29 July 2019

In the first three days our two videos had a total of over 200,000 views (over 159,000 for the English video, almost 50,000 for the German video).

Viewers liked the English video 32,000 times and the German video 6800 times. That’s a like/view ratio of 20% for the English video and 13% for the German video.

Adjusting for cultural differences, the ratios are basically equivalent.

There are over 4000 comments on the English video and 900 on the German video, almost all positive. The critical comments are mostly of the form of “I agree with the goals and have a few concerns.”

Other YouTubers have made videos about our proposals. Some have been supportive, and some have been critical. Importantly, even the critical ones have discussed our proposals in a fairly reasonable way. We hope it keeps going like this. We’re planning to address some of the concerns and criticisms in a future video.

Online and print media have covered FairTube in both English and German. In Germany, it was covered in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, one of Germany’s biggest daily newspapers, and in the “Future” section of Bento, an online publication that’s part of Germany’s famous weekly magazine Der Spiegel.

In English, our favorite titles so far are from Edward Ongweso Jr’s article on Vice Motherboard — “The YouTubers Union is Not Messing Around” — and Alyse Stanley’s article on Gizmodo — “YouTubers Team Up With Europe’s Largest Trade Union To Demand the Platform Stop Screwing Them Over.” We couldn’t have come up with better titles ourselves.

And BoingBoing and Slashdot, literally some of the first blogs to have ever existed, have linked to the reportage.

We’re overwhelmed with the response. Our thanks to everyone who watched, liked, commented (even critically), and shared. Our thanks to the journalists who took the time to contact us and cover the effort. Our thanks to everyone who’s taking the time to think about how YouTube can be better.

As far as we know, every journalist who has written about our proposals has asked YouTube for a comment. So far, they haven’t replied.

Here are a few of our favorite comments from YouTube:

• And now here is the weather for YouTube a shitstorm is moving in from the east
• Professor Voodoo: I love that YouTube decided to put this in my recommendations (Yeah, we do too.)
• nuju888ice: You know you are in trouble if a lawyer finds something “interesting and exciting”
• Husain Patanwala: I had only heard about serious germans.. today i’ve seen it. Boy they’re talking business.
• IamSirZak: Thank you for giving smaller guys like us a voice.
• Cormoran: Imagine if the government went by Youtubes idea of “we wont tell you our laws so you wont find a loophole around them”.
• DudeistPriest: Youtube’s explanation is pure nonsense. That’s like telling somebody when they get their driver’s license, “We aren’t going to tell you what the rules of the road are, but we’re going to hold you accountable to them anyway.” They aren’t telling you the rules because then you might actually have legal recourse in a dispute…
• TheReaverKane: Holy crap! An actual union for youtubers? GO GUYS!!
• roadblock0210: Laughs in German paperwork

And possibly the one that makes the point the most concisely:

• Edge Rino: Yes algorithm, this video right here

Thanks so much, everyone. We’ll keep you posted.