In Jimmy Donaldson’s latest MrBeast video, the YouTuber is in an abandoned city with three friends. Over the next 17 minutes, Donaldson and his fellow YouTubers build shelter, explore the area, and try to survive on rations for seven days.

Like most of the MrBeast catalog, the video is an expensive and over-produced spectacle. It amassed tens of millions of views in just a few days. But according to the chocolatier, entrepreneur, and content creator, he’s trying something new. 

According to Donaldson on Twitter/X, for this island adventure and the three other videos he released so far in 2024, he “yelled less,” made “longer videos,” and spent more time focusing on “personality.” The new YouTube editing strategy is to slow down videos, “focus on storytelling,” and let “scenes breathe.”

“My fellow YouTubers let’s get rid of the ultra fast-paced/overstim era of content,” Donaldson wrote. “It doesn’t even work.” 

That style of YouTube editing that Donaldson thinks is no longer viable for YouTubers was what he used to get to the top. If you watch a video MrBeast created in the past five years, he inundates you with screaming, fast cuts, simple jokes, and a premise that’s easy to understand.

In earlier videos — like when he spent 24 hours on a mountain or his friends competed to keep their hands on a house — the editing was so fast-paced that a single shot couldn’t last for more than five seconds.

“In my mind, it boiled down to the comedy and timing of the cuts to make the viewer as entertained as possible,” former MrBeast editor Trey Yates told Passionfruit. “Back in that time, there wasn’t any room for them to think a joke wasn’t coming or that something funny wasn’t going to happen.”

Yates, currently an editor for YouTubers like Jacksepticeye, worked on multiple MrBeast channels and videos from 2018 to 2021. During his tenure, videos on the main channel needed to be “focused on the story.” They needed to always “have tension,” giving viewers a reason to stay glued to their screens.

The idea of “staircase storytelling,” where you start with something small before moving to a larger goal, was the driving force behind videos where things started at $1 before getting progressively more expensive.

We know that Donaldson is a very data-inclined creator, constantly studying the algorithm. He even launched his own analytics platform late last year.

According to Yates, that fast-paced YouTube editing style resulted from looking at “analytics.” Number-crunchers told the YouTuber that “the personal stories of the people in the videos don’t matter. People are watching just to get to the end product.”

The editing of MrBeast videos has crept its way into nearly every corner of the platform. YouTubers like Brent Rivera, Dylan Huynh, and Matthew Beam have earned hundreds of subscribers by copying Donaldson’s formula. Other YouTubers have certainly had their editing styles influenced, using flashy captions and loud edits to retain as much attention as possible.

“The biggest creator on any platform sets the example for what works,” video editor Devin Robbins told Passionfruit. “MrBeast’s channel has always been a good compass for teaching the ‘rules’ of the platform.” ...

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post Can the ‘fast-paced’ era of YouTubers ever end? appeared first on The Daily Dot.

Eric Sedeño, known better on TikTok as RicoTaquito, is unapologetically himself.

Fans know the 27-year-old creator best for his skits about being a poorly-hidden LGTBQ+ teen. “Fighting for his life” against gay allegations, he has a brand of awkward, relatable cringe humor that you can’t help but love.

And then, of course, there’s the infamous RicoTaquito wig series, where he walks around with a f**kass bob. For no other reason besides it’s funny. 

These unique satirical videos, along with Sedeño’s general sunny demeanor, have garnered the New York-based creator a loyal fanbase of 1 million followers on his RicoTaquito TikTok account.

“Honestly, I was super pent up, and during COVID, I had no outlet for creativity and being silly with my friends like I used to be,” Eric Sedeño said in an interview with Passionfruit. “I’m a very hardcore extrovert. I didn’t expect anything to come from it.”

But what initially started as roughly 20 followers soon swelled into a media empire of 1 million RicoTaquito TikTok followers and a 2024 GLAAD Award-nominated podcast, “Gay & Afraid.”

“I had like 20 followers. And I was like, ‘Okay, these 20 people are gonna have the time of their lives!’” he said. “And that’s kind of what got me out of my shell.”

According to Sedeño, he’s always been a storyteller. He tells us he prides himself on being the “exact same person” IRL as you see on the internet.

“I just want to make people smile,” he adds. “And I wasn’t smart enough to become an orthodontist." ...

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post TikToker Eric Sedeño just wants to make people smile appeared first on The Daily Dot.

