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The YouTube Union Won’t Work
And here’s why
Reporters have been getting awfully excited in the last few days about the prospect of a YouTube union, led by a German YouTuber best known for his slingshot videos.
The FairTube campaign is the creation of Jörg Sprave, and has the support of IG Metall, a metalworkers union in Germany. It wants YouTube to enter into negotiations with the group by August 23rd over its proposals, which include providing more transparency over decisions around monetization, the ability for creators to argue back against those decisions, an independent mediation board for resolving disputes and the formation of a YouTuber Advisory Board.
FairTube and IG Metall plan to use the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to compel YouTube to move on some of these processes.
The declaration has captured the attention of the world’s press — much in the same way that the last attempt to unionize digital creators, the Internet Creators Guild (ICG) did in 2016.
