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

0:00This podcast is supported by doctors without borders. When emergency strike, when war reaches homes, when floods wash everything away, doctors without borders doesn't wait. They're already on the ground to help people to provide care to save lives. When you give to doctors without borders, you make a global impact, powering their local teams in more than 75 countries around the world. Donate today at doctorswithoutborders.org. Slash the Daily. From the New York Times, this is the interview. I'm Luzouk Arsianavaro. YouTube is a juggernaut. The platform is winning the streaming war with Netflix. It's made creators like Mr. Beaston, Mr. Rachel into huge stars, and it's owning the video podcast space. Add to that, it's growing distribution business with YouTube TV

1:01and 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 Negligen, alongside Metta, 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,

2:04said 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 three years running now in the U.S. On television screens, we're an incredibly large podcast platform. You know, this conversation, I will watch on YouTube, and 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.

3:06Obviously, 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 a, you know, in a fit. 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.

4:08The 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. 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,

5:14especially 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

6:16completely 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. 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

7:16is 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. Like, what are the, what are the hooks? How do you can 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

8:18a 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

9:23producing amazing scripted content in Hollywood like Alan Chicanchao 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

10:26are 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, you know, lots of people watch them on televisions to a 15 minute sort of classic YouTube sort of vod or long form video to, you know, three hour podcasts, one hour podcasts through a three hour NFL game or a 15 hour live stream because we have, you know, 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

11:30it. 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 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.

12:30And 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 skip this year, where he sort of poked front at YouTube? I did. Yeah. Yeah. Two YouTube jokes. He did. 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 of these franchises become like the dodo? Because I mean, they're the 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,

13:33largest 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 so we work closely with them every single day. They understand sort of what's happening in the the ecosystem. And I think they also understand that like a lot of the fandom around their IP, their franchises, the 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 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

14:38embarking on with 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 you're I presumably I you're talking about young people and young people, you know, my brain too though, but yeah, but you know, we're 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

15:40every 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 beyond 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 the 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? And 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 that that is just sort of changing the way that they absorb information or it doesn't? I think that

16:41video, just like reading, is an important way for people to learn. And when you say the turn 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. 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, audio visual. 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

17:44happening 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 we 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 Billie Eilish or Taylor Swift or what have you to connect with community that's a lot of what happens on YouTube and then learn things and so I think the the mental model for me is we should be thinking about

18:49protecting 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 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 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

19:50you 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

20:56I'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 months ago now the ability for parents to actually

22:00have 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 great or do you feel that responsibility in terms of how things have shifted for YouTube and just having a lot more time spent on the on the site. Every single day it is my top priority in many ways and and I often say that you know 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

23:06from 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 6th 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 dollars to settle the case

24:08last year without admitting liability were you wrong to ban them in the first place? I think I'm trying to think back to the the policies that were I think in place back then those many of those I think are not in place today you know 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 but was it the wrong decision do you think at the time to ban you know former president?

25:08I think that you know it's hard to look at all of these decisions out of context you know 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 you know 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

26:13what 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 a 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 I 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

27:14fair 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 I don't know the specifics of of of the ballroom or or how it's being built it is going towards a 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 um I think it's a way for us to um 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

28:17you 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 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 is as I said you clarity around the principles and the core principle here for um 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 um a stance that we've taken and we have gotten criticized on both sides of the aisle constantly and I think that that is

29:23and I say this to my teams here uh that's uh 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 seen free speech up to absolutist like Elon Musk and what X has become and that's a version of free speech um so I'm trying to understand what your definition is. Yeah so I guess what I'm saying is our principles uh the way to answer your original question is it starts with the principles we try to hold true to this ten end to 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

30:23sides of it because people are not going to be not everyone is going to be happy about where that line is drawn and um 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 you if you think about Candace Owens she has five million followers on your platform and growing um 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 um we I 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 uh 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 um in a in a general sense what I will say is that we do have guidelines around

31:25hate speech or harassment we have 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 uh on our website so I couldn't get into the details of every single one of those uh 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 uh the broad spectrum of speech as possible sometimes it might be speech that people disagree with um 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 uh grounds for us to take down on the platform I don't know if it's disagreement it's it's it's just a question of the fundamental questions right or what are facts what are what is truth um what is fair uh and and what is the responsibility of a

