this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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The creators also get a good chunk of the money from premium as far as I’ve been able to verify (by asking some I follow directly).
Why not pay creators directly through Patreon PayPal or equivalent instead of Google as well?
Well, for one thing it scales more efficiently. If you watch 50 creators, giving Google a 45% cut is more efficient than paying processing fees on $20 split 50 ways. If you want to be truly fair, the logistics become basically impossible without massively increasing your budget. That's why, when most people opt to give directly, they're effectively choosing to reward only their most favorite channels while giving nothing to everyone else.
I don't necessarily think there's anything wrong with that, but it's not objectively superior to Premium, which does fairly distribute the creator's cut. Google is able to endlessly split your $11 creator's cut into micro-contributions based on exact watch-time in a way that individuals cannot replicate. Every creator you watch gets their share. Not as much as a direct donation, true, but nobody gets left out and it's considerably more than they'd get from an ad-watching viewer.
Finally a good argument, thank you.
I agree that premium splits the percentage of my cash equally and easily but only 55% bugs me. That's an arbitrary number based off of some black box calculation.
I do not trust YouTube to have my or the creators best interest in mind.
If this number was 90% for creators I would consider it fair. The majority of the work comes from creators and is the reason YouTube has any people at its doorstep.
In the meantime, I can still far less effectively make use of my money the way I want to until a better alternative comes around.
I'll just have the sweat it and try harder to be a better consumer, I guess.
It's not arbitrary. It's the same 55/45 split that creators have gotten from ad-revenue as part of the YouTube Partner Program. I can't seem to find a source to prove it, but IIRC the split percentage has remained completely untouched for a very long time, maybe even since YPP was originally introduced in 2007.
I should also stress that this is a revenue split, not a profit split. Youtube pays all of their operating expenses after creators take their 55% share. It means that the final balance sheet for Youtube works out to something like (fudging): 55% creators, 25% expenses, 20% profit. I won't shill for the shareholders -- the deal could be better, but it's not exactly highway robbery, either.
Thank you for the information. I needed some brushing up on all of it.
If no one pays for YouTube how can they keep supporting their insanely costly infrastructure? Hosting all those videos is not free. Far from it.
I'm perfectly fine paying for YouTube if that means I can continue to have access to awesome creators under a easy to use platform. It would be a very sad day if Google decided to shut down YouTube due to not being able to cover it's costs.
The only other company that could potentially take over would be meta. Which would probably be even worse. At least YouTube provides an option to pay to disable ads.
Good. Let them close it.
They won't, because it's still making money hand over fist. This is all because tech profits are down a smidge now we're all getting back to normal after COVID, so they're all cranking up the enshittification dial to compensate.
None of these companies are "losing" money. They're just making very slightly less than they were before. Fuck 'em.
I would be fine if YouTube crumbled and was put into second place by a better platform or two.
Yes it's the best option currently which is why they can do such ridiculous practices.
But once they have actual competition, I expect them to bend over backwards for my attention. Because if they don't change the current trajectory, they'll go the way of the other digital giants of the past.
Do not worry about having a viable platform in a future without YouTube. I am 100% sure there will be one.
I just wish they kept the ads at the start and end. There is something off putting about watching some documentary about some horrible event only to have it pause for some perky Grammarly ad in the middle of it.
This is an extremely unlikely hypothetical. Google is one of the most profitable companies in the world and there is no sign of that changing, even considering all the people who block ads right now. There is no reason to squeeze everyone like this.