This is my biggest pet peeve with YouTubers. THEY ARE NOT EMPLOYEES OF YOUTUBE.
employment laws do not apply to a youtuber, unless they are employed by some other company, but they do NOT have an employment relationship with YouTube, they are not "employees" of YouTube, and Susan Wojcicki is not "their boss"
Everytime there is a YT Change (like happen recently) there is all these videos where YT often try to compare their experience with employment, how their "boss" Susan did something, or how they are being "Fired" if they get banned, or other such non-sense. That is my peeve.
>>I wouldn't be surprised if some countries define employee differently.
I would be surprised if any nation classified a person uploading videos on to a platform with the hopes of having a revenue share on ads the 3rd party sells on those videos is in anyway an "employee" of any kind.
I would also be surprised if any country has laws where 2 parties could not agree to non-disclosure of the terms of their business contract (which is the basis for this comment thread). that is pretty standard really
I would also be surprised since most of the time when you upload a video you have to agree you will be governed under the Laws of the US, and even more specific the laws of California
I would be surprised in some countries dont change their laws at some time to account for this digital sharecropping (from Youtube and iOS App Store to Uber, etc), and set some rules (like with employment) to this wild west of making a living that affects millions...
Any country or group of people is welcome to spin up their own data centers and content moderations teams to make their own YouTube.
The point is is no one else in the world wants to make the enormous investment required to create a YouTube, so why should they get to make the rules?
It is not technically hard to make a YouTube alternative, just expensive.
"Someone rich could make a new ecosystem" is unrelated to whether the current ecosystem resembles sharecropping.
They can always do that too, but I'm also full for them inconveniencing those businesses.
Businesses should be whiped and forced to play responsibly in society. They can innovate on tech and features, they don't have to innovate on milking people and erroding working rights.
There are and were multitudes of video hosting and serving websites. It is just ridiculously expensive.
Castles, mercenary armies, and conquering land are comparable much, much more difficult.
I'm not sure what you mean. That it's not rocket science? Well, yes, it isn't. It's not the technology: money (and to a second extend, entrenchment and network effects, and ties with Android, and many other non-tech things) IS of course the huge, sky-high, bar, to building an alternative YouTube.
>Castles, mercenary armies, and conquering land are comparable much, much more difficult.*
Well, it was quite a lot of mobility in the feudal ranks. Any competent mercenary could rise to be a higher ranking soldier, and any compenent and cunning higher ranking soldier could, and often did, take on some existing feudal lords, and get their own smaller or bigger fiefdom. After some point, even succesful merchants could get their own armies and castles and be feudal "nobility". Tons of stories from the feudal times (that was what all of cross-feudal fighting was about), and thousands of castles and fiefdoms - and that's just in Europe.
Whereas Youtube? That's one service of its size/scale in the world, covering multiple billions of people.
That would be more like trying to get something competitive not to a feudal lord (which were a dime a dozen), but to the whole of an empire.
This has to stop. People are making products which one company uses to profit. This company is buying their labor—albeit in a really roundabout way. We’ve heard this gaslighting from e.g. Uber, where their workers weren’t employees but “gig workers”, or some other thing.
The only reason companies do this is to get their labor for cheaper. No, these are YouTube workers, their labor is bought by YouTube, and YouTube should obey all labor laws when they buy their labor and profit from their work.
furthermore you paid for the right to work the land what the landowner asked, nobody pays a minimum rate to have a YouTube channel that I am aware of.
I understand it is a rhetorically powerful phrase, digital sharecropper, but unfortunately as often happens with analogies it falls apart with all the ways it does not fit.
How is this a useful distinction? It's about how you can sell the product, but doesn't change the fact that you don't own your lot, that you pay a percentage share to the owner of the place, that they can change the terms or even crush you anytime they like, and so on.
>furthermore you paid for the right to work the land what the landowner asked, nobody pays a minimum rate to have a YouTube channel that I am aware of.
What you paid to the landowner was a percentage of your lot's production, same as with YouTube.
No, this is an even further stretch.
There are various tests that apply to contractors in the U.K. to work out if you’re an employee or a Lego mate contracting company, as it makes a difference to how taxes and benefits are calculated. Fro my understanding YouTube nowhere near meets that criteria of employee/employer. Companies like Uber and deliveroo are far closer.
As there are in most of the world. Most of them were made for the factory and office era, and despite "updates" still within the old spirit, are antiquated in 2023 when it comes to addressing many new work scenarios...
