I think that part of what limits what creators can do on twitch comes down to what the advertisers are willing to put up with, it's likely more that advertisers are leaning on twitch who are then leaning on creators, vs just twitch leaning on creators.

As for kick, they seem to be actively ignoring/rejecting these limitations (potentially because they at least partly externally funded by stake (online gambling platform) and kick was a response to most gambling being banned on twitch). I'm not sure how long they can maintain this if they want to stay profitable/attract people to their platform.

These online gambling platforms have no shortage of money, they were paying out 7 figure amounts to content creators for one stream in some cases. It's possible they can run the whole site through their marketing budget.

Yep, this is my theory as well. The viewer isn't being advertised to by third parties, they're being advertised to by the owner of the platform. If they can get people hooked on gambling, they'll make just as much money as advertisement.

> what creators can do on twitch comes down to what the advertisers are willing to put up with

Eh. Then those advertisers will have to create the content from now on...

I'm tired of advertisers being averse to content most people find unobjectionable.

Advertisers need to get comfortable with nudity, swearing, and the whole range of non-abusive human behavior. They're almost as bad as the credit card companies with linking morality to commerce.

YouTube is slowly starting to relax, so I'm hoping the shift is happening.

It's okay if the person appearing next to the Big Mac says "fuck".

They are. Brands are starting to stream directly. Game companies especially.

If not stream they're in channels where the streamer is playing their game, they'll give out DLC codes so that the streamer plays the game longer and make a mint off the back of the viewers. Content created.

A 20 quid DLC key gifted to the streamer will buy you an hour long gameplay ad easily, usually way longer.

There's so many streamers out there they just sort by view count and cherry pick the brand safe ones. They don't need to change their criteria.

Isn't youtube also incredibly mismanaged in the way that they treat their content creators?

For example, making up new rules about swearing too close to the intro of videos being grounds for demonetization, and retroactively applying it to everyone's back catalog from before the rule existed?

Youtube was much better before it was monetized. With monetization came the same pressure on content that had already been present on commercial television; advertisers. Advertisers are the reason television content sucks, they are the ones who demand that the content be formulaic milquetoast crap, and television sucking was the reason Youtube got huge in the first place. Now youtube is becoming the new television.

Retroactive application of new standards? That's newish to youtube but standard for television. Old TV episodes that don't meet present advertiser standards don't get reruns.

Thankfully there are still some video creators on youtube who don't care about money and are doing it for other reasons (passion, hobby, etc.) But youtube has lost most of their incentive to promote that sort of unmonetized content, so it's becoming harder to find.

Is ANY platform in a position to treat creators well?

I hear nothing but complaints from everywhere. I wonder if it is possible to treat creators well…?

Are creators even worth much on average considering the volume of people willing to just grind out content continuously without much regard to … themselves?

It seems to be an endless search for more subscribers, more views, more patrons of some type, more questionable sponsors.

The the youtube, twitch, etc video creators ecosystem seems perpetually messed up, and creators seem to keep at it, sometimes seem to be flogging themselves.

Maybe I missed it, but Wordpress seemed to handle creators really well.

I've been saying for a while that the next big thing in streaming is Wordpress but for Streamers.

Something relatively easy for small streamers to set up and manage on their own, cheap enough to start small and scale up as it starts to make money, with the ability to handle large-scale streams if necessary.

I don't know how you would handle provisioning the servers and such. Maybe it's not easy enough to automate. But I think this sort of thing would take a huge bite out of centralized streaming sites.

Could you give an example of someone who was making significant money (preferably by YT/Twitch standards but any example is good) on WordPress?

This is a red herring.

I don't think WordPress pays anyone anything.

They built a platform and the will also provide hosting. You can download WordPress from wordpress.org and just run it. Or you can go to wordpress.com and buy a whole hosting plan where wordpress.com manages the software for you.

But WordPress doesn't give fuck number one about what you do with it. So you are free to monetize it in any fashion you want. They'll even help you with that. WordPress doesn't have to worry about if any of the people on their site are making money because they still get paid.

