The medium of digital entertainment has drastically shifted from traditional outlets to online platforms. Online platforms are now competing directly with satellite and cable television providers for the biggest slice of advertisement revenue and active viewers, and these platforms now share many of the same services that traditional television providers have supplied for decades. Atop all of these online platforms is YouTube: the thirteen year old video sharing website with an estimated $9 billion in annual revenue, a $100 billion evaluation, and a global audience of 1.3 billion users (Bowman). YouTube is a rapidly changing environment; the business models of advertisers and content creators benefitting from the highest online traffic numbers on the internet, have adapted to the rules and guidelines that YouTube believes to be most beneficial for all parties. This practice of following suit with each latest YouTube initiative is counter intuitive to the origin of YouTube’s value as an online service from the perspective of a content creator. Without the content that drives traffic onto the platform, YouTube cannot offer competitive services like Netflix or Cable/Satellite Television can. Because thousands of individuals rely on the YouTube platform for compensation, subjective human moderators have the power to alter the social influence of content creators and distribution of advertisement revenue, and YouTube can change the operational algorithms of its platform in anyway without the consent of its content creators, the platform should be restructured in favor of automatic protocols and a transparent agenda.  

To diagnose the disingenuous nature of the platform, it is important to understand the relationships between the actors in a YouTube economy. The YouTube channel is meant to be and individual account of one person, but many channels are operated by multiple individuals or sometimes a group of employees (individuals can also operate one or more channels). The only way channels can earn revenue through YouTube directly, is a partnership program that distributes a portion of ad revenue to the user. Channels cannot operate directly with the advertisers that contribute to the ad-revenue, instead, the advertisers are contracted through YouTube, and 65% of the money is disbursed to the channel. Another source of revenue for content creators comes from sponsors. If a channel can demonstrate a high volume of traffic to a potential sponsor, the channel may feature sponsored products or services in their videos. There also exists a number of private networks across YouTube but independent from the platform (i.e Machinima, Maker Studios, Full Screen), these networks often deal private contracts to content creators in exchange for promotional services. YouTube also features full length films on its platform through a rental service, but there is little public information on these dealings and channel stakeholders are not affected in this relationship. 

The real value that websites like YouTube can provide to its users is known as an e-service, and unlike other e-services, YouTube utilizes a co-creation of value between users and providers (Kuppelwieser). E-services are electronic services that internet users or entire firms can employ from the publicly accessible internet or from private networks (Alter). The content that YouTube hosts and distributes to its viewers is not licensed or produced by YouTube, every video excluding the feature films library or YouTube’s own channels, is uploaded by users. This is what allows YouTube to generate higher profit margins than traditional outlets; all of its programming is supplied voluntarily by the largest pool of content creators in the world. This economic advantage (or loophole) is one of YouTube’s biggest factors of success, and what allows the company to grow with small operating costs. Many e-services utilize co-creation to supply value to their users – this is the principle idea behind websites like Wikipedia, who’s encyclopedia database has been written almost entirely by online contributors. Unlike Wikipedia, YouTube’s co-creation model supplies the content of a for-profit business, and this is why the contributing users should expect compensation for their work. 

Because YouTube is an open a free website, there is little difference between the experience of registered users and nonregistered users from a value perspective of YouTube’s service; registered users and non-registered users can derive value from the same library of non-age-restricted content. This is different from the subscription based entertainment platforms like Netflix and Hulu; only registered and paying users can access the video libraries of those services. The reward or additional feature for registering as a user, is the ability to contribute to the platform. However, users that contribute video content, and in-turn millions of dollars in ad revenue, can only access the same features as a newly created account. This is counterintuitive to the co-creation aspect of the platform; contributing users that drive revenue and are responsible for online traffic are not differentiated from new users that do not contribute video content. 

The social aspect of YouTube’s platform is what sets it apart from comparable e-services like Netflix and Hulu; users can comment and contribute to the library of content that YouTube freely hosts, and this is a necessary aspect of the co-creation model that has made the platform successful. To ensure that users are contributing to the platform in an acceptable manner that satisfies the expectations of advertisers, YouTube independently moderates its content according to a human moderator’s interpretation of community guidelines.  Human moderators are responsible reviewing videos that are flagged by users, or moderating comment sections that cross community guidelines. There is also a distinction between content that is acceptable and content that is “advertiser friendly”. In 2016, moderators began demonetizing videos that were not advertiser friendly, thus foregoing hundreds of thousands in advertisement revenue for YouTube partners (Eordogh). The decision of a moderator to de-monetize a video is akin to network agents censoring content from television; content that may seem offensive or otherwise unacceptable is censored from television to satisfy the expectations of advertisers. Advertisers that choose to use Google services to advertise on YouTube are relying on moderators to associate their ads with safe content. This relationship is different from the sponsor and content creator agreement to promote products or services within the video, because those agreements do not affect the credibility of the YouTube platform. These actions and policy changes made by YouTube, whose platform originally offered no monetization or revenue opportunities, will ultimately support the company’s best financial interests. 