Hasan Piker started his Saturday, Feb. 24 stream as usual. Before the political pundit fed the daily dose of news to his 2.6 million followers, he updated his audience on what was happening in his life. 

The day before, after spending nine and a half hours talking on camera, Piker went to his producer’s housewarming party. After one drink of alcohol, Piker quickly realized his “social battery” had depleted after his time on Twitch. 

Within 15 minutes of telling that story, a viewer clipped a 20-second portion of the 15-minute segment. In the clip, Piker said, “A real job doesn't suck the soul out of you in the same way that streaming absolutely will.”

The clip started to spread immediately, pulling in millions of views on Twitter/X and various streamer-based subreddits. Piker, who was still streaming at the time, tried to stem the outrage. He offered the full context of the clip and further explained his stance.

But the floodgates opened, and no one could shut them.

“I was talking about my social battery depleting. And I was comparing it to the previous job that I held, which was a sales job that was also a client-facing, client-pleasing job,” Hasan Piker told us in an interview. “Twitter being the right-wing shithole that it is… people really pounced on it immediately.”

“When you see that, and you're angry at the world, you're angry for understandable reasons,” Hasan Piker said in our interview. “You have no autonomy. You're alienated for your labor. Your boss is a fucking piece of shit. And then, you see a random clip out of context of this guy who doesn't have any of those things. You're going to get mad.” 

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post Hasan Piker understands why you’re angry appeared first on The Daily Dot.

When the average person thinks of how much money content creators make, they often picture multi-millionaires — taking luxurious brand trips, living in sprawling mansions, with millions of adoring fans blowing up their comments section with love and sometimes hate.

This is part of the reason why so many kids are joining creator summer camps in droves. According to a 2023 Morning Consult poll, a whopping 57% of Gen Zers said they’d like to be an influencer if given a chance.

But this stereotype of fame and fortune is far the truth of how much money most content creators make.

Take this week, for example, when popular TikToker Reesa Teesa revealed she’s “not quitting her day job” anytime soon. Her viral, 50-part “Who TF Did I Marry?” series helped her gain over 3 million followers in a matter of two weeks. But in a recent video, she said she hasn’t been able to make much money from it due to TikTok’s limited monetization offerings.

It’s not surprising, considering many influencers reported making only “pennies” from hit videos on the platform.

"So for the people who think I’ve made 80-something-thousand, a hundred thousand, three hundred thousand — I am so sorry to disappoint you, but the actual number is nowhere near."

— Creator Reesa Teesa on TikTok.

So, how much do content creators really make? Sure, the richest YouTubers and TikTokers like MrBeast and Charli D’Amelio have made millions. They’ve expanded their businesses, becoming media titans. But the reality is millions of other people working professionally as creators make nowhere near that much.

In one Linktree survey from 2022, researchers found that only 12% of full-time creators earned more than $50,000 annually. In comparison, the average U.S. annual income for working adults in the last quarter of 2023 was $59,384, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor.

On top of this, creators operate in a highly unregulated industry. They have unpredictable incomes, making it difficult to plan for health insurance and paid time off. They struggle to get the platforms they rely on to listen to their feedback. Harassment and stalking are common threats.

Furthermore, the social pressures to always be online and turn yourself into a personal brand can take a toll on mental health. It’s the reason that even the most popular creators burn out.

Take influencer Ana Wolfermann, who said earlier this month she's stepping away from a full-time career as an influencer due to the pressure to share too much of herself. Or Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who spoke this week about how socially draining putting yourself online all day can be.

Arguably, most importantly, child labor laws are also virtually non-existent for social media work. This is despite the growing evidence that being on social media poses mental health risks for young children.

A chilling report this week from the New York Times, which analyzed 2.1 million Instagram posts and over 100 interviews of parents and children, discovered a horrifying ecosystem of young girls working as Instagram influencers. These girls often get stalked and harassed by predatory men, and arguably exploited by their Instamom managers.

Devastatingly, in most states, these children aren’t even entitled to sue their parents for their earnings from social media work.

According to the Times report, the most financially successful child influencers they studied earned upwards of $3,000 for a single sponsored post. Or, 99 cents to $19.99 for paywalled content. But financial gain was “elusive” for many others, who made little besides free or discounted clothes in exchange for posts.

