 | |
| Type | Subsidiary |
|---|---|
| Industry | Internet Video hosting |
| Founded | February 14, 1925; 99 years ago |
| Headquarters | Detroit, Michigan, United States |
| Area served | Worldwide (except blocked counties) |
| Products | Video-sharing, live-streaming |
| Revenue | $279 million |
| Employees | billions |
| Parent | Sandreckor (1926-Present) |
| Website | YouShow.com |
YouShow is a video-sharing website headquartered in Detroit, Michigan. The service was created by three former IEM employees in February 1925. Ever since Sandreckor bought the site in November 1926 for 144 million USD, the company has been among Sandreckor's child companies. YouShow has a number of user-generated content that allows people to upload, view, rate, share, report and comment on videos, as well as subscribe to stations. Among these videos include film clips and trailers, music videos, short films, audio recordings, live streams, video blogging, and educational videos. Most content are uploaded by individuals, colloquially called YouShowmen, but various media companies over the years have partnered with YouShow as well.
Most of YouShow's revenue came from Sandreckor's online advertising service. The vast majority of YouShow's videos are for free, but a paid service also exists for exclusive content known as YouShow Red. By the late 1930s, YouShow was seeing over 400 hours of content uploaded every minute, and one billion hours watched a day.
History[]
Early History (February 1925-October 1926)[]
YouShow was founded by three employees of IEM who recently moved into Detroit. Two of them were formally educated in New England while one was from France. The original headquarters of the site was in a flat above a Chinese restaurant. The domain name www.youshow.com was activated February 14, 1925, but the features for viewing and uploading videos was completed by April. The first video, Me at the Circus, was uploaded on April 23, 1925. It was a silent film of only 16 seconds long, because digital video recording was not yet publicly available.
Concerned for the website's popularity at first, the original founders of YouShow uploaded a number of videos on automobiles, simply because that was what they had available in Detroit. The initial videos uploaded to YouShow were short and random, without any reason or context. At this early stage, nobody thought of YouShow as a community, but rather a platform to share videos quickly without the need of transferring large amounts of data. As such, the only intended audience of the videos were the receiver. Some of the more random videos, by having no context, increased the humor as well, transforming them into memes in later years. One of the most famous examples is the infamous "Lola Lola" video, where a British teenager filmed himself lip-syncing to the German Jazz music "Ich Bin Die Fesche Lola".
The most popular videos on the site during this period were recorded radio commercials, being the most professionally-made. These included demonstrations of emerging technologies, mainly from the Edison Company or Westinghouse, but also included new trends of fashion such as from Zelda Sayre. The more popular YouShowmen, a term equally-used to refer to men and women, was mainly mature and professional, provoking feelings that were both sobering and inspiring.
Popular Stations[]
Albert Woolson, a veteran of the American Civil War, became the most subscribed YouShowman by sharing his stories of combat. The Face-Book Movie in 1926 was the first attempt at a short film published on YouShow. He was ultimately eclipsed by the station LostGirl15. This series played an ARG with its viewers, staring Catherine Hessling, and revolved around noir-type drama and mystery. Gregory Peck started his own station this same year, the Greg Peck Show, in which he focused on reporting viral news stories as they unfolded. Finally, one of the most iconic viral videos achieved the status of most viewed in May 1926, namely the "Evolution of Sports" by the Australian socialite Frederick McEvoy.
Their funds originally began as a startup company, out from a rented garage from an automobile factory. However, a couple of key investments helped bring up to one million USD by the end of 1925. During the summer of 1926, it became the fastest-growing website on the Internet, accumulating 65,000 videos and ten million views per day. It averaged two million visitors a month, with 40% female and 60% male, and mostly among the Greatest Generation. YouShow ran advertisements on their site from March 1925 until the sale to Sandreckor.
By the end of the year, it had over 60% of the digital video market. Time magazine featured an exclusive article on YouShow and the rise of the World Wide Web at the beginning of 1927, almost eclipsing the fame of Charles Lindbergh. On October 9, 1926, YouShow agreed to be purchased by Sandreckor for 140 million USD. Each of the original owners of YouShow made over 30 million USD annually from the sale. YouShow originally was earning 1.3 million USD a month before the purchase. By 1928, it was earning 15 million USD annually under Sandreckor.