Acknowledging the pressure on YouTube moderators from channels, advertisers, and the company’s bottom line, content creators and channel representatives should not accept the opinions of subject human moderators as limiting factors of their social influence and financial revenue. It’s no secret that YouTube content creators can earn six to seven figure incomes from advertisement revenue alone. In 2016 the top 10 channels earned at least $5 million in ad revenue respectively, and the number one channel (PewDiePie) earning $15 million (Berg). For a moderator to usurp the potential revenue of a video from one of these popular channels, or any other channel, they would only have to find a few aspects of the video to be “un-advertiser-friendly”. This relationship between a moderator and a channel characterizes the perspective of content creators towards YouTube as a figurative body, being that YouTube has the power to demonetize videos because of a subject or biased decision making process. From an outside perspective, content creators should not accept the conditions made by the platform concerning their largest source of revenue. 

Online moderation has been around as long as social spaces have existed on the internet, and there are undeniable truths about the importance of online safety. The traditional opinion has been that online moderation is a necessary aspect of social spaces. In a Huffington Post article on the necessity of online moderation, author Tamara Littleton, a proponent of human moderation of online spaces, argues that a “part of good social media management is to moderate content: protecting users from harmful or unsafe content and diffusing difficult situations such as bullying or abuse” (Littleton). This statement aligns with the opinions of most internet users and contributors, and echoes the expectations of advertisers associates with such websites, Littleton also states that “Moderation, when done properly, is highly-skilled, with moderators often making - quite literally - life and death decisions about how to deal with reported content”. This idea further inflates the sovereignty of moderators, and their ability to take action against user content. YouTube is meant to be a social space with commenting and messaging features, and if these features were not properly moderated, dangerous or illegal activity could potentially exist on the platform, but the power of online moderator should only extend so far into the frame work of a profitable platform like YouTube.

 These duties are what allow YouTube to justify its actions as a sovereign platform, and reserved the right to remove or restrict content. However, as a multi-billion-dollar company that does not produce anything, YouTube cannot justify its actions to fully dictate the monetization of videos. The demand for a channel’s content is driven by the channel, marketed by the channel, and sometimes the supporting audience of a person’s livelihood. If the platform that does not contribute to the creation aspect of the co-creation model, and decides to demonetize a highly-demanded piece of media, the creator of that media has no compensation for their work, but the platform continues to benefit from the user traffic of the video. This is an issue that has not been recognized by influential community members, but there have been waves of outcry against the platform in the past.  

Beginning in August 2016, the operational algorithms that promote videos and dictate the distribution patterns of uploaded content were altered without any notification from YouTube. These changes caused a ripple effect in the traffic for YouTube videos and prioritized videos with higher view duration and session duration (Gielen). Channels with larger libraries of shorter videos saw large drops in daily views, and there was a wide-spread reaction from content creators and even the YouTube help channel. If YouTube’s reputation towards content creators wasn’t damaged enough by this point, in December of 2016, an unrelated glitch caused popular YouTube channels to lose hundreds of thousands of subscribers in the course of a few days. The reason these changes sparked so much upset and controversy is because of the in-the-dark nature of YouTubes changes to the distribution and promotional protocols of the platform. Major shifts in traffic have major financial implications for a YouTube channel. YouTube channels that use their audience to attract sponsors or join private networks, rely on the traffic and subscriber counts of a channel for the revenue streams of these relationships. 

A common assumption among people unfamiliar with the revenue sharing policies on YouTube is that popular content creators must have relationships with YouTube staff to be so successful on the platform. The reality is that there is no structured relationship or even an official line of communication between channels and YouTube. There is however an initiative called ‘The Creator Hub” that aims to provide services for growing channels, but this initiative is not connected to any significant infrastructure. The most popular and emblematic recognition of a channel’s influence is the “play button”. A play button is an award given to channels that surpass a given subscriber count, and features a silver plaque, a gold plaque, and a diamond themed trophy. This is YouTube’s recognition of the channels that generate billions of dollars in annual revenue, and contribute to all of the digital content that generates online traffic for the website: a silver plaque, a gold plaque, and a diamond themed trophy.

 Further considering the ideas of co-creation between YouTube and its users, and the disconnection of financial motivations between successful content creators and the operational algorithms of YouTube, a logical solution to this issue would mirror similar labor markets with a collective bargaining or unionization among content creators. A phenomenon that exists amongst the seemingly hostile environments and problematic social spaces of the YouTube sub-communities, is the “us and them” mentality of content creators and YouTube as a figurative body. This phenomenon is typified by the mass disliking of YouTube content on its own platform, and the unconditional support of fellow content creators. If channels relied on the relationships across content creators to bargain for proper changes, the collective volume of future digital content and the dedicated audiences of each channel would be enough to restructure the platform. A counterpoint to this solution would be the dedication to the YouTube organization from a small number of large channels, because of personal relationships with the staff, or a sense of gratitude toward the platform that propelled their careers as internet personalities. Regardless of the plausibility of an outright boycott or platform migration, if channels were to collectively bargain with the platform for better compensation or more transparent policy making, the co-creation model would justify their contribution as the primary factor of success for the website. 

If YouTube is to continue their success as an online platform and a profitable organization, the growing tension among content creators and YouTube as a figurative body will have to be subdued. There are interesting events ahead in 2017, with advertisement revenue figures expected to reach an all-time high, and corporate entertainment organizations like NBC, The NFL, and Time Warner Cable, developing relationships with YouTube and taking up a growing portion of the platform’s traffic. The Creator Hub and play button trophies are evidence of the platform recognizing its contributing audience, and for the most part, channels are satisfied with these initiatives, but if content creators, or independent networks were to recognize the displacement in compensation figures between YouTube and its growing work force, one could expect drastic changes.  
