Maybe it's the wrong mindset, but imo compensation is precisely why the internet stopped being like that. When people are doing things for free, there is generally a maximum to the amount of effort they will put into things.
They might try to make something look nice and be slick for the end user, but they won't usually hire people or use big studios.
This contributed to a culture where the very best people in the field are making things that any user could also go away and do themselves easily, which led to creativity.
Nowadays the best people get money, and lots of it, which leads to their production becoming better and better, which leads to a better product, but less innovation.
> which leads to their production becoming better and better, which leads to a better product, but less innovation.
"Better" in the sense that they are more polished and edited, but unfortunately that means more filtered, targeted and biased. There is an intrinsic, authentic value in raw productions that gets lost or doesn't exist in the former.
Hence https://joinpeertube.org/en/ existing and growing. YouTube has demonetized & banned LGBTQ+ mentioning videos[1], and continues to tighten the noose around those that make it a viable platform.
YouTube has helped to improve the product, but I am of the opinion that the most of the best YouTube channels are produced by a single person who post weekly at most. They seem to have struck a good balance between audience
engagement and information value. Consider Ben Eater or Technology Connections videos. The former may be more education oriented while the latter is well geared towards my quirky tastes in entertainment, yet both of these are producers who clearly respect their audiences by being interesting and to the point.
In contrast, the channels that have large production crews and publish more regularly usually feel thin on content. There is either very little value to the information or the density of information is incredibly low. There are exceptions. Vox comes to mind because they clearly respect their audience, has many more people involved in production, and produces more polished videos.
Yet those exceptions feel rare. More often than not I find new channels through those small time producers, either directly from the creator or through YouTube's automated recommendation while watching an interesting channel.
Now Google is sanitizing educational hacking videos, which is disconcerting because a lot of those videos are either lectures or produced by small producers. Google is probably doing that to protect their reputation, and there are likely cases when I would agree that it is a good thing. On the other hand, hacking is filled with a lot of grey areas. I enjoy some of those educational videos because it offers a glimpse into how hardware and software works, or demonstrates some interesting uses of everyday software. (At least for a Unix user, The other day, I was watching a video on reverse engineering firmware where I have regularly used all but one of the Unix utilities in the demonstration.) If Google takes that option away one of the best avenues for discoverability disappears. That hurts audiences and producers.
> In contrast, the channels that have large production crews and publish more regularly usually feel thin on content. There is either very little value to the information or the density of information is incredibly low. There are exceptions. Vox comes to mind because they clearly respect their audience, has many more people involved in production, and produces more polished videos.
Are you familiar with the youtube channel Kurzgesagt?
That's an exception to the rule - a rare case of people with enough integrity to not sacrifice quality and accuracy, while having a distinct and approachable enough style to attract a wider audience. And still, I'm not sure if they've reached "financial independence" point yet. Yes, there's Patreon (and I send them money there), but last I checked (roughly a year ago), they still funded it in big part from the money they make commercially as a creative agency.
> Maybe it's the wrong mindset, but imo compensation is precisely why the internet stopped being like that. When people are doing things for free, there is generally a maximum to the amount of effort they will put into things.
It's the other way around. When there is no compensation, people do stuff for fun, out of love, and not for optimisation, ROI, DAU/MAU, etc.
"Back in the days" - pre-dot-com - the website was part of the hobby. People wanted to put their knowledge out there, maybe for pride, maybe just "why not?". And the site was theirs, it looked the way they wanted, it was organised they way they were thinking[^1]. But when money comes in, one has to deal with making more visitors, making the site according to trends, with negative space material auto dark/light design, constantly and regularly put in updates, add JSON-LD microdata... it's endless. And the fun dies. On platforms, everything looks the same, it doesn't feel like a home any more, it's not yours. It's a job.
This is what kills quirky, niche little sites and communities.
My experience is people generally do different things when it's out of interest. More going deep on whatever their passion is, less of everything else. So you get ugly sites with interesting essays, or beautiful data visualization but no text for search engines to use to know to send people to the page. I really liked https://srconstantin.wordpress.com/2019/07/20/the-costs-of-r... on this.
