Conclusion: challenging fragmentation initiate lawsuits in various fields to bring about clarity regard­ing the legal situation and pave the way for new regulation in the field. Through efforts to file a lawsuit against YouTube in the EU for GDPR violation and for sham self-employment in various countries, YouTube might be pressured to change its practices. One indication of such a development is several landmark bills and regulations that have been introduced in recent years, such as the AB5 regulation for gig work­ers in California(Konger/Scheiber 2019) and billion-dollar penalties for Google in the EU for violating antitrust law (European Commission 2019). Institutional power remains terra incognita so far, however. Court rulings could turn out in favour of content creators, but this remains to be seen. As a power resource for the YTU, institutional power could mostly be employed as a threat(of filing lawsuits) to pres­sure the company. Through the FairTube campaign, the YTU could profit from IG Metall’s institutional power, for instance by initiating official talks with the company. While institu­tional power can generally be seen as offering potential for the YTU, the frequently national nature of institutions also poses an obstacle for transnational movements, possibly fragmenting its members. In conclusion, it can be said that the YTU was successful in the mobilisation of two power resources, associational and societal power. Associational power was developed through the organising process that JS and other creators initiated at a time when YouTube’s reputation was at a low point and dissent against its practices was strong. It quickly assembled membership through the use of Facebook’s and YouTube’s infrastructure and established a collective process geared around information exchange, mutual aid and strategy-finding. Societal power was developed through the successful scandalising of YouTube’s treatment of cre­ators and its increasingly controversial content governance. This generated significant public attention and pressured YouTube to react in various ways(informal negotiations, press statements, smaller policy changes). This pressure was increased through successful collaboration with IG Metall, which improved the YTU’s standing and equipped the group with institutional and associational resources(i.e. legal sta­tus and expert knowledge). Additionally, the legal grey area of YouTube’s privacy and labour practices served as an im­portant leverage for the YTU to pressure the company and raise public awareness about its practices. Of course, none of the mobilised power resources proved to be without risks or ambivalences. While associational power has been crucial to building and developing the group(and countering the platform’s immense fragmentation of workers), a multiplic­ity of aspects are putting the group’s associational potential at risk or are ambivalent as a strength: limited participation due to the concentration of power in the hands of JS, a lack of collective identity and the threat of conflict and exclusion due to hostile subcultures. While institutional power offers potential, its actual impact remains uncertain so far. Societal power might continue to be an important resource for the YTU and similar groups, but it is unclear how long the dis­cursive momentum can be maintained and if coalitions will prove to be lasting. CONCLUSION: CHALLENGING FRAGMENTATION Looking at the development of the YTU and analysing its power resources, several conclusions can be drawn. First of all, it becomes clear that the YTU differs from the previous forms of collective action that have been witnessed with workers in web-based platform labour so far. The YTU’s actions went beyond the spontaneous(and usually frag­mented) backlash of workers and users on a platform and can instead be described as a»collective actor with strategic capabilities«(Dolata/Schrape 2018). At the same time, the YTU is not to be confused with formal organisations or trade unions. The group’s actions are shaped by forms of »organised informality«(Dobusch/Quack 2011) which are distinct from both formal organisations and non-organised collectives. Another important difference of the YTU in con­trast to other associations of creators is that its organising processes were based on the formulation of a clear conflict line against YouTube. 17 While willingness to cooperate with YouTube was stated clearly, the group has addressed the company as a core problem in the conflict, and has chal­lenged the company’s affirmative notion of ›partnership‹ in the process. Still, the activity of YTU members does not stem from an anti-capitalist or ›class-conscious‹ standpoint, as interviewees repeatedly emphasised. The main effort was to re-install the ›old YouTube‹ as creators and viewers had known it before. Still, the antagonistic narrative of a conflict line might serve as a basis for more broader forms of labour organising. An important aspect of the YTU is the clear hierarchy be­tween the founder JS and regular members of the group. This fact shaped the potential of associational power in ambivalent ways. While a small team of administrators formed an organisational core around JS and were at times embedded in some decision-making, JS functioned as the major symbolic figure, spokesperson and coordinator of the group. Although the development of power asymmetries is a conventional dynamic within collective actors(Dolata/ Schrape 2018), its manifestation in the YTU proved to be relatively distinct. This dynamic, however, also mirrors the overall distribution of power within YouTube, where a small minority of highly influential creators garner the majority of attention and influence. It is not surprising, then, that such ›Matthew-effects‹ are also present in organising processes. How this will develop in the future remains unclear. The group could become more grassroots-oriented and might be able to maintain membership activity, or could develop more into a»Single-Person-Organisation«(Lovink 2010) focused on one leadership figure. Another finding from the research is that trade unions such as IG Metall are making efforts to position themselves in the field of platform la­bour and have been able to do so with some success. In this case, IG Metall was a provider of institutional standing, expertise and experience as well as financial and infrastruc­17 This can be said to have been the case with the ›Internet Creators Guild‹(ICG), which was closely affiliated with YouTube and refrained from elaborating an obvious conflict of interest. 9