What Is YouTube’s Dominance Doing to Us? We Asked Its C.E.O.

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From The New York Times, this is the interview.

I'm Lutukar Sianavaro.

YouTube is a juggernaut.

The platform is winning the streaming war with Netflix.

It's made creators like Mr. Beast and Ms. Rachel into huge stars.

And it's owning the video podcast space.

Add to that, it's growing distribution business with YouTube TV,

and the deals with both the NFL and the Oscars.

And it's clear YouTube has few, if any, peers.

Which is why I wanted to sit down with CEO Neil Mohan.

Mohan has been in charge of YouTube since 2023,

and has overseen its rapid growth.

But that hasn't come without controversy.

Just this week, a jury in California found the company negligent,

alongside Mehta, for harming a teenager's mental health

through its addictive features.

That verdict which YouTube told us they planned to appeal

came down after Mohan and I talked.

But we still had a lengthy discussion about YouTube's impact on children and us all.

Here's my conversation with YouTube CEO Neil Mohan.

I

am very excited to be here today at YouTube.

I wanted to start with a statistic.

Mr. Beast, of course, the biggest content creator on YouTube,

said that humanity now spends 2% of its waking hours on YouTube.

Is the goal to make it 3%?

So I know Jimmy very well.

He and I have not done that math together.

So I don't think I can validate his math or not.

I think our goal, I mean, look, we measure ourselves by this concept of

whether viewers, all of us, the 2 billion people that come to YouTube every single day

are satisfied by their experience on YouTube.

And so that is how we orient decisions around the product or the business.

And we have grown.

We're the number one streamer, I think, for 3 years running now in the US.

On television screens, we're an incredibly large podcast platform.

This conversation, I will watch on YouTube.

So yeah, that has been part of the journey.

I'm incredibly proud of it in terms of making some long-term bets that have really paid off

for YouTube but also for our viewers and our creators.

Obviously, this is going to go on YouTube.

We've got cameras and lights here.

And what used to be an audio podcast is now a video podcast.

And part of that reason is because this is the way to gain new audiences, to reach people

because everyone seems to be on the platform now.

What is it that you think makes shows grow and gains an audience?

I mean, how do I make this a hit other than like maybe taking a chair and

bashing you over the head?

We might get there in an event.

When I get asked this question, I think it's, in my view, very, very simple.

And it has to do really with how YouTube works, which is the people that are on the other side

of the camera, other side of the screen, rather, that are watching you on a television screen,

or on their mobile phones when they're watching this conversation, or even on their

desktops or what have you. The one thing they can suss out really, really quickly is if it's

like truly authentic. And I really do think that if you go and actually spend a minute thinking

about any creator's channel, that is really what comes through for the really successful creators.

I want to talk about your competition because you mentioned podcasts.

You recently, though, have had several major podcasters leave YouTube for Netflix, shows like

the Breakfast Club, my favorite murder, are you worried that your biggest stars are going to be

signed away to places like Netflix? And we're also, by the way, of course, seeing Meta just

announced this week that they were interested in luring some of your creators away.

Apple is now talking about obviously getting into the video podcast business more aggressively.

I mean, they're taking, you know, they're taking the things that you built and they're saying,

come over here, the water's warm. Yeah. You know what I'd say a couple of things about that. So first,

it is flattering that they see us as sort of the center of culture, especially in terms of what

these amazing creators have been able to do on YouTube. But the real sort of conversation,

when I speak to our creators and I speak to our creators several times a week of all sizes,

really up and coming creators, some of the very large ones that you've mentioned, what they

always tell me is that no matter what they look to do, they understand that YouTube is their home.

There would be no beast games if there wasn't Mr. Beast on YouTube. And Jimmy knows that and he

talks about that. And that's the way that I think about it. They tell me over and over that

their most authentic real audience is on YouTube. They know that is the font of a lot of their

success off of YouTube. But if as a result of their success on YouTube, they are also experiencing

success in other places, whether it's working with a studio on a project or writing a book or coming

up in the case of Mr. Beast with his chocolate bar or what have you, then I think that's awesome.

