Tag: pay

How 9-year-old YouTube millionaire Ryan Kaji is building a kids’ media empire

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In 2015, when Ryan Kaji was three years old, he asked his parents why he wasn’t on YouTube like the other kids he was watching. Ryan’s mom, Loann, and dad, Shion, created the channel Ryan ToysReview that same year, uploading videos of Ryan opening and playing with toys and conducting at-home science experiments. Initially, they thought YouTube would be just another hobby for Ryan, like swimming or gymnastics. At the very least, it was a fun way to keep their extended families in Vietnam and Japan up-to-date on Ryan’s life in Texas. But in less than a year, Ryan ToysReview, which they later renamed Ryan’s World , was one of YouTube’s top kids’ channels. [Photo: courtesy of Ryan’s World] “We saw a tipping point of the channel very early on,” says Shion, whose family’s surname is Guan—Kaji is their stage name. “We were very confused because we were uploading the videos as a hobby, and the production value wasn’t that great either. So at first my wife and I thought maybe somebody was hacking our channel.” Today, at just nine years old, Ryan is YouTube’s highest earner (child or otherwise) for three years running, according to Forbes , pulling in an estimated $29.5 million in revenue in 202o. Ryan’s World has more than 45 million subscribers across nine channels and has generated more than 62 billion lifetime views. “It’s exciting seeing people enjoying my content and what we make,” Ryan says. Children’s content is the most viewed on YouTube and has certainly made some very young people very rich. But the platform’s evolving policies around permissible content and what can be monetized has created something of an unstable environment for creators, especially for kid-centric channels such as Ryan’s World. In 2019, Google was fined $170 million because YouTube violated the FTC’s Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, which requires websites to have certain guidelines for collecting personal data from children under 13. That fine led to YouTube creating new privacy rules around videos targeted toward kids, including limiting advertising, a key revenue stream for creators. “It hit us tremendously,” Shion says. “More than half our revenue from YouTube decreased since the new regulation.” Keeping kids safe online is paramount, but critics of YouTube’s response felt it put creators on the hook for an issue the platform created in the first place. According to the complaint , YouTube touted itself as the premier destination for kids’ content but never bothered complying with COPPA. So when the FTC finally cracked down, YouTube’s efforts seemed more reactive and sweeping, impacting creators far more than a $170 million fine flicked at a company worth billions. Kidfluencer content on YouTube is also under the eye of watchdog organizations monitoring the disclosure of advertising products and services in videos aimed at kids. The group Truth in Advertising filed a complaint with the FTC against Ryan’s World in 2019 accusing the Kajis of not properly flagging branded videos Read More …

The five best arguments that Apple’s App Store is a monopoly

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Apple and Google testified in front of the Senate Judiciary’s Antitrust Subcommittee Wednesday, and it’s fair to say the committee members came with their A game and that Apple walked away the biggest loser. At issue are the strict rules Apple imposes on app developers for the privilege of being listed in the App Store, which is virtually the only way developers can access the huge worldwide market of iPhone users. Google may be somewhat less in the antitrust crosshairs because it allows Android users to side-load apps from other marketplaces and websites. But both Apple and Google require many developers to use their respective marketplaces’ own proprietary payment systems to sell their apps, and they charge the developers up to 30% to do so. Both Democrats and Republicans in the hearing seemed surprised at that high toll and wondered out loud whether it would be so high if the two main app stores faced more competition. The subcommittee members had clearly coordinated their efforts before the hearing and presented Apple with a wide-ranging, and nonoverlapping, set of informed and relevant questions. However, the hearing was especially fiery because some big-name app developers who have a beef with the app stores—Spotify, Tile, and Tinder’s parent, Match Group—were sitting at the witness table too. Some of the best arguments against Apple’s App Store policies came from them. Spotify’s App Store blues Case in point: Spotify’s lawyer Horacio Gutierrez pointed out that not only is his company required to use Apple’s payment system (and pay the “Apple tax”), but the music app is also prohibited from directing users of its free iOS app to online promotions offering three months of Spotify Premium for 99¢. Gutierrez called this a “gag order.” Spotify had the sympathy of Democrat Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust subcommittee, even before the hearing. “[Telling people] they can get a better deal [on an app] on a website, when the companies . . . on the app store are banned from doing that, that’s pretty outrageous,” Klobuchar told me on the phone Tuesday night. Spotify has a particularly interesting viewpoint because it competes directly with Apple’s own Music service, which naturally gets more visibility in the App Store. Klobuchar called this “self-preferencing.” Gutierrez said Apple had threatened retaliation against Spotify and in some cases carried it out. He claimed Apple told Spotify straight out that it would not promote the Spotify app and forced Spotify to wait for months for app-upgrade approvals. Read More …

