YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki steps down after nine years at the helm

erek

erek

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Dec 19, 2005
Messages
10,875
Re: Welcome change of pace, or disaster piece theatre?

"And beyond that, I’ll still be around, so I’ll have a chance to thank the thousands of people from all across the company and the world who I’ve worked with and learned from. But for now, I want to thank Sundar for his leadership, support and vision over the years. I also want to thank Larry and Sergey for inviting me on what has truly been the adventure of a lifetime. I always dreamed of working for a company with a mission that could change the world for the better. Thanks to you and your vision, I got the chance to live that dream. It has been an absolute privilege to be a part of it, and I’m excited for what’s next.
Thank you for everything,
Susan.
Click to expand...
Developing..."

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2023/2/16/...usan-wojcicki-stepping-down-neal-mohan-google
 
In order for meaningful change I think YouTube’s entire leadership structure needs a shakeup. I’m not sure if just replacing the CEO will do much. The platform has only steadily been getting worse under their current leadership, including the folks on the board of directors. Maybe she was holding things back, but I don’t have a ton of confidence.
 
Folks: whatever your political views, the departure of YouTube's CEO will not lead to a sudden change in content policies. Wojcicki is not some tyrant who makes all the key decisions; she's one person in a larger organization, and she's focused on profitability, not waging ideological wars.
 
Aurelius said:
Folks: whatever your political views, the departure of YouTube's CEO will not lead to a sudden change in content policies. Wojcicki is not some tyrant who makes all the key decisions; she's one person in a larger organization, and she's focused on profitability, not waging ideological wars.
Click to expand...
We have clearly seen that one person DOES, in fact, have the power to institute their personal and political views into company products. However, you are right, there won't be a sudden change because they will end up replacing her with someone with almost the exact same views. I agree that the platform has gotten much much worse over the last two years. The interface is cluttered and navigation is cumbersome. Hiding the dislike button? Ridiculous.
 
Aurelius said:
Folks: whatever your political views, the departure of YouTube's CEO will not lead to a sudden change in content policies. Wojcicki is not some tyrant who makes all the key decisions; she's one person in a larger organization, and she's focused on profitability, not waging ideological wars.
Click to expand...
This is funny, it truly is.

But it's not going to matter because Youtube is ruled/owned by Google and Google will put another person in who is just as bad if not worse. Google's policies and ideological ideals will continue to march on in the destruction of Youtube.

It's truly way too late to save Youtube but the only way it would be possible is to have Youtube bought from Google and turn it back into what it once was. But that's not going to happen. It would require scrapping almost all of what it has become and rewrite it. Similar issue to what we've seen of Twitter since the Musk buyout. Although I have no doubt that the revelations of what Youtube has done would be just as bad if not worse than what we've seen Twitter did.
 
Meeho said:
LOL! LMAO, even.
Click to expand...
techie81 said:
We have clearly seen that one person DOES, in fact, have the power to institute their personal and political views into company products. However, you are right, there won't be a sudden change because they will end up replacing her with someone with almost the exact same views. I agree that the platform has gotten much much worse over the last two years. The interface is cluttered and navigation is cumbersome. Hiding the dislike button? Ridiculous.
Click to expand...
Aurelius said:
Folks: whatever your political views, the departure of YouTube's CEO will not lead to a sudden change in content policies. Wojcicki is not some tyrant who makes all the key decisions; she's one person in a larger organization, and she's focused on profitability, not waging ideological wars.
Click to expand...
Right - that's why left-wing fund managers are pushing to invest people's retirement savings in global warming funds. It has nothing to do with making sure people have enough to live in retirement and everything to do with pushing their political views.
 
Well Elon has proven what 1 man can do. Twitter is bigger than YouTube and they absolutely were waging an ideological war against anything not woke.

I've grown to love YouTube and watch it most of the time now, way more than any other streaming service. I hope this does mean they'll loosen up the reins on creators some. Don't get me wrong I'm not wanting snuff films on there but I'd like for creators to be allowed to say the word COVID without being demonetized.
 
