The hidden world beneath the shadows of YouTube’s algorithm

BBC: “There’s a secret side of YouTube, just beyond the guiding hand of the algorithm – and it’s nothing like what you know. The vast majority of YouTube’s estimated 14.8 billion videos have almost never been seen. Until now. This year marks YouTube’s 20th birthday. From its humble beginnings as a venue for amateurs, today YouTube is such a behemoth that the company calls itself the new Hollywood. YouTube is the world’s number one TV streaming service, where users clock billions of hours of watching every day. Leading YouTubers regularly outperform big-name studios. For comparison, an estimated 823 million cinema tickets were sold across all of the US and Canada in 2024. Meanwhile, MrBeast’s most successful video alone racked up 762 million views, about one watch for every 10 people on earth.  That’s the vision of YouTube the company promotes – slick, professional, entertaining and loud – but from one perspective, it’s all a façade. Through another lens, the essence of YouTube is more like this video from 2020. Before I watched, it had only been seen twice. A man points the camera out of his bedroom window as a flurry breaks out in the dead of winter. “Here it is,” he says. “The falling snow.” The sound of a TV plays in the background. A bird lands on a nearby fence. 19 minutes go by. Nothing happens…”