I have not come across YouTubers that have completely yanked their content off YouTube. I

can't imagine why they would do that. And frankly, they're in a position where they can say no

to that, right? They don't have to because the nice thing about what they've built on YouTube is

that there's other places that are so desperate to actually work with them that they'll acquiesce

to what our YouTubers are ultimately know as the right decision for them in the long term,

which is to never leave their home. Yeah, I mean, it just seems like it's an interesting

consequence of the YouTube model because in many ways you're an incubator. You take, like you

said, anyone who's got a camera and a dream and they have a shot at getting an audience and

connecting with them. But once they get to a certain level of success, it seems like all these

other groups are sort of circling to take them away. And they never leave because they know that

their home is on YouTube. I want to move to another part of your business that you are also

really dominating. YouTube TV is now bigger than many of the cable operators. And since 2025,

the main way that YouTube is now consumed in the US is on connected television. At the beginning

of 2026, you wrote YouTube is the new TV because creators are the new prime time. I think one of the

things that has Hollywood nervous is that it's a question of quality too. Prestige TV, something

that's hard and costly to make. YouTube is mostly not that. I was looking at all these guides

that there are to sort of get your things to do well on YouTube. What are the hooks? How

do you get the algorithm to like you and amplify you? Are you adopting any of them? Not yet.

But it's all about tapping into a lizard brain and not about maybe elevating things that have

a narrative arc, that have character development, that have complex moral decision making.

And I'm just wondering, are we losing something with the dominance of the kind of creator

economy that YouTube specializes in? You know, I think this is a conversation that

I do think the industry likes to have. And it's oftentimes the industry just sort of talking

to itself to be honest. And I think it's presumptuous for us to judge or tell people what is

high quality or low quality or prestige or not. At the end of the day, two billion people come to

YouTube. Families, parents, young people, college kids, older adults. And they find what they love.

And there's every type of creator and every type of genre because it is a reflection

of humanity. We have incredible creators that are producing amazing scripted content in Hollywood,

like Alan, Chicken Chow, or Kanegra Dion, who have built sound stages to produce content

that engages people in incredibly, I would put that up against any sort of quote-unquote

sort of prestige content out there. I would put Miss Rachel or Mark Rober or Cleo Abram against

any sort of quote-unquote traditional sort of produced content. And the great thing about it is

that when the next Miss Rachel or the next next Mark Rober comes along, who's even more creative

in a different way, they get a shot at it as well. As opposed to someone in sort of traditional

sort of media saying, actually, no, I don't think your idea is a good one or it's low quality

quote-unquote. Who are we to say that? So content creators are king, but you are moving into

the traditional purview of the networks. You secure exclusive broadcasting rights for events

like the Oscars starting in 2029 and currently some NFL games. I've seen, of course,

predictions that this is going to be the death knell for cable and broadcast television

because these are such big tent pole events. I mean, what is this strategy here? Is it to sort of

pick out the biggest events from traditional broadcast television? I mean, is the Super Bowl next

and bring it to YouTube? Well, I mean, I guess the first thing that I would say is if you think

about it from a consumer standpoint, a viewer standpoint, especially a younger viewer,

their expectation is that when they turn on the TV, that all of what they want to watch and

engage with is in the same experience. And so that is everything from a 15-second short. By the way,

shorts are lots of people watching on televisions to a 15-minute sort of classic YouTube sort of

VOD or long-form video to three-hour podcasts, one-hour podcasts through a three-hour NFL game,

or a 15-hour live stream because we have lots of streamers on our platform. And the expectation

is that all of that is a seamless experience that they can get through their recommendations on

YouTube. And so that's the consumer lens through which we have looked at it. And we made that

bet for three reasons. One is, could we expand the market by making it easy for fans to actually

find football games, whether it was a live game, but our biggest relationship is actually Sunday

ticket, which is a subscription service. The second was like, could we bring technological

innovation to it? So, you know, multi-view, like being able to watch which people take for granted

now was one of like the core innovations we brought to the NFL experience, creator integrations,

right? Like we did this new concept that was, we call it creator watch withs, which is basically

the live stream. I mean, the live game, like our Brazil game, which was the one of the season

openers last year, but watch alongside your favorite creator. And so those are the types of things

that we talk about with the NFL. So when the commissioner and I have a meeting with our teams,

that's really what our focus is. I have an 18-year-old son. He's a sports nut. He watches lots of

live sports, but his sports highlights are his YouTube feed. And the NFL understood that,

and so that led to the partnership that we have. And so that's how, and the Oscars actually

was a similar type of conversation with the Academy. Since you mentioned the Oscars,

did you see Conan O'Brien get this year, where he sort of poked front at YouTube?

I did, yeah, yeah. Two YouTube jokes, actually. What'd you think?