In interviews, parents of these children said they often paid for styling and attendance at fashion events. They described these costs as “extracurricular activity” expenses “serving to create social media résumés that will follow into adulthood.” In other words, in most cases, all the work by these children was merely in the hope that there’s a big payday somewhere down the road, in the near future.

Currently, the U.S. Census Bureau doesn’t even have a categorization for people employed in social media work in one of its 22,607+ listed industries, even though Goldman Sachs estimates the creator economy to be a $250 billion industry.

The lack of government support and recognition is probably a reason why the desire to form a creator union is so high — according to a 2024 Kajabi report, 46% of top-earning creators surveyed said they would join a union in the future. On top of that, an additional 37% of creators surveyed said they would “consider” joining a union.

Our goal here at Passionfruit is to bring attention to these pressing issues in the creator landscape. And, to help creators take back some of that agency (and money) by arming them with tools and resources. With more and more internet culture journalists getting laid off every day, we think it’s more important than ever to cover the social media frontier. 

Happy creating! And thank you to all of you who have been reading.

- Grace Stanley, Deputy Editor

In Today's Newsletter:

• Freedom to Tweet or to Delete? Supreme Court Considers the Legality of Social Media Bans
• Taylor Lorenz on THAT Viral Interview with LibsofTiktok
• Turkey Bans Twitch in Anti-Gambling Crusade
• Roblox Paid Out $741 Million To Creators in 2023
• Creators Say Sora’s AI Videos Are a Little Too Real for Comfort

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post Passionfruit newsletter: How much money do creators really make? appeared first on The Daily Dot.

Banning content creators from social media platforms, aka deplatforming, is controversial. Creators who have been on the receiving end of social media bans rail against it. Others believe it is a vital method of keeping online conversations civil. Some acknowledge its successes and failures at the same time. Platforms have banned enormous names not just in the creator space but worldwide — including at least one former US president.

A new analysis looks not just at the impact of social media bans on a single platform but across the whole online ecosystem. It claims to finally have a definitive answer as to whether deplatforming someone impacts their ability to draw attention.

Manoel Horta Ribeiro, a Swiss Federal Institute of Technology social media researcher, and a team of researchers led the report. They carefully analyzed the aftermath of 165 deplatforming events affecting 101 creators worldwide. Platforms studied included Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram.

The researchers then examined the public’s interest in those creators by Google search and Wikipedia hits following a ban. They found that deplatforming a creator resulted in a 63% drop in Google searches for an individual and a 43% decrease in Wikipedia hits.

“We used all-encompassing signals that capture attention across the web,” Horta Ribeiro told Passionfruit. 

The analysis aimed to answer whether deplatformed individuals simply managed to pick up where they left off on an alternative platform. The answer was that they may migrate platforms, often to more fringe ones, including Gab and Rumble. But overall, attention drawn to them decreases across the whole web.

However, not all deplatforming events are equal. “The reason behind your deplatforming is correlated with the effect,” Horta Ribeiro said. Banned creators who spread fake news or disinformation saw a greater drop in attention than those who shared hate speech.

But many who find themselves, or people they like, on the wrong side of deplatforming often worry about unjust social media bans.

It’s the reason why TikTokers and Instagram influencers will often use words like “seggs” instead of “sex,” “unalive” instead of “dead,” or alternative words like “panini” to describe the pandemic. Creators call this language “algospeak." It is part of a game of whispers about what platforms allow and don't allow.

“Considering that deplatforming is often used against the wrong audiences, like sex workers just trying to make a living, or sex educators or activists, it's a huge power for platforms to have that they use sparingly. And even when they do use it, it’s concerning who it targets,” explains Carolina Are, a content moderation researcher at Northumbria University’s Centre for Digital Citizens.

Karl, the owner of a London-based kink club called Klub Verboten that uses Instagram to advertise its regular club nights, often uses code words to avoid deplatforming. Meta, the parent company of Instagram, banned his official Instagram account in June 2023 for no apparent reason.

Meta reversed the ban after journalists contacted the company. It admitted that it removed “a number of the accounts" in error.

“When it comes to deplatforming, I think it’s quite harsh,” Karl told Passionfruit. “You can eradicate someone on a platform in a morning.” ...

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post Social media bans may work, but for who? appeared first on The Daily Dot.

Last week, YouTube’s biggest star, Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson, faced criticism after saying he didn't consider himself rich. In a Feb. 15 Time Magazine profile, the 25-year-old said he makes around $700 million a year. But he doesn’t think of himself as wealthy. This is because he reinvests most of his revenue into his future business prospects. 

