YouTube's Inevitable Russia Problem

Modern day YouTube is best contextualized by loot boxes. You know, those types of addictive, ponzi-scheme gacha style digital subscriptions that took over YouTube creator sponsorships a few years back, and came under scrutiny by press and parents organizations for alleged manipulation of audiences and taking advantage of kids. The problem was specific to that current story beat, but it was perfectly symbolic of YouTube’s growing brand problem: companies promoting problematic businesses were partnering with popular YouTube creators to influence editorial content across a sea of videos and reach tens of millions of unknowing people that becomes a plague way before YouTube notices the trend, isolates the culprits, and identifies the negative effects. 

YouTube begins to feel more and more like a shot in the dark. This, therefore, increases audience devotion to creators they feel like they can trust and whose content they know they enjoy, building additional faith in a system held up on a foundation that resembles a block of Swiss cheese. Nearly 70% of audiences in the United States are more willing to purchase a product from a creator they like than any other type of advertising, influencer, or marketing campaign, according to Matter Communications. 

More to the point of the illicit nature of loot boxes that speaks to YouTube’s core contagious and challenging problem is the reality that creators don’t always know where their sponsorship money is coming from, nor are they incentivized to dig into these deep pockets they suddenly find themselves associated with. They don’t have to ask why a random company would want to work with them because that’s apparent from their perceived influence as dictated by the subscriber numbers underneath their profile pictures and viewership figures underneath their videos. That reality, however, leaves them open to “bad actors” — a term used to describe people who use widely populated platforms to accomplish harmful goals — taking full advantage of the barely policed, extremely eager marketplace that is the creator economy.

A YouTube Inevitability

Case in point: “Tenet Media” and a handful of YouTube’s most controversially prolific YouTubers. The Department of Justice last week filed a report alleging that several right-wing YouTubers, including Tim Pool, Benny Johnson, Lauren Southern, Dave Rubin, and several others were unknowingly part of a Russian psyop mission to spread propaganda. Tenet Media allegedly paid several of the YouTubers more than hundreds of thousands of dollars for content that resulted in providing mouthpieces for Russian interests, according to the Department of Justice.

The creators in question have asserted they maintained full editorial control over their videos, repeatedly saying they were victims of the ordeal themselves, but that doesn’t ease the more monstrous problem lurking below this high profile case. Sponsorships and back-door media companies are the expected next step for influencers who gain notoriety, and YouTube doesn’t necessarily heavily police those deals done outside the platform because to do so would hinder incentive to create for YouTube. The more prolific the creator, the more disincentivized YouTube is to prevent them from earning money on the platform that draws in global audiences. 

To borrow from the Marxist-Lenist phrase, it was destined to create an environment of useful idiots. This is just the first time it’s been caught. 

YouTube is still the wild wild west of a user generated content dominated, creator economy incentivized world. Instagram and TikTok are bigger social video players, but when it comes to creating a non-stop machine of content and a roster of the most sought out talent, no one comes close to YouTube. Other video platforms have tried: Vimeo pivoted to being a platform for serious filmmakers, Twitch took on live streaming instead of focusing on VOD, but YouTube’s strong creator payout system — 55% of all advertising revenue goes to creators — has established the Google-firm as a monopoly for all aspiring creators, bored audiences, and knowledge seekers. YouTube went from being a place for leisure to a place of labor, and that move brought with it a hoard of manipulators who could buy influence without worrying too much about strong interference from those in charge of the distribution. 

YouTube posted  the equivalent of roughly 360,000 full time jobs through its creators in 2023

Recognizing and sitting with how large the creator economy is are two different mindsets. It’s valued globally at $250 billion. New platforms like OnlyFans paid out a total $5.32 billion in 2023 — $3 billion more than what was paid out to NBA athletes. YouTube posted  the equivalent of roughly 360,000 full time jobs through its creators in 2023, which the Washington Post points out is 4x the size of General Motors. TikTok is the first stop for any type of news for people under the age of 24 in the United States, and that app reaches more than 150 million monthly active users in the US — about on par with Instagram. Data also shows that consumers trust news shared via YouTube creators more than creators on any other social media influencers, according to Statista: nearly 30% of survey respondents found YouTube creators to be highly trustworthy when it came to news content, about 6% higher than the next platform, LinkedIn. 

