[bscphil]

> The provider and about 1% of contributors get the real lions share, the rest are fighting for scraps

This is a good point and a much bigger issue than I was initially thinking. Even if 100% of my YouTube ad money and premium subscription went directly to the creators I watch, proportioned by how much time I spent on each channel, I wouldn't do it. That's because there's a weird inequality created by virality. If you're really successful, you can make millions of dollars a year solo. If you don't get past the algorithm or your content is niche, you might have a team of 5 people and make less than 100k a year in total (and obviously there's a very long tail of people trying to make a career of YouTube who are currently failing to do even that).

At the end of the day, I think this is ... bad. It may seem "fair" for people to be paid linearly with how much their creations are consumed, but the nature of digital media is such that if something is mainstream enough, boring enough, safe enough, it can scale basically forever with no added costs. (It's why Disney movies can make a billion dollars.) If someone whose work I follow is already making six figures a year, I'd much rather continue watching their content for free (which comes at no cost to them because digital media can be copied), while supporting niche creators who are trying to make rent at the end of the month instead. It may not be "fair" (ad blocking is only a step removed from piracy, they're both effectively copyright subversion), but copyright and endless remuneration based on popularity is creating a bad media landscape. I want to see a better one.