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It should be clear to everyone that YouTube cannot be considered a full time career. Partly, because it is a free service. They are always going to be more interested in their own profits than that of their users, but since it's free they will take a much higher percentage than they would if they had actual partners who were paid to create content. It's basically a much more sophisticated version of public access tv. This has nothing to do with me. It's merely the reality of the situation. But again, there is a huge potential for using it as a launching point, even if it only leads users to having their own site that they can monetize as they see fit.
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Well firstly, just because it's an unstable job that pays badly, doesn't mean it's not a job. People work hard to earn money from it, and then use that money to live their lives. Last time I checked, that's what a job is. Admittedly, the controlling corporation can snap their fingers and massively reduce the quality of their working conditions, but isn't that a risk inherent to everyone bar the self-employed? Also, isn't that exactly what we're complaining about in this thread?
Secondly, there are no sensible, self-sufficent YouTubers that intend on solely relying on that site indefinitely. While the occasional idiot might get lucky, the majority of consistently successful YouTube creators are fairly dull, business-minded people who also love making films/music/sketches/whatever. With these recent developments, plenty of them have started going public with their exit strategies. The kind of person you're criticising simply doesn't exist in any meaningful quantity, and even if they did, I sincerely doubt that the fuss kicked up in this thread is on their behalf. There are decent people with their livelihoods at stake, and I for one am concerned.
Because even though, as you say, YouTube is best used to springboard into a career in independent media,
it is still required. Several popular YouTubers maintain the format of having half of their videos on YouTube, and using them to advertise the other half exlusively on their own, seperately monetised sites. And those YouTubers invariably make less money than ones who put all of their videos on YouTube. Because most web users are too lazy to use multiple sites, basically, but that's the reality. It's probably safer in terms of dependability, but the average internet video creator earns a pittance as it is. They can't hold down a job
and produce videos of the quality required, in the quantities required, to stay popular. Unless they've got a hell of a lot of savings, YouTube ad revenue plus the occasional merchandise sale really is all they can rely on if they want to keep doing something they're good at.
Even those hypothetical artists who are determined to be reliant on YouTube for the shortest period of time possible will
still be reliant on YouTube for a time. Because it is
really really fucking difficult to get anywhere in online media without being on YouTube. Everyone knows that monopolies are bad, but a monopoly is what we've got, and even if Internet Guy has set up the Internet Guy Site, has an Internet Guy Facebook page, an Internet Guy clothing range and a chain of Internet Guy shops appearing across the globe,
no-one will know who the fuck he is if he doesn't devote a significant period of time to exclusively producing YouTube content.
Yes, you're right, YouTube is a piss-poor way to make a living. Yes, you're right, anyone who thinks they'll be able to live off YouTube forever is an idiot. Yes, you're right, anyone who finds themselves making money off of YouTube should immediately look for ways to independently capitalise on their success.
But it is still a very-much-required step on the road to being a Self-Employed Internet Person, and whether that step takes a matter of months or a couple of years, there will still be a period when their career rests on the success of their YouTube page. And for those who are currently in that period, unhelpful changes to YouTube's format really fucking suck. Not to the degree of, I don't know, mass starvation or alien death rays, but enough to justify a poxy forum thread where people can bitch about it.