Users also create reaction videos to other videos, showing a selfie shot next to the original clip. Everything is participatory, and the nature of the algorithm makes it so that a video from an unknown account can go as viral as easily as one from a famous account.

YouTube is less surprising than its peers, especially TikTok. While the latter has an almost telepathic capacity for serving you a wide variety of content it thinks you’ll like, YouTube is instead a platform designed for long-term buy-in. Creators are less likely to go viral on a one-off video on YouTube than they are on TikTok, but they’re more... See more

The creator economy has not done well in courting readers. It "cares" about readers, but only in two dysfunctional ways:

• Turning them into creators ("you, too, can make money doing this")


• Aggressively tracking (and monetizing) their activities

But readers are the largest cohort and the value they provide is the entire value of the scene. There is no... See more