YouTube

YouTube has already eaten Disney

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In 2025, YouTube generated about $62 billion in revenue and surpassed Disney as the world’s largest entertainment company by revenue. It did so without a single film studio, without decades-old franchises behind it, and without making contracts with any of its main content creators. The model that made it possible has been being built in silence for twenty years. The figures. These 62 billion dollars exceed for the first time the media segment of The Walt Disney Company, which generated 60.9 billion excluding its theme parks and experiences, that is, we are talking strictly about the audiovisual sector (Disney parks and resorts contributed around 9 billion additional dollars to the group). The comparison measures the content and media distribution business, where it competes with YouTube. And in that area there is no longer any doubt who is in charge. Advertising, first notice. It was clear that the surprise. YouTube earned $40.4 billion in advertising alone during 2025, more than Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery combined, whose combined advertising revenue amounted to 37.8 billion. A year earlier, in 2024, that same combination of studios still surpassed YouTube in advertising: 41.8 billion compared to 36.1 billion. The rest of YouTube’s income comes from subscriptions: YouTube TV has around 10 million subscribers, YouTube Premium and YouTube Music have approximately 107 million according to the studies cited. These are lines of business that did not exist before or were marginal, and that now represent about 22 billion dollars annually. The secret of low risk. The important question is not how much YouTube earns but how it earns it. Disney maintains studios, pays salaries to directors, actors and scriptwriters, finances productions with budgets that in franchises such as Marvel or ‘Avatar’ frequently exceed $200 million in revenue per film, but assumes the risk that this investment will not be recovered at the box office. YouTube doesn’t do any of that. Not even hiring its creators. Although that doesn’t mean it doesn’t deliver. The YouTube Partner Program, launched in 2007, established that the platform shares 55% of the advertising revenue generated by each video with the creator who produces it. The creator provides the content, the risk and the work. YouTube provides the infrastructure, distribution and monetization system. In total, the platform has paid more than $100 billion to creators, record labels and media partners throughout its history, according to YouTube itself. It is, in terms of costs, a structure that traditional studies can hardly replicate. Hearing, second notice. The 2025 revenue is not the first time YouTube has surpassed Disney in something relevant. On the audience front, the gap opened earlier. YouTube, according to the studies cited, captured 12.5% ​​of the total television consumption time in the United States, overtaking Disney, Fox and Netflix. The figure includes consumption on connected televisions, a rapidly growing segment and that has transformed YouTube from a mobile platform to a regular presence in the living room. The great risk. The great creators of the platform are those who have their own studios, production teams and budgets that rival those of conventional television. They have been, in practice, media companies for years. The externalization of risk that has put YouTube in first position has a reverse: the platform’s income depends on millions of people who, at any time, can migrate to another environment or stop producing, without contractual obligations. Disney can lose money due to a movie’s failure at the box office. YouTube, in theory, can take a significant blow to its ecosystem. Disadvantages of outsourcing everything. Featured image | Xataka In Xataka | YouTube’s lawyers are clear that “YouTube is not a social network.” The future of the platform depends on it

YouTube tries to escape a historic trial that compares it to Facebook and tobacco

