The same holds true for retailers in malls, or property managers. There are many lines of work where you are entirely reliant on things that you can’t reasonably have second sources for.
Blaming people for deriving significant income from YouTube is putting the cart well and truly before the horse.
Youtube does not employ "creators". Creators suffering from anxiety because of endangered income should first get help and then get a real job. Youtube is just another "get rich quick" scheme if done irresponsibly.
Most non-professional YouTube channels start as a side project. Someone thinks of something they'd like to make videos about, starts in their spare time, and grows a following. Then the money starts to come in, and eventually it's enough for them to quit their day job and work on their YouTube channel full time. Sometimes they start a business and employ people to help along the way.
If that was a SaaS app instead of a video channel there'd be no question about whether or not it's entrepreneurial. The fact they're making videos instead of code doesn't change anything.
Relying on YouTube is no different to relying on Google, or Amazon, or any service that people build successful businesses on. Yes, there's a risk having a single critical factor, but that doesn't automatically mean the risk is too great to still be worthwhile.
The real problem here is that YouTube has an effective monopoly as the only working platform for monetized online video. If that's the business you're in then you have to use YouTube.
Vimeo has their VOD service. It works very differently, but still...
That is actually a great simile. :)
I can see both sides of the argument, but developing an application and paying to host it on AWS or GCP is different to creating A video and uploading it somewhere for free.
http://uk.businessinsider.com/highest-paid-youtube-stars-201...
Who employs entrepreneurs?
They are absolutely aware of this and the design of YouTube highly emphasises these metrics (which in turn translate to financial success). They allowed the formation of networks (few successful channels are "independent", finding a network is usually one of the first steps creators take when seeking to become "professional"). Their promos (e.g. Rewind) routinely feature content with high production values that are only possible with financial investment and they actively promote the idea of having YouTube "celebrities" (although lately there has been a shift towards "importing" TV personalities).
What YouTube did was create a culture around their platform that encourages people to go full time and earn money by producing content for YouTube for free and get a cut of the ad revenue in return.
In order to fight creators who gamed the system they then went and created an air of mystery around what content they actively promote (just listen to YouTubers talk about "the algorithm"), leading to various superstitions and conspiracy theories while intentionally driving creators to change the kind of content they create in order to adapt.
Then they pulled the rug underneath creators by secretly demonetising videos, resulting in revenue to drop for seemingly no reason until they made the monetisation status more visible (which sparked the "adpocalypse" drama). At that point many creators diversified their income via patreon but this relied on viewers to actually part with their money, which only worked for channels with very dedicated fans or a consistent level of quality (further adding to the pressure to churn out new content and reach a wider audience).
Meanwhile YouTube has been abandoning the independent creators that drove the site's initial success in favor of big name production studios moving content from TV over to YouTube or creating tie-ins. The independent creators that still do well are mostly the ones heavily relying on clickbait to drive fews and churning out short and shallow content that allows them to feed the algorithm and stay relevant (although even these now often rely on product placement and sponsorship deals).
On the one hand this is a classical story of a startup pivoting as it adapts to market changes and hits problems of scale. On the other hand there is a massive social cost YouTube is all but neglecting to take responsibility for.
YouTube doesn't care how their changes affect the livelihoods of creators. Free market libertarians will say they shouldn't have to care about this and they are absolutely right legally speaking. But let's not pretend the effects those decisions have on real people's lives weren't predictable.
There's the old Web 2.0 joke that "there's nothing social about social media" but YouTube certainly lives up to that. Note that all of this wouldn't be half as bad if YouTube were at all approachable to its creators. Instead, by using an unpredictable "algorithm" to hand out punishments (demonetisation, content claims, strikes) and rewards ("trending", "watch next", etc), YouTube creates a victim mindset which naturally breeds resentment.
EDIT: If anything, YouTube is a high-risk high-reward precursor to other "sharing economy" companies like Uber, except Uber's playing field is much more level.
The world of television is full of stories of pilot episodes that get picked up, are a smash hit for a few seasons, but get cancelled. The producers of those shows didn't have right to shoot up ABC, NBC, or Fox and many just licked their wounds and tried again.
She didn't shoot people because YouTube uses unethical business practices. She shot people because she was an unhinged individual with extremist views about lots of things. She saw YouTube's apathy as a personal conspiracy against her content.
Whether YouTube's business practices are ethical and whether it's okay to shoot YouTube employees because of it are two separate questions. You don't need to be an ISIS sympathiser to take issue with what the US military is doing overseas.
FWIW whether YouTube's business practices are "okay" strongly depends on your political ideology and cultural background. It seems Americans, especially on HN, tend to hold the opinion that conning people into making bad decisions is (to some degree) okay because it's the victim's fault for being naive and careless. I'm German and thus have grown up in a country with strong consumer protection laws -- YouTube's behavior strikes me as obviously nefarious, but I'm well aware this perception is not universal.
YouTube disavow their responsibility by deferring their decisions to "the algorithm" and surely you can't blame a machine. But the obvious truth is that they're in control of it and could change it -- even if it is too complicated to predict, nothing is forcing them to use it and they could still replace it with something more predictable but less "error-prone". Instead they chose not to, which means they are entirely responsible for the outcome.
This isn't unique to YouTube either. Plenty of tech companies try to hide behind a wall of maths to justify unethical behavior.
As for "blame Youtube for encouraging", well, yes, sure you can blame Youtube for encouraging other people. Ponzi schemeres also "encourage" you to invenst. Snake oil vendor also "encourage" you to buy this insanely expensive wonder tincture which is supposed to heal just about everything there is. Ironically, in the US, the tactics of the so-called confidence men are not illegal. In free trade a sales pitch is everything. If anyone can convince you to fall for a scheme then it's your own damn fault. If you know that, you avoid that.
What do you think how many Ponzi schemers were murdered and quartered just because somebody fell for their shady ways of "encouraging" the money out of naive people's pockets?
I'm sorry, but let's face reality here. If you fall for that kind of "encouragement" you probably should review your own naive world view. The reality is hostile. If there is a way to take advantage of you it will be taken if your aren't careful.
> If you fall for that kind of "encouragement" you probably should review your own naive world view.
I guess that's what makes you a anarcho-capitalist and me a socialist. I'm not sure where you're from, but I'm German. The general attitude in the US for example seems to be that "your problem is your problem". Like many other European countries, in Germany the view tends to be closer to "your problem is everyone's problem" (though I think some of the Nordic countries take this to a greater extreme than us).
This is why we have a real social welfare system, real public health care, real workers rights and real consumer protection laws. You're still not excused from being a naive idiot, but it's not only considered unethical to exploit naive idiots, it's also almost always a crime. Not because we want to encourage people to be naive idiots but because we think it's society's moral duty to protect even the naive idiots (and because everyone eventually has their moment of being a naive idiot about something).