The functional equivalence isn't with curation, but ordering. Newspapers order what goes on the front page, YouTube orders what goes on the home page. The stati

The functional equivalence isn't with curation, but ordering. Newspapers order what goes on the front page, YouTube orders what goes on the home page. The statistic on how many newspaper readers get past the front page, and first few pages, probably follows a similar power law distribution. I don't think that articles near the back are "functionally not published" just because a large % of readers never look at them, so I don't think the similar argument applies to YouTube. YouTube's advantages on this equivalence are also clear, since the newspaper's front page is the same for everyone, YouTube's isn't, and I much prefer YouTube's searching capabilities over trying to search newspapers to see if they have anything on my interest.