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So...TikTok Sucks

Hank Green
Commentary
YouTube
2 HN users recommended this commentary2 months2022–2023 score 2
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

Cited in threads on creator economics as a clear explanation of how TikTok payouts shrink per creator as the platform grows.

Hank Green, a TikTok creator with millions of followers, explains why he thinks TikTok underpays creators. He compares its fixed-pot creator fund with YouTube's revenue sharing.

“Worth the full watch on video media money.” (HN, 2022)

2 recommendations · 4 citations · Commentary · partly dated

6 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@athrowaway3z Mar 2022 Recommends
on HN thread TikTok is scary good. It's digital crack
[this video] Worth the full watch on video media money. But tldw; TikTok splits a pot of money over the views each video gets. The pot doesn't grow with the revenue they make or total views, so it's pretty exploitative.
Explains TikTok's fixed creator pot and why it is exploitative.
@status200 Jul 2022 Recommends
on HN thread The unlikely odds of making it big on TikTok
Tiktok will definitely be replaced by a similar app if they don't start paying out to their content creators in a similar way that Youtube (still awful, but better) does. Hank Green has a great video[0] on the difference since he is on both platforms, and unless there is more compensation to the creators, they will get burned out chasing the high of the occasional viral video. [0] [this video]
Compares creator payouts on TikTok versus YouTube from someone on both.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@d0mine May 2022 Cites it
on HN thread TikTok Boom
The fond is fixed, it doesn’t depend on the number of creators. The more popular TikTok the less share creators get. [this video]
Shows TikTok creator fund is fixed so creators' share shrinks as it grows.
@pas Jun 2022 Cites it
on HN thread The fall of Reddit: Why it’s quickly declining into chaos
Read more
> Reddit is hijacking content by requiring it to be hosted on it's own CDN.. does it require it or provide it as an option? as far as I know you can submit image URLs just fine. gyfcat and imgur videos are regularly on r/all. hosting multimedia content provides a better experience. does it have downsides? yes. just with google's AMP. a bit offtopic, but tiktok creators' fund is already shortshelling creators. [this video] and this endless reposting of viral content ... well, it's ongoing since we have viral content. is it great? of course not, but it's not like the reddit CDN somehow changed anything with regards to this problem. youtube has contentID ... "creators" are free to organize and advocate for reddit/IG/tiktok to introduce it (or lobby US/EU/China to mandate it or whatever)
Cited in passing regarding the TikTok creators' fund shortchanging creators.
@delecti Mar 2023 Cites it
on HN thread How TikTok Broke the Ad Business
Hank Green, a fairly prominent Youtuber and increasingly successful Tiktoker did a video a while back, and AFAIK the situation with the TikTok creator fund hasn't changed significantly since. You basically TLDR'd it: their revenue-sharing is far worse than main Youtube videos, and even quite worse than Youtube's model for Shorts. [this video]
Shows TikTok revenue sharing is far worse than YouTube's.
@ADuckOnQuack Nov 2023 Cites it
on HN thread Show HN: YouTube banned adblockers so I built an extension to skip their ads
Tim Tok has been struggling with a massive problem where many creators that actually start to get big on the platform end up migrating to YouTube anyway because their pay sucks compared to YouTube, the same goes for instagram and every other platform in the industry. Youtube has a lot of problems but nobody pays better than them [this video]
Supports claim that TikTok creators leave for better-paying YouTube.

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