Instagram isn't sure how users are supposed to make money off its new IGTV platform

The life of a social media influencer can be utterly incomprehensible for those of us with real jobs (not that “pop culture news writer” counts as a real job), but it seems like even Instagram itself isn’t too sure about how its users are supposed to make money off of its now IGTV platform. People typically make money on regular Instagram by talking about products they “like” and then getting money from the people who make those products, but IGTV was designed for long-form video content that shouldn’t require plugging facial masks or whatever. The platform launched earlier this summer as a phone-centric competitor to YouTube, but unlike YouTube (which has a well-established structure of ads), there’s no system in place yet for people to make money off of the things they release.

According to Variety, Instagram “isn’t ready yet” to reveal how monetization for IGTV will work, which sounds suspiciously like Instagram has now idea how monetization for IGTV will work. Instagram even says that it thinks of IGTV as “the next generation’s TV,” but TV probably never would’ve taken off if the old-timey content creators behind The World In Your Home or Let’s Rhumba were only being paid in exposure.