> 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 hi

> 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.