Whether it is Youtube, Facebook, Twitch, Medium or any other user generated content site you give up control the moment you start using them and you are essentially working for whatever crumbs they decide to throw your way.

Being fired in many countries actually does come with a whole pile of assurances about your continued income, but it is ridiculous to compare the situation of a content producer on a free platform with the one of a salaried employee.

And to take that anger out on the employees of Youtube is utterly ridiculous, if you feel that there is some form of breach of contract then the courts would be your avenue to seek redress.

He clearly mentioned that YouTube is already doing great service to people by hosting their videos, providing serving infrastructure and content discoverability.

The fact that people seem to be, to the extent, expect YouTube to pay them, instead of being thankful to all the free stuff YT provides itself feels wrong here.

Are they wrong? It's only a matter of time until lots of bad things happen. Still bad, still going to happen.

This is a Burning-man-sized strawman.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16754694

In any case, using loaded language doesn't change the validity of the argument.

No, no it's not.

Even AWS customers who don't have a contract (like reserved instances or an Enterprise Agreement) may not have any claim to receive ongoing service.

Business disputes are as old as businesses and we have ways to resolve those disputes: the courts.

And be sure to read the fine print of any service or company that you are going to do business with if your business will be dependent on that other party. Avoid such dependencies as much as possible.

So yes, signing up with AWS is a calculated risk. You should know the possible downsides of that decision, and you should be aware of your position, rights and obligations as well as the terms of service.

Most of society actually works like this, and we somehow manage to muddle through without shooting each other most of the time.

If you allow yourself to be locked in to your hosting provider you are doing it wrong.

AWS is very clever about this but it is still your decision on whether or not you allow yourself to be suckered in. I point this out with some regularity to the companies I look at.

Practically, when you have a business dispute with a major corporation, your only option is to give up.

In Europe the courts are still accessible for companies that do not have millions of $.

AWS on the other hand has plenty of competition, as long as you don't willingly lock yourself into their platform you'll be fine.

It's a mall with a large number of people flowing through it rather than just a content distribution engine.

She snapped, identified the target of her rage, and took violent revenge.

However, it could be helpful to understand Ms. Nasim's motivations insofar as they stem from losing a source of revenue to which she had no entitlement.

To that end, our collective social good might be promoted by platform owners like YouTube giving content-generators greater say over the monetization of their content.

This is not an apology and I accord no blame for Ms. Nasim's actions to YouTube. Mine is just a suggestion that Ms. Nasim had an unjustified grievance which might have been alleviated by giving more agency to the content-generators upon whom platforms such as YouTube depend.

EDIT: add "insofar"

What insurances that are not part of earning nothing from youtube?

> And to take that anger out on the employees of Youtube is utterly ridiculous

So? The same is true for any sort of anger from between partners to countries. Even if someone has been laid off. If a person can literally shoot someone, then this advice won't have the ears.

Sure, and having an at-will employment contract, which is what almost all YC companies offer, isn't something you should count on either. So I fail to comprehend your attempt to distinguish.

So the service-provider service-consumer relationship is inverted.

(Thanks for the recommendation in any case.)

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Going-Postal-Rebellion-Workplaces-Col...

Funny, outside of the US even in countries with high unemployment nobody goes around and shoots anyone.

I can't speak for the culture of other countries, but Americans have a deep-seated sense of worth tied to profession. Having your livelihood stripped raises existential questions about whether you have any value as an American (to understand this phenomenon better, it may be worth also comparing suicide rates in the US after a job loss to suicide rates in other cultures in similar situations).

... but in addition, the US has a pretty deep-seated cultural mythos that when your worth is taken by someone, you take it back, using violence if necessary. Witness the Revolutionary War and the recent phenomenon of a conservative political group naming itself after an economic rebellion against the East India Company.

What point are you trying to make then? People get angry because they feel it's unfair, so...?

EDIT: many people are upset by the panhandling comparison. I just meant that as a juxtaposition to those saying "it's like being fired". It was meant as an analogy - no intent to insult anyone (YouTubers and beggars alike). A better analogy would be a musician who was paid to perform in a bar, and the bar owner tells them "you can still play here all you want, but we're no longer going to pay you." (mind you - they are not saying "you have to continue playing here and do it for free")

I agree that they should realize it's a volatile system and prepare for downswings, but that doesn't make them beggars.

