Can you give a bit more detail on the term "Averagisation", couldn't find much about it from a quick google.
What you describe sounds more like polarization.
What you describe sounds more like polarization.
However, what I mean by "Averagisation" is that all the content begins to look like the previous one and as the trend is to drift either to the most monetizable or most politically extremist.
I wouldn't call this polarisation because these are not polar opposites. The "nice, advertisers friendly" content is not polar opposite to the extremist content, they co-exist without any conflict. So, the content becomes more from the same, just they are in two categories.
Instead, I coin a word and proceed to explain it. I find that using words with precise technical definitions or words that are jargons is dangerous in an informal context.
You get one set of creators who want monetary gain and so their content fits within certain limits. Over time this will create more similar content as they watch what works for other people.
The other set of creators have different goals and don't care about monetary gain. The popular parts of this content will also tend to local maximum based on the level of extremism that's popular.
I wouldn't call this polarisation even if it can be described as the polarisation of income models because my concern is about the content of the videos.
I find it disturbing to see comments on HN completely disregarding the content and context and default to monetary optimisation.
I believe that people and their creations are what matters and the business models around those are incidental, despite the fact the business is influencing the content.
People always sing songs but the way they profit from this keeps changing over time. Selling tickets, selling recording, selling streaming, selling right - all change as the technology and society changes.
Therefore, I think that the polarisation is not the right word here as there is no polarisation of the content of ad-friendly and controversial content. They might be polarised among themselves tho, like iPhone vs Samsung and MAGA vs Antifa.
The polarization isn't about income models, it's about the different kinds of content (light hearted safe content that aligns with advertisers vs extreme content that doesn't). I may have confused things by mentioning gain. The different goals of the creators was just my basic explanation as to why similar content continues being created because the effect is already in place.
I find it disturbing that you disregard the effect of capital. Advertisers are 100% focused on monetary optimization, and they're very good at driving creators to what will work best for them.
Of course content and context is important. But, money drives the content creation. Even when it isn't used to pay for the original content. Advertisers want impressions and clicks. Content creators want more viewers. The type of content aligns with advertisers goals -> money becomes involved -> more similar content. And other creators see this and want part of it.
Anyway, the content is a cultural product and if not treated as such you'll end up losing your business to someone who does. In that case, if the blockchain people figure out a way that to reward content in a different way than pleasing advertisers then there's a huge opportunity to disrupt Youtube.
At the end of the day, despite what your analytics software says, it's not just impressions what your product gets - it's people watching videos. Content creators don't necessarily want more viewers, they want more influence or more money or more appreciation.
After all, there's a reason why don't consume the same content since the invention of camera and advertisements.
It is, but its also more.
OP wrote:
> The moment that you make a content that advertisers might find controversial you risk losing your reward for that content so advertising financed media fails to capture anything beyond the mainstream entertainment.
This described self-censorship. Wikipedia has a nice article about that, including many examples. [1]
It's a process that maintains the existing polarization.
(Why ice-cream stands on a beach bunch together in the middle instead of being conveniently - for customers - distributed.)
There are certainly examples of things like UK newspapers downplaying reports of crime by their advertisers [2], newspapers with advertorial "the real russia" supplements being less critical of russia, local newspapers that rely on ads from estate agents not reporting on crime by local estate agents, and suchlike. There's not much reporting of this stuff online (who'd report it, after all?) but if you can get a paper copy of Private Eye, there are regular reports of this sort of thing.
And of course, you can easily imagine Youtube video creators not wanting their videos demonetised - while demonetising seems pretty inscrutable, "don't offend advertisers" seems to be the name of the game.
There's also a subtler process at work than reports just not getting run; it's that journalists know they won't find it profitable to focus their career on scrutinising big businesses, and youtubers know channels that talk about sexual health and prescription drug costs tend to not do well - so they focus their careers/channels in different areas.
In this case, there's no spiked report or tagged video serving as a smoking gun - just a "lack of interest" as interested people focus their energy elsewhere.
[1] https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=self-censorship+advertisin... [2] https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-media-telegraph-id...