Circulation Gatekeepers: Unbundling the Platform Politics of YouTube's Content ID

This article explores how circulation flows are shaped by the politics of digital platforms. The author introduces the concept circulation gatekeepers to consider the infrastructures (people, institutions, technologies, discourses, etc.) that control and direct the flow of how, or if, matter moves in particular rhetorical ecologies. Focusing on YouTube's Content ID as a case in point, the article explores how YouTube exercises circulation gatekeeping power by blocking some circulation flows and boosting others. It traces how Content ID aligns itself-materially through its computational procedures, economically through its monetization practices, and rhetorically through its published legal positions and community guidelines-with a view of copyright that privileges the interests of corporate rightsholders and neglects those of everyday users. The author shows how these interests are embedded in copyright discourses and regimes of property control, suggesting systems such as Content ID have broader implications for digital writing in an age where platform infrastructures determine authorship and ownership status. In addition to discussing why rhetoric and writing scholars should care about circulation practices on YouTube (and other corporate platforms), the article closes by calling for more work that considers the role other circulation gatekeepers play in networked economies.