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In part four of How YouTube Ate TV, Fast Companys oral history of YouTube, insiders describe how the companys Partner Program began sharing ad revenue with creators, kicking off the age of the professional YouTuber. As monetization transformed the platform, creators faced the newfangled challenges of managing fame in the viral video age. YouTube, meanwhile, wrestled with hate speech and other unsavory content. With YouTube increasingly competing with TV in its classic form, it also spent billions to bring one of broadcastings most iconic offeringsthe NFLon board. Comments have been edited for length and clarity. Read more How YouTube Ate TV Part one: YouTube failed as a dating site. This one change altered its fortunes forever Part two: Pit bulls, rats, and 2 circling sharks: The inside story of Google buying YouTube Part three: How YouTube went from money pit to money printer Ian Hecox, cocreator (with his high school friend Anthony Padilla) of the comedy duo Smosh: We were one of the first 10 channels on YouTube to get monetization [in 2007]. That allowed us to move out of our parents’ houses and into a house where we lived and worked for multiple years. Shishir Mehrotra, YouTube chief product officer/CTO (20082014): At first you had to know somebody to get into the Partner Program. The choice to open it up in 2009 was big. It was heavily motivated by our interaction with Sal Khan and Khan Academy, and how important it was to support creators like that.Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy, the pioneering maker of educational videos: I think I got on YouTube’s radar because of [Mehrotra]. He’s a close friend. He used to say, You know, Sal, I checked your viewership. If you turned your ads on, you could maybe make a living off of this.Mehrotra: Of every dollar that came in [to YouTube], 55 cents went right back out [to creators]. That was a promise we were willing to make. It was a very hard decision at a time when we were losing a lot of money.Justine iJustine Ezarik, YouTuber: The first few years, I wasnt making a lot of money. But then the YouTube Partner Program came along. And then the brand deals started coming. Zahavah Levine, YouTube general counsel, chief counsel (20062011): Paying this new generation of YouTube creatorswho developed content specifically for YouTubeled to an entirely new ecosystem for unknown performers and filmmakers by giving these artists new ways to promote their work to a global audience and rise to fame. Meanwhile, YouTubes cultural influence was still surging. Kevin Allocca, YouTube culture and trends executive (2010present): In 2010, you had Double Rainbow and Auto-Tune the News. Some of the Lonely Island stuff from Saturday Night Live was popping as well. In 2011, you had Rebecca Black and Nyan Cat. It was kind of the peak viral video era. The parents of unknown 13-year-old singer Rebecca Black paid $4,000 to produce a video of her song Friday. It got about 1,000 views in its first month on YouTubeand then, after going viral, racked up 167 million more in four months. Rebecca Black, singer: Friday was never intended to be a part of the internet. The idea of it being [seen] by anyone more than my family and the people I was making it with was the furthest thing from my mind.Allocca: The things that were viral at that point were the ones that people were sharing across different social media platforms or that were being embedded across all the big blogs. Though Blacks song hit the Billboard charts, it was widely mocked online, and she was targeted for harassment, including death threats. Black: The idea of putting yourself out there, for me as a kid, was terrifying. I dont think the internet knew at all what it was turning itself into, what it already was at that point. There was such a Wild West of the dark web and the deep web and strangers on the internet. As a child, theres just no way that you even can truly grasp what that means. Founded in 2010, VidConan annual conference for creators, executives, and fanshelped make the platforms community tangible. Tara Walpert Levy, Google ads director (20112021); VP, Americas at YouTube (2021present): We started taking advertisers and agencies to VidCon, where they could see the relationship between the creators and the fans.Jim Louderback, general manager and CEO, VidCon (20172022): All you had to do was stand there and watch a famous creator walk across the Anaheim Convention Center. The teens would scream and yell and run after them. It was Beatlemania for YouTubers.Ezarik: At the first VidCon I brought T-shirts to give away, and I was handing them out in the lobby. You cannot do that now. There are too many peopleit’s a safety hazard. But back then, we were all just hanging out. We didn’t know any better. How YouTube Shaped CultureI Counted to 100,000!, January 2017Jimmy MrBeast Donaldson shares 40 hours of himself counting, sped up to 23 minutes. His increasingly lavish stunts eventually make him YouTubes most followed creator. In 2014, Susan Wojcicki (19682024), a key architect of Googles ad business, succeeded Salar Kamangar as YouTubes CEO. She was soon confronted with complaints