TOGETHER WITH

It's Monday and PlayStation is diving into the word of competitive gaming with the launch of its very own esports channel .

STATE OF AFFAIRS

ByteDance made $25 billion in profit last year. Can it buy its way out of a TikTok ban?

There's no denying that Bytedance is a  powerhouse in the tech industry —but that doesn't seem to be helping its case in Congress. According to  The Economist , the TikTok parent company made $25 billion in gross operating profit last year, outpacing local rivals like Alibaba and Tencent. Bytedance's apps outpaced U.S.-based competitors, too: profit per monthly active user stayed relatively flat on both TikTok and Douyin between 2021 and 2022, while both Facebook/Instagram and YouTube  declined on that axis .

For Bytedance, a good chunk of that profit went to wooing U.S. legislators. The Bejing-based company has spent  at least $1.5 billion  on Project Texas over the last few years, plus millions more on its  lobbying operation  in Washington.

Will all that effort make a difference?

TikTok's prospects in the U.S. are looking cloudy. Federal efforts to ban the popular app have  met considerable opposition , but state governments are still pressing on. On Friday, for instance, Montana's state legislature  approved the first state-wide TikTok ban —meaning the bill needs only a signature from Governor Greg Gianforte to go into effect in January 2024. If that happens, any app stores that give users the opportunity to download TikTok would be fined $10,000 a day. Of course, even if lawmakers find a way to police app stores, they won’t be able to stop users from accessing TikTok via a virtual private network (VPN).

As for  TikTok's response ? The platform has vowed to “continue to fight for TikTok users and creators in Montana whose livelihoods and First Amendment rights are threatened by this egregious government overreach.”

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HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

• Instagram is kicking things into gear with an updated editing process, a  central hub dedicated to trending Reels , and new analytics for Reels creators. (Tubefilter)
  
  

• According to new reports, Google is working to create a  brand-new, AI-driven search engine . (Engadget)
  
  

• Apple TV's latest beta feature is a  multiview option  that allows sports fans to tune into as many as four games at once. (TechCrunch)
  
  

• Twitter CEO Elon Musk is reportedly in the process of launching his own  artificial intelligence company , X.AI. (VentureBeat)

DATA • ICYMI 📈

Chris Tyson came out, YouTube Premium got an upgrade, and h3h3 battled BBTV

 #1 - Chris Tyson comes out as gender nonconforming ​​
Longtime MrBeast collaborator Chris Tyson came out as gender nonconforming on April 6 after responses to  a Beast Reacts video  focused largely on their changed appearance. In a series of tweets, Tyson pointed to the importance of HRT, noting that it “saved my and many others’ lives,” and that “[t]he hurdles [gender nonconforming people] have to jump through to get life-saving gender-affirming healthcare in a 1st world country is wild to me.”

 #2 - TikTok’s 18-and-up videos have arrived. Don’t get the wrong idea about what that means. ​
TikTok creators have been posting adult-only videos for a while now, but that doesn't mean excitement over the new-ish feature has worn off. Of course, there is one big caveat: even videos catered to grown-ups are expected to follow TikTok's Community Guidelines.

 #3 - YouTube Premium is getting a full loadout of new features ​​
In a recent  company blog post ,YouTube announced five new Premium features: a continue watching tool, a co-watching feature, Smart Downloads, video queuing, and an “enhanced bitrate version” of 1080p HD video.

 #4 - A court battle is brewing between h3h3productions and BBTV ​​
h3h3 co-host Ethan Klein has threatened to take BBTV to court after accusing the network of improperly claiming $620,000 of YouTube  Channel Membership  revenue. The creator's allegations are already making waves: following Klein’s public remarks, creators like  Brody Foxx and ZachJamesOBZ  found that BBTV had taken a cut of their Channel Membership revenue, too.

MEET THE REVENGINEERS 🤖

Mark Rober is kicking off his TV career with two new Discovery shows

Mark Rober's 23.7 million YouTube subscribers can now  watch their favorite science guy  on TV. The famous engineer has premiered a show on Discovery called  This Is Mark Rober . Another Rober-led program, Revengineers, is set to arrive on the same channel on April 20. Both shows will dive into the world of STEM by entertaining viewers with large-scale pranks and experiments.

This Is Mark Rober offers viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the YouTuber's videos by unraveling the scientific concepts involved in their development. (The show's first episode, for instance, centers around the “elephant toothpaste" that Rober set off in Jimmy Kimmel‘s office last year.)

Revengineers incorporates even more mischief.

In 2019, Rober teamed up with Kimmel to  create a series  called Revenge of the Nerd. Fast forward three years or so, and Revengineers is finally hitting the small screen. The prank program will tap into the same energy as Rober's most-watched videos, which follow the creator as he booby-traps porch pirates. Revengineers' premiere episode will take aim at similar hooligans, including foodies who hoard free samples at the farmer’s market and shoppers who fail to return their carts after checking out.

Rober gave fans a sneak peek of the action during a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live. During his bit, the 43-year-old  Los Angeles native  biked across his hometown to prank pedestrians who looked at their phones in the middle of intersections.

LISTEN UP 🎙️

This week on the podcast…

Cat Valdes stops in for a chat about her journey from creator to career, and MrBeast teaches a class at Harvard Business School. Finally, listen in as experts Lauren Schnipper and Josh Cohen dissect the corporate drama brewing between H3H3 and BBTV.

It’s all right here on  Spotify  and  Apple Podcasts .

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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.