I mean, is it worse than a traditional Hollywood type model for low level creators? Aren't traditional media firms famous for shenanigans like making entry level work so underpaid that you basically need wealthy parents to get your foot in the door? Or crunching visual effects artists because their whole craft was born post-unionization? The elites ultimately win everywhere, (in this case it is Google instead of say, Disney) but at least with YouTube it is ostensibly meritocratic to climb the career ladder from the bottom?
But I definitely can see the dystopia in an algorithmic platform seeking content hegemony at highest possible profit as opposed to how traditional firms work which is... not too different to me. But I can see a higher ceiling to the gray goo problem in the notoriously willing-to-be-bad-at-customer-service Google.
Idk necessarily if the issue is 'who are you paying' as much as it is 'what are the people I'm paying actually contributing.'
And in the case of YouTube the answer seem to be: we created and refined some amazing video compression and streaming techniques. Now that that's done we just want to profit indefinitely?
But I definitely can see the dystopia in an algorithmic platform seeking content hegemony at highest possible profit as opposed to how traditional firms work which is... not too different to me. But I can see a higher ceiling to the gray goo problem in the notoriously willing-to-be-bad-at-customer-service Google.