The Time profile also mentioned Donaldson can afford a personal chef and trainer. He also bought an entire neighborhood for his workers to live in. So, understandably, many people thought that logic was a bit… questionable.

However, all this debate might have distracted us from a more nebulous yet important detail in the Time profile about how the MrBeast business is run. A Business Insider article from earlier this week smartly pointed out that the Time profile also revealed that Donaldson doesn’t like to use “traditional” job titles for his employees.

So what does MrBeast prefer to call his employees? FOFs — friends of friends.

“Jimmy gets uncomfortable and gets angry when people use language like PA [production assistant] because it’s too industry,” one former MrBeast staffer told Time.

While this may seem like a small detail, it could have some dangerous consequences. Business Insider spoke with a variety of human resources and business operations experts, who explained these dangers in detail. In summary, a lack of professional boundaries and clearly defined roles can easily descend an organization into “chaos.” Without a proper HR system in place, accountability is hard to enforce.

In MrBeast's case, we’ve already seen this play out. Former employees told the New York Times in 2021 that MrBeast companies “have been rife with favoritism and bullying.” Employees revealed that many of those hired were MrBeast's friends, family, and acquaintances. Some found followings of their own after being in his videos.

Of course, at the beginning of a creator’s life cycle, this makes sense. Creators often start out by making videos with their closest friends. 

In this regard, the advent of social media provided upward mobility for a small group of creators and their loved ones. Early creators, like mommy bloggers or YouTube friend groups like Rhett & Link or Smosh, were a trailblazing class that eschewed the gatekeepers of days past.

In order to have a creative career, it was no longer necessary to break through the glass ceiling at major media corporations or agencies. You could just make some money hanging out with your buddies.

But things have changed as more money rolled into the ecosystem. The old-school narrative about the creator economy — that it’s an easy way to make money doing fun things with your friends — can at times distract us. It makes it harder to understand the impact of nepotism in the creator economy and the difficult conditions of social media work. Not to mention the growing financial power of social media titans. 

As Passionfruit contributor Lon Harris explains in an article this week, YouTube is now the top streaming giant — eclipsing both Netflix and Amazon Prime. The top “creators” on YouTube today are no longer mom-and-pop shops. They are media empires.

The top class of creators like MrBeast have eschewed traditional gatekeepers. But the creative people working underneath them, including their "friends," have also been gutted of the traditional benefits of working for a media company.

The 40-hour work week, health insurance, paid time off, promotions, steady career progression, child labor laws, discrimination protections, legal rights to organize — these protections are few and far between for most creators.

Things like harassment, nepotism, bias, and DEI training are only barely entering discourse at more mainstream companies in other fields. In the creator world, they’re basically nonexistent. It's clear nepotism in the creator economy is running rampant ...

– Grace Stanley, Deputy Editor

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post Passionfruit newsletter: Nepotism in the creator economy appeared first on The Daily Dot.

In August 2023, amid ‘Hot Labor Summer,’ the Creators Guild of America (CGA) made its debut with a lot of promise, attracting high-profile members like YouTuber Justine Ezarik and TikToker Mitchell Crawford. The CGA claimed to be “the” up-and-coming “nonprofit organization that protects and promotes the interests of digital creators.”

Despite its “guild” title that is reminiscent of labor unions like the Writers Guild, the CGA made clear it is not a union. It, therefore, won't collectively bargain against corporations (like tech platforms, talent agencies, production studios, etc.) on creators’ behalf.

Instead, it is a “service organization.” It aims to join together like-minded individuals (including people working with the aforementioned not-so-labor-friendly corporations, like Triller, Microsoft, and Disney) to provide several professional resources for those working in the creator economy.

Specifically, the organization aimed to eventually become the “IMDb” for digital accreditation. For context, in traditional Hollywood productions, rolling credits at the end of movies, TV shows, and video games list out the names of the cast and crew. These credits populate IMDb, an online database of notable entertainment productions.

Most people in the industry know these official credits are hard to come by. (Shoutout to all the production assistants in the audience!) Still, getting an IMDb credit is a stamp of approval. And a flex. Once the review team at IMDb approves your credit, you can show everyone online that you’re legitimate.