Uh, its pretty obvious companies are willing to throw away billions to push woke ideologies onto the unthinking masses. Take a gander at the movies and shows they produce these days, that almost no one watches. google's the tip of the spear in this religious crusade.

Elon patched up twitter pretty well
 
MacLeod said:
Well Elon has proven what 1 man can do. Twitter is bigger than YouTube and they absolutely were waging an ideological war against anything not woke.

I've grown to love YouTube and watch it most of the time now, way more than any other streaming service. I hope this does mean they'll loosen up the reins on creators some. Don't get me wrong I'm not wanting snuff films on there but I'd like for creators to be allowed to say the word COVID without being demonetized.
Click to expand...
He's proven what an actual man can do. The definitions have become cloudy as to what that means lately.
 
SmokeRngs said:
It's truly way too late to save Youtube but the only way it would be possible is to have Youtube bought from Google and turn it back into what it once was.
Click to expand...

What is it that YouTube once was but isn't anymore? I don't use it very much personally but a month ago I used it to look up a movie trailer that I was curious about and it seemed to me more or less the same as it was 3 years ago.
 
ZodaEX said:
What is it that YouTube once was but isn't anymore? I don't use it very much personally but a month ago I used it to look up a movie trailer that I was curious about and it seemed to me more or less the same as it was 3 years ago.
Click to expand...

It's actually pretty huge now. Many of the channels on there now out out videos rivaling anything too find on network tv. Watch Lemino's documentary on Jack the Ripper. It's better than anything you'll find on Discovery lol....

So yeah I don't necessarily want it to go back to "what it was", I would just like to see the creators have a little more freedom without threat of being demonetized or deleted or whatever.
 
erek said:
Fidelity again cuts its Twitter valuation
Click to expand...
What happened was the woke mob tried to cancel Elon and Twitter. Gotta pump up those EGS scores. Twitter now actually allows freedom of information (for the most part) compared to the narrative pushed by certain political figures/agencies. So yeah, it is a lot better than it was. As someone said, we need an Elon like figure to do the same for Youtube and really all other social media.
 
Well the link format had suddenly changed, now include "Live" in link...?

Correction...Just now=Thy seemed to corrected it back to how it was.
 
Last edited:
techie81 said:
What happened was the woke mob tried to cancel Elon and Twitter. Gotta pump up those EGS scores. Twitter now actually allows freedom of information (for the most part) compared to the narrative pushed by certain political figures/agencies. So yeah, it is a lot better than it was. As someone said, we need an Elon like figure to do the same for Youtube and really all other social media.
Click to expand...
Twitter has literally never been profitable. YouTube is. And that was no easy task as the storage and bandwidth necessary to run YouTube is many multiple orders of magnitude larger than Twitter.

YouTube's policies are for one purpose: to make advertisers happy to buy ads on their platform. If you think they have an ideological agenda past that, then you should probably consider then it's more an advertiser influence issue rather than any political stance they have. In other words, it would be much easier to suggest that advertisers have a political agenda and not Alphabet.
YouTube has repeatedly shown that they are a stable platform for advertisers. Advertisers are the clients, Youtubers and viewers are the product.

Meanwhile Twitter is currently experiencing the opposite. It's incredibly unstable and advertisers are fleeing the platform. Again, suggesting that YouTube policies are more about advertisers and not about YouTube's "agendas". But whatever, people believe whatever they want to believe, especially if it disagrees with their politics.

EDIT: Some more recent links:
https://www.entrepreneur.com/busine...tters-top-advertisers-have-dropped-out/445038
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/10/tech/twitter-top-advertiser-decline/index.html
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/foc...n-advertising-revenue-in-final-months-of-2022
 
Last edited:
Aurelius said:
Folks: whatever your political views, the departure of YouTube's CEO will not lead to a sudden change in content policies. Wojcicki is not some tyrant who makes all the key decisions; she's one person in a larger organization, and she's focused on profitability, not waging ideological wars.
Click to expand...
That's closer to what I think. I don't give a damn about twitter or elon, but many of you have it right.
These "wars" have all the hallmarks of ideological crusades but aim to serve advertisers. They explain away censorship with advertisers' interests but fail to see the advertisers themselves perpetuating all of those cancerous ideas most of us here are against.

