7 ms·

I can see your argument. On the other hand, the article mentions people who work for companies like Buzzfeed and other agencies, creating extremely successful

by axlee 6y ago

I can see your argument. On the other hand, the article mentions people who work for companies like Buzzfeed and other agencies, creating extremely successful web content for them, having to work shifts at night on top of their media jobs. That sounds unacceptable to me: I am pretty sure the company employing them can afford them a living wage, and it looks a lot like exploitation.

mitchdaily 6y ago
Sounds like they need a union
chii 6y ago
that's a different problem vs creators not getting much monetization and payment. businesses that employ people for low wages should, in theory, be out competed by businesses that would be willing to pay a little bit more to get the talent. So either the business model _requires_ the low wages for it to work, or the workers are not shopping around for a better workplace (or is sacrificing their wages in the hopes of moving up, or some such passion-related reason like game developers).
- rileymat2 6y ago
  > or the workers are not shopping around for a better workplace Perhaps they are not shopping around because of monopolistic/anti competitive actions from google search causing competing video services to be unviable. I believe there is an ongoing legal case around this. Edit: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/google-sued-by-youtube-rival-over-search-rankings-11610407969 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/google... It is kind of funny getting the amp link in this discussion...
  - wutbrodo 6y ago
    This doesn't make any sense. The discussion is the pay that buzzfeed pays their content creators. If the market for platforms was wide open, that wouldn't change much about this situation, since there would still be an oversupply of content creators that want a salary (as opposed to creators willing to personally take on the investment and risk, which is what the article but not the thread is abjout).
ajsnigrutin 6y ago
But this is not "youtube and patreon", but "employer buzzfeed does not pay their employees enough".
dec0dedab0de 6y ago
If they're not getting paid enough they should stop doing it. If enough of them stop doing it, then the rest will start to get paid more.
- gambiting 6y ago
  It's the exact same argument I keep making about tipping - if only everyone everywhere stopped tipping overnight, this stupid system would disappear. Underpaid waiters and drivers would find other jobs because suddenly without tips they wouldn't be able to support themselves. I am also surprised that no one has seen the wisdom of my words yet :P
  - skrebbel 6y ago
    The situation you advocate for is common practice in many countries. I'm likely missing nuances, but to me it seems that the key culprit is minimum wage laws in many US states having an exception for restaurant personnel. If a minimum wage was unconditional and high enough to live from, you wouldn't need tips to survive.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      The US has a big cultural expectation of tipping, so even though the entire west coast, NYC, Chicago, and Washington DC have gotten rid of lower tipped minimum wages and effectively increased wages for waitstaff, almost all people still tip in all of those places. Even more, over the years, the standard tip amount has moved from 10% to 15% to now what seems like wide support for 20%. Not to mention that large portions of the population now tip for non waited transactions too. It gets even crazier when you go out with people and they look at you like you’re cheap for calculating tip on pre tax amounts. There’s a lot of pride in the US for tipping, as if it’s a status symbol.
  - matz1 6y ago
    Nothing stopping you to not tipping. You don't need to wait for everyone to stop tipping for you to not tip right now.
ImprobableTruth 6y ago
... didn't buzzfeed have to lay off a bunch of staff because they're losing money?
rmah 6y ago
This has also always been commonplace in the media industry for creatives. Simply put, the supply of labor far far FAR outstrips the demand. It's a highly risky career path, but many take the chance because they want to. No amount of complaining or legislation will ever "fix" it.
- PurpleFoxy 6y ago
  Also known as “compensating differential”. People _want_ to be a musician or content creator so they are willing to do the job even without being paid much. Which pushes the value down for the job. If you paid people YouTube rates to maintain php garbage they would just say no which keeps the prices up at a decent level.
  - bob33212 6y ago
    This is why capitalism is successful. You need an honest feedback mechanism from labor. If a centralized government assigned people jobs of maintaining a shitty php monolith at a standard wage those people would effectively produce nothing, because it is a shitty job and those people would not enjoy it or work hard because it is unfair that other people get better jobs. The unintended consequence is income inequality but that inequality is the only way to get someone to be a garbage man instead of a youtube commentator or beer reviewer.
  - chipotle_coyote 6y ago
    > People _want_ to be a musician or content creator so they are willing to do the job even without being paid much. Which pushes the value down for the job. Well, no, I don't think so, because this isn't like the market for maintaining PHP garbage. :) Creative work -- at least in this context -- isn't fungible. One low-rent PHP contractor is probably interchangeable with another one, but Patreon creators are not: if you're giving Bob $5 a month, it's because you specifically like Bob's stuff. What a Patreon creator with 50 patrons makes has no material effect on what a Patreon creator with 50,000 patrons makes.
zpeti 6y ago
It’s unacceptable that people building their own channel/brand/art have to work nights while doing a day job? This is normal. Life doesn’t owe you success. You have the suffer and work hard if you want more than a day job. Or move to somewhere with low rents and eat rice and beans for a few months, that also works. Success isn’t guaranteed and certainly society doesn’t owe you it.
Dirlewanger 6y ago
Buzzfeed and et. al are deeply dishonest companies running on borrowed time.
znpy 6y ago
people who work for companies like Buzzfeed and other agencies, creating extremely successful web content for them, having to work shifts at night on top of their media jobs. In my opinion part of the problem is that these kind of jobs are too much glamourized[1]. If a job doesn't pay enough (according to any metric) move on to a better paying job. If an industry or a field doesn't pay enough, move on to another field/industry. At one point one must be honest enough to admit "this isn't working" or "this barely works, It's not wise to live like this". [1] a similar scenario: van life. there was a fad where a lot of people were trying to get a lifestyle income by living in a van and blogging about that (instagram, youtube, twitter and stuff like that). needless to say, after a while a wave of videos about "the truth of vanlife" has come up. Once again, people don't realize that for one person managing to achieve a huge success, another thousand (or more) will fail, possibly with consequences.
root_axis 6y ago
I think this is a fair criticism of Buzzfeed, after all, they have an employee/employer relationship with said creators; this is not true of independent creators.
TuringNYC 6y ago
That sounds like a criticism of Buzzfeed. Why should YouTube and Patreon step in and subsidize those salaries? Why not that the employer (Buzzfeed in your example) pay a living wage?
FalconSensei 6y ago
On the other hand, people who work entry-level jobs also work multiple job sometimes

