Demonetization renders influencers nonexchangeable while the platform still profits from their content

Evidence

Demonetization, instead of removal, highlights how videos on YouTube are, really, owned and controlled by the platform, not by the content creators who made them. And more significant, demonetization is not about rendering videos nonexchangeable but rendering influencers nonexchangeable. Because the objects in the video—a weed grinder, a salami—refuse subsumption into an incoherent stream of waste, then the influencer as a commodity fails to emerge. The demonetization process is the complete accumulation by dispossession of the platform; it’s in the interest of the platform to demonetize since videos still get attention, clicks, and views, but the platform doesn’t have to pay, along with imposing a moral system of judgment enforced by algorithms. — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 280

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharpens the Corpocene account: demonetization targets the influencer-as-commodity, not the video, and functions as accumulation by dispossession.
• XREF: Connects to the labor theory of value thread centrally — the platform appropriates the influencer’s surplus (views, attention) while withholding payment, exposing who realizes the surplus.