Comment by phpisthebest | Hacker News Reader

Comment by phpisthebest | Hacker News Reader

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>>That's an odd pet peeve

Everytime there is a YT Change (like happen recently) there is all these videos where YT often try to compare their experience with employment, how their "boss" Susan did something, or how they are being "Fired" if they get banned, or other such non-sense. That is my peeve.

>>I wouldn't be surprised if some countries define employee differently.

I would be surprised if any nation classified a person uploading videos on to a platform with the hopes of having a revenue share on ads the 3rd party sells on those videos is in anyway an "employee" of any kind.

I would also be surprised if any country has laws where 2 parties could not agree to non-disclosure of the terms of their business contract (which is the basis for this comment thread). that is pretty standard really

I would also be surprised since most of the time when you upload a video you have to agree you will be governed under the Laws of the US, and even more specific the laws of California

>I would be surprised if any nation classified a person uploading videos on to a platform with the hopes of having a revenue share on ads the 3rd party sells on those videos is in anyway an "employee" of any kind.

I would be surprised in some countries dont change their laws at some time to account for this digital sharecropping (from Youtube and iOS App Store to Uber, etc), and set some rules (like with employment) to this wild west of making a living that affects millions...

> digital sharecropping

This has to stop. People are making products which one company uses to profit. This company is buying their labor—albeit in a really roundabout way. We’ve heard this gaslighting from e.g. Uber, where their workers weren’t employees but “gig workers”, or some other thing.

The only reason companies do this is to get their labor for cheaper. No, these are YouTube workers, their labor is bought by YouTube, and YouTube should obey all labor laws when they buy their labor and profit from their work.

Does YouTube stop people from uploading the videos to other platforms? Do they require a set commitment of work?

There are various tests that apply to contractors in the U.K. to work out if you’re an employee or a Lego mate contracting company, as it makes a difference to how taxes and benefits are calculated. Fro my understanding YouTube nowhere near meets that criteria of employee/employer. Companies like Uber and deliveroo are far closer.

>There are various tests that apply to contractors in the U.K.

As there are in most of the world. Most of them were made for the factory and office era, and despite "updates" still within the old spirit, are antiquated in 2023 when it comes to addressing many new work scenarios...

I actually wonder if they are really that antiquated, but rather that these schemes to bypass labor laws used to be called out and stopped, either by the unions in the 1890s or 1920s, or by the government in the 1950s.

That is, I wonder if the the deregulation era of the 1980s also deregulated labor practices to the extent that companies can now jump through these hoops in order to avoid labor laws.

the analogy doesn't work here, the videos are owned by their creators so they can monetise that content in other available ways, once an Uber driver has given someone a ride they can't find new ways to profit off of that (at least legally, or unless the passenger was a celebrity)

The farm products were owned by the sharecroppers too, to eat or sell as they see fit. They just had to pay their tax to the landowner and be at their mercy regarding the property and changes in demands.

So if people insist YouTube does not employ the creators of the products that make them money, then at best YouTube is their land lords. I don’t know if that is any better, particularly if this land lord is not asking for rent, but rather, is asking their creators to work for them.

No, this is an even further stretch.

the farm products when used once are used up, videos, texts, "content" can be reused theoretically infinitely.

furthermore you paid for the right to work the land what the landowner asked, nobody pays a minimum rate to have a YouTube channel that I am aware of.

I understand it is a rhetorically powerful phrase, digital sharecropper, but unfortunately as often happens with analogies it falls apart with all the ways it does not fit.

>the farm products when used once are used up, videos, texts, "content" can be reused theoretically infinitely.

How is this a useful distinction? It's about how you can sell the product, but doesn't change the fact that you don't own your lot, that you pay a percentage share to the owner of the place, that they can change the terms or even crush you anytime they like, and so on.

>furthermore you paid for the right to work the land what the landowner asked, nobody pays a minimum rate to have a YouTube channel that I am aware of.

What you paid to the landowner was a percentage of your lot's production, same as with YouTube.

Digital sharecropping?

Any country or group of people is welcome to spin up their own data centers and content moderations teams to make their own YouTube.

And any sharecropper was welcome to buy their own land, spin up their own castle, fund their own mercenary army, and make their own feudal kingdom! Sharecroppers weren't slaves either. But that's a pretty low bar (and "build your own YouTube" a pretty high bar).

I disagree that build your own YouTube is a “high” bar, outside of money.

There are and were multitudes of video hosting and serving websites. It is just ridiculously expensive.

Castles, mercenary armies, and conquering land are comparable much, much more difficult.

>I disagree that build your own YouTube is a “high” bar, outside of money. (...) It is just ridiculously expensive.

I'm not sure what you mean. That it's not rocket science? Well, yes, it isn't. It's not the technology: money (and to a second extend, entrenchment and network effects, and ties with Android, and many other non-tech things) IS of course the huge, sky-high, bar, to building an alternative YouTube.

>Castles, mercenary armies, and conquering land are comparable much, much more difficult.*

Well, it was quite a lot of mobility in the feudal ranks. Any competent mercenary could rise to be a higher ranking soldier, and any compenent and cunning higher ranking soldier could, and often did, take on some existing feudal lords, and get their own smaller or bigger fiefdom. After some point, even succesful merchants could get their own armies and castles and be feudal "nobility". Tons of stories from the feudal times (that was what all of cross-feudal fighting was about), and thousands of castles and fiefdoms - and that's just in Europe.

Whereas Youtube? That's one service of its size/scale in the world, covering multiple billions of people.

That would be more like trying to get something competitive not to a feudal lord (which were a dime a dozen), but to the whole of an empire.

The digital sharecropper analogy is less about the monopoly position of platforms but about the content creator and platform relationship. More platforms wouldn’t change that relationship.

The platform owner can change the relationship, for example if it’s is publicly owned.

The point is is no one else in the world wants to make the enormous investment required to create a YouTube, so why should they get to make the rules?

It is not technically hard to make a YouTube alternative, just expensive.

Isn't buying your own farm easier then spinning up your own data center? I really don't understand the point you're trying to make.

For an individual, yes. For a country? It is just a matter of the country not wanting to spend the money to buy servers, bandwidth, and labor to moderate.

Why are countries coming up now? I thought you were arguing against the sharecropping analogy, and the people that do sharecropping are all low-power individuals.

"Someone rich could make a new ecosystem" is unrelated to whether the current ecosystem resembles sharecropping.

Because coldtea’s response involved using the power of a country’s legal system to force a business to share its revenue.

So, is your arguent that instead of inconveniencing those businesses, countries should just create competiting public services?

They can always do that too, but I'm also full for them inconveniencing those businesses.

Businesses should be whiped and forced to play responsibly in society. They can innovate on tech and features, they don't have to innovate on milking people and erroding working rights.

If an accusation of sharecropping is legitimate, I think it's fair for the government to apply regulation and not just try to compete.

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