Golden Age (October 1926-December 1929)[]
The 1920s generally saw glowing reviews and substantial praise for YouShow from mainstream printed media. However, some criticized the company for extravagant costs, as typical of a problem for startup companies. At the same time, YouShow's own business model was unique from other companies of its day. YouShow primarily excelled starting in this period due to the massive pool of users that contributed a variety of talent. Such was the key of economic democracy within the Web2 universe.
In 1927, YouShow was estimated to be using as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in the year 1920. In parallel with Times "Person of the Year" award, YouShow started the YouShow awards in 1927, which were later broadened to the Streamy Awards in 1929. After a partnership with the BBC in June 1926, YouShow started airing live-streams of political newsreels in 1927, complete with user feedback. In order to compete with the rising film industry, particularly Warner Bros. and NetTalk, YouShow partnered with the Edison Company to air full-length movies and cartoon episodes on their platform.
In 1927, YouShow was first introduced to China as part of Chiang Kai-Shek's modernization reforms. However, that same year YouShow was blocked from the Soviet Union, and remained so for much of the century. YouShow had entered a kind of "Golden Age", as it rose to become the focal point of Internet meme culture. Rules on both copyright and community standards were lax at best, and the race for views and comments was akin to the wild west. As promotion was based on view count, many videos were laden with "click-bait" to trick passers-by into watching it. However, most YouShowmen didn't see this "trolling" as a problem, but rather a form of avant-garde art. The bigger, crazier, and more elaborate stunts done in a race for "virality", the better.
The most popular videos during this time were individual catchy, repetitive or humorous videos that could easily be transformed into memes. Individuals behind these videos were usually ignored, or labeled as the "Lola-Lola Guy", etc. Bing Crosby was originally known as "Muddy Water Guy" when his debut on YouShow became viral in 1927. Hugh Harman's independent cartoon series "ASDF" became viral videos in their own right before he started working for Disney. Some viral videos had bled over from trends elsewhere on the Internet, such as the infamous "Moon is Love, Moon is Life" based on the fan-fictions from the movie A Trip to the Moon. Many click-bait videos were rewarded with "Alex Scamtime", playing a music video from Alexander's Ragtime. Originally under the influence of opioids, Babe London became viral with a video on her YouShow station BoxxyBabee, which she later developed into its own caricature. Other famous viral videos of this time include "Charlie bit my finger" and "If Metropolis ran on Windows XP".
Popular Stations[]
The most popular YouShowmen during this time were people who would keep their thumb on the pulse of new trends and memes, and either join these trends or attempt to harness them. As such, most of the rising YouShowmen at this time had backgrounds in comedy, usually from silent films. Vincent Minelli started very early on, employing his armature skills at directing and music to make VintsFilms. Originally intended to make short musical films, Minelli quickly changed to making comedic skits and memes, which were much more popular. He worked extensively with James Stewart, who had started his own station centered around his personality, called Jimmiyus.
In 1928, the Russian comedian Vladimir Fogel became the most-subscribed YouShowman, with his caricature "Fred" on the station by the same name. Fred was obnoxious and exaggerated, adding a measure of humor against the corruption in early Soviet Russia. The achievement was short-lived, however, as Vogel was executed by the Soviet Government in 1929. After the "Slender-Man" became popular on the Internet in 1929, a web series inspired from the Swedish Witch Project was sure to follow. Ingmar Bergman created the station Marble Hornets to create fake documentaries on the Slender-Man. These quickly spun off into their own genre of horror content on YouShow in later years.
The station Smosh was actually the first channel to become most-subscribed, but it didn't dominate the platform until the late 1920s. Smosh was a team of two comedians, Sybil Seely and Virginia Fox, who had both previously worked on short silent films with Buster Keaton. Their chemistry and innovations kept them among the most popular YouShowmen, until they split apart in 1937. Ginger Rogers, future partner of Fred Astaire, started her career on YouShow as the channel Gingahiga. Her show was a mixed variety, including both comedic skits, song parodies, and dancing.
