FRIEDRICH-EBERT-STIFTUNG – Organising ­YouTube From a collective action angle, the organisation of workers at YouTube appears difficult. Workers face three-fold frag­mentation. First, they are confronted with organisational fragmentation through their status as independent contrac­tors. Despite tight control of creators on the platform, they are not formally integrated into the organisation and there­fore lack rights to collectively bargain or organise. The fact that workers are pitted against each other on YouTube as marketplace competitors intensifies this dynamic. Second, the logic of surveillance-based algorithmic management described above also suggests that workers face techno­logical fragmentation, entangled with high information asymmetries that prevent them from communicating with each other. Third, creators are confronted with geographi­cal fragmentation, due to the dispersion of workers across regions and borders, often with different legal frameworks. Sometimes neither workers, YouTube or advertisers are based in the same country and jurisdiction(Berg et al. 2019). The association of individuals on these grounds is difficult and has led to a collective voice of content creators not being visible on YouTube. CONFLICT ON YOUTUBE: THE ›ADPOCALYPSE‹ Like most labour organising, the emergence of YTU was linked to a specific workplace conflict. Conflict on YouTube arose from a series of scandals on the platform from 2017 onwards that led to tighter control of labour processes. YouTube suffered a major financial loss when advertisements were screened alongside racist, anti-Semitic and misleading content(Winkler et al.  2017). This led to advertisers like Walmart, Coca-Cola and Starbucks diverting spending away from YouTube and cancelling sponsorships (Nicas 2017). After only a few weeks, YouTube’s losses were estimated at around USD 750 million, very likely rising to several billion USD in subsequent months(Rath 2017). To counter this development and regain trust among advertis­ers, YouTube enforced a strict regime of(mostly) automated content moderation on the platform. Besides the deletion of doubtful content, these changes also resulted in an intensified, algorithmic labour regime for most creators on the platform, leading to a high number of arbitrary sanc­tions, channel shutdowns and income loss. Regardless of actual rule violations, creators’ videos were demonetised 4 , ›shadowbanned‹ 5 or saw their channels closed for several weeks. Some examples of falsely flagged content include videos about a boat-building technique called»strip built« (which was flagged because of the word ›strip‹), the use of vernacular language or terms such as ›gay‹ or ›trans‹, which were flagged as ›shocking content‹(Alexander 2019; Kumar 2019: 7f.). YouTube’s abrupt changes, unclear com­4 ›Demonetisation‹ denotes the labelling of a video as ›not advertiser­friendly‹. Videos that are demonetised are not able to create reve­nue. 5 ›Shadowbanning‹ denotes the process of making content on a plat­form hard or impossible to find. This limits the reach of content sig­nificantly. munication and lack of accountability on the issue sparked a public backlash by content creators and users across the platform(Alexander 2019). The conflict, which was dubbed ›Adpocalpyse‹ within the YouTube community, exposed the dependencies and vulnerabilities of creators that had already been present on the platform before. In this heated situation, a group of YouTubers formed the YTU to chal­lenge labour conditions on the platform. ›YOUTUBERS UNITE‹: THE YOUTUBERS UNION In reaction to YouTube’s advertisement crisis and its repercus­sions, the YTU was established by content creators in March 2018. The group’s founding was initiated by Jörg Sprave (JS), a popular German content creator whose income and visibility on the platform had dropped due to YouTube’s ad­vertisement restructurings. JS published a campaign video in which he called»all YouTubers to arms«(Sprave 2018b) and created a Facebook group, which 15,000 individuals joined within six weeks. Regarding his motivation to initiate the group, JS states: »Since I was not the only one affected, I thought, this is such a huge issue at the moment, because it also shows how difficult it is as a small YouTuber.[…] I’m not that small myself, but even my big channel cannot ward this off. There is nothing you can do, they sit this out. That’s why it is clear for me until now, if YouTube creators don’t unite, no change will be achieved.«(Interview 6: 3) 6 The newly founded group consisted of three main constitu­encies: professional content creators, aspiring professionals, viewers and supporters. Most work was conducted by JS himself, a group of admin members and a couple of large professional creators who published campaign videos on their channels. According to our research, the YTU served three main purposes for members: to gather and exchange data, to organise or support campaigns and to discuss ongoing changes on the platform.(1) Data exchange and collection was important for creators to gather common knowledge on the problems they had faced individually. Surveys among all members were conducted to identify common grievances, and screenshots of statistics were shared to highlight problems creators experienced and col­lect evidence.(2) Organisation and support of campaigns was an important second form of interaction. The group’s large membership base was put to use when the group’s actions or campaigns were on display with public exposure, through likes, shares, comments or other forms of interven­tion via social media.(3) Discussion of changes on YouTube was a third important membership activity. Recent and up­coming developments on the platform(such as new terms and conditions) were discussed from a creator’s perspective. This presented a contrast to the often unclear information 6 This and all following German quotes(Interviews 6, 7 and 9) have been translated by the authors. 4