YouTube has paid out more than $30 billion to content creators over the past three years

Shawn Knight

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Editor's take: YouTube has paid out more than $30 billion to content creators over the last three years according to CEO Susan Wojcicki. As the Google-owned video sharing service turns the page to 2021, it remains steadfast in its desire to improve the platform and create a better environment for creators and viewers alike.

In 2019 alone, YouTube contributed an estimated $16 billion to the US gross domestic product (GDP). According to Oxford Economics, that’s roughly equivalent to 345,000 full-time jobs.

Creators are diversifying their revenue streams as well. Wojcicki in a community letter said that last year, the number of channels making the majority of their revenue from Super Stickers, Super Chats and memberships tripled. The number of new channels that joined YouTube’s Partner Program, meanwhile, more than doubled in 2020.

Wojcicki also outlined some of the changes YouTube intends to make in the year ahead.

Specifically, YouTube aims to be more transparent with regard to policies that impact creators and will make improvements to the appeals process. The video site will also start asking creators in the US to share details about their gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation on a voluntary basis in order “to understand what’s happening at scale for different communities on YouTube” and to help make it “a better place for everyone.”

Wojcicki's full letter, which additionally touches on topics like misinformation, health and helping people learn new skills, can be found over on the official YouTube blog.

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Still relevant for me on the music side of content and happening stuff too.
Rather pay more tax than open cardboard and packaging though.
 
Really if you are on YouTube you have to push paid promotions and partnerships and your own merch among few other passive income ways. Just solely ad revenue won't cut it, or it might but all ya' eggs are in one baskit'
 
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Given its tightening grip on free speech, I sincerely wish it to die. Or be beaten by a younger, truly liberal platform.


Kinda funny, today when you say liberal, it could mean a variety of things. From the borderline insanity as used by radicals, all the way back to its true form that is hardly ever used by a few.
 
Wow, I wasn't aware that TechSpot did PR for Google. What this article forgets to include is just how much YouTube has profited from content creators over the past three years. Since YouTube doesn't actually create any content, literally all of their profit comes from ads before, during and after the content providers' videos.

Well, the answer is $45 BILLION. So Google has pocketed $15 BILLION over the past three years. They skim 1/3 of all YouTube revenue and pay the actual content creators (the ones who really generate the revenue) what's left. I think that pulling in $5 BILLION per year just from YouTube and then using algorithms as much as possible to "moderate" the site when they could easily afford to hire actual humans makes Google/YouTube a typical psychopathic corporation who only cares about the greed of its shareholders. Now we know (at least partially) where Google's constantly rising record profits come from.

Quite often, in order to get even a half-decent piece of the pie, the poor creators often have to work so many hours that, averaged out using the money they get, ends up being less than the current (pathetic) US minimum wage of $7.25/hour. How many times have we seen Steve and/or Tim look like death warmed over because they hadn't slept in days? For some, it's a choice that they make. For others, they do it because they can't find a decent job elsewhere and have to keep a roof over their heads.

I don't think that Shawn intended for his article to sound like a YouTube PR ad. That's not his style and I've enjoyed his work for a long time. It's just that this article comes across as trying to make a multi-billion dollar corporation with a reputation for having terrible ethics sound like a charitable foundation.

Again, I'm not disparaging Shawn, I'm just pointing out the elephant in the room.
 
Given its tightening grip on free speech, I sincerely wish it to die. Or be beaten by a younger, truly liberal platform.


Kinda funny, today when you say liberal, it could mean a variety of things. From the borderline insanity as used by radicals, all the way back to its true form that is hardly ever used by a few.
The only problem that I have with US-style "free speech" (and it's a problem that a lot of the Western World has with it) is that Americans seem to think that barefaced lies and misinformation that causes serious damage to society should be protected the same as objective and provable fact.

If anyone can just publicly lie without consequences, how do you know if anything you're being told is the truth? That's why American society is in the shape it's in right now, because the media has been allowed to lie so often that a huge chunk of the population now believes it. This same chunk of the population is so brainwashed even when the people spouting these lies lose EIGHTY-SIX court cases about the very thing they're lying about, the people's blind belief in these lies isn't even dented.

Now, on the other hand, I don't care if something is offensive as long as it is 100% true. This isn't about left or right, it's about true or false. That means not "true in a way" or "depending on your point of view" because something is either true or it isn't, period. As it is now, nobody with a public pulpit is required to provide any actual evidence to back up their (sometimes crazy) claims.

Sidney Powell's "Kraken" is a perfect example of this. She made all of these wild and baseless claims and despite repeatedly saying that she has all of the evidence she needs to go forward, she has never gone forward with it and has never provided evidence. Hell, even Tucker Carlson threw her under the bus for it and he's not exactly a paragon of honest reporting himself.

Free speech is fine but objectively lying is not. That's where a lot of these platforms draw the line (assuming that they even care enough to draw that line in the first place). Remember that the Internet is international and the USA's idea of free speech only really exists in the USA. These platforms have to be acceptable in many countries to be viable.

As for the political spectrum, I see it like this (from left to right):
True Positions: Progressive - Liberal/Moderate/Centrist - Conservative

I consider SJWs and fascists to be fake positions because they lie about their identities to begin with. SJWs call themselves progressives but they're not. Fascists call themselves conservatives but they're not. They are both authoritarian/totalitarian doctrines that only differ in what they want to force down the throats of everyone else whether they want it or not. They also both want authoritarian or totalitarian control over the thought and expression of individuals instead of only controlling what is harmful to society. They tend to have overly-powerful negative reactions to things that are driven by emotion instead of the rational and thoughtful objections than would be displayed by the far more rational progressives, liberals and conservatives.

They're also both quite similar in that they get so easily offended that it seems like they're always looking for an excuse to be offended by something. Their reactions can be so stupidly strong that I often think that they're lying (both of them). They also hate each other more than anyone else. Ironic, isn't it? :laughing:
 
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They should put the horses back of the truck and remove the auto play next function and replace it with an auto play a completely random but in same genre function. YouTube one day (not to far) will die from entropy.


One YouTube video can be up to 125 gigabytes (that's the limit it accepts as upload), that's maybe near the size of all mobile apps in a major store.
 
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