New Delhi:Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, stood at the Digital News Publishers Association Conclave a few days ago, said something the social media and streaming industry has long avoided hearing: social media platforms mustshare revenue in a fair mannerwith those who create content — whether they are journalists, conventional media houses, influencers, professors, or researchers. The room applauded. The platforms stayed quiet. And the obvious follow-up question is now the one everyone in India's creator economy is asking: What exactly is a fair share?
The debate didn't begin with Minister Vaishnaw, but his remarks gave it political urgency. He warned that if platforms fail to adopt a voluntary model, legal mechanisms are available to enforce compliance, noting that several countries have already introduced such frameworks.
What India now needs isn't just a principle — it needs a number. And the evidence, when laid out plainly, points to one: Nothing less than at least 70%.
The current revenue-sharing landscape across major platforms is deeply uneven and , in some cases, it's a bit more exploitative.
YouTube's own blog confirms the revenue split at 55% for long-form videos and 45% for Shorts. And yet, even that headline figure deserves scrutiny. Alphabet's official Q4 2025 earnings filing confirms YouTube's combined ad and subscription revenue exceeded $60 billion for the full year — but the company has never disclosed what portion of that actually reaches creators' pockets. YouTube's own announcement at its 2025 ‘Made on YouTube’ event put cumulative payouts to creators, artists, and media companies at $100 billion since 2021 — without offering any breakdown of how that number is distributed or verified. In the absence of transparent, audited creator earnings data, the 55% split remains a policy number — not a proven reality for the millions of creators who generate the content powering a $60 billion business."
Instagram's position is harder to defend. Meta had previously offered creators a 55% share via in-stream video ads but pulled back from that model in February 2022 when it pivoted to Reels, according to Digiday. Since then, the platform has offered no meaningful direct ad revenue share to creators on its most-watched format. The creators making those Reels see none of that pot directly. Instagram Reels, according to The Wrap report, alone is on track to generate over $50 billion in annual ad revenue — a number built almost entirely on content that creators produced, uploaded, and promoted themselves, often without a single rupee in return from the platform's ad machinery.
X, formerly Twitter, pays creators an average of around $8.50 per million verified impressions through its Ads Revenue Sharing programme, as per the Epidemic Sound report. This figure is so small that it barely qualifies as acknowledgement, let alone compensation. X's own Help Centre confirms that only impressions from verified Premium users count toward payouts, meaning the vast majority of a creator's audience — anyone not paying for an X subscription — generates zero revenue for the person whose content they just read.
The case for a 70% revenue share — mandatory across social media platforms, AI companies, YouTube, and Google — rests on both economic logic and a simple question of fairness.
Platforms provide infrastructure, algorithms, and distribution. That is real, and it costs money. But the journalism, the analysis, the breaking news, the video essays, the tutorials — that is what drives advertiser demand, user retention, and ultimately, valuation. Without creators, these platforms are empty pipes dressed up in good design.
Between 2020 and 2023, YouTube paid out more than $70 billion to creators globally, according to the Grey report. Also, most LLMs (Large Language Models) and recommendation engines are trained on media reports, academic writing, creative work, and original reporting and analysis — scraped, ingested, and monetised, often without consent, credit, or a single conversation with the people who produced it. If that content generates commercial value, a 70% share flowing back to its originators is not generosity. It is correction.
Source: India Latest News, Breaking News Today, Top News Headlines | Times Now
