THE YOUTUBE EFFECT - Mark Reviews Movies

The YouTube Effect, Drafthouse Films

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Review by Mark Dujsik | July 6, 2023

Discussing an online platform as massive as YouTube at this point is akin to talking about the entire history of media, the whole of history and prehistory, every political theory and opinion, and, essentially, the range of human knowledge and experience. Just about everything you could want to see, don't know you wanted to see, and definitely don't want to see were or are available on that site, and that makes it both an essential, living archive and a tool that can be used for good or for ill.

That's the basic point of The YouTube Effect, an overly ambitious but succinctly argued documentary by director Alex Winter. The topic is a lot more than he can—or, to be fair, any individual film or filmmaker could—approach with any sense of being definitive or possessing a feeling of finality, if only because there are probably countless videos being posted to or streamed on that site while you're reading this sentence. It's constantly evolving, and the main takeaway to be hopeful and fear about the site after watching this documentary is that we're not evolving, either as individuals or as a society, anywhere near as quickly as the platform is.

Smartly, Winter presents his case while detailing a chronological history of YouTube and the many events it helped to capture in the moment—or that were spurred by its existence. As with most big companies, the site began with humble origins. People had been making videos via their personal computers and digital cameras for years in 2005, when Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim founded YouTube.

In those relatively early days of the rapidly changing and expanding history of the internet, though, there was no place for people to share what they had created, so here was an answer to a problem that most people never really considered until the solution arrived. Anything and everything could be uploaded to the site, if the first video on the site—of Karim at the zoo—would be any indication. It would be, obviously.

People shared—and still do share—their lives, opinions, silly sketches, pets, and whatever else they felt like showing to the world. It all looked so promising as a way for each of us to see ourselves and perspectives we otherwise wouldn't have known in other people around the globe.

As with other small and idealistic companies that are swallowed up by massive conglomerates, YouTube changed after being purchased by Google less than two years after the social media platform was created. Almost two decades later, that's where we're at now, as algorithms developed by the tech behemoth help guide or, in some cases, dictate what people will watch on the platform. It's convenient, to be sure, but with the convenience comes the sacrifice of watching some footage of a moon landing, only to fall down a rabbit hole of uncurious people making ill-conceived arguments that humans never stepped foot on the moon—and others asserting, by the way, the Earth is flat, too.

Obviously, Winter isn't making any novel observations or arguments that many others haven't already made or that can be gleaned by spending an hour or less of one's own time on YouTube, but that really doesn't matter here. The filmmaker uses the reality of how cold computer learning, as well as the company's desire to keep people engaged and interacting as long as possible so that there are more eyes on advertising, can change the way some of us think and have real-world consequences that almost certainly nobody imagined until they started happening.

The rest of the film's timeline is dedicated to dissecting the specifics of those personal and social consequences, starting with momentous events of possible or real change in the Occupy Wall Street movement and the Arab Spring. There are dark moments, too, and that's clearly what concerns Winter the most, as he tries to figure out what makes the platform one with such power to influence.

One fascinating connection, which helps to explain why YouTube can become such an overwhelming presence in the lives of those who use the platform, is what a solitary experience the site can be, both for those the viewer side and creator side of the equation. People watch and keep watching videos alone in private moments, and as some creators interviewed for the documentary point out, people make and keep making these videos on their own. That results in a false sense of intimacy between the viewer and the creator, and when some intentionally take advantage of that relationship in order to spread lies and hate, the message becomes a personal one.

Experts help to fill in the psychological and societal gaps that convince people to go from learning rumors about a video gamer developer's personal life to harassing and making death threats against women in a targeted campaign. People who experienced themselves or witnessed a loved one become sucked into dangerous far-right politics speak of how easy the algorithm makes those trips. Winter reminds us of how many acts of violence have resulted, either directly or indirectly, and been posted/broadcasted on YouTube or social media in general, and there's a feeling of despair to be confronted with how many of those have since been forgotten, as others, mainly the attempted coup of the U.S. government in 2021, have occurred in the meantime.

If there are any answers to these issues, The YoutTube Effect makes it apparent that they won't be easy ones. The real fear, as Winter and others here acknowledge, is that, at this point in the history and evolution of the internet as a business dominated by about three companies unwilling to yield that much money and power, there might not be any answers.

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