> Youtube however spend a lot of effort to drive that early content away and focus on professional content that they could monetize easier.
Could you elaborate a bit on that? What did youtube to do drive that early content away? Why is it easier to monetize professional content?
I have an alternative theory: Some people within every social media company try to turn the company into a mass media company—they want to promote content according to their taste, hang out with celebrities ... See "youtube originals". Social media companies win if they can withstand that pressure, if they manage to stay neutral, to show things to people that they're interested in.
> Why is it easier to monetize professional content?
For the same reason that Twitter is currently under fire: brand safety.
Brands don't want their ads to appear next to people spreading flat earth conspiracy theories, drunken ramblings, hate speech or dangerous "challenges" - just think back to the Tide Pod "challenge", if you were an advertising buyer for Tide, would you want an ad for Tide as a pre-roll for a video where a bunch of morons eats them like candy? That crap alone led to almost 7700 hospital incidents and at least fourteen deaths [1]. Additionally, you have people without a fucking clue what they are doing who upload videos like high voltage arc burning in wood, showing no concern to safety - and at least 30 people died because they were blindly following these videos [2]. Other stuff I've seen are "DIY" YouTubers doing electrical work and even I as someone who's not formally certified but have way over a decade worth of experience in construction and maintenance immediately see just in which amount of danger these people go.
And hell even actual professional YouTubers like HeavyDSparks routinely show a shocking lack of caring about workplace safety. Not wearing proper PPE (helmets, shoes), standing barely a foot away from a winch cable with thousands of pounds of load on it... it's bad enough that people don't care about OSHA guidelines on their own, but showing that on YouTube... I respect the guy and his team for the good work they do to help out people and nature, but they could definitely do way better in promoting safe workplace standards!
Platforms that allow large scale unmoderated publication of user-generated content will always end up facilitating grave injury and death.
Could you elaborate a bit on that? What did youtube to do drive that early content away? Why is it easier to monetize professional content?
I have an alternative theory: Some people within every social media company try to turn the company into a mass media company—they want to promote content according to their taste, hang out with celebrities ... See "youtube originals". Social media companies win if they can withstand that pressure, if they manage to stay neutral, to show things to people that they're interested in.