32:28platform like YouTube uh to elevate those things um and not uh things that are unfair untrue and possibly damaging yeah you know we are we are an open platform Lulu uh 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 uh 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 and forgive me I just it's because I think these are important questions they are thank you and 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 uh Terrapal Mary who

33:29I know a little bit um who uh has now become a sort of independent creator on YouTube and I saw you know you 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 uh that kind of reporting that she's being you know she is having to fight um for the attention in 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 uh way for YouTube to approach it which is how do you wrestle with this concept of an open platform

34:30but 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 on YouTube right like how did we make that decision what was important behind it etc 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 one of the verticals that we have on YouTube is news we have lots and lots of successful news creators not every creator um 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

35:32particular creator xyz is better than this particular creator um 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 um who are successful in our platform have that notion of authenticity because what the out 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 thank you 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 feat of AI slot

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37:35industries learn more at wedeliverforamerica.org ever feel like you're too busy worrying about making money to actually save money what you need is a friend a big financial friend experience your bff could help you save over 300 bucks here's how on the experience app you can see your monthly subscriptions then any you don't want experience can cancel them for you get started with the experience app and find out how much you could save results will vary not all subscriptions eligible savings not guarantee $306 a year average savings with one-plus cancellations paid membership with connect-to-payment account required see experience.com for details 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 you know I I appreciated the conversation and I do really appreciate how much depth we got into you know I was as I was thinking about it

38:41on my on my way home in the evening you know one of one of the things that struck me I think is a lot of the examples and a lot of the conversation was very US focused which makes sense we're based in the US here but but one of the things that's super interesting at least to me about YouTube is that it's truly global you know you could be a fan of you know this particular type of dance that might originate in you know in Canada but you might be living in southern India and vice versa and those types of things and that's that's also kind of a very interesting phenomenon that's happened on as a result of of 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 know 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

39:46Argentinian 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 US 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 this sort of very typical 70s and 80s childhood which by the way I remember to you know watching Star Wars going in 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

40:51I 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

41:54stemmed 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 calls me 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

42:57very 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 to the to the best of my ability and we talked a lot about this yesterday too is I really do try to focus 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 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 if you are watching a YouTube video you'll notice below that video there's a like in a dislike button and you can tap that a lot obviously many many people tap that after their watch a video like dislike and we used to have a count next to those buttons the

43:58dislike button in particular and 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 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 especially for smaller creators or perhaps marginalized creators it was becoming something that could potentially get weaponized and used as a means to troll them or have a robot army sort of kind of get at them and so we made the difficult decision

44:58and 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 what's here and what's coming and we touched on AI already a little bit but 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 heart of the matter so this is 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

46:04changing 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 human creativity again back to one of the very first things we talked about yesterday which is that notion of authenticity 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 we've had AI possible to the point where computers can play chess 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

47:08YouTubers 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 content that might be produced for monetization motives but is not actually 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 so that's that's 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 and this is where this is the part that's the unsolved part because AI created content does not mean low quality content amazing content is produced by

48:13AI 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 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 AI slop yeah I mean right now you have 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 public figures journalists etc is being able to

49:19manage 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 you know to trick a user or to 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 but also but need to have tools and so one of the areas 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

50:24a 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 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 what that person stands for you know just like in your case people understand what the interview means they know how Lulu's going to approach it and I just I don't think that that is going to get swapped by you know AI generated you know take your pick journalists artists musician and and that's that I have seen

51:28nothing 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 um uh the humans that produce you know videos on YouTube all right I'm going to come back in two

52:29years and if I'm still a year 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

53:32YouTube is um 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 a 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 or if 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 Lulu appreciate it that's YouTube CEO Neil Mohan to watch this interview and many others you can subscribe yes to our

54:37YouTube channel at youtube.com slash at symbol the interview podcast this conversation was produced by Wyatt Orham 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 Merino 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 it 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 no it's not your imagination risk and regulation are ramping up and customers now expect

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