alt Hacker NewsThat is sad reality. As an example, I wish Sabine Hossenfelder didn't have to leave academia. Her content (blog posts not videos) were one of the ways I kept up with development in theoretical physics. But now that she is a full time video content creator, she is under pressure to publish click bait and very questionable content. I understand that she is catering to the audience but this is one example why alignment of the incentives works. Before, she was earning her living as a working physicist so she did not have to cater to anyone actually and she produced very good content -with exceptions- for years.
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Avocations can turn into a nice revenue stream if the stars align. But online content almost certainly requires that you really work at it and think about what you need to do to boost revenue in ways that might not happen organically.
>, I wish Sabine Hossenfelder didn't have to leave academia. [...] I understand that she is catering to the audience but this is one example why alignment of the incentives works. Before, she was earning her living as a working physicist so she did not have to cater to anyone actually
But this obscures the fact that she was still "catering to the audience" when working in academia as a paid physicist. She was just placating a different audience and worked on topics she really didn't think was groundbreaking just to keep the grant money rolling in. The misalignment of incentives just happened outside of Youtube.
Deep link to her explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKiBlGDfRU8&t=4m37s
A lot of viewers wish that "content creator" wasn't a thing and people just did Youtube for free as a hobby. Understandable. But what viewers don't realize is that it's also actually saying this: "Please continue being unhappy in your crappy day job so you don't need to live off money from Youtube ads or sponsorships."