Within three weeks, South Korea experienced one transient declaration of martial lawits sudden cancellation and the impeachment its president Yoon Suk Yeol.

An underappreciated driver of the recent drama is the rise of YouTube agitators, activists and influencers who’re making the most of and fueling a brand new sort of populism. The impact in South Korea is serious – however the trend is global.

An extremely online constituency

In the 2022 South Korean election, Yoon trailed his opponent for much of the campaign. He is aggressive Populist politics received some support, nevertheless it gave the look of it will fail.

Then he found it a brand new constituency – a gaggle of lively and partisan young men who campaigned for the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family. These agitators used YouTube and other platforms to spread their message.

This crowd, together with traditional conservative voters, allowed Yoon a narrow victory and control of South Korea's strongest political position. He then duly abolished The gender ministry said structural sexism was “a thing of the past”.

After gaining power, Yoon relented Arrest warrants for several of his supposed political opponents. Among these was Kim Yeo Juna critical and inflammatory YouTube journalist and a polarizing populist figure with ties to liberal politics. Kim's weekly videos Send news, guest interviews and snarky comments to hundreds of thousands of lively followers.

We have turn out to be accustomed to the concept that social media platforms Influence democratic processes by disseminating news and evaluation and by directing users' attention by recommending specific content. However, the increasing political visibility of platform actors like Kim suggests that the influence is becoming more direct.

Platforms for populist news and views

Social media platforms provide access to a big selection of stories and media producers, from mainstream media outlets to independent commentators at the acute ends of the political spectrum. However, not all news receives the identical attention.

Research shows, no less than in South Korea, fake news receives more likes and interactions than verifiable messages. “Real news” is commonly dismissed and ridiculed.

Further South Korean research shows residents could also be using platforms Look for conspiracy theories and despise unpopular political groups or decisions. Users also notorious direct hatred on topics comparable to women's rights.

These problems will not be limited to South Korea. Polarizing and populist news and evaluation is a worldwide phenomenon.

Trust in traditional news media is declining, partly due to fear in keeping with elite and powerful personalities. These fears are sometimes confirmed Social media influencer who wish to turn out to be the brand new opinion leaders.

Online influencers are great vehicles for populist politics. They normally have close relationships with their viewers suggest easy solutionsand frequently resist accountability and fact-checking.

Platforms are sometimes more more likely to recommend polarizing and even radicalizing content for viewers, crowding out more balanced content.

Platforms for journalism?

However, these polarizing personalities will not be alone in these areas. Experienced journalists and newcomers get used to the platforms and still provide reliable information.

On YouTube, former mainstream journalists, comparable to B. Australia Michael West and the American Phil Edwardshave built a following while combining personal and casual content with more traditional journalism.

Non-journalists, comparable to Money & Macro and the English Tom Nicholashave expanded their influence by adopting some basic journalistic practices. With the support of their many viewers, they produce content that researches, explores and explains current news and evaluation.

These YouTube news influencers show that journalistic content can contribute to the brand new news media ecosystem and attract large audiences without counting on populist and polarizing content.

“Newsfluencer” produce Journalism on platformsB. YouTube, adapt their content to the conventions of the platforms.

Newsfluencer and the long run

Newsfluencers often film in informal settings moderately than traditional sets, constructing an informal relationship with their audience. They use “authenticity” and exit of their method to “Avoid looking like polished corporate media“.

Their diverse sources of income include advertisements, sponsors, merchandise and, most significantly, direct audience contributions. These contributions may be made through memberships or through third-party platforms comparable to Patreon and Substack.

Even major news organizations like Australia's ABC have began adopting YouTuber norms. While the present podcast was produced under the auspices of the national broadcaster If you listenFor example, with its casual style and deal with giving the audience what they need, it significantly outperforms traditionally formatted content.

In South Korea there are YouTube channels like VoiceOfSeoul Take similar steps and mix street reporting with informal talk show panels and investigative journalism. OhMyTV combines YouTuber and breaking news styles and includes hyperlinks for private contributions and sponsorships.