I think Conan is very funny. And he's actually a YouTuber. He's been on YouTube for a very

long time since Team Coco Channel does really well on YouTube. Do you think the broadcast networks

that had been traditionally been the home of these franchises become like the dodo? Because,

I mean, those are the biggest drivers also for them. And you taking that away, I mean, kind of like

what's left? Well, you know what's interesting about those partners is they're obviously, as I said,

some of our largest most strategic partners because of YouTube TV, but they are also large partners

in the classic sense of being creators on YouTube, whether they are news, some of the, you know,

largest news partners on YouTube are like Fox News, right? They're very large on our platform,

just like the New York Times has a very large presence on YouTube. And the Wall Street Journal,

or a lot of the entertainment networks, Disney is one of our, you know, strategic partners.

They have a big investment in presence on YouTube. And so we work closely with them every single

day. They understand sort of what's happening in the ecosystem. And I think they also understand

that like a lot of the fandom around their IP, their franchises, the amount of creativity that

comes out of their studios is happening on YouTube. So they really tap into that and they invest in

it. So we've been talking obviously about the power of video today. And I want to get your thoughts

on on this because I understand that you are a big reader among other things. And one of the other

big concerns that I hear about this world that we're entering and living in now and sort of

embarking on with AI is that, you know, there are studies showing that all our video consumption

has ushered in this age of post literacy. The Gen Z now overwhelmingly prefers to consume visual

content on YouTube as opposed to traditional media. And that has tracked with a sort of more

pronounced drop in reading levels, attention spans. What do you think about YouTube's role in

changing the way that we think and our brains? Yeah, I mean, I can answer that. And presumably,

I, you're talking about young people and people, you know, I bring to though, but yeah. But,

you know, certainly where the responsibly bar for all of us is very high, which is, which is

young people and children. You know, I have three kids of my own. So as a parent, as a dad, I think about

their development and, you know, both challenges and opportunities every single day, like I can say,

unequivocally, you know, I encourage my kids to go run around and touch grass and, you know, for our

youngest, be on the swing set or play basketball with my son and all of those types of things.

And I encourage that. I encourage them to read as much as they possibly can. You know, I love to read,

but I encourage our, we, my wife and I encourage our kids to do that as well. And I, on YouTube,

what I find is there's content as we've described that young people find entertaining and they

learn new things on a regular basis. I mean, do you think it matters that they're learning things?

This isn't a gotcha. This is actually, I'm just genuinely curious. Do you think it matters that

they're learning things through video and, and that that is just sort of changing the way that

they absorb information or it doesn't? I think that video, just like reading, is an important way

for people to learn. When you, and when you say the term video, it's like learning visually. And I

see that, you know, just like back in the day, we learned in the classroom visually from our

teachers. I do see a lot of that learning happening on YouTube and actually teachers tell me that

all the time, too, like it's. And I want to see my daughter's dyslexic and YouTube is a huge part

of her life. She learns visually and it's been a godsend for her for all sorts of different

reasons. So this isn't to say that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it is a thing. Yeah, I

think that it is a, it is, I think about it more in the, in the analogy of like a library,

and it's a visual library, but it's a library that has lots and lots and lots of books in it.

And the way that information or knowledge is communicated or new ways of thinking is

communicated is visual, audiovisual. And I do think that is an effective way for people to learn.

Do I think it's the only way, of course, not? I want to ask you about a lawsuit that's happening

where you're currently, along with Meta being sued by a young woman who says YouTube is addictive

and harmful when she was a minor. And this is considered a landmark case here in California.

Do you feel responsibility to remedy the harm for that? If your site is addictive to people?

And I, you know, I shouldn't comment on that specific trial, of course, as you can, as you can

understand. What I will say about, again, and I think I was alluding to some of these things in

my earlier answers. The way I think about it is, as you point out, as we were just talking about,

you know, YouTube is this platform where people go for many different reasons to, you know,

blow off steam, listen to their favorite artists, you know, whatever, Billy Isleys or Taylor Swift

or what have you, to connect with community. That's a lot of what happens on YouTube. And then

learn, learn things. And so I think the, the mental model for me is we should be thinking about

protecting young people in the digital world as opposed to protecting them from the digital world.

And like the best analogy I can think about there is, you know, teaching my daughter to ride a bike.

Like it starts with training wheels and you take off the training wheels and then eventually

like she can kind of go and ride her bike and sort of be on her own. You know that it's impossible.