There are many popular creators on YouTube earning an honest full-time living from the YouTube platform, some even have more lucrative relationships with YouTube(e.g. Slo Mo Guys, Vsauce). It's hyperbole to compare them to beggars on the street. Is that income absolutely secure? No, but that seems to kinda be the trend we're heading towards, where fewer jobs provide income security. Should YouTube be more open and transparent about demonetizing content? Yes, especially considering their effective monopoly on the indie video-on-demand scene, and parent Google's effective monopoly on internet ads.

I'm not trying to make a dig at anyone - I'm describing reality and it's upsetting a lot of people who feel entitled to ad revenue. I honestly hope YouTube just does away with their partner program altogether.

As for YouTube careers - I couldn't agree more that many creators are full-time and put their time and energy into making content. The Slo Mo Guys, VSauce, etc are all making money outside of Adsense. They've done what Philip Defranco often tells people to do - diversify where you're getting your money from.

My whole point is that being a YouTube creator or a blogger is a perfectly fine profession - but that requires work to monetize your product and/or direct support from your subscribers/readers.

I am a huge proponent of users in general creating and participating in services that truly meet our needs and wants rather than going all in and hitching ourselves to a multinational corporation that has advertisers and board members to please.

I honestly think we're on the same side of this argument. I just don't think the answer is in expecting YouTube to take care of us.

I know a lot of people want to nationalize YouTube/Google, but unless/until that happens (and unless/until their IP becomes free & open source), we cannot count on them.

But I agree on the rest of your point, relying on advertising and third-party services is unreasonable.

youtube was a platform for which people with issues could still produce an income, gain an audience, and be part of a social group (even if it was just subscribers and comments).

During the great boom era of youtube, it certainly helped lots of depressed and down on their luck people that had a creative spark. It's not that youtube draws them, but that they are desperate enough, and youtube was a good opportunity.

Now youtube becoming more mainstream means that those opportunities that it used to afford to socially awkward and/or depressed people no longer exists. It's a sad outcome imho.

And then you proceed to defend that anyway.

Any webserver will be happy to serve up .mp4 content. There are free players (JWPlayer for instance) and you are entirely free to serve up whatever you want from your own hosted service.

That capricious decision can be appealed, you can take Youtube to court if you feel they have wronged you.

> Why would you be surprised that someone would be upset about a capricious decision, which cannot be appealed, suddenly taking away the money?

Because it never was theirs in the first place. The contract which you engage in when you sign up with Youtube or any other user created content service is pretty clear in that respect: the service can be withheld at the discretion of the company. If you can't live with those terms don't host your content there.

>Any webserver will be happy to serve up .mp4 content. There are free players (JWPlayer for instance) and you are entirely free to serve up whatever you want from your own hosted service.

This echos the classic dropbox comment, "you can just do it yourself". A layperson isn't going to.

>That capricious decision can be appealed, you can take Youtube to court if you feel they have wronged you.

You can sue whoever you want, but you will lose due to lack of resources.

> Because it never was theirs in the first place

As the facebook controversies have show, people have a remarkably bad time using common sense and making rational decisions on the internet, so while you are totally correct, its silly to assume people think that way.

I think the problem is that people are using "common sense", but depending on your background "common sense" can lead you to dramatically different places.

Then you will have to live with being dependent on the whims of another entity. Which means you give up a lot of your freedoms.

> As the facebook controversies have show, people have a remarkably bad time using common sense and making rational decisions on the internet

This wasn't 'on the internet', this was about as IRL as it gets.

That's the state of the vast majority of the population, who lack the system administration and/or development skills to "do it themselves."

Chiding them for not "doing it themselves" is akin to chiding someone upset about their medical bills for not reading to become their own doctor.

We don’t have time for everything, at some point we have to outsorce work.

Did you write the OS used to start up your browser/app to type this comment?

Just because we agreed to depend on others doesn’t mean they can shit on us.

Funny, I did actually write an OS, and no it is not the one on my computer but the one that is on my computer is open source and I know I can rely on it for ever because I have that source and know how to use a compiler.

Yes, that's a conscious decision.

In my point of view, it can be reasonable and morally justified to subject companies that manage to obtain a quasi-monopoly on some form of information distribution to rules that go beyond of what is required for a company merely by law, or even to adjust the law in order to better protect those companies' users.

