Or in other words “Megacorp reminds you that it can and will decide to pocket cut your income based on the court of public opinion”.
This is not a discussion about the allegations against him, this is about the fact that Google have decided to pocket the income they would otherwise be giving him (not taking down the videos, oh no, they’re probably bringing in even more ad revenue now!) without any convictions or similar. Not that Google is an employer (I’m sure they consider payments they make to video uploaders to be some kind of generous untaxable gift), but should an employer have the power to take away a source of income based on allegations, no matter how heinous?
Edit: seems they’re actually not putting ads on his videos at all now, which was a surprise to me
The trouble is that a lot of people treat it like a job and rely on it for income. Obviously this is a pretty risky way to get by, but it essentially means they’re an employer and should probably be regulated as such.
I guarantee that if YouTube were treated legally as an employer, Youtube would shut down. It’s not an employer. It’s a free video hosting platform that shares some of the revenue that it makes. The fact that people treat it as an employer is the problem. There is nothing to stop Brand or anyone else, using sponsorship or other paid promotion if they would like to monetise their videos. They just can’t rely on Youtube’s advertising machine.
Or the people uploading should be aware of their precarious position and make sure to have back up revenue streams like patreon. Unless you have a contact with YT commiting them to provide you with a cut of profits, you’ve no leg to stand on. Not that Brand is in any danger of this bankrupting him.
While this is true in a cut-throat business world, we’ve had regulation on issues like forcing Uber to treat their employees as employees. While this isn’t exactly the same it doesn’t seem like a huge leap to say well some people are starting to use this for an income, we the state should ensure it has similar protections to other forms of income. Well, that’s my thoughts on it, I’m no employment-law-speaker!
Uber isn’t regulated like that everywhere, we did it in the UK more because of how it was undermining minicab firms that did have to treat staff as employees.
I mean, I think the closest analogy is to a TV station and a TV show.
The TV station isn’t the employer of the people making a show.
On the other hand, a show and a station contract on a season-by-season basis, so AFAIK, normally a show is guaranteed payments for the remainder of a season. Youtubers don’t get that guarantee. But then again, a show is obligated to actually keep making shows until the end of the season, and that isn’t true of Youtubers.
And a Youtuber can pull their content that they’ve already made down whenever they want. Like, either YouTube or Brand can, at any point and for any reason, terminate the relationship.
Also, YouTube doesn’t get any exclusivity. Brand can put his shows on YouTube and Vimeo and OnlyFans and as many other services as he wants. The only Youtuber that I’ve followed much, a guy that drives around the US in an RV with his cat, puts some stuff up on Patreon, some on YouTube (and sells some merch). He puts as much content/time or as little on any platform as he wants. Maybe he never uploads anything to YouTube again, maybe he puts a lot up in a given month.