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The case of this article is unfortunate, but it's actually missing what I think is the more serious problem with YouTube for independent artists right now.. Thi

The case of this article is unfortunate, but it's actually missing what I think is the more serious problem with YouTube for independent artists right now.. This is just a problem of an unfortunate strike against a video - I imagine that it will be fixed under appeal. These things happen, as a great great number of videos need to be evaluated by staff against a complicated set of criteria and precedents. It doesn't actually speak very much about any kind of systemic bias against independent artists. What DOES create a problem for artists is the tuning of the algorithms to be highly preferential to long form frequently posted content E.g video game commentary. This is a big problem for creators who work in short, high effort, highly polished media - E.g animators. This really really bums me out. I was an employee at YouTube during their period of great growth and I absolutely loved the platform and potential for compensation that they gave to niche and indy animators and musicians, and had great hope for a future where the democratization of video distribution would lead to a flourishing of art and entertainment that caters to a higher common denominator than the over-polished, focus group approved, mass market creativity that passes for main-stream. Sadly, it looks like the prime goal of increasing return visits and raw view time has lead to algorithmic optimization of that same mass-media race-to-the-bottom in quality and diversity in search of a broadly palatable and compulsively consumable product. It saddens me and I still feel that they could have it both ways if they took a more aware approach to niche content. YouTube offers monetization - the fact that artists even need Patreon means that GoogTube is ignoring a need, and thus a business opportunity. Just because a piece of work may only appeal to 50,000 people world wide doesn't necessarily mean that it has less value or merit than one that appeals to 10 million. I support quite a few animators on Patreon, and the impression I get is that they are all struggling to keep working on it as a primary job.

kbenson 9y ago
I think it's entirely possible that youtube is still in a growth phase (or they are treating it as that phase), where they see the goal as convincing people it's a real platform to visit for content, and recurring content (such as a network channel, or Netflix now), and not just that place hosting videos that you get links to. Once there's enough people that see it as a network of content that they can spend time on, they can then start encouraging and optimizing for specific, high-impact items instead of recurring content. Right now they are in the "let's pump out as many sitcoms as possible" phase, and hopefully they'll progress towards a "let's release a couple mini-series and made-for-TV movies" phase (allowing that they aren't generating the content in either case, just encouraging it's production and dissemination by offering cheap hosting and monetization).
stcredzero 9y ago
algorithmic optimization of that same mass-media race-to-the-bottom in quality and diversity in search of a broadly palatable and compulsively consumable product. How's this for a solution? We just return this stuff to the web. How about a service that lets you host and create embeddable video links for a small fee? There would be an API that lets people automatically tip creators per view. Discovery would be through search and through blogs. At the very least, this would solve most of the censorship issues.
polishTar 9y ago
I think describing it as a bias towards maximizing aggregate watch time is more accurate than a bias towards "long form" content. It's definitely a balance. If a creator only pumps out high amounts of low quality content, they'll never gain a subscriber base. On the other hand, if the content is so short that subscribers only interact with their channel a minute per month, this isn't particularly useful to advertisers either. I'm not convinced this bias is a bad thing though. My perspective has always been that a closer aligning of YouTube's financial incentives with the financial incentives of creators will definitely be a positive for the platform in the long run. As more work is done on alternative methods of monetization (YTR, super chat, etc) that have different incentives than just watch time, the biases that come from ad based monetization might become less of a driving force for creators in the future.
- whataboutyoutu 9y ago
  > If a creator only pumps out high amounts of low quality content, they'll never gain a subscriber base. How do you explain the youtuber phenomenon, then? Unfortunately there seems to be very little in terms of content rather than commentary, as the latter is so much cheaper to throw together with no money.
  - onion2k 9y ago
    Exactly this. Quality is rarely a selling point when the product is cheap. People are happy to accept very poor stuff if the price is seeing an advert or entering an email address. Thinking you need to make a good video in order to get subscribers is very wrong; you need to make an entertaining video, and that's not the same thing at all.
  - polishTar 9y ago
    People like different things. There are definitely some things on YouTube that are objectively low quality, but I think the genres/channels you're describing are just things that people other than yourself enjoy. The demographics of YouTube are no doubt different than the demographics of Hacker News.
bryananderson 9y ago
"When you’re young, you look at television and think, 'There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down.' But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth." --Steve Jobs The algorithms are they way they are because YouTube has figured out what people actually want to watch. Surprise, most people still want to watch "lowest common denominator" content, just like they did before digital media.
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  Put another way by Terry Pratchett, "And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up."
  - kaffee 9y ago
    Please! It's Brecht: Would it not be easier In that case for the government To dissolve the people And elect another? Poem in Die Welt (1959)
    - leggomylibro 9y ago
      Ha, nice! Thanks, I love finding out about the origins of his aphorisms.
  - QAPereo 9y ago
    Aka The problem with humanity is all of the humans.
- TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
  That's an interesting quote, but Steve Jobs was describing an industry with very little competition beyond its set format at the time. Look at the TV industry now: It's been declining for years, mostly because of rising prices and program line-ups that cater only to the lowest common denominator. The internet media of today is a completely different industry from the television industry of the 1990's. Catering to the lowest common denominator isn't necessarily bad as long as it's not the only option. If, however, YouTube only monetizes crap and removes more thoughtful content, people will go elsewhere.
hyperpallium 9y ago
They still give that "platform and potential for compemsation" to the long tail, since it's effecively zero-cost to them... it's promotion that is zero-sum. As an advertising company, that attention is all google has to sell. So while they do lose some money from that 50,000 piece of work, they gain much more from the 10 million. They could have an independent artists section, like the indy corner on their android app store, but which they don't really promote... presumably for the above reason. It's ironic that YouTube, named in ironic allusion to the denigrating slang term "boob tube" for TV, has become just that, after all.
lumberingjack 9y ago
PEWDIEPIE said that same thing about his "high school" videos. He said it took like half a day to make one because he actually had to make something and that was a long time for one his videos "it was not doing as well as my other videos so I stopped doing that set".

