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How do you propose sites/YouTube channels monetise themselves (for sustenance or profit)?

by sofixa 4y ago

disintegore 4y ago
I don't really care about their bottom line. They're the middle-men. Virtual landlords. They're there to squeeze the lemon. Not to say that the service they provide isn't useful. It's obviously more economical to operate media platforms at scale, and obviously most content creators don't have the technical ability to do it themselves. When you look at say, podcasts for instance, you have this giant shared wealth of free content and you can pick a number of creators to support depending on your budget. You usually get extra episodes or perks as an incentive for doing so. Imagine if, instead of paying YouTube X dollars or watching Y ads and letting them choose out how to spread that money around, you pay the people you actually watch and the platform vendors, who ought to be the least important and most replaceable factor in this transaction, gets the cut they actually deserve. Before they were ruined by copyright trolls, streaming services like Netflix demonstrated that charging everyone a reasonable amount of money for access to the entire park was a viable business model.
- Bakary 4y ago
  YouTube sounds replaceable or unimportant in an ethical sense but in a practical sense it's certainly not that simple from the POV of someone trying to build an audience for their videography or even the audience itself.
  - disintegore 4y ago
    Total chicken and egg scenario. That's often the case with monopolies. However, to my knowledge Youtube doesn't force its content creators into exclusivity deals (like, say, Amazon with Kindle Direct) so there may be some leeway there seeing as posting your content on another platform isn't a major risk.
    - Bakary 4y ago
      I don't have a definite view on this, but my intuition tells me that there is more to it than just the monopoly effect. If YouTube had developed with additional competitors, it might not necessarily have lead to a better market/space for videographers since having a single platform has its own advantages for the development of the medium/culture/etc. YouTube is getting more heavy-handed as time goes on, but one reason for this is that they were operating at a loss for so long, and in doing so provided extra utility that we might take for granted. GP comment mentioned Netflix, but that is in fact a good example of what I mean. They started to struggle because competitors moved into the space. Unlike YouTube, they did not have an unassailable position. Unlike Spotify, they did not have a market that allowed sharing catalogues across platforms. In a sense, what we interpreted as Netflix showing a viable business model was rather Netflix showing early mover advantage on borrowed time. Having an ecosystem with multiple mediocre services such as what streaming is becoming now would not necessarily have been in the advantage of videographers if it had happened to video-sharing platforms. It would almost certainly have lead to a smaller and less engaged overall audience.
denton-scratch 4y ago
I'm not responsible for Youtube's business plans. Don't they pay executives a lot of money to make their business plans for them?
- sofixa 4y ago
  And they have, as a consumer you can choose ads or Premium. Some want neither, so out of curiosity I'm asking, how do they see things if not those two options?
  - denton-scratch 4y ago
    I have no idea how they see things, I'm not telepathic. I'm in the "want neither" camp; I put up with whatever I can't filter. The kind of stuff I look for on YT often doesn't seem to be monetized.
trasz 4y ago
Same as now: Patreon. YouTube monetisation model is pretty useless except for Google itself.
- endisneigh 4y ago
  Lol, YouTube has minted many millionaires.
  - trasz 4y ago
    Millionaires don’t matter except for marketing; median matters.
Spivak 4y ago
I think the only real response is that isn't my problem to figure out. I'm sure you could come up with 10 highly unethical or outright illegal monetization methods off the top of your head, and the argument against them isn't "well here's an alternative" but instead "these are bad and shouldn't be done full stop." And this is how people view ads, it's a values based judgement rather than a utilitarian one.
- zamadatix 4y ago
  A values based judgement goes both ways though - you shouldn't be using such a service in the first place if you knowingly can't conceive of an ethical way for it to operate. And that's a fair stance but few seem to actually care about values based judgement enough to actually stop using the services. That said this case isn't much of a moral mystery. YouTube offers a reasonable paid plan, most people just prefer ads.
  - Spivak 4y ago
    Oh trust me I can conceive many ethical ways businesses could operate without ads. I think what you mean is that you shouldn’t use a service you know is unethical. But there are problems with that as a general rule. First being that there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism so that makes things difficult. Second, “voting with your wallet” is pointless, you’re much better off voting with your votes and ad blockers if you want to see real change. If anything by your logic buying YouTube Premium is worse ethically since you’re directly supporting a company that makes money on unethical ads. Giving them more money won’t make ads go away. And to that, third, demanding self-flagellation to prove that one is sincere in their beliefs is puritanical nonsense. You are absolutely allowed to both buy Nike shoes and fight for legislation that forbids them from treating their factory workers poorly.
    - zamadatix 4y ago
      I'm not going to comment on capitalism as a whole or the like as that seems neither here nor there for this thread but I can see how someone with those views would have problems with pretty much any service anywhere in the current environment. I'm not quite sure I follow how opting for the business model one doesn't find unethical is supporting unethical business models. It may not be attacking the business model they find unethical but that's a different claim. Unless of course we allow any connection with a service to taint the entire lot in which case I can again see how someone with those views would have problems with pretty much any service anywhere. As for the conversation on shoes when you have a basic need sure, don't let people's ability to source needs get in the way of people bettering their working conditions. After all they don't really have a choice in forgoing either. That's not really relevant to people's desires to consume entertainment services though. Particularly when people are given their own agency on deciding what is the right way to fund it already or even to be able to not consume the want should there be nowhere to do so. In the end it may come down to whether you think it should be alright for people to operate on different morals than you so long as their choice is mostly limited to impacting them or if there is only one true set of morals everyone must be forced to follow by law.