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YouTube’s lawyers made their argument clear: they are not a social network and They are not addictive. Those statements came as part of those initial statements in the important trial to which they have been subjected both to them and to those responsible for Meta. What happens in this legal process could pose important changes in the future of these platforms. “We are more like Netflix than Facebook”. YouTube’s lawyers indicated in their initial defense that YouTube is an entertainment platform more similar to Netflix than a social network like Facebook. They also gave examples of its usefulness: people use their videos to learn how to cook, knit, or become pop stars. They don’t design it for subject users to infinite scroll“We’re not trying to get into your brain and rewire it. We’re just asking you what you want to see.” The accusation: YouTube and Instagram are addictive. A 20-year-old California woman identified as KGM has accused these platforms of create addictive applications that harm mental health. She claims to have been one of the victims, in fact. It is a recurring theme and almost even unofficially acceptedbut there are no legal sentences that confirm and punish what is happening. And when there could have been mysterious previous agreements arrived to those processes. That has led to a lawsuit involving Meta, Snap, TikTok and YouTube. The moment is delicate and very striking. The CEO of Instagram throws things out. Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, He assured in his appearance that the platform has security protocols for teenagers. Although it admitted that social media can be harmful, the company is careful and tests features that will reach young people before launching them. He further noted that people can be addicted to social media in the same way as they are to a television show, but that was not the same as being “clinically addicted.” Tipping point for social media. The trial is especially significant because it occurs precisely at a historical moment in which various countries are implementing (or planning to implement) age verification systems so that minors cannot access social networks. States want to regulate and control social networks on the Internet, so the first step is to define what a social network is. This is what this judgment is about: putting some on one side and others on the other. YouTube certainly stands on a very thin line here, and will undoubtedly try to evade the problem with arguments such as those put forward. Social networks wash their hands. Even though there are scientific studies that suggest that there is a behavior similar to that of other addictions, technology companies have always avoided that discourse or They have tried to remove iron. It is somewhat ironic considering that they make the most of the functioning of our brain (hello digital slots). Companies point in The New York Timesthey not only argue that this scientific evidence does not exist (or is not conclusive), but they point to federal laws—the well-known Section 230— that protect them: we are not responsible for what users publish online, they say. A case that can set precedents. There are thousands of pending lawsuits very similar to this one, but this case has become the spearhead of all those efforts that want to punish social networks for “hooking” users. KGM’s lawyer argued Monday that she had become trapped in YouTube and Instagram because those apps were like “digital casinos.” It’s already over with tobacco. Meta documents displayed at trial mentioned how its employees compared its tactics to those used by companies in the tobacco industry. That is very dangerous, because the lawsuits against those companies in the 90s led to multimillion-dollar settlements for those companies. Are you a social network or not? The argument used by the prosecution was the same one that is being used now: the platforms “sell” a harmful product knowing that they are doing so. History could repeat itself now, and that would condemn platforms that fall within the definition of “social network.” And precisely what YouTube is trying to avoid is that: not falling into that definition. Image | Rubaitul Azad In Xataka | Young people have decided to stop posting (so much) on Facebook and Instagram. “AI-generated garbage” has free rein

Netflix spends 17 billion on producing content and YouTube does it for free. And that’s why YouTube is winning the game

