YouTubers are in revolt—and they want their host platform to acknowledge their revolution sooner rather than later.

"Tick tock," Joerg Sprave says in a video addressed to YouTube. "The clock is ticking."

Sprave isn’t a teenage gamer or a Hollywood-based vlogger. He’s a bassy-voiced, middle-aged German man who once was a C-level executive at a consumer electronics company and now makes high-powered slingshot weapons in the woods for an audience of 2.3 million. He laughs like Santa. He looks like someone who could survive punching a bear. In the video, Sprave advises the platform to respond to the demands of FairTube, a collaboration between the YouTubers Union that Sprave founded and IG Metall, Europe’s largest trade union. The demands are sweeping: Creators want greater transparency, a more stable and equitable approach to monetization, and a seat at the table when the platform makes decisions that impact their livelihoods. If YouTube doesn't respond to these demands, Sprave warns, they can expect "a shitstorm."

With just eight hours left on that countdown clock, the German branch of YouTube’s parent company, Google, reached out, inviting FairTube to a meeting in Berlin on October 22. "The expectations are very high. We won’t be satisfied with talking about how nice the weather is or how we all want to make YouTube a better place," Sprave said before the meeting. "I know of no channel that does not really struggle with YouTube’s algorithm, demonetization, with all the changes."

Once you start paying attention, you’ll hear the same grumbles from all corners. Celebrity YouTubers in head-to-toe Gucci quip about being unrightfully demonetized. Videos start and end with statements like, "if YouTube likes this kind of video, we’ll do more." Small channels plead for likes, explaining that it helps videos fare better. It feels like creators are constantly protesting some policy change or another, whether it's being unverified en masse or suddenly disqualified from making ad revenue. The #YouTubeIsOverParty has to be one of the longest running platform-bashing bashes on the web. Creators want fair treatment; YouTube wants to run a business; not everyone is getting their needs met. No wonder creators are looking to collective action.

Tensions between YouTube and YouTubers have been rising steadily since the 'Adpocalypse' of 2017.

That doesn't necessarily mean YouTube wants to respond to the masses. "We explained to the union in great detail what [we're] doing in terms of transparency and support for YouTubers," a YouTube spokesperson told WIRED. "But we have also made clear that we are not going to negotiate their demands." There’s a queasy but complicated asymmetry to the situation, like a beehive negotiating with a crop duster. Of course, that’s not just true of YouTube and Google’s relationship with the 24,000 creators who make up the YouTubers Union—it’s their relationship with almost all of their creators, who likely number in the tens of millions.

That relationship isn’t getting any better. Just before the FairTube meeting was supposed to take place this week, Google decided that no YouTubers—including Sprave—would be welcome. FairTube and YouTubers Union members are understandably displeased, but not at all surprised.

Tensions between YouTube and YouTubers have been rising steadily since 2017, when the platform made a series of policy changes creators refer to as “the Adpocalypse.” It started, like many things did in 2017, with racism. Advertisements were playing on bigoted videos, prompting giant companies like Coca-Cola and Johnson & Johnson to pull all of their advertisements (and money) out of the platform until YouTube could guarantee their ads wouldn’t be running against extremist content. Facing stiff financial penalties and public outcry, YouTube scrambled to find a way to sift through its billions of videos for an ever-diversifying array of revolting behaviors, from prejudice to pedophilia. “We're deeply invested in creators' success; that's why we share the majority of revenue with them,” says a YouTube spokesperson. “We also need to ensure that users feel safe and that advertisers feel confident that YouTube is safe for their brand.” The solutions to these very real problems, however, also have created most of the creators’ gripes.