YouSaid · the spoken record

Hank Green

lines on the record: 100
first: 2022-08-02
most recent: 2022-08-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And I don't know, like, part of me is like, okay, we're going to be a stock company and there's going to be a coffee company, and that's going to be great. And part of me is like, we're going to take over the world. They're going to be bigger than Amazon. But like, I never have a person who thinks too much about what the goals are. I think more about what happens today and what's happening today seems good. And I'm just going to chase it and do it and whatever decision seems like the right decision. That's later.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so the whole idea is we buy things that we need and want and like the current model is in order to do that you have to have a founder or stock shareholders who are getting rich somehow. But like do we have to? Like if stocks aren't that complicated turns out they're more complicated than I thought. Coffee also same, but do we have to? Like can you have a situation where instead of when you buy socks some strange rich person gets richer that you will never know exists? Could it just be that it helps build hospitals or something? So that's the business model that we're playing around with. It's certainly not a unique idea I've studied and looked a lot at Newman's own. And there's ways that it makes things easier and there's ways that it makes things harder. And some of those ways that it makes things harder surprised me. But the outcome has been very good. People have signed up. I think we've got over 10,000 coffee subscribers, over 40,000 sock subscribers, this coffee club just launched recently.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Oh, and being on tour, did you ever go on tour where it's like five guys in a van with a thousand t-shirts just smelling each other for two months?”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I agree with you there. I would say that for all the management talk on the show, being in a struggling local band was the best management training I ever received in my life. You got four people in the room and they all got to start and stop on time. That's really hard.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I am glad I wanted to be a rock star for a little bit so that I can play my son Simon and Garfunkel songs. If the concern is more, are you setting yourself up for failure? I think the dreams are always setting you up for failure. I think that the main thing about dreams is that once they become less interesting to you, whether because you're failing or because you're changing, that you don't hold yourself to a dream that you don't have anymore. That's the only thing I'd say to those kids”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. I think that there's ways to do it. The other thing I think is I think that it's more like when people wanted to be a rock star than when people wanted to be quarterbacks. If being a quarterback, it's not a super transferable skill and also it's very hard on your body and also it's very select group of people. But wanted to be a rock star, you at least come out of it being great at guitar and wanted to be a YouTuber. I feel like you can come out of it being a better communicator. You can come out of it like understanding marketing better. I feel like if you actually sort of like chase it to its logical conclusion, it's like, oh, so you want a communications degree. Which is valuable.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, this is the whole show here. Like, how do you build a system that can operate itself? And like, no one's told me the answer yet. If you're out there listening, Jeff, give Hank $10 million and get on the show. But it's true when I had a kid, that pole switch flipped for me like overnight. Like, oh, I got to spend a lot more time at home. There's a lot of stats out there that say that the thing that young people want to be most is a YouTuber. It's like the number one desired profession. Whenever I hear the stat, I like. Know, like, that's you might like, yeah, I want to be an NFL quarterback, but like it's really hard. Like, it might not be sustainable. Do you think it's a sustainable career now in 2022?”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The sort of additive of having a lot of stuff to do and also wanting to be a good dad is definitely tricky and had me thinking more about how do I get great help. And that I think is really, I think that's probably a much bigger deal than I ever anticipated it would be. And something that I don't know. I don't hear like business people talking enough about succession or like how to create really stable systems of excellent executives, which seems to me like it's like the whole thing”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's like life is hard. And I have chosen a very interesting life and had the opportunity to choose, a very interesting life that I love. And if it contains hard parts, then other people's lives contain hard parts too. But sometimes it's like a thing that like, well, how do we solve this problem? I have managed to not have to feel like I don't know. I just, I don't am definitely tired. But I think that I wasn't this tired before I had a child.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And there's having people around me who don't, I'm not like as driven because I'm not surrounded by people who want the same things as me. And I think that if I'm very self-reinforcing. And so that's a nice piece of it. I have a really supportive community of people who like if I have to take a break, they're like, great, take a break. My brother is very supportive. It's always been the two of us in this together. And so if I'm having a hard time and I whine to him, he will either tell me to stop whining and solve the problem or that actually I'm just whining.