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This feels like when Microsoft pays for TV characters to use Bing instead of Google. It doesn’t make Bing look cooler, it just makes the TV shows look cheap.
No kidding - it can be jarring sometimes. A sharp character starts breaking out Bing on IE. Uh? You'd be expecting maybe firefox for the weirdo - not bing / IE :)

At least edge is out now so that's not so bad.

On the other hand, YouTube paying content creators has helped that platform remain dominant.
Does YouTube pay content creators beyond the revenue they generate?
Yeah. I guess my instinct would be this is something platforms have to do while they’re still considered cool? Like Snapchat could have done this seven years ago but couldn't pull it off now?
It's easier to pay to keep a brand on top. If you're paying to revive the reputation of a brand, the uphill climb is much more painful.
> It doesn’t make Bing look cooler, it just makes the TV shows look cheap

Product name-drops are just one thing, the corporate placement also cares about how it is used and by whom.

Apple says you can't put an iPhone in a villain's hand and indirectly gives away the plot of Knives Out.

I remember the TV show 24 where you could identify which of the counter-terrorism team members was betraying Kiefer Sutherland this hour by noticing which one was suddenly using a Dell instead of their usual Mac.
Good. Creators will finally produce content for Grandma.
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Future fines by the EU should factor in FAANG's willingness to invest 10-digit numbers around.
About time. Snap, TikTok, Twitch, and especially YouTube all have partnership programs which pay content creators directly based on how many views/subscribers/etc they have. I.e. revenue sharing. I never understood why FB thought they could plausibly compete with YT on video when the only compensation offered to low/mid-tier content creators was… likes?
Meanwhile Twitch has locked in many of the creators with 24 Hrs platform exclusivity. High viewership count twitch streamers are not going to risk their twitch partnership status because Facebook is offering some subsidy.
>High viewership count twitch streamers are not going to risk their twitch partnership status because Facebook is offering some subsidy.

There are several "High viewership count twitch streamers" who moved to Facebook because they got a much better offer. DisguisedToast, KingSlayer, Corinna Kopf etc.

Also there is still a difference between someone like Asmongold who pulls 100k viewers and has fuck you amount of money and others with 5-10k viewers. 5-10k makes you a 1% on Twitch but you are still on another league from Asmon, Shroud etc.

Last but not least seasonal fluctuation is real for a lot of streamers see the current WoW worlds first race where the racing guild memebers are having 30-50k viewers but that's gone next week when the race is over.

First we had stretching yoga shorts, then we had hot tubs/kiddy pools indoors, then we had ear-licking. There'll always be something for the twitch crowd to keep them coming back and pretending the strimmers care about em.
> On Wednesday, mobile insights firm Sensor Tower said that TikTok was the most-downloaded app globally in the first half of 2021. TikTok also surpassed 3 billion installations globally, SensorTower said, making it the first non-Facebook app to exceed that figure.

Seems a bit cheating to combine Douyin and TikTok download numbers even if they are nearly identical apps.

https://sensortower.com/blog/tiktok-downloads-3-billion

If you're getting blocked by the paywall, here's a no-paywall alternative link: https://archive.is/CX5aT
A tip for those on Firefox. The paywall takes a second or two to activate so I worked out that once it comes up if you hit F5 to refresh and wait for the text to appear and then immediately go into reader view you can usually beat the script. Boom! No paywall.
blocking scripts on this website with uBlock Origin probably works, then.
I think it's a sad sign of the times that people live vicariously through fake internet personalities--their eyeballs create monetary incentives to push these personalities to become even more fake and banal. All for tiny algorithmically derived dopamine hits and YouTube faces.
> I think it's a sad sign of the times that people live vicariously through fake internet personalities

Yeah,unlike when people vicariously through fake tv personalities/ book personalities/ theater?

As opposed to the good old 1990s where people lived vicariously through fake TV personalities?
Social media should have been paying users from day 1.

FB makes money by packaging up and sharing user content as bait for paid ads. While it's reasonable for FB to keep some of the ad revenue, to offset the infrastructure and recurring costs of running the system, without user-generated content there'd be nothing for social media companies to offer to advertisers to get attention.

In short, every kitten picture uploaded to FB is worth something. It's not free for the user to upload, either, at least not when the externalities of having home internet are counted.

FB revenue sharing should include every user, according to network effects value added, not just the "content creators", who are usually already getting paid by sponsors for shilling whatever.

Hacker news should be paying for the quality user-generated comments here. They make money by advertising YC companies, which are worth billions! Also, the upload bandwidth of my text here is at least a quarter of a cent.
Agreed. I'm going on strike.
Three strikes and you’re banned forever, better choose the moment well.
> the upload bandwidth of my text here is at least a quarter of a cent.

Only because it’s 1989 and you are using a v23 modem.

Social media companies pay users from day 1 by providing service for them. It's a mutually beneficial relationship.

There's of course power imbalance, and it's valid to talk about who gets more value of it, and how that should be balanced. But let's not pretend that users get nothing in return.

> by providing service for them. It's a mutually beneficial relationship.

That's what the social media companies would like everyone to believe. The reality is that the service that social media provides is eyeballs for advertisers, taking the attention of users and directing it to paid promotions. It's not clown fish and sea anemone, It's more like tongue-eating louse and snapper.

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This is pretty much what Tik Tok did.

They spent $1B on influencer marketing through IG / FB.