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The primary motivation of most creators is to make money. What is PeerTube paying per view? 0$? Why would any creator spend all that time and money making cont

The primary motivation of most creators is to make money. What is PeerTube paying per view? 0$? Why would any creator spend all that time and money making content to give away for free? Do you give away your daily work for free? They can easily use something like Patreon or one of the many pay-only tube sites if they're giving up on ads and asking for donations/subscriptions/etc. I mean, I'm not against the idea, it just seems to fundamentally misunderstand why creators choose youtube. If Youtube paid $0/1000 views... the majority of the top 1000 creators would be gone overnight.

Taywee 5y ago
Personally, I do tons of things for free because I enjoy doing them. Nobody needs to pay me to play my piano, paint a painting, or run a D&D campaign, and all of that takes effort and skill. I remember the old days of YouTube when most people making videos were doing it for the joy of it, not profit. I understand that doesn't scale forever, but at the same time, there's a vast range of video creation that doesn't need to be profit-driven, or can easily be crowd funded. I understand the point of big budget video creation, but that's not most creators, just like most companies aren't Google and shouldn't be trying to solve their problems that are a 1000th the size with Google-scale solutions. Simply, there is a place for small budget videos. I'd even argue that the majority should be small budget, and that advertising and budget inflation have on average been more bad for YouTube than good.
southerntofu 5y ago
> The primary motivation of most creators is to make money. Most creators/uploaders do not monetize their works. This is just the tiny minority that Youtube highlights to keep their business flowing. A lot of content is produced by amateurs and non-profits, and Youtube does them a huge disservice by displaying ads (which they don't benefit from), tracking their viewers, recommending bad-quality/outrageous content (eg. conspiracy videos), and copyright-striking their videos even when it is clear no law was violated (eg. fair use). > Why would any creator spend all that time and money making content to give away for free? Do you give away your daily work for free? I definitely would not give my work for free for companies to profit from, but i'm happy to engage in free labor for non-profits and for my peers. This is a well-known paradox in the libre culture/software, especially with non-copyleft licenses (eg. MIT) which enable a for-profit to siphon of volunteer work without ever contributing something back in return. See also: OpenSSL maintainership "scandal" back in the day. > If Youtube paid $0/1000 views... the majority of the top 1000 creators would be gone overnight. Would that be such a loss? Looks like these channels are just outrage/advertisement machine with very little content creation going on... at least form an outsider's perspective.
gnramires 5y ago
Good point. Well, creators can still point to their Patreon (or Liberapay) without problems. I see many creators relying more on Sponsorships and other income streams as significant (apparently YT doesn't pay that much unless you're incredibly popular). Dave from EEVBlog is extremely transparent on YT income, worth checking out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU3FAIaAF0I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU3FAIaAF0I It seems LBRY gets around this with micropayments. Could be an interesting avenue for PeerTube. Maybe you could "charge micropayment credits" and those would be redistributed to creators according to your likes/dislikes/subscriptions.

Taywee 5y ago

Personally, I do tons of things for free because I enjoy doing them. Nobody needs to pay me to play my piano, paint a painting, or run a D&D campaign, and all of that takes effort and skill. I remember the old days of YouTube when most people making videos were doing it for the joy of it, not profit. I understand that doesn't scale forever, but at the same time, there's a vast range of video creation that doesn't need to be profit-driven, or can easily be crowd funded. I understand the point of big budget video creation, but that's not most creators, just like most companies aren't Google and shouldn't be trying to solve their problems that are a 1000th the size with Google-scale solutions. Simply, there is a place for small budget videos. I'd even argue that the majority should be small budget, and that advertising and budget inflation have on average been more bad for YouTube than good.

southerntofu 5y ago

> The primary motivation of most creators is to make money. Most creators/uploaders do not monetize their works. This is just the tiny minority that Youtube highlights to keep their business flowing. A lot of content is produced by amateurs and non-profits, and Youtube does them a huge disservice by displaying ads (which they don't benefit from), tracking their viewers, recommending bad-quality/outrageous content (eg. conspiracy videos), and copyright-striking their videos even when it is clear no law was violated (eg. fair use). > Why would any creator spend all that time and money making content to give away for free? Do you give away your daily work for free? I definitely would not give my work for free for companies to profit from, but i'm happy to engage in free labor for non-profits and for my peers. This is a well-known paradox in the libre culture/software, especially with non-copyleft licenses (eg. MIT) which enable a for-profit to siphon of volunteer work without ever contributing something back in return. See also: OpenSSL maintainership "scandal" back in the day. > If Youtube paid $0/1000 views... the majority of the top 1000 creators would be gone overnight. Would that be such a loss? Looks like these channels are just outrage/advertisement machine with very little content creation going on... at least form an outsider's perspective.

gnramires 5y ago

Good point. Well, creators can still point to their Patreon (or Liberapay) without problems. I see many creators relying more on Sponsorships and other income streams as significant (apparently YT doesn't pay that much unless you're incredibly popular). Dave from EEVBlog is extremely transparent on YT income, worth checking out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU3FAIaAF0I https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wU3FAIaAF0I It seems LBRY gets around this with micropayments. Could be an interesting avenue for PeerTube. Maybe you could "charge micropayment credits" and those would be redistributed to creators according to your likes/dislikes/subscriptions.