At the identical time, legacy media like KBS maintains a powerful following via TV and portal sites like Naver. However, KBS's conventional format is struggling to realize comparable viewership on the increasingly dominant platforms on which these unconventional journalists thrive.

There is a transparent space for journalism on YouTube and similar platforms. However, it has to adapt.

As the South Korean experience shows, the time may come when platform journalism is crucial to democracy.

Nikki Doucet, CEO of English skilled women's football, says the move of the Women's Super League (WSL) and the championship's streaming platform to YouTube will increase the sport's reach.

Doucet also confirmed there was a “long-term” timeframe for repaying the £20 million ($25.2 million) loan given by the Premier League to the Women's Professional Leagues Limited (WPLL, formerly NewCo), and said her job was to search out more owners, akin to Michele Kang of the London City Lionesses, to take a position within the clubs and increase revenue.

The WSL and Championship YouTube channels have replaced FA Player because the divisions' primary streaming service for the 2024–25 season. All non-televised WSL matches and chosen Championship matches might be available to look at globally on the platform.

The WSL's broadcast deal was as a result of expire at the tip of last season and was renewed for an extra yr by the BBC and Sky Sports in April. Doucet said the move to YouTube could help underline the worth of each leagues when the media rights are put up for tender again next yr.

“When we go to market, we include both the WSL and the Championship (broadcast rights),” Doucet said.

“We had 55,000 people watching the game (London City Lionesses v Newcastle United) (on Sunday on YouTube). If you compare that to the FA Player. I think the highest attendance on the FA Player last year was 4,500.

“Our job now could be to make certain we get as much reach as possible, that we present the championship properly and that we deal with that. So from a marketing and industrial viewpoint we’re pondering fastidiously about what we are able to do for the championship.

“The more value we create there, the higher for everybody and for the WSL. The more reach we are able to get with the championship, get it on YouTube, attract more people, tell more stories and use our channels properly.

“We invest in the YouTube channel to make sure we get views and we can address that in the right way. And over time, we build that out to have more data that shows, this is the views, this is the engagement, this is the audience, this is the reach. And then we have the opportunity to go back to the market and see again where we can maximize the value of those points.

“Our media rights expire in 25-26 and we might be taking a look at each properties.”

The Football Association's (FA) outgoing director of ladies's football, Baroness Sue Campbell, said last yr that the governing body was examining whether women's football might be exempted from the 3pm television blackout in an effort to attract a daily audience.

Under Article 48 of the UEFA statutes, the FA prohibits the printed of matches between 2.45pm and 5.15pm on Saturdays within the UK to guard crowds in stadiums. Doucet added that while that they had looked into possible changes to the 3pm blackout period, this was “not an option at the moment”.

Premier League chief executive Richard Masters told a government committee in January that Premier League clubs had given the WPLL a £20 million ($25.2 million) loan. The loan might be interest-free and is not going to be repaid until annual turnover reaches £100 million.

“Given the size of the company, this is the right amount of capital today,” Doucet explained. “It's a loan. We have to pay it back at some point.”

“It's a long-term loan on favorable terms. It's interest-free, which is super positive, and it's part of this collaboration agreement. So we either have to hit certain revenue thresholds to pay it back, or there's a time frame, but it's a longer-term time frame that gives us room to grow.”

On the topic of accelerating sales and attracting investors, Doucet stressed the importance of a long-term vision and referred to the instance of US businesswoman Kang after her takeover of the London City Lionesses in December.

The investment from the owner of Washington Spirit and Lyon Feminin has given the Championship team a busy summer window, which has seen the signings of Swedish international Kosovare Asllani and young striker Isobel Goodwin from Sheffield United, amongst others. The club has also bought a brand new training facility and is within the means of renovating it.

“Investing in women’s football today – based on the maturity stage of the company – requires a different capital and risk profile than investing in men’s football today,” added Doucet.

“We need to find investors here who believe in the concept of community purpose, in a growth story that is built on future financial numbers but has the ability to invest ahead of revenue. Our biggest challenge is the revenue challenge, not necessarily the cost challenge.

