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Today's News

🛠️ PewDiePie "fixed YouTube"
🤖 Say hello to the "XTuber"
💸 Facebook woos pro creators
🍎 Apple enters its brainrot era
🎤 Hannah Montana is back, y'all

CREATOR COMMOTION

.PewDiePie is having a mad scientist moment

PewDiePie was sick of having "algo brain," so he "fixed YouTube"

The extension: One of the most iconic creators of the 2010s is a father now—and he's not willing to expose his kids to "algo brain."

In a recent video, PewDiePie explains how he "fixed YouTube" by using his personal AI model to build a browser extension that takes users straight to their Subscriptions page when they log in.

PewDiePie's argument is that current recommendation algorithms lead to a "race to the bottom" that encourages creators—and especially Shorts creators—to seek the lowest common denominator. As a result, creators burn themselves out, viewers have insufficient control over the content they see, and AI slop runs rampant.

❝

"We've industrialized nothingness."

PewDiePie (aka Felix Kjellberg)

PewDiePie's solution is to restore YouTube to its former glory. By putting the Subscriptions tab back in the spotlight, he centered his favorite channels and cleared up the screen to make the comment section easier to find.

That design would undoubtedly appeal to users who have called for things like Instagram rollbacks and neutral TikTok feeds. But instead of publicizing his own work, PewDiePie is directing fans to a similar extension called Unhook.

The context: At the end of the day, all this is vintage PewDiePie. Even at his peak, the Swedish creator frequently clashed with the tech companies that enabled his meteoric rise. That anti-authoritarian streak was a big part of his appeal, and he frequently criticized YouTube for its perceived double standards.

More than a decade later, PewDiePie's career is in a completely different place, and his content has taken on a softer tone. Nevertheless, this extension is a perfect encapsulation of his personal brand: it's an idiosyncratic and iconoclastic product that uplifts both creators and their fans.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

XTubers are a thing now.

Tokyo-based VTuber agency Pandora has announced its plan to trademark the term "XTuber," which refers to hybrid creators who employ both virtual and human avatars. (Tubefilter)
An AI agent at Meta reportedly encouraged an employee to take actions that caused "massive amounts of company and user-related data" to be exposed to unauthorized engineers. (TechCrunch)
Stock trading/investment hub Robinhood is beta testing "Robinhood Social," a Twitter-style social media platform that allows users to trade from their feeds. (The Verge)
The American investor group behind the acquisition of the U.S. version of TikTok will reportedly pay a $10 billion "transaction fee" to the U.S. Treasury. (The New York Times)

PLATFORM UPDATES

Meta is putting established creators on the fast track.

Meta will pay some creators $3K to start posting on Reels and Facebook

The program: In 2025, Facebook paid out "nearly $3 billion" from creator monetization programs—"a 35% increase from the previous year and its highest annual total ever" (per Meta). That same year, the number of creators earning more than $10,000 annually on Facebook grew 30% year-over-year.

Now, Meta wants creators who've established themselves on other platforms to bring their prestige to Facebook and Reels. The company has unveiled Creator Fast Track, a new program that will pay creators with significant audiences on Instagram, TikTok, and/or YouTube to start posting videos across Reels and Facebook.

The size of those incentives depends on follower count. Meta will pay out $1,000/month if a creator has at least 100,000 followers on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube, and $3,000/month if they have over one million followers on at least one of those platforms. Participants won't have to go through the usual waiting period before monetization kicks in, so they can potentially start earning on day one.

In order to secure their monthly bonuses, creators must share at least 15 Reels on Facebook within each 30-day period. Those Reels can include reposts of videos that have already been uploaded on other platforms, but they must be posted on at least 10 different days across the 30-day period.

The fine print: It's worth noting that the $1,000 and $3,000 bonuses only last three months. A Meta spokesperson tells Tubefilter these monthly payouts are "a sweetener entry point for the program […] not the main value."

Instead, "the main value" comes from "immediate access to Facebook Content Monetization…which lasts beyond the three months and will be their primary way of making money." Meta also plans to boost creators' reach, and will push their content out to Reels/Facebook users "until…they've reached and found their audience on Facebook."

BRAINROT BOOM

Apple is going full Gen Alpha.

On TikTok, Apple is bringing its marketing into the brainrot era

The strategy: Apple's ramped-up TikTok activity is a hit with the kids.

Since unveiling the Macbook Neo earlier in March, the tech giant has promoted its colorful, economical laptop line by posting 14 TikTok videos—all of which have now received at least two million views.

The most-watched upload of the bunch has garnered nearly 18 million hits over two weeks, and embodies Apple's move into "brainrot" territory with its focus on colors, lack of dialogue, and use of ASMR-style sounds. That video fits into a genre we've dubbed "kidslop," which is typified by content that is surprising, vibey, and easy to translate across cultural boundaries.

Kidslop is the domain of Gen Alpha, and that's a good demographic for Apple to reach. Aside from being big on vibes and conscious of their spending, teenagers apparently think the Cupertino-based corporation is pretty cool.

The context: Does all that mean Gen A consumers will dig a $599 laptop that comes in a variety of colors and features the user-friendly MacOS interface?

Apple seems to think so—and it's hardly the first brand to see nonsensical social media content as a marketing opportunity. The company most associated with that approach is Duolingo, which has dabbled in comics, chess, and other eclectic categories that allow it to meet today's kids where they hang out. Duolingo vets are now being courted to run social media ops for brands like DoorDash, and Apple is also seeing the value of a borderline dadaist approach to ads.

WATCH THIS 👀

Miley Cyrus will sit down with Alex Cooper to discuss her Disney roots.

Hannah Montana is coming back for a 20th Anniversary Special

The pop comeback: For many young millennials and elder Zoomers, there's never been anything quite like the heyday of Hannah Montana. Miley Cyrus' blonde-haired alter ego was everywhere in the 2000s, from Disney Channel to sold-out concerts and Nintendo DS games.

In the twenty years since Hannah Montana premiered in 2006, Cyrus' career has taken some major (and often controversial) turns. Now, however, she's headed to Hulu and Disney+ to look back on her time as a preteen icon.

The Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special is set to premiere on March 24, with Call Her Daddy star Alex Cooper serving as host.

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