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YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Stepping Down (vox.com) 60

Posted by msmash from the end-of-an-era dept.
YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, who has led the world's largest video site for the last nine years, is stepping down from her role. She'll be replaced by Neal Mohan, her longtime lieutenant. From a report: In a letter sent to YouTube's employees, Wojcicki said she was leaving in order to "start a new chapter focused on my family, health and personal projects I'm passionate about." During her tenure, YouTube became increasingly important to the business for Google, which bought the site in 2006, and Alphabet, the holding company that houses both of them: In 2022, YouTube generated $29.2 billion in ad sales -- more than 10 percent of Alphabet's total revenue.
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YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Stepping Down More

YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Stepping Down

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  • Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Informative)

    by CEC-P ( 10248912 ) on Thursday February 16, 2023 @02:29PM (#63299217)
    Good riddance to the most unqualified, clueless, useless CEO I have ever seen at a tech company in my entire life. It was like watching whatever the opposite of a race would be to see who can technologically progress the worst. The fact that I can't get someone on the phone to help with a problem critically involving my channel when I, no joke, have made them approximately $160,000 since my channel first started is RIDICULOUS. How much of a margin could that possibly be?!
    Sincerely, someone with a 42 million view, 10 year old channel and zero patience left.

    • Serious question: why didnt you setup your own website and hosted your videos there?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by irving47 ( 73147 )

        You know full damn well why.

      • Every channel I've seen try this has failed. Even large established ones.

        People largely, I think, enjoy the "just scroll" experience. Reddit, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook... all designed so you can consume huge amounts of content easily and with very little navigation. Asking them to go to another site is already a really hard topic to bring up.

        Beyond your core subscribers, Youtube invests a ton of money and research into funneling eyes to you who will actually want to see you, and in keeping those eyes glued

      • WHAT? Having to do all the heavy work themselves? Not getting free advertising from Google's algorithm? Actually having to pay to make make their content available?

        Are you mad?

        I'm not saying there's not problems with what support Youtube offers content creators... But the value of what they do offer is indisputable. And the grandparent illustrates that.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          You can embed videos from YouTube, and from lots of other websites. No need to handle the video streaming part yourself.

          There is Floatplane too, like YouTube but subscription. Set your own rates.

      • Re: Let me be the first to say (Score:4, Interesting)

        by pieisgood ( 841871 ) on Thursday February 16, 2023 @05:40PM (#63299917) Journal

        Small plug here. Ezoic is working on providing a tool for self hosting videos with their own central domain. When a user clicks on a video in the search section of https://www.humix.com/ [humix.com] it will then point the user to the domain of the video content owner. Providing a way for content creators to have ownership over their work and ad revenue while still being on a central, searchable and social network site. https://www.ezoic.com/humix-ne... [ezoic.com]

        We want to give content creators and publishers control back over their content, moderation and ad revenue.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by CEC-P ( 10248912 )
        No discoverability, up front costs, potentially separate ad network, etc. I'm big enough now that I probably could but I'm back working in IT to pay off some debt so whatevs.

      • Ya but Youtube has all the backend stuff ready to go. Demographics as well as view time they can show to advertisers in bulk so you don't have to hunt them down yourselves. Sure if you had like a team of 3-5 people who's whole job would be to find your add revenue for your cooking stream you only upload 2 times a week it might work but it wouldn't be profitable for you at all. Its hard enough to hire a decent editor that isn't over worked let alone designing the content.

        Hell completely different field bu

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      > Good riddance to the most unqualified, clueless, useless CEO I have ever seen at a tech company in my entire life

      Youtube grew a lot under her, and is the #1 video site, even after the TikTok boom. You cannot say she's a failure from a financial perspective.

      As far as customer service, ALL the large social media sites suck at that. They live on volume, not quality.

      > I can't get someone on the phone to help with a problem critically involving my channel when I...have made them approximately $160,000

      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        > Good riddance to the most unqualified, clueless, useless CEO I have ever seen at a tech company in my entire life

        Youtube grew a lot under her

        And YouTube would have grown just as much without her. Anyone could have been "CEO of YouTube" -- including you or me -- and YouTube would have done just as well.