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Alphabet first revealed in its Q4 2025 earnings report that YouTube generated more than 60 billion dollars over the past year, adding advertising revenue and subscriptions. The figure is 33% higher than the 45,000 million that Netflix reached in the same period and places the video platform above all the entertainment giants except Disney, which had a turnover of 95.7 billion. The data confirms what many in the industry already sensed: YouTube is not simply another competitor in the online video market, but the main beneficiary of the transformation in audiovisual consumption habits. Paradigm shift. YouTube’s victory reflects a profound transformation in how we consume video. While subscription platforms opted for the Netflix model (closed catalogs of professional productions), YouTube added in July 2025 13.4% of total television viewing time in the United States. It expanded its lead over Disney (9.4%) to establish the largest difference recorded since these measurements began. Youtube on your TV. Time spent watching YouTube on television has grown 53% since February 2023. The traditional streaming market, meanwhile, is going through what is known as “subscription fatigue“: the average number of subscriptions per consumer in the European market has stagnated at 2.35 in both 2023 and 2024, after growing systematically for years. This saturation has caused structural changes: the number of original series released in the United States fell 11% in 2025third consecutive year of declines from the 2022 peak. The difference in the plan. Breaking down where the money comes from can point to the reasons for this triumph. Of the 60,000 million in YouTube revenue, we have: Advertising revenue in the last quarter of the year was 11.38 billion dollars, with a growth of 8.7% year-on-year 325 million paid subscriptions on all your consumer services, such as YouTube Music or YouTube Premium For its part, Netflix: It reported revenue of $12.05 billion in the fourth quarter of 2025, with a growth of 17.6% For the year as a whole, the platform reached $45.2 billion, with more than 325 million paid memberships The most notable difference lies in the business model. While YouTube maintains a hybrid model where advertising remains dominant, Netflix revealed its advertising figures for the first time: in 2025, its third year selling ads, advertising revenue exceeded $1.5 billion, multiplying by more than 2.5 compared to 2024. The company projects double that ad revenue in 2026. Why YouTube wins. YouTube’s competitive advantage lies in features that traditional platforms cannot replicate. On the one hand, the radical democratization of content creation: Netflix invests 17 billion dollars annually to produce, while on YouTube the creators assume the production costs. The base of 69 million creators generates a volume of content that is impossible to match: every minute 500 hours of video are uploaded to the platform The second differentiating factor is the algorithmic recommendation system. YouTube’s recommendation system uses large-scale language models that can handle massive amounts of data. This allows YouTube to do something that closed catalog platforms cannot: recommend videos based not only on general categories, but by fine-tuning suggestions based on specific interests. In 2025, YouTube’s recommendation system is the most sophisticated and user-focused. The third advantage is the absence of entry barriers for the public. While Netflix requires a mandatory subscription, YouTube offers free ad-supported access, with premium subscription as an option. This hybrid model maximizes potential reach: YouTube’s monthly active user base reached approximately 2.7 billion people in early 2025. This means that more than 25% of the world’s population uses YouTube in any given month. What it points to. YouTube’s triumph over Netflix in annual revenue represents more than a change in leadership: it signals a structural transformation in how audiovisual content is produced, distributed and monetized. The centralized studio model, a direct heir to the Hollywood system, is giving way to a decentralized ecosystem where millions of creators generate content for hyper-segmented audiences. And the implications for the industry are very profound. Header | Photo of NordWood Themes in Unsplash In Xataka | A YouTube video that lasts 140 years has gone viral. Nobody is clear why

A YouTube video that lasts 140 years has gone viral. Nobody is clear why

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A YouTube video which, on paper, would not end for more than a century is the type of oddity that the internet knows how to turn into a phenomenon. It is enough to see an impossible figure in duration and verify that that same clip exceeds 2.3 million views to understand why half the world has stopped to watch it. Not because someone intends to reproduce it in its entirety, but because something like this challenges what we think we know about how the platform works. Even more so when it comes from a strange channel, with only three published videos and 137,000 subscribers. The longest video on YouTube? What has triggered the confusion is not only that exorbitant figure, but the way in which YouTube shows it depending on where you look. A counter appears in the channel view and in the video thumbnail that, translated into real time, is equivalent to about 140 years of continuous playback, as we can see in the screenshots. However, when you press play and load the player, the duration changes and is around 12 hours, with variations of minutes and seconds. The length of the video when embedded in a web page The limits of the platform. On your own help pagesGoogle explains that the maximum upload is 256 GB or 12 hours, whichever comes first, and remembers that these limits have varied over the years, leaving longer videos from previous times on the platform. This framework is essential to not get carried away by the impact of the number that appears on the screen. If the player shows something close to 12 hours, it’s within what YouTube considers normal, while a duration of decades simply doesn’t fit with the service’s known rules. The only direct source of this entire case is the file of the channel that hosts the video. On YouTube he appears as @shinywrand in your profile YouTube indicates as location “North Korea”. It also shows minimal but striking activity: three videos published, 137,000 subscribers and 2,551,606 accumulated views, with the channel’s registration date on July 31, 2023. There is no additional information or descriptions that clarify what it is or where it comes from, beyond what the platform itself shows. A metadata failure. The hypothesis that best fits what we see is that we are not dealing with a real duration, but rather a number that is poorly recorded or poorly read within the YouTube infrastructure. Each video has several time measurements associated with it, the one declared by the original file, the one calculated by the system when processing it and the one used by the different interface modules. If one of them fails, inconsistencies could appear as striking as a preview that points to decades of playback and a player that moves in a normal range. The threshold of direct. Google explains that Live shows of less than 12 hours are automatically archived, but if they exceed that time they may be lost, a detail that helps to understand why that number appears again and again as a border. Although there is no confirmation that this video comes from a glitch in a live broadcast, that technical framework adds context to the duration displayed by the player. The result is a phenomenon that lives on the border between what the platform teaches and what really happens in its internal functioning. There is a video with an impossible length, a player that tells another story and a channel that provides no clues other than its own figures. And while the reasons remain unclear, the video continues to gain views and more than 30,000 comments. Images | BoliviaIntelligent | Screenshot In Xataka | Before, advertising was to monetize. Now it is to punish you and YouTube has taken it to the extreme

