This is the most consequential technology in America (2024)

I’m digging into YouTube’s identity because it’s essential to understand the influence of technologies in our lives. As popular as YouTube is, its power over the internet and us is somehow still underrated.

Let me try to persuade you that YouTube is the most consequential technology in America:

YouTube might be best known for wasting a few minutes at a supermarket checkout or on the toilet. (Sorry.)

YouTube, however, is also America’s top living room streaming destination. Data from Nielsen consistently shows that Americans spend more time watching YouTube on TV sets than we do any streaming service including Netflix.

There isn’t reliable data counting the combined time we stream on TV, phones, computers and other devices, but YouTube would likely be tops on that measure, too.

In music, more people tune into songs on YouTube than we do on Spotify, the radio or any other audio service.

In a survey of people in several countries by Mark Mulligan of MIDiA Research, about two-thirds of respondents watched music videos on YouTube. About 43 percent listened to music online another way and 31 percent have a streaming music subscription like those from Spotify and Apple Music.

P.S. The most widely used social app among American adults is YouTube by a mile, Pew Research Center says. The most widely used app among teens isn’t TikTok. It’s YouTube again by a mile.

If you post on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Reddit or X, you are basically making those companies’ products for free. YouTube doesn’t work that way.

From each dollar that advertisers pay for commercials on many millions of YouTube videos, the person who made the video gets 55 cents. Google, which owns YouTube, keeps the rest.

YouTube has had this financial arrangement for close to 20 years. Still today, no other large app has such a consistent way for people to earn income from what they create and post online.

A healthy internet economy, like a well-functioning United States economy, is one in which everyone believes he has a shot to thrive. That includes you as the viewer, the people making the information or entertainment you’re watching and the companies distributing the material.

YouTube is far from perfect on this score, but it may be the closest thing to the financially ideal online economy.

By the way, if you buy a subscription to YouTube Premium, which lets you watch videos without ads, YouTube hands over portions of your money to the video makers, in proportion to your viewing time.

If you watch a lot of videos from MrBeast and Not Just Bikes, those YouTube channels will receive a large chunk of your subscription money. The relatively democratic system to pay the people making stuff is not how most music services like Spotify or Netflix work.

Even if you only listen to jazz music on Spotify, Taylor Swift will still get a bunch of your subscription money.

You know an app is important when it becomes a wrestling match for companies grabbing every morsel of data to “train” their AI.

According to the New York Times, ChatGPT owner OpenAI invented a way to suck up more than 1 million hours of YouTube videos and podcasts and turned the spoken words into fuel to coach its AI. Google has also transcribed YouTube videos to train its AI software, the Times reported.

What OpenAI did might violate YouTube’s terms of service and what Google did might violate the copyright of people who make YouTube videos, the Times reported.

OpenAI said it uses “numerous sources including publicly available data and partnerships for nonpublic data." Google reiterated the YouTube CEO’s recent comment that the company’s AI is trained with some YouTube material, “in accordance with our agreements with YouTube creators.”

YouTube is definitely flawed. It’s been used to mislead and harass people and to spread propaganda. But for good or for ill, YouTube matters even more than you probably think.