from marketers whose ads were being shown with videos that included hate speech and other offensive material. Some of them suspended advertising on the platform. Levy: Peple would send us videos and say, This is a problem.Johanna Voolich, YouTube VP of product management (20152021); chief product officer (2023present): We needed to figure out how to lean into the community guidelines that wed had, how to make them stronger, how to work on our advertiser guidelines, how to work on enforcement. How YouTube Shaped CultureCobra Kai, May 2018An updating of the 1984 movie The Karate Kid, this series is a hit among the companys big-budget YouTube Originals. After two seasons, it goes to Netflix. Ultimately, creating YouTube videos is still about connecting with a community and staying human, even if the demand on creators can be incessant and the good stuff can feel like its swimming in a sea of slop. Rhett McLaughlin, cocreator and cohost of Good Mythical Morning (2012present), whose recent topics have included a review of every flavor of Spam: You sit down and watch some videos that are designed for engagement, and you do that for an hour; you walk away and you feel like your brain has just had all its serotonin drained out of it. Link Neal, Good Mythical Morning cocreator, cohost: The cornerstone of everything we do is that were inviting viewers into our friendship. Chris Schonberger, CEO of First We Feast, which produces Hot Ones (2015present) featuring celebrities chatting while eating increasingly spicy wings: [Hot Ones host] Sean [Davis] says that the audience is like a cat that tells you where it wants to be scratched. Michelle Khare, whose activities on Challenge Accepted (2018present) have ranged from joining the circus to training at the FBI Academy: When we release an episode, we have immediate feedback. Many times we take those learnings and apply them to the next video, rather than having to wait for the next season of the show. Casey Neistat, filmmaker and YouTuber: You can have a moderately or mildly successful channel on the platform if you approach it with a moderate or mild level of attention. When I found a real inflection point in my YouTube channel by posting every day, I made the decision to go into that as aggressively as possible, to post every day for something like 800 days in a row. The demands on me were tremendous. Felicia Day, actress, singer, writer, and YouTuber: iJustine [Ezarik] is the survivor. Shes talked a lot lately about how shes pacing herself, not sharing as much, because you cannot sustain it as a human being. If you cant fill your well, because youre always online, youre going to burn out. Ezarik: Right now Im obsessed with Labubu, so I have a bunch of Labubu content coming out. I like sharing it with my audience, and if theyre not interested, theyll just click away and watch something else. Keeping consistent is key, even if youre not posting every day. Just letting them know that Im still here. How YouTube Shaped CultureSkibidi Toilet, February 2023Generation Alpha binges on Alexey Gerasimovs animated series about humanheaded toilets. It garners tens of billions of views within months and spawns memes and merch aplenty. As YouTube grows ever more central to how billions of people entertain and inform themselves, its boundaries have gotten tougher to pin downto the benefit of creators and viewers alike. Neistat: In the mid-2010s, YouTube was elevating specific creators. And in the decade since then, theyve necessarily taken their foot off the gas of defining what it means to be a creator, because they breached this critical mass where they no longer needed to tell people what the platform was. Everyone had their own understanding. What’s come out of that is really special. It’s expanded the definition of what it means to be a YouTuber. Day: When I launched my company, Geek & Sundry, on YouTube [in 2012], YouTube was looking to Hollywood to make content. Native creators weren’t as encouraged or valued or seen as important. And now it’s like creators rule. Its a wonderful place to be. Kevin Perjurer, a YouTube documentarian whose Defunctland channel tells the stories of abandoned theme park attractions: When I started on the platform [in 2017], it was all about regular uploading. You know, You gotta pick your day of the week, and then hit that time with a video of similar runtime and a similar style, and that’s how you grow. That is completely gone in terms of the modern-day YouTube, for better, I think. YouTube is now much more about longer projects that took a dedicated amount of time and effort put into them. Allocca: There’s not a day goes by that I don’t see something where I’m like, I don’t even know what I’m looking at right now. The ways that people use this technology evolve with the ways that society and human creativity evolve. Along with enabling YouTubers to explore new frontiers, YouTube has become essential to some of the worlds most well-established content providers as they seek mass audiences in changing times. One long-in-the-making landmark moment came in 2022, when it acquired rights to the National Football Leagues Sunday Ticket package, formerly a DirecTV staple. Hans Schroeder, executive