COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW – 04/04/2019
Mathew Ingram
The metaphor YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki likes to rely on when she’s describing the Google video-sharing service is a wholesome one: it’s like a library, she says—a custodian of content provided by others, giving users an easy way to find things they might be interested in. There are disturbing and even offensive books in the library too, she points out, but we take for granted that there’s more good than bad. It’s an appealing comparison, and it certainly makes YouTube sound like a benefit to society. But is it accurate? Not really. After all, if you start reading a book about the moon, the library doesn’t automatically pull books about how the moon landing was faked and stack them beside you, urging you to read them. That’s more or less what YouTube’s algorithm does.