It's impossible to put guardrails on kids with devices. It's so hard. Yeah. And that's, so that's

what I was trying, trying to say, which is I feel like because of that sort of principle of

making sure that we're protecting young people in the digital world as opposed to shutting them off

from it. Because I also think it's wrong, frankly, to eliminate that knowledge, that library of

content. Because there isn't, there's amazing, wonderful content that parents tell me about

every single day, just like the experience that you just shared about your daughter. I have that

certainly in my household. So well, then how do you approach it? Well, the way I think you approach

it is to make it so that what you can do around parental controls as you described,

or other types of things are actually truly practical and easy to use. And that can actually be

enforceable. And that's what we can do. And that's what my wife and I try to do in our household.

Like you said, we're not perfect by any stretch. But if there are things that we can do at YouTube

to make that job easier for parents, I think that is that's the right approach.

You know, as a parent, which again, I know you are, it can often times feel like you're fighting

against Silicon Valley. Like it's you trying to put some guardrails and some order in the household

and you are fighting against, you know, these giant corporations of which you are one.

And it feels impossible. It feels from many parents like they just lose the battle.

Yeah, I mean, look, I'm as parent of three myself. I think about this, how young people are

growing up today, I think that there are amazing things that happened that access to information,

to knowledge that happened because of platforms like YouTube. I also understand the challenges

that you're describing. And so it's not to trivialize them in any sense because I experienced them.

And it is something that I personally care deeply about. It's personal to me.

Our approach to it is how can we bring all of that sort of those awesome experiences that you

just described in the context of your daughter that I experienced with my own kids. But do it in a

way where parents are in control. And that's what we work towards. And so, you know, we are a platform

where we will build things like timers in the app. We announced actually a couple of months ago,

now the ability for parents to actually have a timer on short form video feeds, right, to set it

to zero. That's industry leading that has not been done before. But that's the way that we make

decisions here in terms of putting that responsibility first and foremost and kind of then letting

the chips fall where they may. I do want to talk about content moderation because as YouTube has

become bigger and bigger and takes up more of the culture and of people's engagement and the way

they get information, the responsibility becomes, I think, greater. Do you feel that responsibility in

terms of how things have shifted for YouTube and just having a lot more time spent on the site?

Every single day, it is my top priority in many ways. And I often say that YouTube is a reflection

of what's happening in the world. But what happens on YouTube also impacts the world. And that

in my, in from my standpoint is the motivation behind the responsibility. There's two billion people

that come to YouTube every single day. We do have a responsibility. We are a platform that prides

itself on being an open platform without a gatekeeper. We stand for freedom of speech, freedom of

expression. But we've had community guidelines on our platform since the day YouTube started. And

living up to that responsibility is a big part of what happens around here literally every

single day. Yeah, I mean, starting in 2020, you de-platformed a number of YouTube accounts for

spreading lies. You've re-platformed many of them, most notably Donald Trump. After January 6, 2021,

you had suspended Donald Trump's account. And we should note that YouTube wasn't alone in that.

Many other platforms did the same. Trump then sued, accusing you of censorship,

and you reinstated his account in 2023. And then Google your parent company agreed to pay nearly

$25 million to settle the case last year without admitting liability. Will you wrong to ban him in

the first place? I think I'm trying to think back to the policies that were I think in place

back then. Many of those, I think, are not in place today. We have, because of a lot of what we

talked about here and the scale of YouTube and what it represents in culture and society,

we have a long track record of working with administrations really on both sides of the aisle.

And we make our decisions based on what we believe at the moment to be right for the

creator ecosystem that we spent the bulk of the time talking about here. And so we strive to

write our community guidelines in a way the best as we possibly can. We strive to be truly

as much of an open platform as we can. Was it the wrong decision? Do you think at the time to

ban former president? I think that it's hard to look at all of these decisions out of context.

You think about, you know, you said even back to 2020 some of the examples that you were describing

there. We were embarking on this pandemic that was going to shut down the world like science was

being created every single day. Did we reverse those policies? Yeah, we changed a lot of those policies

because I think that while the principles of freedom of expression, free speech,

remain sort of north star kind of immovable principles, at least at YouTube,

we also want to be flexible in terms of the context around policies. And what we, you know,

back to your question around the president's channel and what around January 6th, that was,

that was, I can't remember this very specific policy that was in place then, but that was

that was during that particular time period fast forward. A lot of those policies, even before

independent of, you know, the lawsuit or what have you were deprecated policies. And so,

so that's how we try to be flexible about the policies, but also be true to our principles

about being an open, open platform. And so when I was took over as CEO, one of the first decisions

was to, to bring that channel back. That was your decision. That was ultimately my decision, yes.

