Hi everyone, welcome to Mini Scroll, the daily Internet
culture podcast bringing you the biggest stories from social
media, the creator economy and the digital space.
Every Monday through Thursday. I'm your host, Lauren Meissner,
the founder of the youth digital media brand Centennial World.
It is finally a nice day up at the cottage.
I have been here for just over a week and almost every single day
it's been like cloudy and rainy and cold.
And I'm like, I thought I came out of that out of Sydney winter
to come to Canadian summer. And normally like the Toronto
area gets quite warm in summer, but it's just been like a shit
week. Anyways, I'm so excited and I'm
sure you guys can tell because if you watch on YouTube then you
will have seen the lighting in my videos change so much every
single day. I've never realized the value of
like artificial studio lights before because I haven't had to
like properly film with only natural light since I started
this podcast. But here we are.
And I think it's like a beautiful day.
It's a vibe. All right, so let's just get
into the first story for you guys today.
I have two stories. So the first is that there is
speculation, very seriously valid speculation, that
subreddits are about to be paywalled.
So last week during an earnings call, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman
suggested they might pay wall certain subreddits, he said.
Quote, I think the existing altruistic free version of
Reddit will continue to exist and grow and thrive just the way
it has. But now we will unlock the door
for new use cases, new types of subreddits that can be built
that may have exclusive content or private areas, things of that
nature. So this development comes as
part of Reddit's revenue boosting strategy after the
company went public at the start of this year.
Some of the most controversial decisions of this nature
relating to this revenue boosting strategy so far were
when Huffman decided to hike up the API fees last year, which
essentially led to a bunch of third party apps that relied on
that API to basically close go bankrupt because they couldn't
afford those fees. For anyone that doesn't
remember, actually did a full deep dive into the history of
Reddit and I talked about that. I think it was a couple months
back. So definitely go listen to that.
But basically there was a bunch of third party apps that would
use Reddit's. I think it was free API to
deliver the app or like the service, but like Reddit
basically interface in a more user friendly way than the
Reddit app currently exists. And there was one major one,
Apollo, that people were obsessed with and like everyone
used that one for years. And then Apollo unfortunately
had to close after they change the API from free to I think it
was going to be like $20 million a year for Apollo to pay for
that fee. And more recently, Reddit signed
a deal with Google, which allows Google to train its AI model off
of Reddit's massive database of posts.
And then Reddit has also blocked other AI companies like Open AI
and stuff like that from crawling.
Its I don't know if it's servers or whatever its posts unless
they pay a fee. So I think open AI has actually
like also strike to deal with Reddit as well, but it actually
seems to be working. I know that Reddit's revenue is
up massively from the previous year.
So you know this CEO, he's come in and he is like, I'm ACEO,
like I am here to make the company profitable to make like
the hard business decisions, whether that impacts users or
not. That is just kind of the role of
an executive at that level. And I mean, I guess it's
working. I don't know how anyone is going
to feel about paywalled subreddits that's a bit
unhinged, but we will see, OK. And the second story that I have
for you guys today is that JoJo Siwa has opened up about feeling
like Trisha Paytas used her for clout when she was young.
So on an episode of Jojo's podcast, JoJo Siwa Now, the
controversial star spoke about her relationship with Trisha
Paytas and how she feels Trisha used her back in the day.
So we all know back when JoJo was a minor, she would
collaborate a lot with different Youtubers who were much older
than her. You know, Colleen Ballinger was
obviously one major one. And she also had filmed some
videos with Tricia as well. And a lot of them, I think we're
like related to Tricia's relationship with Jason Nash
because JoJo would film with David in the vlog squad.
But either way, like she filmed videos with Tricia in discussing
people that she would want as a guest on her podcast.
And I just, I can't even say that without thinking of that
clip. Dream guest on my podcast.
She said she would not want Tricia as a guest because she
feels used by her. She said quote, yes, we would
and we did videos together when I was a kid.
