Youtubers Union Weekly Update 4, 1st April 2018

Hi everyone,
Jörg Sprave has been an absolute raid boss this week for YouTube, what an amazing week for the YouTubers Union, it has been so busy. I will list Jörg's Facebook posts below to make sure I don't miss anything. I highly recommend you check them out and take part in the discussions.

• Sunday 25th March, Virtual Membership Card Design challenge
• Monday 26th March, YouTube moves the call again
• Tuesday 27th March, YouTube confirms disallowing self sold adds for demonetized videos
• Tuesday 27th March, Jörg Sprave reports on the VC with YouTube - (PDF with YouTube's responses)
• Wednesday 28th March, Yellow video of the month campaign.
• Thursday 29th March, Jörg Sprave asking for more talks with YouTube
• Friday 30th March, Reminder we are not the YouTube Quitters Union.
• Saturday 31st March, YouTube asking for more talks.
• Sunday 1st April, THE GRAND "NAKED TRUTH" YOUTUBERS UNION SURVEY - (Users Survey) (Creators Survey)

The more active the Union is the more resources YouTube will need to expend in order to monitor us. We are well over 13k members now and growing.

Last week we had the virtual membership card design challenge, we had some great artwork submitted. As a result we will be adding a virtual membership care to the website in the near future. This will show an avatar image, a real image (optional)  and all the YouTubers  Union Platforms you have joined. Here is a sample of the card. The virtual version will link you your YouTube channel, as well as your social profiles. If you decide you want to print it out, we will provide a QR code for the rear, that will include all those links.

YouTube also requested to move the time of the call with Jörg to an earlier time rather than a later one again. While YouTube is regularly making positive noises such as hoping the meetings will "bring us closer together" they are yet to take any convincing action to back up that sentiment. They did provide Jörg with some written answers to his concerns, the PDF linked above, which makes an interesting, but infuriating read. To me it really cements YouTube's lack of understanding of their own platforms issues and how those issues impact creators AND viewers. I highly recommend you read Jörg's full post reporting on the VC with YouTube if you haven't already. YouTube has also contacted Jörg asking for further talks, check out his March 31st post and check out his sample questions and drop in any suggestions you have into the comments.

Jörg has also posted this week a reminder that we are not the YouTube Quitters Union. I believe our ideal solution is to fix YouTube. It was great, and it can be great again. Moving platform is too much like giving up and it will be damaging to larger creators. It won't be easy for another company to absorb our creators either, it will represent a massive spike in their usage and many just don't have the capacity. It is an option we must consider for the future but only as a last resort. Since there is a lot of interest in the viability of other platforms I am going to add a comparison of services to the website in the near future. I do not believe any platform is yet ready to handle a mass migration but I think there is good value in monitoring the situation and investigating properly.

Jörg also posted his "Yellow video of the month campaign". This will allow creators to produce a 10 second trailer of their demonetized video and it will be posted on the YouTubers' Union official channel in a monthly video. Please check out Jörg's Facebook post where he includes details on how to contribute.

Earlier this afternoon Jörg also posted on the Facebook group asking members to fill in a creators and users survey. This will be incredibly useful information in our negotiations with YouTube, it will clearly demonstrate any time YouTube is being misleading and it help us demonstrate our own points much more clearly.

I've also recently added an ideas sharing platform to the website which will allow much more structured discussion and allow those who share an opinion to add their voice to the movement. I've also added the ability to log into the website by using several different social media accounts. I have made a video demonstrating these features available here.

Since this week has been so busy I have considered sending out multiple newsletters, before I send out more I'd like some feedback on how everyone feels about getting emails more often. I've added a poll to the website. We could take the option later of splitting the newsletters into multiple categories in order to give people more control. For now though I would like to know how you guys feel about a greater frequency.

United We Stand

BigMonMulgrew