I would consider it fair and reasonable, for instance, to demand of Facebook, Youtube, and similar platforms (incl. app stores with quasi-monopoly status on a given platform) to be fair, to not manipulate content in favour of the company's political ambitions, in favour of obviously immoral or of decidedly anti-democratic agendas. I also think it is fair and reasonable to expect these companies to remove dangerous, illegal, or decidedly anti-democratic content, to remove radical propaganda, and so on, within reasonable limits. And it is also reasonable and fair to expect or even regulate these companies to adequately compensate content-providers, since they de facto act as their publishers, make money of this content, and have besaid quasi-monopoly. I also think that companies that hold some quasi-monopoly over some information channel should be held to higher standards than those for which there are many viable alternatives, since the former are closer to being utilities. (What constitutes a quasi-monopoly or enough of a monopoly is, of course, another, quite debatable question.)

Obviously, none of this justifies any kind of violence, and the shooter was deranged and most likely wrong about her perceptions of her supposedly unfair treatment. But I couldn't let your statement stand on its own, since I believe it to be wrong in general. This is a debatable standpoint, of course, but there should be a debate. To give another example, I really don't think that Google should be allowed to skew their search results as they see fit, e.g. to influence elections in various countries, just because they are a private company and using Google search is free.

That being said I agree with your non-crazy point about how video uploaders shouldn't feel entitled to a share of the cake in the first place. If your business model is entirely based on some multinational corporation giving you scraps of their ad revenue then you better have a backup plan ready. Unfortunately the people who do that seem to be very young and probably don't plan that far ahead.

No, but there are such 'shooter apologists' in this thread.

Read the whole of it, at least one person writes that they feel that it was only a matter of time before someone brought a gun to a dispute like this.

But if you are claiming ownership of revenues then you are indirectly claiming ownership of that audience and this is a giant mistake. After all, hosting some video is trivial, getting that audience to your self hosted content is the hard part.

So if you take part in an ecosystem like that then you will have to (1) abide by the rules and (2) take into account that you serve at the pleasure of others. Failure to do so is going to result in a rude reminder of what your position really is: one of dependence.

Thank you for agreeing.

You can't plan for 'crazy'.

You spend a lot of time and money to make a video.

You upload it to youtube.

It trips some random check and is flagged and de-monetized, you appeal.

People come and watch your video, with this type of content the vast majority of views is in the few first days since publishing.

Your appeal finally gets through, you can now monetize the video. However it is too late because 80% of the views the video will ever have have been without ads.

You are not entitled to revenue, however if you make your living off Youtube, you may expect that it will not randomly shoot you in the foot for no reason.

this is the problem i think a lot of youtubers have. If only youtube can clearly say what they are checking or set guidelines for monetizations to follow. Of course, the issue they must have is that guidelines are often skirted around - youtubers (and internet in general) is known for attempting to edge towards the limits...

unless you're restricted in how many times you're allowed to check the video, this will just become the same game-able system. There isn't a good way tbh - i think a free-for-all (ala, streamable!) is the best democratic option.

I think you built a strawman that makes it harder to discuss because you seem to equate "being unhappy with Youtube's monetization scheme" with supporting that shooter which is obviously inane. I doubt anybody here is saying that you should go shoot Google HQ if you're unhappy with their ToS.

For the record I don't think people complaining about Youtube's monetization are right anyway, begging a tech giant for lunch money is not a viable business model. If you think you ought to be paid for your content then you should try to work together with other content producers to create your own platform where you get the share of the profit you deem fair. You need Youtube more than they need you.

That's about as silly as being a 'pro Mediumer'. There is such a thing as a professional blogger but they treat the thing as an actual business: with as much control over hosting and content delivery as they can get.

The moment you use a third party service as the key component of your business you lose your 'pro' status.

That's ridiculous on any number of levels. Are Pro hockey players not pro because they don't own their teams? Are salespeople not professional because they use SFDC as SaaS instead of their own handcrafted CRM? Hell, are devs not pros if they use GitHub, AWS, or GCP?

Yes, if you draw it wider than I intended to it is. After all I clearly meant within the context of creating and delivering content to an audience. If that is your business you operate at the whims of the owners of the network.

> Are Pro hockey players not pro because they don't own their teams?

I never really got 'professional sports' so I'm not going to be the right person to comment on that. To me a sport is something to be enjoyed, not something to be made into a profession though it is clear that lots of people do just that. Even so, they are not - to me - as much of a professional as say a car mechanic, a musician or a computer programmer would be. If professional sports would disappear tomorrow I wouldn't miss it, but I totally realize I'm in the minority here.

