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>The 21st century’s digital dazzle conceals age-old tricks. In keeping with the ways that charity has always been used to smooth over questions of fairness and

>The 21st century’s digital dazzle conceals age-old tricks. In keeping with the ways that charity has always been used to smooth over questions of fairness and exploitation, the new vogue for ad hoc donations seems designed to distract us from a handful of tech players getting ever-more wealthy, while the people on their platforms who would like to enrich the culture with something more substantial than cat videos are living increasingly impossible lives. I think this article tries to make a complex problem into "fair/unfair" situation. In my point of view, the "problem" is globalization itself. Everyone thought it would be the most fair thing ever. We would have access to more people and more things that were made all over the world, and we would see a boom of diversity. In reality globalization simply makes large players even larger, funneling the majority of the wealth and resources to few players. That's why there's a handful of tech players getting-ever more wealthy. Everything compounds on a global scale, they can run businesses at loss, have access to unlimited capital, hoard every competitor, making them even more bloated and large. Yet this is funny because within the artists industry, the exact same thing is happening. The big popular artists are getting most of the attention/wealth, probably at a scale never seen before. The Beatles have never reached so many people, and that's taking away from other artists - so it's not just cat videos. Why aren't artists complaining that other artists are taking away from them? At least radios had to manage a pool of time, now people can listen to the same artists, everyday, in a loop. Should popular artists have a pool of time that gets empty after so many streams? Which brings me to the point of: reach. Just because you can reach more people doesn't mean that everyone would have the interest/attention to invest their time to listen to music. Maybe the cat videos time was spent watching commercials in the 90's, or reading through a SEARS catalog in the 70's. The difference is that now it's funneled to few media companies. So the question shouldn't be if it's offensive to have tip jars that help struggling artists, or if watching cat videos is culture decay... maybe should be, is globalization good for culture? Is globalization a fair and balanced system?

Chris2048 5y ago
> the people on their platforms who would like to enrich the culture with something more substantial than cat videos What are these things? There are many who don't want to "enrich" at all, so much as forcing their values (often their ego-centric self-worth) onto others via harassment. If your efforts enrich the lives of others, they should be seeking you for that benefit. If that isn't the case, you either need to advertise your wares more, convince others of your values more; or, maybe rethink your initial value proposition (maybe you are creating something valuable if the market isn't agreeing). There are a lot of caveats to this but it's such a fundamental of how capitalist societies are supposed to work (ideally, on paper, anyway) that any diligent discussion should at least address the issue. If the situation goes unaddressed, I assume ignorance or malintent. > That's why there's a handful of tech players getting-ever more wealthy That's the argument of tech monopolisation. An important subject, but that doesn't seem to be the issue this article's framing appears to address. The implication of this article is that cat videos "should" get less than "real artists", for some subjective value of "real". This begs a lot of questions. But without addressing them I'll simply state: tech platforms reduce the barrier to global reach, are there are just enough competing tech platforms to be competitive (this is an issue to watch out for though) - Hence platforms such as YT (before it began actively censoring channels/videos and hence publishing vs providing its content) only make things fairer. Art has a good few decades head-start in content creation, so why are they losing a content war to youtuber amateurs? I suspect the real answer is: the most successful artists had some kind of monopoly, as such their content quality has been diverging from their audience for some time. It's a similar question to "Why so little public funding for the arts?", and "Why do the Arts need so much funding?", and "Why isn't it the Arts job to find willing funders?".
- libertine 5y ago
  >The implication of this article is that cat videos "should" get less than "real artists", for some subjective value of "real". I was just stating that cat videos may get less per interaction then "real artists", the difference is the reach cat videos get that makes them earn so much. The problem of the global tech platforms disrupting the barrier of global reach is that it's funneled to very few platforms. That's not good, it's what makes the mentioned cat videos explode and earn more, because one choice of one algorithm was enough to do so. How is that "fair" in the sense that was a low effort endeavor that got picked up and boosted to reach millions of people? And then, like you mentioned, we're at the will of very few players and their decisions (political or not). >Art has a good few decades head-start in content creation, so why are they losing a content war to youtuber amateurs? Certainly there were other gatekeepers, but you never had single entities with so much reach. Distributors had to work with other distributors globally, no matter if it was for the film industry or music industry, no media alone company could reach more then a billion people and enforce their choices on everyone - which is what Youtube does in the end. You can say that chain of players is just inefficiency and cost overhead, which is true. But also it was truly diverse. By being diverse I'm not saying it was fairer, it was just diverse and the act of competing with such small players (in comparison to Google, or Amazon, that have unlimited money) was still up for grabs. > It's a similar question to "Why so little public funding for the arts?", and "Why do the Arts need so much funding?", and "Why isn't it the Arts job to find willing funders?". Well some of those guys actually put some effort into things, and the majority are not trying to game a algorithm, hopping on a trend, or looking for some sort of "art-market-fit" (jesus, imagine that), they do things for the sake of expressing themselves - and this shouldn't be ruled by capitalism, much less ruled by Google or Facebook.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    I agree, the tech platforms threaten to form a monopoly, which is why I noted it but decided not to address that fact. It may become a bigger problem, it may not - I guess we'll see what competition arises. Arguably, the more people see the threat, and start to care about it; The more they'll do about it, and competition will arise. > How is that "fair" in the sense that was a low effort endeavour that got picked up and boosted to reach millions of people This seems very similar to the radio/record-label issue. Whatever subpar trash band band Simon Cowell picks up gets boosted, whatever the radio channels choose to air over gate-keeped frequencies. The web is different in that such a monopoly is harder to maintain, not easier. We are still in the early days of internet media. If cat videos are truly "low effort", then competition should be high, so expect the boost to be short lived as the competition starts to kick in. I'm actually somewhat surprised any particular cat video is able to make a lot of money still. > which is what Youtube does in the end YouTube won't necessarily be only game in town for long, I hope. Google rose to fame on the basis of a better search algorithm. Maybe the future of video streaming is a competitor with a better video recommendation algo? > the majority are not trying to game a algorithm The algo changes so much that this isn't necessarily a winning strategy. > looking for some sort of "art-market-fit" (jesus, imagine that), they do things for the sake of expressing themselves If you aren't ruled by capitalism, don't expect to earn as much capital. What else do you want: those ignoring the needs/signals of the market, get equally rewarded by the market? To quote: "I write.. erotic novels. For children." "What.." "They're wildly unpopular."

