RIP Youtube

[Baruch]

Well then substitute get a real job for choose a livelihood from any number of known existing sources which do not suffer the disadvantage of having a single solitary product and a single solitary revenue stream which both depend on the whims of an entity you have zero control over and zero influence with.

It doesn't quite flow like get a real job does. But it does describe the point a bit more accurately I suppose.

Saying and doing are two different things.  I know one person, one ... who has two forms of real income, and his self-employment income is turning from a business into a hobby ... because he went from single to married with kid.  Also getting a unique if temporarily valuable skill, is usually by luck, and becomes valuable only over a long time (5 or more years) and then its shelf life is limited too.  Sucks to be you ... and me ;-)

[drunkenshoe]

There's a difference between people who make Internet content for a living and people who make YouTube videos for a living. This topic is about YouTube, and all of my comments have been about YouTube. All YouTubers make Internet content, but not all internet content producers are YouTubers. Don't put words in my mouth.

YouTube is a private company that allows people to publish videos for FREE. To publish on YouTube, you don't need an agent or a contract, so really, YouTube already overwhelmingly favors content producers. That being said, people that post videos on YouTube are not employees of YouTube. At best, they are freelancers who use YouTube as a FREE platform, again, with very few restrictions on what they post.

By the way, if they wanted to, YouTube actually reserves the right to restrict whatever fucking content they want, not just strip ad revenue. YouTube does not equal the Internet. YouTube is a private company: the Internet is not.

If people are convinced the only way they can make a living and feel like productive members of society is to make videos ranting about what's wrong with the world and get paid for it, then they are completely free to do so. Most will probably be broke as fuck, but it's their right (at least if they're American) to seek self-determination and all that bullshit. Rant away on the Internet. But to act so entitled as to say that advertisers who partner with YouTube OWE them money for the content they produce, sorry, they don't. Just because it was that way in the past, YouTube, as a private company, reserves the right to make changes to its policy. Don't like it, then start your own company and court your own advertisers.

This. QFT.

[Johan]

Saying and doing are two different things.  I know one person, one ... who has two forms of real income, and his self-employment income is turning from a business into a hobby ... because he went from single to married with kid.  Also getting a unique if temporarily valuable skill, is usually by luck, and becomes valuable only over a long time (5 or more years) and then its shelf life is limited too.  Sucks to be you ... and me ;-)

Hmm.... I think you misunderstood what I wrote. I didn't say anything about completely separate forms of income. My comments were focused on having only one revenue stream i.e. only one product to sell and only one way of selling it. Let me explain. Lets look at musicians. What do that do? They make music. How might they derive revenue from that music? Well they can perform it live at various venues so that's a revenue stream. They can also record it and sell copies of those recordings so that's a separate revenue stream. Same artist, same basic product i.e. music, two different revenue streams from it. The artist can also sell merchandise related to themselves and their music (t-shirts, stickers etc) thus creating an additional revenue stream.

When you try to make a living off of youtube, you have exactly one stream of revenue, i.e. monetizing via ads. So you've got only one product to sell, i.e. video content. And you've got only one way to sell it, i.e. ads. Musicians can perform live at lots of different venues. If one bar or theater goes out of business or decides to stop hosting live music, there are other venues to go to. With youtube content, youtube is your venue. If youtube decides to stop hosting your content, you're screwed. If youtube decides to limit your ability to sell ads on their platform, you're screwed.

[Baruch]

By popular consumerism, Youtube has a monopoly ... of course it will be abused.  If there were just one talent agent, and all artists had to work thru that one agent, the artists would be screwed too.

[Johan]

By popular consumerism, Youtube has a monopoly ... of course it will be abused.  If there were just one talent agent, and all artists had to work thru that one agent, the artists would be screwed too.

Right. But there's not just one talent agent. And that was my point. There are LOTS of ways for anyone to choose to try to make a living, including artists and/or those who consider themselves to be 'viable content creators'. If they make the choice to make a living solely via youtube and get screwed in the process? Boo fucking hoo IMO.

I mean don't get me wrong, I get that there are lots of individuals who produce worthwhile youtube content. But being good at your particular 'thing' has NEVER been an automatic free ride that excuses you from having to get all the other parts right as well. IOW it stands to reason that there have probably been quite a few individuals who were more talented than Mozart and could have single-handedly pushed music culture to the next level. But they couldn't pull it together to make a living at their intended trade so they never made it to the point where they were able to leave their mark on history.

Put another way, the music business is... duh... a business. Its never enough to be good at the music part. You also have to master the business part. Same applies to every other endeavor that involves money.

[Blackleaf]

YouTube is punishing some of their best talent with these stupid moves. From vague rules that allow any random video to be removed, to the broken system that allows people to file copyright claims on videos that have absolutely nothing to do with anything of theirs, to take the ad revenue from the video while YouTube's elusive staff who can't be contacted take their sweet time to review it, and then issue no disciplinary action for the false claim or any compensation for the lost revenue to the victim. And now YouTube Heroes, a system which rewards people for flagging videos and comments by giving them the ability to speak directly to staff (which content creators should be able to do) and to mass flag videos without even having to watch them first. Seriously?

