TechScape: want to ‘be your own boss’ online? Here’s why it’s not so simple

Every March, Silicon Valley executives, Wall Street investors, hackers, digital designers and other creatives meet in Austin, Texas, to discuss the future of the internet. Most years, this involves various panels forecasting social media trends, startups promoting themselves for increased funding, and endless debates around how useful tech companies actually are to society. This year, however, there seemed to be only one subject on most people's lips: the "Creator Economy". Indeed, at this year's South by Southwest festival, there were dozens of panels on it, ranging from giving content creators "Autonomy" to how brands can get in on it too.

Much like NFTs, Crypto and Web3, the "Creator Economy" feels like a phenomenon without an obvious root, on which marketing agencies, PR firms and the tech industry have become fixated. Some argue that the term has a long history, harking back to the early days of the internet, when Stanford Engineering professor Paul Saffo used the phrase to refer to animators and illustrators, in what he considered to be a new, wholly digital economy. In recent years, however, the term has been liberally used by Silicon Valley tech CEOs and venture capital funds, in reference to content creators such as YouTubers and podcasters earning money through a hybrid of brand partnerships, ad revenue and subscription platforms such as Patreon, as well as influencers on consumer facing platforms advertising products and services directly through TikTok and Instagram.

The future of the internet?

To tech CEOs like Li Jin, founder of investment fund Atelier Ventures, the "Creator Economy" is the foundation upon which a new version of the Internet will be built. She explains in the New Yorker that "anyone whose fame stems from online channels, if they are able to earn income through that influence, I consider that to be the creator economy". To Jin, such a structure should be welcomed, on the basis that it gives creators more control and freedom over their work, and would open the internet up to more creative possibilities.One problem in interrogating this vision of a "Creator Economy" is its vagueness. Most of us can get our heads around considering YouTubers who film, edit and publish videos to be "creators", as might we apply that term to podcasters, or to visual artists putting their work on to Etsy. But it becomes more difficult to apply this understanding to other kinds of creative work - for example, streamers who take small cash donations through live broadcasts on Twitch, or journalists who turn to platforms like Substack as a source of stable income rather than the precarity of a standard newsroom. Moreover, the tile of "creator" tends to be given to individuals who are the public face of content - meaning that those who, for example, design thumbnails for YouTube videos, fix the sound quality on podcasts, or even manage the upload schedules of big influencers, tend not to be seen as "creators", or much considered by VCs hoping to cash in on the "Creator Economy".

Art optimised for the algorithmTo my mind, though, the second problem is how this idea hands tech platforms the power to decide what counts as "valuable" creative work, which often has far less to do with artistic merit than a creator's personal investment in the tech itself. I'm grateful to be able to make a portion of my income through podcasting and streaming on Patreon, but I'm also aware that much of this is a result of having an existing media profile which makes my work more discoverable to the public. As someone who has spent much of my career producing online content for various outlets, I have an expert knowledge of what kinds of content garners attention on different social media platforms. In that way, much actual creative work itself is secondary. The primary focus is optimising that work so that platforms notice and promote it.

This means that independent creatives lacking resources will often struggle against their wealthier counterparts, or that creators producing content that some major platforms have unclear rules on - for example, adult content creators on OnlyFans - have to constantly navigate changes in rules and regulations, as well as sudden algorithmic changes, all of which will have a significant impact on their income. While some platforms might make it easier to publish content to personalised audiences - making the process of earning money easier - the "Creator Economy", far from liberating digital content producers, further binds them to the commercial logics of tech platforms. Consequently, creators, far from having financial stability, are forced into further precarious gig work, incentivised to create content that platforms demand in order to make a living.

It is unclear how the "Creator Economy" will look like in the future, where predictions about a functional 'Web3' system have ranged from hyper-localised patronage networks to creators having their own micro social media platforms. What's missing in all these visions, however, is a framework in which creatives get a better deal out of their work, or, more broadly, how a new version of the internet might make producing art sustainable. As Jathan Sadowski, an academic and host of the Tech & Political Economy podcast This Machine Kills points out, far from freeing artists from the shackles of corporate tech firms, the "Creator Economy" amplifies its worst excesses and, in doing so, "perfectly mirrors" another type of economic system: capitalism.

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