Chris2048 5y ago

> the people on their platforms who would like to enrich the culture with something more substantial than cat videos What are these things? There are many who don't want to "enrich" at all, so much as forcing their values (often their ego-centric self-worth) onto others via harassment. If your efforts enrich the lives of others, they should be seeking you for that benefit. If that isn't the case, you either need to advertise your wares more, convince others of your values more; or, maybe rethink your initial value proposition (maybe you are creating something valuable if the market isn't agreeing). There are a lot of caveats to this but it's such a fundamental of how capitalist societies are supposed to work (ideally, on paper, anyway) that any diligent discussion should at least address the issue. If the situation goes unaddressed, I assume ignorance or malintent. > That's why there's a handful of tech players getting-ever more wealthy That's the argument of tech monopolisation. An important subject, but that doesn't seem to be the issue this article's framing appears to address. The implication of this article is that cat videos "should" get less than "real artists", for some subjective value of "real". This begs a lot of questions. But without addressing them I'll simply state: tech platforms reduce the barrier to global reach, are there are just enough competing tech platforms to be competitive (this is an issue to watch out for though) - Hence platforms such as YT (before it began actively censoring channels/videos and hence publishing vs providing its content) only make things fairer. Art has a good few decades head-start in content creation, so why are they losing a content war to youtuber amateurs? I suspect the real answer is: the most successful artists had some kind of monopoly, as such their content quality has been diverging from their audience for some time. It's a similar question to "Why so little public funding for the arts?", and "Why do the Arts need so much funding?", and "Why isn't it the Arts job to find willing funders?".

libertine 5y ago
>The implication of this article is that cat videos "should" get less than "real artists", for some subjective value of "real". I was just stating that cat videos may get less per interaction then "real artists", the difference is the reach cat videos get that makes them earn so much. The problem of the global tech platforms disrupting the barrier of global reach is that it's funneled to very few platforms. That's not good, it's what makes the mentioned cat videos explode and earn more, because one choice of one algorithm was enough to do so. How is that "fair" in the sense that was a low effort endeavor that got picked up and boosted to reach millions of people? And then, like you mentioned, we're at the will of very few players and their decisions (political or not). >Art has a good few decades head-start in content creation, so why are they losing a content war to youtuber amateurs? Certainly there were other gatekeepers, but you never had single entities with so much reach. Distributors had to work with other distributors globally, no matter if it was for the film industry or music industry, no media alone company could reach more then a billion people and enforce their choices on everyone - which is what Youtube does in the end. You can say that chain of players is just inefficiency and cost overhead, which is true. But also it was truly diverse. By being diverse I'm not saying it was fairer, it was just diverse and the act of competing with such small players (in comparison to Google, or Amazon, that have unlimited money) was still up for grabs. > It's a similar question to "Why so little public funding for the arts?", and "Why do the Arts need so much funding?", and "Why isn't it the Arts job to find willing funders?". Well some of those guys actually put some effort into things, and the majority are not trying to game a algorithm, hopping on a trend, or looking for some sort of "art-market-fit" (jesus, imagine that), they do things for the sake of expressing themselves - and this shouldn't be ruled by capitalism, much less ruled by Google or Facebook.
- Chris2048 5y ago
  I agree, the tech platforms threaten to form a monopoly, which is why I noted it but decided not to address that fact. It may become a bigger problem, it may not - I guess we'll see what competition arises. Arguably, the more people see the threat, and start to care about it; The more they'll do about it, and competition will arise. > How is that "fair" in the sense that was a low effort endeavour that got picked up and boosted to reach millions of people This seems very similar to the radio/record-label issue. Whatever subpar trash band band Simon Cowell picks up gets boosted, whatever the radio channels choose to air over gate-keeped frequencies. The web is different in that such a monopoly is harder to maintain, not easier. We are still in the early days of internet media. If cat videos are truly "low effort", then competition should be high, so expect the boost to be short lived as the competition starts to kick in. I'm actually somewhat surprised any particular cat video is able to make a lot of money still. > which is what Youtube does in the end YouTube won't necessarily be only game in town for long, I hope. Google rose to fame on the basis of a better search algorithm. Maybe the future of video streaming is a competitor with a better video recommendation algo? > the majority are not trying to game a algorithm The algo changes so much that this isn't necessarily a winning strategy. > looking for some sort of "art-market-fit" (jesus, imagine that), they do things for the sake of expressing themselves If you aren't ruled by capitalism, don't expect to earn as much capital. What else do you want: those ignoring the needs/signals of the market, get equally rewarded by the market? To quote: "I write.. erotic novels. For children." "What.." "They're wildly unpopular."