Abstract
Over the past decade, YouTube has established itself as the largest video sharing platform in the world (Stokel-Walker, 2019a). The Google-owned company has become not only a widely used hub for amateur broadcasting, but also a work site for over 100,000 professional ‘YouTubers’, who earn an income through the publication of videos (Funk, 2020). While YouTube was hailed as an emancipatory hub for a user-generated ‘participatory culture’ (Jenkins, 2006) in its first decade, in recent years the platform has also been the scene of conflicts and power struggles (Kumar, 2019). Controversies include the platform’s algorithmic recommendation engine – which, to maximise engagement, tends to steer users towards extremist and misinformation channels – streamlining of content and precarious working conditions for creators (Kumar 2019; Ribeiro et al., 2019). In the teeth of these developments, which culminated in a conflict on the platform in 2017, YouTube content creators and users formed a so-called YouTubers Union (YTU), in order to collectively challenge the platform’s governance decisions. This development represents a first major instance of collective action in the remote platform economy, where workers are usually dispersed geographically and face high hurdles if they want to organise. After some initial success through a self-organising process, the YouTubers Union teamed up with the German trade union IG Metall and launched a joint campaign against YouTube.
YouTube: more than a video repository
While presenting itself as merely an intermediary for content distribution, YouTube has operated as a de facto provider of labour from its early days onwards. Since 2006, content creators (‘YouTubers’) have been able to earn direct incomes through Google’s AdSense service, which pays content creators for advertisements screened with their videos. 1 In the past decade, the platform has opened itself up to hundreds of thousands of creators, who usually earn additional income through subscription services such as Patreon, donation platforms, brand deals and merchandise sales. In the production of their content, YouTubers usually employ their personality as a central resource, making content creation a highly subjectivised form of labour. Work on YouTube might be described as a form of cultural platform labour, similar to income-based activities on Instagram, Twitch or TikTok (Johnson and Woodcock, 2019; O’Meara, 2019; Stokel-Walker, 2019b). Within the platform economy, there is a basic distinction between local, on-site work activities (Uber, Deliveroo, Helpling) and remote, web-based activities (Mechanical Turk, Upwork). Work in the latter category, to which content creation on YouTube belongs, poses major obstacles for collective organising. Whereas workers engaged in on-site platform services, such as Deliveroo and Uber, have mobilised successfully in pursuit of their interests in recent years, collective resistance and organisation among web-based platform workers has barely seemed possible so far. Our research 2 suggests that the organising efforts of the YouTubers Union is an early case of successful mobilisation on such platforms.
YouTube’s advertisement conflict as a starting point for mobilisation
Like most labour organising, the emergence of the YouTubers Union has been associated with a specific workplace conflict. In the case of YouTube, conflict arose from a series of scandals on the platform from 2017 onwards that led to tighter control of labour processes. YouTube, whose revenue is almost entirely dependent on corporate advertising, suffered a major financial loss when advertisements were screened alongside, for example, racist, anti-Semitic or misleading content (Winkler et al., 2017). This led to advertisers pulling spending from YouTube and cancelling sponsorships. In response to this financial pressure, YouTube enforced a strict regime of content moderation on its content creators, resulting in arbitrary sanctions, automated channel shutdowns and therefore sudden income loss for creators (Kumar, 2019). These changes intensified the existing system of ‘algorithmic management’ on the platform, which crucially influences the visibility (and therefore the income opportunities) of creators. Through its recommendation engine, YouTube ties the visibility of creators on the platform to high frequency of publishing, specific video lengths and the avoidance of controversial language. While operating as an open distribution platform with meritocratic appeal, YouTube has established a labour regime with strict (and often automated) managerial control that leaves little autonomy. YouTube’s strategies for overcoming its advertisement crisis, which intensified the labour regime described above, sparked a public backlash by content creators and users across the platform (Alexander, 2019). In this situation, several YouTubers formed the YouTubers Union as a Facebook group to improve labour conditions on the platform.
From self-organisation to union-supported campaigns
Collective action on YouTube started as a process of self-organisation on the part of YouTubers. When the advertisement conflict escalated once more in early 2018, more than 15,000 people, both creators and their viewers, organised in a Facebook group to work out strategies against the changes on YouTube. In contrast to conventional organising, the YouTubers Union also invited YouTube viewers to join their effort: ‘Everyone is welcome to join – we need you! No matter if you are PewDiePie or just a user. You don’t have to pay any money and you have zero obligations’ (YouTubers Union, 2018). The launch was initiated by a large-scale YouTuber, who has also taken the lead as a group representative and administrator in the Facebook group. Content creators have used this group to exchange grievances, collect common experiences, discuss changes on the platform and coordinate strategies against the company. After the group publicly exposed a controversial aspect of YouTube’s recommendation engine, the group’s representative was invited for talks with YouTube at headquarters in Switzerland and Silicon Valley. While YouTube agreed to informal concessions, no formal co-determination could be established in these talks. After talks did not prove successful in achieving lasting changes, the group began to cooperate with Germany’s IG Metall. IG Metall has supported efforts on behalf of workers in the platform economy before, through its initiative ‘Fair Crowd Work’ and its co-initiation of the ‘Frankfurt Declaration on Platform-Based Work’ in 2016 (IG Metall, N/A).
