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A tech journalist traces how YouTube works—or fails to.

Bloomberg reporter Bergen seeks to bring the behemoth into the light. Though YouTube has billions of users and countless hours of content, the founders of the company—Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim—are largely unknown outside of the tech industry. YouTube’s current CEO, Susan Wojcicki, has a low profile by the standards of the social media business. When it started in 2005, the concept of having users provide content was simple, but the mechanics were complex. Once the site was operational, the growth rate was astonishing. Videos about games, music, fashion, celebrities, and, of course, cats: There seemed to be something by—and for—everyone. When Google paid $1.65 billion for YouTube 10 months after its launch, it seemed like an incredible amount. Of course, it turned out to be an excellent investment. The massive size of YouTube, however, presents a host of managerial problems. “It’s a tanker, an enormous business steered with small, careful turns,” writes Bergen. “Even if she wanted to, Wojcicki probably couldn’t steer it entirely in a chosen direction. She is a steward of a platform with a life of its own.” A central issue has always been the proliferation of posts that were unsuitable, including fake news, pornography, conspiracy theories, and terrorist videos. They appear faster than the algorithms and moderators can deal with them. The deluge stemmed from the open-to-all business model, and constant changes to the rules have often generated more confusion than clarity. As the author shows, all this raises fundamental questions: When does content moderation become censorship? Where is the line between disinformation and a different opinion? What are the obligations of a social media platform? There are no easy answers. Bergen mostly keeps the story straight, but any account of the company is going to be a tale of barely controlled disarray. That is part of YouTube’s attraction—for better or worse.

Powerful insight into a ubiquitous yet still shadowy company.