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I'm not burned out. I've never experienced what I think people are talking about when they talk about burnout. I've never experienced like a collapse moment. Like I've had my, I've had very bad moments in my career for sure. But usually they're not about overwork. They're about some external problem that I can't solve. The things that have helped me with that are obviously having a lot of like enough resources to get help. Usually when I say help, I don't mean like therapy, though that's also good. I mean like people do. To take the burdens off of me”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A reason why not to, but diversification feels very good, and also being able to make stuff you couldn't otherwise make feels very good. And also, there's a bunch of people in my company who want to do stuff we can't afford, and it'd be great to make more money for them.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not an or. I've thought about it in the and sense, but like, I don't think that there's enough, like we'd have to make content for it. I'm quite tired. But I do find that model very interesting, and I hope that it's a big part of the future seeing creators make stuff that sort of like in between the quality of a YouTube video and a television show because it's on a streaming platform and so you can like make that work and seeing the sort of the different things that can exist that couldn't exist otherwise because of that is great. And I think that Nebula is probably the one elve, if not the standout version of that. But I and complexly are always like, you know, when we have these conversations, I think I said this in a meeting today, that we are impact focused. And so we would rather make a little bit of money from a lot of people than a lot of money from a little bit of people. So that's.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or their shareholders. But, like, ultimately, if you believe that people are rationally, economically motivated, no one should tweet. Like only disaster can befall you and you will never make any money. And yet, like the whole media industry is like, let's tweet.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. I also, like, it's weird because I also have a novelist, and so it's like the full gamut of the like, I'm going to work on this for three years and no one's going to see it, and then it's going to be six months done before anybody, you know, any consumer sees it versus a TikTok, which is like, or a tweet, you know, like the most instantaneous, like I went from an idea to feedback on it in, you know, less than five seconds.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I honestly don't think about it that way. I use the platform because I find it very compelling to use. I could have a lot of answers to this question that would seem a little bit less troubling, but ultimately I think that we are all kind of chasing just emotions and dopamine and like I like to, I'm trying to be honest with myself about that. And like the audience is there, certainly that's a component of it. But like I just, it's really fun to use.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is the weirdest thing about our current society that we don't think about a lot is that there's a huge amount of power being held in the hands of like a board and a CEO and maybe a couple of people around the CEO and add in a somewhat antagonistic foreign government in that equation and it's an order of magnitude creepier. more worrying. So I don't know how to interface with that. My hope is that I'm not actually drawing people onto the platform, but I'm reaching them with good stuff while I'm there. But I think that that's weasily.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That power to sort of like bury misinformation. That's some of the work that they do, but almost all of it is how do we get people to stick on our platform and show them morans. So it's just the money motive. But like if there is a motive beyond that, there's no reason why it couldn't be used for the motive beyond that, whether that is to create division or create stick certain narratives in people's heads or to make people sort of just more chill. Facebook's done research on the fact that they can make people happier or more sad by what they show them. And they're also like Facebook has been trying to optimize for more connection, which I don't know that they successfully have ever done. But that's a weird thing to optimize for. It's a weird amount of power for like 10 people to have.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I guess the thing that gives me the most makes me the most ambivalent. And I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. I felt this way about YouTube to some extent. Like there was a time when it felt very values neutral or even values positive to create YouTube videos. And then there was a time when it felt like, oh, this platform is maybe like I don't know every day whether this does more harm than good. And I feel that way about all of the social media platforms I engage with. But this is different. And I don't know, like I don't feel like I have the expertise to know how different it is. And I also don't get the idea that anybody does. Like I don't think that one thing that I will say is that I think that we all underestimate how powerful these platforms are. Like I think that generally they don't leverage that power for much more than increased revenue. You know, I think that the best actors out there try to use.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was a story this morning about the Chinese government asking for a propaganda account that wasn't labeled as a propaganda account and TikTok being like, we have to push back against this. But the conversations are happening, you know?”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Talked a lot about YouTube and their algorithms and how they work and access to YouTube and how you might have there's levers to influence the CEO of YouTube and they've grown. And we've talked a lot about TikTok as a black box. One of the most important elements of TikTok is a black box is that it's owned by a Chinese company that has some element of control of the Chinese government. And they will dispute that actual mechanism of control, but it's there. There's something there and there's reports of data being shared.