The iPad Pro just got way more pro. Now it needs pro software

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Apple is fond of declaring that the iPad Pro isn’t a computer . But at its “Spring Loaded” event on Tuesday, it unveiled new 11- and 12.9-inch iPad Pros that are so well equipped they could do a darn good impression of one. The new models are built around exactly the same M1 chip that’s in Apple’s newest Macs . They’re available with up to 16 GB of RAM and 2 TB of storage, trouncing any previous iPad and matching a nicely appointed Mac Read More …

The Apple Card’s new feature tackles one of credit’s biggest problems

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At its Spring Loaded event held virtually on Tuesday, the very first thing Apple announced was a new Apple Card feature called Apple Card Family. Available in the U.S. in May, Apple Card Family allows two people to co-own an Apple Card credit card, merging their credit lines while building credit together equally. Apple Card Family also lets parents share an Apple Card with their children. This comes almost a month after the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS)  released  a report that cleared Apple and Goldman Sachs of gender-based discrimination. That followed an investigation initiated by online complaints shared shortly after the card’s initial launch in 2019. At the time, tech entrepreneur David Heinemeier Hansson tweeted that he had received a credit limit that was 20 times higher than what his wife Jamie was offered despite her higher credit score . The path to women’s credit independence started with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974. In its investigation, NYDFS found that gender was not a factor influencing Apple Card eligibility. Still, spouses’ credit scores, debt, income, missed payments, how they used their credit, and other credit history elements were considered. In the end, NYDFS concluded that none of the factors identified was an “unlawful basis” for a credit determination.   Despite this finding, there’s still a need for more transparency regarding the current credit score system. In Apple’s press release about Apple Pay Family, Jennifer Bailey, the company’s VP of Apple Pay, acknowledged that issue saying, “we designed Apple Card Family because we saw an opportunity to reinvent how spouses, partners, and the people you trust most share credit cards and build credit together. There’s been a lack of transparency and consumer understanding in the way credit scores are calculated when there are two users of the same credit card since the primary account holder receives the benefit of building a strong credit history while the other does not.” The path to women’s credit independence started with the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974, which put an end to lenders requiring women to have male cosigners on loans. Before then, women might have also been required to make larger down payments on homes than men with similar credit profiles. [Photo: Apple] While these practices became illegal, other factors also impacted women’s ability to access credit. Income is usually a primary qualifier for creditors, and considering the income gap between women and men, it is easy to see how that would negatively impact women’s credit. According to Payscale, as of March 2021, women earned 82¢ for every dollar a man makes. That pay gap does not affect credit alone. It also impacts the ability to repay debt such as student loans, which in return negatively impacts credit. Read More …

Biden’s infrastructure plan could transform broadband in the U.S.

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People in Washington have been trying to fix the country’s digital divide for years. But the COVID-19 pandemic is pushing the stars into alignment for real action on broadband access and affordability in 2021. COVID-19 kept tens of millions of office workers and schoolchildren at home, with a broadband line becoming their primary connection to the outside world. A Pew study in March found that 31% of Americans are “almost constantly online.” Meanwhile, 77 million Americans lack adequate internet service at home, says public interest group Free Press, and just two-thirds of people in the nation’s bottom income bracket can access the internet from home. Congress has already included $3.2 billion in emergency funding for broadband access in the stimulus bill this year. But the big show for broadband stimulus will come in the bill that emerges from President Biden’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan–the American Jobs Plan . The plan proposes to fund all kinds of infrastructure, among them $174 billion for electric vehicles, $50 billion for semiconductor manufacturing and research, and $100 billion to build out broadband networks. Read More …