Tiered Governance and Demonetization: The Shifting Terms of Labor and Compensation in the Platform Economy

TLDR

Social media platforms have reshaped cultural production by changing how culture is distributed and compensated. The article investigates YouTube’s Partner Program and demonetization controversies to understand how shifting terms affect creators. The authors analyze YouTubers’ own videos to examine YouTube’s tiered governance—different rules, resources, and protections—and how ambiguous policies prompt creators to form theories that can fuel political accusations.

Abstract

Social media platforms have profoundly transformed cultural production, in part by restructuring the terms by which culture is distributed and paid for. In this article, we examine the YouTube Partner Program and the controversies around the “demonetization” of videos, to understand these arrangements and what happens when they shift beneath creators’ feet. We use the testimony of YouTubers, provided in their own videos, to understand how creators square the contradiction between YouTube’s increasingly cautious rules regarding “advertiser-friendly” content, its shifting financial and algorithmic incentive structure, and its stated values as an open platform of expression. We examine YouTube’s tiered governance strategy, in which different users are offered different sets of rules, different material resources, and different procedural protections when content is demonetized. And we examine how, especially when the details of that tiered governance are ambiguous or poorly conveyed, creators develop their own theories for why their content has been demonetized—which can provide some creators a tactical opportunity to advance politically motivated accusations of bias against the platform.