Really? Because saidit exists in the shadow of reddit, which was originally FOSS. It's no behemoth, but it started small and it's growing.

Unless you signed a contract and you're getting a W2 from YouTube and not some ad agency, that's not a job, it's a hobby that until recently allowed for a symbiotic relationship. Greed is as greed does though.

No one said it would be easy. However, Unless someone is directly paying you for your work, not some ad agency money funneling scheme, what you are is an enthusiast who's managed to get while the getting was good.

The web was designed originally for sharing & not necessarily commercial monetization, that's one of the main reasons it's inherently insecure by design. It's also one of the main reasons that everyone wants to curtail it, through net neutrality, through govt picking which tech giants win or lose, through free speech regulation and on and on..

You can literally create you're own vlogs on your device and host them on a computer stuffed in your closet. That's freedom to say whatever you want. Criticizing your govt or showing hours of cat videos. You Might not make a living doing it though, but that's life.

If you make good content the eyeballs will come eventually and somebody will pay you to say an ad for them In your video. If your shit is hosted at YouTube and not in your closet, you must play by their rules. Or you must get enough of your friends and followers to leave & make it worth their time to change their policies.

But they're gambling that you won't. For now they're right. But Myspace was king until it wasn't. When enough ppl get fed up with it, a new one will come (Unless these tech giants manage to get our politicians to stifle any competition which i think they've got a pretty good shot at doing.)

YouTube does post it's jobs; developers, marketers, managers, admins, customer service, custodians, and groundskeepers to name a few. If you're a "content creator", you aren't an employee, you're a user who's an enthusiast about something.