This is a post about something I've been noticing more and more now and seemingly social media platforms have stopped caring about because in the end it's naturally all about money, stock prices, shareholder profits, etc and so forth.
It is however ironic because a platform I used to use a lot before this chain was very much against this at one point, I guess back when the majority of its users had an actual say in it.
Let me first talk a little bit about what I'm referring to as attention parasites in the title.
Let's say you make an amazing video, it's covering something unique and fresh, whatever it is, it's driving a lot of people to your video/content to consume it. Let's say it drove 1 million views to your content, the platform you uploaded it to rewards you fairly for your contribution. (Fair being vague as it's mostly just an ad revenue share the platform profited off of from advertisers)
Your content is still quite fresh, so after your excitement drops a little and you get curious to see where your traffic is coming from, you notice all kinds of places it's been shared in. External traffic tells you a large % is coming from different platforms to your (let's say in this case youtube account), some from google and a lot from Youtube's recommended page since your video is "trending".
You think to yourself, oh that's great, let me check what some of the other social platforms think about my video since everyone here on this platform seems to love it. You go to Reddit's biggest relevant subreddit r/videos and you instantly see your face on their trending page.
(I'm including an example here, video/youtuber may not be relevant to the discussion but is definitely affected)
At first glance you're happy someone shared your video on Reddit to drive more traffic towards your work, but on second glance you notice they did no such thing. They simply clipped part of the vide, re-uploaded it to reddit's own storage and media player and haven't even shared your original video anywhere in the post.
This is attention parasiting. You may wonder why did the uploader, who's only gaining worthless karma points download his original video, cut it shorter often times unnecessarily, then upload it to Reddit and not even bother to share the original video?
It's because there's an unspoken agreement that Reddit does not care if the original source is mentioned, in fact they prefer you don't. Naturally they wouldn't admit to it, but remember Reddit is now a company seeking to launch its own IPO and any links on their platform sending people off said platform is a risk to the platform. If I constantly told you to go to Steemit on Hive, even without the drama, theft and censorship that occurred/occurrs, it'd still be weird, right? This is how they see it as well, without considering the costs to the original creator.
The costs are not nothing. People who see this edited version of this video from this creator on Reddit don't have a reason to re-watch it on youtube. If say youtube was their next platform they'd visit after scrolling Reddit for a while and get this video recommended they'd just say "I already watchedit". This costs the uploader monetization since that primarily stems from ad revenue/views and potential follows/future recommendations of new/other videos of the same channel by the algo.
Reddit profits off of this person's content 100%, gives the person 0% revenue and generally many subreddits don't allow you/it's frowned upon to drop links to the source. (In this video they actually did at some point down the comment tree)
It's ironic because not too many years ago Reddit users were shaming Facebook for pretty much doing the same thing, albeit there it was way more malicious where content creators would copy shorts completely and just add a 2 sec clip of their face saying "what would you do if this happened to you" insert full 30sec clip someone else has created and monetize it for your own gain.
This has become more of a touchy subject lately due to Streamers streaming hours upon hours and viewers watching content through their stream. Also known as "react streamers" although often times they barely react much to it. Even so they're going through many of the same social media platforms watching trending content which ultimately works as a barrier of ad revenue to the original creators because all these thousands of viewers are now watching content through the streamer rather than giving any views, follows, clicks, etc, to the original creator.
The original creator are simply being robbed of a lot of monetization this way and the platforms have of course little care for "outside creators".
It's especially funny considering Streaming platforms like Twitch were quick to DMCA and mute vods from streamers playing music in the background because record lables wouldn't want their songs being played "for free" to thousands of viewers/listeners, but when it comes to original creators without legal backing, they aren't being cared for.
This is something I think Hive does well, even if we some times give hivewatchers a lot of flak for the way they handle some things, but I like that we have a strong sense of not taking value/attention away from others and using it as the majority of the content being monetized here, where no laws or DMCA's are attempting to enforce their rules. We just do it because it's the right thing to do and always encourage people to share links to sources and the "full video" or the creator's channel when we pick pieces of content from others to post about or share.
I feel like platforms like youtube and others should do way more for regular creators, most who already have accounts on most big platforms either way, so the solutions wouldn't be too difficult to throw some "beneficiaries" or revenue their way if they're generating a lot of traffic and advertisement on other platforms with their content. Yet they don't, and you don't see many talking about it because you know they're not going to listen nor care nor are the giants in competition with each other going to shake hands about something that only concerns their users rather than their own bottom line.
Video of the screenshot taken from trending on Reddit. Not that this post will get it many views, but it might still grant it more than Reddit does.
