Speeches by Irons.

“Will you answer the question?”

“But categorically not commissioning something?”

“What is appropriate regulation of your platform then?”

“But people will be going through this training programme. I think someone mentioned this earlier, but why would you avoid kitemarking content that has gone through, say, at least this process where you are driving high quality? As a parent who sits there with a child on YouTube you can go from an unboxing video—which i…”

“That is interesting. Out of curiosity, why would you avoid categorising yourselves as TV?”

“Why are we very keen to hold on to the word “distribution”? Why is that the key word?”

“What would be inappropriate? When you say “inappropriate regulation” from one end, what do you mean by inappropriate?”

“I think what I am getting at is about, as a parent, making informed choices for our chidren. We have to also remember that some of their viewing does not just come from Made for Kids content. It comes from your main platform as well, because children are going on to that in a way that maybe you do not intend, but they …”

“It is essentially a personalised TV schedule, isn’t it? It is essentially, like the olden days when someone within a broadcaster would say, “At nine o’clock, we are going to play this, this and this.” You are doing that algorithmically at scale.”

“How is it different? If you are making decisions on behalf of your users, because you are recommending content for them based on whatever is in your ingredients for your algorithm, how is that different from somebody editorialising content in another context?”

“I completely understand that. As I said, we use YouTube in my household and I get it. What I am getting at here is that your platform that started out as a library has essentially changed and shifted because editorial decisions are now being made at a systemic level via your algorithm, whether you intervene on that or …”

“In 2025, your CEO said, “YouTube is the new television” in a blog he posted, “Our big bets for 2025”. He said that for many people, “watching TV means watching YouTube”, and, “TV is now the primary device for YouTube viewing in the US.” He also went on to say this year that YouTube TV will become “cable reimagined”, so…”

“Okay. Did anybody else want to come in?”

“Going back to the example of Channel 4, Channel 4 commissioned content, yes, but did not make any content itself and was a distributor in its own right. What makes that different is that it is a broadcaster and it is beholden to Ofcom because it editorialises its schedule. How is your editorial guidance any different f…”

“Do you disagree that YouTube is TV?”

“I guess what I am getting at is, if I am a creator, and I have done the high bar, and I am in this thing, is there something that I as a creator can say is a badge of honour, or a kitemark from YouTube to say, “This content has the quality that we expect it to have.” Just expecting parents to assume that this is all ok…”

“So there is nobody responsible for the content on your platform?”

“Thank you very much, Chair. I used to work for Channel 4 and my husband works there, so that is me declaring an interest. And on behalf of parents across the UK, thank you so much for your service to our children during covid. You saved a lot of arguments in my household, so thank you very much. I will jump right in an…”

“Yes.”

“So YouTube ultimately is responsible for the content on the platform, which is reassuring to hear. I do not know if you managed to catch our Committee meeting last week. We had Iain Bundred from the BBC in, and there was a question around, “What is YouTube?” For this conversation, it will be good to set the context of …”