As a creator you couldn't say covid, you couldn't show off guns in a certain way, you can't say rape, suicide... Some can, though. Their umbrella over certain channels is painfully obvious.

I watch a lot of Youtube but it annoys me and saddens me to no end. PL Youtube now has aggressive ads. By aggressive I mean: the audio is purposefully boosted way into the clipping territory with high and low notes boosted so much it always startles me awake while I'm trying to fall asleep listening to ghost stories read by a robot.

Nearly all creators follow the same stupid practices to gradually "grow" their numbers, implement stupid clickbait thumbnails and titles to pamper to more and more groups but fail to notice other users dumping their channels exactly because of these techniques.

You HAVE to tell people to like, subscribe and tick the little damn bell icon. It's insulting. Meanwhile, some cool and unique channels like Possum Reviews struggle like a dog trying to screw a hedgehog. Just a constant stream of copyright lawyers standing in line for their due, like it's a breadline.

TheToE! said:
Hahahah
Click to expand...
Not cool, man. Not a good way to react to someone's idea. Twice.

I'm salty today.
 
I doubt much will change. But I am now getting hit with these "Your comment has been removed for hate speech" messages that I've never seen before. Funny enough, there's very little you can even write on YouTube without it getting auto-censored, so I'm a little baffled at what I could've written that slipped by the auto-censor yet is considered hate speech. I wasn't given any indication what could've been removed so I'm left in the dark what exactly I said that went over the line so I could prevent myself from doing it again.
 
I'm amused at how the folks who complain about "snowflakes" will seize on even the slightest excuse to twist a tech thread into an extended whine about alleged censorship. Persecution complex, anyone?

Like others have said, the boring reality is that YouTube and other internet giants are mainly interested in pleasing advertisers. And that's not censorship; that's companies deciding that running ads against certain content will look bad, and they're unsurprisingly very cautious. Marketers have nightmares of news stories that read "brand X ran ads against hate speech and anti-vaxxers," so they'll avoid keywords where there's even the slightest chance of a PR disaster. And even if internet companies can guarantee that this dodgy content won't be monetized, advertisers also tend to consider a platform's overall reputation. Reddit, for example, long had problems attracting advertisers — while most of its communities were fine, brands didn't like that hate-filled subreddits could persist with few consequences.

Again, Wojcicki isn't some fiendish puppet master. She's an (outgoing) CEO who has to turn a profit. Many of her decisions, if not most, flow from that.
 
  • Like
Reactions: DPI
like this
The company that said it's removing thumbs down because it hurts creators' feelings..... and it can't really get any better according to some?

It's still under Google so good luck with it getting better, but it could.
 
TheToE! said:
How is it worse?
Click to expand...
My twitter feed is completely dead since the takover, I get all tweets from some people I follow, while see nothing from others, it also shows zero tweets outside of my follows, and when scrolling down it will keep showing the same ones over and over again. It is impossible to find anything interesting on it. And the new underclass / upper class system downranks everything I say where basically nobody will see it or respond to it.
 
M76 said:
My twitter feed is completely dead since the takover, I get all tweets from some people I follow, while see nothing from others, it also shows zero tweets outside of my follows, and when scrolling down it will keep showing the same ones over and over again. It is impossible to find anything interesting on it. And the new underclass / upper class system downranks everything I say where basically nobody will see it or respond to it.
Click to expand...

