Op-ed: What D.C. Is Getting Wrong About Creators

Summary:

• Longtime YouTuber MatPat’s departure highlights challenges creators face in digital landscape, sparking bipartisan Congressional Creators Caucus in 2025.

• Creators rely on digital advertising for revenue, facing risks from state-level ad taxes and AI regulations that threaten growth and accessibility.

• Supporting creators means advocating for fair digital ad policies, national privacy standards, and sensible AI rules to sustain the creator economy.

When longtime YouTuber MatPat announced his departure in 2024, it struck a chord — not just with fans, but with fellow creators navigating a more challenging digital landscape. His exit became a symbol of a larger problem: Washington celebrates creators’ cultural influence but often overlooks the policies that could undermine their success.

In 2025, Congress launched the bipartisan Congressional Creators Caucus — a sign that creators are too popular to ignore. Yet many lawmakers still don’t fully understand how creators earn a living or how quickly regulation can disrupt the tools that make it possible.

At the heart of this ecosystem is digital advertising. It funds content, drives growth, and connects audiences. But policies gaining traction in statehouses and on Capitol Hill risk quietly chipping away at this foundation.

Internet for Growth, a nationwide coalition of creators and small businesses, is reminding them. Let’s get into it.

Don’t Forget Who’s Powering the Internet

Creators aren’t a niche. They’re driving today’s digital economy. Over 1.5 million Americans now work as digital creators — a 7.5x increase since 2020, according to a new report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

They’re hiring. They’re launching products. They’re creating jobs. And they’re doing it with tools and platforms that have opened entire industries to anyone with a good idea and an internet connection.

If policymakers truly want to support creators, they need to understand how the digital economy works — and how easily it can be disrupted. State-by-state fragmentation on privacy and AI may seem like progress, but in practice, it creates confusion, cost, and risk that smaller players simply can’t absorb. Taxing digital advertising in one state raises costs for creators everywhere. Regulating AI tools before understanding how they’re used day to day risks shutting out the very people who benefit most.

What creators need isn’t protection from progress. They need thoughtful policy that keeps growth within reach: a national privacy standard, sensible AI rules, and a commitment to preserving access to digital advertising. These aren’t just “tech issues.” With the creator economy valued at nearly $200 billion globally — and projected to surpass a half-trillion dollars by 2030 — they are economic priorities too big to ignore.

The Whole Thing Rests on Digital Ads

Digital advertising is the economic backbone of the creator economy. Whether teaching guitar, reviewing tech, or selling homemade candles, creators rely on affordable, targeted ads to reach audiences and generate revenue — not just by promoting their own content, but also by earning from the ads brands place alongside it.

Yet proposals to tax digital ads or restrict advertising technology, often in the name of curbing “Big Tech,” can have far broader consequences. The impact doesn’t stop with large platforms — it reaches creators, small publishers, and businesses that depend on these tools to stay visible and competitive.

Ad Taxes Hurt the Wrong People

Digital ad taxes are often pitched as a way to rein in platform power or generate new revenue from the digital economy. But when taxes are added, advertiser budgets shrink, and platforms adjust. Those changes ripple down the chain.

For a mid-sized creator earning a few thousand dollars a month, even modest shifts in brand spend can mean fewer opportunities. New voices find it harder to break through. The revenue pool shrinks.

It’s not just creators who feel the impact. Local newsrooms, nonprofits, and community groups use the same ad ecosystem. When states treat digital ads as an easy revenue source, they’re taxing the infrastructure that supports diverse, independent voices.

And this is already happening. Washington state added up to a 10% sales tax on services like SEO, web design, and online ads, while exempting traditional media like print and billboards. A small business spending $2,000 a month could pay $2,400 more annually just to maintain visibility.

Maryland passed a first-of-its-kind digital ad revenue tax in 2021 — targeting large platforms but triggering higher costs across the board. One analysis of a similar tax in Europe found that just 5% of the burden landed on tech companies, while the remaining 95% was passed on to advertisers and consumers.

Nebraska went even further, grouping proposed ad taxes with those on gambling and tobacco.

And while these are state-level decisions, they ripple nationally. The internet doesn’t stop at state borders, and one state’s policy can affect creators everywhere.

Advertising isn’t the problem — it’s what keeps the internet open, affordable, and full of new voices. Taxing it weakens that system and makes growth harder for everyone trying to build online.