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not just pure candy land. We will promote whatever stuff does well, even if it's extraordinarily destructive to society. And that leaves space, you know, leaves space open for somebody who comes along with a set of features that is even better for users and even sort of more easy and fun to use.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And it's also very interesting because it's a different question will you watch this versus will you click on this? And I think that we have biases about ourselves and about what content is for us in our own minds too. And I think that deciding to click on a technology review video or a science video might be a very different decision than whether I will watch it once it starts playing. So there is difference there as well. But yeah, I mean, when I think about this, I'm going back to a previous moment in the conversation. When I think about like how TikTok is structured for creators, it's just so designed for the user. It's not designed for creators. It's like it's so optimized for the best possible experience of the user, which is now like it's starting to walk back from that a little bit because you start, you put more advertisements and you try and control things a little bit more so that you can not be in burn mode forever. And YouTube did this to TV. You know, it was a much better user experience than TV. And now it spent the last 10 years trying to create systems that actually make it.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, but I heard you on waveform with Marquez, and I've talked to Marquez about this too. We see this too. YouTube thinks that our video should be shown to 97% men. And then we look at the actual stats in the tech industry. In like 70% of purchase decisions in tech are made by women. So I know based on the actual money that is spent that women are very interested in technology. And you can make content for them, and then you run into this crusty old YouTube algorithm that is just like very set in its ways It's like only dudes. TikTok, like, just doesn't have the hasn't developed the rigidity and it'll just fire stuff at anybody to see what will happen. And that algorithmic dynamic seems like the opportunity, but it also feels like a very big story about how culture works right now.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But I do feel like I love the TikTok community hugely. Like, this is where it's complicated. Like, there's so much creativity and there's so much air. There's so much light in the forest where there isn't any on YouTube, so much opportunity to get discovered. And that means that the diversity of science creators is head and shoulders above YouTube. It's younger. It's more female. It's more of color. And like, these are decisions people are making. People want content from different kinds of people. And like I've loved that and I also love just how culture just freaking happens. Like it's a huge driver of culture. It feels in like I am happy to be on it. I have a lot of concerns about it. And I think that it's definitely a citizenship thing to not sort of like accept the place where you are as the way that it will always be.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just realized in this conversation the people I know at TikTok who are going to listen to the conversation, I just want to say, I'm sorry, this is how I feel. I would love to not feel this way. I would love to feel like you have the capacity to take on the sort of complexity of the challenges you face. And I would love to feel like you want to support creators the same way that YouTube does, but I don't feel that way.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think the TikTok is in the burn phase anymore. And I also think that spending $1,000 on a creator that's making them $100,000 is a great deal for them. Like if they can send somebody flowers instead of sharing revenue, that's a huge win”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, it feels much more surface level. Like TikTok, for example, will send you a $200 flower arrangement, but they will not talk to you about whether your friend's account got canceled, you know? And I think that they may be cutting back on this a little bit, but for a while there, the TikTok swag was out of hand. I was like, my wife was like, you need to tell them to stop sending stuff. Is that everybody just like, I don't know. We'll see if it happens again this Christmas, but just like cakes and skateboard decks and hoodies and boxes, it's just like...”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. I think that it does until TikTok starts to experience, like in the audience's head, isn't all positive vibes. And, you know, right now, I think that the vast majority of people who use TikTok kind of picture them as like an upstart, like what a surprise, what a delightful little place without any idea of how big bite dance is. You know, I think that TikTok's this tiny little sudden company that is fighting the big. Dog It's like an underdog story. And that feels really good. And so it's sort of like, well, you know, give him time. Give him some slack. They're like, TikTok, they're a tiny little company. It's just like, you know, I don't think anybody, like it's very, it would be very weird for, because like, you know, you don't have.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We loved YouTube early on. Like, there was never any drama between YouTube and YouTubers in the beginning. And I think that, you know, it's been interesting because it isn't really when creators start to feel that way. It's when audiences start listening to them about it. Because right now you can make a TikTok about how annoying you are by some decision TikTok made. But unless the audience is going to watch that instead of the next thing that they could immediately swipe to, then doesn't matter. It's not going to get any views.