Eight-year-old Ryan Kaji earned US$26 million this year on his YouTube channel, making him the highest-paid creator on the platform, according to a list published on Wednesday by Forbes magazine.
Kaji, whose real name is Ryan Guan, was already the video platform’s highest earner last year, with US$22 million, Forbes said.
His channel, “Ryan’s World,” launched in 2015 by his parents, is only three years old, but already has 22.9 million subscribers.
Initially called “Ryan Toys
Review,” it mostly consisted of “unboxing” videos — videos of the young star opening boxes of toys and playing with them.
A number of the videos have racked up more than 1 billion views, and the channel has received almost 35 billion views since its creation, according to data from the analytics Web site Social Blade.
Recently, the channel was renamed after a consumer advocacy organization, Truth in Advertising, filed a complaint with the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) about it.
Truth in Advertising accused the channel of not clearly denoting which videos had been sponsored, meaning brands paid for the channel to feature their products.
The channel has also evolved as Ryan ages, now offering more educational videos in addition to the toys.
In Forbes’ ranking, Ryan Kaji surpassed the channel “Dude Perfect,” run by a group of friends from Texas who attempt seemingly impossible feats, such as launching basketballs into hoops from the tops of buildings or out of helicopters.
“Dude Perfect” came in second, up from third the year before, having earned US$20 million from June 1 last year to June 1 this year.
In third place was another child star’s channel, Russian Anastasia Radzinskaya. At only five years old, she earned US$18 million.
Her channels — “Like Nastya Vlog” and “Funny Stacy” — boast nearly 70 million subscribers in total, with videos in Russian, English and Spanish.
At the beginning of September, YouTube’s parent company, Google, agreed to pay a US$170 million fine after the FTC accused the Internet giant of collecting personal data from child YouTube users without permission.
The platform used the data to ensure that advertisers were able to target children, the FTC said.
In a small town in Paraguay, a showdown is brewing between traditional producers of yerba mate, a bitter herbal tea popular across South America, and miners of a shinier treasure: gold. A rush for the precious metal is pitting mate growers and indigenous groups against the expanding operations of small-scale miners who, until recently, were their neighbors, not nemeses. “They [the miners] have destroyed everything... The canals, springs, swamps,” said Vidal Britez, president of the Yerba Mate Producers’ Association of the town of Paso Yobai, about 210km east of capital Asuncion. “You can see the pollution from the dead fish.
MULTIFACETED: A task force has analyzed possible scenarios and created responses to assist domestic industries in dealing with US tariffs, the economics minister said The Executive Yuan is tomorrow to announce countermeasures to US President Donald Trump’s planned reciprocal tariffs, although the details of the plan would not be made public until Monday next week, Minister of Economic Affairs J.W. Kuo (郭智輝) said yesterday. The Cabinet established an economic and trade task force in November last year to deal with US trade and tariff related issues, Kuo told reporters outside the legislature in Taipei. The task force has been analyzing and evaluating all kinds of scenarios to identify suitable responses and determine how best to assist domestic industries in managing the effects of Trump’s tariffs, he
TIGHT-LIPPED: UMC said it had no merger plans at the moment, after Nikkei Asia reported that the firm and GlobalFoundries were considering restarting merger talks United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, 聯電), the world’s No. 4 contract chipmaker, yesterday launched a new US$5 billion 12-inch chip factory in Singapore as part of its latest effort to diversify its manufacturing footprint amid growing geopolitical risks. The new factory, adjacent to UMC’s existing Singapore fab in the Pasir Res Wafer Fab Park, is scheduled to enter volume production next year, utilizing mature 22-nanometer and 28-nanometer process technologies, UMC said in a statement. The company plans to invest US$5 billion during the first phase of the new fab, which would have an installed capacity of 30,000 12-inch wafers per month, it said. The
ASML Holding NV, the sole producer of the most advanced machines used in semiconductor manufacturing, said geopolitical tensions are harming innovation a day after US President Donald Trump levied massive tariffs that promise to disrupt trade flows across the entire world. “Our industry has been built basically on the ability of people to work together, to innovate together,” ASML chief executive officer Christophe Fouquet said in a recorded message at a Thursday industry event in the Netherlands. Export controls and increasing geopolitical tensions challenge that collaboration, he said, without specifically addressing the new US tariffs. Tech executives in the EU, which is
RSS