VP and COO, NFL Media: I go back to somewhere in 2005, even before Google bought YouTube. A couple of us took a day trip out to Google and met with Jennifer Feikin, who was running Google Video at the time. Our excitement only grew once they acquired YouTube, and you saw the growth of that platform. Mehrotra: In 2012, we tried to buy the rights to Sunday Ticket from the NFL. We were ready to pay $2 billion for it and ended up not being able to make the offer. We couldn’t get Larry [Page] to approve it. And YouTube ended up with the exact same deal for the same price 10 years later. Christian Oestlien, YouTube VP of product management (2015present): As with all deals, it came together quickly. I was down in Australia at the time, so it was a lot of 3 a.m. to 7 a.m. type meetings. Schroeder: There was always excitement that we could do something together. They launched the YouTube TV platform and distributed NFL Network and RedZone on that. And that led to Sunday Ticket. Oestlien: One thing that’s really nice about NFL Sunday Ticket was it built on top of the several years of experience we had on YouTube TV of delivering sports as low-latency, high-quality broadcast-level experiences. We built a really big fan base on YouTube across sports with our clips and highlights business and our partnerships with the NFL and others. Levy: The NFL is doing incredibly creative stuff on YouTube, above and beyond distributing their content. Their strategy was very specific: They wanted to partner with us on younger and more female viewers. And so they did a whole series of partnerships with our creators where they let them backstage at exclusive events. Schroeder: As you think about the creator content that they have and how that gets wrapped around an NFL game, were just at the tip of the iceberg now. Oestlien: We’re 10 years into many of us working on our partnership with the NFL. It’s a really nice milestone to showcase how far the company has come and how invested we are in making sure that these great sporting moments can be a big part of the YouTube culture. Additional reporting by María José Gutiérrez Chávez, Yasmin Gagne, David Salazar, and Steven Melendez.
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Below, coauthors Ulrik Juul Christensen and Tony Wagner share five key insights from their new book, Mastery: Why Deeper Learning Is Essential in an Age of Distraction. Ulrik is founder and CEO of Area9 Lyceum. Formerly a member of the McGraw Hill executive board, he is a frequent keynote speaker and regular contributor to Forbes. He also serves on several boards including the Technical University of Denmark. Tony is senior research fellow at the Learning Policy Institute and former codirector of Harvard Graduate School of Educations Change Leadership Group. He is the bestselling author of Creative Innovators and The Global Achievement Gap. Whats the big idea? In a world where AI can deliver information faster and more accurately than any human, what matters most are the uniquely human skills of critical thinking, communication, creativity, collaboration, and character. This is why we need to replace our outdated, time-based education model with a mastery-based approach. The future of learning depends on a ground-up redesign of our standards, metrics, and methods in the classroom. 1. The core purpose of education should be to develop the skills of mind and heart necessary for productive work, active citizenship, and personal health and well-being Our current education system is far too focused on information retention and recallthings that AI can do far better than any human beingand failing to develop our uniquely human skills. The world simply no longer cares how much students know. What matters far more is what they can do with what they know. A woman named Monique Little did everything society told her to do to succeed. She worked hard in high school, earned a bachelors degree from a good college, and yet, she was stuck in a series of dead-end, low-wage jobs because she lacked marketable skills. In fact, 45% of recent college graduates are underemployed, working in jobs that dont even require a bachelors degree. Monique told us that she had come to see her degrees as no more than certificates of attendance. She told us that she learned far more technical and people skills in 10 weeks at a nonprofit training program called Per Scholas than in all her years of schooling, which is what enabled her to land a great new job as an internet threat analyst for a startup. 