How do you propose sites/YouTube channels monetise themselves (for sustenance or profit)?

by sofixa 4y ago

How do you propose sites/YouTube channels monetise themselves (for sustenance or profit)?

I don't really care about their bottom line. They're the middle-men. Virtual landlords. They're there to squeeze the lemon. Not to say that the service they provide isn't useful. It's obviously more economical to operate media platforms at scale, and obviously most content creators don't have the technical ability to do it themselves. When you look at say, podcasts for instance, you have this giant shared wealth of free content and you can pick a number of creators to support depending on your budget. You usually get extra episodes or perks as an incentive for doing so. Imagine if, instead of paying YouTube X dollars or watching Y ads and letting them choose out how to spread that money around, you pay the people you actually watch and the platform vendors, who ought to be the least important and most replaceable factor in this transaction, gets the cut they actually deserve. Before they were ruined by copyright trolls, streaming services like Netflix demonstrated that charging everyone a reasonable amount of money for access to the entire park was a viable business model.

Bakary 4y ago
YouTube sounds replaceable or unimportant in an ethical sense but in a practical sense it's certainly not that simple from the POV of someone trying to build an audience for their videography or even the audience itself.
- disintegore 4y ago
  Total chicken and egg scenario. That's often the case with monopolies. However, to my knowledge Youtube doesn't force its content creators into exclusivity deals (like, say, Amazon with Kindle Direct) so there may be some leeway there seeing as posting your content on another platform isn't a major risk.
  - Bakary 4y ago
    I don't have a definite view on this, but my intuition tells me that there is more to it than just the monopoly effect. If YouTube had developed with additional competitors, it might not necessarily have lead to a better market/space for videographers since having a single platform has its own advantages for the development of the medium/culture/etc. YouTube is getting more heavy-handed as time goes on, but one reason for this is that they were operating at a loss for so long, and in doing so provided extra utility that we might take for granted. GP comment mentioned Netflix, but that is in fact a good example of what I mean. They started to struggle because competitors moved into the space. Unlike YouTube, they did not have an unassailable position. Unlike Spotify, they did not have a market that allowed sharing catalogues across platforms. In a sense, what we interpreted as Netflix showing a viable business model was rather Netflix showing early mover advantage on borrowed time. Having an ecosystem with multiple mediocre services such as what streaming is becoming now would not necessarily have been in the advantage of videographers if it had happened to video-sharing platforms. It would almost certainly have lead to a smaller and less engaged overall audience.

denton-scratch 4y ago

I'm not responsible for Youtube's business plans. Don't they pay executives a lot of money to make their business plans for them?

sofixa 4y ago
And they have, as a consumer you can choose ads or Premium. Some want neither, so out of curiosity I'm asking, how do they see things if not those two options?
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  I have no idea how they see things, I'm not telepathic. I'm in the "want neither" camp; I put up with whatever I can't filter. The kind of stuff I look for on YT often doesn't seem to be monetized.

trasz 4y ago

Same as now: Patreon. YouTube monetisation model is pretty useless except for Google itself.

endisneigh 4y ago
Lol, YouTube has minted many millionaires.
- trasz 4y ago
  Millionaires don’t matter except for marketing; median matters.

Spivak 4y ago

I think the only real response is that isn't my problem to figure out. I'm sure you could come up with 10 highly unethical or outright illegal monetization methods off the top of your head, and the argument against them isn't "well here's an alternative" but instead "these are bad and shouldn't be done full stop." And this is how people view ads, it's a values based judgement rather than a utilitarian one.

zamadatix 4y ago
A values based judgement goes both ways though - you shouldn't be using such a service in the first place if you knowingly can't conceive of an ethical way for it to operate. And that's a fair stance but few seem to actually care about values based judgement enough to actually stop using the services. That said this case isn't much of a moral mystery. YouTube offers a reasonable paid plan, most people just prefer ads.
- Spivak 4y ago
  Oh trust me I can conceive many ethical ways businesses could operate without ads. I think what you mean is that you shouldn’t use a service you know is unethical. But there are problems with that as a general rule. First being that there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism so that makes things difficult. Second, “voting with your wallet” is pointless, you’re much better off voting with your votes and ad blockers if you want to see real change. If anything by your logic buying YouTube Premium is worse ethically since you’re directly supporting a company that makes money on unethical ads. Giving them more money won’t make ads go away. And to that, third, demanding self-flagellation to prove that one is sincere in their beliefs is puritanical nonsense. You are absolutely allowed to both buy Nike shoes and fight for legislation that forbids them from treating their factory workers poorly.
  - zamadatix 4y ago
    I'm not going to comment on capitalism as a whole or the like as that seems neither here nor there for this thread but I can see how someone with those views would have problems with pretty much any service anywhere in the current environment. I'm not quite sure I follow how opting for the business model one doesn't find unethical is supporting unethical business models. It may not be attacking the business model they find unethical but that's a different claim. Unless of course we allow any connection with a service to taint the entire lot in which case I can again see how someone with those views would have problems with pretty much any service anywhere. As for the conversation on shoes when you have a basic need sure, don't let people's ability to source needs get in the way of people bettering their working conditions. After all they don't really have a choice in forgoing either. That's not really relevant to people's desires to consume entertainment services though. Particularly when people are given their own agency on deciding what is the right way to fund it already or even to be able to not consume the want should there be nowhere to do so. In the end it may come down to whether you think it should be alright for people to operate on different morals than you so long as their choice is mostly limited to impacting them or if there is only one true set of morals everyone must be forced to follow by law.