And what's so interesting is she Tricia has a lot to say about me
nowadays and that's fine. A lot of people have a lot to
say about me nowadays. But what hurts my heart is a lot
of people who were friends with me when I was a kid are friends
with me now. And that tells me that they
weren't friends with me because they were using me because I was
a kid. I did bring a lot of views.
I brought a lot of views to a lot of people's videos and my
own videos. What breaks my heart, not as a
21 year old, but it breaks my heart for that 14 year old that
did videos with Tricia. She thought Tricia actually
liked her. You guys know how I feel about
JoJo. I think she is publicly in the
throes of deconstructing what happened to her as a child star.
And I think this is actually quite a good example of this.
She's still very much in denial. Like the fact that she, you
know, I know she's still quite young.
She's 21. The fact that she still believes
she's still not ready to accept that just because Colleen
Ballinger and these other Youtubers kept speaking with her
after she kind of transitioned her channel from JoJo Siwa to
like, it's more of like a brand channel now.
Just because they stayed in touch with her doesn't mean that
they were like best friends. Like what does a 30 year old
have in common with a 14 year old?
Like, why would they be friends with JoJo other than for a
business benefit, right? Doesn't mean that they're not
like friendly with her still. But the fact that she's using
Tricia not wanting to be her like actual friend as a reason
for the fact that she used her. And she can't see the fact that,
like someone like Colleen, who has had so many allegations
against her about acting inappropriately with really
young fans and minors over the course of her career, Like she
can't see that how Colleen treated JoJo when she was a
teenager is more inappropriate is so indicative, I believe of
like the mental space that she's in.
Like, she's still very much a child star in her, like, you
know, inside. And she can't unravel that yet.
Like she can't kind of like come to terms, I think with like how
the industry treated her and how the adults around her treated
her and how exploited she actually was.
So Tricia responded on her podcast and she basically said
she was not about to become friends with a 13 year old.
She said they were friend Lee and JoJo was very nice, but
there was no hanging out outside of filming because it would be
weird. And she was like, yeah, I filmed
with JoJo. It was like a business decision.
We were working together, but that doesn't mean that I'm going
to go become friends with her. She mentioned a New Year's Eve
party that she was invited to at Jojos, and she didn't go.
She was like, that would be so weird.
She's like, it's not because I don't like JoJo, like she's
super nice, but like that would just be inappropriate and weird.
So I know JoJo gets a lot of Flack for being a bit
problematic and defending, you know, abusers and people that
have exploited others, but also people, the same people that
have exploited her. She came out in defensive
Colleen Ballinger last year. And I don't know, I think
sometimes, and this happens with child stars, we don't especially
JoJo because she hasn't actually transitioned.
I know she I know like Karma and like her new album and stuff is
supposed to be her like step into adulthood.
I think it's very clear that it's not, you know, she's just
kind of turned her like rainbow sparkly vibes into like sparkly
black vibes and is like hoping that that shows that she's
matured and growing and kind of like in her adult phase.
But I don't think she's quite there yet.
And I think sometimes with child stars, including JoJo, what
happens is we we place more, I think adultness.
I like, I'm not sure what the right word is.
Like, we adult ify them the adultification, I suppose, of
child stars. Like we treat them like they are
adults, obviously so much younger than they are.
And I think JoJo is only 21 and she still has a lot of
unlearning to do. But I don't think a lot of us
are giving her enough grace to do that.
So she's going to make mistakes. Like she's going to defend
Colleen, you know, and she's going to defend the wrong people
and she's going to say the wrong things because she's dealing
with like what happened to her. But she's like not taking a step
back like a lot of child stars do and like deal with it and
like reconcile with it privately.
Like she's doing all of this in front of us because she's trying
to maintain her career. So I don't know.
So I think that's partly what we're seeing here.
Anyways, guys, that's it for Mini scroll today.
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