Like it or not, being a YouTube creator has become a lucrative career, with the app giving creators over $17 billion of ad revenue, according to YouTube, 55% of its earnings go to creators, and advertisers rake in YouTube $31.51 billion. Many are gambling their fortunes on the app, but to succeed, some are resorting to immoral methods. YouTube’s content is becoming more controversial every year, and neither its moderation nor algorithm stops this trend.
From vlogs to conspiracy videos, YouTube’s content captures ideas from all over the world. Because of YouTube’s vast and expanding reach, it’s difficult to quantify what the trends are based on singular incidents and examples. However, this content is seen by millions of people, provoking the opportunity to get a small glimpse into the countless amounts of debauchery and mischief that are apparent on YouTube. While many small-time YouTubers have robbed stores, snuck into homes, or made bomb threats, this might not reflect broader trends.
According to Forbes, the content creator MrBeast is valued at $500 million, and he holds the title of YouTube’s biggest creator. For his videos, MrBeast, or Jimmy Donaldson, commonly puts people into dangerous physical and mental situations that operate under the guise of challenges and competitions. In MrBeast’s constant desire for the biggest and best content, he has hurt a vast amount of people. For one video, he trapped a contestant in solitary confinement. In another, contestants participated in a real-life version of the Netflix drama, “Squid Games.” After some of these barbaric challenges, many contestants faced serious health issues and one even had to be escorted on a stretcher.
While some argued that MrBeast’s contestants volunteered to participate in these activities, some other popular content creators have harmed people who weren’t voluntarily part of the video. In the summer of 2020, Jake Paul, an ex-Disney channel childhood star turned professional boxer, showed his 20 million subscribers footage of him stealing liquor and vandalizing a mall during protests. Millions also watched Fidias, a prankster who is now a member of the European Parliament, travel across Japan for free, begging for charity, and evading fees.
When these dangerous strategies for success run into the higher scrutiny that comes with the fame gained by selling products or creating mainstream content, they almost universally fail. Logan Paul, a top youtuber and brother of Jake Paul, made millions off pranks like mocking a suicide victim or pretending to be gay for a month as a dare. However, when he tried to create a drink brand, he was charged with nine multi-million dollar lawsuits including charges of deceiving consumers and stealing copyrighted work. The best example of this comes from MrBeast, whose new Amazon show “Beast Games” treated its contestants inhumanly by feeding them once a day, taking away medication, and not letting contestants change clothes.
While YouTube definitively has a dark side, one could argue this side is disconnected from the platform as a whole. They could even try to argue that the moderators are trying their best to control the platform. It’s possible every individual moderator is working hard to make the platform better, however, according to the US Supreme Court, 500 hours of content are uploaded every minute. This streaming platform lacks the resources to properly moderate. This leaves YouTube’s digital recommendation system as the only tool that ensures safe content is being shown to viewers. This algorithm displays to viewers what is popular, even when it encourages dangerous behaviors.
Since many YouTube viewers make their decisions based on the thumbnail alone, users will naturally gravitate toward what seems surprising and extravagant, putting constant pressure on creators to make their ideas seem bigger and their headlines catchier. It leads to an increasingly regressive mindset that the creators have to make their content do everything in one day and in one video. With low budgets, many people cut corners to pull this off. While I can’t lay the blame for all YouTube content’s flaws on its algorithm, I think it’s clear that they aren’t doing enough to fix these problems.
Critics would argue that the viewers choose what to watch and bear responsibility for supporting dangerous behavior. However, there will always be someone there to watch any video, especially with YouTube’s massive audience. If YouTube doesn’t want to be overrun by these pranks, it needs to make large-scale changes to its guidelines, make examples of the bigger creators, and recode its algorithm to care more about ethics and less about views. YouTube leaves lots of room for improvement even though the profit-driven developers actively choose not to make such improvements.