2. We must abandon the traditional, time-based model of learning Progress should be based on clear evidence of mastery, not on arbitrary measures, like Carnegie units. The Carnegie unit, which defines a course as 120 hours of seat time, was established more than a century ago. This system, along with its reliance on multiple-choice tests, is fundamentally flawed. It leaves many students behind who simply need more time to master a subject. This system, along with its reliance on multiple-choice tests, is fundamentally flawed. We offer an inspiring alternative: performance assessments. Schools in Allen County, Kentucky, are holding defenses of learning where middle schoolers publicly present and defend their work to community members. This shifts the focus from passive memorization to active demonstration of skill and understanding. This kind of authentic, public assessment not only motivates students but also gives the community a clear, face-to-face sense of what their students can truly do. 3. Tapping into students intrinsic interests and passions motivates them Rote learning and external rewards and punishments (like grades) are not enough and lead to increasing levels of student disengagement and anxiety in schools. We provide a fantastic example from a program called the Center for Advanced Professional Studies, or CAPS. A student named Antonio Linhart entered the program interested in game design. CAPS didnt force him down a predefined path; instead, it helped him apply his passion to real-world projects, including a client project, a community outreach project, and a personal passion project. This process of connecting his interests to meaningful, hands-on work sparked his curiosity and led him to discover new career paths in computer science that he didnt know existed. We also saw this idea in practice at Red Bridge School, where a group of young girls interested in fashion created clothing designs based on their curiosity about roly-poly bugs. This kind of learning is foundational to creativity and mastery of skills. 4. A personalized approach is essential in mastery-based learning Nearly everyone can achieve high levels of mastery, but not everyone learns at the same pace. We bring this idea to life with a powerful story from the world of adult learning, specifically from the Danish road-safety certification organization, VEJ-EU. This program trains a diverse group of workers, from civil engineers with advanced degrees to laborers who didnt finish high school, all of whom must pass the same proficiency-based certification exam. True education is not a race. Instead of a one-size-fits-all class, they developed a personalized, computer-based learning system that allows individuals to progress at their own speed. The program proved that all learners could achieve the required mastery, even though the slowest learners might need 10 times longer than the fastest ones. True education is not a race. Its about providing the time and support necessary for every individual to reach a defined standard of competence. 5. This new model of learning requires educators to be sources of inspiration Teachers must become performance coaches, guides, and mentors who know and support their students. In Finland, a country whose education system is often praised globally, aspiring teachers enter a masters degree program where they spend a full year with a master teacher and a team of peers. They regularly observe each others classes, debrief on their practice, and collaboratively refine their lesson plans. This model, rooted in collaboration and continuous feedback, transforms teaching from an isolated profession into a community of practice dedicated to improvement. This systemic, mastery-based approach to teacher training is what has enabled Finland to consistently achieve excellent and equitable education outcomes. Its a stark contrast to the conventional conference, observe, conference model that is still common in many teacher preparation programs today. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with ermission.
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Youre in a meeting when your boss suggests changing a number to make the quarterly report look stronger. Heads nod. The slides move on. You feel a knot in your stomach: Do you speak up and risk being branded difficult, or stay silent and become complicit? Most people picture defiance as dramatic outbursts. In reality, its often these small, tense moments where conscience collides with compliance. I first saw the power of defiance not in the workplace, but closer to home. My mother was the ultimate people-pleaser: timid, polite, eager to accommodate. Barely 4 feet, 10 inches tall, she put everyone elses needs above her own. But one day, when I was 7, I saw a different side to her. We were walking home from the grocery store in West Yorkshire, England, when a group of teenage boys blocked our path in a narrow alleyway. They hurled racist insults and told us to go back home. My reaction was instantaneous: Stay quiet, avoid conflict, and get past them as quickly as possible. I grabbed my mothers arm, urging her to move with me. But she didnt. My quiet, deferential, never-confrontational mother did something completely different. She stopped, turned, and looked the boys directly in the eyes. Then she asked, calmly but firmly, What do you mean? She wasnt loud or aggressive. And in that moment, she showed me that defiance doesnt always roar, and it can come from the people you least expect. Ive carried these lessons into my work as a physician-turned-organizational psychologist. For decades, Ive studied why people comply, staying silent when they dont want to, and how they can resist wisely. In my book Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes, I offer a framework based on behavioral science research that can help you defy in ways that