In an interview with Newsbeat, Youtube's chief business officer says the service is 'different' to traditional broadcasters, and therefore shouldn't be treated with the same 'editorial hand.'

In the UK, lisenced broadcasters have to obey the guidelines of Ofcom, but YouTube insists that it will remain an open platform and won't be restricting its content in any way.

A new hope

Calls for the platform to be regulated were made after one of YouTube's largest creators - Logan Paul - uploaded footage of a dead body to his channel.

In response to this, YouTube has hired another 10,000 staff to monitor channels and uploads, to ensure that nobody is breaking the community guidelines.

Robert Kyncl admits that monitoring such a large platform is 'one of the hardest things you can do.' but insists it's worth doing because 'openness brings so many great benefits'. 

"The steps we're taking are not steps any government is asking us to do, these are the steps we're choosing to do because we believe that is the right thing to do."

A difficult year

2017 was a difficult period for YouTube. Issues with a handful of its largest creators led to two advertisement purges in six months. 

Further investigation also revealed that investors were having their ads shown next to racist and inappropriate videos that were going unnoticed by the platform. 

However, YouTube is insistent on remaining as an open platform. 

"It doesn't absolve us of responsibility, we actually take that very seriously," Kyncl says.

The site's community guidelines act as the "standards which are a guide on how to behave on YouTube," he adds.