In 2006, in a milestone decision in the world of business, tech giant Google bought the video-sharing start-up company YouTube for US$1,6 billion. The stock-for-stock transaction was the largest purchase Google had ever made. Beyond the multimillion-dollar success of the internet-based platform, which has cultivated communities all over the world, YouTube has faced criticism related to the content hosted on the platform such as children-sensitive content, online abuse, harassment, hate and extremism.
The quest to make YouTube more responsible has since inspired accomplished documentary filmmaker Alex Winter and film and television producer Gale Anne Hurd, to create The YouTube Effect, an eye-opening documentary film about the dangers of YouTube. Hurd is the executive producer of the American horror drama series, Walking Dead, which stars Zimbawean actress Danai Gurira.
The 99-minute-long unfiltered documentary was launched at the US Embassy in Harare last Thursday in partnership with Almasi Collaborative Arts who brought together content creators and filmmakers to watch a captivating exploration of the impact of YouTube on modern storytelling.
The YouTube Effect points to YouTube for helping radicalise some of its viewers with propaganda and other dangerous forms of media.
Its makers argue that as much as it has sparked a cultural revolution, it has also created massive controversy in the age of disinformation due to its unchecked algorithm that values profit over people.
The documentary made its world premiere last year at the Tribeca Festival in New York and was officially released in the United States on July 7 this year as a limited release.
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The film seeks to help viewers understand how digital citizens are financially and psychologically motivated to create shocking content which Alex critiques as the “monetisation of propaganda and disinformation”.
The event also featured a special talk-back session that saw the two American film directors, interacting with attendees via the Zoom digital platform. Local creatives got a unique opportunity to gain insights into both directors’ creative processes and the inspiration behind the project.
One of the documentary’s focal points is the story of Andy Parker father to Alison Parker, a news reporter from Virginia who was shot and killed while conducting a live television interview in August of 2015.
For years, Parker has been involved in a copyright struggle to get the video of her daughter’s death removed from online sites such as Google and Facebook as he claimed they were “monetising” his daughter’s death.
The documentary made its world premiere last year at the Tribeca Festival in New York and was officially released in the United States on July 7 this year as a limited release.
The film seeks to help viewers understand how digital citizens are financially and psychologically motivated to create shocking content which Alex critiques as the “monetisation of propaganda and disinformation”.
According to Winter, the YouTube Effect documentary can be viewed as an effort to reform YouTube by taking corporates into account so that they find legitimate and effective ways of dealing with issues brought about by purveyors of disinformation and misinformation on the web.
Steve Chen, a Taiwanese-born American internet entrepreneur, and Chad Hurley, an American webmaster and businessman, initially conceived the idea for the YouTube platform after facing challenges sharing video files from a house party hosted by Chen.
Their solution eventually evolved into the video-sharing platform that has become an integral part of the online landscape.
YouTube has since expanded to become a social phenomenon often referred to as the second search engine after Google with over three billion views per day making it the biggest video streaming community in the world.