Platform will ensure algorithms do not keep pushing similar content to young viewers, even though it does not breach guidelines YouTube is to stop recommending videos to teenagers that idealise specific fitness levels, body weights or physical features, after experts warned such content could be harmful if viewed repeatedly. The platform will still allow 13- to 17-year-olds to view the videos, but its algorithms will not push young users down related content “rabbit holes” afterwards. Continue reading...

Found-footage horror about YouTube pranksters turns into an online phenomenon, giving its star and creator a Hollywood inroad 2024 is already becoming something of a banner year for horror, with Longlegs making over $100m and Late Night with the Devil earning a whopping 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And yet the breakout horror of the year might just be an $800 project currently available to watch free on YouTube. Milk & Serial is a 62-minute, found-footage horror by YouTuber Curry Barker, and it manages to be at once ruthlessly effective and wonderfully authentic. Racking up 348,000 views in the two weeks since its release, its popularity has been supercharged by raves on Reddit that have since crossed over into traditional media. Bloody Disgusting called it “one of the year’s best-kept secrets” and this week Barker found himself being interviewed by no less than Variety. Continue reading...

Wojcicki, one of the most prominent women in tech, had been living with cancer for two years Susan Wojcicki, the former YouTube CEO and one of the first Google employees, has died at the age of 56 after two years of living with cancer. Her husband, Dennis Troper, announced the news of her death on Friday. Continue reading...

The comedian, screenwriter and actor’s list includes a Jurassic Park melodica cover and Kristen Wiig’s Liza Minnelli impersonation * Get our weekend culture and lifestyle email I’m a breakfast radio producer, so I spend countless hours scouring the internet for comedy gold. I’d love to say outside work I’m decidedly offline, joyously pursuing real-world activities such as jogging, baking and not being perpetually afraid of the news. But that would be a dirty stinking lie. Nope, this 21st-century gal is hooked! And if compiling this list has taught me anything … it’s that I’ve been glued to the interwebs for quite some time. So, in honour of my crippling decades-long addiction, let’s start with a few gems from back in the good old days of dial-up. Cue old timey modem sound! Continue reading...