111–120 of 259 posts
What they should do is collectively take their content somewhere else. As an aside, I'm seeing the same pattern at Amazon. People thought they were opening a business on amazon selling retail. Then amazon started selling the profitable products themselves, storing the products themselves, ... basically doing more and more of the work and taking more control and taking money from the people who helped them become powe…
Fundamentally I think the problem is that these platforms are not neutral, when YouTube's algorithm hoists your video to the front page they are "manipulating" the system. Personally, I would not be surprised to see Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act challenged on this notion and it as the basis for other challenges. Internet providers just serve bits, any effort to "manipulate" those bits based on who is…
Here's an excellent video breaking down with extremely compelling data how the "trending" tab is very heavily manipulated in favor of mainstream media sources: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDqBeXJ8Zx8 What's interesting is that extreme bias in the US is not seen in Canada. Though I'm not sure it's stated in the video, I think that Youtube has been propping up MSM sources so that they can make themselves seem more…
Then the whole thing with AMP and them "partnering with big publishers" to show you carousels of big brand content at the top of the search page also happened.
And the same thing with YouTube happened the moment Google decided to turn it into "web TV", also many years ago.
There's also the trend of top of all these other trends of Google trying to do everything by itself, which the European Commission noticed a while ago and started investigating it in multiple antitrust lawsuits. But I fear even several multi-billion dollar fines won't be enough to actually stop Google from going down this path even more.
I wonder how this plays out. Youtubers are very competitive, and the high profile YouTuber crowd very much asks for special benefits for themselves ... not for the collective.
We can take a look at SAG-AFTRA, the Screen Actors Guild, to see how it will play out. Turns out that every movie star alive today is a union member, and they have no problem asking for special benefits and receiving them.
A lot of the unions that are tied to trying to make progress in tech related fields are not at all like the screen actors guild. They often operate in a way where benefits are tied to simple things like seniority or prescribed certifications and etc.
This is mostly just people like Jörg Sprave and Taofledermaus types, that are angry their videos of making improvised weapons and improvised ammunition, getting demonetized or removed. This started early last year when Jörg got fed up with losing money and getting strikes against videos on his channel. For context he was most famous for his fantastically powerful homemade slingshots, he then started doing stuff like…
> ost advertisers don't want to touch a guy showing how to defeat riot shields with homemade crossbows I 'm not sure anymore if "advertisers" dont want to advertise on non-mainstream or adult sites, or if it's just google imposing arbitrary standards on both their advertisers AND publishers. In the old times of TV there were brands that catered to specific, non-family friendly audiences (e.g. cigarettes, alcohol). Wi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you run a business and your solvency depends on the existence of another, larger business, you're not as independent as the title of 'business owner' alludes. How many HN posts have we seen over the years of businesses based on Amazon, Twitter, Apple getting blown the fuck up because the mothership restricted an API, copied their project or changed a ToS? I'm not putting in an opinion on anything else in your post…
"If you run a business and your solvency depends on the existence of another, larger business, you're not as independent as the title of 'business owner' alludes." My point is that Youtubers can start their own sites and go elsewhere if they get tired of a large company controlling their content. Unionization usually means they will now need to be paid a 'fair wage' and benefits..and your relationship changes to more…
"My point is that Youtubers can start their own sites and go elsewhere if they get tired of a large company controlling their content."
I don't fault people who try that, nor do I fault anyone who tries to stay and fight. In many ways, Google "owns the well". It makes sense to me that the economics of the situation for some makes staying and organizing the easier course of action. Taking on Youtube as a competitor.. building a website, attracting advertisers, etc. Especially doing all this while making cat videos, now for no money, seems like a tough play.
You'd have to have some systemic luxuries, and lots of grit to take on the risk of such a feat. I wish anyone who tries the best of luck.
"Unionization usually means they will now need to be paid a 'fair wage' and benefits..and your relationship changes to more of an employee..with more restrictions on what you can do."
You're already restricted to whatever rules of the road Google sets, by fiat. 99.999% of Content creators who work with google have ZERO negotiating power right now. They can, and do change the rules at anytime. Companies can submit fraudulent DMCA takedowns depriving these small business owners their revenue during its most important period. You can appeal, but it doesn't undo the damage to your revenue even if you win.
These are dirty tricks! Those affected should maximize their voice to do something about it, in my opinion.
"This is is kind of crazy when you think about it: Independent business is now considered an 'alternative viewpoint' here on HN..a site dedicated to hackers, startups, and the tech business."
It's alternative to put 'independent business' contingent on employees never organizing. Businesses can make partnerships, why not employees?
"My guess is that the majority here work for large companies and really don't care about (or have even tried) running a business/startup."
I've worked for a few startups. We weren't aggrieved anywhere close enough to consider Unionization. We were all well paid, treated well, and close enough to management that they listened to concerns as we brought them up.