The money we should say is being used to remodel the White House and pay for Trump's ballroom.

Do you worry about the optics of that? You know, again, like I was saying, Lulu, we are,

we're very focused on our creators, like what is the best for the ecosystem? We do work with all

administrations. I think that what I would say is we, there's a lot of discussion, as you know,

about how powerful entities in corporate America are dealing with this administration now,

and there will be questions when there are others and that relationship. And I think it's a fair

question. You know, I think I'm sure that you're more focused on your creators, but this is,

I think it's a fair question. Question being, how do we? How do you think about the optics of

the money that you ended up paying to Donald Trump to settle the case being used on his new ballroom?

I don't know the specifics of the ballroom or how it's being built. It is going towards

a preservation trust. So I do think it's something that is going to be for the country,

but I think the way, honestly, I think about it is sort of the way you framed it in the question,

which is, I think it's a way for us to settle on old policies. Most of them are actually not even

in place today and focus on the future of our creators and the ecosystem. We make those policy decisions,

independent of administrations based on what we think is best for YouTube. And that is so

hopefully something that we will continue to do. Something I'm, you know, I'm hearing from

you and I think it's very true is that the culture has changed so much in terms of what is deemed

misinformation, not deemed misinformation. And you have changed your policies along with that.

And there's a lot of reporting around what those changes are at YouTube. And I'm just wondering

how now something gets taken down. What exactly are the community guidelines that get breached?

Is it the sort of amount of time someone's saying something or the impact of what they're saying?

You know, the real, the way I think that it really breaks down into a few things that allows us

to do what we do. And the first, as I said, you clarity around the principles and the core principle

here for, which is, again, goes back to the very early days of YouTube and has been consistent,

which is we are an open platform and we stand for free speech. And that is a stance that we've

taken and we have gotten criticized on both sides of the aisle constantly. And I think that that is,

and I say this to my teams here, that's, that is a result of the privileged position we're in.

We are relevant to people's lives. And there's a difference between unfettered free speech. We've,

we've seen free speech up to absolutist like Elon Musk and what X has become. And that's a

version of free speech. So I'm trying to understand what your definition is. Yeah. So I guess what I'm

saying is our principles, the way to answer your original question is it starts with the principles.

We try to hold true to this tenant of free speech. That is core to how we do it. And so then the

question is, well, how do you then write a set of community guidelines that reflect it to the

best of our ability? And I always say that that's, that's the hard work. That's the job. And the best

we can do there is to write them and to be transparent about them. And then the third part of it is to do

our best to live up to what we actually published. And then we are going to get criticized on either

sides of it because people are not going to be, not everyone is going to be happy about where that

line is drawn. And. But I guess I'm trying to understand where the line is drawn. Because I mean,

let's take, you know, and a couple of examples, if you think about Candace Owens, she has five

million followers on your platform and growing. And right now she has a multi part series on

conspiracy theories around Erica Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk. She's also talked frequently

about Bridget Macron, the first lady of France being a man. There has been anti-Semitic content

in the past. So explain to me how she's not violating YouTube's community guidelines.

We, again, I'd have to look at a very specific video there. So it's hard to answer that question

in sort of a generalized sense. And the decisions we make are video by video. And we're able to do

that at scale because of our investment in our systems and the people that we have. And so I don't

think I can answer that question in a general sense. What I will say is that we do have guidelines

around hate speech or harassment. We have guidelines around making sure that kids are protected on

the platform around consumer fraud and those types of things. And each one of those guidelines,

we try our best to actually publish them on our website. So I couldn't get into the details of

every single one of those verticals and how it applies to an individual video. But I can speak

in terms of the broad principles that on, in general, we try to allow for as the broad

spectrum of speech as possible. Sometimes it might be speech that people disagree with.