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, for a creator, is TikTok a viable hedge? Okay. You know, I think the creators are often super aware of the fact that they are in the attention game rather than the money game and that that's more what motivates most of them anyway. That's certainly what motivates you at the beginning before any money is there. So I think that in that way it is. Like it's certainly an attention hedge if it's not an economic one. At the same time, even after two plus years of being a TikToker, like a straight, like I'm a TikToker now. do not feel like it's a stable place. And I feel like what's going to be interesting to me is like, when does it happen? When is the moment of self-awareness arise in enough people? Because this happens every platform. Like I remember when the relationship between Twitch and streamers was just so beautiful and loving and rosy and everybody was so happy about every decision that Twitch made and then like at some point it was just like and I remember that happening with YouTube too.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have con Made of Does that make it a viable hedge against YouTube? I think I know a lot of creators who think, okay, the audience is moving to TikTok. The platforms certainly are terrified of the audience moving to TikTok, but economically, it doesn't seem like a viable hedge or a sustainable or stable hedge against something like YouTube.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More. So just let them deal with us as we exist. And, you know, if we hear something that seems like a good feature change, we'll change that feature. We won't say that we responded to the creator community. It's more like imagine us as a black box and not made of people and that people don't make these decisions. It's TikTok that makes these decisions. And I think that's how most creators think about it. Like they don't think about it as a group of people.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't really. I think that they've got some pretty big, you know, they're responsive to big, big creators, big, big, big, big creators, like Instagram's responsive to a Kardashian. For example, a huge problem they have is that moderation is really automated and there's very little recourse. I've had friends who've had channels with over accounts with over a million followers that just lost it. And there's no recourse. Like I, Hank Green could not get them. That sounded very egotistical, but like I have contacts inside TikTok. And I was like, what can we do for this person? And they're like, well, the person who handles that does not take my calls. I'm not allowed to talk to them. I think that there's just not enough infrastructure built up there. It feels to me more like the relationship between Facebook and creators where it's sort of like, you know, they're going to do what they're going to do. And I think that maybe the concern is like if you give creators a little bit, they're going to expect more and more and more.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but like, I know over the course of the past many years, you have made many videos where you're like YouTube is dumb for X. And then YouTube will like change it, right? Like my joke is that the life cycle of every YouTuber hits an inflection point where they make a YouTube video about how mad they are at YouTube. That's where everything changes. They become self aware, like in Westworld. Like that video is when it happens. But like YouTube is responsive to its creative community in that way. Do you think TikTok is responsive to its creative community in that way?”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's like legal, like that's law. Whereas the TikToks problem is can you get shareholders on board with the idea that this will be a more dynamic, long-lasting ecosystem if we pay creators, not just sort of like put the burden of monetization on them, but also do some work to actually pay them more than 0.000 cents per view.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sharp radio titles and songwriters and like whoever, but like, you know, and they're ever chasing increasing margins by doing podcasts and audiobooks and all this other stuff where they don't have that economic relationship But then on the flip side, Spotify also has huge shareholders in the record labels, which own huge chunks of Spotify. And they've got a legal regime in this country. They're like regulated into having to pay certain amounts of license fees for music in certain ways. And like creators get none of that.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a little bit of a technology in business and politics problem there, but like not unsolvable because you can just expand a thing that you already have. And say it's going to work this way. And you've got the pre-existing understanding of everyone that some huge percentage of the money coming in will go out. That everyone includes again like alphabet shareholders who know that YouTube is built this way and so extending the model for them. TikTok, right, they just have a giant Chinese corporation that no one can really pierce the veil of and then they've got the Chinese government, but they can't necessarily be like, we're changing our revenue model so that 55% of every incoming dollar then goes out to create like that's a big change.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I think for YouTube, it's very easy to say we will extend our current advertising model from regular YouTube to shorts Problem to solve there is it's not pre roll, right? It's in between swipes of video, right?”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a great, like Neil's great, and I think Neil's very honest. That was a great episode. But, like, he gets to say that because he already has the thing, and he can just promise the next thing forever. TikTok can't say that because they don't have the thing.