Aside from the obvious problems that abusers of this system will cause, there's also the issue of giving the responsibility of moderating every YouTube community to one single group. What might be considered unacceptable in the comments section of one video may be par for the coarse in another. You have to take into account the type of audience that a creator attracts. Sesame Street and The Amazing Atheist have drastically different audiences. You can't apply the same standards to everyone. I don't know what the people at YouTube have been smoking, but they've been full of stupid ideas lately.

[drunkenshoe]

A mighty internet god is angry. He demands sacrifice! The punishment is upon us mortals. If the blood is not paid the crops will fail, we will suffer a famine! All births will be stillborn and wives will rebel against their men. Pray...Pray! The end is nigh.

[Baruch]

Youtube has always been a bad business model, that is why they sold out to Google aka CIA.  Better to let the rebellious peasants gavotte while under surveillance.  It is surprising, but probably a predictable statistical anomaly, that anyone could ever make a net profit as a producer.  There has never been enough people to police it, it is too big and dynamic ... hence the desire to hire the Chinese or Indian population to volunteer for free.

[drunkenshoe]

Youtube has always been a bad business model, that is why they sold out to Google aka CIA.  Better to let the rebellious peasants gavotte while under surveillance.  It is surprising, but probably a predictable statistical anomaly, that anyone could ever make a net profit as a producer.  There has never been enough people to police it, it is too big and dynamic ... hence the desire to hire the Chinese or Indian population to volunteer for free.

Youtube is a monopoly. It's never bad news that a monopoly is likely to fall as a result of changed policies, but then this is something different. It's a private country trying to create a channel to trim themselves down in the way they like. It's highly likely better for them in a loong term business planning.

[Baruch]

Youtube is a monopoly. It's never bad news that a monopoly is likely to fall as a result of changed policies, but then this is something different. It's a private country trying to create a channel to trim themselves down in the way they like. It's highly likely better for them in a loong term business planning.

But the French Revolution didn't happen at the height of French royal tyranny (I am watching the opening episode of Versailles) ... but as they tried a controlled weakening of the tyranny (Estates General)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2016/05/23/welcome-to-versailles-the-bbcs-raunchy-new-drama-set-in-the-cour/

Voila!

[drunkenshoe]

But the French Revolution didn't happen at the height of French royal tyranny (I am watching the opening episode of Versailles) ... but as they tried a controlled weakening of the tyranny (Estates General)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tv/2016/05/23/welcome-to-versailles-the-bbcs-raunchy-new-drama-set-in-the-cour/

Voila!

Irrelevant example. We don't need Youtube to survive.

[Baruch]

Irrelevant example. We don't need Youtube to survive.

We don't need brioche to survive either (or cake ... but she actually said brioche).  Since most of us aren't farmers ... most of the US population is surplus.  In France, the peasants didn't get to keep enough of their serf output, and were in debt ... otherwise there was enough food.

[drunkenshoe]

We don't need brioche to survive either (or cake ... but she actually said brioche).  Since most of us aren't farmers ... most of the US population is surplus.  In France, the peasants didn't get to keep enough of their serf output, and were in debt ... otherwise there was enough food.

Except there is no evidence that she ever uttered the words, highly likley she didn't. It is a myth with a 'moral' created later to instill the fear in any monarcy supporter against the revolution. The only reason she is attributed to such a role is that she was the last queen before the revolution and widely known for her luxury taste and life style. Other than that she is just an ordinary French Royal.

In any case, it would be completely normal to say something like that for a woman; 'God's anointed Queen' who grew up as a royal in palaces all her life by eating 'cake' whenever she wanted.

Enough food doesn't equate to distribution of wealth overall. There are no standards in anything, stop thinking in modern, post French Revolution concepts.

But then example is irrelevant to begin with. Try again.

[Hydra009]

Aside from the obvious problems that abusers of this system will cause, there's also the issue of giving the responsibility of moderating every YouTube community to one single group. What might be considered unacceptable in the comments section of one video may be par for the coarse in another.

Yeah, I watched a lot of the YouTube videos on the Heroes thing and that came up a lot.  One YouTuber said that he wouldn't want a random Hero to jump into his videos' comments sections and police them, potentially censoring people who simply disagree with him or censoring comments on one side of the ideological spectrum or another.

And virtually everyone took great exception to the mass flagging tool.  Because we all know an individjual situation who would jump at the chance for that kind of power and would abuse the hell out of it.

[AllPurposeAtheist]

YouTube isn't going anywhere and you're not required to watch anything on it if you don't like their policies. But hey, start your own video posting site with absolutely no rules and welcome to the wonderful world of spammers. There are plenty of free YouTube clone scripts out there.
I watch a lot of woodworking videos and many have found ways to monitize their channels.
Check out Izzy Swan..