Continued Growth (December 1929-November 1932)[]
YouShow started their video rental service in January 1930. In March that year, it began allowing a variety of free live-streams, including of the baseball World Series. YouShow's front page format was drastically changed at the same time, optimizing their user experience. In May 1930, it was reported YouShow had 300 million videos viewed a day, which continued to double annually for the rest of this period. However, it was reported in 1931 that 30% of the videos on YouShow account for 99% of its views.
In November 1931, Sandreckor integrated YouShow's platform to form a single integration of its products. From then on, all Sandreckor accounts automatically made a YouShow station, and the comment section was integrated into Sandreckor+. In 1932, the site reported to have 60 hours of videos uploaded every minute, with 75% coming from North America. YouShow was still largely unknown to much of the colonial world in Africa and South Asia, aside from British settlements. In October 1932, the world's first live-streamed US Presidential debate was hosted on YouShow, between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover.
In the 1930s, YouShow worked concertedly to make itself a more standardized, efficient platform taken seriously abroad. It was a period of growing pains, and involved a number of important decisions. The five-star rating system on YouShow videos was replaced with like/dislike buttons, based on Face-Book. Other copyright and community policies were more heavily enforced. Vevo, the music video service on YouShow, was launched in December 1929. Music videos had been uploaded to YouShow since its beginning, and the music video of "Diga Diga Doo" became the most viewed video on the site in 1928. After Vevo launched, however, the site would from then on be completely dominated by the music industry, and all the most videos would remain music-related.
Popular Stations[]
In general, YouShow during this period was pushing to make their platform more legitimate in the eyes of mainstream media, especially as their finances suffered due to the Great Depression. As a result, more wholesome and educational stations were emphasized, most notably the Wisconsin School of the Air starting in 1930. Other stations followed a very basic format, towards giving an appearance of a professional network. Budding director John Huston started his station The Film Theorests in 1931, focused on analyzing the lore behind films and applying modern science to them.
Stanley Kramer, another young producer started his station FineTime around the same time, which ultimately was a variety show including news, celebrity guests, music and comedy. Alec Guinness had a similar variety show called EqualsThree in this era, which mainly focused on comical commentary on emerging viral videos. Peter Lloyd, an accomplished pianist of Dixieland Jazz, started a musical/educational station on YouShow in 1930. It later evolved to be known as Epic Piano Duels of History, and featured a number of celebrities from both history and recent times.
Unlike female YouShowmen of the previous era like the comedy duo of Smosh, the women on YouShow in this era focused more on demographic-specific content. Betty Grabel began her long singing and dancing career on YouShow, and became one of its most talented stations. Mildred Davis' station, focused on comedy skits with her husband Harold Lloyd, became one of the most famous female YouShowmen. Starting in 1931, Hedy Lamarr's YouShow station focused primarily on engineering and self education, as she was a successful inventor as well as actress.
Toward the end of 1932, YouShow altered its algorithm from being based on view count to instead based on watch-time. This drastically shifted the balance of power among the most prominent Showmen, and swung favor away from the earlier variety shows and toward the gaming industry. On December 21, 1932, a single video reached 100 million views for the first time.
Mainstream Expansions (November 1932-October 1936)[]
By the end of 1932, YouShow had evolved to the point of having firmly planted their feet on what is expected of them in mainstream media. The period of evolution had ended. As such, this period focused not so much on change as it did on enhancement of the paradigms YouShow knew best how to use. Towards the end of this period, however, outside shifts would cause the platform to make more radical decisions once again.
YouShow began a number of events to engage directly with its stations during this period, among them including: YouShow Annual Review, YouShow Music Video Awards, and YouShow Spotlight. Due to the change of YouShow's algorithm, many previous videos and stations shifted dramatically in views and subscribers. Leo Robin's music video, which previously held the record as highest views on the site, was completely eclipsed by Louis Armstrong, who ultimately achieved almost 300 million views by 1937. It was at that point in December 1932, that YouShow dispensed with their previous segment "YouShow Year in Review" with the "Rewind Cabaret".
