A book excerpt details how YouTube’s love affair with PewDiePie soured in 2017, before he stopped pushing boundaries and signed a livestreaming deal in 2020 (Mark Bergen/The Verge)

Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with Mark Bergen on his book “Like, Comment, Subscribe”, chronicling YouTube’s evolution from a scrappy startup to a pivotal part of Google and social media  —  Mark Bergen takes us inside the black box … YouTube has always been fascinating to me because it’s such a black box …

Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Tumblr adds support for livestreaming to its iOS and Android apps in the US; the service is powered by video platform Livebox, which lets users tip streamers  —  Tumblr is adding support for livestreaming via the video platform Livebox.  The feature is being rolled out to US users on iOS and Android now …

Adi Robertson / The Verge:
Tumblr adds support for livestreaming to its iOS and Android apps in the US; the service is powered by video platform Livebox, which lets users tip streamers  —  Tumblr is adding support for livestreaming via the video platform Livebox.  The feature is being rolled out to US users on iOS and Android now …

Mark Bergen / The Atlantic:
A look at YouTube’s “coolhunters” who were tasked with finding and promoting talented YouTubers in the company’s early years, before the algorithms took over  —  How “coolhunters” helped make YouTube into an internet sensation before the algorithms took over.  —  Everyone had to see this.

Sander Lutz / Decrypt:
In a federal lawsuit against crypto influencer Ian Balina, the US SEC claims the entire Ethereum network falls under the US government’s purview  —  In a civil complaint against a crypto influencer, the SEC suggested that it believes the U.S. government has jurisdiction over all Ethereum transactions.

Kathryn Tewson / Techdirt:
Hands-on with DoNotPay, a service claiming to be the first robot lawyer: slow, drafted a terrible defamation demand letter, missed legal issues, and more  —  Note: This post is an adaptation of what started initially as a Twitter thread.  —  I’ve been going pretty hard on DoNotPay …