I also think (though don't have the numbers) that there are many more hobby sites now than there were in, say, 1995, because the whole web is so much bigger. They're just far smaller portion of what you're likely to encounter.
> I also think (though don't have the numbers) that there are many more hobby sites now than there were in, say, 1995, because the whole web is so much bigger.
I severely doubt this. 1995-2004(?), essentially pre-myspace, was an era when many of us had a homepage as a hobby; some went into blogging as well, but still on their own site.
Compare it to the web today: everyone is posting content* on silos and a most don't event bother thinking of a website. Convenience, they say, but reality is that everyone thinks they might be able to make a living out of that hobby.
* "content" in the context of silos is a tricky thing to be honest. When was the last time you saw real, true, honest content, without an agenda, without cat videos, without selfies, on a modern content silo? When I say modern, I mean Facebook, Twitter, Instagram; WordPress and Tumblr are different, being more like providers of websites.
It sounds like you're talking about relative numbers, and I have no disagreement there, but I'm talking about absolute numbers. There just weren't that many people online in 1995, so even a large fraction then can easily be less than a very small fraction now.
I know lots of people with websites (ex: my own, https://jefftk.com) and a lot of this is it's so much easier and cheaper now. You don't have to be a sysadmin or be friends with one, domains cost 10x less than they used to, many more people have internet access, etc.
> When was the last time you saw real, true, honest content, without an agenda, without cat videos, without selfies, on a modern content silo?
I think it depends a lot who your friends are, what subcultures you're in, and how you choose who to follow. My Facebook feed is mostly my friends talking about interesting things and I like it a lot.
Deleting it is one option, but another is teaching FB to show you posts by friends who have more interesting things to say. This has worked well for me, though I also expect it depends on your friends and how they use FB.
Another negative aspect of compensation I’ve thought about is that it could cause content creators, particularly political and religious/non-religious ones, from seriously exploring opposing views. Why make videos exploring opposing views when you are making thousands of dollars by giving your audience what it wants? It may increase bias, and limit the self development of not only the creator, but audience as well.
> Another negative aspect of compensation I’ve thought about is that it could cause content creators, particularly political and religious/non-religious ones, from seriously exploring opposing views.
Almost worse, it puts up a barrier to resistance to me even reading opposing views. When I see an anti-Christian comment on HN or Slashdot, I have no problem reading it and potentially responding to it. But if I see an anti-Christian article on Medium, I'm a bit reluctant to click on it, because 1) that person may get money as a result, and 2) it may promote that article to more people, potentially leading to even more articles on a similar vein being written. I assume the situation is the same for lots of ideological positions -- Conservatives avoiding reading Liberal think-pieces, etc.
> When people are doing things for free, there is generally a maximum to the amount of effort they will put into things.
I don't know, I feel like it's the opposite
When you look at the myriad X-Files or guitar pedal schematic or whatever site, they could be endlessly detailed because it's what people did for fun. Nobody maxes out on fun.
I do, however, max out my work hours...generally as quickly as possible.
D
In a behavioral psych class, we had the "Bart vs Lisa" analogy of working.
If we pay Bart to study, his grades will increase. If we pay Lisa to study, her grades will decrease. I've forgotten the original papers this was based on because it's not my area.
Anyway. I'm sure Bart's work for pay is equivalent or better than Lisa's free work.
If asked, any rational human would work an hour for $5 versus $0, right? Nobody can spend time making anything complex or useful and then give it away freely.
I think what is missing here is the passion factor. Most devs will work on a project theyre passionate about for (insert reason here), but won't work on others unless theyre compensated for it.
I know this is true for myself. I will happily contribute to a project if I need it for work and my employer compensates me for it. I only work on a project if it is personally rewarding outside of work
They might try to make something look nice and be slick for the end user, but they won't usually hire people or use big studios.
This contributed to a culture where the very best people in the field are making things that any user could also go away and do themselves easily, which led to creativity.
Nowadays the best people get money, and lots of it, which leads to their production becoming better and better, which leads to a better product, but less innovation.