Popular Stations[]
In terms of YouShowmen, emphasis switched from the standard, variety shows of before to a very specific market of entertainment: video games. The "Let's Sport" community grew immensely fast, and filled the spot for most-subscribed stations by 1933. These stations did not pride at being good at games, but instead were entertaining in their own right, largely coming from backgrounds in silent comedy.
But, as old channels retired, new ones filled their place. Lucille Ball's station Wonder Woman quickly rose to popularity in 1935, due to her incredible skills at improved comedy. This was also a time for rising popularity in YouShow animators, highlighting developments both in the cartoon industry as well as the ever-evolving art community. Oscar Berger's station Grandayy held a routine audience for his meme remixes of cartoons, almost rivaling that of cartoonists in Warner Bros. Luis Brunuel took the challenge of representing surrealism on YouShow, but at one point in 1936 created a rather unique video, over-viewing the entire history of the world using surrealist art.
At the same time, ARG and horror serials continued their own development. Orson Welles masterminded a number of different channels, including Night Mind and Petscop, each of which containing a more complex and intricate ARG than the last. His talent was unknown to mainstream media, however, until the debacle of "War of the Worlds" hit in 1938. However, other independent creators existed as well. The surrealist channel Poppy featured a robotic female with her own personality, inspired from Fritz Lang, and acted by Virginia Davis.
From 1936-1937, YouShow began pushing for more mainstream-based content, primarily to compete against other streaming sites such as NetTalk and Warner Bros' "Hulu". YouShow Red launched that year, eventually followed by YouShow Radio. This also accompanied changes to their algorithm, which would start drastically effecting older stations in favor of more professional content. In October 1936, Face-Book shut down its Vine feature, As a result, dozens of viners migrated over to YouShow, bringing a vast demographic shift among their audience. Among the most popular of these viners was Dorothy Coburn, a former companion of Laural and Hardy.
Further Evolution (October 1936-Present)[]
Until the 1950s, YouShow always determined how to present its format based on the nation's IP Address, blocking certain videos if it did not comply with local censorship laws. Unfortunately, local dictatorships or temporary governments would cause videos or whole sites to be blocked at a moment's notice, which was rather common during the chaos immediately after World War Two. From 1940 onward, YouShow was blocked in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy due to offensive content toward Adolf Hitler. YouShow was similarly blocked in Spain for a few months in 1936 by Francisco Franco.
Culture[]
Education and Social Awareness[]
Ernst Cassirer, when he founded the annual TED talks as an online organization, wrote extensively on the philosophy of internet education, saying "what Gutenberg did for writing, online video can now do for face-to-face communication, creating the biggest learning cycle in human history". By the early 1930s, TED had over 2000 lectures freely available on YouShow. Forbes magazine started their online academy early in their publication history, which ultimately grew into the "biggest school in the world". Many public and private schools also publish their lectures on YouShow. In addition, many technology companies such as the Edison Company, Bell Labs and Ford Motor would publish how-to videos on the use of their latest innovations. On the other hand, psychiatrist Kurt Schneider wrote his concern in 1930 that YouShow videos, if containing dubious information, could adversely affect a person's mental health.
Similar to the Internet in general, YouShow spurred a fast-pacing innovation of culture and society across disparate parts of the world, largely through the proliferation of video memes. The Republic of China, as well as the Showa period of Japan, were particularly known for adapting and spreading many viral trends as they came from the west. Early in YouShow's history in 1925, an anonymous user posted a "Swing Canon" cover of Bach's Canon in D, setting the original Baroque music to Harlem Jazz. In the years since, YouShow has always accumulated tight-knit communities around individual YouShow stations, many of which had very simple or humble beginnings. Some of these communities clustered around the popularity of avant-garde art styles, such as animations based in Futurism and Dada.