Twitch and YouTube are free for creators. You don't have to pay to stream on Twitch or to post videos to YouTube. All the cost of hosting and serving is borne by the service. Which is why they were doing ads in the first place. But with creators now needing actual production, they realized they were pouring in serious money into their channels, but getting none of that sweet ad money.

So shit got complicated. It's free to post and free to watch. But that doesn't make it free to host or produce. Which is why you have YouTube showing you ads and the video itself being sponsored by AG1, Dollar Shave Club, and Mystery Box of the Month Club.

I think ultimately, these places are going to need to charge for hosting. And yes, that's going to kill a lot of channels. But ok. You can afford overpriced, under-engineered rainbow glowy keyboards, you can instead put that towards a $30/month hosting fee.

It's anything but. Video is more engaging than text. Video hosting is expensive. No one's making tens of thousands a month from their blog (or by convincing people to buy merch based on their blog).

Wordpress is more than blogs. You can run a whole ass site off of the Wordpress platform. You don't even need to have a blog.

But the point is still, Wordpress charges people. YouTube and Twitch do not.

They have a weird broadcast television model going. But broadcast television curates their content and charges advertisers decent rates not dependent on "engagement".

I'm not saying video hosting isn't expensive. I'm saying that YouTube and Twitch should be charging for it. If that makes it infeasible for some people to stream. I'm ok with that outcome.

A sizable portion of the entire internet is running WordPress. That’s billions of dollars a year.

They're running the Software, but they're not on wordpress.com.

If we're talking about Software, then wow, Microsoft is really treating those game streamers well, because they can use it to play games which they stream.

Not really a good comparison. WordPress is comparable because it comes with the same/slightly different tools for building a business. It’s on the same shelf in the grocery store, so to speak.

I don't think so. YT/Twitch provide the platform and the audience, that's comparable to wordpress.com (in a way; it doesn't really provide the audience).

I don't know of any creators that are leveraging wordpress.com.

Using the software is like using Windows (or Linux, if you want a comparison in open source), but I don't think anyone argues that Linux takes good care of creators in the way they expect it from Twitch or Youtube, primarily because Linux doesn't pay creators, it's not a middle-man, it's a tool. Like wordpress.

> Something relatively easy for small streamers to set up and manage on their own, cheap enough to start small and scale up as it starts to make money, with the ability to handle large-scale streams if necessary.

Self-hosted social networks and microblogs are all over the place and have been for decades, and Twitter is falling apart, but the audience is still on Twitter. Self-hosting streams has never been easier, but even if it were one-click it invariably costs money out of pocket for the bandwidth to self-host a stream, and Twitch does not. WordPress is trivial to host for nearly nothing; streaming, not so much.

The appeal of Twitch isn't livestreaming, it's the culture and existing social network of users and streamers who are already there, and the ease of starting up. The architecture or centralization of the next big thing in the space won't matter, it's whether both the creators, audience, and money will all show up at roughly the same time.

> I've been saying for a while that the next big thing in streaming is Wordpress but for Streamers.

One of the really interesting projects I've been tracking for a while is Destiny.gg (D.gg for short): https://github.com/destinygg

Destiny is a streamer, a very controversial one, that often finds himself on the wrong side of rules, and due to his stances, rarely sees clemency from administrators and moderators. Despite this, he has managed to be a professional streamer for over a decade.

Crucial to his ability to survive the bans and de-platforming is that early on he hired someone to build his own pseudo-platform. The big things were: a page that embedded a stream (e.g. Twitch or Youtube), a chat service, a subscription tied into that chat service, and a web site to tie it all together.

This meant that while Twitch could ban him, he would just move over to Youtube and his core community - which chatted on D.gg, not Twitch - would barely notice. Subscribers would be unaffected and his income would be safe.

The elegant details are that the project synchronizes subscriber tiers from the other chats into the main Destiny.gg chat, so even if you subscribed on Twitch or Youtube, you were not only rewarded in D.gg chat, but incentivized to go there because that's where the core community posts.

Socially, it's been interesting to watch because it ended up with two chat-based communities around this streamer and they actually dislike each other. The chat on Youtube leans one way, but the chat on the D.gg leans the opposite way. It's unlike anything I've seen in other streamers.

