Luxembourg Times - Community - Should parents worry about PewDiePie?
PewDiePie, a popular YouTuber rose, to fame with the non-tech generation like me when the New Zealand shooter urged to "Subscribe to PewDiePie" while webcasting part of his attack in real time.
PewDiePie has more than 90 million subscribers, but his credentials have been called into question since the shooting, with many saying his mocking of extremist views is at best not really funny, and at worst has a strong whiff of collusion.
Following me? No? Well I can't say I blame you. Until last Tuesday I had never heard of PewDiePie, but my kids had.
Thankfully we are a Fortnite-free home (small cheer), so the kids aren't interested in following gamers. But the parents who alerted me to him had found their son watching some worrying content, and warnings were spreading across Luxembourg's parent community.
It was at this precise point that I realised that dangerous content on YouTube might be influencing my kids daily, something I had never considered before.
I always saw YouTube as the place that brought us the "flossing" dance craze, The Duck Song, and - for me personally - the site to watch "how to" videos on unblocking a drain or understanding basic algebra (that's homework-related, not what I do on a Friday night for fun).
I had absolutely no idea that 1.8 billion watch the internet's second biggest search engine every day. If you compare that to the paltry 4 million subscribers of the New York Times you start to get a very different picture of where most young people consume their media.
It's not TV or newspapers.
The PewDiePie incident has made me question who is policing YouTube. If in doubt, ask a friend, and I did. My source, Romit Choudhury, works in new technologies in Luxembourg.
"All major content platforms, especially the crowd-sourced ones, rely heavily on two pillars that allow them to publish almost any material unhindered," he told me.
A law signed by former president Bill Clinton gives these companies complete immunity from liability for content published by others on their platform in the US, where most of them are based, he said.
Armed with this shield, many content platforms use the standard refrain of "freedom of speech" to allow almost any content.
PR departments in these companies use words like "freedom of speech" as do critics of censorship. They gain an irrational defensive response by comparing often extreme content with our notion of what constitutes democratic freedom and the fundamental rights to defend it.
Romit highlights that it would be easy for YouTube to make it harder to find a lot of the hate-filled content.
"But executives fear that such actions might affect viewership and engagement on a platform like YouTube, leading first to less advertising revenue, but ultimately affecting the share price of the parent company and their core business model," Choudhury says.
Let's be clear about the revenues we are talking about here.
The New York Times has a market capitalisation of US$1.6billion; YouTube is worth US$15 billion. So significant money is to be made from letting extremist voices be heard, if they attract viewers who condone or condemn their messages.
And this goes back full circle to PewDiePie and the amount of airtime he is given. He's popular, has billions of followers and critics alike, all of whom keep coming back to watch him - on YouTube.
Parents worried about exactly what their children might be watching on YouTube should lobby for independent policing of these platforms. Countries like Canada are considering forcing social media companies to remove extreme content, while Facebook and Instagram have also been in the firing line. Perhaps governments need to step in.
For now, I am keeping a beady eye on what content my kids are consuming, or which YouTubers they are watching.
I know that no self-respecting child from 8 years and upwards wants their parents to be looking over their shoulder, but having an open conversation about what is out there is a good start.
Most kids will self-regulate because they sense content is dark or simply just wrong, but some will feel the pull of peer pressure to watch things, especially if it's linked to popular gamers or other icons.
Ignoring the fact that the younger generation now turn to YouTube and Instagram for their news and information, and that these are largely unchecked sources, is not an option. PewDiePie's star may be waning, but there are plenty of others queuing up to take his place.