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WIRED25: CEO Susan Wojcicki On Making YouTube A Better Place

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki spoke with WIRED’s Peter Rubin as part of WIRED25, WIRED’s 25th anniversary celebration in San Francisco.

Released on 10/16/2018

Transcript

00:00
(upbeat music)
00:04
Susan, thank you so much for being here.
00:06
Considering I googled all my questions,
00:08
I'm feeling a little bit at a loss after that video.
00:11
So, first question,
00:14
who has time to watch all these Shane Dawson videos?
00:17
No, I'm just kidding.
00:19
So... Lots of people.
00:21
Lots of people do. Millions of people do,
00:24
and you've seen this all happen.
00:25
You have a very kind of long history with Google.
00:27
Famously, it's your garage that it got started in.
00:33
And a little extra part.
00:34
It was more than just the garage.
00:36
And actually, recently, Google just did this
00:40
put it on Google Maps with Street View
00:42
for our 20 year anniversary.
00:43
So, if anyone has any questions about it,
00:46
you can just see it on Google Maps.
00:49
Floor plan and everything.
00:50
So, from that perspective,
00:52
being as kind of intimately involved with Google
00:55
from the very beginning,
00:56
the open internet was this incredible dream 20 years ago.
01:01
It was utopian.
01:01
It was something to aspire to.
01:03
Now, though, people aren't so sure.
01:05
So, is there such a thing as too much openness,
01:09
and how are you grappling with that?
01:12
Well, I think if we look at openness
01:15
and we think about all of the advantages that it's had,
01:19
they're tremendous.
01:21
I mean, I don't think anyone here could think about
01:24
going back to a world pre-internet
01:26
where you can't have access to all the information
01:28
that we have in today's world.
01:31
And, you know, we just saw this appear on the screen
01:34
of these YouTube creators.
01:35
And when I see these YouTube creators,
01:37
I call them next generation media companies
01:39
because they are people who have a business.
01:42
They go out, they have a vision,
01:45
they entertain or they inform,
01:49
and each one of them actually is generating income.
01:55
They're a business, they're a media company,
01:56
but they're this new type of media company
01:58
that we just couldn't have had in the previous world
02:01
where you had to go, you had to...
02:04
There was only certain people who had access to video.
02:07
So, I think there's no question
02:08
that the openness has been an incredible resource
02:12
to share voices and to make those voices much more diverse.
02:16
On the other hand,
02:18
in the last 18 months we've added a lot of language
02:21
and a lot of focus in the company around responsibility.
02:26
YouTube has always had community guidelines.
02:28
We've always said these are the guidelines
02:30
that we'll allow on the platform.
02:32
For example, we've never enabled pornography,
02:35
any kind of incitement to violence, hate.
02:40
Those are examples of ways
02:41
that we've had community guidelines,
02:43
but in the last 18 months we have significantly ramped up
02:49
our enforcement of those policies.
02:51
We have tightened our policies.
02:53
We've committed, Google has committed,
02:55
to having 10,000 people who are focused on trust and safety.
03:00
We have enhanced those people with machines.
03:03
We've come out with a transparency report.
03:04
So, if you look and see, we had, in Q2,
03:07
we removed almost 10 million videos,
03:10
and of those 10 million videos,
03:12
we removed almost 70% of that with machines.
03:15
And of that, we removed almost 75% very very quickly
03:19
without a single view
03:20
because we could do that with a machine.
03:21
So, this had just been...
03:23
I think if you look at it, it's all about balance.
03:25
Openness is here, it's really valuable,
03:28
but we have to marry that
03:29
with the right level of responsibility.
03:31
Earlier this year,
03:32
you announced actually on stage with my boss Nick Thompson
03:36
that YouTube was rolling out a new function
03:39
in which they would kind of present vetted text
03:41
alongside any topics that were kind of
03:43
rife with conspiracy theories.
03:45
We're about seven months into that.
03:48
How has that borne fruit?
03:49
What have you kind of found from that?
03:50
Yeah, so what we've done is
03:53
there's a number of areas that are conspiracies.
03:56
One of them is flat earth, that the earth is flat.
04:01
Now, I don't think any of you in the room
04:03
probably believe that,
04:04
but there are a number of people
04:06
who'd try to convince you that that's true.
04:08
Now, that's an example of a conspiracy theory
04:11
where we have what we have clarify box.
04:14
And so, we put below it the information
04:18
from credible sources.
04:20
Wikipedia, Encyclopedia Brittanica.
04:23
We're gonna expand that to even more sources
04:25
so that users can get that information
04:27
and they can see the video is telling me something,
04:31
but here is other information from a very credible source
04:34
because it's hard.
04:35
We don't wanna be in the business of saying this is true,
04:38
this is not true.
04:40
We have almost 400 million hours uploaded,
04:43
and so we wanna make sure that we...
04:46
Sorry, 400 hours uploaded every minute to YouTube.
04:51
So, we wanna make sure that we are...
04:55
We can't be saying this is true, this isn't true,
04:57
but what we can do is we can enhance all of those sources
05:00
and give users more options.
05:02
So, that covers the factual side of things,
05:05
but there's this whole other side of YouTube that is
05:08
has been the subject of much discussion over the past,
05:10
like you said, 18 months.
05:11
And that is how results are presented to us.
05:14
So, yesterday, I went on the YouTube app
05:17
and I searched for Susan Wojcicki,
05:20
and because it was on my phone,
05:22
there was room for four results.
05:24
The first two were from a channel
05:26
called Red Pill Philosophy, which is a little yikes.
05:30
The third one was from a video that was not very nice
05:34
and had 200 views.
05:36
That's it.
05:37
And then the final one just said
05:39
people want YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki fired.
05:42
There were no interviews with you,
05:46
at least none that hadn't been re-contextualized
05:48
to serve the purpose of whoever uploaded the video.
05:51
And you have your own channel.
05:53
Your videos weren't there.
05:54
What needs to happen to find some kind of balancing point,
05:59
not on the factual side,
06:00
not on the enabling conspiracy side,
06:02
but on the what we are being steered toward
06:05
when we are looking for information?
06:08
Well, I mean, our goal is to be able to give you
06:10
the most relevant information.
06:15
We would hope that it would recognize
06:17
that I have a channel and these are my videos
06:19
and I have lots of interviews, probably like this one,
06:23
on YouTube, and I'd be curious what happened on page two.
06:28
Right?
06:29
'Cause I have a feeling that page two
06:30
was probably a lot better than page one,
06:32
but we really want page one.
06:34
We want those top results to be right.
06:37
And I think if you look at the web,
06:40
the web has a whole structure.
06:42
We're working to figure out like,
06:44
what are the right signals for us to figure
06:46
when we do ranking for search to bring up the most useful
06:49
and relevant information for our users?
06:51
And we think about YouTube really as this opportunity
06:58
to have the world's information,
07:00
but have it be a video library.
07:02
And so, our goal is that no matter what you wanna look up,
07:05
no matter what you wanna find,
07:07
you can find that information on YouTube
07:08
and you can find it in a video way.
07:11
So, did you go to page two?
07:12
I did, but my... And what was there?
07:14
There were actually videos of stage interviews of you.
07:18
Not mine,
07:18
because that would've been a feat of quantum physics,
07:21
but it felt like there was a moment
07:25
where that was all I saw.
07:27
And I thought, well, the swiping and the tapping,
07:29
it felt like the SEO gaming ploy all over again,
07:32
albeit on a new platform, which felt to me like...
07:36
It feels like a game of whack-a-mole sometimes.
07:40
Well, we're working.
07:41
We're working.
07:41
I mean, we wanna make sure that we deliver
07:43
the most relevant results,
07:44
and we look across a broad set of queries,
07:47
we look across a broad set of topics,
07:49
we make sure that those results are relevant.
07:51
I may not be in the query set
07:53
that people use for testing, but...
07:56
And certainly as CEO,
07:58
you're in the cross hairs of the user base
08:01
sometimes in a way that
08:02
a lot of public figures... Particularly on YouTube.
08:04
Particularly on YouTube.
08:06
However, some of that is unfortunately kind of a microcosm
08:11
of what happens a lot on internet culture at large,
08:13
which is some sort of kind of really deeply baked misogyny.
08:18
Now, as a woman CEO of a company
08:21
that's astride both technology and culture,
08:25
that's two male dominated industries,
08:27
or tech and entertainment, rather.
08:29
So, how do you create a workplace culture
08:32
that fosters more Susan Wojcickis,
08:34
that fosters more Geetha Muralis,
08:36
who you nominated for our 25th anniversary issue?
08:40
Yeah, for Room to Read.
08:42
Yeah, I mean, I think first of all,
08:44
it's been really important for me
08:46
to bring more diversity to tech.
08:49
And the reason I see that is I just...
08:54
I've been at Google now for almost 20 years.
08:56
I've been working in tech for over, I don't know,
09:01
approaching 30 years,
09:02
and I see how much this industry has changed the world
09:06
and I've seen that it's gonna continue...
09:08
It's just getting started.
09:10
And you say here's this giant force that's making change,
09:14
but it doesn't have diversity in it.
09:16
It doesn't have enough women.
09:18
And so, a lot of times I've tried to explain
09:20
what this feels like by saying the internet and technology
09:24
has been the printing press in terms of enabling information
09:27
to be delivered at a much lower cost
09:30
in a much easier way than ever before.
09:33
And if you look back at the printing press and you said,
09:35
well, we have this new technology,
09:37
but only 20% of the world can read that are women,
09:44
and then you think...
09:44
and write.
09:45
And then you say, well,
09:47
what does that mean for literature
09:49
if only 20% of the books being written
09:51
and being written by women
09:53
or from different diverse groups?
09:54
Well, you're missing a lot of points of view.
09:56
There have been a lot of great woman authors.
09:58
And so, I've been worried about this
10:01
and have been trying to change it in a few ways.
10:04
By, first of all, being a role model
10:07
and being very positive.
10:10
Really encouraging, you know,
10:12
I've written a number of op-eds
10:14
about encouraging other tech leaders
10:16
to take this really seriously and for them to own it,
10:19
not just say oh, this is the HR department's role.
10:22
No, you're the leader of the company.
10:24
You need to own it.
10:26
And then also from my perspective,
10:30
I've also tried to remind people
10:32
that really anyone can be a mentor.
10:35
I may be a role model, but anyone can be a mentor.
10:37
And I look back at Google as I say, well, who...
10:41
How did I get to this position?
10:43
And I realize it's really that the people in charge were,
10:48
who are pretty much all men, were there,
10:52
and they really mentored me and gave me this opportunity.
10:56
And so, I remind people your mentor
10:58
doesn't need to look like you.
10:59
They don't necessarily need to be the same gender
11:01
or the same race or the same background, and anyone...
11:05
Power is something that is passed on.
11:08
People who are in power say these are the next people
11:11
that I'm gonna give it to.
11:12
And I really think it's important for the people
11:14
who are in positions of power to realize that and to give,
11:18
think as they hand it out to the next generation,
11:21
to think and to encourage a more diverse group in tech.
11:26
You've had a number of these mentors in part
11:28
because, like I said,
11:29
you have this long history at Google
11:31
and you've been in so many divisions
11:33
in so many capacities that it's...
11:36
You're not a founder, you're a veteran,
11:40
which seems like it brings with it
11:41
an entirely different set of learned leadership traits.
11:45
So, how has that changed the way,
11:47
your stewardship of YouTube,
11:49
in a way that it might now have had you just founded it?
11:53
Yeah, well, one of the things that's been good
11:56
is that I've basically been at Google since the beginning,
11:59
so when I talk to people,
12:01
I can imagine every size of a company
12:03
from the very very beginning
12:05
to the size that it currently is.
12:06
And I was very...
12:08
I was on Google's leadership team for the first, I guess,
12:13
15 years that I was at Google.
12:15
And so, when I got to YouTube,
12:17
it felt like going back in time.
12:18
It felt like oh, this is Google 2002.
12:22
This is my opportunity to really take all these lessons
12:25
that I learned at Google and how do I apply them to YouTube?
12:28
And so, when I joined Google, I didn't really know anything.
12:32
Everything I said I knew,
12:33
I was probably just making up, and people believed me,
12:37
which was incredible.
12:38
But now I actually know.
12:39
I've done this for a long time.
12:41
And so, when I'm in a meeting, I know what questions to ask.
12:44
I have a lot of mental models and so,
12:46
I wanna use that to make YouTube successful.
12:49
But I also, as I talk to other leaders,
12:52
I also wanna be able to share that with other people
12:54
because I realize 20 years
12:55
of running a different tech company, you have real lessons.