Congress should oppose state-level digital ad taxes and ensure any national policy protects affordable, targeted advertising that fuels small creators and businesses.

But financial pressure isn’t the only challenge — regulatory fragmentation is making it harder to operate at all.

Creators Risk Becoming Collateral in the Privacy Debate

Privacy matters. New state-level privacy laws have brought important protections, but their growing patchwork is creating confusion, cost, and compliance challenges for small businesses and creators.

More than 20 states have enacted or proposed laws that share broad similarities but differ in key rules, thresholds, and enforcement. Even basic activities—publishing branded content, sending email newsletters, or using site analytics—can trigger compliance obligations. While often framed as targeting “Big Tech,” many creators fall outside small business exemptions.

Even micro-influencers with 10K–100K followers can be covered, as many laws apply based on the amount of personal data handled, not revenue. Iowa’s law, for example, covers businesses processing data of 100,000 residents, or 25,000 if more than half of revenue comes from selling data. Other states set similar thresholds. Audience size and data volume mean a creator with a large subscriber list, analytics data, or ecommerce customers could meet these limits without a big team or high revenue. Many use third-party platforms that process personal data across state lines, including IP addresses, cookies, and purchase behavior.

Compliance can cost tens of thousands of dollars annually—a manageable sum for large corporations but out of reach for many solo entrepreneurs and small businesses. Some laws also restrict how personalized content or ads can be, or limit how creators communicate with their followers. Key analytics and ad tools are becoming harder to use, driving down ad value and growth.

The result? Fewer monetization options, more uncertainty, and yet another set of barriers that slow momentum and raise risk

We don’t need fewer protections; we need smarter ones. A national privacy standard would reduce confusion and help creators continue building responsibly and sustainably. Congress should replace the state patchwork with a single, clear standard that works for small businesses and solo entrepreneurs — not just large corporations.

Privacy rules need clarity and consistency, but technology is evolving too fast for piecemeal laws to keep up. Nowhere is that clearer than with artificial intelligence.

AI Isn’t the Enemy

AI is already part of creators’ daily workflow. It helps write copy, edit content, analyze performance, and manage tasks that would otherwise require a full team. Used well, it’s a time-saver, a growth tool, and a competitive equalizer.

But legislation is racing ahead of understanding. Many proposals focus on “frontier AI,” just as AI is getting started, and sweep in basic tools that creators and small businesses rely on every day.

California’s SB 1047, for example, was meant to target powerful systems, but risked cutting off access to common tools by increasing costs and complexity. It was vetoed, but lawmakers are already revising and reintroducing it.

California’s privacy agency also tried to step in, proposing new rules on AI use in targeting and automation. But after public concern about cost and unintended consequences, parts of the proposal were scaled back, a reminder that even well-meaning efforts can overreach.

Last year, 45 states introduced nearly 700 AI-related bills. Many are duplicative and burdensome, especially for solo creators or small teams. Some require impact assessments or formal documentation, but their enforcement is unclear.

Once again, those least equipped to navigate a fragmented, high-risk landscape are the ones most affected. Big firms can hire compliance staff. Most creators cannot.

We need sensible, targeted AI legislation designed with real-world use cases in mind. AI can level the playing field — but only if we keep it accessible and usable for those who need it to compete. AI rules must focus on real risks without making standard, beneficial tools unaffordable or inaccessible for the people who rely on them to compete.

The Opportunity Ahead

Creators are driving the next phase of the internet—teaching, building businesses, forming communities, and reaching audiences that traditional models never touched. They aren’t just making content. They’re laying the groundwork for new industries, jobs, and opportunities for millions.

Right now, lawmakers can decide whether that growth continues—or gets cut short. That means writing policy that treats creators as small business owners and engines of the economy, replacing a maze of conflicting state privacy rules with clear national standards, and protecting the personalized digital tools that make it possible to reach audiences, earn a living, and grow.

Creators don’t need special favors—just fair rules, stability, and the freedom to innovate. Supporting them is supporting the next generation of economic participation: open, flexible, and accessible to anyone with a good idea and an internet connection.

The future of work is already here. Policy must keep up—or risk holding it back.

Act now to protect the creator economy. If you’re a creator, small business owner, or supporter of an open internet, your voice matters today—not later. Email your Member of Congress to protect the tools that keep the digital economy open and fair. Every message counts, and every delay puts growth at risk.