[ehhthing]

I think the last few paragraphs go off the rails. If creators didn't own (at least in some way) some controlling stake in Nebula, why would they publicly say that they do? Moreover, why would creators join Nebula if the terms were not beneficial to them in the first place?

I find it funny that the author writes

> It’s equally possible, however, that the system was set up in order to keep any meaningful power away from the creators.

Does the author really think that the chance that all of these creators are lying to their audiences is just as likely as them all telling the truth?

Also, the author even admits

> As I mentioned previously, some ownership of Standard has since been offered to other creators through stock options, but it’s unclear how much or what type of stock those options represent.

Owning equity (and thus voting power) in Standard also means that the creator has the ability to vote on how Standard operates Nebula. So the conclusion that the creators have no control over Nebula literally cannot be true. So the statement that "the creators own 0 percent of Nebula" is just misleading, and yet this is somehow the important conclusion that the author wants readers to know...?

[Tarq0n]

The creators are desperate for a hedge against Youtube, which unilaterally controls their compensation and can deplatform them at any time.

[MichaelZuo]

I thought Patreon was already a “hedge against Youtube”?

[SpicyLemonZest]

The author’s thesis is that the creators are being tricked. They own some complex bespoke right in Nebula (“an entirely new kind of cooperative corporate governance”), which they’re told and believe is equivalent to ownership, but actually it’s a sham that will break down if Standard ever wants to do something that isn’t in the creators’ interests.

[ehhthing]

The author doesn't go through this in nearly enough detail to make that argument convincing. Rather than spending the entire time trying to find what the "real" ownership amount, the author should've spent the time contextualizing the situation.

The author basically spends the entirety of one sentence dismissing the idea that there could exist a corporate governance model that allows creators to have a meaningful way to direct the company's decision making process and spends the rest of the time on a wild goose hunt to figure out the "actual" ownership percentages.

It was pretty obvious from the beginning given the repeated mentions of complex ownership models that the "real" numbers were not going to mean that creators owned "real" equity in the company. An investigation about what this actually means would've been a much better way to write this kind of essay.

Instead all we got was a long article with a conclusion that was reasonably obvious in hindsight, and no real evidence to support the thesis that "it's all just smoke and mirrors".

[SpicyLemonZest]

I don’t agree that was obvious in hindsight. I was familiar with Nebula before this article and I had always understood it to be something like a co-op where creators and only creators had genuine equity. When reading the first bit, I assumed as the author did that it must be something where the co-op owns a controlling share in some underlying company.

The conclusion that there’s nothing like a co-op at all is not what I would have expected and I really think does suggest that it’s all smoke and mirrors. If this “ownership” doesn’t consist of anything more than a right for creators to be paid based on their view counts, isn’t it just a YouTube contract with extra steps?

[weinzierl]

"The author’s thesis is that the creators are being tricked."

The author says: "Unfortunately, without access to one of their contracts, we can’t know for sure what power the broader group of creators actually has."

While the accusation of the creators being tricked might be between the lines[1], I think the more direct accusation is the subscribers being tricked.

The subscribers are made to believe:

1. the creators get 50% of Nebula's profit

2. their money goes into a co-op of creators

3. Nebula hasn't taken VC money

My reading is that the author claims, that only the first point is true.

[1] To the best of my knowledge, none of them has come forward with any accusations. On the other hand, we probably only should expect this to happen once Nebula gets in trouble or is actually sold.

[dmazin]

I agree – the investigation is thorough, but I think the conclusions are a little jumpy.