YouTube: Block the Bots Now

This Week: This Week: YouTube’s Wishy-Washy AI-Training “Response”, Kajabi’s amazing creator payout overshadowed by Only Fans and the Manager vs Founder debate the Creator Economy Needs to have NOW!

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YouTube Working on AI Model Training Guidelines

The pressure is mounting on YouTube to do SOMETHING about AI companies training LLMS on creator’s videos. We SHOULD be able to opt out of training. YouTube’s response? Buried in the middle of its “Responsible AI Tools” post last week was a wishy-washy statement admitting that they recognize the problem (finally). We’re “developing new ways to give YouTube creators choice over how third parties might use their content on our platform.” Big Red went on, promising “more to share later this year.”

Hey YouTube. That’s not good enough. A simple and voluntary Opt-Out should be pretty easy to develop and implement. Every week wasted studying the problem results in more creator IP being ripped off, deconstructed and used to build training models. There’s no value in shutting the barn door after the videos have been tokenized. The time to act is NOW, not some nebulous point in the future. If you can continuously rebuild your platform to support 18 weekly football games, you ought to be able to create a simple opt-out too. Want to truly be “responsible”? Shut the darn barn door TODAY.

• Related: There were some good developments in YouTube’s release, including new AI detection capabilities as part of Content ID and other new features.

Manager or Founder Mode for Creator Businesses?

Read the “Manager mode” vs. “Founder mode” essay that’s roiling Silicon Valley VCs and startups. It’s sort of a love letter to micro-management. Then think about applying it to creator businesses. MrBeast clearly runs on founder mode – to its ultimate detriment- and now seems to be pivoting to manager mode. But is that the right approach? Perhaps for the beast, perhaps right now (and arguably it should have happened a few years ago). But it begs the question: should creator-led companies stay in Founder Mode as long as possible? When should professional managers be brought? And when is too early? The creator economy needs to have this debate just as Silicon Valley is doing. Perhaps the “COO for creators” movement was misguided?

Instagram Continues to Lean in on Friends

Read any of the top creator economy newsletters this year and you’ll be overwhelmed by the torrent of new Instagram features. I first highlighted the impending tidal wave of features last November, counting 47 new features in 45 days and predicting 400 new features in a year. Looks like I was right. Lia Haberman has done yeoman’s work keeping up with all 400 (or so) - and this week puts it all into context, highlighting the three primary lanes of Instagram’s metamorphosis: Original, Shareable and Lo-Fi content. And as I laid out in July, it’s one leg of a broader differentiation in our three-legged platform stool, as YouTube leans into creators and content, Instagram focuses on friends and TikTok tries to sell you crap.

Kajabi Surpasses $8B Paid to Creators – But Only Fans paid out more:

With all the talk of peak courses, peak SAAS, peak this and that, one company has quietly delivered more revenue to creators than just about anyone else apart from YouTube (and OnlyFans). $2B in less than a year and $8B since they were founded 14 years ago. I still remember introducing Kajabi on-stage at Web Summit, a company that had quietly become a leader in creator commerce. Quiet no more. Congrats to the entire team there, not only is this a great company for creators, but it’s also a great company with an amazing team.

• Related: By contrast, OnlyFans paid out almost $16B to creators in just five years (2019-2023) and a whopping $5.3B in 2023. Matthew Ball takes A deep dive into their business then predicts that AI will soon disrupt the OF model (with a few SFW examples).

TikTok Gives Users More Control

In a rare kimono opening, TikTok now lets users tweak their FYP preferences by promoting or demoting different top-level topics. Via sliders found in the “content preferences” area, you can tweak what you want and what you don’t. The 12 relatively broad topics provide fascinating insight into the top level of TikTok’s topic graph, and even includes a short sentence helpfully describing each topic (eg “Pets: This type of content typically includes pet care tips and clips of people pets”). OK, maybe it’s not all that helpful.

Another new-to-me feature, TikTok rolled out a “STEM” feed back in 2023, also selectable in the Content Preferences area. I have more questions than answers here. Will we see new feeds specifically curated for each of these other 12 topics? And if I max out PETS and minimize the other 11 topics, will my STEM feed only include fluffy puppies solving quadratic equations? That would be so cool! I’ll report back.