        The good news is, now Google can replace her with a black trans lesbian Eskimo and score more Woke Points.

    • Wow, I didn't really expect such a response regarding youtube. As "social media" companies go it seems to have mostly remained uncontroversial. Or so I thought!

      • > As "social media" companies go it seems to have mostly remained uncontroversial. Or so I thought!

        Some dweebs at YouTube watching CNN for "news" have spent the past two years deleting important videos produced by scientific and medical experts because the dweebs guessed they were "misinformation".

        The majority of what was deleted has borne out to be correct and important. The dweebs were wrong. Susan was the Chief Dweeb.

        The entire Locals/Rumble ecosystem exists basically due to YouTube censorship.

        Censo

      • The news of Susan Wojcicki stepping down as CEO comes at a time when YouTube and other social media platforms are facing increased scrutiny over their content moderation policies and their role in shaping public discourse. Besides this I can't remark enough thanks to Susan, she has made the lives of many bloggers and other sources who https://clairesitchyfeet.com/blogger-media-kit/ [clairesitchyfeet.com] have made posts about this media resource, teaching how to become a successful blogger and what the blogger media kit is for, b

    • Re:Let me be the first to say (Score:5, Funny)

      by Dragonslicer ( 991472 ) on Thursday February 16, 2023 @03:12PM (#63299383)

      Good riddance to the most unqualified, clueless, useless CEO I have ever seen at a tech company in my entire life.

      Carly Fiorina would like a word with you.

    • She wasn't CEO of Youtube because of what she knows, she's a member of the American ruling class.
      The clues are there in her wikipedia entry:

      Wojcicki grew up on the Stanford campus...

      She studied history and literature at Harvard University and graduated with honors in 1990.

      She also received her MS in economics in 1993 from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and an MBA in 1998 from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

      In September 1998, the same month that Google was incorporated, its co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin set up office in Wojcicki's parents' garage in Menlo Park, California.

      She may well be pretty clever, but she has had a whole bunch of opportunities some random clever working class girl would never have had.

    • Damn, I had moderator points until yesterday... I would have modded this post up by "one million points".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      What is your YouTube channel, out of interest?

    • The fact that I can't get someone on the phone to help with a problem critically involving my channel when I, no joke, have made them approximately $160,000 since my channel first started is RIDICULOUS

      Lol they don't give a shit about your baby channel.

  • Whatever (Score:4, Informative)

    by NoWayNoShapeNoForm ( 7060585 ) on Thursday February 16, 2023 @02:33PM (#63299237)

    If her departure improves YT, then I am fine with it.

    if nothing improves at YT, then it does not really matter is she stays or goes.

    • What improvements would you like to see?

      • Re: Whatever (Score:5, Interesting)

        by irving47 ( 73147 ) on Thursday February 16, 2023 @02:58PM (#63299337) Homepage

        Live people able to answer creator issues. Even guys with 20,000 subscribers have trouble getting answers about why a video gets struck down. Accountability to false-flagging of videos by "enemies" or even just competition. Any kind of consistency on why certain words can't be uttered, but worse ones can. Why the FUCK can the Cunextuesday word be used with wreckless abandon, but if talking about certain German dictators I can't say "nazi" or "hitler" without getting demonetized.

        • What's wrong with Cunextuesday?

        • It is a standard operating procedure in big tech to treat users as the product, in a way that is repeatable and scalable. Offering human support to human users is very hard to scale, and interferes with profit margins that shareholders expect to see.

      • What improvements would you like to see?

        I once observed a friend setting up a YT account just so they could comment on some videos that they saw.

        The privacy invasive questions being asked by YT just so you could have an account...

        I suppose YT collects all of the invasive info so they can turn it over to the FBI and-or other forms of state/secret police, depending on the country.

        It would be nice to see YT explain WHY they need all that invasive info and then see YT utterly dispense with that collection process.

