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Over the past couple of years, YouTube\u2019s been in hot water over a myriad of issues that would give any CEO sleepless nights. The list of offenses includes failing to police problematic videos appearing on its platform<\/a>, toxic comments that have pushed it to disable the feature<\/a> for some content, and troubling recommendations<\/a> delivered to unwitting users, including children<\/a>.<\/p>\n Naturally, the company has been lambasted over these shortcomings \u2013 rightly so, many people would argue. I\u2019ve been on that side of the debate too, having written about<\/a>\u00a0the platform\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0mistakes over the past few years.<\/a><\/p>\n That said, I began to wonder if we weren\u2019t collectively being too harsh on a platform that does something impossibly remarkable. It lets more than two billion people<\/a> around the world watch video that\u2019s uploaded at a rate of 500 hours\u2019 worth of content per minute<\/a>, on demand.<\/p>\n To get to the bottom of this,\u00a0I spoke to Chris Stokel-Walker<\/a>, who\u2019s literally written the book on the subject<\/a>. YouTubers<\/em><\/a>, which hit shelves in May, looks at the lives of prominent content creators who make a living on the platform, as well as its impact on society at large. Stokel-Walker decided to write it after covering YouTube for years as a freelance reporter, and coming up empty in his search for an authoritative source of information on the site\u2019s 14 year-long history.<\/p>\n