Before, advertising was to monetize. Now it is to punish you and YouTube has taken it to the extreme

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About fifteen years ago, online advertising was the implicit deal: you saw a banner or a pre-roll fifteen seconds and you had free access to everything. It wasn’t ideal, but it was logical: someone paid for the content you consumed so you didn’t have to pay for it. It worked because the discomfort was proportionate. That exists less and less. What we have now is something else: the platforms have discovered that advertising serves less to monetize than to push. To degrade the free experience until paying premium stops being a whim and becomes the only tolerable way to use the product. And no one does it with more brazenness – or mastery – than YouTube. That’s how he hunted me. If you use it without paying, you know: increasingly longer and more frequent ads, several before starting the video, the same shady spot repeated three times in ten minutes. Ads that cut sentences in half, destroy the rhythm of a song, or appear just when you got to the part you were interested in. It is that way by design. YouTube doesn’t need to show you so many ads to monetize. You would probably earn more with less, better targeted advertising. But it’s not about that. It’s about making the free experience so unbearable that you end up paying to stay sane. I don’t pay YouTube Premium for what it offers me, but for what it takes from me. And more and more people pay not because they want extra features, but so they don’t end up crashing their phone on the ground. Other platforms do the same but disguise it better. Netflix with shared accounts, Disney+ with the video quality on the cheap plan, Spotify putting ads on you and forcing random mode. They are visible tricks, but at least you have less and what you have works. YouTube has gone further: it doesn’t take away your features, it poisons them. The catalog is still complete, but the experience is hostile. You pay with your patience and with your fragmented attention. The curious thing is that YouTube is pretty honest. It doesn’t talk about Premium as an “improved experience” or “exclusive content.” It basically tells you: if you want this to stop being hell, check out. They don’t deceive. They tell you what the deal is. Forks the Internet model in the 1920s. Platforms no longer build something so good that people want to pay for it. They make the free plan so bad that there is no other option. The logic is identical: friction is no longer a side effect. It’s the lever. This also says something about us: a decade ago, ads were annoying but bearable. Today they are intrusions that we cannot tolerate. We have normalized that the Internet should be fluid, without interruptions or waiting. The platforms know it. They know that we have lost the ability to endure any friction. So they make it, multiply it, and then charge you to remove it. YouTube has perfected something that other platforms may not want to admit: The ad no longer sells products. Sell ​​your own absence. And that is perhaps the only advertising that really works. In Xataka | I’ve been paying for YouTube Premium for years and I don’t regret it. The problem is that going back is impossible. Featured image | Xataka with Mockuuups Studio

YouTube has begun to fill with AI-generated content. Spain appears in an unexpected position

