On entitlement and platforms

Not many things enrage me more that entitlement.

Here’s an example: when people critique platforms like Medium and Unsplash for not paying creators. Even Instagram and social media platforms get flak for this. This drives me up the wall.

The argument that these people share is that these platforms make money with this content, so they must share that revenue with the creators. It sounds fair. A lot of moronic arguments do.

When you sign up to a platform like medium, you are getting a service. That’s why you signed up. You expect them to give you something. That’s the implicit contract that these entitled people neglect. If you’re not into implicit social contracts, there’s a web page that explains to you why you may want to consider their services. If you want more, there’s a verbose legal contract. You knew why you were publishing on Medium. You knew there was no money in it. And yet you did it. You benefited from a service for free, you created something and now you have the audacity to demand payment even though none was promised, advertised, implied or otherwise communicated.

“Instagram makes so much money from my nudes”, “Twitter makes so much money from my misinformation”, “LinkedIn makes so much money from my malarky”. That’s what you hear from these people. They are not interested in fairness. They’re entitled. This is the kind of people that work day and night to weaponize the collective to get what they want.

These platforms are impossibly tough to build. The Winner takes all dynamic is not invented by the platform. They don’t have any moral responsibility to pay people anything. In fact, They would charge people if they could. But they can’t. So why are users trying to charge platforms to be on them? If your content is so valuable, then why wouldn’t you take it elsewhere?

Some creators have such amazing content that platforms do pay them a share of their revenue. Take Youtube for example. You think Youtube enjoys giving a cut of its earnings to creators? No they don’t. They do it because it motivates creators to create more and move the wheel in their favor.

Spotify Paid Rogan to be on Spotify. I like what JP said about it: “I’m not sure Rogan is on Spotify. Maybe Spotify is on Rogan”. Who is the platform? Is it Youtube or is it MrBeast? Is it Twitter or is it Elon or Trump or Tate?