12:59
And so, I wanna be able to share that also
13:01
with the next generation and help them
13:02
as they make decisions about their companies.
13:05
So, when you came in, it was a little bit like,
13:07
I guess, getting custodian of a nine-year-old.
13:09
And that nine-year-old is now 13.
13:11
And 13-year-olds can be difficult.
13:13
13-year-olds get angsty and they get rebellious
13:16
and they pierce things and they hide cigarettes.
13:19
What...
13:20
Yes, I'm aware of all of these issues.
13:23
What phase of parenting are you in right now with YouTube?
13:28
Is it a tough love phase
13:30
or is it a, oh, they'll grow out of it phase?
13:32
I think about YouTube as the last 18 months
13:35
really growing up, going through our growing up years.
13:39
And internet used to be...
13:42
We used to have to argue like hey, we're relevant,
13:44
we're important.
13:45
We actually have all these views
13:47
and we have all these people who come to us.
13:49
Pay attention to us!
13:50
And the world changed really quickly
13:52
where suddenly they said okay, we believe you.
13:54
You do have a lot of views.
13:55
Now, tell us what are you gonna do with that?
13:58
And make sure that you're being
13:59
and acting responsibly with that.
14:01
And so, the last 18 months I really think about
14:04
as our growing up years where we put a lot of systems,
14:08
a lot of people in place,
14:09
a lot of investment to think about
14:11
what's the right responsible growth.
14:13
And we are committed to that.
14:15
And we wanna make sure
14:17
that we are delivering the right information.
14:19
We wanna be thinking hard about all these tough questions.
14:24
As there's questions about
14:27
what do you allow on the platform, what you rank,
14:29
how do you rank that,
14:30
and I think we're in a much better place.
14:34
We've worked incredibly hard
14:36
and we will continue to do the best job we can
14:39
to deliver the best results for our users.
14:42
So, there's this whole other side to YouTube
14:44
which is the kind of paid content part,
14:48
which was YouTube Red, now it's YouTube Premium.
14:51
And you recently renewed a series from Doug Liman
14:54
set in the Jumper universe,
14:55
and there's a series coming from Paul W. S. Anderson
14:59
as the director.
15:01
My nieces and nephews already watch YouTube.
15:06
They don't watch it because it's TV,
15:07
but they watch it because it's TV for them
15:10
whether it's haul videos or it's gamers talking.
15:14
If you've already re-defined television,
15:17
why emulate television?
15:22
Well, our goal isn't to emulate television.
15:24
So, what we have in our subscription service is,
15:27
first of all, we have YouTube Music,
15:29
which we think is a great music subscription service.
15:33
And we have every song and every recording of every song.
15:38
So, if you're a music aficionado,
15:41
this is a great service for you.
15:42
So, that's the baseline service that we have
15:45
and that's a $9.99 a month service.
15:47
And then for two additional dollars,
15:50
we have YouTube Premium,
15:51
which also includes the no ads
15:54
and then the ability to watch any video offline
15:58
and background.
15:59
So, airplanes are great 'cause you can download
16:02
tons of videos, you can watch them on the airplane.
16:05
And then as part of that,
16:06
we also have these original contents.
16:08
And part of it had been that we have these YouTube creators,
16:11
and again,
16:12
they really are this next generation media companies,
16:14
but they say I've been doing vlogs,
16:16
I've been creating content on YouTube for a while,
16:19
but I really wanna create a movie.
16:21
And we just wanted to make sure that if we have core content
16:25
that appeals to our audience,
16:27
we want that to happen on YouTube.
16:29
These are YouTube creators.
16:30
We've really leaned into the creators, into music,
16:32
which has been universally appreciated on YouTube,
16:35
and areas that we think make sense for our users.
16:37
So, it's a small part of a larger offering.
16:40
Video has changed so much since 2005.
16:44
We've seen whole genres emerge.
16:47
We've seen makeup tutorials become an insane industry.
16:52
What is a YouTube video in, let's just take the WIRED,
16:56
pay in 25 years?
17:00
Well, let's see.
17:02
25 years.
17:02
I mean, I think one of the...
17:04
If we look at where video has gone...
17:06
First of all,
17:07
we've just had so many new voices
17:10
that we hadn't had 13 years ago.
17:13
And so, we expect that to continue,
17:17
but also this interactivity that goes with the platform.
