YouTube CEO Neal Mohan on AI, Censorship & the Future of Creators

**SPEAKER_2** (0:02)
The man himself, CEO of YouTube.

**Neal Mohan** (0:06)
I didn't realize that when I took over the CEO gig, a big part of my job would be being a straight man for a lot of YouTubers out there.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:12)
YouTube is now by far the biggest streamer in the world.

**Neal Mohan** (0:16)
Shorts, I think, has just surpassed 70 billion views a day.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:19)
Mohan was one of the pioneers of internet advertising, and keeping the world's largest creator economy afloat.

**Neal Mohan** (0:25)
We think we're really still in the early days of our growth story and fulfilling what our mission is, which is to give everyone a voice and show them the world.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:34)
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome YouTube CEO Neal Mohan.

**Jason** (0:47)
Good to see you, brother.

**Neal Mohan** (0:48)
Thanks. Nice to see you.

**Jason** (0:52)
David, hi. All right, welcome, Neal.

**Chamath** (0:54)
Neal.

**Neal Mohan** (0:58)
I could have done that together.

**Chamath** (1:00)
I mean, you could have.

**Jason** (1:02)
What did you think? We talked to him a little bit about which platform is the most important. He said the one that pays us the most. You don't pay for content upfront. You've done some experiments. You do it all with the 55% revenue split. You sweep 45%. It seems like you're doing pretty well. Are you taking too much money from creators?

**Neal Mohan** (1:21)
Let's get into it.

**Jason** (1:21)
Can we get that down to 30%?

**Neal Mohan** (1:24)
First of all, thank you all for having me. It's a privilege to be with you guys. Like they say, a long-time listener, first-time caller. It's great to be here with all of you. Do you listen to the pod? I watch it.

**Jason** (1:35)
Oh, you watch it. Where do you watch it? You like the Spotify video?

**Chamath** (1:38)
I watch it on YouTube.

**Jason** (1:39)
Oh, on YouTube. Yes, we're there now. We are there now. Yes.

**Chamath** (1:43)
Can you please be prepared?

**Jason** (1:45)
Yes. I didn't know we had a YouTube channel. Really? How's it doing?

**Neal Mohan** (1:47)
How many folks watch it on YouTube? Just out of curiosity. There we go. All right.

**Jason** (1:52)
It's about half.

**Neal Mohan** (1:53)
The channel is growing. You guys are close to a million subs, watch time views all up and to the right. So congrats to all of you guys on that. But on your question, Jason, so we've paid out in the last three years over $70 billion to the creator economy. We are the original and world's largest creator economy.
And so, and that innovation, which is called the YouTube Partner Program, is well over a decade now, the 55-45 that you're referring to. And so we pay out billions to creators, creators, our media company partners, the music partners, etc. I'm using that term creator and I'll use it for the next 30 minutes sort of in the broadest sense of the term. It's just that the way that we do it is very different. I mean, we're a creator economy in the true entrepreneurial sense of the word, which is if you're a creator on YouTube, contrast to the traditional model, you're betting on yourself, which is kind of the opposite of sort of the way that traditional media models have worked. And as you grow, as your audience grow, as your success grows, your monetization grows, your business grows as well. And not every creator on our platform is going to become, you know, Mr. Beast or Dude Perfect, but there are, you know, north of three million creators that are in that partner program today earning revenue.

**Jason** (3:20)
Back to my question, I feel like you've created all these stars and you look at the Tuckers, you look at the Megans, you know, we'll put ourselves maybe right behind them. We all choose to turn off monetization because the take rate is too high and we can do it better ourselves. Should you not start to think about two classes of folks, the up-and-comers who don't have sales teams, who don't have distributions, maybe it's more about building an audience and then maybe looking at the folks like us slightly differently? And this seems to be a weakness in your game. Your take?

**Neal Mohan** (3:59)
I would say that, you know, the way I think about it is...

**David Sacks** (4:01)
He doesn't speak for us.

**Chamath** (4:04)
I speak for myself. I just want to be clear that I love you.

**Jason** (4:08)
But it's clear that people who are at this level take it on themselves because the 45% is just an absurdly high take rate for that level of person, the Tuckers, the Megans, they'd rather just bake their ads in. So how do you think about that level of folks? They participate but you don't monetize them.