SPONSOR: Creators do punch well above their weight! Nielsen reported that Whalar Inc campaigns had a ROI of $2.41, surpassing all other media channels. More importantly, creators are efficient - while making up less than 1% of total media, they contribute 3x the impact. Check out the full Media Mix Model (MMM) study?here?to learn more about how creators are media investments. ?

QUIBIS:

YOUTUBE

• YouTube adds new measures to protect teens – although some are European only.
• Google facing another anti-trust suit in the US, this one over its internet advertising business
• Related: Penalties against Google in its first anti-trust suit won’t happen until next year.

META

• Want to create effective campaigns on Instagram? Yup, there’s a guide for that. HT to Lia Haberman for downloading it before it got pulled, presumably by Meta.

TIKTOK

• TikTok continues to win the hearts and minds of the US as support for the US government’s sale/ban has plummeted (Pew Research).
• Want to sell on TikTok? Yup, there’s a 94-page guide for that.
• TikTok joins YouTube with an big partnership update with the NFL.
• TikTok teaches millions to commit bank fraud.

OTHER CREATOR ECONOMY

• Roblox dramatically increases the amount of revenue it shares with creators – up to 70% in some cases – and announces new community, AI and 3D tools too.
• Related: Roblox lays out future plans at its annual developer conference.
• Another sign of how the global creator world is expanding: Singapore-based talent agency GushCloud partners with TalentPlus to help expand in MENA.
• Spotter finally launches its new AI tools for creators to help with ideation, packaging and more. The demos I’ve seen look cool, but at $50 a month it’s a bit pricey compared to the competition. (full disclosure, I am an advisor/shareholder of both Spotter and VidIQ).
• Good post on how virality is uncoupling from popularity via Garbage Day that ties into some of my thinking about the diffusion of fandom.
• How TV execs should think about making YouTube shows.
• New Mexico suing Snap, claiming disappearing messages let predators prey on teens. Snap’s response to the lawsuit.
• Evan Spiegel reflects on 13 years of building Snap and what’s ahead in 2025.
• Congrats to Dan Levitt for his successful exit of Long Haul to Wasserman. Dan’s now SVP of Creators over there, and I’m expecting great things!
• The Minecraft movie trailer looks amazing (#snort, “I am Steve”, #snort). I can’t wait until April 2025!
• The Try Guys claim early success with their subscription service but there’s still “a long road ahead”.
• Taylor Lorenz exposes the disparity between right and left-wing creators, demanding “more transparency from influencers and influence-driven media companies across the political spectrum.“ Amen to that!

CREATOR TECH – AI, WEB3, VR, MORE

• California legislature passes a bill designed to regulate AI companies, but its unclear if the state’s governor will sign it. If enacted it will impact the AI industries based in the state.
• MidJourney will be making hardware. What Massimo Banzi explained at Open Sauce – how we need failures to build success – predicted something like this.
• We all knew it was true. Now there’s proof. Media companies really are eavesdropping on you to serve you relevant ads.
• Lots of buzz about Cursor at Nas Summit Saturday. And they just raised $60M. You need to know about them. And Replit too.
• Interesting debate going on about writers, GenAI and man vs. machine over at NanoWriMo – similar to how Procreate swore off AI forever (which we covered last week). We will see a lot more of this.
• This might be new just to me, but I recently discovered River, a way for creators to host fan events – and enable their fans to do it too. Compelling idea, anyone give it a try?
• Interesting history of the Call Her Daddy podcast, one of the latest mega-podcasts to cash in.

RESEARCH

• New teen research from PreciseTV and Giraffe show that YouTube remains number one for teen consumption, and surprisingly Facebook is relevant as well – more than Instagram or Snap.
• Tubular releases a detailed analysis of the state of social in 2024, including a rebounding interest in long-form video, business and finance are up-up-up. Plus, CaptainSparklez remains huge even after 14 years on YouTube – coming in at #10 in the gaming category.

BEAST WATCH

• The Baker vs. The Beast: NBC News profiles Rosanna Pansino.
• Yes, Jimmy Donaldson skipped VidSummit. You heard about it here first.
• Dogpack404 retracts one of his allegations against defacto CEO James Warren.

100% written by me – no human or AI ghostwriters were involved in the production (except for the cover art!).

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