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The creator economy: the top 1% and everyone else
- ffwacom 4y agoCan the algorithms be changed to prevent Pareto outcomes from occurring? Most content is arbitrary anyway so no real cultural value discovery is occurring with these algorithms IMO, just chance and feedback loops.
- whiddershins 4y agoMost content is arbitrary?
- ffwacom 4y agoYeah, is the top only fans girl really 10x or whatever more valuable than the penultimate only fans girl? Same for the arts. Same for most market segments whose products are artfully differentiated to prevent the customer from commoditising them mentally.
- gruez 4y ago>Yeah, is the top only fans girl really 10x or whatever more valuable than the penultimate only fans girl? That's the wrong interpretation. The reason why the top only fan girl gets 10x more revenue than the penultimate only fans girl is because she's marginally better, so more people flock to her. This works because her marginal cost of production is zero, so her having 10x the fans doesn't cost her 10x the work. The same applies to other professions where the marginal cost is zero. I doubt the average NFL player signing multi-million dollar contracts are hundreds/thousands of times better than the amateur player, but because sports leagues wants to hire the best, the top players get a disproportionate amount of money chasing after them.
- ffwacom 4y agoFair enough, it must be inevitable and the algorithm is irrelevant.
- PaulKeeble 4y agoThe algorithms tend to favour entrenchment. They don't select on good or best they don't understand those qualities so they select on the basis of popular, assuming people are aware of the best. The issue with that is once a best has been selected years later the algorithm has effectively boosted them even with better options. Discovery is a real problem on most social media but especially on places like twitch.
- 99failures 4y agoIt's actually not Pareto's but more like "Normal Distribution" and that is something embedded in Nature/Society that one can't change or eradicate. It's just the way things work, the natural dynamics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_distribution But that is objectively speaking. Objectively we all have great tools: * Free Will * Agency * Locus of control and more. Choose wisely.
- 082349872349872 4y agoLook at wealth instead of income, and you will probably also find that "the middle class" has always been a bit of rose-coloured labelling of some slice out of a Pareto distribution. Traditionally, people have felt middle class because they were not comparing themselves to an entire distribution — but (almost by definition?) the "creator economy" has been focused* on a tail. * Eg I can easily find numbers for mean AdSense payments, but not median, nor, more importantly median including those creators who don't meet AdSense minimums.
- simonh 4y agoThe idea that there is no middle class any more us utter tosh though, nowadays in the western world almost everyone is middle class, by any stable criteria. Of course it depends how we define it. If the definition is some mid percentage by income then it would be fairly consistent over time because the absolute criteria would be constantly changing. However with those measures someone can maintain the same standard of living in society and leave or enter the middle class as demographics shift around them. If we use a more absolute measure that better tracks demographic change over time, such as having one third of income available for discretionary spending, or criteria such as home ownership or type of work done so we can better track changes over time, then more than half the worlds population is now middle class.
- j7ake 4y agoAre there any entrepreneurial professions that do not have this winner take all dynamic ? The only ones I can think of are professions with some physical constraints. Eg where the product requires the professional to be physically present. Eg surgeons, luthiers, sports therapists.
- amelius 4y agoDepends. If surgeons somehow ended up working for a company/franchise then that company will hold all the power. Surgeons would have to unionize to get some power back. I hear that something like this is happening with vets.
- mbustamanter 4y agoAnything that isn't scalable. Taleb writes at length about this difference in The Black Swan, categorizing professions in which there are winner-take-all effects (Extremistan) and low variance, stable, one-sample-is-representative ones (Mediocristan). As you said, surgeon (the example Taleb gives is 'dentist'), prostitute, taylor, and so on. He also notes that some professions can switch categories, e.g. musician, since the existence of recording technology the distribution became a Pareto one.
- oj2828 4y ago“ The creator economy, once hailed as the solution to economic inequality and the savior of the middle class, is facing challenges that threaten its very existence.” Not to nitpick, but did anyone really believe that becoming a tik tok influencer was a reasonable career path for more than a couple hundred people? I don’t see how most middle class people would’ve been helped by the creator economy
- Invictus0 4y agoYes? I'd imagine there are tens of thousands of people who are credible social media influencers and content creators.
- d-us-vb 4y agoEven a few tens of thousands of people is less than 1% of the people making an attempt. He’s right in being skeptical that “people” (who?) thought that “being a creator” was a viable career path, as the article suggests was the case.
- Invictus0 4y agoIt's like saying being a professional basketball player is not a viable career path because most people don't make it. The mere fact of it's exclusivity is besides the point. Being a content creator/influencer is a viable career path. There are creators with disabilities, creators that never speak, creators that never show their face. Not everyone makes great money but for many people the money is enough.
