youtube. I would say at the time, listen, we are not putting any of their videos in our Recommendation System like viewers are finding this on their own, going out and searching for it. You oddly like a lot of the maybe not oddly, but a lot of those videos went went viral on facebook or gab on a right wing social network, not on youtube itself. Their approach is theyre fine through tweaking the rules and then doing as much as doing what they they they as much as they can. Around the download ranking any channels that would put them. And i think a difficulty around election misinformation but it is an incredibly knotty problem for them that i dont think theyve solved and maybe cant right now i think it seems pretty very challenging. But another area is how they work in other countries. So in russia and in india or other environments where there there is rules on, certain speech and what youre allowed to say. Interestingly, after the beginning of the war in ukraine, its youtube. Bruni remains one of the few platforms allowed there in, russia. So, you know, russias kicked out a lot of the other platform gms for not following their rules. But so could you talk about kind of the the dance the song and dance youtube does in other countries that dont have as strong of or as wide of an allowance of free speech as the us does . Yeah, i think thats a really fascinating that is probably maybe the companys biggest challenge right now and not getting enough attention india is a really fascinating is youtubes biggest market the startup a shared most recently and that was i think from 2020 is 325 monthly users so thats the equivalent of the entirety United States thats had someone on youtube there and 25 million yeah next the year and im sure the number is bigger in part because tik tok is banned on youtube or sorry, tik tok is banned in india. And so, you know, theyve been paying more attention to to misinformation, to hate speech, to harassment. And it is complicated in india, has dozens of languages and is not. Youtube has recently written caste into their policies. But its difficult to moderate but at the same time you have the governments the bjp in india that has been insisting that all videos come down for violating misinformation or extremism rules. Some videos certainly fit this. Others are appear to be just critical of the government. And so this is something that youtube has dealt with a lot in the past right there from almost day one in outside the us. Right. Like they were even banned in pakistan, they were banned then and briefly in thailand and turkey, countries where it felt like videos were being critical of them in thailands case, the king, the ruling party, the government in egypt has for a long time took pride in standing up to these countries. I think in countries india now, because its so you to be big they have so much invested in and so much at stake there. I have a hard time seeing them retreat. I mean, russias another interesting example like they have taken down state media in russia after the war in ukraine and i was one of many people that sort of fully expected russia to block youtube. And it has not yet, i think in part because youtube is just so there and part of the mainstream culture and Entertainment Complex that that i it seems to be one of the major reason why it continues to operate they have theyre theyre no longer running ads there as business in russia but you know, youtube will point out often and i think fairly that the opposition russia has a big presence there and and that is a space in with either state controlled media or something equivalent youtube can a powerful opposition a powerful platform for for opposition guy youre saying navalnys account is one of the largest in fact his followers so i mean that seems to be another reason why its so widely used russia this time but yeah dash cams are also really popular like a lot of cars and in russia have dash cams and so you have like some of the most entertaining dash cam footage coming it and theyre big theyre, big online personalities. Theyre like, yeah, you know, youtube remains despite like it certainly has everything under the sun but but, you know, there is like music, gaming, beauty, like categories are gigantic, right . Another i wanted to talk about was we just he says in the book, one of our biggest fears is regulation and it really wasnt until september 2019, they saw their biggest fine from the ftc, the 170 million, which really isnt that much for a youtube, but the largest ftc has fined date for violating the childrens Online Privacy protection act. Could you talk about the significance of that and the ramifications here . One significance is its really been to date the only us regulator to crack down big tech in a meaningful way. And congress hasnt passed so far. And despite many proposals and i think weve seen at the state level around privacy and. Um, but, but this was, this had a significant effect on youtube. And like one of that, it is something that viewers see, right . If you go on right now, if you like go a nursery rhyme channel any like popular kids channel youre not going to see comments theyve been disabled whats happening the background is youtube is no longer running its higher priced targeted behavioral ads based on like the the you know our surfing or user on those channels and and that has as a consequence it impact the the creators that were on there i think you know from what i understand that was sort of balanced out by that happened and youtube made that change early 2020 and then a few months later, the pandemic and since the pandemic traffic especially on kids videos has just taken off and skyrocketed. So youre almost talk to like some youtube people who are like family and kids space and like that sort of even now in some ways, they they paid a lot more attention to like they were sexually assigned more people to kind of curate youtube kids as a safe space trying to be more attuned to quality mean some of its a little bit comical like you know youtube is is said there and i try to program for subjective traits like humility and compassion in videos that show and and you know more recently theyve theyve said theyre on a theyll be more to run advertising on youtube on Youtube Videos that are overtly commercial and thats been you know another part ftc. There have been complaints that some really popular youtube kids videos and channels are effectively like 15, 20 minute long commercials as theyre theyre unboxing with a toy, theyre playing a toy. This is a space where on conventional tv. The fcc actually has a lot of rules in place about you know, you have to mix in a certain amount of educational programing for every year for all the ads and like non educational programing you have to add the like commercial timing is is limited like Product Placement are rules around that for kids programing when youtube came around there were none of these rules and another big area is the rules, child labor laws