        • Post a question you think is overly invasive and we can surmise on why they would ask about it.

          Without seeing the questions in particular I would have to assume it's to feed the algorithim so it knows how and where to promote your channel. I'm not saying it's good for them to ask or collect that but the system feeds on that information and if they can get it right from the creators that makes "the system" all the more thorough.

          I don't think the FBI necessarily needs YT specifically to collect information f

      • The Dislike button back or some indicator of a quality video.
        Views aren't enough.
        Taylor Swift has billions of views for the shit quality of music she has.

        • After the shitstorm that Rewind 2018 created? When Youtube had to notice that nobody wants to see their influenzas and other bullshit peddlers that try to leech money out of the pockets of our kids without providing anything relevant in return in a review video and instead what really happened during that year? Or the various dislike-bombs that various reboot/retool/rehash/regurgitate movie trailers got because everyone was pissed at them for butchering the classics?

          Yeah, that's gonna happen. Their customer

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Search for "return youtube dislike" on your browser's add-on repository.

          Or get it from their main site/github: https://www.returnyoutubedisli... [returnyoutubedislike.com]

      • I would like the search to be dramatically overhauled. Please give me a paginated results list of more than 10 videos, and don't give me "people also watched" and nonsense like that.

        I want the dislike count to be reinstated as the ratio of likes to dislikes is a valuable metric when choosing what to watch.

        I want to be able to permanently hide Shorts from my recommendations, not just for 30 days.

        I want to stop getting recommended Minecraft videos and play alongs given that I don't play video games at all let

      • Stop the gun censorship, for one thing. https://support.google.com/you... [google.com] Guns are a legitimate and lawful area of interest. YouTube suppresses it in every way they can.

  • I wonder (Score:3)

    by DarkRookie2 ( 5551422 ) on Thursday February 16, 2023 @02:36PM (#63299249)
    What she is going to ruin next by slapping ads all over everything.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by shanen ( 462549 )

      Hear, hear.

      I was surprised to see the numbers they claim in the summary of the story. I still see YouTube as a kind of criminal enterprise, but it's really hard for me to believe that it could be a profitable one unless they are somehow getting legal kickbacks from the scammers and BS slingers and pirates.

      So is that how monsterman Jones made all the money he lost in those lawsuits?

  • If her junior employee takes over? I donct care about the subject,just asking.
    • It does appear to be on autopilot and mostly uncontroversial. But, sometimes the hardest thing is making it look easy. If youtube descends into FaceBook or Twitter levels of controversy after her departure then we will know she was actually holding it together all along.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by irving47 ( 73147 )

      Probably not. We can hope that he has been blocked by her from making certain "customer service" issues easier to deal with.

      They are too much of a "black box" for creators even with hundreds of thousands of subs. A channel should not be hobbled (and that creator's income nuked for a week at a time" every time some asshole false-flags a video because they don't like them. There should be consequences for media companies that get a video pulled or the channel suspended if they put in a copyright claim with n

  • You're not really CEO if your boss is also CEO

  • ...that explains the fireworks.

  • dropping in 3...2...1...

  • The new GOP House majority just sent out a set of subpoenas to the tech giants to get their side of any conversations with government agencies like the FBI regarding suppression of speech/views/opinions. No such efforts took place under Democrat speaker Pelosi, nor did the previous GOP Speaker (Paul Ryan, who now haunts public board rooms as he becomes rich in the city of revolving doors) allow such subpoenas. This is likely to be a long and unpleasant experience for silicon valley execs who have been "mode

    • Yes, it's been satisfying to watch Jim Jordan wipe the smugness from the face of Twitter lawyer Vijaya Gadde during the hearings.

      Youtube is so incredibly censorship heavy, particularly about Covid and the vaccines, that its only a matter of time until we're hearing testimony about how they were getting their marching orders in violation of the first amendment.

  • May her sleep be punctuated by strangely timed mid-roll ads and dreams of such, if the pre-roll ads ever let her get to sleep.

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