[ctraynor]

What you're describing seems to be pretty much exactly polarization.

You get one set of creators who want monetary gain and so their content fits within certain limits. Over time this will create more similar content as they watch what works for other people.

The other set of creators have different goals and don't care about monetary gain. The popular parts of this content will also tend to local maximum based on the level of extremism that's popular.

[mrtksn]

An iPhone unboxing video is not a polar opposite of a video complaining about feminists.

I wouldn't call this polarisation even if it can be described as the polarisation of income models because my concern is about the content of the videos.

I find it disturbing to see comments on HN completely disregarding the content and context and default to monetary optimisation.

I believe that people and their creations are what matters and the business models around those are incidental, despite the fact the business is influencing the content.

People always sing songs but the way they profit from this keeps changing over time. Selling tickets, selling recording, selling streaming, selling right - all change as the technology and society changes.

Therefore, I think that the polarisation is not the right word here as there is no polarisation of the content of ad-friendly and controversial content. They might be polarised among themselves tho, like iPhone vs Samsung and MAGA vs Antifa.

[ctraynor]

The content of two videos don't need to disagree with each other for the general effect to be called polarization.

The polarization isn't about income models, it's about the different kinds of content (light hearted safe content that aligns with advertisers vs extreme content that doesn't). I may have confused things by mentioning gain. The different goals of the creators was just my basic explanation as to why similar content continues being created because the effect is already in place.

I find it disturbing that you disregard the effect of capital. Advertisers are 100% focused on monetary optimization, and they're very good at driving creators to what will work best for them.

Of course content and context is important. But, money drives the content creation. Even when it isn't used to pay for the original content. Advertisers want impressions and clicks. Content creators want more viewers. The type of content aligns with advertisers goals -> money becomes involved -> more similar content. And other creators see this and want part of it.

[Fnoord]

> What you're describing seems to be pretty much exactly polarization. [...]

It is, but its also more.

OP wrote:

> The moment that you make a content that advertisers might find controversial you risk losing your reward for that content so advertising financed media fails to capture anything beyond the mainstream entertainment.

This described self-censorship. Wikipedia has a nice article about that, including many examples. [1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-censorship

[ctraynor]

Yes self censorship is part of the system.

It's a process that maintains the existing polarization.