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Something has noticeably changed in the YouTube experience. A recent analysis points to a notable change in the type of videos that make their way into the feed, with a high presence of content generated with artificial intelligence and with Spain standing out within that context. We are not talking about a passing fad or experimental creativity, but rather a pattern that responds to how attention is rewarded today. To understand what we are talking about, it is worth clarifying the terms that are repeated in the studies. “AI slop“is used to describe automatically generated videos, with very low standards and designed to be mass produced, prioritizing quantity over content.”brainrot” expands that idea and encompasses pieces that, with or without artificial intelligence, seek to retain the viewer based on repetitive stimuli and without a clear narrative. They are disputed labels, but useful to describe a type of content designed above all to capture attention. How the phenomenon has been measured. To put figures to this trend, Kapwing reviewed the 100 YouTube channels considered “trend” in each country through Playboard and isolated those he identified as AI slop. From there, he collected public data on views, subscribers, and estimated revenue with Social Blade and added them by country. Additionally, the team created a new YouTube account and reviewed the first 500 Shorts in the feed to see what a user with no previous history finds. What exactly does the data say about Spain. When breaking down the results by country, Spain stands out for a very specific reason. Channels of this type that fall into the “trend” category accumulate more than 20 million subscribers, more than any other country analyzed. However, the number of channels is small. The study itself indicates that this combination reveals a strong concentration of audience in few profiles, a key factor to understand why Spain appears so high in the ranking. The comparative analysis shows that there is no single global pattern. There are countries that stand out for the number of channels identified, others for the total number of views and others for the loyalty of their audiences. South Korea, for example, has a much higher number of views than the rest, while the United States is among the first in terms of aggregate volume of followers. This diversity reinforces a central idea of ​​the report: the impact of this type of content depends both on the local ecosystem and how algorithms respond in each market. Patterns that repeat in the videos. When reviewing this content, very recognizable formulas appear: animals with human features and cartoon aesthetics, with an almost photographic finish, placed in “story” mini-scenes that can be understood in seconds. Examples usually include baby monkeys that star in emotional or exaggerated situations, animals that “save” people in impossible accidents, or everyday scenes turned into fables, such as a cat shopping in a market. The Guardian highlights that many pieces dispense with a clear narrative and work by immediate impact, repetition and familiarity, three ingredients that fit well with the logic of the feed. Why this model is attractive. According to The Guardianmany creators approach this type of content not out of creative affinity, but out of pure profitability. Automated tools reduce costs and allow you to test ideas almost unlimitedly, while monetization programs promise income that is difficult to match in other local jobs. The result is a constant trial logic, where what works is replicated and what doesn’t is discarded, in an environment in which the algorithm decides more than the author. Regardless of who produces these videos, the impact is clearly perceived from the other side of the screen. Kapwing created a new account and counted the first 500 Shorts in the feed: 104 were AI-generated content, 21%, and 165 fit into “brainrot”, 33%. The Guardian summarizes that finding as “more than 20%” of AI slop in a new user experience. The data does not allow us to describe all of YouTube, but it does suggest that this material is part of the initial menu offered by the algorithm. The official response and its limits. YouTube maintained in statements to the aforementioned newspaper that videos generated with AI must meet the same standards as any other content and that it acts when its policies are violated. However, the platform does not offer public figures that allow us to know how many views correspond to this type of materials or how they influence the total. This opacity forces us to rely on external studies and leaves open the question of whether the algorithm prioritizes these videos or simply reflects their proliferation. Images | Ganes AI official 5286 | Lily Video AI | Dipto Fun Tv | Sparks Adventures (YouTube) | Kapwing In Xataka | We believed that Stack Overflow was essential for programming. AI is proving the opposite