Live version of the core functionality: https://www.destiny.gg/bigscreen

The whole thing is available for licensing, although no longer publicly maintained. I'm not entirely sure where things are between the developer and Destiny, but it's such an interesting project and I'm surprised it isn't the de-facto standard for most streamers.

It's funny to me the "restrictions" being placed on content creators like it's a new thing. It's only new in that more people are being made aware of how there have always been rules applied to what could or could not be "aired". Yes, there were government rules enforced by the FCC and the infamous stories of getting things past the censors, but there were always deference paid to the corporate sponsors and advertisers. This isn't unique to internet streamers.

If you started out without any consideration of this, then you're just a babe in the woods type of situation, but if you thought you could do this and "disrupt", then you're just living in a delusion. You want to make money from advertisers, then you're going to play by their rules.

Youtube treats creators pretty well, from what I can tell.

It's just that 'influencers' like nothing more than to complain.

Admittedly, Twitch is a clusterfuck though.

That's weird, as my understanding of the YT creator community is constant strife, ever changing rules, arbitrary bans, strikes on their account for vaguely matching copyrighted work, and most recently swearing too much, or too early, in a video.

YT is not friendly to creators, for the same reason Twitch is not friendly to creators: advertisers hate what people want to watch.

Even Patreon, where people pay rather than watch ads, repeatedly runs into issues with creators because of pay schedules, amounts, percent cuts, platform features, and more.

If its someone else's platform, creators don't win.

How? Youtube will take automatic action against peoples channels and then there will be no way to interact with a real human to resolve the situation. The whole system seems like a random black box that does not care for its users.

A channel I like is having to test various patterns of swearing and swear-bleeping to try to narrow down what exactly suddenly changed that wrecked their monetization, which had been fine for years and years. They can't just ask YouTube what they need to do to be OK again. It's really dumb.

Also, creators on a platform that grew its original userbase through piracy and media re-mixes with little or no content-policing now have to be extremely careful about even very clear-cut fair-use of commercial media, or risk losing one of their copyright strikes (as in, three strikes and you're out—that is, we kill your business). It makes their videos worse—so, it's also bad for viewers—and causes them stress.

> Also, creators on a platform that grew its original userbase through piracy and media re-mixes with little or no content-policing now have to be extremely careful about even very clear-cut fair-use of commercial media

Monetization is a big part of this problem. It is possible for something to be fair use and commercialized, but once you've commercialized it you're fighting an uphill battle to claim fair use.

> A channel I like is having to test various patterns of swearing and swear-bleeping to try to narrow down what exactly suddenly changed that wrecked their monetization

This seems like such a stupid, pointless effort. Instead of pentesting to find exactly where the line is so you can toe it perfectly, why not... just stay far away from the line and stop swearing. Wouldn't that be much less effort and less risk?

Might lose them audience & differentiation, depending on what's getting people to show up. Any change in tone or content would carry that risk (or, might improve it—hard to say until you try)

If it makes the videos worse then probably not worth it

From what I've heard from big streamers (Ludwig Ahgren and his gang specifically), he was incredibly out of touch with Twitch culture. Basically zero awareness of what was happening on his platform.

No money no mission. If advertisers leave the ecosystem it all falls apart which is why the content controls are so strict.

Make it a monthly payment like Netflix? Streaming is streaming if you ask me.

You can subscribe to individual creators on twitch. This removes advertising from that streamers stream only.

Really should be a monthly subscription, that will get shared by all creators based on minutes of view time, or some other metric. Then maybe gate it behind some artificial limit, so that only serious creators will get a cut. I mean Spotify can share profits between every single artist, why cant twitch do the same? It would benefit both the consumer, higher likelihood of subscribing, and also the creators. They could also keep running ads on a free tier. It’s not exactly rocket science.

They already have this, although it only pays the streamer for ads the viewer would have seen rather than split across view time.

https://www.twitch.tv/turbo

It seems all YouTube has really done is offer massive contracts to Twitch streamers to poach them. It’s still a terrible streaming platform. Unless you already have a well established audience, you’re not going anywhere there.