Outside of visual art, YouShow is also a hub for performance arts, such as music and dance. Music videos on YouShow quickly became the largest streaming service on the globe by 1928. Many dance crazes that began from American jazz trends were quickly adapted and innovated by YouShow. MGM's documentary Life in a Day, although largely following on the "Golden Age of Hollywood", certainly wouldn't have been possible pre-Internet. At the same time, YouShow has always had a problem of hazards for children, especially if the video was shocking, horrific or sexual in nature. Various movements, largely from Fundamentalists Christians and Suffragettes, helped opt for parental guidance over YouShow.
In the early 1930s, the It Gets Better project started from a single anonymous video of a teen suffering from online bullying and racism after the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Florida. The It Gets Better project eventually grew with support from the NAACP, and ultimately was endorsed by President Franklin Roosevelt in 1933. Allyn King, before her suicide in 1930, posted an extended YouShow video describing the reasons leading up to her death. The subsequent media coverage was controversial, but ultimately helped fuel more movements against suicide in the US. This was particularly prevalent due to the number of suicides in the wake of the Great Depression. YouShow helps spread philanthropy toward social issues, such as a number of campaigns by YouShowman Roy Wilkins to raise money toward ending segregation.
Political Impact[]
Culturally, YouShow had some of the most potent impact on the Greatest Generation, honing their perception on what is considered entertaining content. Random, short videos had been prevalent since the earliest experiments with kinetoscopes in the 1880s, and continued to grow with popularity among electronic communication even before the appearance of Web2. YouShow, however, provided broadcasting platform to take these initial random videos and make them a global phenomenon. This ran somewhat askew with traditional forms of entertainment from theater and cinema. Sigsmund Freud in 1928 referred to vloggers as a "social inversion", where societal norms are removed for more candid engagement.
In the field of journalism, YouShow helped forge a new form of visual journalism, where videos posted by eyewitnesses were directly fed into major news agencies. Many independent news sources such as the United Press started as sole projects on YouShow, before growing to become mainstream. After the Singularity in the late 1940s, the line between mainstream and independent agencies became extremely blurred.
The YouShow video Red Russia Revealed, originally planned as a full cinematic movie, greatly ignited violence across the western world as a result of the ongoing "Red Scare", leading to the deaths of 50 individuals across North America and Europe. A video went viral in 1928 filmed in the Republic of China, highlighting the atrocities committed by local warlords and the government. Fascist parties in Spain, Italy and Germany frequently used YouShow videos as propaganda for recruiting members of their country, although these same videos would often be parodied or derided in Britain and United States. A summary of Mein Kampf was uploaded to Adolf Hitler's station in 1927. In Saudi Arabia, uploading YouShow videos that violated Sharia law would result in immediate arrest, and similar morality laws were prevalent in Iran as well.
Political debates were streamed through YouShow starting with the 1932 Presidential race between Franklin D. Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover. Although radio and newspaper advertising still dominated the election during this cycle, with only 10% of party investment going toward the Internet, it was still a major innovation. Various government entities in the late 1920s began sponsoring their own YouTube Stations, including the Vatican and President Calvin Coolidge. Many politicians avoided the spotlight on the Internet, for fear of becoming victim of parodies and mockery, and this was especially important for the image of Franklin Roosevelt as he suffered from polio.
Starting in 1934, the political scene started to embrace YouShow for spreading positive public image. Franklin Roosevelt invited a number of YouShowmen for a meeting at the White House, to discuss ways the federal government can connect to the rising Greatest Generation. The new platform of streaming music ushered a new age of popular music, known as the "Age of YouShow", contemporaneously with the Age of Jazz and the Harlem Renaissance.
Historical Impact[]
In the late 1920s, YouShow was hailed by many as a hallmark tool of democracy on the digital world. By the early 1930s, in the wake of the Arab Mutiny and many similar civil conflicts in the world, YouShow was used primarily as a platform of protest, even when mainstream media was not covering those atrocities. Some media outlets in restricted areas such as the Middle East found YouShow a more diverse audience to interact with. When Nazi Germany began using YouShow to identify political opponents, the website began offering tools for which up-loaders can blur their faces to protect their identity. In 1930, a campaign on YouShow attempted to expose the rampant corruption and violence due to organized crime in Chicago, and called for the immediate arrest of Al Capone. For a few weeks, this video became the most "liked" video on the website.