Maybe your account is just part of some A/B testing

I use twitter as a daily news feed and I get tweets from people I follow + people followed by the people I follow + others based on topics/interests
 
M76 said:
My twitter feed is completely dead since the takover, I get all tweets from some people I follow, while see nothing from others, it also shows zero tweets outside of my follows, and when scrolling down it will keep showing the same ones over and over again. It is impossible to find anything interesting on it. And the new underclass / upper class system downranks everything I say where basically nobody will see it or respond to it.
Click to expand...
I'm not on twitter so i have no idea how any of that works.
 
staknhalo said:
Maybe your account is just part of some A/B testing

I use twitter as a daily news feed and I get tweets from people I follow + people followed by the people I follow + others based on topics/interests
Click to expand...
That's what I was used to, and it actually got better right before the takeover as presumably twitter removed the censoring algorithms and shadowbans, only for it to become crap a few weeks after the takeover where now it is much worse than ever before.
 
Supporters of censorship always seem to try to minimize it by disingenuously attacking the people who are against censorship, as a group if not as individuals. Often it is blamed on "hate speech", "bigotry", etc. but there have been a lot of questionable actions taken by big tech including YouTube and its parent company Google / Alphabet. The rules are vague and inconsistently applied.

There seem to be both knee-jerk reactions to current events, as well as broader ideologically-driven actions. Some of the former include the ridiculous restrictions on firearm-related content that always seem to periodically show up after any widely publicized shooting incident. Google for instance at one point removed anything "gun" related from their shopping search results, including things like glue guns, caulking guns, nail guns, water guns, etc. At the same time YouTube also put broad restrictions on almost all firearm-related channels. I can't imagine that they couldn't allow advertisers to choose what topics they want their ads to show up on - why couldn't a company that doesn't like guns just not show their ads on gun-related channels? The technology clearly exists as targeted advertisements are used all over the place, so I think it's just a cop-out to allow them to push an agenda without admitting to as much.

The restrictions on "medical misinformation" were another example. At the beginning of the covid pandemic, some YouTube channels had their videos removed and received strikes for suggesting that people should wear masks. It turned out that the idea preventing people from wearing masks was deliberate disinformation from the CDC in order to ensure that there would be more masks available for the medical industry. A few short months later channels would be subject to similar adverse actions for NOT suggesting people should wear masks. The rules change practically by the day and for no reason; content posted years ago gets banned and the creator punished because it violates rules that didn't exist way back when the video was posted.

Some people also claim that it's not possible for private companies to be violating first amendment rights when they censor things. This is does not take into account the concept of a "state actor", which is a private person or company acting on behalf of the government. By deciding to collaborate with government agencies and perform tasks at their instructions, they effectively become an arm of the government. A perfect example is the Twitter incident about a certain crack-smoking corrupt businessman with government connections which was sent to the memory hole. From a broader perspective, organizations like private prison operators and private military contractors would fall under this definition.
 
M76 said:
That's what I was used to, and it actually got better right before the takeover as presumably twitter removed the censoring algorithms and shadowbans, only for it to become crap a few weeks after the takeover where now it is much worse than ever before.
Click to expand...

Maybe everybody you followed + they followed + went to Mastadon 🤷‍♂️

I've not noticed any decrease in my feed - I noticed it has expanded/gotten better - I like the For You/Following tabs + algo cultivated content in the For You section

Edit: Whether as a shitposter or not, Musk uses the product actively at least so ideological problems with him one might have aside, he does have good ideas on how to fix/what works/what doesn't with the product IMO because stuff gets in his way/works for him/etc as just a user
 
Unperson said:
Supporters of censorship always seem to try to minimize it by disingenuously attacking the people who are against censorship, as a group if not as individuals. Often it is blamed on "hate speech", "bigotry", etc. but there have been a lot of questionable actions taken by big tech including YouTube and its parent company Google / Alphabet. The rules are vague and inconsistently applied.

There seem to be both knee-jerk reactions to current events, as well as broader ideologically-driven actions. Some of the former include the ridiculous restrictions on firearm-related content that always seem to periodically show up after any widely publicized shooting incident. Google for instance at one point removed anything "gun" related from their shopping search results, including things like glue guns, caulking guns, nail guns, water guns, etc. At the same time YouTube also put broad restrictions on almost all firearm-related channels. I can't imagine that they couldn't allow advertisers to choose what topics they want their ads to show up on - why couldn't a company that doesn't like guns just not show their ads on gun-related channels? The technology clearly exists as targeted advertisements are used all over the place, so I think it's just a cop-out to allow them to push an agenda without admitting to as much.

