Small Creators Drive YouTube

YouTube is a weird concept, if you think about it. It got its start because so many people were trying to find the same video, and there was no real service to provide access to videos. And goodness knows that’s still one of its uses—you’re looking for a clip from the news or an old video or a trailer. Something prerecorded that you just wanted to watch—you can find entire movies there, and believe me I have. Mostly public domain ones, but not always. Old TV shows that aren’t available anywhere else. Music videos from the ‘80s. Whole hours of commercials arranged by decade.

But there’s another aspect to the service, one that’s clearly taken over. Nearly four million people are subscribed to a channel where a guy cooks and eats historical recipes. Over two million people are subscribed to a channel where a woman talks about death and the funeral industry. Over a million and a half people are subscribed to a channel where a man reads Reddit posts. And that’s just what I myself am subscribed to; nearly half a billion people are subscribed to a guy who . . . I don’t even understand what he does. Weird challenges and eventually a Squid Game-esque show on Prime?

What I can also tell you, though, is that considerably fewer of the channels I watch are anywhere near that popular. I’ve actually been on three YouTube channels myself—our own Media Magpies channel has one video so far and a whopping 22 subscribers. Vandalia1998, which I’ve been on a lot more and will be on again soon talking about the MCU phase by phase, has slightly over a thousand subscribers. Bad Science Sunday, which is a weekly show about debunking bad science, has a couple hundred more than that. Some of the others I watch are as many as a few tens of thousands, and that’s it.

Now, one of the channels I watch regularly is Dapper Dinosaur. He’s got nearly 15,000 subscribers. He’s monetized. Between YouTube, Patreon, and his store, he’s been able to make a living at it for some time now. He’s not rich by any stretch of the imagination, but he keeps a roof over his head and food on his table and does well enough to buy one of his cohosts pizza every now and again. He likes what he does, he’s combating misinformation at minimum three days a week, and he’s a pretty decent guy.

And YouTube is constantly making all that harder. They are nickel-and-diming the small creators to death. I know for a fact that the service limits how many memberships are allowed to be gifted on Bad Science Sunday, and it’s a lot fewer than there are subscribers. Even The Click will tell you that YouTube randomly unsubscribes people, and the notifications are notoriously spotty. YouTube takes a higher percentage of memberships than Patreon. The algorithm doesn’t show me Dapper’s videos as things I’d want to watch no matter how many of his videos I rewatch because I’m bored.

YouTube needs the creators given its current model. Sure, “Janet Jackson Super Bowl” is one of the immediate results when you start searching “Janet,” and there are multiple uploads of that clip with tens to hundreds of thousands of views each. Since Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” all the most popular videos are music videos, generally by big-name performers. (Except “Baby Shark Dance,” number one with over sixteen billion views.) Trailers drop, and everyone rushes to watch them. All of this remains true.

But Dapper, or Debate Hub, or Dr. Kipp Davis, or Vishanti, or OK Roll? They’re trying to provide good content, and if only, to my knowledge, Dapper (maybe Chesh of Debate Hub) is trying to make a living at it, that’s no reason for YouTube to treat them the way it does. I know that Reannag Teine uses their channel to promote their pottery business, but come on—people making pottery while their cats look on is such a great YouTube thing. They don’t need to make a ton of money at it, but YouTube makes money off them, after all. Likewise my friend from junior high who does children’s art tutorials and is a professional art teacher.

And, fine, maybe not everyone is interested in the various Science Friends, because most of them do anti-creationist content and it’s fairly niche. (Or, if you’re Reason to Doubt, the Shroud of Turin.) But if they’re screwing over Doktor Deino, they’re probably screwing over Philosophy Tube, and there’s a reason she keeps hyping those Nebula subscriptions. I know they’ve screwed over Caitlin Doughty, who is publishing more and more of her videos on Patreon instead so she doesn’t have to worry about community guidelines while running a channel that talks about death as its very nature.

YouTube seems set up by its very nature to push, say, 5 Minute Crafts (no link because they suck and most of their “hacks” are fake) instead of Dollightful or Miso Hungrie or whoever. And Milo Rossi has made enough of a success of his channel to be doing a book tour. And good on him; I have the book, and it’s a lot of fun. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the algorithm is still set up to send you to Graham Hancock instead. My Friends Call Me Pat would be a less problematic breakout star than about half the people on the list of most-subscribed YouTubers—unlike a certain Swedish guy, there’s nary a whiff of Nazism to him.

The platform needs creators. It needs to reward the creators by helping them actually survive, because if they can’t afford to keep going, the platform loses content. As I write this, Dapper’s doing a membership stream because he won’t be able to keep his channel going if YouTube keeps screwing him over. Gifted memberships go to randos instead of regulars, which means memberships get gifted less often. He doesn’t draw many new viewers even with the randos’ getting memberships. He is, in short, a microcosm of the platform and tells us all where it needs improvement.