“Claim our profession and defend our rights”: with these objectives the so-called Creators Network was born, a space promoted by UGT and defined as a union project.
Why a Network of Creators? Mainly because, despite the fact that there are millions of influencers around the world, it is a highly informal and still deregulated labor sector. In fact, it will be one of the challenges of the future, how to catalog people who contribute to the economy of both the country and the technology companies for which they enter content when these spaces are of almost total participatory freedom, where the viewer and the creator they intermingle.
🎥Youtubers, streamers, instagramers … Content creators are digital workers and deserve decent conditions.
Today they organize to demand transparent algorithms, labor rights and generate social debate.
❗️The #RedCreadores from #UGT, a pioneering space. pic.twitter.com/yQBSCiKWAX
– Pepe Álvarez (@SG_UGT) November 22, 2021
Its importance is already being recognized by the platforms themselves. For example, Tiktok acknowledged that, had it not “manufactured” influencers, those creators would not have attracted masses of consumers to its app. Also recently Facebook offered to make a counter offer, to improve the conditions to retain talent there and not let them stay on greener pastures. As long as we’re hooked on the screen, they are a wealth-generating workforce.
Who is behind the project? At the moment what we have is a collaborative video between Isabel Serrano (11,000 followers on Instagram), Sergio Gregori (38,000 on Youtube and Cuatro’s worker), Alán Barroso (52,000 on Instagram), Nerea Blanco Marañón (80,000 on Facebook), Marta Llanos (9,000 on YouTube), Mauricio Schwarz (110,000 on YouTube) and PutoMikel (135,000 on YouTube). They are the outpost, it will be necessary to see if they manage to consolidate and attract enough influencers to be noticed. For December 10 and 11 they have called a conference where they will tell more about the proposal.
What are Spanish creators asking for? At the moment, what is seen in the video. Logically, a greater weight of collective bargaining, as well as greater transparency and auditing of the platforms and the operation of their algorithms, where the creation of legal protection and administrative surveillance frameworks could also enter. A “fairer” distribution (it is understood that of income) and an active fight against hate speech and in favor of “freedom of expression, respect for differences and ideological plurality”. A Eldiario advance that at the union level they are in an embryonic phase, analyzing “what needs exist” within these groups.
A universal union movement. The digital world has been talking about “influencers unions” for at least three years. Fairtube, based in Germany, was born in 2019 with the support of 18,000 disgruntled youtubers. As of August 2020, the American Influencer Council (AIC), registered as both an NGO and a lobby, seeks to “defend and promote the interests of virtual content creators.” The Creator Union (TCU) is a British union with 400 members. Many of the labor movements that have been seen so far have not been constituted through organizations as such, but as spontaneous unions of creators in the face of unidirectional abuses of the platforms.
The power of small speakers. Ibai has eight million followers on Twitch. It is understandable that he, the type of influencer profile that he is, does not need a union to better negotiate with Amazon. But many small streamers could have something to do if they decide to join, just like in any workplace. Hence, the success of these union platforms will not be so much in the big stars (which also) as in the capacity for group action of the so-called micro-influencers.
The Twitch Strikes. A couple of the most notorious were the creation strikes on Twitch this summer, one focused on the reduction in salary conditions for Brazil of the live broadcasting platform and another international against the increase in hate attacks. According to TwitchTracker, at the peak of the protest, the streamers managed to cut one million attendees to the 4.5 million that, on average, they had been having, a not inconsiderable figure for an international alliance and without any collective financial support behind.
And a rejection by the Spanish right. Interventions from the economist Juan Ramón Rallo and from youtuber Wall Street Wolverine, among others, criticizing (or making fun of) the initiative. The criticism that is sensed is twofold. On the one hand, it seems to them that those behind the proposal are only creators with a leftist ideological tendency, so they feel that the Network of creators might not be as plurally ideological as they advertise. Hence a second suspicion, that they will be oriented to demand algorithmic changes that harm the audiences of right-wing creators. It is true that, for example, the British union, has worked towards greater visibility in the rates of instagramers, since there was a disparity in the salary that white women earned compared to black or LGTBI.