If seeing is believing, then the camera, the television and, most recently, YouTube have changed what people see and believe. Of these, YouTube — it turned 20 this week — was perhaps the most radical invention. Television, once the unrivalled king of media, had brought visual storytelling to homes across the globe. It reshaped culture, politics, advertising, and even family life. YouTube, however, took this a step further. It, arguably, removed the need for having traditional gatekeepers — studios, broadcasters, producers — and handed the power of creation and distribution to the aam aadmi. Anyone with a camera and internet access could reach a global audience. In this sense, YouTube fundamentally rewrote the rules by democratising both the media and the messaging. The popularity it achieved by rewriting the rules of visual engagement is borne out by the numbers that YouTube published on its 20th anniversary: in addition to the 20 billion-plus videos uploaded over 20 years, there are over 20 million videos uploaded daily onto this platform. Little wonder then that the market found in YouTube an ally to align the elements of commerce. YouTube, thus, went on to pioneer the concept of monetising content — individuals, often starting with minimal resources, who amassed a large subscriber base with their videos, could suddenly make money from the content that they created. This idea became the seed from which sprung the tribe of social media influencers who have turned content creation into a viable profession.
But every platform, no matter how lucrative, has a dark side. With the democratisation of content — the proverbial apple for the Market — crept in the serpent. In making knowledge available at minimal cost, YouTube, unlike the traditional media it seeks
to displace, disregarded the imperative of installing an apparatus that is necessary to weed out harmful information. Videos on everything, from how to operate firearms to how to hang oneself, are available with ease and often without cautionary caveats on this platform. Similarly, while boasting of its ability to upload videos of events — protests, disasters, or political speeches — often faster than traditional news outlets, YouTube ignored the importance of filters such as the verification of facts and editorial oversight. This makes the content available on YouTube particularly vulnerable to mischief by vested interests. This malaise — YouTube is perhaps the original victim — afflicts other, emerging technologies as well. As Artificial Intelligence-generated content becomes more sophisticated and widespread, the line between real and artificial becomes ever more blurred on allied media. Consequently, what is intended to function as a platform for authentic, innovative creativity gets transformed into a breeding ground for synthetic deception. The dawn of the Age of Post-Truth could not have been possible without more than a bit of help from social media entities like YouTube and Co.
This is not to deny YouTube’s potential and power at present. But there are clouds on the horizon since its future is threatened by an undeniable dilemma: seeing is believing, but should one believe everything one sees?