You know, you're describing one example. There's probably millions and millions of videos on YouTube

that I disagree with, that you might disagree with. But don't have grounds for us to take down

on the platform. I don't know if it's just agreement. It's just a question of the fundamental

questions, right? Or what are facts? What are what is truth? What is fair? And what is the

responsibility of a platform like YouTube to elevate those things and not things that are unfair,

untrue, and possibly damaging? Yeah, you know, we are, we are an open platform, Lulu. Each one

of the channels on our platform, the New York Times channel, the interview channel. You have the

editorial standards that you live by on those channels. And they are certainly different across

the various not just genres, but channels within genres. And our job is to have a set of rules

and guidelines. Those are our community guidelines. Every channel will draw a different line in

terms of what they think is appropriate. And the reason I'm focusing on this and forgive me,

I just, it's because I think these are important questions. They are, thank you. And also,

it's just, I think they're important for, you know, our understanding of the world. I just saw

one of your news creators, Tara Palmeri, who I know a little bit, who has now become a sort of

independent creator on YouTube. And I saw, you know, you have cited her as, you know, someone

trying to respond, you know, promote responsible journalism on the platform. And she just had a

post on YouTube sort of lamenting the fact that she feels like she's fighting against an algorithm

that deprioritizes that kind of reporting. That she's being, you know, she is having to fight

for the attention in a world where there's all sorts of other people pushing things that might be

more jazzy, more interesting, but not true. And I guess how do you promote responsible

information? I think the best way for YouTube to approach it, which is how do you wrestle with

this concept of an open platform, but also having some rules for the road in terms of how things

operate on YouTube. For example, you know, we never allowed adult content on YouTube, right? Like,

how did we make that decision? Well, it was important behind it, et cetera. And again, our approach

there is to be very clear about what sort of those baseline rules are. There are, as you know,

pages and pages of them. And we really work hard to try to enforce them. And our enforcement is not

always perfect. One of our, one of the verticals that we have on YouTube is news. We have lots and

lots of successful news creators. Not every creator is serving the same audience or looking to do

the same thing. So there's lots of people who are approaching it in different ways. And I think,

honestly, that that's also a really entrepreneurial ecosystem with lots of new,

news creators that, you know, other folks might have different opinions on. It's not, I think,

we are not qualified to have a point of view on this particular creator xyz is better than this

particular creator. The audience makes that judgment. I always say that, you know, the best way to

think about the YouTube algorithm is to replace the word algorithm with audience. And that is,

because it is a reflection of the audience. That's the reason why creators who are successful in

our platform have that notion of authenticity because what the, quote unquote, algorithm is doing

is adjusting to your behavior on YouTube. I want to thank you so much for your time today.

Thank you. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. We'll talk again. Yeah, thank you.

After the break, Neil and I speak again about AI. We're very, very focused on making sure that

when you open up the YouTube app, it's, it's not a feed of AI slot.

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Thank you so much for sitting down with me yesterday. Of course. I was wondering if there was

anything that you were thinking about after our last conversation before I ask you some other

questions about your own sort of personal journey. Yeah. I appreciated the conversation and I

do really appreciate how much depth we got into. As I was thinking about it on my way home in the

evening, one of the things that struck me I think is a lot of the examples and a lot of the

conversation was very U.S. focus which makes sense we're based in the U.S. here but one of the

things that's super interesting at least to me about YouTube is that it's truly global. You

could be a fan of this particular type of dance that might originate in Canada but you might be

living in Southern India and vice versa and those types of things and that's also a very

interesting phenomenon that's happened as a result of YouTube. Yeah. In fact, I want to talk a

little bit about AI in a minute and one of the innovations that you have enabled is using

language now to be able to get creators who are in their native language and you can see them

in your native language and so that of course opens up everyone's content much much more widely.

I was watching a you know Argentinian creator I do speak Spanish but it was amazing to see that

all translated in real time in English you know for people who might not speak the language so.

Yeah that's actually a perfect example kind of an of the moment example for sure.

Well I'm glad you mentioned this global reach because I was actually thinking about you and your

journey. You know your father moved to the U.S. with $25 in his pocket as you've said before from

India to do his PhD in the United States and then you grew up in the Midwest which you have

described as a sort of very typical 70s and 80s childhood which by the way I remember to you know

watching Star Wars going to the movie theater and then at age 10 your family moved back to India.

I wondered what helped you get through that shock of this one very specific kind of experience

and then finding yourself in a completely different context. So as you said I was you know grew up

in in Michigan you know love Star Wars and Transformers and all of that sort of good stuff

was a big sports kid back then too and when I moved to India it was a bit of a

culture shock even though obviously my parents are of Indian heritage but I couldn't

speak the language I couldn't read and write it and you know you fast forward through that experience

and I think you know obviously I appreciate that experience deeply and a lot of it I think you know

you draw these sort of direct lines sometimes or you sort of kind of justify and reverse but I

really do genuinely believe there's a direct line from that experience because I saw a lot of

sort of like commonalities between global culture differences and sort of that nuance and I think

that me becoming someone just a fan of kind of media and storytelling and everything from music

to sports to ultimately Bollywood and Hollywood and and the like I think stemmed from the fact

that that was the way that I connected frankly with different cultures and different people and it

was the way that I sort of moved from being like an outsider to having friends. In speaking to

people who do know you they do say that you have this very even temper a very even keeled you don't

let yourself get swept up in crises which any CEO has to deal with how do you

apply that in terms of something difficult comes your way and you have to

figure out how to navigate it as a leader. It's funny my wife jokes that I'm even keeled

Neil that's sort of what she what she'll what she calls me um you know I thought the first thing

just to be to be very sort of candid with you I think by the time a decision gets to me almost

by definition it's a difficult decision because and oftentimes it's a trade-off between two bad choices

right or two very difficult choices otherwise that decision would be made you know somewhere else

in the organization it wouldn't really need to come to me and so what I try to do um to the to the best

of my ability and we talked a lot about this yesterday too is I really do try to focus uh beforehand

on the principles by which we will make those decisions and I believe that principles are

particularly important in tough decisions that involve trade-offs in terms of um examples I'll give

you I'll give you one that's a very YouTube kind of example that's sort of deep in the in the

YouTube ecosystem from a few years ago so um if you are watching a YouTube video you'll notice

below that video there's a like and a dislike button and um you can tap that a lot obviously

many many people tap that after they watch a video like dislike and we used to have a count

next to the those buttons the dislike button in particular and um a few years ago we removed it

and that sounds like a small thing like just a number right below the video but it was a really really

big thing in the YouTube ecosystem because it was part of the YouTube heritage where YouTube started

from you know we were the you know the the platform that had a count across that so your video had

to stand up to scrutiny from this audience and um so lots of creators were very very attached to it

particularly larger creators who you know and and you know some viewers were attached to it too

because it was like how do that's a quick way to evaluate a video before you watch it however

a few years ago it was becoming clear that specially for smaller creators or perhaps marginalized

creators it was becoming something that could potentially get weaponized and used as a means to

um troll them or have a robot army sort of kind of get at them and so we made

the difficult decision and ultimately I made it to remove that count it was positively received in

many ways but it was extremely critically received in other ways but I think having those

principles allowed me to ultimately make that call that was a in in the YouTube world was a very

consequential thing even though it seemed small I want to talk about um what's here and what's coming

and we touched on AI already a little bit but uh this is the huge conversation that everyone's

having and you've declared war on AI Slop but you're also handing creators tools to use AI

and I'm just wondering how you distinguish between what it is a creative AI video

that creators are using in a good way and AI Slop yeah you're you're you're really getting at the

the heart of the matter so this is uh and I would say that just to be very transparent I don't think

that this is a solved question by any means and frankly the rate at which AI is impacting all of our

lives the the ground beneath that question is changing on a weekly basis if not even faster so I

just I want to be very upfront about that but I have this very firm conviction that it will never

replace um human creativity again back to one of the very first things we talked about yesterday

which is that notion of authenticity um people want to see you know an artist on stage because

they know something about her life story and they have some background in terms of why she wrote

the lyrics that way and why she's performing it that way um uh we've had AI possible to the point

where computers can play tests but for it to be interesting on YouTube at least one of the

contestants has to be a human and so because of this notion of the human stories on YouTube we

I absolutely cannot have it be overrun with AI Slop and what if AI of course does is just like it

can be a tool to produce amazing content or further democratize content creation so that another

entirely new class of creators can come on board like the first youtubers 20 years ago it can

also allow for the creation of lots of low quality content and so that's where the AI Slop question

comes in and there I think there's aspects of it that are not new the part that's new is the

scale but the notion of low quality content click baity content um content that might be produced for

um monetization motives but is not actually um uh quality to a certain level we've we've been

able to deal with that on YouTube and so I think you know just like AI is powering some of

that low quality content it can also be used to combat it on YouTube in terms of what we recommend

or what have you that's so that's that's uh and then the last point that I'll make on this

that I think is you alluded to as well is I also think that we have to have a bit of a delicate

hand on this um and this is where this is the part that's the unsolved part because um AI

created content does not mean low quality content um amazing content is produced by AI just like

technologies from the past whether it's Photoshop or the drum machine produced a new form of creativity

and I do think that's what's happening in the AI world and and so we can't have too many of those

false positives where we're sort of killing the new form of creativity that's driven by these

tools and I would tell you that every day we're trying to really strike that balance uh but we're

very very focused on making sure that when you open up the YouTube app it's it's not a feat of

of AI slop yeah I mean right now you have a like a small little stamp when AI has been used on a

on on something that is posted is that enough yeah I my personal view is that is sort of table stakes

but I do think that it's a place to start and I think the other really big thing that I hear from

when I speak to creators um public figures journalists etc is being able to manage their

likeness in this in this AI world and that is I think something that is profoundly important

in my view and not just like the classic sort of deep fakes and all those types of things of course

but also impersonation for um you know to trick a user or to um to steal someone's creative idea

and things like that and so those things I think are also important that will not get solved

with an AI label um but also but need to have tools and so one of the areas um that were very focused

on is this notion of we call it likeness detection we've had a technology here at YouTube for a long

time called content ID was actually in some sense one of the very early uses of AI almost a decade

ago if not longer and it allows rights holders artists musicians whether if you're Taylor Swift or

what have you to make a choice when your music is used or when you're a particular you know movie

character is used to either take down that video or monetize that video and it is created the ecosystem

that exists on YouTube so that principle of content ID we want to carry over to the AI world

the big picture question around like well you know if um a video can do something xyz can review

a technology product and can create you know a fake reviewer to do that or an AI generator reviewer

to do that then who needs me I really believe and again I could be naive on this is what shines

through on YouTube is that human connection with that person stands for um you know uh just like

in your case people understand what the interview means they know how Lulu's gonna approach it

and I just I don't think that that is going to get swapped by you know AI generated you know

take take your pick journalist artist musician and and that's that I I have seen nothing

um despite all the rapid progress here that would be contrary to what I what I said

can you promise me that there's not going to be a Lulu bot doing my job in two years

I really I I don't and by the way I'm also not naive to the point to say that there isn't going

to be disruption like there's a whole supply chain of creativity and I do think the and

just like is happening in the software industry there is a going to be a change in the nature of

the jobs how those jobs are done even who does them so I don't want to trivialize that disruption

of course that happens with any big technology paradigm shift and AI is not going to be different

in that context but to your core question of the replacement of that human creativity element and

what people connect with on a service like YouTube I just don't see AI generation replacing

the humans that produce you know videos on YouTube all right I'm going to come back in two years

and and if I'm still here you'd be right I'll be holding you to that all right last question um

one of the things that really struck me from everything we talked about is how you said that

YouTube is really this reflection of humanity and you know as we've mentioned you have

billions of users you get a lot of information from all those users and I'm just wondering what

you've learned about humanity leading YouTube what surprised you oh um you know I could I could

reflect on this for a long time but I um and hopefully you've got some sense of this I I tend to be

um an optimist almost to the point of being naive about these things Lulu and and what has

what is a privilege for me on YouTube is that you know despite the challenges and you know despite

the incredibly complicated world that we live in what I love about what I see on YouTube is

like the the common humanity aspect which is um I was watching you know YouTube on my television set

last night and I was watching a uh YouTuber lives in New York City reviews restaurants and you know

the restaurant aspect of that was interesting but the way that he talked about his life and how he

anticipated going to have that meal and and his experience after that meal like that's what I mean by

the common humanity and that shines through in YouTube it's almost as if like if aliens discovered

earth you know what five thousand years from now YouTube is that encapsulation of that and on

balance I think um it's awesome thank you so much I've really enjoyed this conversation

thank you Lou appreciate it

that's YouTube CEO Neil Mohan to watch this interview and many others you can

subscribe yes to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash at symbol the interview podcast

this conversation was produced by Wyatt Orem it was edited by Alison Benedict mixing by Sophia

Landman original music by Dan Powell and Marion Luzano photography by Devon Yalkin the rest of

the team is Priya Matthew Seth Kelly Powell and Newdorf Joe Bill Munoz Eddie Costas Amy Murino

Mark Zemel David Hurr Kathleen O'Brien and Brooke Mentors our executive producer is Alison

Benedict we'll be back in two weeks when David talks with actress writer and director Lena Dunham

about her new memoir and processing her meteoric rise to fame in the 2010s I never thought of

anything I did as controversial and then my feeling was well yeah I like to make whatever I want

then I don't want anyone to ever be upset with me I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro and this is the interview

from the New York Times

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