and kid actors. Thats still unregulated on youtube right there. There are no laws that say that that a child has to be restricted to number of hours, that they can be working, shooting videos. Yeah. And theres so many big child stars on youtube. So is that ever going to be an issue that like regular is going to watch for . I think there are. Theres certainly advocates who are pushing for for the equivalent of though the laws in california on on youtube i think enforcement is difficult in some way right like you in certainly possible but but you know youtube i think would obviously say we have no like if this this person in the video 12 or 13 or eight like you know and i think they struggle with this certainly during in some of the low points the moment. Right like where you had footage of this was a few years ago where but you know some of the there was this really popular trend of of on youtube of white people playing. And sometimes it was like pranking and like parents pranking, kids. And, you know, one video of like a father pranking his daughter is could be entertaining. But if that persons not the actual parent, its hard to look a little different. Right. And youtube has no way of knowing who the parents are. Certainly across millions of videos. So but i think those are california now has has an additional law around childrens privacy which is i think where youre going to see these on the advertising business probably a lot push for regulation how about like you know in general how do you foresee congress regulating youtube, the large tech platforms . I think one of the biggest spills were seeing is big antitrust reform from senator Amy Klobuchar are senators Chuck Grassley still not, you know made it to the senate floor yet lots of negotiations but but google would be captured to that under that bill if it were to become law. Are there other you know, what do foresee on on the regulatory front the us for for youtube and google i mean certainly anything that changes section 230 has implications for youtube. You know, another area that is much more youtube specific is copyright law. And so in europe and im not an expert on this at all, but article 17 was that rule around copyright. And this was you know, i had talked to someone at youtube. It was this was initially being, i think, proposed around 2019. And and they said, you know, you dont really appreciate how much of our time and leadership so spent dealing with this copyright law. It would have in the way it was originally written, at least according to people at youtube dramatically changed the way they do Rights Management and made them made the platform liable for any youtuber that violated copyright laws. They to the end. They not only did lobbying google is is a powerful and fairly effective lobbying shop they they not only lobbied around that but they actually encouraged youtube owners to make videos in europe against measure. They started like an Online Campaign and they effectively mobilized their influencers to influence policy which was effective and essentially a judge ruled in europe that they would not like youtube would not be ultimately liable for copyright. I know i believe there have been proposals in the us to change copyright law. You know, in that case in europe was brought by a record Music Industry executive, a person that they claim that that youtube was kind of flagrant using their material without royalties. That has been consistent complaint from the Music Industry for a long time that youtube was basically like making money off their. Hmm well and then we have seen california leading though they have their own privacy law we have failed to look the federal government has failed to push forward or advance a federal privacy law, at least right now. There a bill moving, but running out of time. This congress. So california also recently theyre their senate their assembly advanced this uk its model after uk age appropriate design law which would just basically require Tech Companies to to design their products with with children in mind and safety and privacy issues in mind obviously i think under under 18 too, right . Yeah. I mean it extends it beyond what we have now is 13 and under is is federal law. And so this would just be in california though. But just kind of curious like how theyre a youtube would have to prepare for that and in essence theyre complying in the uk, but but this would be a big deal if it have to comply here i guess. Yeah. I think there theres wanted you know their lawyers are going to be busy for sure. Theres a lot of work and plans i think you know what my understanding of the bill is pretty limited but it would certainly restrict the way that their advertising business operates and now for that age group of 13 to 18 right its something which yeah its a big group it is it is certainly you know there was a pew study that came out a few weeks ago about teenagers in the us and their of social media and the highest ranking as far as what apps you use constantly, like constantly, not just daily. It youtube i was was a so it is a youtube is the first primary screen sort of the television for generation i think. Youtube is adjusting their business in a similar way as who have they adjusting to the changes that apple has made. So apple just purely brief is like restricted cookies, advertising cookies in third party targeting on and that has like undercut a substantial business for social media for facebook for snapchat and youtube which made a fair amount of money by like getting advertisers in of videos on iphone and where they could say you know not only i i know where this iphone, but i know this iphone user has watched these particular videos before or clicked on this ad before. I have a lot more data. So without that data, the their advertising suffers. So once they have anything to prepare for that is, is some Machine Learning systems to kind of replicate that targeting without collecting the data theyre leaning in a lot on commerce as a business so trying to get youtubers to sell things over the platform which creators have been doing on their own. But now youtube is basically building and systems that take commissions that i think has been in place in part because of regulation in part because of what apples been doing. And i think youll see a lot more of that. I think youtube was hoping to to expand business to to rely less on on advertising for those reasons. Right well mark i think were hit our time i really appreciate your time and conversation it was so interesting saying i hope everyone reads the book super informative and and look forward to watching what comes from here. Thanks so much for havingwere e elliot moore celebrating publication of strength in numbers, how apples work and why we need them an insightful exploration of political polling and a board defense of crucial role in a modern democracy. Morris argues that the larger purpose of political polls is to improved democracy, not just predict