Their songs about Greek myths on YouTube have filled the Movistar Arena. Twice

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Almost two years after announcing their temporary retirement from the stage, Álvaro Pascual and Rodrigo Septién return to the same place where they said goodbye. On January 3, 2026, Gutting History returns to the Movistar Arena with a new proposal called ‘The Dawn of the Gods’. They had closed their previous tour, ‘Loki Tour’ in January 2024 before thousands of attendees in Madrid, then declaring a break without a return date after mobilizing more than 75,000 spectators between Spain and Latin America. But they are back. How it started. Gutting history It started on YouTube in 2017, combining dissemination of stories and mythology with parody songs and handmade animations. The project started applying the format “draw my life“, popular on YouTube during those years, with his own songs until he ended up developing songs as diverse as the authentic ones. myths that inspired Disney movies or the stories of classical mythology, just as they were originally born. Origins. After a few humorous videos starring themselveshis video about the origin of Valentine’s Day established a formula that they would not abandon for a long time: very schematic illustrations on a white board, with rudimentary animations, catchy melodies and a humorous and demystifying tone. From there they would evolve until reaching the current state, where they exhibit animations much more sophisticated. The data. Currently the channel is approaching six million subscribers and according to HypeAuditor datahas a monthly growth of 0.16%. These are figures that position it as a benchmark for this type of educational content in Spanish. Monetization has evolved beyond YouTube: the platform’s advertising revenue estimates place its earnings between $4,100 and $5,700 per month for that channel alone, also according to HypeAuditor. However, the real commercial muscle came with diversification: they published books like ‘Gods of Olympus’, ‘The Craziest Gods’ or ‘The Craziest Monsters’, comics like ‘The Greatest Villains’, and they have developed merchandising that includes even dolls based on their characters. The ‘Loki Tour’ that closed in 2024 mobilized 75,000 attendees and took them outside of Spain, to countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Argentina and Chile, as well as nine Spanish cities, a figure comparable to tours by established musical artists. A recurring jump. The jump from digital content to physical venues is not exclusive to Destripando la Historia. In the Anglo-Saxon sphere, several projects on mythology and history have consolidated sufficient audiences to monetize in-person events. The podcast Let’s Talk About Myths, Baby! takes an irreverent approach to Greco-Latin mythology similar to Gutting History, while Mythologyproduction of Spotify Studios with theatrical finish combines dramatizations with historical analysis. Our Fake Historywhich debunks historical urban legends through hour-plus episodes, represents the more academic end of the spectrum. The case of Critical Role. However, the closest reference to the Guttering History model is Critical Rolea group of voice actors that has broadcast ‘Dungeons & Dragons’ games since 2015. Its expansion illustrates the commercial potential of this type of content: in October 2023 They filled the OVO Arena Wembley in London with 12,000 attendees. Their 10th anniversary tour in 2025 included Radio City Music Hall in New York and they already have an animated series on Amazon Prime, ‘The legend of Vox Machina‘, and they have founded a board game publishing house and a charitable foundation. The secret of success. There are several reasons to explain the impact of Ripping History, beyond the indisputable quality of its content. First, its hybrid format turns educational content into musical entertainment. Three-minute songs generate complete plays and relistens, which certainly pleases the algorithm. But they have also achieved something unusual: a transgenerational audience. Children enjoy the references to movies and myths they know through Disney, teenagers connect with the hooligan humor and adults appreciate the irony behind the proposal. The future. The question, once completely artisanal growth is established for the channel (unlike Critical Role, which rotates for months and has 180 employees) remains: can a duo sustain continuous content production without evolving towards a more business format, with specialized teams? Or, formulated another way, does the return to the Movistar Arena confirm that the model works in cycles, alternating digital creation with in-person peaks, instead of aspiring to the permanent machinery of Critical Role? In Xataka | The king of podcasting is no longer Apple or Spotify. It’s Google

How to watch YouTube without ads and in the background without paying for YouTube Premium or installing fake apps

