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This is Fresh Air.

I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross.

When congressional leaders grilled social media executives last year about spreading

misinformation on the 2020 election in COVID-19, most of the heat was on Facebook,

Twitter and the search engine Google.

Our guest business writer Mark Bergen says far less attention is focused on YouTube.

The video sharing platform which last year earned $28 billion in ad revenue,

and which has over two billion viewers around the world.

Bergen's new book tells the story of YouTube's founding in 2005 on the simple

idea of letting everyone share videos on the internet for free.

And he describes the company's chaotic growth into a business giant.

It's a platform that's allowed a nine year old boy whose videos began appearing

when he was three to become a multi millionaire with his own toy and clothing brands.

It's also given enormous exposure to Alex Jones and other conspiracy theorists.

Bergen writes that YouTube has ushered in a world of abundant content and creativity

of influencers and online hustlers of information overload and endless culture wars.

Mark Bergen writes for Bloomberg and Bloomberg Business Week and previously reported

on technology and media for recode and ad age.

He covered business and economics from India, writing for the New York Times,

...