As for Kick, that is not a legitimate business. One, they’ve ripped off the entire UI from Twitch. Two, the anything goes attitude is not going to fly if they ever get real advertisers.

They didn't just "rip off the entire UI". Couple of years ago the entire sourcecode of Twitch leaked along with user data, SDKs, security tools etc. They used all that to create Kick after Twitch banned slots.

Last time I checked, Kick still mostly used Twitch logos and their policy documents were still talking about Twitch, since they didn't even bother looking at them.

> Last time I checked, Kick still mostly used Twitch logos and their policy documents were still talking about Twitch, since they didn't even bother looking at them.

While I have not spent enough time on Kick to confirm this, that seems 100% on brand. Again, it's not a legitimate business and likely never will be.

It sounds legit, yet I haven't seen any proof of it.

Kick uses a different technology stack, different frameworks and libraries... so I wonder how much really can be stolen? I wouldn't doubt boilerplate legaleese getting copied from Twitch though.

Way to gloss over those streamers you're mentioning were streaming gambling.

Kick is a front for Stake the bitcoin casino, not a legitimate streaming site. It exists purely because Trainwrecks wanted to keep making money streaming bitcoin slots. It's been an utter shit show with people streaming porn, sex, the super bowl, incredible amounts of racism... Twitch absolutely is not going that direction with good reason.

Indeed, browsing Kick right now shows gambling is the biggest category by far with 42k viewers.

Chat streams are second with 6k viewers, and the most viewed (non-gambling) game has a mere 1.6k viewers.

I can't imagine why anyone would stream games on there unless they're banned from Twitch.

Not knowing, understanding or having any experience of the "streaming" community of the internet. What is the purpose/fun with watching someone not just gamble as in playing poker or whatever for money, but slots specifically? Feels like watching someone rolling a dice by themselves, but with fancier graphics.

People get a second hand buzz when they see people win and the streamer will react in a way that gets people excited. This naturally leads to playing slots yourself and feeling like you are part of a community. It's incredibly lucrative for gambling sites.

My favourite example of this was seeing a popular gambling streamer who had a permanent overlay reading "DO NOT GAMBLE, YOU WILL LOSE", but still raked in sponsorships from gambling sites regardless. Maybe the overlay helped him sleep at night but the sites know that wasn't actually going to deter anyone.

Then there's the shadier casinos that provide fake balances to streamers so they're never at risk of going bust, and can keep perpetually hitting the big jackpots that entice the audience...

That's the guy behind Kick... it's honestly hilarious he lives in this kind of contradiction which is very interesting to see from the outside.

I imagine the answer to that would be one word:

Schadenfreude

> And now that Youtube is robust enough to allow streaming (also with the features that streaming has) it's catching up to them.

Do you have some up-to-date numbers for this? Because YouTube has streaming since 2016, and they never caught up to twitch. Not in the pandemia, when Twitch was growing like crazy. And also not when they bought some big Streamers from Twitch. IIRC, at some point they were even worse than Facebook Gaming for some while. Though, I haven't seen the numbers for 2023 yet.

> Another shock was this new Kick platform which is managed by a creator itself, and apparently is doing quite well on the surface

Kick seems to be 99% bots. I wouldn't call that doing well.

I worked at twitch for almost 5 years and they had no idea what they were doing at all. Emmett was eternally condescending to staff and continuously listened to whoever was playing politics best. His replacement dan was equally checked out and they had no good tech or content ideas. Tech was a joke, spending 50-80% of some teams time on checking off items in huge spreadsheets to be compliant with new systems and processes that were regularly replaced by new requirements and often required rewriting services that were not in use/working just fine in new languages and frameworks to check new boxes and then the cycle repeated itself.

> And now that Youtube is robust enough to allow streaming (also with the features that streaming has) it's catching up to them.

YouTube does not want you to be able to search Live content because they want to sell you YouTube Red or YouTube TV. I can't possibly agree that they are anywhere close to Twitch.

Unless you are already following a creator, or see their published content on the platform, you wouldn't even know live streaming existed on the platform.