Whats the difference between youtube paying creators $x/1000 views and Uber paying drivers $X per km/minute of driving? Surely they're both contractors right? What distinction am I missing here?
YouTube is actually very different. As a YouTuber, you, by default, have no monetary transaction with YouTube. It is possible for you, however, to ask YouTube to place ads on your video, where they get a 30% cut of the ad revenue. Crucially however, you are allowed to place your own ads and monetize your videos any which way you like. So YouTube just acts as an ad agency, and as far as YouTube is concerned you are just a user of their ad service, or in the majority of cases just a user of their video sharing platform.
There is no contract between you and YouTube where you do work and in exchange you get money. There is only the option for YouTube to choose ads for your videos and give you a cut in exchange - it's quite literally just like placing ads on your website using AdSense. No guarantee of $ per video or even $ per view, it works almost exactly like AdSense.
Which is crucially different from Uber where the contract is that you do a task in exchange for some money, therefore meaning that you do the work for Uber. On YouTube, you're allowing YouTube to place ads on your IP for money, and you're allowed to do anything else with your work and monetize it however you like, so really YouTube is providing a service for you.
