YouTube

We stopped watching traditional television because of advertising, but YouTube is willing to recover it with unstoppable ads

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A few days ago, YouTube users in smart TVs They began to notice something that many thought they had left behind forever: unskippable 90-second ads in the middle of forty-minute videos. YouTube had promised in March that non-skippables would be 30 seconds long, but the limit has tripled in a matter of weeks. You see the ads. On March 2, YouTube released a statement announcing the global arrival of 30-second non-skippable ads for those watching the platform on connected TVs. More people than ever are using YouTube in the living room, and advertisers want formats that look like traditional television. Only five weeks later, things began to change: this April 7, several users began to publish on the r/YouTube subreddit 90-second ad screenshots, triple the advertised maximum, which could not be omitted in any way. Some media They collected part of the reactions of the spectators, which ranged from fury to inevitable resignation. YouTube’s response. The platform assured that those 90-second ads were not intentional and that it was “investigating” what had happened. The same source published a survey in January in which 87% of more than 8,600 people questioned claimed to have received non-skippable ads lasting more than 30 seconds, and almost a third said they had seen them exceed two minutes. Paradoxically, in 2017 YouTube removed 30-second non-skippable ads considering them precisely “a relic of traditional television.” The accounts come out. YouTube generated 40.4 billion dollars in advertising revenue in 2025. A figure that exceeds the combined sum of Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery, which together earned 37.8 billion. The same firm went so far as to declare YouTube “the new king of all media” by estimate its total income at around 62,000 million a year. And it’s not just a matter of raw money: according to NielsenYouTube took over 12.7% of all television viewing time in the US in December 2025, compared to 9% for Netflix. The gap between the two has widened in recent months. More people watch YouTube on TVs than any other screen, and the AI ​​system Google uses to decide which ad format to show (including bumpers 6-second spots, 15-second spots, and the new 30-second non-skippable ones) now have data to decide when a viewer is comfortable enough to tolerate a long ad break. And if you don’t want ads… Anyone who wants to avoid ads has a way out: YouTube Premium, at 13.99 euros per month. There is no middle option, no setting that allows you to opt for shorter or less frequent ads. According to Google itselfthere is no setting to turn off the 30-second format without a paid subscription. The thing is that not even Premium is what it used to be: some service levels include certain types of ads. It is the same pattern that the greats followed streamers: Netflix launched its tier with advertising in 2022; Disney+ followed suit shortly after. “Pay more to see fewer ads” is no longer a promise of digital platforms, it is their business model. What differentiates YouTube from other streaming platforms is that it is not a paid service that has added a free tier with advertising; It is a free platform that has built an advertising business of such magnitude that it can now afford to behave as if it were traditional television. The 90-second ads are another test for Google to discover how far the user’s tolerance can go before they change services or agree to pay. In Xataka | YouTube knows it has a problem with AI “slop” for kids. It turns out that the main culprit is YouTube

YouTube invests a million in AI content for children just as it has just declared war on AI content for children

