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Comment by protonfish | Hacker News Reader

If this is their reasoning, then it is YouTube that is missing the forest if they think destroying the environment that fosters and encourages small content creators is a smart move. All of the big players started there once. As the taste for content matures and viewers search for higher-quality content, hacks like PewDiePie dwindle and pros like Binging with Babish rise. Locking into the cesspool of current popular channels is extremely short sighted. A wiser position would be investing in nurturing up and coming content creators or risk losing to a platform that does.

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> As the taste for content matures and viewers search for higher-quality content, hacks like PewDiePie dwindle and pros like Binging with Babish rise.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but just because you don't like something doesn't mean there's not a huge audience for people like PewDiePie, especially among the younger demographic - which still spends money, and which is a constantly-replenishing spring.

Advertisement is a bad model for niche content creators anyway. Selling "premium" content, contract work, and donations are how most are paying their bills.

EDIT: And PewDiePie won't disappear. He provides the perfect wish fulfillment for kids that would love to stay in their bedrooms and be paid to play videogames all day long.

Ironically it's easier to use YT as free advertising for your own content - and have YT pay you for it, even if the pay is a joke - than to rely on traditional ad revenue.

Maybe if YT wasn't so fixated on ad revenue it wouldn't be missing out on a huge potential market.

No way can he sustain the attention beyond his 30's. His demo will grow up and he'll eventually be a creepy old guy the next generation isn't interested in.

This is true of literally every celebrity.

Many celebrities and entertainers can bring their fanbase with them as they get older. This is literally what people like Leno and the Rolling Stones do.

There will always be new children who will go to youtube and find the most popular youtuber...unless he gets burnt out or feels he has enough money, he's going to keep raking it in.

From their blog post, the majority of the smaller creators that are affected by this change are earning less than $100 per year. There's three types of creators that are impacted by this:

- people who will never earn more than this off youtube, but aren't motivated by earning money.

- people who are currently earning less than this, and are motivated by money but are on a trajectory to quickly exceed 1000 subscribers. they'll be minimally affected.

- people who are currently earning less than $100/yr, but are motivated by money and are unlikely to exceed 1000 subscribers anytime soon. If they're actively working to grow their channel but can't break 1000 subscribers, losing them is probably for the best.

I don't see how this is going to really harm youtube's content pool.

I wonder what the data is on hitting 1000 subs from scratch. I can see it taking 6+ months and if you're putting out daily or weekly content thats a lot of unpaid labor till you get some of that sweet ~$1 per 1000 views. But yeah I think most tubers monetize through patreon/merchandise/non-yt ads so this might not affect things too much.

I suspect your patreon, merch, or other ad revenue is also going to be pretty inconsequential if you're under 1000 subscribers

YouTube is like Walmart.

- There are people who just need to do some work and get out of their house and aren't motivated by earning money.

- There are those who make it their career and want to work up the chain. They will be minimally affected.

- There are those who are part time and but can't make it into full time any time soon. Let's hypothesize that they're not actively trying to be the best workers so let's just get rid of them. No harm done.

That sounds like a pretty scary world.

Not only that, but they're incentivizing the creation of a network of fraudsters. Small-time content creators are already banding together to form subscriber pools.

I remember when Google was known for actually thinking things through.

I don't think anyone got rich assuming that viewers demand high quality content.

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