That is, I wonder if the the deregulation era of the 1980s also deregulated labor practices to the extent that companies can now jump through these hoops in order to avoid labor laws.
Usually a wage or salary is a payment in exchange for doing something. Which this isn’t.
I would imagine most places treat this similarly to the way something like a book publishing agreement works.
From memory, the issue is publicly disclosing CPM among some other things (at least it was 4+ years ago).
I actually wonder if posting it off-platform is even allowed, I've seen Twitch enforce their platform exclusivity for 24 hours for Partners.
The same logic applies to most tech jobs. I would expect more big tech companies would want to broadcast their comp numbers to encourage more people to pursue those careers and apply to those companies. The average joe probably assumes SWEs at Google make $100-150K MAX. If more people knew they could make doctor-like numbers without going to grad school (or even going to college at all in some cases), more people would go into tech. But I guess companies have done the math and determined its better to conceal that information best they can to keep their advantage during negotiations.
I remember emailing someone that said they “didn’t share how much they made because it’s against TOS” after the policy changed and they still declined.
I think it might have been the “I made my Christmas lights controlled by anyone on the internet” guy.
It was a long time ago.
This quora post quotes the terms: https://www.quora.com/Am-I-allowed-to-show-my-earnings-to-my...
"HOWEVER, YOU MAY ACCURATELY DISCLOSE THE AMOUNT OF GOOGLE’S GROSS PAYMENTS TO YOU PURSUANT TO THE PROGRAM"
Linus Tech Tips has published their earnings for the past couple of years. One detailed video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zt57TWkTF4
Linus also posted his adsense of ~$4.6million for the last 9 months a couple of days ago: https://twitter.com/linusgsebastian/status/16094682622194032...
Their payroll and overhead costs probably eat up a significant part of that 4.6m.
https://twitter.com/linusgsebastian/status/16094698614949519...
Source on employee count: https://twitter.com/linusgsebastian/status/16094698614949519...
https://twitter.com/linusgsebastian/status/16094698614949519...
Of course he has other income streams - sponsorships, lttstore.com, commissioned videos etc.
This is pretty common knowledge for monetized or high viewership (sponsored/paid for outside of Google) channels.
They both have private communities where people freely share a lot of good info (especially Project24).
There are many others that I have heard good things about but have not checked out myself.
Estimating earnings based on views/subs is helpful to prospective youtubers, letting them make wise decisions about whether they pursue that path or do something else with their time (it will probably dissuade more than it will encourage, but that's a good thing if in aggregate people are making sounder career decisions).
Totally taking the convo in the darker direction, but you can see this dynamic in play with Rogan‘s podcast. He’s a liberal, but those hot button right wing takes are probably what brings in the clicks. Every trans critique he makes caters to that traffic, so he milks that audience often.
What does one become when you effectively sell out to the analytics?
Your thoughts and perspective are no longer driven by your convictions or experience, but by this shit.
These are many large quantitative changes, that are going to have qualitative implications.
For instance, given the small scale of each offering, post, etc., most creators won’t have developed deeply held individual visions to be compromised with a focus on adapting
Is he?
"USA: the primary use of the term liberal is at some variance with European and worldwide usage. In the United States today, it is most associated with the definition of modern liberalism, which is a combination of social liberalism, public welfare and a mixed economy,[12] which is in contrast to classical liberalism."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_parties_by_country#The...
This assumed cultural hegemony by some US citizens is frustrating as hell; they are incredibly quick to assume (or demand even) the rest of the world knows their cultural references/idioms/etc., yet make zero effort to discover what the rest of the world is doing. Unfortunately they are also loud and so it's easy to come to the false conclusion all US citizens are like that.
I used to believe this as well. I was thaught a lesson... In fact, now I understand that liberals, when given the power, will corrupt into totalitarism in a few months.
> liberals, when given the power, will corrupt into totalitarism in a few months.
Is your complaint an actual example of that? I've never actually heard the argument - I've heard "billionaires should not exist", but never "we should have a 100% tax on those making more than $100m", so I don't know if the claim you're making is as popular as you're making it out to be, nor do I believe is it an example of totalitarianism.
I also don't see actual examples of liberal governments doing that. People say lots of crazy stuff online, but "liberals say the darndest thing" is not the claim here.
