The YouTube Effect
YouTube has garnered over 2.3 billion users and is worth up to $300 billion dollars. At its center is its algorithm, something that threatens to destroy not only the platform, but the entire Internet.
- Released: 2022-06-11
- Runtime: 99 minutes
- Genre: Documentaries
- Stars: Caleb Cain, Carrie Goldberg Loann, Ryan Kaji, Shion Kaji, Anthony Padilla, Susan Wojcicki, Brianna Wu, Natalie Wynn, Steve Chen
- Director: Alex Winter
Comments
- SleepyMaya - 16 September 2023
Doesn't say anything we don't already know
I expected some interesting cover of YouTube's history through the years, but instead the whole movie just states the obvious (literally starts by telling you how the internet itself didn't always exist, wow really?) and quickly turns into just being about how YouTube has an algorithm that picks videos to recommend to you and that is affecting what you might watch, and there is a reason why some things might get recommended to you more than others, and the reason is (get ready to be shocked) that they want you to stay on the website for as long as possible, and of course some people can abuse the algorithm to make it recommend specific things to you. From that moment on, that algorithm is pretty much the only thing they talk about for the rest of the movie. This maybe would be interesting if the movie was made 10 years ago, but by now I think we are all pretty much aware of that already, considering it's been talked about everywhere for years. It could at least reveal new information or interesting facts about the topic to make it fresh, but really it didn't, it just repeated the same old things we all already know. There are barely maybe 4 YouTubers interviewed on this so called documentary about YouTube, two of them were from the same channel, the other two I've never even heard of.
The movie also seem to push some political agenda to you, which while honestly it wasn't an agenda that I disagree with, it did make me feel like I was watching a political movie pretending to be a movie about YouTube and I didn't appreciate that.
None of the information in the movie is wrong, but considering it really doesn't say anything we don't already know, plus feeling like the whole documentary was just an excuse to shove some political message into our face (regardless of what that message is), I sadly couldn't help but feel like I've wasted my time watching it and that's why I gave it the low score.