“Being knowledgeable club and providing the fitting infrastructure costs money. That's someone like Michelle Kang or a number of the greater clubs in the meanwhile, their owners are investing, they consider on this future. They say: we understand that this can be a ten-year journey. This will not be an quick return in two or three years.”

“And our job now could be to maximise value at every point in the expansion journey. The market will dictate what we are able to extract and maximize from a price perspective. And our job is to listen to that day by day.”

Stay “real”

Research into in-flight injuries

Calls come “in waves”

Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, who can also be probably the most influential early Google worker, has died on the age of 56, based on online posts by her husband Dennis Troper and Google CEO Sundar Pichai on Friday evening.

Wojicki led YouTube for nearly a decade and was one in all the few women to carry the CEO position at a significant Silicon Valley technology company.

Wojcicki’s husband Dennis Troper wrote on Facebook early Friday evening: “It is with deep sadness that I share the news of Susan Wojcicki Passing away. My beloved wife of 26 years and mother of our five children passed away today after battling non-small cell lung cancer for two years.”

Pichai confirmed the death and the cancer condition in one post on social media and wrote that the loss made him “incredibly sad.”

In a note In a letter to employees, Pichai described Wojcicki as “probably the most energetic and vibrant people I even have ever met. Her loss is devastating for all of us who know and love her, for the 1000’s of Googlers she led through the years, and for the hundreds of thousands of individuals all over the world who looked as much as her, benefited from her dedication and leadership, and felt the impact of the incredible things she created at Google, YouTube, and beyond.”

“Susan's journey from the garage she rented to Larry and Sergey… to leading consumer products teams and constructing our ad business… to becoming CEO of YouTube, probably the most significant platforms on the earth, is inspiring in every way. But she didn't stop there. As one in all the primary Googlers – and the primary to take maternity leave – Susan used her position to create a greater workplace for everybody. And within the years that followed, her commitment to parental leave set a brand new standard for firms all over the place. Susan was also very captivated with education. She recognized early on that YouTube might be a learning platform for the world and championed 'edutubers' – especially those that were expanding the reach of STEM education to underserved communities.”

Wojcicki, 56, joined YouTube as CEO in 2014. She stepped down from the position in February 2023 and said she would continue to work with YouTube teams, coach members and meet with creators.

She helped build Google into a technology giant from its earliest days and is considered a pioneer of some of its most successful products.

When she founded Google, she let Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin work from her home in Menlo Park, California. Page and Brin rented the garage space from her for $1,700 a month. Wojcicki was working in Intel's marketing department at the time.

When she joined Google in 1999 as its 16th employee, Wojcicki spent 14 years developing and building Google's advertising and analytics products. She played a key role in developing Google's advertising business, including co-creating AdSense, one of the company's most successful products.

In 2006, she pushed for Google's acquisition of YouTube, which cost $1.65 billion at the time.

“The founders trust Susan perhaps greater than anyone else on the earth,” said Patrick Keane, one of Google's first sales leaders, in the 2022 book “Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination.” “You could never faze Susan, regardless of how difficult the moment.”

“If people couldn't talk sense into him, she still could,” said former Google director and former Silicon Valley workplace influencer Kim Scott, known in the book as the “Larry Whisperer,” referring to Google co-founder Larry Page.

During her tenure as YouTube CEO, Wojcicki oversaw the company's rapid expansion and helped make it the largest video platform in the world. YouTube now has more than 2.5 billion monthly active users, according to the company, and more than 500 hours of content are uploaded to the platform every minute.

The announcement of her death sparked a wave of condolences from numerous top technology and venture capital leaders on Friday evening.

“I used to be fortunate to satisfy Susan 17 years ago when she was the architect of the DoubleClick acquisition,” wrote current YouTube CEO Neal Mohan in a social Media report on Friday evening. “Her legacy lives on in the whole lot she touched at Google and YouTube.”

“She taught me the business and helped me navigate a growing, fairly chaotic organization early in my profession within the technology industry,” said former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg in a social media post. “As probably the most necessary female leaders within the technology industry – the primary to steer a significant company – she was committed to expanding opportunities for ladies across Silicon Valley. I don't think my profession can be what it’s today without her unwavering support.”