YouTube shows some weaknesses, but ignores efforts
In July 2019, the YouTubers Union and IG Metall launched FairTube, a joint campaign that issued six demands to YouTube and called on creators across the platform to join the cause (IG Metall, 2019). FairTube demands transparency with regard to YouTube’s content moderation and algorithmic sanction system, the right to appeal decisions and talk to employees directly, as well as mechanisms of mediation and co-determination on the platform. In the event that YouTube ignored their demands, FairTube threatened to file lawsuits for GDPR violations in the EU and for cases of bogus self-employment. The campaign gained worldwide attention, especially in the United States and Germany. Major news outlets covered the case and drew attention to the working conditions of content creators (Chen, 2019; Ellis, 2019; Webb, 2019). YouTube was pressured into making press statements and decided to invite IG Metall and a FairTube representative for a meeting in Berlin (Sprave, 2019). This meeting was later cancelled, however, when YouTube rescinded their invitation to members of the YouTubers Union. Since then, FairTube has been involved in preparing lawsuits and has launched smaller protest actions against the company.
Challenging fragmentation
While the YouTubers Union remains some distance away from achieving its aims, the establishment of the group itself is surprising. Hurdles to collective organisation are exceptionally high for remote platform workers: not only are they legally located outside the firm that governs their labour process (as independent contractors) and subjects them to a strict system of algorithmic management, but they are also fragmented geographically because workers on remote platforms are dispersed around the globe. On top of this, the prevalent spirit of self-entrepreneurship among YouTubers obscures the antagonistic relationship between creators and the platform. What has made organising possible despite these hurdles? While not all YouTubers have been affected by content strikes and channel shutdowns since YouTube’s advertisement crisis, a critically large number of creator groups were affected at the same time. As this research suggests, a common (occupational) identity as YouTubers could be invoked to build self-organisation. The collective discontent of creators was mobilised through the initiative of a prominent YouTuber, who initiated the group with a protest video and was able to attract 15,000 members in six weeks. In all the group’s collective actions its ability to draw public attention has been a crucial power resource. The group could employ the high public exposure of YouTube and its creators for their campaigning purposes. The group’s public standing and high membership numbers also made it possible to form a coalition with IG Metall, which provided the group with institutional backing.
Brand value as a vulnerability
The case of the YouTubers Union shows that platform giants such as YouTube can be taken on by workers, and that the brand value of these companies can be a weak spot in such disputes. As with other media platforms, YouTube’s image among consumers and creators is crucial for advertising investors. Such ‘intangible assets’ (Haskel and Westlake, 2018) can be vulnerable when platforms face conflicts and controversies, especially when launched from the producers of its content. At the same time, other potential options for exercising worker power remain weak. Due to YouTube’s marketplace infrastructure, strikes on YouTube are not a viable option for most creators and have had little effect. Platform workers can associate through digital group tools, but often it is difficult to maintain long-term pressure. For the YouTubers Union, there are both risks and possibilities for the future. One risk is the group’s instrumentalisation by right-wing creators and other fringe groups, who have tried to influence discussions. The group’s largely male constituency also fails to reflect the variety of the platform overall, and many large-scale creators have been reluctant to join so far. Potential might lie in fostering coalitions with other groups, such as creators within the LGBTQ community, who have been strongly affected by YouTube’s changes. When a group of queer creators in California launched a class action lawsuit against YouTube due to its biased sanction system, both FairTube and the queer creators mutually endorsed one another’s efforts against YouTube. Another ambivalent aspect is the group’s understanding of leadership. The group’s founder, a prominent YouTuber, has substantial power and has enabled many of the YTU’s achievements. While his leading role is appreciated by members, the hierarchy might also undermine membership activity and collective decision-making. Although clearly ambivalent, it is not surprising that the grave status differences between YouTubers on the platform also manifest in the organising process.
YouTube is under transformation
Besides insights for the study of new and shifting worker power, the case presented here also sheds light on a transformation of YouTube in recent years. While the platform was considered part of a promising ‘sharing economy’ in its first decade, YouTube’s business model has come under significant scrutiny in recent years. Corporations, states, legal entities and civil society are pressuring the company to incorporate their standards and values in the governance of the platform. Given that the platform has become close to being a public utility, this is far from surprising (Kumar, 2019). The YouTubers Union, as a reaction to YouTube’s intensified labour regime, is, then, only one sign of such a contested transformation. In relation to workers’ leverage over platforms, the implementation of regional or national legislation might force further transformations in the future. In California, the AB5 regulation on self-employment has improved the social security situation for drivers of ride-hailing platforms such as Uber and Lyft (Konger and Scheiber, 2019). Rulings on GDPR in the EU, as well as antitrust legislation and decisions on bogus self-employment cases will be relevant to such developments, too.
Footnotes
Funding
This research was supported by the project ‘Trade Unions in Transformation 4.0’ of the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation.