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A YouTube executive needed only 27 minutes to make the case that the company is taking over all aspects of how people create and consume video online. That was the length of a recent talk by Fede Goldenberg, YouTube’s head of TV and film partnerships, at the StreamTV conference in Denver last month. Goldenberg’s presentation had an upbeat title, “YouTube is the new TV.” But the talk carried an unmistakable undertone: Resistance is futile. I happened to be at that conference to moderate a couple of panels, and I attended a bunch of other discussions and presentations while there, but Goldenberg’s talk is the one I’m still thinking about. While most of the conference was about streamers talking shop with one another, YouTube was there to argue that it would eventually subsume them. In some ways, it already has. The data Goldenberg came armed with data to underscore YouTubes dominance in the TV space. His most convincing talking point: Nielsen reports that YouTube now accounts for 12.4% of daily TV watch time in the U.S., up from 8.6% at the start of 2024. It surpassed Netflixnow a distant second at 7.5%more than two years ago. In addition: Some 2 billion people log into YouTube at least once per month and collectively watch more than 2 billion hours of video per day. Roughly 1 billion of those hours are watched on TVs every day. YouTube reaches 92% of 18- to 34-year-olds in the U.S. YouTube’s 33% of podcast listening in the U.S. now tops Spotify (27%) and Apple Podcasts (15%) in the U.S., according to Edison Research. “This company is only 20 years old, and it’s been able to really radically change the landscape of media,” Goldenberg said onstage. Stages of acceptance YouTube’s ascent is now forcing media companies to reckon with how they’re using the service. While those companies started off treating YouTube as just a marketing channel with sample episodes and clips, lately they’ve been slicing and dicing their back catalogs into new kinds of long-form content. Warner Bros. Discovery has hour-long Friends complications and the entire run of spin-off Joey. National Geographic has linear rerun streams and multi-hour marathon videos. NBCUniversal has even spun up entirely new brands such as Comedy Bites and Family Flicks to showcase its back catalog. “This is where we think the majority of sophisticated media companies operate today,” Goldenberg said. He believes that before long, those companies will start producing new content for YouTube specifically. In January, Nickelodeon debuted a new YouTube show for preschoolers called Kid Cowboy, bypassing Paramount’s own cable channels and streaming service. National Geographic has been creating original content for YouTube as well. And in Brazil, Endemol Shine Brasil produced a spin-off of MasterChef featuring top food influencers from the country. “My prediction is that we’re going to continue to see more and more original content made for YouTube first, and then it could be repurposed to TV,” Goldenberg told the audience. Creator cred While YouTube works on winning over major media companies, it’s also cultivating an army of smaller creators to replace them. Dhar Mann, a top creator of videos with a feel-good angle, now runs production on a 100,000-square-foot campus in Burbank. Alan Chikin Chow, who creates the high school anthology series Alan’s Universe, opened a 10,000-square-foot studio space in Los Angeles last year. Sports and comedy group Dude Perfect raised more than $100 million from Highmount Capital, a private investment firm, last year. Goldenberg delighted in pointing out a recent video on the creator channel Colin and Samir, in which Dude Perfect illustrated its business in a way that resembled the famous Disney flywheel from the 1950s. In that model, content feeds into other businesses such as merchandising, touring, and tourist destinations, which in turn feeds back into creating new content. “It’s no exaggeration to call these guys the new Hollywood,” Goldenberg said. YouTube also wants its most popular creators to get the same credibility as Hollywood producers. It’s lobbying for a few creators in particularSean Evans of Hot Ones; Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal, aka Rhett & Link, of Good Mythical Morning; and Michelle Khare of Challenge Acceptedto earn Emmy nominations. “This will be another line in the sand, when creators start to get nominated, and start to get accolades, just like traditional TV does,” Goldenberg said. Flaws in the machine Sitting through this presentation, I found myself simultaneously drinking the Kool-Aid and fearing the ingredient list. After all, paid streaming services are getting worse in pretty much every measurable way. Over time, they’ve removed content, restricted password sharing, made you pay more for better video quality, and started showing more ads than they originally promised. Even just figuring out what to watch is an ordeal, thanks to selfish business decisions and petty platform politics that get in the way of finding your content. All those annoyances work in YouTube’s favor. In an increasingly fragmented and frictional media landscape, here’s a free service that puts a growing body of content in one place, both from major media companies and new creators. While streaming catalogs are contracting, YouTube is adding 500 hours of content every minute. But of course, Goldenberg didn’t touch on the uglier side of that growth, in which creators must literally contort themselves to please YouTube’s algorithm and risk burning out in the process. And there was no mention of enshittification for viewers, who’ve been asked to tolerate more annoying ads and higher prices to avoid them. A world in which YouTube is the new TV, then, is one in which viewers and creators have less control than ever. “To me, the big issue with YouTube is that it’s a monopoly,” TVRev lead analyst Alan Wolk tells me. “If you somehow run afoul of them, you have no option. You’re out. They get to set all the rules.” YouTube’s TV takeover is still nowhere near complete. It has struggled for years to find a place for premium programming on its platform, and it’s unlikely that the biggest subscription-based streamersNetflix, Disney, Amazonwill ever embrace YouTube wholeheartedly. Even within Google, YouTube must contend with other fiefdoms with their own visions for the future of television. (There are signs YouTube may be winning, though; The Information recently reported that Google cut the budget for its Google TV streaming platform to focus more on YouTube.) Wolk says that while YouTube may envision itself as the Holy Roman Empire, a powerful force that wants to unify the television world, it might wind up being more like Constantinople, the lesser attempt that followed after Rome’s fall. “It’s on some level the next iteration of television,” he says, “but it’ll never have the same impact.”
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E-Commerce
Calls to boycott Etsy are growing since Alligator Alcatraz merch popped up on its marketplace. The term refers to the Trump administration’s new migrant detention facility in the Florida Everglades. The detention facility, built from Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers and temporary shelters at the site of a training airport in Miami-Dade County, is in the middle of a natural alligator habitat. It has drawn condemnation from tribal, environmental, and civil rights groups. The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida called the facility part of a broader strategy to expand the abusive mass detention machine, and in turn, criminalize and disappear members of our communities.” It has not drawn condemnation, though, from Etsy, which claims to prohibit “content which directly or indirectly contains violent or degrading commentary” against people over traits like their race, religion, gender, or immigration status. The availability of “Alligator Alcatraz” merchandise on the site has inspired calls for boycotts on social media that have received thousands of reactions. Etsy did not respond to a request for comment. [Screenshot: Etsy] Etsy’s terms of service around discrimination and hateful content are broad, with the term indirectly allowing for enforcement against veiled, coded, and subtle violations. Considering the derisive and violent nature of how President Trump and his supporters have spoken about the facility, “Alligator Alcatraz” seems to fall under the policy’s generous umbrella. When Trump toured the detention facility last week, he joked that detainees would learn “how to run away from an alligator if they escape prison.” Much of Etsy’s “Alligator Alcatraz” merch has the look of AI-generated slop, which is at odds with the company’s recent push to highlight human-made products. And it’s not clear how much of an audience there is for this stuff. A 53% majority of U.S. adults disapprove of Trump’s handling of immigration, according to a Yahoo/YouGov poll, and Etsy pages for “Alligator Alcatraz” products don’t suggest robust sales, with low views and few notes indicating products had been purchased or put into carts. There’s also competition, with official Florida Republican Party “Alligator Alcatraz” merch and more options on Amazon. It’s clear Etsy understands the art of political subtly when it comes to the left- and right-leaning political categories it organizes for T-shirts with quiet, hidden political messages. For merch celebrating Trump’s new detention facility, though, that understanding suddenly seems lost.
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E-Commerce
In the age of climate change, many people are trying to consume more mindfully. When it comes to fashion, this often means buying fewer clothes and wearing them longer. But that’s a hard principle to follow with children’s clothing. Kids grow out of garments quickly; they also rip and stain clothes with abandon. It’s tempting to buy them cheap clothes that you won’t mind throwing out after a few wears. And it’s easy to do exactly that when fast fashion for kids is abundant, everywhere from Target to H&M. Now, a new platform wants to make it equally easy for parents and kids to shop secondhand clothing. Rebecca Bahmani [Photo: courtesy Prelove Me] Today, Prelove Me unveils a membership-based platform that allows you to buy and sell used clothing exclusively for kids. And unlike other secondhand clothing websites like ThredUp and Poshmark, Prelove Me doesn’t transact in money but in credits. You get credits for sending in clothes, which you can then use to buy other products on the site. “In the age of fast fashion, it’s easy to think of clothes as disposable,” says Rebecca Bahmani, Prelove You’s founder. “We’re trying to push back against this by teaching them that their clothes have actual value, which they can use to buy other clothes.” The planet is drowning in clothing Some experts estimate that fashion brands produce upwards of 100 billion garments every year, for only eight billion humans. Producing these clothes consumes enormous quantities of raw materials like cotton and oil, and is responsible for up to 8.6% of the world’s global greenhouse gas footprint. There are now many companies like Circ and Repreve that are developing technology that will enable us to recycle old clothes into new ones, which is far less environmentally damaging than making new clothes from scratch. But until this kind of recycling is widespread, a more sustainable approach is buying used clothes. After all, there are already enough garments on the planet to clothe humanity for decades into the future. [Image: courtesy Prelove Me] With Prelove Me, Bahmani wanted to create a platform that would make it easier for families to access secondhand clothing for their kids. To shop the site, you must first become a member. There are three tiers of membership, ranging from $35 a month to $95 a month, that gives you access to between 30 and 75 credits every month. Clothes are priced based on their quality and brand. A Rockets of Awesome bomber jacket is 21 credits, a pair of Vans velcro sneakers is 31 credits. “A membership makes sense because families need to buy clothes for their kids on a regular basis,” she says. “Kids outgrow things quickly, and they have specific needs, like swimsuits for the summer.” Bahmani, who previously worked at a lace manufacturer called Klauber Brothers, Inc., bootstrapped the company. She spent years collecting the initial inventory by asking for donations to launch the site. But the company is also raising funds to allow it to scale, particularly when it comes to automating the logistics of receiving secondhand clothes, uploading them to the website, then sending them out to customers. ThredUp, a secondhand website that generated $260 million in revenue last year, has scaled thanks to its high-tech, highly automated warehouses. [Image: courtesy Prelove Me] To continue growing the platform’s inventory, members are invited to send in all the clothes that their kids have outgrown. They will get credits based on the quality of the garment. Clothes from designer brands and those in excellent or unworn condition will get more credits than those from mass market brands and clothes that show more wear and tear. But the website accepts clothes from all brands, including fast fashion labels like Shein. Bahmani point out that even clothes with a cheap price tag take a lot of resources to make, and it is just as important to keep them out of landfills. Bahmani wanted to make sure that families felt comfortable sending in clothes that are unwearable. Prelove will offer one credit for these clothes, and will send them to be upcycled at a company that produces housing insulation. “We’re trying to teach kids to dispose of clothes responsibly,” Bahmani says. “Upcycling is much better than just throwing them in a landfill. And in time, we’ll be looking at fabric-to-fabric recycling.” [Photo: courtesy Prelove Me] Teaching Kids Good Habits Prelove You’s website is designed to be fun, interactive, and simple enough for kids to use. The number of credits required to buy a product are clearly marked, and it’s easy to “favorite” products. And because it focuses exclusively on kid’s clothes, it is easier for kids to navigate. “Kids often want to be involved with choosing their own clothes,” she says. “We wanted to make the experience fun for them.” More broadly, however, her goal is to help instill more responsible shopping habits in kids. This website is supposed to make shopping pre-owned just as fun as shopping new. It’s also designed to give children a tangible sense of what a circular economy looks like, where clothes are kept in circulation as long as possible. There’s some evidence that young people are more willing to buy thrifted goods than previous generation: 83% of Gen Z is willing to shop pre-owned, and the global secondhand market has increased by more than a third in recent years. But at the same time, young people responsible for the explosion in ultra fast fashion brands like Shein and Temu. Many teens and twentysomethings now buy enormous quantities of clothesor “hauls”from cheap retailers and share them on social media. Bahmani believes that there is still time to shape the shopping habits of younger kids, so they grow up to be the kinds of people who understand the value of clothing and live more sustainably. “If they grow up being excited about shopping preowned, they’re likely to become adults who do the same,” she says.
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E-Commerce
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