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Let’s tell you How can you watch YouTube without ads on your mobile or computerand even with the option to watch the videos in the background. These are features available to paying users on YouTube Premiumbut we are going to tell you how to do it without paying. We are going to do this using third-party apps, but without resorting to fake applications or those that are a modified YouTube and that expose you to privacy dangers. Nor are they the apps to listen to music on YouTube as if it were Spotify. Some browsers will help you with this There are three key functions that YouTube Premium offers you, which is to watch videos without ads, listen to their audio in the background, or even use the mode Qicture-in-Picture with which to watch videos in a floating window while you are using another application. This is something you can do with other paid apps. The trick is use some specific browsers instead of Chrome or Safari. They are perfectly normal, safe and legal browsers, so you don’t need to go around installing modified versions of YouTube that are going to become a problem for your privacy. There are three very popular browsers that you can use for this, which are Brave, Firefox and Vivaldithe latter with the extra of being a European alternative. You can find these browsers both in the official application store of your mobile phone, and you can also download them to your computer. Brave is the best option for mobileas it allows you to use PiP mode to have the video play in an overlay window while you do other things. Vivaldi, on the other hand, only removes the ads, which is no small feat either. Just remember, you have to use YouTube from the browsernot from the app, entering m.youtube.com. For background playback With Brave, you’ll need to turn it on in the app’s settings. For this you will have to enter the configuration, and in the section Multimedia. Here activate background playback. For the computer any of the three options are goodsince they will allow you to watch YouTube without ads. This is due to the internal blockers they have. In Xataka Basics | How to use Gemini to summarize YouTube videos or ask questions about their content on Android

‘Baby Shark’ is the most successful song in YouTube history. It is also the least profitable of all

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It has already gone somewhat out of fashion, at least in terms of omnipresence at children’s parties, birthdays and meetings with children, but in those transition years between the birth of YouTube and the current flood of children’s content generated by AIs and insane algorithms on the platform, ‘Baby Shark‘It was a monumental success. One that, however, did not make its creators millionaires, unlike what many of us came to believe. Baby Shark, the legend. The infectious original song, since its publication on YouTube in June 2016, has accumulated an average of more than 4.7 million daily views. Now it’s at 16.4 billion views. Success transcends borders: available in 25 different languages, the United States leads as the main market in number of views, while Brazil holds the record in number of “likes.” In 2020, it dethroned ‘Despacito’ as the most viewed content on YouTube. And the distance continues to grow: ‘Despacito’ remains at 8.86 billion views, and ‘Baby Shark’ already doubles it. As The Wall Street Journal saysto get an idea of ​​the dimensions of the achievement: the amount is approximately equivalent to the sum of Taylor Swift’s ten most popular music videos on the platform. There is no money. Despite the records, Pinkfong, the South Korean company that created the song, barely generated $67 million in 2024. The reason: child privacy restrictions drastically limit its advertising monetization. In September 2019, Google agreed to pay 170 million dollars to resolve accusations of systematic violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). The US Federal Trade Commission determined that the platform had collected cookies and IP addresses from children under 13 years of age to serve you personalized advertisingwithout obtaining parental consent. The sanction (136 million for the FTC, 34 million for the State of New York) represented the largest fine imposed until then for violations of this type. The investigation revealed that YouTube advertised itself among toy brands such as Mattel and Hasbro as a leader in reaching children ages 6 to 11. Changes for Baby Shark. This fine led to YouTube banning personalized advertising in “Made for Kids” content as of January 2020. Additionally, it disabled features such as comments, subscription notifications, playlists, and live chat. The economic impact was notable: Children’s content creators reduced their production by 18% and views fell by 20%. Profits plummeted between 60% and 90% compared to content with personalized advertising. Others affected. Other big names in children’s entertainment also saw stars with YouTube’s decision. Cocomelonwhich has two of the ten videos confirmed significant revenue losses after the removal of personalized advertising. Chris Williams, co-founder of pocket.watch (a digital studio specialized in children’s content), said that the main channels in the sector, such as the Indian ChuChu TV, had experienced drops between 50% and 60% in their advertising revenue since January 2020. To survive. Faced with monetization restrictions, Pinkfong has built a diversified business model where YouTube advertising represents only a fraction of its revenue. According to data from the first half of 202568% of its sales now come from content distribution (YouTube, but also Netflix and live shows), while merchandising contributes 15%, licensing 10%, and the remaining segment corresponds to video games and other digital products. This allowed the company to achieve a profit of approximately 13 million dollars in 2024 on total revenues of 67 million. Of course, its CEO has already spoken of integrating artificial intelligence and data analysis in content creation. No more viral bombs. In Xataka | Baby Shark (doo doo doo doo doo doo): when a children’s song also sweeps the stock market