“I am deeply saddened by the passing of my dear colleague and friend @SusanWojcicki,” wrote Google chief scientist Jeff Dean on Social Media Friday night. “She has had a profound impact on everyone at Google and has touched the lives of so many individuals.”

Former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, a Silicon Valley native and technology pioneer, has died after a two-year battle with cancer, her family announced. She was 56 years old.

“We are heartbroken but grateful for the time we had with her,” Troper added. “Please keep our family in mind as we go through this difficult time.”

Wojcicki first got here into contact with YouTube's parent company Google when she rented her Menlo Park garage to co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, then students at Stanford. They lived within the university's dormitory and needed space to develop a brand new search engine that may later grow to be Google. Soon after, Wojcicki joined the corporate as its sixteenth worker – while pregnant together with her first child – and worked at Google for nearly 25 years.

Wojcicki was “a central part of Google’s history,” wrote current Google CEO Sundar Pichai in a X-Post Friday night. “It's hard to imagine the world without her. She was an incredible person, leader and friend who had a tremendous impact on the world, and I am one of countless Googlers who knew her better. We will miss her greatly.”

Ron Conway, a distinguished early-stage Silicon Valley investor, said Wojcicki was “one of the kindest, most thoughtful people and also a great mother,” in a Saturday morning interview. X-Post“Let us strive to follow her example and make the world a better place in her honor.”

Conway, one in every of Google's early investors, described Wojcicki as “one of the greatest contributors to the tech community.”

When she began working at Google, Wojcicki led the initial development of products corresponding to Google Images and Google Books, in keeping with CNN. She later became the corporate's senior vp of promoting and commerce and led its flagship AdSense – an initiative that allowed web sites to become profitable by displaying Google ads. Under Wojcicki's leadership in 2010, AdSense distributed greater than $6 billion in promoting revenue to the greater than 1 million web sites that used the service and was Google's second-largest income.

Wojcicki is stepping down in 2023 to “start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects that are close to my heart,” the Bay Area News Group previously reported. She married Troper, himself a Google executive, in 1998 and had five children. Their 19-year-old son, Marco Troper, died of an accidental drug overdose in his dorm at UC Berkeley this February.

Wojcicki grew up in Palo Alto, where her father Stanley Chair Stanford's physics department and her mother Esther worked as an educator and journalist. Her sisters are Janet, a health care provider and professor at UCSF, and Anne, co-founder of Mountain View-based DNA testing company 23andMe.

Originally published: August 10, 2024 at 12:06 pm

The promised revolution of artificial intelligence requires data. Lots of information. OpenAI and Google have began using YouTube videos to Train your text-based AI modelsBut what does the YouTube archive actually contain?

Our team of digital media Researchers on the University of Massachusetts Amherst collected and analyzed random samples of YouTube videos to learn more about this archive. We published a 85-page document about this record and arrange a Website called TubeStats for researchers and journalists who need basic details about YouTube.

Now we're taking a more in-depth have a look at a few of our more surprising findings to higher understand how these obscure videos could develop into a part of powerful AI systems. We found that many YouTube videos are intended for private use or for small groups of individuals, and a major proportion were created by children who look like under the age of 13.

The majority of the YouTube iceberg

Most people’s experiences with YouTube are algorithmically curated: Up to 70% of videos The videos users watch are beneficial by the location's algorithms. Recommended videos are frequently popular content like influencer stunts, news clips, explainer videos, travel vlogs, and video game reviews, while non-recommended content falls into obscurity.

Some YouTube content imitates popular creators or suits into established genres, but much of it’s personal: family gatherings, selfies with music, homework, video game clips out of context, and dancing children. The obscure side of YouTube—the overwhelming majority of The an estimated 14.8 billion videos created and uploaded to the platform – is poorly understood.

Shedding light on this aspect of YouTube – and social media on the whole – is difficult because large technology corporations increasingly hostile To Researchers.