But these kinds of traditional credits don’t exist in the creator age. Much of the work of video editors, producers, artists, designers, and other creators goes completely uncredited. Brand campaigns, TikToks, YouTube videos, and live streams typically don't have credits. Not only that, but creators’ work often gets plagiarized or ripped off. 

Occasionally, a responsible creator or brand will list the folks who worked on a video in its description. But most of the time, they don’t. (When did you last see a cast and crew listing on a MrBeast video?)

The idea of a public ledger of creator-made work — verified by a team of independent fact-checkers — seems largely beneficial. So, this week, the CGA sent out an email letting members know that it is partnering with one of its sponsors, Mosaic, to try to offer this service. CGA members will now get free lifetime memberships to Mosaic.

Mosaic, currently in a beta testing phase, is a social media platform where users can acknowledge and “authenticate” projects. Users can create “blocks” that contain descriptions of creative work completed, dates finished, and the company or brand you did it for. Someone from that company (with an official company email address) must then approve that block and say you indeed did the work. 

“We utilize three layers of authentication,” Mosaic co-founder and CGA’s creative director Joshua Hoy told Passionfruit. “The first is a company email address. The second is human peer-proofing. The third is a root authentication with the company, which we have not surfaced yet in our beta.”

Mosaic opened its doors to the public on Feb. 12 for beta testing. The platform is currently free for anyone to use.

Eventually, however, it plans to add monthly fees. These fees will be added as it develops new features over the “coming weeks and months,” according to its FAQs. All accounts created before paid memberships launch will have a “free subscription for life.” (Although it’s unclear if this is just a free tier, and certain features will be paywalled off.)

It currently appears that the service only covers work with companies or brands — so an ad campaign, or social media work done by a larger media company. There are no steps currently available to authenticate independent art or social media projects, which is, you know… what a lot of creators are known for.

When I asked a Mosaic representative whether they plan to introduce authentication services for independent content productions, they declined to comment. But they hinted the company will be announcing new features soon.

Mosaic’s functionality is also quite limited for the time being. For example, I tried out its search bar and couldn’t find anything or anyone on it (including the accounts it advertises on its homepage.) When I reached out to a representative for Mosaic, they declined to comment on whether this was a site-wide issue or just an issue on my end. They didn’t share when search and discoverability features would become available.

So, is this the new IMDb for creators? Maybe eventually, but we have some lingering questions...

– Grace Stanley, Deputy Editor

In Today's Newsletter:

• The Dark World Of JoJo Siwa’s Girl Group, XOMG Pop!
• New EU Study Shows Influencers ‘Rarely’ Disclose Ads
• AI Chatbot Service ‘Agent Gold’ Accused of Copying Creators’ Image and Likeness
• I’m An OnlyFans Model Who Flourishes Around Valentine’s Day
• Political Commentator Vaush Leaks Disturbing Images
• We’re All Joe Biden’s Oomfies, Apparently

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post Passionfruit newsletter: Is this the new IMDb for creators? appeared first on The Daily Dot.

Back in the day, parents used to send their kids to camp to learn archery or canoeing. Nowadays, children are joining summer camps in droves to pursue their dreams of becoming professional creators. According to a 2023 Morning Consult poll, a whopping 57% of Gen Zers said they’d like to be an influencer if given the chance. Another 2019 Lego survey found that one-third of kids ages 8 to 12 listed “YouTuber” as their top career choice.

It’s no surprise that all these starry-eyed hopes are often exploited, for one, by the platforms and advertisers that use child star power to generate millions in profit. But also by the Instamoms and managers who know how lucrative raising a child star can be.

Just take a look at the rise of the family vlog genre over the past two decades. Some of the first creators to monetize their presence online were mommy bloggers. Since then, the practice of documenting family life has evolved to be a multi-million-dollar industry.

Yet, despite the participation and exploitation of children in the creator space, up until 2023, there were no laws protecting underage content creators in the United States. In 2023, Illinois passed the first-ever state-level law, SB 1782, to regulate the work of child social media stars. And now, one more state-level law might be coming to fruition.

On Jan. 30, the California State Senate passed Senate Bill 764, known as the “Child Content Creator Rights Act.” The bill, which is authored by Democratic Senator Steve Padilla, is intended to “ensure content creators under 18 earn fair financial benefits from the use of their image.” 

“Social media has become so widespread in our lives that at the touch of a button, you can be in someone’s life more intimately than ever before,” Senator Padilla told Passionfruit. “As a result, children are having intimate moments of childhood exposed for profit. They deserve fair compensation for their part in their family’s financial success.”