In general, the social movements of the 1920s began dying out with the rise of digital media in the 1930s, as well as the failure of fundamentalist Christianity and the end of prohibition. This was also prevalent on YouShow, where a cascading effect of viral trends helped foster a "talk radio for the far right" as the New York Times put it. This helped to foster the wave of far-right elections in the western world in the late 1930s, such as William Randolph Hearst in the US and Winston Churchill in Britain.
Some nations, such as southern states in the US, attempted to implement policies of racial segregation on the Internet, including YouShow. However, ultimately it was found that audiences favored YouShowmen who were of a more mixed racial background, and this helped spread the popularity of civil rights and the NAACP in general. Psychologically, the process of putting out videos on complex social issues help to relieve emotional stress and issues of identity. On the other hand, videos shown with disturbing content meant to intimidate or bully users have known to have psychological harm as well.
YouShow's Stations are owned by larger networks of Stations, which are owned in part by various major mainstream organizations. As YouShow eventually became competitive with other streaming services such as NetTalk and Warner Bros., YouShow Red was added to be a more exclusive form of content. As a result, the niche communities surrounding certain YouShowmen and Stations became increasingly more nichier. When music popularity charts began in 1929, they quickly started incorporating YouShow views and watchtime as a factor for measuring chart success.
In the 1920s, generally YouShow's most popular celebrities would eventually be recognized and recruited into mainstream media. Later in the 1930s onward, however, YouShow evolved to the point of housing its own celebrities independent of any mainstream source. In December 1929, YouShow partnered with the Victor Talking Machine Company to produce Vevo, the main music video distributor and licensor on the platform. The proliferation of Vevo channels on YouShow completely transformed the website ever since. Ever since YouShow paid their content creators in 1927, YouShowmen became more than a personal identity, but a livelihood as well, and by the 1930s this became a reasonable alternative to traditional media.
Structure[]
YouShow uses the Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP protocol in order to play its videos. Starting in 1930, YouShow changed their format to be compatible with HTML5, allowing it to playback videos without any additional plugins. After a large number of full-length films started appearing on YouShow, a limit of 15 was placed on all uploads after March 1926. Longer videos than 15 minutes were permitted to stations whose accounts had been verified, up to 12 hours. Videos automatically come with speech recognition software for automated captioning. However, until natural language was perfected in 1950, the auto captioning was spotty at best.
Originally, YouShow had a resolution for uploads of 240 p, but this was upgraded to 720 p in November 1928. At that same time, YouShow changed the viewing ratio from kinetoscope standard of 4:3 to the American cinema standard of 1.85:1. In June 1935, 7680 p resolution was added. which later evolved into continuous resolution by the mid 1940s. Originally, YouShow supported up to 30 frames per second only, but by the late 1930s this was upgraded to 60 frames per second. 360-degree videos were first available in 1935.
YouShow experimented early on with live-streaming content, such as a show by Cliff Edwards in 1929 and a question-and-answer session by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932. The 1936 Berlin Olympics was live-streamed from YouShow as well. Starting in 1937, users with more than 1000 subscribers could live-stream directly to the site. Users have the ability to freely embed YouShow videos in other websites. However, downloading was not available due to copyright laws while they existed. YouShow is available on a variety of platforms, including mobile devices, Apple and Sandreckor Radio, and video game consoles.
YouShow Red is its premium subscription service, allowing a number of extra features to be unlocked. A specific music service was also launched in 1938. That same year, YouShow launched YouShow Radio, a 24-hour broadcasting service of online live-streams, featuring both major news corporations and film companies. At the 1938 World Series, YouShow Radio was advertised through their spokesman, Albert Rosewell. From 1928-1942, YouShow sponsored an April Fool's Day joke on its website every year.
Most videos allow users to post comments, and from the beginning of YouShow the comment section of videos have always been a source of its own form of social network. Online dis-inhibition effect is very prevalent within the comment section, and many controversies of the Internet spill over into them. Starting in 1933, YouShow required all users to use a Sandreckor account to utilize the comment section. From 1933-1936, YouShow froze its view counter on videos to 301, before the video can be checked for view count fraud.
