The creator economy is failing to spread the wealth
—Top 1% of Twitch streamers earn 50%+ all revenue
—Top 1% podcasters earn almost all ad revenue
—Top 10 Substacks make $20M
Tipping and micropayments may help solve this. But prob not meaningfully or soon
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Replying to
‘Shirky famously dubbed this phenomenon the "power law distribution"’
Quibble: He didn’t “dub” it like he was naming a trend. Power law is a century-old technical concept in statistics. Shirky merely popularized the observation that this is an example.
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In which case gripping about it is like complaining about gravity?
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Not necessarily. Under certain conditions (preferential attachment) power laws emerge. In this case: when people choose who to subscribe to, they will preferentially choose bigger sources. There’s ways to weaken or reshape this. You can design gravity. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferent



