David Dobrik slammed by creators for benefiting from TikTok funding Instagram: David DobrikEveryday creators on TikTok are up in arms that the first raft of recipients of the app\u2019s $1 billion creator fund, aimed at offering developing creators a livelihood, includes David Dobrik. Dobrik, who has 20.5 million followers on the app, was one of 19 creators announced as recipients of the first tranche of funding made available through the much-hyped financial support program, general applications for which open later this month. The creator is estimated to be worth $7 million, and made his name and fortune on YouTube, after Vine, which he first uploaded videos to in 2013, shut down. \u201cDobrik specifically has really established himself as master of \u2018bringing joy\u2019 on YouTube in the past years, and gained a massive following doing so,\u201d says Andreas Schellewald, a researcher at Goldsmiths, University of London, who studies David Dobrik and TikTok. \u201cBut the thing is that his content has always remained short-video content, as he initially started on Vine, just packaged into a YouTube montage. \u201cHe\u2019s definitely someone TikTok has an interest keeping on their site,\u201d Schellewald adds. \u201cIt\u2019s just a great match for both sides. However, I\u2019m not sure if it communicates the right message to take an established creator like Dobrik and feature him in the context of this creator fund. Many others featured in that list of course too have a big following.\u201d With a handful of exceptions, the first group of creators announced as recipients of the funding appear to ignore the founding principle of the program. When it was announced on July 23, Vanessa Pappas, TikTok\u2019s general manager in the United States, said the cash would be disbursed \u201cto help support ambitious creators who are seeking opportunities to foster a livelihood through their innovative content\u201d. The fund is open to applications from anyone over the age of 18 on the app, with more than 10,000 followers and more than 10,000 views in the last 30 days. The 19 creators announced as the first recipients of the money have an average of nine million followers, with a quarter of them in TikTok\u2019s top 100 creators by follower count. They include beatboxer SpencerX and Michael Le, who are both in the 10 most followed accounts on TikTok. The list of creators \u2013 and the decisions made \u2013 echo a decision by YouTube to roll out a similar creator funding scheme in 2012, which ended up mostly paying mainstream celebrities and entertainment companies. \u201cI think a lot of us creators suspected it would turn into money to basically pay the big, already famous and already very financially successful \u2018stars\u2019 of TikTok, but it was still quite a surprise to actually see the list,\u201d says Jenny Millenni, a creator with 277,000 followers on the app. \u201cWhen you hear \u2018help support\u2019 and \u2018who are seeking opportunities\u2019, and \u2018a livelihood\u2019, it gives an image that it would be used to help people who are building up their career and presence on the platform, who may actually need the money in order to continue posting on the platform and turn it into a career,\u201d she says. \u201cNot creators who are already well established on the app, with a career, making a very large sum of money doing it and have existing net worths of millions of dollars.\u201d Millenni is one of a number of creators who have expressed concerns about who has been funded through the program on social media and private chat groups of TikTok creators. She\u2019s also concerned that the first raft of funded creators was announced before applications were even officially open. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty discouraging because it had potential to be a pretty cool opportunity for a lot of people, but now it doesn\u2019t seem like it\u2019s really going to hit the hands of very many due to the fact these huge personalities who are already millionaires are top on the list and picked out before people can even apply,\u201d she says. \u201cThe announcement of these people is pretty much the complete opposite of the type of people they stated it would go to.\u201d Schellewald believes it\u2019s a useful strategy for TikTok to highlight its biggest names, and often most interesting educational creators, early on in the fund\u2019s history, but that needs to change in the future. \u201cGoing forward there needs to be some kind of transparency in regards to the decision-making process of who gets funded, which I think would fit TikTok\u2019s overall commitment to transparency they\u2019ve thus far shown in regards to their algorithm,\u201d he says. However, the fund is in its early stages. \u201cThis first round of creators that have been announced are mostly well-established influencers,\u201d says Brendan Gahan, partner, and chief social officer at Mekanism, a US creative agency. \u201cThey\u2019ve got followings in the millions. Are they creators that need the money? Probably not.\u201d Yet Gahan thinks it\u2019s a smart move. He believes some of the money may be being used to stop TikTok\u2019s biggest names jumping ship to competing apps, chief among them Instagram Reels. The Wall Street Journal reported big TikTok creators were being offered six figures to jump ship to Reels last month. \u201cThey\u2019re facing a battle on multiple fronts with competitors nipping at their heels,\u201d says Gahan. \u201cBy investing in top creators they\u2019re securing some of their biggest stars.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
David Dobrik slammed by creators for benefiting from TikTok funding Instagram: David DobrikEveryday creators on TikTok are up in arms that the first raft of recipients of the app\u2019s $1 billion creator fund, aimed at offering developing creators a livelihood, includes David Dobrik. Dobrik, who has 20.5 million followers on the app, was one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46678","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46678\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dejan.au\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}