- bell-cot 4y agoTHIS. Just how far into can’t-do-arithmetic self-delusion do you need to be, to believe that “you need X thousand followers to succeed financially” jobs could actually be available to more than a few people out of every X thousand???
- auggierose 4y ago
- tylerscott 4y agoIs it me or does this article seem “off”. The verbatim repetition of the thesis multiple times makes me think this wasn’t written by a person.
- NetOpWibby 4y agoYou're right. I came to this HN thread from Twitter https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1611758284175966209 https://twitter.com/GergelyOrosz/status/1611758284175966209
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- nkko 4y agoHaven't bothered to read it. GPT detector says it is 99% fake. https://openai-openai-detector.hf.space/ https://openai-openai-detector.hf.space/
- Urgo 4y agoMaybe I'm doing it wrong but I pasted the article text into the site you linked and it said 99.98% real.
- nkko 4y agoI've used two paragraphs from the middle of the article.
- lgas 4y agoIgnoring for the moment the accuracy of that tool, even if the prose is 99% AI written, that doesn't meant that the result is fake. Maybe their model wrote it. Edit: You can try it here https://huggingface.co/spaces/THUDM/GLM-130B https://huggingface.co/spaces/THUDM/GLM-130B. I tried it. I was not impressed.
- nmpennypacker 4y agoI was thinking the same thing. The repetition of the variations of the phrase "the creator economy...upper echelon of..." are painfully redundant.
- ernestipark 4y agoI half agree with this article. There does seem to be a typical power law in terms of who is able to make a bunch of $ and make this a viable career. That being said, 'winning' doesn't necessarily mean having this be your entire job or revenue source. I think we're progressively going to see more 'portfolio careers' or people holding multiple small jobs. I've seen many folks have small ish followings (say few thousand subs on YouTube), but that's enough for them to generate good leadflow for a consulting business that sustains their family. Put another way, being a creator can just be the marketing or top of funnel for other activities. If we view it solely as a full-time job, then it probably will be a privileged few <1% that 'win'. But if it's part of a larger portfolio of work, then the creator economy opens up a lot of new possibilities for people.
- asicsp 4y ago>That being said, 'winning' doesn't necessarily mean having this be your entire job or revenue source It is my entire job, brings 25% of what I used to earn 8 years ago (never mind what I might be earning now) and I still call it a win ;)
- ernestipark 4y agoYeah that's fantastic! I'm a huge proponent of diversified streams of income, and the low barrier to entry means people can try it out with little investment and a little elbow grease. If that can bring in xx% of your full-time income I think a lot of people would call that a win.
- danbruc 4y agoPut another way, being a creator can just be the marketing or top of funnel for other activities. Then, I would argue, you are not a creator, you are just running your own ads for your actually business on YouTube. This is not to say that it is a bad choice, you might really enjoy it, it might be more cost efficient than other ways of advertising or whatever.
- factsarelolz 4y ago
- dsir 4y agoI think it's key for creators to diversify their income and generate revenue from different streams. This is especially true in light of platforms becoming increasingly restrictive and unpredictable with their content moderation policies. Relying solely on automated ad systems as a means of generating revenue leaves the creator susceptible to the algorithm. It seems like the biggest asset that creators are creating are the communties that form around them and their content. Even for smaller creators, I've seen time and time again that all you need is one or two highly dedicated and engaged fans to make being a creator an extremely lucrative endeavour. I've been working on a platform to help creators diversify their revenue streams and focus on developing their community as an asset on top of just creating content. The hope is to try and bring more predictability in their ability to monetize. http://sociables.com/creators http://sociables.com/creators
- danbruc 4y agoI actually had to look up what creator economy even means exactly and if Wikipedia [1] is accurately describing it, then it seems to essentially belong into the broader category of entertainment. The creator economy was once hailed as the solution to economic inequality and the savior of the middle class. How would that have worked? You can not run a world on entertainment. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creator_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creator_economy
- wslh 4y agoAre we just paraphrasing a critique of the "The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More" book [1]? Internet offered new eyes for new content but few winners remain. For sure Internet offers new opportunities to people. For example, well paid remote dev jobs outside of the center of power (SV) but they are not creators, they are workers. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail_(book)
- whodidntante 4y agoThere used to be a very vibrant creator community, one in which most everyone earned a decent living. However, we no longer have a community of people growing food, making clothes, building and fixing houses, making metal tools, shoeing horses, etc. Cannot eat a blog post about food, cannot wear a photo of someone wearing expensive clothes, cannot live in a photo of a mansion.
- manuelmoreale 4y agoThat is a lovely way to put it. Never thought about craftsmen as creators in that sense. Thank you for this comment.
- whodidntante 4y agoThank you. The "trades" are always underappreciated.
- ebiester 4y agoThat's because of the industrialization of those creator economies. There are still bespoke furniture designers out there, but it's very competitive in the same ways other arts are.
- simonh 4y agoThe problem with an economy like that is it doesn’t scale up to support a modern state. Things like a universal health service (even to the extent of Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP in the US); national road, rail and telecoms infrastructure; a universal education system; social services. You need a massive surplus to pay for all that stuff, that an artisanal craft based economy just can’t support.
- whodidntante 4y agoI am not sure that an economy where everyone is creating tiktok content can support those type of services either. It also has not been proven that we, as humans, are able to "scale up" as you say in a sustainable manner.
- PaulHoule 4y agoSubstack is in trouble because of this. They get almost all their revenue from two handfuls of writers, any of which could afford to develop their own ‘pay for an e-mail newsletter’ script and keep more money. Unlike some companies that look similar, I think Substack is not delivering a lot of value in terms of discovery. People come to Substack for Bari Weiss and not the other way around. It is not Medium, the low value domain of people who want to put low effort into blogging, where people are blown away because they got 70 views on a post. (Prediction: Medium’s user base will defect once somebody comes up with a platform that uses LLMs to write their blog posts for them) Substack would like to grow to be more than e-mail newsletters but the creators and users will have a say in that.
- gregdoesit 4y agoThe whole article feels to me like it’s generated by GPT-3 based on a few prompts. There’s a reference to Forbes article not linked, but otherwise zero things backing up this 1% claim. The thing that makes this very suspicious is the continuous repetition of the same content, the anonymous writer and the fact that the only other article in this publication is about a tool that’s even better than GPT-3. GPT-3 certainly has the effect that I have a hard time trusting that anonymous articles that are repetitive are not AI generated any more… Update: I posted the exact same comment on the article and the author deleted it within two minutes. instead of responding. So yes, it’s likely I was on the money. I re-posted the comment. If it’s not there, you know that this comment is uncomfortable for the author for some reason. Update 2: my second comment was removed within minutes as well. There’s a commenter claiming they are the author saying they used ChatGPT to generate parts of the article. Does not explain why they keep deleting my comment and not disclosing that this article is AI-generated. Update 3: posted a third and final comment asking the author to not delete this comment and answer if the article was verenigde by ChatGPT. Comment also deleted within minutes. This all underscores how it’s becoming hard to trust anonymous authors even now, and how this will just get worse. If a GPT3 article can generate so much discussion on Hacker News, without most people realizing we are arguing about the output of an AI, GPT3 is ready to go mainstream.
- wakana 4y agoI posted on this thread earlier too: Hi! I am the person that wrote this, and used GPT-3 and a few other writing tools to help me wordsmith it. All the points, however, is original work and not AI generated. I am not a native English speaker, so I have been using these tools to avoid awkward sentences/paragraphs. (Clearly this has not been the outcome I was hoping for) As for the erroneous citation to Forbes: there were two links, one to Forbes and the other to Digiday to backup the next point in the outline I wrote. While transferring the content from Huggingface to the substack editor, I missed that in the proofreading.
- gregdoesit 4y agoSo why delete my comment on the publication instead of addressing it? Then why delete my second comment? And why not make it clear the article is generated by ChatGPT, at least partially? Also, this is a good example on why anonymous accounts writing content will be trusted less. You say you used ChatGPT for parts of it. Unclear on what “parts” mean and how much input you had, versus what the AI wrote. It’s a reason for people to stop reading anonymous authors, or articles that don’t make it clear that it’s not an AI writing part of the article. I’ll be honest: I feel duped reading a wall of text to realise it’s at least partially generated, and this whole article could have been the prompts you used to generate it.
- haywirez 4y agoAs hard data from the Twitch leak proves, it's even more tilted — only 0.117% make minimum-wage income levels[0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30364685 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30364685
- college_physics 4y agoOne would have thought that a normal distribution would be the normal state of affairs rather than an abnormal exception...
- gumby 4y agoThis has been the case for centuries before the odious term "creator" was applied. Who would have imagined that now would be any different?
- tchock23 4y agoThe next post on this substack is going to be titled: ‘I wrote a post using GPT3 and it got to the front page of Hacker News. Learn how you can do it to build your following as a creator!’