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Seems to me content creators who get upset at their treatment by Youtube have made a serious mistake; they believe they are Youtube's customers. They are not. N

by ebbv 9y ago

Seems to me content creators who get upset at their treatment by Youtube have made a serious mistake; they believe they are Youtube's customers. They are not. Neither are the people watching the videos. The advertisers are the customers, just like most other Google services. You are the product. If you don't like it, you need to switch to a platform where you are the customer and the provider cares about you on that level. Google never will.

falcolas 9y ago
I don't think they're under that misunderstanding. However, they correctly believe that they are the hook which pulls in viewers - the product - to sell to advertisers. Take away those hooks by removing their incentive to post videos, and you pull in fewer viewers, resulting in fewer ad sales to YouTube's customers. Sadly, the most affected are those who cover niche categories, which means YouTube can afford to fuck it up and not feel any significant pain. (Yes, I consider 90% loss in revenue for their bait, err, content creators to be worthy of the phrase "fucking it up").
- krapp 9y ago
  >Yes, I consider 90% loss in revenue for their bait, err, content creators to be worthy of the phrase "fucking it up" I'm not certain Google are "fucking it up," or at least, that this effect isn't intentional. How much revenue do those niche creators generate for Google? How much first party content do they include, that media companies might object to? Google may consider them to be a risk not worth the reward if their intent is to optimize their algorithm to prefer first-party commercial content, in order to increase the value of their platform to advertisers. The existing system clearly hasn't been working for Google, so to me it seems more likely that the apparent failures of its algorithms are part of an attempt to forcibly pivot the platform while maintaining good PR. I could be wrong, though.
  - falcolas 9y ago
    It comes down to what do you (or what should Google) value more: Varied content covering a broad range of topics, pulling in broad and varied audiences or Google's short-term bottom line. Personally, I value the former, which is why I think that Google is doing it wrong. Focusing exclusively on the bottom line doesn't help society, doesn't even really help companies in the long run. If you fire your entire R&D team, you'll goose the bottom line, at the cost of your company's future. If you (effectively) fire your content creators, you endanger the future of your video platform. Everyone yells "Patreon" as the solution for content creators, but this is a bad thing for Google. It removes their control over the content creators by removing the biggest form of "stickiness" to the platform. Twitch started out as a platform for gaming live streams. Youtube is demonetizing gaming videos. It's creating conditions ripe for an exodus of gamers (creators and viewers) from YouTube.

by ebbv 9y ago

falcolas 9y ago

I don't think they're under that misunderstanding. However, they correctly believe that they are the hook which pulls in viewers - the product - to sell to advertisers. Take away those hooks by removing their incentive to post videos, and you pull in fewer viewers, resulting in fewer ad sales to YouTube's customers. Sadly, the most affected are those who cover niche categories, which means YouTube can afford to fuck it up and not feel any significant pain. (Yes, I consider 90% loss in revenue for their bait, err, content creators to be worthy of the phrase "fucking it up").

krapp 9y ago
>Yes, I consider 90% loss in revenue for their bait, err, content creators to be worthy of the phrase "fucking it up" I'm not certain Google are "fucking it up," or at least, that this effect isn't intentional. How much revenue do those niche creators generate for Google? How much first party content do they include, that media companies might object to? Google may consider them to be a risk not worth the reward if their intent is to optimize their algorithm to prefer first-party commercial content, in order to increase the value of their platform to advertisers. The existing system clearly hasn't been working for Google, so to me it seems more likely that the apparent failures of its algorithms are part of an attempt to forcibly pivot the platform while maintaining good PR. I could be wrong, though.
- falcolas 9y ago
  It comes down to what do you (or what should Google) value more: Varied content covering a broad range of topics, pulling in broad and varied audiences or Google's short-term bottom line. Personally, I value the former, which is why I think that Google is doing it wrong. Focusing exclusively on the bottom line doesn't help society, doesn't even really help companies in the long run. If you fire your entire R&D team, you'll goose the bottom line, at the cost of your company's future. If you (effectively) fire your content creators, you endanger the future of your video platform. Everyone yells "Patreon" as the solution for content creators, but this is a bad thing for Google. It removes their control over the content creators by removing the biggest form of "stickiness" to the platform. Twitch started out as a platform for gaming live streams. Youtube is demonetizing gaming videos. It's creating conditions ripe for an exodus of gamers (creators and viewers) from YouTube.