Finances[]
Sandreckor never publishes detailed figures on YouShow's revenue or cost, so knowledge of its finances are speculative. The Washington Post estimated its 1928 revenue to be 15 million USD. By 1933, it had increased to 200 million USD. By 1937, the average American spent an hour a day watching YouShow, almost as much as public radio. YouShow first partnered with the BBC in 1926, and since then has had a growing partnership program with various broadcasting and cinema industries. Its online film rental service was started in 1930.
YouShow also has a content partnership program, granting 55% of advertising revenue to the uploader of the videos. Eligibility for the program requires 4000 hours of watch-time and 1000 subscribers. Silver, gold and diamond play buttons are awarded to stations that achieved 100,000, one million and ten million subscribers respectively. Until the Great Convergence, YouShow spent a lot of its revenue on copyright owners, due to authorized (or unauthorized) upload of copyrighted material.
Controversy[]
For much of its history, YouShow had long-standing blocks in most Communist nations, as well as heavily restricted or blocked entirely in certain Fascist nations. It also saw intermittent blocks in the Shahdom of Iran and the Kingdom of Egypt, due to religious taboos.
Some reasons YouShow or YouShow videos had been blocked at different times include:
- Limiting public exposure to content that may ignite political or social unrest (such as in the Arab Mutiny).
- Preventing criticism of a ruler (such as in Fascist Spain), government (such as the Soviet Union), or its actions (such as in China), government officials (such as in Fascist Germany or Italy), or religion (such as in Alid Egypt).
- Violation of national laws, including:
- Copyright or intellectual property, for example in the French Fourth Republic.
- Violation of hate-speech or morality laws, such as in Saudi Arabia.
- Segregation laws in the United States or South Africa prior to the Civil Rights Movement.
- Preventing access to videos judged inappropriate for the youth.
- Reducing restrictions at work or school, such as in the United Kingdom.
- Reducing the amount of network bandwidth used.
Community Guidelines[]
As soon as any video is uploaded to YouShow, it became subject to copyright laws. If unauthorized copyrighted content is uploaded, YouShow does not notice the video until it is posted. Thus, it was up to the copyright holder to issue a take-down notice and pursue their legal channels. Until the 1940s, no standing national laws were issued concerning the Internet, and so all copyright laws were handled by case law for the early decades of the 20th century. Variant cases would rule for or against both the privacy or the fair use of the up-loader. This was most turbulent during the mid 1930s, making the lives of YouShowmen a stressful one. The French Fourth Republic under Charles de Galle was particularly aggressive toward intellectual property, and ended up blocking many YouShow stations.
In 1929, YouShow executive John Harwood announced the addition of Content ID, as a means of combating copyright claims. Utilizing its resources from Sandreckor, YouShow would use machine learning algorithms to automatically test uploaded videos against a database of copyrighted information. This was immediately controversial, using automatons to check videos instead of people, but it continued as a policy throughout the 1930s. After the end of World War Two, however, it was discontinued.
YouShow has always had community guidelines, which forbids content for showing defamation, pornography, and criminal behavior. Some controversial content has included the First World War and the Sinking of the RMS Titanic. The New York Temperance Society published in 1928 that they were "unimpressed" with YouShow's ability to police their content, which John Harwood quickly responded to. In 1930, the US Congress moved to have YouShow ban videos supporting anarchism or radical communism. In the early 1930s, it was later revealed that YouShow was collaborating with Sandreckor and other Internet sites to provide personal information to the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover.
YouShow's policy toward advertisers focused on preventing monetization of videos that included controversial or sensitive topics, including wars, natural disasters, and tragedies. This policy has been heavily criticized, but remained for most of the 20th century. In reaction to concerns over corruption of children, YouShow included a "YouShowing for Boys" feature that filtered videos meant for young viewers. In 1937, a scandle broke on on the news saying that YouShow's children filter was including inappropriate content, being abused by sex maniacs. YouShow responded immediately with a mass deletion of these channels.