WMHSMUN XXXIV YouTube Creators Forum Background Guide “Unprecedented committees. Unparalleled debate. Unmatched fun.” Letter From the Director Dear Delegates, My name is Sam Clark, and I have the honor of directing the YouTube Creators Forum for WMHSMUN XXXIV. I can’t wait to work with you all this fall, and I’m excited to see the direction you take our committee in, as I know it’ll be engaging and fun. Let me start by saying I’ve been on YouTube for as long as I can remember and observing how this platform has shaped the world of social media has fascinated me for a while. So needless to say, being able to dive into the international politics of YouTube is incredibly fun for me, and hopefully we can make it just as fun for you. As for my background, I’m a junior at William and Mary from a small town called Cranford, New Jersey. So far, I’ve been involved with every conference we’ve had here in my time at the university, but I also study English and Hispanic Studies. That’s right, you don’t have to be a government or international relations major to like MUN! Though I only did it a little bit in high school, I’ve found a renewed interest for it in college. In my free time, however, I like to game, write, watch films, and explore YouTube. YouTube has been a part of my weekly routine ever since I could access a computer. I became a part of the earliest communities and fandoms, and as the platform evolved, so did my interests and subscriptions. Of course, I never foresaw the global impact that it would have, becoming some creators’ full-time professions and giving a voice to creators around the world who wouldn’t have otherwise gotten a chance to tell their story. What was once a cute little site that hosts funny videos has now become a network of people, organizations, and even corporations that produce a literally indescribable amount of content. Despite being owned by a private entity, the public space that YouTube created has grown in precedence when it comes to media and information, and therefore it becomes our duty to finally outline policy that bolsters but also regulates the power that it has. We are tasked with creating innovative ways for YouTube and its community to grow and change as the landscape of the media does the same, and I have no doubt that we will be able to come up with some really remarkable work. Now this goes without saying, but this conference will certainly not be like any other MUN conference I think any of us have experienced. While I know we all would rather be able to interact face-to-face with one another, let us remember the importance of the everyone’s wellbeing first. It remains paramount that we do our best to fight this pandemic, so with that I ask everyone to give me your patience and understanding as we work together to make this year’s WMHSMUN just as memorable as any other one. There will be difficulties, that’s inevitable, but I stand firmly with the belief that, together, we can get through anything that inhibits our MUN experience. I hope you’re all healthy and safe and I can’t wait to see how our committee turns out. If you have any questions about the committee or about how we will run conference, don’t hesitate to email me. Sam Clark [email protected] Background Guide – YouTube Creators Forum Introduction Steve Chen. Chad Hurley. Jawed Karim. These three PayPal employees had no idea what they would create when they launched a small, video-oriented dating site called YouTube. Having little success with their original plan to pay women who uploaded profiles, the trio realized that the platform could be best used for anyone to upload whatever kind of video they wanted. They say they were inspired to go in this direction by Janet Jackson’s infamous wardrobe malfunction at the 2004 Super Bowl, thinking that people would want to be able to see the incident repeatedly. Accordingly, they dropped the dating idea in favor of a public forum for videos in May 2005, only a month after its creation. It wasn’t until September that big corporations began to take notice: the company received its first major investment ($3.5 million) from Sequoia Capital, and following, the next two years would see exponential growth for this new website.1 The first important advertisement on YouTube made headlines in October 2005, when Nike launched their marketing campaign with Brazilian footballer Ronaldinho. It was a video of him trying out a new specialized pair of boots, and it eventually became YouTube’s first million-view video. And just like advertising, copyrighting and censorship have also been with the website since the beginning. In February 2006, NBC staked its first copyright claim for an SNL sketch that had gone viral. In less than a year, however, NBC would capitalize on this popularity by partnering with the company. The next several years saw similar things repeat over and over; more investments came in, more people sought to advertise on the site, and in turn the user-base started to grow, especially after it got purchased by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion. 2007 saw its first content-creator earn revenue from advertising, and the rest is history.2 The mid 2010s is where YouTube’s effect on the public media space became most influential. It began hosting hubs for political election content, advertisers began taking note of the platform’s influence, and controversies began affecting people’s careers. August 2016 saw the first time that YouTube started, somewhat conspicuously, demonetizing videos that didn’t meet their “Advertiser-friendly” content guidelines. Several controversies followed where creators had uploaded content that most would deem unsuitable for a public platform, and in 2017, the first “Adpocalypse” began. This was when major companies began to remove their advertisements from YouTube altogether, costing the company around $750 million. Consequently, YouTube tightened its ad policy, making it much harder for creators to keep their videos monetized. The following year, a shooting took place at the San Bruno, California headquarters, reportedly over demonetizing videos. And in 2019, Vox reporter Carlos Maza spoke out against creator Steven Crowder for harassing him on the basis of sexual orientation. Note, the Crowder-Maza controversy is one among hundreds like it, but this particular one garnered a lot of media attention. YouTube once again 2 Background Guide – YouTube Creators Forum updated its content policy, although now, many are claiming that this move is a mark of strict censorship.3 Though, currently, the site is not ruled as a public forum and therefore does not protect is creators under first amendment rights or other such legislation. The time has come to discuss and debate this, and it is up to us create an environment free of controversy or unjust financial regulations. Topic 1: Transparency and Standardization of Sponsorship Marketing YouTube guidelines themselves currently have no standard practice rules governing the relationship between creators and brands that seek to advertise on their channels. The only rule that needs to be abided by is that of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Act, in which it must be disclosed to the audience that the video in question contains paid promotion. However, the actual practice of this policy becomes more muddled and unregulated the more it gets looked into. Almost every video from a successful, profitable, advertiser friendly YouTube channel contains some form of third-party paid promotion. To clarify, YouTube labels these videos a “piece of content that is created specifically for a sponsor and where that sponsor’s brand, message, or product, is integrated directly into the content.”4 Outside of that one sentence, there is no comprehensive policy that describes how to integrate, or what guidelines should be followed. Additionally, though creators are required to notify YouTube when uploading a video and thereby notify their audience, this process is not regulated, nor is it fully enforced. Scholar Katrina Wu agrees: “YouTube has provided little guidance on disclosure, perhaps limited by geographical concerns and difference in laws applicable to its worldwide content creators. Rather than actively presenting disclosure rules to content creators, YouTube takes on a more passive role in providing some guidance on disclosure for those who seek it.”5 She recommends that brands, creators, and YouTube alike be more transparent in the process of this kind of advertising. While they do technically abide by FTC guidelines, the notifications to the viewers are limited and inconspicuous. But many, Wu, included, feel that advertisers would face greater success if there were more transparency in policy and practice between the audience and the creator/brand.3 Uniformity might also be required, as many local laws have different policy concerning advertising. Since this committee is an international forum, the FTC Act only governs American creators, therefore YouTube policy must take precedence over local guidelines. The lack of regulation extends to the governance of brands as well, in that they operate without much regulation by the FTC or any other local governing body. According to a survey of YouTube creators, 3 Background Guide – YouTube Creators Forum brands often wish to exhibit a large amount of control over the videos that their products appear in, despite being prohibited by a majority of local advertising laws. “Though the business of brand integration seems to be highly professional on a structural level (e.g.