The bill is aimed at parents and guardians who are managing their children’s channels or featuring their children in their content, rather than young teenage entrepreneurs who make money doing their own content. Specifically, the bill requires any adult creator that features minors in 30% or more of their content (over a 30-day period) to set aside a “proportionate percentage of their earnings” into a trust — with the caveat that the earnings from videos that include the children exceed $15,000 annually.

If content with kids generates less than $15,000, the creators don’t have to set aside a fund. Arguably, that’s a bit of a high threshold, but the limit is likely intended to set a high standard for liability and ensure the average Grandpa Joe who goes viral doesn’t get sued. 

The children will then receive access to the trust once they reach adulthood, and they could sue the creator who featured them if a proper trust was not formed for them.

The bill passed the Senate Floor 34 to 0, and now moves to the California Assembly for final approval. The Assembly will review the bill sometime this year, and if it gets passed, it will go to California Governor Gavin Newsom to sign into law. If that happens, it will likely go into effect in January 2025. The bill has moved quickly, with bipartisan support and without much public opposition, so it’s got a fair shot to get approved.

That said, the bill would not require social media companies who pay creators to take any responsibility for enforcing the bill or splitting revenue share earnings across multiple parties. Instead, responsibility would fall on a child’s parents or guardians. However, Senator Padilla has said he is open to the idea of platforms eventually having a greater responsibility in enforcing these laws. “It’s an area to be discussed and explored,” he told Bloomberg.

The legislation is similar to the Coogan Laws, a set of state-level financial protections established in the 1930s in the entertainment industry for child actors, musicians, dancers, and other performance artists. Versions of the Coogan Law currently exist in New York, Illinois, Kansas, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.

There are minor differences in state-level requirements, but all require parents and entertainment moguls to deposit a percentage of child performers’ earnings into a trust — 15% in California. The California Coogan Law also makes clear that 100% of children’s earnings belong to the child, not the child’s parent or guardian. Enforcing how the remaining 85% of the salary is actually used is more nebulous, and parents often skirt this by taking a “manager” fee.

Still, as past cases have shown, some level of financial protection is better than nothing. The Coogan Law gets its name from child actor Jackie Coogan. From age nine onwards, Coogan performed in leading roles for dozens of films, reportedly earning more than $4 million before he turned 18. However, at age 21, he realized his family had squandered his wealth on lavish lifestyles, leaving him with less than $2000.

Eventually, Coogan sued his parents and received $126,000. His lawsuit led to the passing of the Coogan Law in California, with some other states following suit.

The current Coogan Laws, however, are only adopted in a handful of states. In addition, they only cover child performers who work under contract — in an employee-employer relationship. In the age of social media, so much profit is generated from content produced in informal settings. Often, content is not monetized through formal contracts but through revenue-sharing programs on social media.

Unfortunately for the kids involved in this kind of content, it’s taken its toll, and many of the children of family vloggers have spoken out to outlets like the Washington Post about the financial abuse they’ve suffered at the hands of their parents (some of whom kept all the money for themselves). But under the law, these vlogging parents are not considered the children’s employers.

Senator Padilla’s bill recent bill aims to skirt amending the complicated employee-employer distinction in the Coogan Laws by proposing a completely separate bill unrelated to formally contracted work. Last month, another California bill was introduced on Jan. 22 by Republican Assemblyman Juan Alanis that aims to add children working in paid social media content to the existing Coogan Law.

But even with the Coogan Law, legislation protecting child entertainers has been limited. Seventeen states in the U.S. do not have any legislation at all protecting child entertainers. States like California and New York have more thorough regulations in place regarding hours worked and school time, while others like Mississippi have none at all. 24 states have some protections but do not require children who work in entertainment to have work permits. The government has largely left the enforcement of child entertainment working conditions to unions like SAG-AFTRA.

Child workers in the U.S. are protected under the Fair Labor Standards Act, passed in 1938. But the law’s scope is quite limited. It mostly focuses on reducing harm from child labor, specifically by restricting working hours for certain ages and taking children out of physically dangerous or taxing jobs that might interfere with their education. 