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Google’s AI Futures Fund just injected a million dollars at Animaj, a Parisian studio that produces children’s animation generated with artificial intelligence for YouTube. The decision comes seven weeks after the platform’s CEO publicly stated that combating AI sloplow-quality content generated with AI, was the priority of the year. Down the slop. On January 21, 2026, Neal Mohan, CEO of YouTube, published his annual message about resolutions for the new year, including an unambiguous directive: combat AI slop It was the priority of the year for the platform. Seven weeks later, Google’s AI Futures Fund injected $1 million into Animaj, a Parisian animation studio that produces AI-generated children’s videos for YouTube. The problem. A analysis of more than 15,000 channels identified 278 dedicated exclusively to produce AI slop: Together they accumulated 63,000 million visits, 221 million subscribers and advertising revenues estimated at 117 million dollars annually. A user who opens Shorts finds that one in five recommended videos belongs to that category. He children’s segment concentrates the worst: YouTubers with more than a million followers explain in tutorials how to generate “simple and repetitive” children’s songs with ChatGPT, run them through a video generator and obtain content that could bring in “hundreds of dollars a day.” The channel JoJo Funlandfor example, published more than 10,000 videos in its first seven months (50 per day on average), a figure that took Sesame Street twenty years to reach on its YouTube channel. The volume would be worrying in itself, but what makes it a problematic issue is that many of these videos pass as educational, and in reality, There are psychologists who describe them as “AI disinformation for babies on an industrial scale”: they promise to teach vowels and show consonants or recite made-up country names. The solution. In July 2025, YouTube renamed its “Repetitive Content” policy as “Inauthentic Content”, which expanded the scope of moderation teams, who could now take action against channels that published videos that were technically different from each other but manufactured without human intervention. In January 2026, the first wave of large-scale application arrived. The platform removed 16 channels with a total of 35 million subscribers and 4.7 billion accumulated visits, which represents a sum of 10 million dollars in annual income. What is Animaj? Animaj was founded in 2022 by Gregory Dray (veteran director of YouTube Kids in Europe) and Sixte de Vauplane, convinced that low-quality children’s content on digital platforms was a problem before generative AI, and well-applied AI could be part of the solution. The company has acquired brands with proven prestige, such as Pocoyo and Maya the Bee. Its channels have 22 billion annual views and 242 million unique monthly viewers, making it the fifth largest children’s digital audience in the world. according to the company itself. The million from the AI ​​Futures Fund is also strategic: Animaj is the first children’s content studio to receive direct support from Alphabet’s technology accelerator. The deal includes early access to unreleased versions of Veo, Gemini, and Imagen, plus direct support from the Google DeepMind and Google Labs teams. With those tools, Animaj says it can go from concept to published episode in less than five weeks (four times faster than traditional animation) and aims to reduce the production cycle of a feature film from six years to eighteen months. In Xataka | The future of the Internet is to be flooded with AI. And there are those who have already seen a business niche: content made by humans Header | edward stojakovic

The POCO X8 Pro lands in Spain with double discount and subscriptions to YouTube Premium and Spotify

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February and March are being very busy months in terms of mobile launches. The latest to arrive has been the new generation of POCO from Xiaomi, and as it cannot be missed, it is accompanied by discounts, gifts and an edition that more than one superhero fan may like. If you are interested, the POCO X8 Pro It is available in several configurations: In addition, if you buy it right now in the official store, Xiaomi offers another additional discount and several gifts: 20 euro coupon. Free trial of YouTube Premium (two months) and Spotify Premium (three months). Double My Points. Trade In option, so by handing in an old device you can receive an additional discount. The price could vary. We earn commission from these links A new generation arrives He POCO X8 Pro It is interesting for many reasons beyond its particular edition of Iron Man. Perhaps the most interesting thing is that it comes with a 6,500 mAh batterya fairly large figure considering that we are talking about a compact (6.59 inches) and thin (8.38 mm) mobile phone. In addition, the battery supports 100W fast charging, so you can have it charged in a very short time. The AMOLED panel offers a 1.5K resolution and a 120 Hz refresh rate, so it will look very fluid at all times. Xiaomi has opted in this case to mount the chip Dimensity 8500-Ultraso it has very good power if what you are looking for is to play with your mobile. Of course, the POCO X8 Pro comes with HyperOS 3.0 As an operating system and at a photographic level, it comes with a 20 MP front camera and a rear module that is made up of a 50 MP main sensor (with optical stabilization) and an 8 MP wide angle. ⚡ IN SUMMARY: POCO X8 Pro offer today ✅ THE BEST Your batterywhich allows you to use your mobile phone without depending so much on the charger. In addition, it supports very fast charging so you can have it charged in a matter of minutes. The introductory offerwhich not only consists of a discount, but also a coupon and several gifts through months of subscriptions to YouTube and Spotify. ❌ THE WORST Like practically any mobile phone, it comes without a chargerso if you don’t have one that supports fast mobile charging, you won’t be able to take advantage of it. 💡 BUY IT IF… You are looking for a mobile phone whose battery lasts more than a day, that can be purchased in the maximum storage capacity (512 GB) without the price going up much and that also has a good processor. ⛔ DON’T BUY IT IF… Are you looking for a mobile phone that stands out above all in photography or that has an even larger battery, for which we have the POCO X8 Pro Max which comes with an 8,500 mAh battery. You may also be interested

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

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