are intentional, effective, and true to your values. What defiance really is When people think of defiance, they often picture teenagers slamming doors, protesters shouting in the streets, or rebels breaking rules just for the thrill of it. But thats not the kind of defiance I study or the kind that shapes our lives most often. Defiance is not about being oppositional for its own sake. Its about choosing to act in line with your values when there is pressure to do otherwise. That pressure can come from anywhere: a boss urging you to fudge the numbers, a friend nudging you toward something you dont believe in, a culture telling you to stay in your place. Defiance in those moments might be as small as saying no, asking for clarification, or simply pausing instead of rushing along with the group. Other times, it means speaking up, challenging authority, or maybe walking away. Seen this way, defiance isnt a fixed trait that some people are born with and others lack. Its a practice: a skill you can strengthen over time. Some days you might comply, other days you might resist. What matters is that you have the awareness and the tools to make the choice consciously, rather than letting fear or habit decide for you. Why people comply If defiance is so important, why do people so often stay silent? One reason is a psychological process Ive uncovered in my research: insinuation anxiety. It arises when people worry that not complying with another persons wishes may be interpreted as a signal of distrust. Turning down a bosss request to adjust the numbers might feel like youre implying theyre dishonest. To avoid that discomfort, you go along, even when it violates your values. Behavioral science has long documented this pull toward compliance. In the 1960s, for example, psychologist Stanley Milgram showed that ordinary people would administer what they believed were dangerous electric shocks to strangers simply because an authority figure told them to. My own research has shown surprisingly high levels of compliance with obviously bad advice, even when given by a stranger with no consequences for disagreeing. People feel immense social pressure to go along with what others suggest. Thats because if youve never been trained in how to say no, it feels uncomfortable and awkward. A framework for action If compliance is the human default, how can you build the muscle of defiance? In my research, Ive developed a simple actionable guide that I call the Defiance Compass. Like a navigation aid, it orients you in difficult situations by asking three questions: Who am I? What are the core values that matter most to me? What type of situation is this? Is it safe to resist? Will it have a positive impact? What does a person like me do in a situation like this? How can I take responsibility and act in a way thats consistent with my identity and values? Asking these questions shifts defiance from a gut reaction to a conscious practice. And heres whats important: That third question (What does a person like me do?) circles back to the first (Who am I?), because how you act again and again becomes who you are. Defiance doesnt always mean open confrontation. Sometimes it means asking a clarifying question, buying time, or quietly refusing. It can mean speaking up or walking away. The key is to start small, practice regularly, and anchor your choices in your values. Like any skill, the more you practice, the more natural it becomes. Why defiance matters now Defiance may be risky, but its never been more relevant. At work, employees are pressured to meet targets at any cost. In politics, citizens face waves of misinformation and polarization. In everyday life, people struggle to set healthy boundaries. Across all these contexts, the temptation to comply for the sake of comfort is strong. Thats why learning to defy strategically matters. It protects personal integrity, strengthens institutions, and helps sustain democracy. And it doesnt require being loud or confrontational. Of course, not every act of defiance is safe or guaranteed to make a difference. Sometimes it comes at real personal cost and some people still choose to act even when the impact isnt certain: Think of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat, or Colin Kaepernick taking a kee. In those moments, the act itself becomes the message. Both of those individuals were deeply connected to their values and the assessment is personal: What feels worth the risk to one person might not to another. Defiance does require practice: noticing when values are at stake, pausing before you nod along, and choosing actions that align with who you want to be. Each act of consent, compliance, or defiance shapes not just your story but the stories of our societies. If you practice defiance, and teach it and model it, you can imagine a different type of society. You can start to envision a world where, in that same alleyway from my childhood, one of the boys will step forward and tell his friends, Thats not okay. Let them pass. Sunita Sah is a professor of management and organizations at Cornell University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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