Congress’ creator education

Last week, a bipartisan pair of senators, Cory Booker (D-New Jersey) and John Kennedy (R-Louisiana), launched the Senate Creators Caucus, a group of legislators intended to support creators. 

In the basement of the U.S. Capitol complex, creators who had flown in for an event sponsored by YouTube to mark the occasion mingled with Hill staffers and lawmakers, with the hopes of highlighting real issues — from taxes to protections of their name, image and likeness — affecting them. But as the event went on, it was clear that Congress has a lot of catching up to do: few members are familiar with creators, what they do, and what issues they say they need help with. 

The Senate caucus is counterpart to a House Creator Caucus that launched last summer, which has focused its efforts so far on educating members of Congress about creators’ significance and bringing representatives of tech platforms to the Hill to meet with staff and members. Both caucuses have leaned into framing them as the new small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Creators celebrated the launch as a moment of validation for their careers, while also pointing out that Congress is late to the game. 

“Moments like this are huge in that goal of proving legitimacy,” said creator Matthew Patrick, better known as MatPat, who also helped launch the House caucus and emphasized that the creator economy has existed for more than two decades already before the Congressional recognition. He outlined the tension: “It's great that we are here and that we are having these conversations. But we're still behind the ball.” 

The other reality check: Congress is not prone to act. The House left early last week ahead of the midterms, and the hot topic in traditional press gaggles last week was about the need for lawmakers to address doomsday threats of AI and their own use of the technology. If Capitol Hill is behind on AI, creators seem even lower down on the priority list.  

While members are eager to try to use creators’ platforms to spread their own messaging, and are attempting to mimic their content with mini mics and direct-to-camera videos, they are largely unfamiliar with both the scale of creators’ impact and the issues they face. I always think back to when I asked members to name their favorite creator last year — the bulk of them struggled to even name any creator at all. 

Since transitioning to covering creators, I have found that people outside of Washington who work in the creator economy overestimate D.C.’s awareness of both what the industry looks like and the developments and challenges it is grappling with. 

For example, after Mark Vins, the CEO and host of Brave Wilderness, a wildlife conservation channel with nearly 22 million followers on YouTube alone, mentioned that creators are now at a legitimacy moment after years of friction with Hollywood, Kennedy interrupted the panel from the audience to ask what he meant. 

“How long you got?” Vins joked before discussing distribution and more recent wins around advertising and creator filmmaking. “They figured they want to understand how to make a buck” off of creators, Kennedy surmised after the explanation. While discussion about Hollywood, creator-led films and marquee creator production deals feels inescapable for those working with creators right now, it was a good reminder that even for a co-chair of the caucus with more interest in creators than most of their Senate colleagues, even the basics of the debate was new information. 

The creators at the Capitol to celebrate the launch and lobby lawmakers shared their concerns around issues like taxation, intellectual property and AI imitators. 

Patrick said it is hard to create an umbrella policy that works for creators with dramatically different roles and audience sizes, from those operating at the scale of traditional studios to people casually posting. “Yet at the same time,” he said, “we are the people who are first to be deepfaked with AI. Our content is the first to be scanned and reused. We are the people who are getting doxxed. We are key members of the gig economy in a lot of ways. Digital privacy for children online, all of these issues are ones that creators are facing first and are kind of representing on behalf of their communities.” 

Beauty YouTuber Jackie Aina talked about her privacy concerns and safety as a public figure: “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had someone literally create an entire fake profile of me. … intellectual property violations, safety, privacy [are] reoccurring problems.”

The creators added that while they were glad to have the opportunity to share their priorities at the launch, they want lawmakers to communicate with them more and to bring them into conversations about the issues that impact them — particularly when members of Congress are also trying to tap into their audiences. 

“Lawmakers need to understand that how we move nimbly and we create influence, it can't be a one-way door,” The Joe Budden Network CEO Ian Schwartzman told attendees at the end of the panel, by which time both Booker and Kennedy — the only Senators I spotted in attendance at the event — had long left the room. “The policymakers can't use us and our platforms when they need us, and not deliver the protections for us when they don't need us. That's the only way we're going to be able to sustain and continue to grow our businesses.”

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