17:19
So, you think about TV and it's just this one-way broadcast.
17:22
You can't do anything.
17:23
You can't talk back to your TV.
17:26
And you think about YouTube,
17:27
and our goal is how do we make that
17:29
as interactive as possible.
17:31
The ability to talk to the creator.
17:35
We have introduced live premier,
17:36
so the opportunity to be able to be the first one
17:39
to see that content, to be able to go live,
17:41
to be able to have a membership with that YouTube creator,
17:45
to have VR experiences.
17:47
And so, I think if you think about it 25 years from now,
17:51
they'll be video.
17:52
We could be watching it on different platforms
17:55
than we do today.
17:56
I don't know, maybe we'll all have contact lenses or...
18:02
I'm not sure where.
18:03
I don't wanna say it'll be in our heads.
18:06
I don't think I would do that in 25 years,
18:08
but there will be potentially new platforms
18:12
that we can watch and see these videos,
18:14
but I also think the opportunity for people to interact,
18:17
to be able to comment, to participate, to donate, to give,
18:21
to have a conversation, to talk to the other fans,
18:25
to get more reference material around the talk.
18:30
And so, I think there are just many ways
18:32
that videos will become much much richer
18:34
than they are today.
18:35
And how does that change?
18:37
We're already at a point where more than 70%
18:40
of all time spent watching YouTube is happening on mobile.
18:44
You're in I think 80 languages.
18:47
Although TV screens are our fastest growing screen,
18:50
which I think is really interesting.
18:52
Are they fighting against mobile?
18:55
Well, they're growing faster than mobile.
18:56
I mean, mobile's an incredible way to watch video,
18:58
but it's interesting to me that people
19:01
are now watching YouTube in the living room.
19:06
And then we also have YouTube TV
19:08
where we've taken TV content
19:10
and people are watching it on mobile.
19:11
And so, the idea that the content and the platform
19:15
have become disassociated with each other.
19:17
Does it change the way you scale up, though?
19:19
If you've come to assume mobile kind of the default,
19:23
but then there's also this push into the living room,
19:26
do things need to be considered or it's just one big pipe
19:29
and whoever, how they take it in is up to them?
19:32
No, we think about each platform,
19:34
and we think about how do we optimize it for each platform
19:36
and how do we give that best experience.
19:42
Usually TV is a shared device.
19:45
Mobile is a very personalized device.
19:47
So, we're thinking about those types of experiences.
19:50
So, if I put it on TV,
19:51
not everyone can see my watch history,
19:53
which might be for the best.
19:54
One last question before I let you go.
19:57
We all know the experience
19:58
of disappearing down a YouTube rabbit hole.
20:00
The good kind.
20:02
What's your most recent kind of, not lost weekend,
20:07
but you looked up and you're like oh,
20:09
I didn't know I'd been watching these videos
20:11
for an hour and a half?
20:12
Yeah.
20:15
Let's see.
20:16
Well, I enjoy many parts of YouTube
20:18
from the news, music, some of the beauty ones.
20:29
I would say recently
20:30
one of the things that I've really enjoyed with YouTube
20:34
is just the ability to learn.
20:36
And so, at YouTube we do over a billion views a day
20:39
of educational material, which I think is pretty amazing.
20:42
And everyone I meet tells me about new things
20:44
that they have learned.
20:45
And just the other night,
20:46
I was putting my son to bed and it was late
20:49
and I wanted him to go to bed.
20:50
And then, he always asks really hard questions,
20:52
and he asked how is cotton made?
20:56
How did things go from cotton to my shirt?
20:58
And I was just like, it's so late at night.
21:00
I need to go to bed.
21:02
Why are we talking about cotton right now?
21:04
But then I was like,
21:05
you should just go to YouTube and we should look at it.
21:07
And so, we opened it up and we started looking
21:09
and seeing how cotton was actually made
21:12
and actually gets cleaned.
21:13
They have, initially,
21:14
have stems and dirt in there
21:16
and then it's cleaned in multiple machines
21:18
and then there's all these different fibers.
21:19
And so then we spent a long time
21:22
actually watching how cotton material was made.
21:27
Well, I thought you said content
21:28
and I thought there is not a better woman to ask.
21:30
(laughing) Susan,
21:31
thank you so much for your time.
21:33
Thank you, everybody. Thank you.
21:34
Thank you. (clapping)
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