These German YouTubers are Fighting to Figure Out How YouTube Works
They’re trying to use the full extent of the law to compel YouTube to lift the curtain on its algorithm
When the Irish government opened up its country to the burgeoning bevy of tech giants looking to find a home for their European headquarters by instigating a low corporation tax regime in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it probably didn’t imagine that its data protection agency, the Data Protection Commission (DPC), would become the frontline for some of the most contentious battles about how social media platforms work. But actions have consequences.
YouTube’s algorithm is an inscrutable black box that has been the subject of heated debate of late. (In the last two weeks we’ve twice written about the algorithm, once covering a controversial academic study of how it works, and another time how attention on the algorithm overlooks other issues about YouTube.) YouTube declines to explain how it works, resulting in an odd game of Chinese whispers any time you get more than three creators in the same room, sharing increasingly odd theories of how to please the algorithm as if it were some pagan god.
But a German YouTuber best known for firing crossbows and slingshots is trying to change that — and could end up in…
