IT’S APT THAT The YouTube Effect is produced by The Terminator veteran Gale Anne Hurd. Because it’s a full-strength tech nightmare, which will have you checking under your bed for malignant algorithms. “Ed Solomon (co-writer of the Bill & Ted films) came to the Tribeca screening and didn’t really know what he was in for,” chuckles Alex Winter, formerly Bill S. Preston, Esq., and now a maker of terrific documentaries. “I saw him afterwards, like, ‘You want to grab dinner?’ And he said, ‘No, I’m gonna grab a drink. That was a horror movie!’”
The film rewinds to 2005, when YouTube was launched, offering up jolly viral videos (remember Charlie Bit My Finger?). Then it zips through the intervening years, showing how it’s swollen like some unstoppable beast, helping disseminate conspiracy theories, offering safe harbour to radicals, and arguably boosting the storming of the US Capitol. It’s now a virtually lawless platform, with even kids’ programming targeted by hackers, who in 2020 spliced disturbing images into Peppa Pig.