The Most Measured Person in Tech Is Running the Most Chaotic Place on the Internet

Hi ABC readers, this is Erin Griffith, a tech writer with the New York Times and author of the occasional newsletter Erin Griffith's Tribute to the Heroes of Business™ (you can find that here: https://erin.substack.com). I'm guest editing for Simo this week. 

I want to share my colleague Dai Wakabayashi's recent profile of Susan Wojcicki, the chief executive of YouTube. Unlike Jack Dorsey, Mark Zuckerberg or Sheryl Sandberg, Ms. Wojcicki has not really taken much personal heat for the spread of misinformation and redpilling of youths on her tech platform. It's kind of incredible, given how aggressively YouTube often pushes its users to content that is, in Dai's words, "increasingly grotesque and sometimes dangerous."

The profile explores how Ms. Wojcicki has tried to manage YouTube's rampant conspiracy theories, Tide Pod challenges, hateful extremist content, bestiality, pedophilia and other various disasters. Most interesting to me is the contrast between how fast YouTube moved when advertising money was at stake versus, say, the low stakes game of humanity's grip on reality. Also: The unexpected consequences of setting arbitrary goals like getting users to watch 1 billion hours of video every day. (Who cares what they're watching or why, amirite?)

Anyway, it's a fair, nuanced portrait that raises a lot of important questions but doesn't necessarily inspire a lot of faith. (Bonus: If you're into wince-worthy moments from powerful tech execs, there's a very yikes cameo from Marc Benioff.)
 

Here's the piece: Who is Susan Wojcicki?

Your BFF,
Erin

P.S. TOMI is an up-and-coming pop-rock singer I recently learned about and "Carry You" is a JAM.  
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