Platforms Need Fresh Creators to Succeed...Just Not Too Much

Let's start out recognizing that creators and platforms are partners with interests that do not always align. There will always be tension in that relationship because platforms have ultimate control over a spaces where creators build their communities and their businesses.

But early in a creator's career, these tensions are less present than the wonderful joy of building an audience. When numbers are growing and everything is new, there is an energy to those moments that has to be felt to be known. Making something people love is wonderful, and that appreciation is far more important than any gripe you might have with a platform.

At least, at first.

Time passes, and things get harder. Your fuel starts running low, and competition never lets down. You start asking how much of the money you're making is ending up in your pocket and how much ends up in the platform's. You want more direct access to your audience. You want to feel stable enough to take a single break in years of hustle. And, if you've built a big enough audience, you might actually have some power over that platform.

I've watched it with YouTube, with Vine, with Twitch...all of these platforms have moments where suddenly creators feel empowered enough to start asking hard questions. They feel slighted by algorithm changes, ignored by new features, or legitimately outraged by bad policy. Together, those creators have enough power to do harm to those platforms, and it's a threat they take seriously.

This is one reason why platforms need to constantly surface new creators. Because, in those first months, or even years, you won't complain about legitimate problems because your dreams are coming true. And big creators who have been at it always know that there's someone more energized and with fewer complaints right on their heels.

When you're first getting big, the only thing you want is views. Once you've been around for a while, you start wanting things. TikTok's algorithm-first nature makes it amazing at this. Even though I am considerably outside of their target demographic, I constantly find new creators I love on the platform. This is a great user-experience, but it makes it much less likely that I fall in love with any single personality. It must be very hard to ever feel safe on TikTok as a creator, and that means basically never feeling like you have any power.

YouTubers, at this point, feel very empowered to come after YouTube when it does something we don't like because it treats many creators (certainly not all) like partners. YouTube lets you see that it's made of humans, and it has allowed people to build big communities and businesses that counter-balance the platform's power. It takes feedback, and it includes creators in feature decisions.

TikTok does not feel like it is made of humans, it feels like a mobile game designed to keep you addicted to making content. Stochastic rewards, ever-present numbers, and a relentless string of surprise features. It's almost as if they feel like letting people build stable businesses on that platform actually harms it, because creators will feel empowered to treat the platform like a partner.

We've seen where that leads. YouTube has spent years tacitly wishing that the top creator on the platform was someone other than Pewdiepie. Pewdiepie (and his audience) are fully aware of this, and the tension it's created on the platform is real. Having creators be powerful enough to harm your company's brand is a huge liability.

It has even been argued that Vine died of this very thing. Vine wasn't good enough at surfacing new talent, which led to big established creators having so much power that the crowded out any potential competition. Then those creators demanded that Vine give them what they wanted, and when Vine couldn't, the platform effectively died. So notice this, platforms want new creators to be constantly growing, but established creators (myself included) would rather that not happen because we're exhausted.

Maybe this is a strategy that TikTok learned from watching YouTube's troubles, or maybe it's just an inevitable result of how the platform functions. And it's important to note that no internet company invented exploiting people's ambition and desire for attention (hello Hollywood.)

But while there are dangers of letting the top stagnate, there are also dangers to never giving creators a moment of stability. TikTok will eventually have to treat more and more of its creators like partners because otherwise they will abandon the platform for more stable locales. Already, it isn't unusual to see a TikToker porting audience to YouTube or Instagram.

If your creators can't make money on a platform, they will leave. And if they can't build direct relationships with their audiences, they will leave. The question is, will there always be a tide of delightedly ambitious creators to take their place. TikTok, right now, seems to be betting on "yes" and so far, it's been a good bet. Ultimately, appreciation and attention often goes further than money for creative people. Trust me, I would know.

There is a balance here. One the one hand, you have investing in stable creators who will then feel empowered to build businesses on your platform, but also question and even attack you. The other strategy is to keep them just unstable enough that they're incapable of pushing back. You can't go all the way in either direction, but I'm am concerned by the current tactic of tracking more toward platforms keeping power over creators mostly by never letting them know they have any power.

Treating partners like partners is how you create a true economic ecosystem. But pretending that your platform is just a game that creators are playing has proven to be a very good growth strategy for TikTok, at least in the short term.

Eventually, it will have to grow up.

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Hank Green is a YouTuber and the CEO of Complexly, an educational media company with more than 2 billion views on YouTube. He also founded VidCon, the world's largest conference of online video fans and professionals, and the #1 New York Times best-selling author of An Absolutely Remarkable Thing.