Feels like a move in the right direction. For a long while now, subcultures a
have been getting publicized and subsequently commercialized so quickly that the subcultures die before they mature. Maybe something interesting will come out of this, who knows.
I feel with some niches this already happens. The art and monetization happen in lockstep.
Partly, monetization is synonymous with release; a part of the consumption platform itself. You launch on Spotify and YouTube, monetization is already there or just a click away.
Another factor seems to be the survivorship bias. The ones that stick around are the ones with enough monetization to pay out and continue working with consistency.
It does seem like creators generally have more control though, if they don't sign away rights for an infusion of capital. This is replaced with a percentage of sales paid to some service (hosting the content and providing advertisers, printing tshirts as a service, etc...), if product isn't bought in bulk and inventoried
sure but... commercialized? Where do you think these hyperconnected subcultures live? Online... if not inside of TikTok, Youtube, Instagram or other large entity then they'll exist on someone else's servers.
You think those servers are free and those subcultures aren't going to get commercialized by companies that need $$$ to live?
But those "someone else's servers" aren't always commercial. Communities run on sweat/passion and donations feel a lot different than those that make their money more commercially. It's not always so black and white either, more of a spectrum.
Eh... the issue I have with that is a few dozen communities run on Patreon or what have you won't offset the gorillas in the room (Youtube, TikTok, discord, etc).
I think "we have no clue what's going on online" is never been more true as actions like cancel culture have moved huge swaths of people off of the big guys and created other areas like Rumble - and the smaller alternatives. but to think that these smaller more diverse cultures aren't being commercialized and monetized - except for a few rare cases - just seems, to me, silly.
I think it's true they won't offset the large platforms, but I also don't think those communities are rare. I too use Discord and YouTube (begrudgingly), but I also use IRC, wikis, and old school forums. There's also Matrix, mastodon, lemmy, mailing lists, heck even usenet. But what's rare probably stems from us being in different communities?
My opinion is that the communities I've found the most fulfillment/happiness in have are not funded primarily as a commercial operation. Sometimes they are related to commercial things (fandoms, user groups), but the community itself is not trying to sell itself, its users, its data, etc. My opinion is that it would be better for all internet-based communities if there were lower-friction ways to start an online community without giving yourself up to commercialization of a platform. Through the many layers of tech that would require changing/tweaking to fix this. All the way down from network layer DDoS mitigation to application layer maintenance and hosting.
