Introduction to Social Media Investigation: A Hands-on Approach, 1st Edition (2015)

Chapter 16. YouTube

Abstract

YouTube is a video-sharing Web site. It's one of the most popular sites on the Web, with over one billion unique visitors each month. People can upload videos from their computers or mobile devices. They can then be viewed by anyone online or by a restricted group depending on the privacy settings. Viewers can comment on videos and rate them. This chapter presents an overview of the different types of information people share on the site and how to find those people.

Keywords

Social media

Social networks

YouTube

Video

Case Study Paragon: Elliot Rodger

On May 23, 2014, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger began a mass killing in the college town of Isla Vista, California.1

After stabbing his three roommates to death, he left in his BMW. He stopped at the Alpha Phi sorority house at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and shot three young women who were outside, killing two of them.

He then continued driving, shooting at people on the sidewalk from his car window, running down cyclists, and eventually shooting at sheriff's deputies. When the spree finally ended, Rodger was dead from a gunshot wound to the head, six victims were dead, and twelve others were injured.

In the aftermath of the shooting, Rodger's 141-page manifesto, “My Twisted World,” was made public, in which he ranted about his anger at the world. However, the most accessed of Rodger's public material was a series of YouTube videos (still available online at the time of writing: https://www.youtube.com/ElliotRodger). Their titles revealed his anger, including “Elliot Rodger, Lonely Vlog, Life is so unfair,” “Life is so unfair because girls dont want me,” and “Why do girls hate me so much?”

In his final video, “Retribution,” Rodger detailed his plan for the massacre2

Well, this is my last video. It has all had to come to this. Tomorrow is the day of retribution, the day in which I will have my revenge against humanity, against all of you. For the last 8 years of my life, ever since I hit puberty, I've been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection, and unfulfilled desires all because girls have never been attracted to me. Girls gave their affection and sex and love to other men but never to me.

He went on to detail his hatred of women for rejecting him, of his peers with whom he could not connect socially, and of humanity. He concluded with a detailed description of his plans:

You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one. The true alpha male. (laughs) Yes. After I've annihilated every single girl in the sorority house, I will take to the streets of Isla Vista and slay every single person I see there. All those popular kids who live such lives of hedonistic pleasures while I've had to rot in loneliness for all these years. Well now, I will be a god compared to you. You will all be animals. You are animals and I will slaughter you like animals. And I will be a god. Exacting my retribution on all those who deserve it. You do deserve it. Just for the crime of living a better life than me. All you popular kids, you've never accepted me, and now, you will all pay for it. And girls, all I ever wanted was to love you and to be loved by you. I've wanted a girlfriend, I've wanted sex, I've wanted love, affection, adoration. You think I'm unworthy of it. That's a crime that can never be forgiven.

Police knew about these videos in the weeks leading up to the shootings but determined that Rodger was not a threat to himself or others. The police reportedly saw his final video where he detailed his plans for the killings about an hour after they took place.3

While the YouTube videos were not enough to stop Rodger's massacre, they provided deep insights into the deranged thought process of an angry young man. They were used in investigations of Rodger before the killings and to investigate and better understand his motives afterward. The tragedy of this incident puts a spotlight on how much can be learned about a person from their YouTube content (Figure 16.1).

FIGURE 16.1 A screen capture from Elliot Rodger's final YouTube video.

YouTube Overview

YouTube is a video-sharing website. It's one of the most popular sites on the web, with over one billion unique visitors each month.

People can upload videos from their computers or mobile devices. They can then be viewed by anyone online or by a restricted group depending on the privacy settings. Viewers can comment on videos and rate them.

Popularity

The most popular videos are wildly popular. The most viewed video of all time is the music video for Psy's “Gangnam Style,” which has over 2 billion views. To its credit (or discredit), YouTube is also responsible for Justin Bieber's music career. His amateur videos were accidentally discovered in 2007 when he was just 13.

Video sharing is dramatically increasing in popularity. This can be largely attributed to the ease with which smartphones can be used to capture, edit, and upload videos. And while people can easily email a few photos to their friends, video files are often too large for emailing. Thus, sites like YouTube become an obvious platform for sharing videos with friends.

Video Pages

Figure 16.2 shows a typical page for a video on YouTube. The video is shown at the top. Immediately beneath the video are the number of views (to the right) and the title and name of the person who posted it (to the left). Beneath that is a list of options to share the video on a variety of platforms, and finally, beneath that is a space for comments.

FIGURE 16.2 A video page on YouTube.

Clicking on the name of the poster (in this case, “Malcom Conroy-Smith”) will take you to a profile page for that user. This is sometimes called the user's “channel.”

