TOGETHER WITH

It’s Thursday and in case you were wondering, YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram aren’t on board with eating the rich. Just ask James Harr: after promoting a deck of cards themed around “Most Wanted CEOs,” the creator found himself booted off social media.

Today’s News

MAKING A RACKET

This Wii Sports Tennis-style Australian Open looks silly, but it’s a whole new kind of sports stream

The strategy: The Australian Open has found an unorthodox way to give fans unprecedented access to its hours-long tennis matches. The annual Melbourne-set tournament’s official YouTube channel (aka Australian Open TV) now features gameplay livetreams that replace its 128 competitors with animated avatars. Fans who tune in will see that the balls are bigger than normal, the fans and court officials are completely still, and the audio is piped in from the TV feed.

If you’ve spent much time swinging rackets in Nintendo’s Wii Sports—and you probably have, since its one of the most-played video games of all time—the Australian Open’s new big-headed avatars might look familiar. That nostalgia is a clear selling point (at least for us), but the tournament’s Wii-style players serve a greater purpose: they give the Australian Open a way to get around rebroadcast rules. 

By animating the on-court action (and therefore showing it without actually showing it), the tournament maintains its TV partners’ exclusive coverage while simultaneously giving fans 24/7 access to one of the year’s four Grand Slam events.

The big picture: That’s a big deal in the tennis world—and one that could help the sport fully adapt to the digital age. While other athletic leagues have embraced online platforms with revenue sharing programs and opportunities for creators, the ATP and WTA Tours frequently leave fans frustrated. Grand Slams like the French Open—which offers brief highlight reels of multi-hour matches—haven’t been much better.

The Australian Open’s animated matches break that mold at a time when marathon streams are pulling in massive numbers on YouTube and Twitch. If other events and leagues follow suit, tennis should be well-positioned to become the next big sport on the internet.

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Twitch says top creators like Ludwig, Sykkuno, and Valkyrae are returning “after a brief stint” on rivals like YouTube due to “a preference for the community and format Twitch’s service provides.” (Dextero)
  
  

• As Meta faces backlash for its new moderation policies, one developer new app, Flashes, could offer disgruntled users an alternative to Instagram. (Gizmodo)
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• Duolingo has reported a 216% year-over-year rise in U.S. users learning Mandarin amid a sudden surge of interest in RedNote. (TechCrunch)
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• Good news, football fans: Fox has announced that Super Bowl LIX will be free to watch on its ad-supported streaming service, Tubi. (The Verge)

BIG INVESTMENT

This platform got more monthly traffic in Russia than YouTube. Here’s why:

The power shift: YouTube’s user numbers are declining in Russia—and another platform is stepping in to take its place. According to RBC (which cited data from Mediascope), VKontakte reached 92 million users in Russia during the final month of the year. YouTube reached fewer than 90 million.

VKontakte (aka “Russian Facebook”) was co-founded in 2006 by Pavel Durov, who later became CEO of Telegram and was eventually arrested for failing to address in-app criminal activity. Nowadays, the CEO of VKontakte parent company VK Group is Vladimir Kiriyenko, a Putin ally who was sanctioned by the Biden Administration in 2022.

The context: It’s no coincidence that a Putin-friendly alternative is rising to prominence while YouTube’s Russian viewership continues to drop. The Alphabet-owned platform’s declining numbers in Russia are the result of a years-long disagreement over the status of state-sponsored YouTube hubs. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, YouTube demonetized many of those channels—including ones operated by Russia Today (RT)—due to what it called “extraordinary circumstances.”

By 2024, Russian users were noticing dramatic slowdowns on the YouTube app. Those intensified later in the year, with federal censorship agency Roskomnadzor stating that “numerous violations of Russian legislation and disrespect for our country…are grounds for taking action against YouTube.” The Kremlin had already taken legal action against Google, seeking damages greater than the world’s GDP.

The consequences: As a result of that apparent throttling of YouTube, Slavic creators who once dominated our Tubefilter charts have seen noticeable viewership decreases. According to Gospel Stats, kids’ channel BorisKateFamily went from 1.6 billion monthly views in March 2024 to 325 million monthly views in November. Other kidfluencer channels with ties to Russia, such as Like Nastya and Vlad and Niki, have begun operating out of cities like Miami and Dubai.

FIND YOUR FAVORITES

Snapchat is leveraging the TikTok ban to promote creators like Avani Gregg and Loren Gray

The campaign: At this point, every platform from Triller to Peacock has attempted to ensnare the millions of “TikTok refugees” who will soon be in need of a fresh feed.

Snapchat is no exception. The app’s new “Find Your Favorites” campaign promotes popular creators like Loren Gray, Savannah Demers, Matt Friend, Avani Gregg, and Harry Jowsey, all of whom made it big on TikTok before expanding their reach to (and signing deals with) Snapchat.

That campaign seems designed to show the U.S. TikTok community that Snapchat can—and should—be their go-to platform once their FYPs go dark. If those users sign up on Snapchat, they’ll find TikTok-like features, unified revenue streams, and even some of their favorite TikTok creators.

The context: Snap’s appeal to TikTok users is well-timed. According to The Information, the ByteDance-owned app is preparing for an immediate shut-off in the U.S. if the “divest-or-ban” law goes into effect on January 19 as scheduled. So despite continuing efforts from the ACLU and some Senators to keep TikTok operational, the FYP-free future anticipated by platforms like Snapchat will almost certainly come to pass.

WATCH THIS 📺

TikTok users are wishing a fond (and satirical) farewell to their “Chinese spies”

The trend: As the TikTok ban approaches, some users are bidding au revoir to the “Chinese spies” who built their FYPs “brick by brick.” The satirical trend pokes fun at the logic behind the soon-to-be-enacted U.S. law, which is designed to root out apps with ties to foreign adversaries.

Videos within the trend feature everything from handwritten love letters to romantic montages and care packages (which, of course, include data-packed gifts like search histories, baby pictures, and the occasional social security card). And, then, of course, there are loving response videos from the “spies” themselves, often featuring ballads like Charlie Puth’s “See You Again.”

This is how we’ll remember you, TikTok.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.