Congress decided to exempt child performers from this federal legislation, saying creative performance is not “coercive,” according to a 2022 Missouri Law Review article (the same state that wants kids to be able to work in coal mines again, mind you). Instead, entertainment work was viewed “as a way for children to grow their talents.” This exemption is called “The Shirley Temple Act” because it was drafted during a time when child actress Shirley Temple was at the height of her career.

But it’s important to remember that labor is labor. Even if it is entertaining, educational, or creative, if someone’s making money off what you make, it’s a job. With all the latest discourse surrounding YouTuber burnout, some of the dangers of the content creation profession are becoming more well-known. Rigorous hours, harassment and stalking, and the constant pressure to contentify your self, identity, and everyday life can be draining and psychologically taxing. 

While we know these dangers, there are countless documented benefits to using social media as a tool of free speech, expression, creativity, and socialization. At the end of the day, it’s not only okay for kids to learn about social media, it’s healthy to allow them to participate responsibly. In fact, it’s for the best that we discuss the pros and cons of the career in a more realistic, educational way.

There’s a decision to be made here: Who is responsible for making sure kids aren’t being exploited? Is it their parents, who the latest laws are clearly aimed at… and thus aren’t exactly the people you’d want in charge of making sure the kids aren’t being taken advantage of?

Or is it the platforms, which have massive amounts of content to moderate and don’t have an incentive to crack down on their highest earners? Or is it the federal or local government, run by members of Congress who have openly stated they are pursuing internet regulations like the Kids Online Safety Act for the purposes of targeting LGBTQ+ youth and dismantling access to healthcare information? 

In this month’s Big Tech congressional hearing, lawmakers demonstrated they are still trying to wrap their dinosaur brains around whether kids should be allowed on social media; let alone what their labor classification is. It’s just another sign of how far behind the legislature is in adapting laws to apply to the internet. 

By and large, lawmakers don’t want to stop kids from pursuing careers in entertainment. They just want to make sure financial abuse doesn’t occur. Padilla, for example, has stressed that the recent bill in the California Senate primarily aims to protect children from financial exploitation by adults, not from the profession itself.

“We want to encourage young entrepreneurs for sure,” he told the Washington Post in December, “but we don’t want to enable exploitation. And I think there probably is a conversation to be had about at some point and at what scale, and in what means and methods, and are they driving that themselves.”

Passing these laws doesn’t mean kids can’t be creative, go on the internet and learn things, or even participate in some forms of work. But it’s important to recognize that when profits start rolling in, parents are often the ones holding the key to their children’s accounts.

There’s at least one thing that we can all agree on. If a kid is making other people money, they at least deserve to own some of it.

– Grace Stanley, Deputy Editor

In Today's Newsletter

• What’s Going on With Family Vlogger Austin McBroom?
• TikTok Called Universal Music Group’s Bluff
• Spotify Ends Its Top Two Exclusive Podcast Contracts With Creators
• Meta Requires AI Watermarks As Election Season Looms
• TikTok’s Chaotic Search Recommendations Are Hurting Creators

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post Passionfruit newsletter: The creator economy’s child labor problem appeared first on The Daily Dot.

Yesterday, I was scrolling Threads (yes, it’s still around), and I found this quote that I think captures everything wrong with our work culture in the U.S. (shared by journalist Taylor Lorenz). Your classic creator-economy-hustle-culture-bro type writes it:

“I’m sure this will piss off certain people, but: You don’t ‘need’ a weekend. The concept is barely 100 years old. It’s a modern invention. What you really need is work you don’t need a weekend from. You’d be amazed how much faster you get to your goals when you don’t go backwards 104 days per year. Contrary to what the mediocre masses will tell you — weekends can also be for work.”

It’s undeniable that the so-called “creator economy” uniquely suffers from this hustle culture mentality. I won’t name names, but many creators brag about working 14-16 hour days and not taking vacations. It’s a weird badge of honor to prove their dedication to “making it” in a competitive field. Even when they do “make it,” for some reason, many wealthy creators choose not to rest — whether it be a result of poor planning or an addiction to the internet/work (Remember when millionaire MrBeast said he was “dying mentally” because he had been filming every single day and hadn’t taken a break for eight months?)...

– Grace Stanley, Newsletter and Features Editor

In Today's Newsletter

• Artists and V-Tubers Left Disappointed After Twitch’s Recent NSFW Rule Reversal
• Senator Elizabeth Warren Gets Candid With Meta Over Censorship of Palestinian Content Creators
• The Best Podcast Setup Ideas For Getting Started

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post Passionfruit newsletter: Kill the hustle-bro in your head appeared first on The Daily Dot.