We found that many videos on YouTube weren’t intended for wide distribution. We documented 1000’s of short, personal videos which have few views but high rates of interaction—likes and comments—suggesting a small but highly engaged audience. These videos were clearly intended for a small audience of family and friends. Such social uses of YouTube contrast with videos that seek to maximise their audience, suggesting a distinct way of using YouTube: as a video-centric social network for small groups.

Other videos appear to be intended for a distinct sort of small, fixed audience: recorded pandemic-era classroom sessions, school board meetings, and work meetings. While they will not be what most individuals consider as social use, they imply that their creators have a different expectations of the audience for the videos than for the creators of the variety of content people see of their recommendations.

Fuel for the AI ​​machine

With this broader understanding, we read the New York Times revelations about How OpenAI and Google turned to YouTube within the race to search out recent data sets to coach their large language models. An archive of YouTube transcripts represents an exceptional data set for text-based models.

There can be speculation partially heated by a evasive answer by Mira Murati, Chief Technology Officer of OpenAI, that the videos themselves may very well be used to coach AI text-to-video models like OpenAI's. Sora.

The New York Times article raised concerns about YouTube's terms of service and, after all, the copyright issues that permeate much of the controversy about AI. But there's one other problem: How is anyone speculated to know what an archive of greater than 14 billion videos uploaded by people all over the world actually incorporates? It's not entirely clear that Google knows, and even could know if it desired to.

Children as content creators

We were surprised to search out a disturbing variety of videos that feature children or are obviously created by them. YouTube requires uploaders be a minimum of 13 years oldbut we frequently saw children who seemed much younger and were often dancing, singing or playing video games.

In our preliminary research, our programmers found that almost one-fifth of randomly chosen videos that showed a minimum of one person's face were more likely to feature someone under the age of 13. We didn’t include videos that were clearly recorded with the consent of a parent or guardian.

Our current sample size of 250 is comparatively small – we’re working on coding a much larger sample – but the outcomes to date are consistent with what we now have seen previously. We don’t want in charge Google. Age verification on the Internet is notoriously difficult and tenseand we now have no way of knowing whether these videos were uploaded with the consent of a parent or guardian. But we would like to focus on what the AI ​​models of those large corporations are picking up.

Small reach, big influence

You might think that OpenAI uses highly produced influencer videos or TV news broadcasts posted on the platform to coach its models. previous research using large language model training data shows that the most well-liked content is just not all the time essentially the most influential when training AI models. A virtually ignored conversation between three friends could have much greater linguistic value when training a chatbot language model than a music video with tens of millions of views.

Unfortunately, OpenAI and other AI corporations are pretty opaque about their training materials: they don't specify what goes in and what doesn't. Most of the time, researchers can infer problems with training data when the outcomes of AI systems are skewed. But once we get a glimpse of the training data, there is commonly cause for concern. Human Rights Watch, for instance, published a report on June 10, 2024, which showed that a preferred training dataset incorporates many photos of identifiable children.

The history of self-regulation by big tech corporations is filled with moving goalposts. OpenAI particularly is notorious for demanding Forgiveness as an alternative of permission and has confronted increasing criticism for Putting profit above safety.

Concerns about using user-generated content to coach AI models typically concentrate on intellectually Propertybut there are also privacy issues. YouTube is a big, unwieldy archive that’s not possible to totally review.

Models trained on a subset of professionally produced videos could potentially be an AI company's first training corpus. But without strict guidelines, any company that features greater than the favored tip of the iceberg is more likely to include content that violates the Federal Trade Commission. Online privacy rules for youngstersprevents the corporate from secretly collecting data from children under the age of 13.

With last yr’s Implementing Regulation on AI And a minimum of one promising proposal Although comprehensive data protection laws is on the table, there are signs that legal protections for user data within the US may develop into stricter.

Did you unknowingly help train ChatGPT?

The intentions of a YouTube uploader simply aren't as consistent or predictable as those of somebody publishing a book, writing an article for a magazine, or exhibiting a painting in a gallery. But even when the YouTube algorithm ignores your upload and it never gets greater than a number of views, it will probably be used to coach models like ChatGPT and Gemini.

As far as AI is worried, your loved ones reunion video may very well be as essential because the videos uploaded by influencer giants Mr. Beast or CNN.