These conversations never go anywhere. The battlelines are already drawn. It just becomes a semantic debate around loosely defined terms like totalitarianism.
Republican = social restrictions + economic freedoms
"Classical liberalism, contrary to liberal branches like social liberalism, looks more negatively on social policies, taxation and the state involvement in the lives of individuals, and it advocates deregulation.[10] Until the Great Depression and the rise of social liberalism, it was used under the name of economic liberalism. As a term, classical liberalism was applied in retronym to distinguish earlier 19th-century liberalism from social liberalism.[11] By modern standards, in the United States, simple liberalism often means social liberalism, but in Europe and Australia, simple liberalism often means classical liberalism.[12][13]
...
In the United States, classical liberalism may be described as "fiscally conservative" and "socially liberal". Despite this context, classical liberalism rejects conservatism's higher tolerance for protectionism and social liberalism's inclination for collective group rights, due to classical liberalism's central principle of individualism.[14] Classical liberalism is also considered closely tied with right-libertarianism in the United States.[15] In Europe, liberalism, whether social (especially radical) or conservative, is classical liberalism in itself, so the term classical liberalism mainly refers to centre-right economic liberalism.[16]
"
"Liberal" in the US -> some social freedoms, but restricted in certain ways + economic restrictions.
"Liberal" outside the US -> social freedoms + economic freedoms.
I learned this as an American abroad when someone called me, who would generally be seen as conservative / libertarian in the US, "very liberal" when discussing gay rights (pro), gun rights / armed self-defense (pro), and abortion rights (pro-choice).
Supporting gay rights and being pro-choice is seen as conservative??
It’s probably either: how he speaks, his takes in general, how others view him, how others reamplify him, or something else, but I really doubt he’s beating the drum on transgender rights since he’s he seems to in favor of all socially liberal topics in general.
To me it was clear he had an axe to grind in regards to the subject, though, and took out that axe out semi-regularly.
[1]: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/thats-crazy-man-have-you-ever...
These are the questions that cut across the entire political spectrum, as there are plenty on the left questioning the excesses of this activist movement too.
I agree they are reasonable, but it’s kind of like a cock tease dog whistle (maybe a less crude way to put it is a feint dog whistle).
If you take a Kanye, and he says ‘I love Hitler’, that’s a blow horn. But if you say, ‘There are a lot of Jews in Hollywood, and look at all that stuff that’s going on in Palestine’, now we’re angling. Everything you are saying is reasonable, but you are reconnoitering around the rim of a specific demographic.
I guess the question is, is this subtle play going past you, or are you letting it get a pass?
He’s keeping one foot in the ring because it’s a pragmatic way of acknowledging the existence of those viewpoints.
I’m not saying black people commit a lot of crime, but look at this shoplifting video. Proceeds to show black people looting. We need to do something about crime.
There are ways to hold that audience without being an outright demagogue.
I like Rogan, but this manipulation in the interest of holding that broader audience smells a little. Integrity is the word I guess.
We know what happens... you get Mr. Beast. He's known for hyper optimizing the metrics. Watch one of his interviews. His Joe Rogan interview was an eye opener.
Basically every scientific progress which gets published on peer reviewed journals (a lot of them open). Some books also are online.
If anything I'd prefer less interest of the general public on specific papers because the way it ends up is with people misunderstanding it to fit whatever the journalist/redditor that peddled it wanted it to mean, maliciously or not.
This issue, in this case, is information dispersal. This sort of information is highly analyzed, almost certainly, by google/youtube. They have all the data, so there's a lot more you can get out of analyzing it.
If ever channel's youtube data was released to the public like this, there would be a lot more notice.
Transparency doesn't just need to overcome secrecy, they need to overcome obscurity.
At the end of the day there's already huge amounts of youtubers showing their mansions or whatever to influence the gullible viewers, the ones who would miss the nuance of his situation would most likely fall for them anyway. There's already an abundance of blatant "false hope" being peddled far harder and wider, the chance of his objective analysis being misinterpreted by people is as far as i'm concerned insignificant.
A huge part of the phenomenon comes through how fashions form. Hype collects around emotionally-charged things. By their very nature, their spectacle is compromising some of the sincerity and value to maximize reach. The spotlight is power, and power corrupts.
HN is a perfect example of this: looks like a chat forum from 1998, but is very much current and edgy with the cool kids.
I wonder how much other information exists on the web that is extremely valuable yet unnoticed