I wish I had some stats on how many startups are brought low by unions, I bet it's a vanishingly small number. If you consider unions to be a response to be corrective feedback from aggrieved employees, some of these hypothetical blown up startups probably should have gone under.
Honestly, I've only ever associated unions as responses against sufficiently-large-to-be-dehumanizing companies. Maybe it is a problem? I'm open to the possibility even though I would be surprised.
"Everything isn't deserving of a 'revolution'."
Those rebels decide what deserves rebellion, power dynamics decide if they succeed, I bet most don't. Treat your people better to make it harder for them to justify the risks of unionizing, imo.
Thanks for the chat!
This is mostly just people like Jörg Sprave and Taofledermaus types, that are angry their videos of making improvised weapons and improvised ammunition, getting demonetized or removed. This started early last year when Jörg got fed up with losing money and getting strikes against videos on his channel. For context he was most famous for his fantastically powerful homemade slingshots, he then started doing stuff like…
> ost advertisers don't want to touch a guy showing how to defeat riot shields with homemade crossbows I 'm not sure anymore if "advertisers" dont want to advertise on non-mainstream or adult sites, or if it's just google imposing arbitrary standards on both their advertisers AND publishers. In the old times of TV there were brands that catered to specific, non-family friendly audiences (e.g. cigarettes, alcohol). Wi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Off by an order of magnitude on ad revenue, more like several thousand $ per million views.
If you look up "how much I make on youtube" videos you can see creator's dashboards to give you some evidence. The answer is that it varies vastly depending on audience, county, topic and advertiser's interest. "$0.25 to $4" $ per thousand views -- https://techwiser.com/how-much-can-you-make-from-youtube/
huh, I would not have guessed that. But I also have no concept of how much a few million views is for a typical content creator.
What they should do is collectively take their content somewhere else. As an aside, I'm seeing the same pattern at Amazon. People thought they were opening a business on amazon selling retail. Then amazon started selling the profitable products themselves, storing the products themselves, ... basically doing more and more of the work and taking more control and taking money from the people who helped them become powe…
> What they should do is collectively take their content somewhere else. The problem is the economics won't be any better anywhere else. Youtube is the way it is because of all the many stakeholders (viewers responding to clickbait, politicians, copyright holders, bad actors etc). Any other platform would eventually have the same problems and either cave into them, or be sued into oblivion. As for the ad-related issu…
YouTube content creators have responded to the flaws in this model by choosing a better one: one where advertisers pay them directly; they put the ad directly into the video; and YouTube isn't involved.
The production side of this alternate relationship is a big hassle, though; it's like it's the 1930s again, when the actors in soap operas would stop to advertise soap.
It'd be very easy to build a "middle way" where the platform handles inserting the ad creative into the video, and handles payment processing between the advertiser and the content-creator, and even captures view metrics to allow the advertiser visibility into their spend—but where the platform doesn't decide which advertisements run on which videos (with that instead being entirely up to the advertiser and the content creator to schedule between themselves.)
Yes, insofar as Google is an ad-tech company, that distributed-ad-auction is their business model's secret sauce/moat, and I'm suggesting they just throw it away. But in this case, the "tech" part of ad-tech is precisely what's killing YouTube as a monetizable platform. Content creators just need ads, not ad-tech.
What they should do is collectively take their content somewhere else. As an aside, I'm seeing the same pattern at Amazon. People thought they were opening a business on amazon selling retail. Then amazon started selling the profitable products themselves, storing the products themselves, ... basically doing more and more of the work and taking more control and taking money from the people who helped them become powe…
> The internet has turned to garbage. The ad-supported internet has turned to garbage. The academic and hobbyist internet is fine, and not that much different from the old days. The governmental internet depends a lot on where you are, but .gov.uk is really rather good, and vastly better at what it does than snailmail and Post Offices were in the old days.
YouTube, and dreams of monetization, have infected the hobbyist internet too. I am active in some niche travel hobbies. It used to be that people in this subculture would write detailed text blogs with tips about various routes and definitions. Now, people think video is the default medium for sharing one’s information, and so they make YT videos that have lots of whizbang effects and GoPro shots but aren’t very information-dense. You have to sit through many minutes (or up to an hour) of a guy stuttering “Uh... So...” to eventually glean details that might help you. It sucks. For a while the people who made these videos would also spam Reddit and specialist forums with links, clearly interested in the prospect of monetizing, but now everyone seems to understand that YT is not a reliable path to financial success.
The decline of text blogging is also partly Google’s fault, in that lots of hobbyist blogs are now excluded from search results even if you try to search for the exact terms you know are found in the blog entry.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most large video makers these days get pathetic amounts of ad revenue (less than $100 for a video with a few million views) and instead are making a vast amount more on patreon or similar sites. Its those creators that have the most to gain at an alternate site, the restrictions of youtube are all downsides, and they receive no money directly from it, the only real upside youtube offers is audience reach.
Off by an order of magnitude on ad revenue, more like several thousand $ per million views.