Issue #173 | Sept. 28, 2023

This weekend, I was scheduled to moderate an LGBTQ+ panel in Baltimore at the go-to convention for creators, VidCon. I was so excited. The panelists were some of my favorite creators — iconic video essayist ContraPoints, queer TikTok icon Cristian Dennis, our club-kid bimbo representative Griffin Maxwell Brooks, and the wonderfully talented musician MegaGoneFree. I picked out a cute outfit, came up with questions, booked my hotel, and was looking forward to a scenic Amtrak ride to the venue. 

And then, on Monday… my partner tested positive for COVID. Two days later, I had a terrible fever, a cough, a blistered mouth, and a sore throat. I woke up in the middle of the night, and it felt like my nose and mouth had been sprayed with mace — which apparently is a lesser-known symptom of the virus. Making matters worse, several people on our team also simultaneously happened to get COVID, which meant we were stretched thin.

I was very anxious last week. And if I — a person with the privilege of getting through COVID without hospitalization while having PTO, health insurance, and a steady income — felt heat and anxiety to keep the content machine churning while sick, I can only imagine what independent creators feel when they face even more dire circumstances.

From the stories I’ve heard, many creators in the U.S. don’t have much of a safety net available to get them through tough times. Last month, YouTubers Robert Mantano and Vanessa Fitzsimmons of the Late to the Party reaction channel spoke on Passionfruit’s podcast about how challenging it’s been for them this year. After Robert suffered a hospitalization, they went through a month of not being able to make new videos and generate income from their YouTube channel.

Thankfully, the Reactors were able to rely on their community’s donations on GoFundMe to help pay for their medical bills and supplement their income. But still, the experience was shocking for them, and they said they’re walking away from the situation with a new dedication to take it easy, be mindful of their health, and prepare to take breaks for emergencies.

It goes to show that even popular creators with large communities suffer from the difficulties of balancing work and life during hard times. Last week, the podcasters behind Chapo Trap House also announced that one of their members suffered a sudden and severe medical emergency and is currently hospitalized. It’s a devastating story to hear. 

It was inspiring, though, to watch how their community turned out to support them. The other members of the podcast are returning to the show today with hopeful spirits, noting that Matt would want the show to go on.

People love to create. We want to build communities, make fun things. And artists, even when they are suffering the most, want to use work to carve some kind of meaning out of their experiences.

Yet, for most of us, what we really need is rest. And our current economic system really doesn’t reward that. There’s a false sense of urgency that plagues the creator economy, and it’s one that infects every industry — CEOs, executives, and middle managers are expected to deal with every issue that pops up, no matter the time or circumstance they happen to personally be in. 

Will anybody die if we don’t respond to this email or join this meeting today? Will our entire business collapse? Usually, the answer is no. Yet our bodies trained to anticipate every tiny issue as a catastrophe. We’re constantly in a state of fight or flight, thinking every issue is urgent. 

Rest, which should be just something that comes naturally, becomes almost a political act of self-preservation and survival in this system. Rebellious trends of radical rest, quiet quitting, and “lazy girl jobs” are more prominent than ever before. And most importantly, each generation pushes the needle further and becomes more willing to advocate for taking sick days when you need it. 

For me, I’m really glad I was able to take last week off. Depression, anxiety, worry, perceived stress, and loneliness are associated with a higher risk of COVID hospitalization and long COVID. And despite having the privilege to take a break, under this creator economy work culture, I was still nervous. I’m sure that anxiety had somewhat of a physical toll on my recovery. 

Even now, despite writing this, I’m still recovering from COVID. But please… let’s all take a note from Robert of Late to the Party. Let’s help each other, and lean on each other for support. Work hard, play hard, rest hard. Never apologize for doing what we have to do to protect our bodies.

– Grace Stanley, Newsletter and Features Editor

In Today's Newsletter

• Activision Blizzard Might Have Killed the Overwatch League
• Chargeback Prevention Strategies for Sex Workers: Minimizing Risk and Protecting Income
• Lighting For YouTube: How to Get Started From Gear to Angles

Sign up to receive the Daily Dot’s Internet Insider newsletter for urgent news from the frontline of online.

The post Passionfruit newsletter: The creator economy’s COVID problem appeared first on The Daily Dot.