TOGETHER WITH

It’s Friday and if you’ve been longing for the photo-filled feeds of 2008 Facebook, look no further than Instagram’s latest feature: carousel posts that can host up to 20 photos and videos at once.

🗞️ Today’s News 🗞️

• Indian Shorts creators hit a trillion-view milestone  📈

• TikTok’s parent company challenges OpenAI’s Sora

• Film and TV studios gain access to a brand-new TikTok feature 🎬

• YouTube wants viewers like you to fact-check its videos

YOUTUBE TRILLIONAIRES

Indian creators have now reeled in more than 1 trillion views on Shorts

The reveal: YouTube’s CEO just dropped some major stats. In a pitch to potential ad buyers at the platform’s India-based Brandcast event, Neal Mohan revealed that Shorts has now generated more than one trillion views in India alone.

The context: That milestone comes three years after India banned TikTok in a 2020 crackdown targeting nearly 60 apps from China-based companies. The resulting vacuum allowed TikTok alternatives—including Shorts and Instagram—to flourish among Indian viewers.

Since then, short-form sports and family content in particular has exploded across the Indian social media landscape.

• According to Mohan, cricket videos alone have earned over 50 billion views in the last year—and while U.S.-based hubs generate billions of Shorts views, Indian family channels like Anaya Kandhal frequently outpace all western competitors.

• In July, for instance, three-year-old Anaya and her family claimed the #1 spot in our Global Top 100 chart for the fourth month running by reeling in 4.29 billion monthly views. No other channel crossed the three billion view mark.

The future: Given the looming potential of a TikTok ban in the U.S., a similar status quo might not be far off for American viewers and creators. U.S. sports content is already growing on YouTube and—if India’s recent history is anything to go by—a TikTok ban could funnel trillions of views to Shorts.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• TikTok is rolling out Spotlight, a new suite of tools that will help film and TV studios encourage sales of tickets and streaming service subscriptions. (Tubefilter)
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• A report from the Financial Times claims that Google and Meta joined forces to exploit a loophole that allowed them to direct ads at underage users. (The Verge)

• X has updated its Premium+ subscription to provide paying users with an entirely ad-free experience. (Engadget)
  
  

• Turkey cut off access to Instagram last week. Now, the government has banned Roblox following an investigation into potential child exploitation. (The Verge)

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AI REVOLUTION

TikTok’s parent company just launched an AI text-to-video program. Can it avoid the controversy plaguing OpenAI?

The technology: Bytedance is getting into the AI text-to-video game. The parent company behind TikTok has announced the launch of Jimeng AI, a new program that rivals OpenAI’s Sora.

Jimeng AI initially arrived on Android on July 31 before hitting the App Store a week later. So far, the text-to-video app is limited to Chinese users—an audience that already has multiple alternatives to choose from. Other China-based Sora competitors include Kling AI (which comes from major Chinese video app Kuaishou and has expanded its program to global users) and startup-backed options Ying and Vidu.

The context: Bytedance has introduced AI features to TikTok in the past, but this latest leap into text-to-video carries some hefty risks.

OpenAI has been at the center of numerous controversies since launching Sora in February, including an investigation launched by YouTube to determine whether it had trained the program on creator videos. Prominent influencers like Marques Brownlee have also come forward to admonish OpenAI for unauthorized AI training, while others are currently suing over illicit data scraping.

If it hopes to expand Jimeng AI to the U.S., Bytedance will need to be careful not to raise similar alarms. In addition to the looming threat of a TikTok ban, the company is already juggling numerous regulatory battles and has faced scrutiny over allegedly scraping content from Instagram and Snapchat.

Of course, it’s possible that Bytedance’s new app won’t achieve the level of prominence necessary to draw that kind of attention. A test run by South China Morning Post showed that Sora’s results are currently far more realistic than Jimeng’s—meaning Bytedance might take its time before expanding to additional markets.

TRUE OR FALSE

YouTube wants users to fact-check videos

The update: YouTube is putting its own spin on X’s Community Notes. Two months after introducing an experimental fact-checking feature, the platform has begun inviting a select number of people to submit context-providing notes on videos.

• For now, YouTube plans to use those notes—which will cover English-language content and be available on mobile in the U.S.—to “improve our systems before we consider expanding.”
  
  

• If that expansion does happen, users can expect an experience close to that provided on X. YouTube will post contributors’ notes alongside videos and ask some viewers if those notes are helpful, factual, and/or conveyed “clearly and neutrally” before displaying them (or not displaying them) to all viewers.
  
  

• That process won’t affect how the platform responds to videos that violate Community Guidelines (i.e. offending content won’t suddenly be permitted due to a clarifying note), but it’s less clear whether fact-checking will affect YouTube’s algorithm or the visibility of posts with less positive ratings.

The context: The timing of YouTube’s fact-checking experiment is significant. While the platform pointed to the usefulness of notes that “clarify when a song is meant to be a parody” or “point out when a new version of a product being reviewed is available,” we’re guessing the feature will also be applied to political misinformation.

• Much of YouTube’s past fact-checking efforts have revolved around elections, and it took serious heat in 2020 after allegedly permitting the spread of voting-related misinformation.

• Most recently, the platform was identified by nonprofit journalism school and research org Poynter as “a major conduit of online disinformation.”

Given the severity of those instances, it’s interesting that YouTube has chosen to enlist unpaid users to fact-check content—especially since that same system has raised serious concerns on X.

WATCH THIS 📺

YouTube’s new AI tool is devoted to helping you brainstorm videos

The feature: YouTube is tapping into the power of Google’s AI model. In a video posted to its Creator Insider channel, the platform announced that a “small, limited” number of creators now have access to a new ideation-focused feature driven by Gemini.

The main purpose of that tool—called Brainstorm with Gemini—is exactly what it sounds like. YouTube says it’s kickstarted the testing process “with the goal of helping creators brainstorm video ideas, video titles, and thumbnail ideas.” Check out the full video here.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen. Drew Baldwin helped edit, too. It's a team effort.