Cleavage Control: Three stories about algorithmic culture and power in the case of the YouTube ‘Reply Girls’

Abstract

This chapter purposes to disentangle some of the messiness that changing algorithms entail. It considers the stories that algorithm changes tell with regards to what is valuable—how value is governed, generated, and negotiated in and through algorithmic social media platforms like YouTube. The chapter contributes to the conversation on the relationships between social media platforms and content producers by focusing on the algorithm as an arbiter of power and resistance. To illuminate how algorithms materialize in practice, this chapter considers the case of the YouTube "Reply Girls," a group of young women who rose to a brief moment of YouTube fame in 2012 for using their cleavage-baring bodies as thumbnails to drive traffic. The prolific cleavage-baring thumbnails and reply videos produced by a handful of YouTubers plays an important role in YouTube changing focus from favoring clicks and view counts to maximizing for "watch time" and sustained attention instead.