Shocking Revelations From Internal Documents

Everything we feared about TikTok was true – and then some. What did they know and when did it know it? Apparently, everything and forever. Plus lies, damn lies and statistics, a treasure trove of new research, and Hollywood’s view of the top 50 creators. And read to the end for a fandom so strong that a new book pushed a 12 year-old TV series into streaming’s top 10.

TIKTOK KNEW IT WAS HARMING USERS

Due to a redacting error, more than 30 pages of court sealed documents leaked last week. They show a cavalier and uncaring TikTok, focused on addicting, not protecting kids and indeed all users. Double Ts own research found that “compulsive usage correlates with a slew of negative mental health effects like loss of analytical skills, memory formation, contextual thinking, conversational depth, empathy, and increased anxiety.” Yet they kept on releasing features designed to addict users young and old. We also now know just how many videos it takes to addict you: 260. It takes as few as 35 minutes to turn a normal person into a TikTok addict. TikTok also found that “compulsive usage also interferes with essential personal responsibilities like sufficient sleep, work/school responsibilities, and connecting with loved ones.” Yet they kept on developing new and more powerful features to mint addicts and compel unhealthy behavior. They even tweaked their algorithm to promote attractive creators and demote those deemed less than ideal. There’s so much more awful in the docs. Just 97 days until a reckoning, according to my TikTok Countdown Clock.

50 MOST INFLUENTIAL CREATORS?

Imagine for a moment your editor comes to you and says, “Here’s your next project – come up with the 50 most influential creators for next week”. After throwing up in your mouth, you produce this. It’s not a bad list, but more than half of the short profiles focus on traditional media crossovers. It’s a sad commentary on how Hollywood still thinks you don’t matter unless you’ve “graduated” to old media. Aside, I’m really looking forward to interviewing #38 Prajakta Koli and seeing some of the others at the One Billion Follower Summit in Dubai in January!

IS THE INFLUENCER MIDDLE CLASS IN TROUBLE?

We talked about Linqia’s new research last week, but it has sparked a debate over whether brands are moving from smaller and midsize creators back to the biggest creators. Don’t miss the comment tree in that post for more context. That certainly wasn’t the message at CreatorIQ Connect last week, but it’s a worrying trend. My take? Different types of creators operate at different parts of the marketing funnel. Top creators are great for awareness, but smaller creators focused on valuable niches can deliver better conversion. Would be nice to see more research here though beyond just talking to 200 top marketers.

• Related: It’s harder to be a creator in 2024 – diversification is key.
• Related: New research from CreatorIQ finds that Mid-tier and Established Creators Offer the Most ROI (see research section below for details, links and more.)

BEWARE DATA OUT OF CONTEXT

This fascinating chart from EMARKETER seems to show that Snapchat leads when it comes to GenZ usage. But it’s really just their share of users, not a share of total GenZ (or any other demographic) reached. And because it’s “Select Platforms”, there are likely other platforms as or more valuable than Snap from a user share POV if you are trying to reach GenZ. For example, if I launched Jim-A-Gram, and had just one user – my 25-year-old son – I would top the charts at 100% share of GenZ. Even if my wife joined up, I’d come in number two at 50%. It’s also unclear whether the data is more than a year old, or just a few months old. The data is interesting when you analyze the relative age of users but raises other questions. For example, it seems like lots of GenA and oldsters watch Disney+ and YouTube, but how did they track that? Plus, we know from PreciseTV research that a lot of pre-teens watch TikTok, but they aren’t represented at all. Consider this a warning – charts out of context with select cuts can be misleading. Or insightful. But it’s often unclear which is which.

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QUIBIS

YOUTUBE

• Exposing Kids: DOJ and the Navy looking into YouTube and Google’s lapses collecting data and placing ads.
• YouTube Mom Settles: Creator Piper Rockelle’s mom will pay $1.85M to 11 teen creators to settle abuse charges.
• Search Changes: YouTube rolling out hot search links into comments.
• NoSkip: YouTube tweaks the “Skip Ad” button, broadly annoying its users.

META

• AI Fail: Meta posts AI-generated Northern Lights photos on Threads. The backlash was predictable.
• Mindless AI: Top Meta AI researcher says AI is dumber than a doodle (dog emoji).
• DM Tips: Instagram wants you to up your DM game by highlighting features you might have missed.
• Cut Off: Threads auto-moderation cuts off Matt Navarra – as thousands of others complain about the ham-handed AI at Threads and Instagram. We predicted this would happen months ago, btw.

TIKTOK

• Big Layoffs: TikTok replaces hundreds of its content moderators with AI. What could possibly go wrong?
• AI Ad Ops: New Smart+ tool uses AI to automate creation, purchasing and placement of performance ads. Will compete with Advantage+ from Meta and Google’s Performance Max.
• Shopping Summit: TikTok throws a live-shopping summit at its LA offices, tries to inject some Asian lessons into the US shop economy.
• AI Wearables: Bytedance launches AI-infused earbuds in China for $170 USD.

