Watch Out Google, YouTubers Are Unionizing

Yes! That's what I'm getting at! The reality of Youtube is that it made it easier to upload videos. The amount of time it takes to learn how to do that and build your own content distribution mechanism isn't really that hard. Most of us around here could do it in a day or two using FFMPEG and amazon buckets.

It actually does in fact take less time to build something to share your own content than it does to create the content itself.

That's why I don't understand why does airbnb take 10% of the transaction? They are just a website. Why does Apple take 30%? They are just a search engine.

And google makes something like $1.2 million per employee. How much of that on average does the google employee get to keep? Is it more or less than content creators?

> Now Youtube is doing the same. They used focus on being a search and distribution mechanism. Now they produce content, allow sponsorships, have more ads per minute of viewing then television, ... jobs there are again, repackaging jobs. Repackage scenes from movies, previews, upload documentaries, sports clips...

This. I remember when getting a single ad in YouTube was news. Or an unstoppable ad. Now I've bumped into videos that have close to an ad a minute.

Moreover, you can feel how in order to keep up with the algorithm YouTubers have forsaken creativity and landed in just clickbaity thumbnails and repeating their formulas. I know YouTubers have been saying this for years, but it finally hit me like cold water recently. There used to be so much clever, creative content on YouTube but now so much of what I see in my home page is content that's shallow and uninspired at best from channels I'm not subscribed to.

And YouTubers have to make this sort of content! If your lively-hood and/or relevance depends on putting videos out every day, you're just gonna find an idea that worked "well enough" and repeat it for weeks.

> They both grew through the expansion of the long tail. The reality is: where are people in the long tail going to go to sell their repackaged stuff?

I wish other platforms like IGTV or Vimeo had taken off. I think there's things Snapchat and Twitter could try for video. Snapchat could experiment with longer-form, edited content for blogs, as a compliment to stories. Twitter is already where personalities are and there's already plenty of video content uploaded there. Facebook seems to want to have a solid go at video, but it feels like they're completely lost. What is Facebook Watch? It has random content from pages but also shows trying to compete with Netflix?

> The internet has turned to garbage. You're better off going to the library like the old days. The internet has been ruined by the mainstream and the money grubbers.

As much as I dislike a lot of what the internet has become, I still don't think this is the case. I don't remember the time of old as better days, TV was (and kinda still is) pretty terrible. The internet is also for much more than just entertainment. Sure, read a book instead of going on YouTube, I agree with that. I'm also very thankful that I am not limited to what's in a library to learn about random topics because I can just click through science sites or Wikipedia.

Though there's certainly a lot the ambition for money and building empires has changed for the worse.

> not just people making weapons are getting demonetized.

I didn't state that, I gave context as to how this union thing started. One specific user was upset his videos showing him defeating law enforcement armor with homemade projectile weapons was demonetized and took offense.

Some of the channels that immediately started supporting him were channels like Taofledermaus (as I said above, along with why they were getting demonetized) and pepole like Cody of Cody's Lab (that had federal agents search his property after some of his videos involving his handling and piss-poor storage of radioactive materials, the poisons literally on a shelf with his canned garden produce and him nearly blowing his own finger/hand off smacking home-made nitro with a knife), months after he quickly walked through an airport recording himself with his phone literally talking about blowing himself up) that also had videos demonetized.

Besides, it is entirely YouTube's right to demonetize videos and entire accounts. YouTube is NOT a hosting provider, content creators are NOT customers. YouTube is an advertising platform and the advertisers are the customers.

If I want to advertise my widget, maybe I don't want it being uploaded to people that crush things with a hydraulic press or people that are overly political or people that are making weapons or people that are editing movie trailers together to be other genres.

There are gobs and gobs of content creators that receive their funding via Patreon/YouTube's Patreon clone/selling merch etc.

These creators have never paid YouTube a single cent to store and host their videos, not one. When you create an account, YouTube does not promise to make you rich by sending you truckloads of money for people watching you and your boyfriend record you talking about your rescue dog or having a 'muckbang' or painting (Jenna Marbles and Julien).

No one is forcing content creators to upload to YouTube, they are more than welcome to PAY another service to host their videos.

YouTube is not some inherent right, YouTube servers don't grow in the wild, if YouTube wants to take 99.99% of the money the top creator's videos make, that's their right especially given there are millions and millions of people uploading hundreds of hours of video per MINUTE that are costing YouTube more to store and host than they'll likely ever recover from the bulk of creators.

Exactly. There is no way for these sites to reach mainstream advertisers who might be interested. Google has the keys to all of them

Similar with payment processors. Nudity or even porn is increasingly accepted today, yet paypal won't touch it, so these sites have to deal with subpar and expensive payment providers

> The only way I can explain this is there is manipulation of the algorithm to fit a certain perspective.

Unless... the two search terms have different distributions in their raw, unbiased results which seems completely plausible to me.