Many video AIs are learning to imitate the world. And everything points to an unprecedented “looting” of YouTube

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A square, tourists, a waiter moving between tables, a bike passing by in the background or a journalist on a set. Video AIs can now generate scenes in a flash. The result is surprising, but it also opens up a question that until recently was barely posed: where did all those images that have come from come from? allowed to learn to imitate the world? According to The Atlanticpart of the answer points to millions of videos pulled from platforms like YouTube without clear consent. The euphoria over generative AI has moved so quickly that many questions have been left behind. In just two years we have gone from curious little experiments to models that produce videos almost indistinguishable from the real thing. And while the focus was on the demonstrations, another issue was gaining weight: transparency. OpenAI, for example, has explained that Sora is trained with “publicly available” data, but has not detailed which one. A massive workout that points to YouTube The Atlantic piece gives a clear clue as to what was happening behind the scenes. We are talking about more than 15 million videos collected to train AI models, with a huge amount coming from YouTube without formal authorization. Among the initiatives cited are data sets associated with several companies, designed to improve the performance of video generators. According to the media, this process was carried out without notifying the creators who originally published that content. One of the most striking aspects of the discovery is the profile of the affected material. These were not just anonymous videos or home recordings, but informative content and professional productions. The media found that thousands of pieces came from channels belonging to publications such as The New York Times, BBC, The Guardian, The Washington Post or Al Jazeera. Taken together, we are talking about a huge volume of journalism that would have ended up feeding AI systems without prior agreement with their owners. runwayone of the companies that has given the most impetus to generative video, is highlighted in the reviewed data sets. According to the documents cited, their models would have learned with clips organized by type of scene and context: interviews, explanatory, pieces with graphics, kitchen plans, resource plans. The idea is clear: if AI must reproduce human situations and audiovisual narratives, it needs real references that cover everything from gestures to editing rhythms. Fragments of a video generated with the Runway tool In addition to Runway, the research mentions data sets used in laboratories of large technology platforms such as Meta or ByteDance in research and development of their models. The dynamic was similar: huge volumes of videos collected on the Internet and shared between research teams to improve audiovisual capabilities. YouTube’s official stance doesn’t leave much room for interpretation. Its regulations prohibit downloading videos to train modelsand its CEO, Neal Mohan, has reiterated it in public. The expectations of the creators, he stressed, involve their content being used within the rules of the service. The appearance of millions of videos in AI databases has brought that legal framework to the fore and has intensified pressure on platforms involved in the development of generative models. The reaction of the media sector has followed two paths. On the one hand, companies like Vox Media o Prisa have closed agreements to license their content to artificial intelligence platforms, looking for a clear framework and economic compensation. On the other hand, some media outlets have chosen to stand up: The New York Times has taken OpenAI and Microsoft to court for the unauthorized use of their materials, stressing that it will also protect the video content it distributes. The legal terrain remains unclear. Current legislation was not intended for models that process millions of videos in parallel, and courts are still beginning to draw the lines. For some experts, publishing openly is not equivalent to transferring training rightswhile AI companies defend that indexing and the use of public material are part of technological advancement. This tension, still unresolved, keeps media and developers in a constant game of balance. What we have before us is the start of a conversation that goes far beyond technology. Training AI models with material available on the internet has been a widespread practice for years, and now comes the time to decide where the limits are. Companies promise agreements and transparency, the media ask for guarantees and creators demand control. The next stage will be as technological as it is political: how artificial intelligence is fed will define who benefits from it. Images | Xataka with Gemini 2.5 In Xataka | All the big AIs have ignored copyright laws. The amazing thing is that there are still no consequences

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