| > not just people making weapons are getting demonetized. I didn't state that, I gave context as to how this union thing started. One specific user was upset his videos showing him defeating law enforcement armor with homemade projectile weapons was demonetized and took offense. Some of the channels that immediately started supporting him were channels like Taofledermaus (as I said above, along with why they were getting demonetized) and pepole like Cody of Cody's Lab (that had federal agents search his property after some of his videos involving his handling and piss-poor storage of radioactive materials, the poisons literally on a shelf with his canned garden produce and him nearly blowing his own finger/hand off smacking home-made nitro with a knife), months after he quickly walked through an airport recording himself with his phone literally talking about blowing himself up) that also had videos demonetized. Besides, it is entirely YouTube's right to demonetize videos and entire accounts. YouTube is NOT a hosting provider, content creators are NOT customers. YouTube is an advertising platform and the advertisers are the customers. If I want to advertise my widget, maybe I don't want it being uploaded to people that crush things with a hydraulic press or people that are overly political or people that are making weapons or people that are editing movie trailers together to be other genres. There are gobs and gobs of content creators that receive their funding via Patreon/YouTube's Patreon clone/selling merch etc. These creators have never paid YouTube a single cent to store and host their videos, not one. When you create an account, YouTube does not promise to make you rich by sending you truckloads of money for people watching you and your boyfriend record you talking about your rescue dog or having a 'muckbang' or painting (Jenna Marbles and Julien). No one is forcing content creators to upload to YouTube, they are more than welcome to PAY another service to host their videos. YouTube is not some inherent right, YouTube servers don't grow in the wild, if YouTube wants to take 99.99% of the money the top creator's videos make, that's their right especially given there are millions and millions of people uploading hundreds of hours of video per MINUTE that are costing YouTube more to store and host than they'll likely ever recover from the bulk of creators. |
Sure they are customers, i 'm sure if you search their Tos they will even call them customers. If they don't then they have to consider them employees, pay benefits etc. (Similarly to how Uber's clients are its drivers)
> YouTube servers don't grow in the wild
They do, youtube is losing money and is only kept alive because google pays for it. They make money indirectly even when demonetized videos are viewed, since they keep users returning to the site. Google has an anti-competitive interest to keep running youtube, they are not doing charity.