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I thought Neil's answer on this podcast was really good, though. He was like straight up, we will share revenue on shorts ads the same way we share revenue on everything else.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shorts are currently basically unmonetized. So, yeah, they're monetized by Creator Fund, but for YouTube, shorts is unmonetized. There's no advertisements running on shorts. Shorts is just a hole that they're throwing money into right now. So to me, I'm like, okay, you can give us, Creator Fund is better than sharing 50% of nothing. But the moment YouTube launches its monetization product for shorts, which has to be soon, right?”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Cash, we're going to give away half of it. It's a hard sell. And I very much hope that YouTube does put that pressure on by having that relationship with shorts, which has just exploded as well. My shorts are doing better than my TikToks”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, no, but I do. The main way I have made money from TikTok is that I have a sock subscription and the sock subscription, you get a pair of socks delivered every month to you designed by a different independent artist that we decide to collaborate with and all of the profit from the SOC club goes to charity. So I don't make money, but the sock club has donated over a million dollars to charity. And TikTok has been the biggest piece of the marketing of the SOC Club. So I can see that conversions come. Like TikTok is pretty good at converting. So I get that, but the success of YouTube just leads me to believe that the savvy move is to share revenue rather than create these static pools. But that's a very hard message to sell when you have gone from losing money every year to just printing cash. And to say like, okay, we're printing.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's very limiting for the platform, and I think it's very bad for creators because it means that the kind of content, it's not just what's successful. It's also what can be turned into something that's monetizable.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But at the same time, brand deals are working very well on TikTok. And so I don't know if that's permanent. And it also seems to be that it doesn't need to be as aspirational. It doesn't, like it's not needing to sort of like rest on you want my life. It can be more like we have the same life. And so trust me, but the reality is people are making plenty of money, like they're making money, not at this per view level, anything like the amount of money you make on YouTube. But like people are figuring out how to make it work on TikTok. TikTok gives the creator instead of money. It gives them attention and create a figure out how to turn that intention into money. And a lot of kinds of content, though, still aren't that good at that. And so the platform is limiting itself only to content that's good at helping people sell things for other people or for themselves. If they're big enough to sort of create their own products.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Much more impactful, bigger, deeper, cool, interesting platform. Not that I don't think Instagram is cool and interesting. Especially most of the things that are going on on Instagram that are interesting, though, don't make any money. So TikTok is interesting in that it saw that and it was like, okay, why would we share a portion of our money with creators if Instagram figured out how to do it without sharing anything? I think the reason to say that is because you're screwing yourself over. You're saying like only certain kinds of content that are good at selling stuff are going to be economically viable on your platform.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sure, a brand like L'Oreal comes to you and says, We want you to talk about our shampoo and your TikTok or in your Instagram post. And it's just like a way of getting an advertising impression that's connected to the credibility and the authenticity of the creator. So what that created was an ecosystem where you could only be a profession on the ecosystem if you were good at selling certain products. And that meant that Instagram became focused on lifestyle and beauty content and aspirational content, not because there was anything intrinsic to Instagram about that kind of content, but because that was the economic incentive. Like you had to create aspirational content so people would want to have a life like yours so that you could sell them shampoo. That seems like a huge miss to me that they were like, if you had created a platform where you could make money doing lots of different kinds of things, like say YouTube did, then you would have a”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, to talk about TikTok, let's talk first about Instagram because I think that Instagram is fascinating. Because Instagram never shared revenue with creators, or it has and has done it in like weird little temporary ways or something. But it's never been like YouTube where it's like, we're going to create a stable economic ecosystem where you know how much you are making and you are making that money based on how effectively we can sell ads against your content. And what that did is it created an Instagram where in order to have a viable business as an Instagram creator, you had to do it as a person who is going to be good at doing brand deals. And so like Instagram kind of created the brand deal a little bit. And that was the way that you could be a professional Instagrammer. And this was fantastic.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Without comparing myself to other creators who are maybe getting more views per video, but like my friend who is a baker is worrying about bakery things and I'm worrying about click-through rates. And like that's just life. Like some people worry about bakery things and some people worry about YouTuber things.”
2022-08-02 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Why Hank Green can’t quit YouTube for TikTok · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT