Nilay Patel on what YouTube is counting on you to keep doing:
Nilay:
And all of that is up against YouTube, TikTok, whatever, whose economics are,
‘A bunch of kids show up and make the work for free, and then we pay them not enough money to run sustainable businesses. And then we collect the ad dollars on the back of that.’
And that — I honestly don’t know how much longer that has in it. Like a— I mean, there’s an infinite supply of kids who want to be famous who will work for YouTube for free…
David:
That the— that’s the thing. Yeah.
Nilay:
…but it feels like some bubble will pop there because the rates aren’t high enough. Like, more and more people are watching YouTube and TikTok and whatever, and advertisers are putting more money into it, but then the number of creators who want a piece of that pie is also going up.
And I don’t think the amount of money going into the system is keeping up with the amount of people who are taking money out of the system on the creator rates, and so they’re all getting paid less money. And, like, something will reconcile itself there.
But none of that — like, Mr. Beast did not make his, like, labor law violation in Squid Games. He made that for Netflix, right? Because Netflix can pay him the rates to do it.
And there’s just something there that is like, if you want to make that next turn, you have to go to a place where the distribution is more valuable or, like, people perceive it’s worth real money, not just free stuff on YouTube.
But that is still the thing they’re all competing with.
David:
Yeah, no, I think that’s right. And the challenge is, it feels like it’s not obvious where the people who turn out of that turn to, right?
It’s back to the, ‘Like, where-are-you-going-to-go?’ question.
And I think the Netflixes and Disneys of the world are increasingly content to sort of skim off the top, right, and give Mr. Beast more money to go do the shiny things for Netflix.
But for everybody else who is just in the grind, there aren’t that many moves, and the platforms know it.
— end of vid clip: @ minute 26:58
They 100-percent know it. The good news is, you don’t need that many moves — you just need one. Own your platform.
— Tang
Nilay Patel’s owned platform is The Verge.
David Pierce’s owned platform is DavidPierce.xyz.