by axlee 6y ago

mitchdaily 6y ago

Sounds like they need a union

chii 6y ago

that's a different problem vs creators not getting much monetization and payment. businesses that employ people for low wages should, in theory, be out competed by businesses that would be willing to pay a little bit more to get the talent. So either the business model _requires_ the low wages for it to work, or the workers are not shopping around for a better workplace (or is sacrificing their wages in the hopes of moving up, or some such passion-related reason like game developers).

rileymat2 6y ago
> or the workers are not shopping around for a better workplace Perhaps they are not shopping around because of monopolistic/anti competitive actions from google search causing competing video services to be unviable. I believe there is an ongoing legal case around this. Edit: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/google-sued-by-youtube-rival-over-search-rankings-11610407969 https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/google... It is kind of funny getting the amp link in this discussion...
- wutbrodo 6y ago
  This doesn't make any sense. The discussion is the pay that buzzfeed pays their content creators. If the market for platforms was wide open, that wouldn't change much about this situation, since there would still be an oversupply of content creators that want a salary (as opposed to creators willing to personally take on the investment and risk, which is what the article but not the thread is abjout).

ajsnigrutin 6y ago

But this is not "youtube and patreon", but "employer buzzfeed does not pay their employees enough".

dec0dedab0de 6y ago

If they're not getting paid enough they should stop doing it. If enough of them stop doing it, then the rest will start to get paid more.

