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Does "The Press" Hate YouTube?

2019-03-08 · letter vlog · Hank · 3:59 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Internet & YouTube · mode: News analysis · tags: timely hook

Responding to MatPat's video on negative media portrayals of YouTube, Hank argues that the press covers YouTube, like Montana, only when it is threatening because its powerful readers and ad buyers don't understand it; YouTube also has real problems and power, and either there is no mainstream media anymore or YouTube is part of it.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — MatPat's video; YouTube's bad press, advertisers pulling out, demonetization and who is to blame

  • ★★ Hank says MatPat's video this week (week of 4 March 2019), longer and better than his, discusses negative ways YouTube and YouTubers have been portrayed in the media. — 00:00:00 · YouTube
  • ★ Hank says the parts of YouTube where he spends his time are amazing: marble races, knives made of bismuth crystals, social commentary and explanations of technology. — 00:00:00 · YouTube
  • ★★ Hank says the big mainstream-press stories about YouTube are Logan Paul, ads shown on terrorist recruitment videos, or worse. — 00:00:00 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Hank says such stories make advertisers cut spending, YouTube then overreacts by strengthening demonetization algorithms, and even slightly controversial videos may earn nothing. — 00:00:42 · YouTube, online advertising
  • ★★ Hank lists where blame is pointed: YouTube overreacting, ad buyers perhaps using the panic as a tactic, or journalists who never cover the platform positively; MatPat points everywhere. — 00:00:42 · YouTube

00:01:11 — Montana analogy: unfamiliar audiences get only threatening stories; Hank's news-writing career

  • ★★★ Hank agrees no one wants to write positive stories about YouTubers, but notes national news never writes positive stories about Montana either, a place people don't understand. — 00:01:11 · Montana, YouTube
  • ★★ Hank says Montana makes national news only when a state senator wanted to legalize drunk driving or someone wanted to sell the state to Canada. (playful) — 00:01:11 · Montana, Canada
  • ★★★ Hank says readers of The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal lack a complex understanding of YouTube just as of Montana: it is not part of their culture. — 00:01:11 · The New York Times, YouTube, Montana
  • ★★ Hank says most ad buyers are likewise Wall Street Journal readers rather than MatPat viewers, though that might be changing. — 00:01:40 · online advertising
  • ★★ Hank recalls that in a former career he wrote news stories for a living and judged stories by whether they were interesting, never whether positive or negative. — 00:01:40
  • ★★★ Hank argues audiences who know little about a thing want no nuance about its success, only stories of it being threatening, scary or dangerous, doubly so when it is big and important. — 00:01:40 · sensationalism
  • ★★ Hank says it is also likely some journalists think YouTubers shouldn't have so much power and don't mind taking them down some notches. (hedged) — 00:02:09 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Hank says that if you look for big, important communities that are misunderstood and covered negatively, he has bigger concerns than YouTubers, who are a really powerful cultural force that hides from its power in victimhood narratives. — 00:02:09 · YouTube

00:02:39 — YouTubers' power and victimhood narratives; YouTube's real problems; no mainstream media anymore

  • ★★★ Hank's conclusion: publications make content for a disproportionately powerful audience that is unfamiliar with, and uneasy about, a massive new cultural force no one truly understands. — 00:02:39 · YouTube
  • ★★★ Hank loves YouTube but it makes him uneasy too: being a platform without gatekeepers makes it interesting but also creates real problems. — 00:02:39 · YouTube
  • ★★ Hank says it is scary for someone to have huge power over young people with no oversight, and bad to monetize terrorist recruitment videos or let violent content into kids' shows. — 00:03:08
  • ★★ Hank says the YouTube community has done great things, but culture hasn't figured out what to make of it, which might be why advertisers hesitate and why he wants journalists covering it. (hedged) — 00:03:08 · online advertising, YouTube
  • ★★ Hank says MatPat's video leaves the feeling that we don't know where to place the blame, maybe because there isn't a good place. (hedged) — 00:03:37
  • ★★★ Hank says that with PewDiePie getting more views than any cable news show, either there is no mainstream media anymore or YouTube is part of it. — 00:03:37 · YouTube

In the description and comments

  • ★★ The description says news is mostly news when it is bad; nuanced coverage tends to be for smaller audiences already aware of a topic. — video description
  • ★★ The description recalls fairly many positive articles about YouTubers when the culture was new; now the platform's influence and popularity have changed that. — video description · YouTube
  • ★★★ Hank says legacy publications, whose readers mostly don't care about YouTube, start with some antagonism toward it, from losing market share to people without their rigor, accountability or training, and with an audience that understands the platform too simply to want nuance. — video description · YouTube
  • ★★★ Hank ranks why articles about YouTube are negative: maybe antagonism, the smallest part; making content their audience wants, as everyone does; and negative news being genuinely more interesting, uncommon and important, a long-researched pattern. — video description · YouTube
  • ★★★ Hank stresses that "the press" is extremely broad, many of these articles were vitally important, and one bad op-ed or a few bad articles do not destroy a publication or the institution of the press, without which we would be devastated. — video description
  • ★★★ Hank says he too is "the press", with no accountability outside himself before publishing, like most big YouTube channels, so giving all our media consumption to single-perspective, unaccountable, untrained YouTubers is bad, however much he loves many of them. — video description · YouTube

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: journalism · legacy media · MatPat · Montana · sensationalism · YouTube

Also: People: Logan Paul · PewDiePie

Organizations: The New York Times · The Wall Street Journal

Concepts: Cable news · drunk driving · online advertising · terrorism · Youth

Places: Canada

Also centred on journalism: Why We Stopped Making Explainers: EXPLAINED · A Lie I Heard this Week · Populism, Media Revolutions, and Our Terrible Moment

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