What did Reed Hastings say about YouTube competing with Netflix on On with Kara Swisher?

Reed Hastings told Kara Swisher that competition among Netflix, Disney and the other Hollywood streamers is fairly stable, and that YouTube is the service really gaining share. He says YouTube does not commission content: creators upload on spec and compete for attention, which makes it a finely tuned attention machine. His advice is for Netflix not to imitate it, and instead to push its shows and films to be more gripping, plus long-form live events like sports.

• Hastings cites about 3 million paid YouTube creators and says YouTube shares roughly 60% of revenue with them.
• Hastings compares the moment to the 1950s and 1960s, when television hurt movies until films improved in the 1970s.
• TikTok, in Hastings's view, competes hard on the phone but much less on the TV.

▸In their words

“it's hard to out-YouTube YouTube.” Reed Hastings · at 15:23 — open in the transcript →

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on On with Kara Swisher (2026-10-26). Read the whole episode summary →

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