Is the creator economy broken? Rethinking video streaming in the age of algorithms and AI
The following is a visitor publish and opinion from Adrián Garelik, CEO and Co-Founder of Flixxoo
Algorithms manufacture style. That’s environment friendly for retention, however brutal for creators who reside and die by an opaque feed. Surveys present widespread burnout and rising skepticism about AI-mediated media—but we hold optimizing for the metric whereas sidelining the maker. It’s time to rebuild the rails with peer-to-peer distribution and clear, tokenized economics in order that creators can absolutely personal their attain.
What centralized algorithms optimize for, and why it issues
Over the previous 15 years, video streaming has been reshaped by recommender techniques. YouTube’s watch-time algorithm pioneered the mannequin. Netflix refined it with big-data analytics to maximise binge-watching. TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts perfected it by capturing each micro-interaction—like swipes, pauses, and skips—as inputs to optimize retention.
This precision has a value. Algorithms now actively mould consumer preferences. Behavioral analysis exhibits that repeated publicity and reward cycles situation viewing habits. Content is now not pushed for depth or creativity. Engagement guidelines, favoring sensational hooks over nuanced storytelling.
Creator affect: burnout and homogenization
For creators, the algorithm acts as a gatekeeper. Success relies upon much less on originality and extra on conforming to opaque indicators: hook size, posting cadence, retention thresholds. Surveys point out that the strain to “play the feed” drives widespread burnout.
A 2022 Awin/ShareASale Creator Burnout Report found that 72% of creators skilled burnout straight tied to algorithmic calls for—a determine echoed in 2024 updates from MarTechEdge. Respondents reported a loss of pleasure in creation, formulaic content material methods, and declining well-being.
The financial affect is equally stark. Large studios, armed with IP-driven franchises, dominate platform distribution, whereas mid-tier creators wrestle for visibility. Quantity is rewarded over high quality, resulting in a homogenized panorama with restricted room for experimentation.
AI content material “slop” and coverage
The subsequent stress check comes from generative AI. Synthetic video, audio, and imagery can now be mass-produced at near-zero price, threatening to flood feeds with undifferentiated “slop.” Analysts at WIRED warn that this quantity dangers drowning out human creators.
Regulators are taking discover. The EU AI Act introduces transparency and watermarking necessities for artificial content material. Therefore, platforms like TikTok and YouTube face scrutiny over suggestions. In the U.S., debate round TikTok divestiture underscores how algorithmic distribution has change into a geopolitical difficulty as a lot as a cultural one.
Without clear curation, the threat is twofold: creators lose visibility, and audiences face a collapsing signal-to-noise ratio.
How P2P + tokens change the math: three levers for a sustainable creator economy
Platforms optimized for retention; the problem now could be to optimize for possession. By combining peer-to-peer infrastructure with tokenized incentives, we are able to rebuild distribution, monetization, and governance on foundations that prioritize creator resilience.
Distribution is already being reimagined by decentralized protocols like Livepeer, which cut back reliance on centralized servers and feeds. Community-run nodes deal with video compute, eliminating the opaque rating techniques that dictate visibility on conventional platforms.
Monetization is shifting on platforms similar to Audius, the place artists obtain direct fan-to-artist payouts. Token incentives align compensation with real neighborhood engagement as an alternative of ad-driven watch time.
Governance additionally modifications in decentralized techniques, the place token-weighted voting and neighborhood curation give audiences a task in shaping discovery and moderation. This transfers energy from unilateral platform selections to shared governance.
Flixxo, launched in Argentina in 2016, illustrates how this mannequin can lengthen to token-gated releases. Its Ticket 3.0 NFT enabled community-funded entry to the movie Bull Run. The experiment highlights each potential and friction factors: whereas it proved new funding fashions are doable, scalability, onboarding, and regulatory readability stay challenges for Web3 streaming.
Towards a sustainable creator economy
The future of the creator economy hinges on whether or not we proceed optimizing for short-term engagement, or rebuild techniques that prioritize possession and inventive depth.
If distribution and income primitives stay centralized, creators will hold fixing for feed as an alternative of creating for folks. But if we decentralize the rails, creators can reclaim autonomy, audiences can uncover content material past the algorithm, and storytelling can regain its cultural significance.
If the final decade was about engineering engagement, the subsequent should be about engineering possession.
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