User Pages

Figure 16.3 shows Malcom's YouTube home page. It has a profile picture and background image at the top, beneath which are tabs with different sections of his profile information. The home page has all of the user's recent activity, including uploaded videos. A more organized and complete list of the videos appears in the “Videos” tab. The “Discussion” section allows people to make comments on the user's channel. Finally, the “About” section has a profile written by the poster. These tend to be short blocks of text.

FIGURE 16.3 Malcom's home page on YouTube.

Users do form social connections on YouTube. They can subscribe to one another, which means one person wants to see the videos posted by the person to subscribe to. However, these subscribers are kept private, so they aren't useful for investigation.

YouTube is owned by Google but operates relatively independently. Users' accounts on YouTube can be linked to other Google accounts—such as Gmail and the Google + social network, discussed in another chapter—but they can also remain separate.

YouTube Demographics

There are two major demographics on YouTube: people who watch videos and people who post them.

Statistics about viewers are relatively easy to come by—and they are impressive. Over 1 billion unique people visit YouTube each month. However, not all these people are sharing videos. Pew reports that 27% of adults have uploaded a video online. The percentage is much higher for younger users (ages 18-29): 41%.4

While YouTube is not the only place these people could have uploaded videos, it is the dominant site for sharing videos.

Finding People

By Search

To find someone on YouTube, you can use the search function at the top of the page. You can search for a person here by their name or their username. If the target has an account with that name, they are likely to appear in the results. The search box is shown inFigure 16.4.

FIGURE 16.4 The search box at the top of the page with Malcom's name entered as the search term.

You may also know, or have a good guess about, the target's username. This may be the first part of their email address (before the “@” symbol) or a username or screen name they use on other sites.

If that doesn't work, you can actually try going directly to the user's YouTube page. Simply append the screen name to https://www.youtube.com. For example, Malcom's username is “malcomcsmith,” so his YouTube page ishttps://www.youtube.com/malcomcsmith.

By Advanced Search

If you want to search for someone by name, but can't find them in the YouTube results, you can use the advanced Google technique (discussed earlier in the book). Put the target's name in quotes and restrict the search to the youtube.com domain. For example, searching for our target Malcom would use the query “malcom conroy-smith” site:youtube.com. If you leave the quotes off the name, you'll get more search results, but they may be less relevant. For example, in this case, you might find people named Conroy Smith, without the “Malcom.”

By Known Associates

If the target doesn't post videos, you may still be able to find videos of them. You can follow the same search advice to see if any of the target's known associates have accounts and then scan the associates' videos to see if the target appears in them.

Similarly, searching for the target's name may not reveal videos posted by the target, but there may be videos of the target. If the target's name is included in the caption, the video will appear in the search results.

Obtaining Data

YouTube is somewhat unique among the social media sites discussed in this book, since the videos are the main source of content. When you find someone on YouTube, you have access to the most important information–his videos.

Privacy Levels and Access

Privacy is relatively simple on YouTube.

YouTube users have the option to make their posts public, which is the default and the most common setting; private, which restricts their visibility to invited users only; or unlisted, where anyone who has a link to the video can view it but the video does not appear in the search results or on a user's YouTube page.

Most videos are posted publicly. It is not a violation to watch unlisted videos if you somehow obtain a link to them. However, private videos will be difficult to access unless the video owner explicitly chooses you or invites you to watch.

Case Studies

Politics

YouTube provides a place for people to share videos of people that the public might want investigated, especially in politics. One of the most high-profile revelations from YouTube came not from a politician's own channel, but from a video someone posted of him.

In the 2012 US presidential election, the Mother Jones magazine posted secretly recorded video footage of Republican candidate Mitt Romney speaking at a $50,000 per place fund-raiser. (Those two videos are still available on YouTube.5) In them, Romney is captured making controversial remarks. These videos came to be known as the “47%” because of the following quotes:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe that government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them … And so my job is not to worry about those people—I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.

There was a strong response to the videos from both sides. Within the Republican party, the campaign was called “incompetent”6,7 and “stupid and arrogant”.8 Obviously, opponents on the other side seized on the remarks as well. The political blogFiveThirtyEight showed Romney's poll ratings decline after the video aired,9 though there is some question about the role the video played.

Regardless of its quantifiable impact, the incident showed how YouTube videos could reveal information about politicians that could shape the national dialogue.

Crime and Misbehavior

For a variety of reasons, many people enjoy posting videos of their bad behavior on YouTube. There are quite a few case studies of people being arrested for crimes or punished for bad behavior as a result of their YouTube videos that depict it.

In May 2014, Michael Keith Maddox of Piedmont, Alabama, was arrested for reckless endangerment as a direct result of the videos he uploaded to his YouTube channel.10 The videos were mostly filmed from his dashboard and showed him ranting about cyclists, revving his engine, and speeding past them. In some instances where the cyclists appeared frightened as Maddox passed them, he laughed manically. He also makes passive threats in some videos, yelling, “Ride your little bicycle, you piece of crap! I'm going to hurt one of them one of these days. I can't help it.” Maddox did issue an apology on Facebook for his “stupid” videos, but this did not prevent his arrest. His bond was set at $3000.

Another bad driving incident posted to YouTube led to an arrest. Derek Kellett was charged with reckless driving after he uploaded a video of himself running from the police on his motorcycle. The video, titled “Yamaha R6 Runs From Cops- Full High Speed Chase!!,” shows him speeding, running red lights, weaving across lanes, and coming close to several cars, narrowly avoiding collisions. He was charged with five counts of reckless driving and released on a $2225 bond.11

Two teen girls from Ohio were arrested after their video of a fight, in which one threw a shovel at the other, hitting her in the head and knocking her to the ground, which was posted on YouTube.12 Both were charged with disorderly conduct.

Adults are not immune from misbehavior caught on camera. Second-grade teacher Thomas Hammer was caught on a video, later uploaded to YouTube, where he threatened to hit a skateboarder over the head with the said skateboard. He was initially faced with both felony and misdemeanor charges. When the felony charge was dropped and he was allowed to return to work at his school, parents demanded he be fired. At the time of writing, his case is still being considered.13

Conclusions

YouTube is a video-sharing social media site and one of the most popular sites on the web. It has over a billion unique visitors per month. The videos themselves provide the main investigative insight on YouTube, and although videos can be made private, most are public. As video sharing becomes more popular online, sites like YouTube become increasingly valuable sources of information, both through videos people post of themselves and through videos posted by others that depict the target.

1 Duke, Alan. 2014. “Timeline to ‘Retribution’: Isla Vista Attacks Planned over Years.” CNN. May 27. http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/26/justice/california-elliot-rodger-timeline/.

2 [This video is no longer on YouTube, but a copy of it is available from The New York Times.] “YouTube Video: Retribution.” 2014. The New York Times. May 24. http://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000002900707/youtube-video-retribution.html.

3 Varandani, Suman. 2014. “California Police Knew Of Elliot Rodger's Disturbing Videos Days Before His Shooting Spree But Did Not Watch Them.” International Business Times. May 30. http://www.ibtimes.com/california-police-knew-elliot-rodgers-disturbing-videos-days-his-shooting-spree-did-not-1592327.

4 Purcell, Kristen. 2013. “New Data Show Increases in Both the Percent of Adults Who Post and Who Watch Videos Online.” Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. October 10. http://www.pewinternet.org/2013/10/10/new-data-show-increases-in-both-the-percent-of-adults-who-post-and-who-watch-videos-online/.

5 Jones, Mother. 2012. “Full Mitt Romney Fundraiser Video Part One (36:39).” YouTube. September 8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge03Sys8SdA and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBj0joyCeag.

6 Noonan, Peggy. 2012. “Time for an Intervention.” The Wall Street Journal (Peggy Noonan's Blog). September 18. http://blogs.wsj.com/peggynoonan/2012/09/18/time-for-an-intervention/.

7 Brooks, David. 2012. “Thurston Howell Romney.” The New York Times. September 17. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/18/opinion/brooks-thurston-howell-romney.html?ref=davidbrooks&_r=1&.

8 Wallace, Chris. 2012. “Gibbs Defends Administration's Response to Libya Attack; Gov. Walker: Romney Needs to Show ‘Fire in the Belly.’” Fox News. Fox News. September 23. http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/fox-news-sunday-chris-wallace/2012/09/23/gibbs-defends-administrations-response-libya-attack-gov-walker-romney-needs-show-fire?page=4#p//v/1856228251001.

9 Silver, Nate. 2012. “Sept. 27: The Impact of the ‘47 Percent.’” The New York Times. September 28. http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/sept-27-the-impact-of-the-47-percent/.

10 Schmitt, Angie. 2014. “Infamous YouTube “Run ‘em in a Ditch” Driver Arrested in Alabama.” Streetsblog USA. May 23. http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/05/23/infamous-youtube-run-em-in-a-ditch-driver-arrested-in-alabama/.

11 Field, Carla. 2014. “Motorcyclist Posts YouTube Videos of Evading Police, Is Arrested.” WYFF. May 30. http://www.wyff4.com/news/motorcyclist-posts-youtube-videos-of-evading-police-is-arrested/26250416#!WCcw2.

12 Zennie, Michael, and Joel Christie. 2014. “BOTH Girls in ‘Shovel Fight’ Video Are Arrested for Disorderly Conduct.” The Daily Mail. May 13. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2627439/BOTH-girls-infamous-shovel-fight-video-arrested-disorderly-conduct-revealed-brawling-BOY.html.

13 Chu, Hanna. 2014. “Parents Want Cielo Vista Elementary Teacher Fired for Controversial Skateboard Video.” ABC7.com. May 20. http://abc7.com/news/parents-want-teacher-fired-for-skateboard-vid/69568/.