OTHER CREATOR ECONOMY

• Whaling With Doug the Pug: 300 new creators – including the iconic barker – join Whalar Group via its acquisition of management firm Sixteenth (note Whalar sponsors this newsletter).
• Creator U: Nice piece from Lia Haberman highlighting some of the universities teaching the creator economy.
• K-Pop Expansion: BTS founder bringing his formula to the US. Will it work?
• Ironmouse Speaks: After breaking Twitch’s sub record, VTuber shares her thoughts and dispels myths about who she is (and isn’t).
• Cover Up: VTubers now must follow the same attire policy as other streamers on Twitch.
• Rewarding Stupidity: Unfortunately, toxic creator Jack Doherty won’t suffer from crashing his car while livestreaming.
• LOST iN Adds Creators: New travel startup lays out its creator partnership vision with announcement of first creators.
• Map Ads! Snap ads Promoted Places” to maps and sponsored snaps too!
• Wish Book 2.0: LTK leans into holiday gift guides with new features for creators.
• Creator Gamification: Really enjoyed moderating a session at CreatorIQ Connect last week. Learned about two new gamification platforms and spent $400 on a panelist’s product. Expensive but hopefully worthwhile!
• Summit Envy: Seems like everyone wants their own Creator Summit now. I blame the White House.
• Make It Up with Volume? Why streaming video is a bad business and YouTube challengers are unlikely to emerge.

CREATOR TECH – AI, WEB3, VR, MORE

• Ignore the hype: Apple researchers conclude LLMs can’t reason – it’s all just sophisticated pattern matching. Full academic paper here. However, when I tried some of the tests on OpenAI’s 01-preview model (with advanced reasoning), they worked.
• Fox in the Henhouse: Open AI develops new benchmark to test how well AI works at solving problems. Benchmarks should be independently produced, not developed by those being tested.
• Credentials From Adobe: Adobe rolls out new way for creators to watermark their work.
• Journalists Feed AI: Storied newspaper publisher Hearst to feed OpenAI local news and lifestyle content.
• Defacing Our Library: The Internet Archive has been hacked – they are working to fix it and strengthen protections, and all data is safe (phew).

RESEARCH

• Creator Marketing 2025: CreatorIQ’s new research finds that nearly all companies now find that creator content ROI exceeds traditional digital, and that creator content dramatically outpaces “owned content” at the biggest companies. Also, measurement has surpassed budget and staffing as the top roadblock to success.
• Creator Economy Size: New research values the global creator economy at $128B last year, growing to $528B in 2030. No idea how they got there, as the research costs over $3k to access. If you buy it, give me a peek!
• TikTok Follower Stats: Pew found that adults are far more likely to follow entertainment and pop accounts on TikTok than news and information creators.
• Teens Today: Piper Sandler released its semi-annual survey of US teens. Nike and ELF remain on top, Roblox grows up and Stanley Cup heads out. Request a full copy of the survey here.

INSIDE THE GRAVITY FALLS FANDOM

How do you revive a fandom 8 years after the last episode aired? Some simply reintroduce old IP to new audiences, but for Alex Hirsh, the creator of the tv show Gravity Falls (2012-2016) the answer looked a little different. In September, Hirsh published The Book of Bill, an in-universe story featuring the show’s main antagonist, Bill Cipher. Eight years after Gravity Falls ended, the fandom is back and bigger than ever. The TV show relied heavily on ciphers and clues, creating a game for its audiences to solve alongside the characters. The Book of Bill did the same – with Hirsh paying for extra marketing for the book, and a website leading to more mysteries. This is how you keep a fandom engaged – more content, and more community activation schemes. The book release boosted Gravity Falls reruns into Disney+'s top ten list for most of the past year. The fandom and the “ships” have also topped Tumblr’s weekly statistics since July. In addition to unravelling mysteries, nostalgia and new plot-lines have led to an explosion of edits, theories, fan comics and more.

  – Morgan Ward

Go Deeper

• Read Alex Hirsch’s interview with Polygon, where he talks about the book and why he decided to return to Bill Cipher.
• Andy Ottone’s piece in The Observer about what it means to return to Gravity Falls after almost a decade.
• Explore the Gravity Falls Tumblr, TikTok, and Reddit pages where fans continue to theorize, make art, and more.
• Follow creator Alex Hirsh on X where he continues to post information about the book, the show, and the animation industry in general.

100% written by me – no human or AI ghostwriters were involved in the production (except for the cover art!).

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I've built and sold multiple creator economy startups to top media companies - including Discovery and Paramount.

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Let me know what you think – email me at jim@louderback.com. Thanks for reading and see you around the internet.