gambiting 6y ago
It's the exact same argument I keep making about tipping - if only everyone everywhere stopped tipping overnight, this stupid system would disappear. Underpaid waiters and drivers would find other jobs because suddenly without tips they wouldn't be able to support themselves. I am also surprised that no one has seen the wisdom of my words yet :P
- skrebbel 6y ago
  The situation you advocate for is common practice in many countries. I'm likely missing nuances, but to me it seems that the key culprit is minimum wage laws in many US states having an exception for restaurant personnel. If a minimum wage was unconditional and high enough to live from, you wouldn't need tips to survive.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    The US has a big cultural expectation of tipping, so even though the entire west coast, NYC, Chicago, and Washington DC have gotten rid of lower tipped minimum wages and effectively increased wages for waitstaff, almost all people still tip in all of those places. Even more, over the years, the standard tip amount has moved from 10% to 15% to now what seems like wide support for 20%. Not to mention that large portions of the population now tip for non waited transactions too. It gets even crazier when you go out with people and they look at you like you’re cheap for calculating tip on pre tax amounts. There’s a lot of pride in the US for tipping, as if it’s a status symbol.
- matz1 6y ago
  Nothing stopping you to not tipping. You don't need to wait for everyone to stop tipping for you to not tip right now.

ImprobableTruth 6y ago

... didn't buzzfeed have to lay off a bunch of staff because they're losing money?

rmah 6y ago

This has also always been commonplace in the media industry for creatives. Simply put, the supply of labor far far FAR outstrips the demand. It's a highly risky career path, but many take the chance because they want to. No amount of complaining or legislation will ever "fix" it.

PurpleFoxy 6y ago
Also known as “compensating differential”. People _want_ to be a musician or content creator so they are willing to do the job even without being paid much. Which pushes the value down for the job. If you paid people YouTube rates to maintain php garbage they would just say no which keeps the prices up at a decent level.
- bob33212 6y ago
  This is why capitalism is successful. You need an honest feedback mechanism from labor. If a centralized government assigned people jobs of maintaining a shitty php monolith at a standard wage those people would effectively produce nothing, because it is a shitty job and those people would not enjoy it or work hard because it is unfair that other people get better jobs. The unintended consequence is income inequality but that inequality is the only way to get someone to be a garbage man instead of a youtube commentator or beer reviewer.
- chipotle_coyote 6y ago
  > People _want_ to be a musician or content creator so they are willing to do the job even without being paid much. Which pushes the value down for the job. Well, no, I don't think so, because this isn't like the market for maintaining PHP garbage. :) Creative work -- at least in this context -- isn't fungible. One low-rent PHP contractor is probably interchangeable with another one, but Patreon creators are not: if you're giving Bob $5 a month, it's because you specifically like Bob's stuff. What a Patreon creator with 50 patrons makes has no material effect on what a Patreon creator with 50,000 patrons makes.

zpeti 6y ago

It’s unacceptable that people building their own channel/brand/art have to work nights while doing a day job? This is normal. Life doesn’t owe you success. You have the suffer and work hard if you want more than a day job. Or move to somewhere with low rents and eat rice and beans for a few months, that also works. Success isn’t guaranteed and certainly society doesn’t owe you it.

Dirlewanger 6y ago

Buzzfeed and et. al are deeply dishonest companies running on borrowed time.

znpy 6y ago

people who work for companies like Buzzfeed and other agencies, creating extremely successful web content for them, having to work shifts at night on top of their media jobs. In my opinion part of the problem is that these kind of jobs are too much glamourized[1]. If a job doesn't pay enough (according to any metric) move on to a better paying job. If an industry or a field doesn't pay enough, move on to another field/industry. At one point one must be honest enough to admit "this isn't working" or "this barely works, It's not wise to live like this". [1] a similar scenario: van life. there was a fad where a lot of people were trying to get a lifestyle income by living in a van and blogging about that (instagram, youtube, twitter and stuff like that). needless to say, after a while a wave of videos about "the truth of vanlife" has come up. Once again, people don't realize that for one person managing to achieve a huge success, another thousand (or more) will fail, possibly with consequences.

root_axis 6y ago

I think this is a fair criticism of Buzzfeed, after all, they have an employee/employer relationship with said creators; this is not true of independent creators.

TuringNYC 6y ago

That sounds like a criticism of Buzzfeed. Why should YouTube and Patreon step in and subsidize those salaries? Why not that the employer (Buzzfeed in your example) pay a living wage?

FalconSensei 6y ago

On the other hand, people who work entry-level jobs also work multiple job sometimes