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Lawmakers Call YouTube Kids ‘Wasteland of Vapid, Consumerist Content’

Andrew Orr ·

The US sub-committee on economic and consumer policy sent a letter [PDF] to YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki about its app for kids, saying it’s full of “inappropriate… highly commercial content”.

According to the letter, some videos appeared to be “smuggling in hidden marketing and advertising with product placements by children’s influencers”.

The letter claimed that one research team, which it did not name, found only about 4% of videos had a high educational value. Much of the rest was low quality content such as toy unboxing and videos of people playing video games.

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iPhone 12 Holds Its Value Better Than Rival Samsung Galaxy S21

Charlotte Henry ·

Smartphones in the ‌iPhone 12‌ range have lost value by between 18.1 to 33.7 percent since they launched in October last year, according to data from SellCell (spotted by Macrumors). Meanwhile, devices in the Samsung Galaxy S21 series, which only launched in January 2021, have already seen a 44.8 and 57.1 percent drop in value.

We can say with some confidence that the reason the iPhone 12 series has held its value better than the Samsung Galaxy S21 series, is because the demand is still there even after that initial sale. Apple owners looking to upgrade their device will, in the majority, stick to the Apple brand. In that sense, demand is high for pre-owned iPhone 12 handsets, meaning that they keep their value as consumers are happy to pay a premium, even for a refurbished or pre-owned iPhone 12. On the other side, not only do Samsung owners show less loyalty to the brand, but 26% of them are happy to consider jumping ship to an Apple device once they’re done with their Android handset. This has two effects. It decreases demand for Samsung’s handsets, driving the value down, while at the same time increasing Apple demand even further, slowing the rate of iPhone 12 value shrinkage.

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No, They're Aren't Really Two Million Shows on Apple Podcasts

Charlotte Henry ·

Apple Podcasts recently hit a milestone – having two million podcasts available to listeners. However, as Amplifi Media explained, all is not quite as it seemed, with many not getting past show number one.

Out of the two million titles reflected in Apple Podcasts (and similar results from Podcast Index), a remarkable 26% have produced just a single episode. One and done. That suggests many people fired up their creative juices, especially during the pandemic, and stopped after creating one episode. Roughly 1/4th of all podcasts are out of business, or more likely, were never really in it. Sure, there might be some that only planned a single episode but for our x-ray, let’s drop the number of podcasts down by 26% – which means there are roughly 1.5 million (1.48m) podcasts with two or more episodes. That’s a big difference. Let’s go a bit further. Let’s use three or fewer episodes as a mark. That rockets the number up to an astonishing 44% of all podcasts… If a ‘real podcast’ is a series of at least four episodes, that effectively reduces the total of two million podcasts to 880,000.