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Description

FairTube is a campaign that demands fairness and transparency for people who create videos on YouTube (‘creators’). The FairTube campaign is a joint initiative of IG Metall (the German Metalworkers' Union) and the Youtubers Union.

The FairTube campaign claims that YouTube has made it difficult for smaller content creators to earn money on the platform, while at the same time favouring channels by larger creators such as corporations, celebrities or media companies. FairTube demands from YouTube to

(1) publish all categories and decision criteria that affect monetisation and views of videos,

(2) give clear explanations for individual decisions,

(3) give YouTubers a human contact person who is qualified and authorised to explain decisions that have negative consequences for YouTubers (and fix them if they are mistaken),

(4) let YouTubers contest decisions that have negative consequences,

(5) create an independent mediation board for resolving disputes (here the Ombuds Office of the Crowdsourcing Code of Conductcan offer relevant lessons), and (6) establish a formal participation of YouTubers in important decisions. I

n August 2019, the initiators of the campaign and Google, YouTube’s parent company, have entered negotiations.

In March 2020, the YouTubers Union has re-established discussions with YouTube. They elaborated their proposals for improved communication, fairness, and transparency into a detailed list of concrete, practical suggestions, and received positive feedback from YouTube.

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Additional metadata

Keywords

representation, industrial relations, social dialogue, information asymmetry

Actors

Platform, Employee organisation

Sector

No specific sector focus

Platforms

YouTube

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