It’s Tuesday, and Jake and Logan Paul addressed a new kind of audience during a trip to the Pentagon last week: the U.S. military.

SCHOOL’S IN SESSION

The app: A new app is turning textbooks into scrollable social media feeds. Founded by husband/wife duo Utsav Gupta and Rebecca Neff, ScrollEd is a straightforward tool designed to make education more engaging. Users upload textbook files, which are then turned into AI-powered interactive feeds that can hold students’ attention while imparting relevant information.

ScrollEd’s tech, according to the startup’s website, delivers “instant concepts, clean summaries, anchor examples, and micro-quizzes” while letting users “keep scrolling without losing flow.”

The context: Evidence shows that pupils flock to educational YouTube content during exam season. Some apps—like Duolingo—have figured out effective ways to gamify studying in specific categories like language learning. But with the exception of Revyze (a French app that offers a swipeable feed filled with educational videos), many of the tools used to make homework engaging are small-scale “PDF-to-brainrot” services like Coconote and StudyRot.

ScrollEd—which says its redesigned lessons have an 80% completion rate—wants to offer a more sophisticated solution.

But not everyone is on board with bringing social video feeds into education. New York City schools, for example, recently enacted limits that will reduce the availability of YouTube on classroom devices.

At next month’s TechCrunch Disrupt Startup Battlefield 200 competition, Gupta and Neff will get a chance to prove that ScrollEd has a place in American schools. “The ambition is a social network that’s better for you,” Gupta told TechCrunch.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

TOP 50 • MOST SUBSCRIBED

The AI wave: Despite YouTube’s best efforts, AI slop is taking over the Top 50 charts. Each week, our rankings of the platform’s most subscribed-to channels are filled with hubs that seem to feature little to no human input.

We can’t say we’re surprised; after all, genAI creators can crank out on-trend videos at a pace humans simply can’t match. In response, some creators—like Turing Games—have found unique ways to incorporate AI models into their content. Others have taken a different approach by putting a human spin on viral AI content.

The creator: Respondemesta is putting his own twist on the latter strategy. In one of the Colombian creator’s recent videos, he attempts to recreate AI-generated foodstuffs that appear in popular videos. His attempts are amusing, his final products are as bizarre as their inspiration, and his use of translation tools allows his long-form video to reach a wide audience.

The proof of that approach is in the pudding. Respondemesta picked up 310,000 subscribers over the course of our last seven-day count, which allowed him to rank #13 in the Global Sub Top 50 and #6 among entrants from Latin America.

In a world where LLMs repeatedly scrape and repurpose human content, it’s nice to see a resourceful creator flip the script.

TUBE TALK

The content conflict: Six kid-friendly channels collected at least 500 million views each on YouTube this week. But are they delivering the kind of content YouTube wants its youngest viewers to see?

The Google-owned hub has worked for years to improve the quality of the health and medical videos that appear on its platform. Its most recent efforts have revolved around investing in better-researched content (especially in categories like parenting) and encouraging caregivers to try different strategies for managing children’s mental health.

The channels: Independent creators, however, have their own ideas about the proper balance between health-conscious themes and lightning-fast viral content.

Take Doctora Sophia Español. While the channel’s Shorts preach the importance of sharing, obedience, and kindness, they also frequently incorporate trendy elements like bright colors, candy, and superheroes. Hubs like Doctora Sophia show the pros and cons of independent content as it pertains to YouTube’s health goals. Positive health themes may put indie channels in YouTube’s good graces, but flashy colors and references to sweet treats are the qualities that haul in big view counts.

NurSure is clear evidence of that pattern. The kid-friendly channel achieved its best-ever single-day performance earlier this month by collecting more than 80 million views over a 24-hour period—but viewers aren’t just gravitating to the channel because it teaches kids to fight germs. They’re also being drawn in by technicolor hairstyles and catchy ditties.

The takeaway: As long as kid-friendly content remains the dominant category in the Global Top 50, there will be opportunities to work educational themes into trending videos. But if those ideas aren’t prioritized over flashy (and often overstimulating) content, YouTube will continue to face scrutiny for its video library’s mental health effects.

WATCH THIS 👀

The competition: The best and chonkiest week of the year has arrived. Every fall, the internet goes wild for Fat Bear Week, an online competition celebrating the resilience of Alaskan bears. Now, the 2026 bracket has officially hit YouTube—and it’s clear voters are facing a tough choice.

With fierce competitors like Chunk, Bucky, Backpack, and Gully sporting bulked-up physiques, this year’s Fat Bear Week tournament is sure to be a close race.

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