The grifter content mill

If our primary urge when we go online is to avoid remaining static, why should our content be siloed within the enclosed walls of a proprietary platform?

In 2006, the launch of YouTube promised a democratization of creativity. Anyone with an internet connection could now share their work with the world, bypassing traditional gatekeepers in publishing, music, and film. Over the next two decades, platforms like Netflix, Spotify, and Instagram further dismantled barriers, offering creators direct acces... See more

Right now in the creator space, the closest thing to this model is in the upfront advances that more and more big platforms are paying creators to join and produce content. Substack, Clubhouse, Snapchat, Facebook, YouTube, and others all pay cash advances to creators in the hopes that they then generate even more revenue for the platform. So far, i... See more

Influencers, now a slowly fading cliché in the Internet’s tableau vivant, found success articulating the cult of personality, and marketing themselves as direct-to-consumer-goods. The shift away from this algorithmic surrender can be traced to the macro and micro “creator economies” spawned by the likes of Patreon, Substack, OnlyFans and even Cameo... See more

With information effortlessly transferable at zero marginal cost and social platforms that blast content to the top of everyone’s feed, it’s difficult to for an ethics based on scarcity to sustain itself.