The restrictions on "medical misinformation" were another example. At the beginning of the covid pandemic, some YouTube channels had their videos removed and received strikes for suggesting that people should wear masks. It turned out that the idea preventing people from wearing masks was deliberate disinformation from the CDC in order to ensure that there would be more masks available for the medical industry. A few short months later channels would be subject to similar adverse actions for NOT suggesting people should wear masks. The rules change practically by the day and for no reason; content posted years ago gets banned and the creator punished because it violates rules that didn't exist way back when the video was posted.

Some people also claim that it's not possible for private companies to be violating first amendment rights when they censor things. This is does not take into account the concept of a "state actor", which is a private person or company acting on behalf of the government. By deciding to collaborate with government agencies and perform tasks at their instructions, they effectively become an arm of the government. A perfect example is the Twitter incident about a certain crack-smoking corrupt businessman with government connections which was sent to the memory hole. From a broader perspective, organizations like private prison operators and private military contractors would fall under this definition.
Click to expand...

If you want to know why social media platforms are gung-ho on this shit go look back at the various adpocolsypse's that have hit YouTube over the years. Corporations don't have moral ideologies, they do whatever is needed to make the most money. If Youtube/Google/Alphabet thought they would make more money catering to the QAnon crowd that is exactly what they would do. If a big enough advertiser tells a company to do something (or multiple get together to make demands) the corporation is going to fold. If shareholders get together and make demands, corporations will blindly go along. There is no such thing as a large corporation that cares about social issues, the environment, politics, etc except where it affects their bottom line. That is the reality of capitalism. There might be people in the organization that care, but everyone at the top is working solely to get the most money possible no matter what legal or moral lines must be crossed or who they have to suck off and/or fuck over to make a buck.
 
Derangel said:
If you want to know why social media platforms are gung-ho on this shit go look back at the various adpocolsypse's that have hit YouTube over the years. Corporations don't have moral ideologies, they do whatever is needed to make the most money. If Youtube/Google/Alphabet thought they would make more money catering to the QAnon crowd that is exactly what they would do. If a big enough advertiser tells a company to do something (or multiple get together to make demands) the corporation is going to fold. If shareholders get together and make demands, corporations will blindly go along. There is no such thing as a large corporation that cares about social issues, the environment, politics, etc except where it affects their bottom line. That is the reality of capitalism. There might be people in the organization that care, but everyone at the top is working solely to get the most money possible no matter what legal or moral lines must be crossed or who they have to suck off and/or fuck over to make a buck.
Click to expand...
Corporations can have moral and political alignment. Especially when they get on the national or global level where they can exert their influance upon governments and society.

YouTube does have a bias. Its visible in their "news" tab. A selection of 5 videos picked and then displayed on everyone's platform without the option of removing them. This started during covid and displayed many propaganda videos on covid, masks, vaccines, Biden, politics, Ukrainian, or any topic they wanted to "inform" people on. I have zero interest in this, and would have loved to remove this section and continue on my merry way but that was not allowed. It has since died down from a constant feed of this stuff during covid to the occatinal section with propaganda they deem important.

However, youtube is fantastic. The amount of obscure music I have found is enough for me to accept this intrusion and inevitable data collection. I watch car channels and they are pretty decent, although you can see they have to tip toe around any content deemed unacceptable to appease youtube.

It would be nice to see more good content on youtube but the platform is by nature harsh on creators leaving only the lowest denominator of content mass public will enjoy to be profitable.
 
As i sit here and read the replies on this thread i realize how out of touch I am with people. I never went to twitter for politics. I went there to find out when a company was launching a new product or to put someone on blast for shoddy workmanship. I don't goto youtube to watch some twitwad in his moms basement stream about covid. Instead I go to learn how to fix the high pressure fuel pump in my 2006 mazdaspeed 6. I have learned a ton from youtube that has a lot of value to me.
 