> Are salespeople not professional because they use SFDC as SaaS instead of their own handcrafted CRM?

They would be unprofessional if they did not plan for outages, being kicked off the service and potential bankruptcies of the SaaS providers. Or at least, the organization they are part of would not be professional.

> Hell, are devs not pros if they use GitHub, AWS, or GCP?

If they make themselves totally dependent on any of those, then yes, they are not pros.

A real business should do the best it can to be an independent entity and should only enter into dependencies after well reasoned out weighing of pros and cons and backup services and options where possible.

Otherwise you will find that that business will sooner or later crash due to some outside influence.

Now obviously there are some risks that you can not protect against: wars, 'acts of god' (a cop-out to mean anything we can imagine that's out of scope), wholesale market downturn and so on. But a simple account termination should not be able to kill a healthy business.

Why? If you are aware of the risks, have alternate monetization scheme, back-ups and mirrors of your videos, what's the problem of relying on a company who can distribute videos way better than what one person can do?

You are right. I was just trying to point out how treating one's YT presence as a business could be done right, but I agree that's not the majority of Youtubers.

(Also, I am neither making videos on Youtube nor invest in crypto, I just happen to follow a bunch of people that do.)

I tend to agree with you, especially since they could put ads directly in the videos. However, they changed their policy fairly recently. If it was money producers were relying on to live, then they are definitely going to be upset.

It's like when Apple pulls something from the AppStore because they want to release something similar. They shouldn't have tried to build a business on someone else's platform, but it's still shitty.

On another note: I hate fanatics, no matter of what plumage.

100% agree, no "however"

when did that happen?

Youtube set out to "own video", and they've been very successful at it. There are a few alleged alternatives out there like vimeo, but come on, how many smart TV's do you know that have a vimeo app pre-installed? Google favors youtube content over other video sites in its search results, and youtube is on-again-off-again zero rated with ISP's all around the globe. Youtube is dominant.

As a result, cutting someone off from youtube is actually a pretty big deal. It's a critical platform for all modern charities, and most modern companies. It's very hard for a marketing department to compete with other companies if they can't use youtube to distribute tutorials, promo content, key announcements and other errata. In most countries, youtube could swing an election by cutting off one party without warning mid-campaign.

And yeah, it's a platform for people to make independent income. Youtube channels are modern busking. I personally would consider income from youtube too tenuous to be willing to commit to a rent contract on the back of that income, but some people are more adventurous.

Youtube wanted a near-total monopoly on internet video, and now they have it. Good for them, but it's not consequence free in my opinion. If they could legitimately tell this person "go use one of our competitors, we don't care", then I'd consider them in the clear. But youtube has successfully suppressed any serious competition, and as a result I consider them to have the same responsibilities as a public utility. They're the USPS of video now. If they're going to have no competitors, they also shouldn't be allowed to arbitrarily cut anyone off from their service.

For some people in the new gig economy of attention/viewfarming, they've found themselves dependent on a particular 'company town' online service. I'm not so much of an anarcho-capitalist that I find this situation hunky-dory.

Youtube first made the pitch that you could "monetize" your videos. Then they had to deny that offer to certain cases. This naturally led to "demonetized" (as opposed to some awkward phrase like "ineligible for monetization").

The word is reasonable in context, and the usage ship has sailed — all market participants use it. I think it's a big stretch to see any presumption of a right in the use of this word.

And discoverability.

A whole generation of stand up comedians, music instrument players and other people have been able to reach people easily and then make careers on top of it all because one easily discovers content on YouTube.

YouTube to me is to get your content some mindshare in the crowds. How you build your career from there should be up-to you.

It's pretty easy to get sucked in to the illusion that Youtube needs the content generators more than vice-versa but Youtube is drowning in content, a lifetime worth of new content is uploaded every day so they have the freedom to pick-and-choose at their pleasure and if you want access to those eyeballs then you are playing their game.

No, it doesn't: it suggests, accurately, that without and until that action, the content would be permitted to be enrolled in some income-generating program. Whether this is a matter of natural or legal rights or (as is in fact the case) merely the discretionary policy of the program operator is outside the scope of the implication of the term.

This was a terrible tragedy and as with all tragedies I fear it will cause parties to double down rather then be introspective of themselves and find a way to grow from it, be it monetization policies, gun rights, office security, etc.