kbenson 9y ago

I think it's entirely possible that youtube is still in a growth phase (or they are treating it as that phase), where they see the goal as convincing people it's a real platform to visit for content, and recurring content (such as a network channel, or Netflix now), and not just that place hosting videos that you get links to. Once there's enough people that see it as a network of content that they can spend time on, they can then start encouraging and optimizing for specific, high-impact items instead of recurring content. Right now they are in the "let's pump out as many sitcoms as possible" phase, and hopefully they'll progress towards a "let's release a couple mini-series and made-for-TV movies" phase (allowing that they aren't generating the content in either case, just encouraging it's production and dissemination by offering cheap hosting and monetization).

stcredzero 9y ago

algorithmic optimization of that same mass-media race-to-the-bottom in quality and diversity in search of a broadly palatable and compulsively consumable product. How's this for a solution? We just return this stuff to the web. How about a service that lets you host and create embeddable video links for a small fee? There would be an API that lets people automatically tip creators per view. Discovery would be through search and through blogs. At the very least, this would solve most of the censorship issues.

polishTar 9y ago

I think describing it as a bias towards maximizing aggregate watch time is more accurate than a bias towards "long form" content. It's definitely a balance. If a creator only pumps out high amounts of low quality content, they'll never gain a subscriber base. On the other hand, if the content is so short that subscribers only interact with their channel a minute per month, this isn't particularly useful to advertisers either. I'm not convinced this bias is a bad thing though. My perspective has always been that a closer aligning of YouTube's financial incentives with the financial incentives of creators will definitely be a positive for the platform in the long run. As more work is done on alternative methods of monetization (YTR, super chat, etc) that have different incentives than just watch time, the biases that come from ad based monetization might become less of a driving force for creators in the future.

whataboutyoutu 9y ago
> If a creator only pumps out high amounts of low quality content, they'll never gain a subscriber base. How do you explain the youtuber phenomenon, then? Unfortunately there seems to be very little in terms of content rather than commentary, as the latter is so much cheaper to throw together with no money.
- onion2k 9y ago
  Exactly this. Quality is rarely a selling point when the product is cheap. People are happy to accept very poor stuff if the price is seeing an advert or entering an email address. Thinking you need to make a good video in order to get subscribers is very wrong; you need to make an entertaining video, and that's not the same thing at all.
- polishTar 9y ago
  People like different things. There are definitely some things on YouTube that are objectively low quality, but I think the genres/channels you're describing are just things that people other than yourself enjoy. The demographics of YouTube are no doubt different than the demographics of Hacker News.

bryananderson 9y ago

"When you’re young, you look at television and think, 'There’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down.' But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That’s a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It’s the truth." --Steve Jobs The algorithms are they way they are because YouTube has figured out what people actually want to watch. Surprise, most people still want to watch "lowest common denominator" content, just like they did before digital media.

leggomylibro 9y ago
Put another way by Terry Pratchett, "And so the children of the revolution were faced with the age-old problem: it wasn't that you had the wrong kind of government, which was obvious, but that you had the wrong kind of people. As soon as you saw people as things to be measured, they didn't measure up."
- kaffee 9y ago
  Please! It's Brecht: Would it not be easier In that case for the government To dissolve the people And elect another? Poem in Die Welt (1959)
  - leggomylibro 9y ago
    Ha, nice! Thanks, I love finding out about the origins of his aphorisms.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Aka The problem with humanity is all of the humans.
TheAdamAndChe 9y ago
That's an interesting quote, but Steve Jobs was describing an industry with very little competition beyond its set format at the time. Look at the TV industry now: It's been declining for years, mostly because of rising prices and program line-ups that cater only to the lowest common denominator. The internet media of today is a completely different industry from the television industry of the 1990's. Catering to the lowest common denominator isn't necessarily bad as long as it's not the only option. If, however, YouTube only monetizes crap and removes more thoughtful content, people will go elsewhere.

hyperpallium 9y ago

They still give that "platform and potential for compemsation" to the long tail, since it's effecively zero-cost to them... it's promotion that is zero-sum. As an advertising company, that attention is all google has to sell. So while they do lose some money from that 50,000 piece of work, they gain much more from the 10 million. They could have an independent artists section, like the indy corner on their android app store, but which they don't really promote... presumably for the above reason. It's ironic that YouTube, named in ironic allusion to the denigrating slang term "boob tube" for TV, has become just that, after all.

lumberingjack 9y ago

PEWDIEPIE said that same thing about his "high school" videos. He said it took like half a day to make one because he actually had to make something and that was a long time for one his videos "it was not doing as well as my other videos so I stopped doing that set".