Twitch streamers unlikely to unionize even after controversial pay changes
Even with TwitchCon, an October celebration of Amazon’s industry-leading live-streaming platform, in the rearview mirror, content creators remain incensed about recent changes to their pay. But despite collective outcry, collective action seems unlikely.
In September, Twitch announced that it’s doing away with a 70/30 revenue split option it offered to top-tier streamers, many of whom spend eight-plus hours per day on camera talking to viewers and playing video games. It’s a job that might sound attractive on paper, but it’s still a job; few have the stamina to dial up their personalities like an actor might all day long, every day, and many burn out after a couple years.
Across the board, Twitch’s standard split on paid subscriptions — a major source of streamers’ revenue — is now 50/50. This after a year in which the company already put pressure on creators to run more ads despite the fact that they interrupt broadcasts and can turn away new viewers at the door. In general, streamers feel like they’re being nickeled and dimed by a company that, according to former employees, has begun pinching pennies in pursuit of profitability.
In the face of sustained ire, Twitch execs say a better split is out of the question, even as competing platforms such as YouTube and Facebook entice creators with more favorable ratios.
“[It’s] like, ‘You’re part of Amazon. Of course you should be able to pay 70 percent,’” Twitch Chief Monetization Officer Mike Minton told The Post during an interview at TwitchCon. “The reality is, as an Amazon-owned company, we have the same expectation as the rest of the Amazon ecosystem: we’re a sustainable, viable long-term business.”
Some creators have proposed unionization as a possible solution to the problem of a platform that’s too big to budge yet apparently too small to foot its own bills. But in pursuing the legal route, streamers encounter the same dilemma facing gig economy workers driving and delivering for apps like Uber and Lyft: They are classified as independent contractors. This leaves them with the option to either form independent union-like entities or join existing unions like the Screen Actors Guild — American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), which recently opened its doors to “influencers,” but only those who’ve made money from sponsored deals.
A recent proposal from the Biden administration that would reclassify large numbers of gig workers as employees could alter this dynamic, but it must face a public comment period and would take months to go into effect if approved.
Twitch is also intensely top-heavy, with little in the way of a middle class. A leak of streamers’ payouts last year revealed that less than 0.1 percent make minimum wage or better.
These structural issues, according to Hasan Piker, a political commentator who broadcasts to millions of viewers per day and regularly advocates for unionization across industries, both help and harm the cause.
“You get the top 1 percent of Twitch streamers, and you have a union all of the sudden,” Piker told The Post during an interview at TwitchCon. “But scabbing is so easy. And also a lot of the [top] streamers themselves are capital owners and would much rather bargain individually than have any kind of collective bargaining agreement. They want to make sure that their bottom line is protected.”
A demonstration of popular streamers’ bargaining power played out in September when top creators like Imane “Pokimane” Anys and Matthew “Mizkif” Rinaudo discussed a plan to boycott Twitch during a particularly profitable week unless the platform addressed the long-standing issue of streamers gambling during broadcasts and, in some cases, advertising gambling sites to young viewers. Later that same week, Twitch took action and effectively banned several popular gambling sites.
Smaller streamers, however, pointed out that this energy from top streamers was nowhere to be found in 2021 when so-called “hate raids” — in which trolls flooded smaller streamers’ chats with bot-powered fake accounts that spammed often-racist messages — plagued Twitch, and the company failed to respond in an expedient fashion even after a boycott from smaller streamers. Moreover, last month’s anti-gambling effort from top streamers quickly collapsed into interpersonal drama and mudslinging, obscuring the central issue at hand.
Piker views this moment as instructive: Potential for organization exists on Twitch, but cohesion is lacking, and Twitch has a tendency to move slowly even when heavy hitters throw their weight around. “Getting gambling taken off the platform after it dominated its own individual [category on Twitch] — with God knows how many people getting addicted to gambling in the process — it still took a year,” Piker said. “I’ll take the moral victory. But it wasn’t [systemic]. Ultimately we didn’t do anything.”
Musk closes deal to buy Twitter
As one of his first moves as the new owner of Twitter, Tesla chief executive Elon Musk fired Twitter chief executive Parag Agrawal, chief financial officer Ned Segal, and Vijaya Gadde, head of legal policy, trust, and safety, Faiz Siddiqui and Elizabeth Dwoskin report.
The deal’s close came after months of legal fights and negotiations. You can follow all of the day’s developments here.
Musk has hinted that he may loosen content moderation at Twitter, but on Thursday he sought to reassure advertisers, writing in a tweet that Twitter “obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences!” Nevertheless, some advertisers say they’ll hold off on advertising on Twitter if former president Donald Trump’s account is reinstated, something Musk has suggested he’ll do, the Wall Street Journal’s Patience Haggin and Suzanne Vranica report.
TikTok faces Washington’s ire amid data privacy concerns
TikTok has been a massive test for the Biden administration in regulating an incredibly popular cultural phenomenon while navigating U.S.-China relations and grappling with an internet no longer dominated by U.S. firms, Drew Harwell and Elizabeth Dwoskin report in the third part of the Rise of TikTok series.
“The fight over TikTok has become one of the biggest standoffs of the modern internet: two global superpowers deadlocked over a multibillion-dollar powerhouse that could define culture and entertainment for a generation,” they write. “Yet the battle has often played out like a farce, loaded with an almost comical level of contortions and contradictions — even as China’s power over the company has grown.”
The U.S. government and TikTok have agreed on some initial terms like oversight from U.S. government specialists and data-security rules, but the deal isn’t close to a clear outcome, two officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity said. And people familiar with Oracle, the company often mentioned as monitoring TikTok, say reports of its involvement so far are overblown, saying all it is doing on TikTok’s behalf is providing servers.
Indian official says he’ll sue The Wire after report on Meta
Amit Malviya, an official from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), says he’ll file civil and criminal charges against The Wire for publishing “forged documents with a view to malign and tarnish my reputation,” Gerry Shih reports. It comes after weeks of controversy for The Wire, which published and later retracted a controversial report alleging that Malviya had the power to censor posts on Instagram.
“In its public apology posted Thursday, The Wire said that one unnamed member of its staff had deceived the organization and that the news organization lacked the expertise and editing rigor to vet technical stories,” Gerry writes.
The Wire says it was deceived by one of its employees, who is no longer associated with the company. The Wire’s editor, Siddharth Varadarajan, also hinted without offering evidence that the outlet may have been the subject of a wider conspiracy.
“Whether the person who brought all the material to The Wire deceived us at anyone else’s behest or acted on his own is a matter that will be subjected to judicial process in due course,” he said. “The malintent to discredit The Wire is obvious.”
