YouTube’s Model can be deconstructed to three levels; international, automated and self-regulated. The international level shows the role that governments play on a platform such as YouTube, based upon different national laws and other legalities. In this process the average YouTube user has no participatory role. All the decisions are taken by YouTube, the so-called ‘G Team.’ Appropriately translated into the field of online communities, this could be seen as a form of representative democracy in which the ‘G Team’ can be held accountable. Even though users don’t elect the persons in charge, they do choose to go on YouTube and thereby choose to be represented by YouTube. The laws to which they abide are openly accessible (transparent) for whoever is interested. The automated level works almost the same way, except that the logarithms are not as transparent.
The self-regulated level is presented as a form of direct democracy. A form of decision making in which every video that has been posted on YouTube is a small referendum, which registered voters can choose to reject. In practice it turns out to be part of the representative democracy model, because YouTube reviews the votes. No insight is given into this reviewing process, neither is it visible for users to see if and why a video has been flagged. These aspects are crucial to foster debate around flagged issues. By increasing the level of user-participation even more, the system would encourage “the kinds of people who habitually revise, comment on, and add to their cultural setting [and who] may be more critical and engaged citizens, if competence, initiative, and collaboration in cultural life affect the way people engage in politics.”