This post is from the Blog Herald archive, originally authored by Scott Karp in 2006. Updated January 2026 to reflect new information.
In December 2006, a writer named Scott Karp published an argument in this space that seemed, at the time, like semantic nitpicking. Fred Wilson, the influential venture capitalist, had written about “pages controlled by users” in a post about shifting internet traffic patterns. Karp pushed back. His objection wasn’t about page views or traffic trends. It was about a single word: user.
“Perhaps the most odious buzzword to emerge from the second coming of the web is ‘user-generated content,'” Karp wrote. He argued that the term positioned content creators as something lesser than publishers, as if bloggers and MySpace page owners existed in a separate, inferior category from traditional media companies.
His conclusion carried a warning that now reads like prophecy: “It’s time to throw off the mantle of ‘user’ and be proud publishers—otherwise we’re going to get ‘used.'”
Nearly two decades later, the evidence is in. Karp was right. And the consequences of ignoring his warning have cost creators billions.
The language shaped the power dynamic
Karp’s core argument was that the distinction between “users” and “publishers” obscured a fundamental shift in media. People creating blogs, social pages, and online content weren’t using the internet. They were publishing to it. The difference wasn’t one of kind but of scale.
This matters because language shapes how systems are built and who those systems serve. When platforms designed their architectures around “users,” they built for consumption and engagement, not for the economic interests of the people creating the content that made their platforms valuable.
The numbers tell the story. According to Grand View Research, the creator economy reached $205 billion in 2024. Goldman Sachs projects it will hit $500 billion by 2027. Yet according to research from Mighty Networks, only 12% of full-time creators earn more than $50,000 annually. Nearly half of full-time creators make less than $1,000.
The platforms captured the value. The “users” did not.
Platform dependency became the new sharecropping
Karp wrote in 2006 that “when you publish to a platform like MySpace or YouTube, you cede control over the monetization of your publication.” Replace MySpace with TikTok, and this sentence could have been written yesterday.
The Mighty Networks research found that 77% of creators worry about being dependent on a social media platform for their income. Seventy percent say an algorithm change could have “serious effects” on their life.
These aren’t abstract concerns. Epidemic Sound’s 2024 Future of the Creator Economy Report found that 58.3% of creators encountered difficulties monetizing their content, with platform algorithm changes cited as a major factor by 37.6% of respondents. Income instability affected 44.8%.
The platform business model depends on this precarity. Algorithms reward constant content production, which keeps creators trapped in a cycle of output that serves the platform’s engagement metrics rather than the creator’s sustainable income. When a creator builds an audience on someone else’s infrastructure, they’re building equity they don’t own.
Fred Wilson, responding to Karp’s original critique, actually agreed. “If you want to allow users to truly control a page,” Wilson wrote, “you must let them put code onto their page. If you don’t, eventually sophisticated leading edge users are going to move on.”
The sophisticated ones did move on. They built email lists. They launched on Substack and Patreon and their own domains. But millions of creators remained locked into platforms that treated them as users rather than publishers, as content sources rather than business partners.
Then the AI companies came for the content
If Karp’s warning seemed prescient in 2015, it became urgent by 2024. The same content that platforms had extracted from “users” for engagement now became training data for artificial intelligence systems.
The scale of this extraction is staggering. Generative AI companies scraped billions of images, articles, videos, and creative works from the internet to train their models. Most creators received nothing. Many didn’t know their work was being used.
In congressional hearings in 2024, Senator Josh Hawley called this “the largest intellectual property theft in American history.” Lawsuits have proliferated, including cases against Stability AI, Meta, and Anthropic. The Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act, introduced in Congress, would require AI companies to disclose which copyrighted works trained their models.
The legal questions remain unresolved. But the pattern is unmistakable. When creators were called “users,” they were positioned as inputs rather than partners. Their content became raw material for platforms to monetize, and then for AI companies to harvest.
Karp wrote that the revolution in media meant “ANYONE can publish to the network and that anyone can leverage the power of the network.” What he couldn’t have predicted was how thoroughly the network would leverage them back.
Why the terminology still matters
The shift from “user-generated content” to “creator economy” represents more than rebranding. It’s a recognition of the economic reality Karp identified in 2006. People who make content are engaged in an economic activity. They’re producing value. The question is who captures it.
The smartest creators have internalized this. They treat platform presence as distribution, not destination. They build direct relationships through email lists, communities, and owned properties. According to a 2025 creator survey cited by Quasa, creators who fully own their audience through email lists are 2.7 times more likely to earn $31,000 or more annually than those who remain platform-dependent.
This is the practical application of Karp’s argument. Publishers own their distribution. Users borrow it. The distinction determines whether you build a business or feed someone else’s.
The lesson for digital publishers
For bloggers, content creators, and digital publishers, the takeaway is straightforward. You are not a user. You are a publisher. Your content has value, and you should structure your work to capture that value rather than donate it.
This means building audience relationships you control. It means diversifying across platforms so no single algorithm change can devastate your income. It means reading terms of service to understand what rights you’re granting. And it means recognizing that when a platform offers you reach in exchange for content, they’re getting the better end of the deal.
Karp wrote that “the tools do not define the activity or the output or the people doing it.” WordPress, TikTok, and YouTube are tools. The people who use them to publish ideas, stories, and creative work are publishers. The tools serve the publisher. When that relationship inverts, the publisher becomes the product.
Nearly twenty years ago, a writer warned that the language of “users” would cost creators their fair share of the value they create. The creator economy has since grown into a $200 billion industry that platforms and AI companies have captured disproportionately. The terminology matters because it shapes how systems treat us.
Call yourself a publisher. Build like one. Otherwise, you’ll get used.
