Can you believe it? YouTube is 20 years old

Do you remember what you were doing in 2005? It's possible you were among the first to check out a new video site dubbed YouTube.

Trillions of video views later, the popular video platform celebrated 20 years online Wednesday.

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Nearly everyone these days knows the name YouTube and its place as a must-see destination for a variety of content, but the site actually got off to a very gradual start. But when it caught on, it caught fire.

Just a year after it launched, Google bought it for $1.6 billion.

Now, in its 20 years of existence, the site has seen roughly 20 billion videos uploaded and now boasts about 20 million new videos a day.

The site isn't just a content platform. It has also become a popular social network that's changed the broadcast landscape dramatically.

"Today, folks sit down on the couch and instead of turning on maybe traditional TV, they're often clicking into that YouTube app," YouTube trends expert Sarah Armstrong said. "It's really shaping the future of entertainment."

It's also been harshly criticized for its size, poor content moderation, and outsized influence, particularly with younger viewers.

"It's making critical decisions in that bureaucracy about what's true, what's false, what's allowed to be broadcast, what's appropriate for what age group and when," UC Santa Cruz media analyst Nolan Higdon said. "These are decisions that previously would be made either by authoritarian kings or by democracies, and now they're in the hands of these corporate bureaucracies. YouTube is one of the major players in that space."