[LittleTimothy]

I think the entire attitude of the author coming in to this is wrong. It's zero sum. It's an assumption that you're either gaining from the platform or the platform is gaining from you. This is wrong. The platform has network effects that make everyone well off. Google owns Youtube, yes it gets enormous value from creating/owning the platform. But Youtube isn't exploiting Mr Beast, Mr Beast also gains enormous value from the platform and provides enormous value to the platform, it's a symbiotic relationship.

Sure, it's true at some point that the Platform could, for whatever reason, decide it would rather suck you dry than continue the symbiotic relationship, that does happen.

But here's the core of the problem - by putting yourself half out of the platform, trying to direct people off to your own website, by gating your content etc. You are damaging the platform. All that massive surplus that is created by having everyone in one place sharing in one common way? It won't exist if you're not participating in it.

I can open a shop in the centre of london. I'm going to pay high rents, but I'm also going to gain massive benefits from all the people in London who can come and buy stuff from my shop. It's a win for everyone. You're going to open a shop in the centre of London and when someone walks in the front door you're going to say "Oh well here's all the stuff I sell, but to actually buy it you need to come visit my farm in Norfolk". You see how this doesn't make sense right?

And laying aside whether you should do this, any platform that wants to survive is going to massively penalize your behaviour because you're freeloading, you're damaging the platform. You want surplus but you don't want to let anyone else benefit.

[rors]

The value of content creators on YouTube will follow a power law distribution. There will be a very small number of hugely profitable creators and a vast sea of people who do ok. This power law distribution makes YouTube very different to setting up a physical retail store in London. Even if I do well with my shop, I won't outperform my neighbour 1000x.

If anything Mr Beast is an argument for not using YouTube. Alphabet is incentivised to keep him happy so that he doesn't move to X. I'm sure they consider his needs before they change their algorithm, at the expense of almost all other creators on YouTube.

[LittleTimothy]

Again you've gone straight back to zero sum thinking. There's no reason Alphabet keeping Mr Beast happy has to be bad for you! It might be good for you! It might be - in fact it almost certainly is true - that the changes that Mr Beast gets youtube to make might be good for everyone.

The network effects of the platform are massive. 90% of that surplus can go to Alphabet and it still be a good deal for average creators. Mr Beast, you, me anyone can go and rent a server tomorrow and start serving their own videos. People still choose to go to youtube because there's just so much surplus value there.

[rors]

My statement did not imply zero sum thinking. The pie can get bigger and the bigger slices can get disproportionately bigger.

As an analogy, economies can increase their GDP and inequality can also increase. Just because something is getting bigger doesn't mean it's getting fairer.

[LittleTimothy]

What I'm saying is the pie is getting bigger, inequality can increase too and that you probably are still better off. If Youtube doubles in size next year, and Mr Beast increases his share of that from let's say 1% to 2%, the remaining 98% is still bigger than the 99% that was shared amongst everyone else last year.

You may look at that and say well that's not fair, most of the benefits are going to Mr Beast - and they are, Mr Beast would have done very well in that scenario. But you're still better off than before. Are you better off relative to Mr Beast? No. But Youtube doesn't owe you that, that's not a reasonable benchmark. If it gets to the point that you're getting worse off, then maybe move to somewhere else, but expecting these places to be good for you in perpetuity is a mistake, and refusing to engage because you fear they won't be good for you in perpetuity is also a mistake. The total benefit of us all engaging makes the pie much bigger, and you almost certainly will get a bigger share of that than by refusing to partake in the pie at all.

[austin-cheney]

But what if Google changes the TOS for YouTube and puts Mr. Beast out of business? Should that guy just retire and be happy with what he got?

[LittleTimothy]

If Youtube put Mr Beast out of business today, they would still have paid him an enormous amount of money over the course of years. Not to mention the hundred million dollar Amazon Prime deal that came out this week, and his Feastables brand.

This isn't an academic exercise, do we see anyone outside of the platforms gaining the success that the creators inside the platforms do? I'd be happy to note anyone I've just totally missed, but these platforms really do actually work.