Growing trust from audiences and a continuous army of creators vying to publish content and monetize their work creates the perfect maelstrom for groups like Tenet Media. Creators like Benny Johnson and Lauren Southern, like other creators across different topic areas, are used to working with benefactors who want to access creators’ reach, and talking to audiences more willing each year to take YouTubers as serious harbingers of perceived truth. At the core of the creators’ response to the DOJ filing is that the payments didn’t impact their own independent editorial control, but the DOJ alleges that “while the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content of the videos are often consistent with the Government of Russia's interest in amplifying US domestic divisions in order to weaken US opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such as its ongoing war in Ukraine." A Wired investigation found that although specific Russian angles like the Ukraine war only appeared 67 times in transcripts downloaded from 1,600 videos (about as often as “misinformation,” “Christianity,” and “Clinton,” according to Wired), videos that Tenet did back stressed “highly divisive culture war topics.” 

YouTube's Underlying Problem is Our Problem

Now, one could argue that said creators would have published videos on these topics even without the $100,000 as seen by precedent set on their channel. If that is the argument you’re taking, then that is precisely the problem. Russian interference groups, who the DOJ alleges are operating within a campaign labeled the “Good Ol’ USA Project,” don’t need to do much other than continue incentivizing creators to continue putting out the types of videos that their audiences already expect. This may help defend the influencers involved in this specific case (I am not a lawyer, and I have no real legal expertise, so…you know…not legal advice), but the broader picture is that it becomes much easier for foreign entities to find and support creators to use as mouthpieces for mass communication with the public on any conceivable topic. 

There is no incentive to question. There is only incentive to grow. 

One of Posting Nexus’ most consistent underlying themes is that when you democratize access to mass audiences through more affordable technology, accessible distribution networks and make that content available to anyone at any given moment, you’re incentivized by two things: reach and monetization. Platforms like YouTube don’t just take advantage of that cheap labor, but use it to dominate digital video advertising supply and demand. YouTube has seen its advertising revenue grow 155% over the last four years, jumping from $3.6 billion in Q4 2019 to $9.2 billion in Q4 2023. The more advertising revenue that YouTube can pull in based on the number of engaged hours YouTube can boast — both of which are the result of more creators producing content to provoke longer audience sessions — the more widespread the rat race becomes. 

It also becomes damn near impossible to moderate, oversee, and police. I am not insinuating that Google was aware of the alleged connections between Russian agents and American YouTubers. Google, however, isn’t incentivized to police every transaction — especially those deals done off-platform — because its only incentives are engagement, advertising dollars, and monopolizing attention. Bad actors know this, and take advantage of it without having to do much work: set up a fake company, give money to creators who are used to working with firms they don’t intimately know, and reach audiences those bad actors couldn’t otherwise. Who needs bots that can be detected through machine learning AI tools when you can simply tap into the very bloodstream of American culture: creators and influencers already producing the type of content those entities want to expand upon? 

It’s funny. When I read the news articles about this case, my reaction, similar to friends who have worked covering beats like disinformation, far-right groups, and creator culture, wasn’t surprise. I wasn’t shocked. I wasn’t aware of what was happening, but I was aware, deep down, that of course this is what was happening in some capacity. This was the inevitable end state not just for YouTube but all social media and social video. We were surprised when Russian bots were used to interfere with the 2016 election. We were surprised when Cambridge Analytica was found collecting data from hundreds of thousands of users to try and influence the election in Donald Trump’s favor. 

We are continuously surprised that after conditioning people to expect that in return for their labor (content, posting) and data (personal information, interests, location, etc) they’ll get fame and money, and that when you pair those opportunities with a lack of oversight about the methods and transactions used to achieve those results, you end up with Tenet Media. You end up with Cambridge Analytica. You end up with, I’m positive, about a hundred other versions of these playing in the background right now. There is no incentive to question. There is only incentive to grow.