Derangel said:
If you want to know why social media platforms are gung-ho on this shit go look back at the various adpocolsypse's that have hit YouTube over the years. Corporations don't have moral ideologies, they do whatever is needed to make the most money. If Youtube/Google/Alphabet thought they would make more money catering to the QAnon crowd that is exactly what they would do. If a big enough advertiser tells a company to do something (or multiple get together to make demands) the corporation is going to fold. If shareholders get together and make demands, corporations will blindly go along. There is no such thing as a large corporation that cares about social issues, the environment, politics, etc except where it affects their bottom line. That is the reality of capitalism. There might be people in the organization that care, but everyone at the top is working solely to get the most money possible no matter what legal or moral lines must be crossed or who they have to suck off and/or fuck over to make a buck.
Click to expand...

I think to be more specific, corporations do what they think will make the most money. If they always did what would objectively make the most money, no company would ever have losses or go bankrupt. Like so many things though, the decisions are difficult to make.

I would also disagree that they don't have any ideology. Take a look at the big investment banks that are pushing ESG - they infiltrate companies and force them to make decisions that are potentially antithetical to the profitability of the company, or otherwise have little or no relation to the company's business model or market presence. They use the voting power of the shares of their investors, without really giving those investors a say in the matter. This gives the appearance of widespread support, but in reality it is a very small number of executives at these investment firms making the decisions. Many people whose money they're managing have little or no idea what's happening - a retirement or pension fund manages the money for the individual, and then in turn has an investment bank manage part of all of it for them. The actual owner of the money and the in essence the owner of the shares in a corporation is removed by two degrees of separation from the shareholder votes.

Companies may also be pushing an ideology without realizing it. What seems completely normal to some people will be absurd to others. A position held by a miniscule percentage of the population might be driving their policies since those positions are being propped up by extraordinarily wealthy individuals or groups who wish to push an agenda; one way of doing so is to make people think it's mainstream though marketing and media when very few actually believe it and/or it is objectively false. This of course affects not just businesses but all people. Access to information is crucial, especially access to a variety of information when facts are in dispute.

As far as the adpocalypse and other things go, as mentioned in my previous post, I think this could be solved by simple targeted advertising. Not every corporation is going to be in favor of or averse to any given topic. Let advertisers decide which topics they want to advertise on instead of having some big tech executives decide for them. For every company that doesn't want their ads to show up on a firearm channel, there's probably another that doesn't care or would actually prefer it. By lumping all advertisers together, it gives them an out to enact broad-based restrictions on topics they don't like. Check out recent changes to YouTube's rules regarding firearm videos for a good look at that. Something as simple as inserting a magazine into a pistol or rifle, or pulling the slide / charging handle is now effectively banned. Ironically I'm pretty sure it's now prohibited to show someone the complete way to safely operate a firearm on YouTube. These rules are retroactive so content posted years ago can result in takedowns and strikes today, without any warning to the creator.

buttons said:
As i sit here and read the replies on this thread i realize how out of touch I am with people. I never went to twitter for politics. I went there to find out when a company was launching a new product or to put someone on blast for shoddy workmanship. I don't goto youtube to watch some twitwad in his moms basement stream about covid. Instead I go to learn how to fix the high pressure fuel pump in my 2006 mazdaspeed 6. I have learned a ton from youtube that has a lot of value to me.
Click to expand...

YouTube and other big tech applications do have a lot of great content. Most of what I watch is technical content like firearms, welding, metal working (fabrication / machining), embedded electronics, etc. I do also watch some particular news analysis / curation channels, and some medical info channels. There were a lot of covid-related videos made early on in the pandemic by doctors which were removed because of knee-jerk reactions to ongoing changes. YouTube chose to solely follow WHO so if they posted something from say the CDC that even slightly conflicted with the official WHO position it would get removed and your account could get a strike.
 
There are plenty of alternatives to youtube's nonsense, try newpipe or invidious, take a stand, make a difference. Support the creators by buying their swag.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top