NAB
Not every creator
wants to make money from their efforts online, but more should be done to help
those that do want to make a decent living from it.
article here
The not altogether
and unremarkable argument stems from a surprising source — a Meta commissioned
report into the creator economy which doesn’t pull back from implicit criticism
of its own role in inhibiting a more sustainable “middle class” of creators.
The lead author of
“The Rise of the Creator Economy” is Richard Florida, founder of the
Creative Class Group and a professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman
School of Management and School of Cities.
Meta has given the
academic fairly free reign to write candidly on the topic. While the tenor of
the case is that the creator economy is a force for good, it doesn’t always tie
back positively to the role of Meta in ways that other sponsored reports might.
Facebook is one of
the digital platforms that disintermediated the old school of gatekeepers, such
as the Hollywood studios, broadcast networks and major record labels, to bring
about the creator economy in the first place.
But now, Meta and
other giant digital platforms including TikTok and YouTube stand as gatekeepers
in their own right.
“While platforms
allow creators to reach audiences and markets that were previously gated by
traditional media corporations and publishers, they are not disinterested parties;
they also maximize their own monetization opportunities,” Florida argues.
“Creators not only pay them fees but are vulnerable to changes in rules,
standards, payments, and algorithms that the platforms can impose.
“That said, by
putting the means of production into the hands of creators, platforms have made
creative marketplaces more porous.”
The report
establishes that the economic value of the creator economy was around $104
billion in 2021, and that YouTube’s creator ecosystem alone contributed more
than $25 billion in economic output in the US.
But the pie is not
split evenly.
While a
“vanishingly small” percentage of superstar creators earn millions from their
online content, fully two-thirds of them earn less than $25,000 annually, and
more than a quarter earn less than $1,000.
Florida argues that
money, fame and audience size don’t motivate every creator. From the research
and interviews with creators for this report, he concludes that the vast
majority are motivated by the ability to work on projects they are passionate
about. Many are “devoted hobbyists,” and a growing number are social and
political activists.
“The desires and
motivations of the Creative Class differ from traditional blue-collar workers,”
Florida contends. “While money can be important, the members of the Creative
Class are also driven by intrinsic motivations. They seek out work that is
challenging and meaningful; they desire to work on great projects with great
teams; they seek out flexibility and want the ability to express themselves in
their work.”
He adds, “The large
majority engage in creator activity as a hobby or sideline rather than as a
source of full-time income or employment.”
I’m not sure I
agree — surely, given the squeeze on the cost of living, people want to earn
more than a dime from their digital efforts. But it is Florida who has done the
research.
What Digital
Platforms Can Do to Grow the Creator Economy
Much of the report
is given over to suggesting ways in which the main digital platforms, as well
as the state, can support creators and help them earn more substantial
livelihoods from their creative production than they do today.
“Establishing a
sustainable middle class does not happen on its own. Digital platform companies
can actually help build and strengthen the creator middle class.”
Taking a cue from
venture capitalist Li Jin, the report suggests platforms could tweak their
algorithms to introduce a greater element of randomness, “encouraging their
audiences to discover new content from less-established creators” — a change
that a few platforms have now adopted.
Platforms might
orient their creator funds toward less-established creators. Jin encourages
platforms to help facilitate collaborations between more, less established
creators.
Perhaps her most
audacious suggestion is that platforms subsidize the incomes of
less-established creators directly through a “Universal Creative Income,”
similar to the broader concept of a Universal Basic Income.
There’s a call for
digital platforms to “redouble their efforts to ensure that creators,
especially women and people of color, are better protected from harassment.
“It’s essential
that platforms strengthen their protections from online harassment, trolls, and
trolling, especially for women, minority, gay, lesbian, and transgender
creators, who are most frequently the targets of on-line hate and threats.”
In other words,
Facebook and other social media platforms need to do a better job of cleaning
racism and sexism and gender hate off their sites. Although there is no mention
in this report of moderating false or deepfake news, or Facebook’s culpability
in peddling conspiracy theories.
Public policy can
also help support creators. Federal, state and local governments are urged to
help identify, organize and support clusters or networks of creators, “similar
to their long-standing efforts to support high-tech arts clusters.”
Governments can
also take steps to provide more direct assistance to lower-income creators,
members of minority groups, and residents of distressed neighborhoods and
communities.
Meta Insiders Know
Facebook Isn’t Forever
Florida lays out
the two sides of the debate about why a move to a decentralized internet is
important for the future of the creator community.
Web3 critics of
Meta maintain that dominant digital platforms function essentially as “walled
gardens,” extracting substantial rents from creators and other elements of the
creator ecosystem: “Not only do they define the terms of exchange with
creators, but they also have considerable control over them.”
Juxtaposed to this,
techno-optimists argue that the evolution of digital technology and the
competition inherent to the creator economy point toward a better future for
creators. From this perspective, digital technology is evolving in ways that
will ultimately shift more power to creators.
“Going all the way
back to Friendster and MySpace, vertical platforms have risen and fallen as new
disruptive entrants like Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok have come onto the
scene. New disruptors are even more likely to emerge in the future,” Florida
says.
“The point is that
today’s leading platforms do not have any permanent hold on creators. As new
platforms with better terms emerge, creators will migrate to them, as they have
done before.”
Instagram’s CEO
Adam Mosseri is equally forthright in the report: “Over the next decade, we’re
going to see a dramatic shift in power, away from platforms like the one that
my team and I are responsible for, and to a group of people I like to describe
as ‘creators.’”
Mosseri continues,
“As a creator, you should be able to use technology to raise money to finance
your ambitions. If you so choose, you should be able to sell equity in your
future. We’ll have created a world where anyone with a compelling idea can turn
their passion into a living, which at the same time, effects possibly the greatest
transfer of power from institutions to individuals in all of history.”
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