The Fragile Creator Economy - SOME MORE NEWS

Hi. In today's episode, we look at how people make money on the internet, how vulnerable tech platforms affect people's livelihoods, and why "being your own boss" often means your boss is just Jeff Bezos.

Executive Producer - Katy Stoll
Hosted by Cody Johnston
Directed by Will Gordh
Written by Erik Barnes
Edited by Gregg Meller
Produced by Jonathan Harris
Associate Producer - Quincy Tucker
Post-Production Supervisor - John Conway
Researcher - Marco Siler-Gonzales
Graphics by Clint DeNisco
Head Writer - David Christopher Bell

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Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
1:09 - The Ripple Effect
10:32 - When A Site Goes Away
19:38 - So What of Creators?

[snaideramos]

"The internet was supposed to be digital anarchy, but instead got hijacked by corporations using that legal gray area to exploit people"
Best quote of the episode.

[Oxiitocyn]

Cody referencing his actual real life career prior to Some More News is fucking surreal. He's so good at playing his persona that I honestly forget that he's not a perpetually duped pothead who's life hangs up on the whims of an Eldritch horror disguised as a puppet.

[jakestrider]

This was a very cathartic episode to listen to while repairing my sewing machine so I can get back to making cow plushies for my etsy store to pay my medical bills :|

[ancel]

Capitalism really said “You like your work? Then why would we pay you?”

[jeffandersen]

if we lose @SomeMoreNews, we will lose any chance of a boar-free future

[jeremygregorio]

So anyone remember monthly pulp sci-fi anthology books? Fun fact they didn't go out of business because tastes changed. Every single one of the major pulp sci-fi anthology books used the same distributor to get their books into stores. This would have happened in the sixties. A venture Capital firm noticed that the distributor owed a bunch of valuable property so they bought the company and liquidated it.

This left the pulp Syfy companies without a distributor for their and they all went under before they could find and set up a new one. Remember this was the 60s and things moved slower and it was harder to find a company to do that kind of work.

I guess my point is this is absolutely nothing new.

[Lucifer-Riding]

As an Etsy seller I simple LOVE the fact that basically the whole site has become Temu with artificially inflated prices. Cool stuff. Not exhausting at all.

[secondfilms]

"5-Second Films: The App" sounds like a good idea to us. Surely a concept that won't die on the vine

[PatrickWDunne]

The fact that most GoFundMe campaigns are for medical bills is just depressing

[usrnam]

I remember having my whole livelihood dependent on etsy, then 1 day they decided to ban my shop because of some customers mad about having to pay for custom duties, nearly ended up on the street due to trusting them, lost all my savings, lost nearly everything and if not for family's support wouldn't even be here today. The pain and misery they inflicted were untold and still have not recovered years later.

[FirebreathXIII]

Considering last week's Patreon crackdown on many "adult" creators... This is surprisingly well-timed to explain the issue.

[phoenixcry]

Etsy took such a big wet bite out of my sales when someone clicked on an ad I did not want posted that I basically had to give the art away. I shut down my account after that

[apersonwhomayormaynotexist]

I doubt this video will cover it but a video with "fragile creator" in the title like 3 days after the james somerton takedown + him deleting his twitter and turning off comments on his videos is really funny

[Hi_Names_Nat]

Just want to clarify, the Unity situation happened a few months ago, and they have since decided to rollback their 'fee-per-download' model after basically every indie company spoke out. It still hurt them a hell of a lot, a lot of developers have moved to open-source solutions that don't cost anything for anyone, at all.

[brandongratta]

You nailed it all. Most of these stupid things are just middlemen between users and content creators. Everything is just becoming a money vessel while users are responsible for it's health. and the same companies make changes that are typically unpopular by a majority.

The biggest negative change we've had is when apps made the switch from chronological scrolling to algorithmic and endless. Then they force the narrative and everyone either obeys or falls into a void. It's why Facebook claimed IG reels and shortform vids from randoms are what it's users want "according to data", yet most people i speak to still wish instagram was back to mostly content from those we purposely followed for that reason over a stranger's content. it's not about you. it never was they just don't need to hide it anymore.

And as a result it assumes my band's followers don't care to see our show announcements because people constantly ask me when the next one is despite posting about it.. how is hiding content from the users that do want it going to help growth? Instead we're penalized for not posting 10 vids every single day and jumping on viral trends. We're just trying to be a band, not insta creators.

[bigmagictent]

Thank you for shining a light on how predatory all of these platforms have become
🙏

[troqu]

They also didn't mention how a lot of these funding sites also take advantage of the sex industry for early explosive growth before randomly deciding to "fix" their image by ruthlessly cutting as many of them out as possible since safe places to sell adult entertainment are rare.

[dTones]

i appreciate the odd shorter episode tbh <3 especially when I watched some very niche and obscure 3h51m video that absolutely no-one is talking about a few days ago

[JohntheDuncan]

I love the precarity of my fake internet job. It almost reaches the precarity of my real academic career

[CyrilZhe]

Yanis Varoufakis has a lot of talks about this topic. He calls it another form of economics, that has more common with feudalism than with capitalism.

As these platforms have their digital fiefs, and if you want in they charge you % of your income just for being there. Thus these the people owning these platforms are very much like feudal lords extracting money from their serfs.