As YouTube Pushes to Make Higher Profits, Are They Pushing Individual Creators Out the Door?





YouTube at the very beginning was created to give a voice to anyone. "Broadcast Yourself" used to ring more true for countless content creators, which allowed their voice and their ideas to be heard worldwide. For the first time, it was possible for anybody to upload a video on their own terms, which challenged traditional media and entertainment. While not all the individual content uploaded to YouTube was good and in some cases was pretty bad, it still allowed for a more diverse range of ideas from individuals themselves.





Coming back to 2019, "Broadcast Yourself" seems anything but authentic these days for Corporate YouTube. As YouTube's revenue stream continues to rack in billions of dollars, a noticeable shift in content has taken hold of YouTube as a whole.





While YouTube's CEO Susan Wojcicki can boast about how YouTube has never been more profitable, can it really be said that she and YouTube really put the interests of individual creators that built up YouTube in the first place? As YouTube has partnered with traditional media outlets and celebrities, more and more individual content is pushed into the background, making it even harder for new YouTubers or new ideas to take center stage like it did before.





Perhaps it is only a matter of time before YouTube is completely unrecognizable with only having sanitized, corporate friendly content on the platform. Even big successful individual creators are struggling to adapt to this new YouTube. tiffanyferg points out how corporate entities and celebrities are sought out by YouTube aggressively, and aren't just simply allowing these corporate videos to trend on YouTube.









The Future of Creators & Viewers





YouTube has shown it will put profits for the individual creators themselves with their algorithms that target what they deem as appropriate, their trending tab is inherently biased towards mainstream media outlets and celebrities, and their updated policies to attract advertisers and draw out any content they deem as unsuitable for their profit driven agendas.



