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kevin zheng 🍯

@ze.vin

721 followers 963 following 22 posts

phd student in information @umich.edu • political economy of social platforms • computational social science, sts, hci • @geo3550.bsky.social @idpiumass.bsky.social @mediacloud.bsky.social ze.vin • he/they • prev umass amherst, cfpb

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kevin zheng 🍯 @ze.vin · 25/12/2024

my favorite albums of 2024 — featuring lizzy mcalpine, charli xcx, clairo, katy kirby, carol ades, maude latour, and more! (full list in alt text)

a 5x5 grid of the following album covers:
1. Lizzy McAlpine - Older (and Wiser)
2. Charli xcx - Brat and it’s completely different but also still brat
3. Clairo - Charm
4. Katy Kirby - Blue Raspberry
5. Carol Ades - Late Start
6. Maude Latour - Sugar Water
7. Rachel Chinouriri - What A Devastating Turn of Events
8. Abby Holliday - CRACK A SMILE COME ON STAY A WHILE
9. Madi Diaz - Weird Faith
10. Jordana - Lively Premonition
11. Katie Gavin - What a Relief
12. Michelle - Songs About You Specifically
13. Sabrina Carpenter - Short n’ Sweet
14. Remi Wolf - Big Ideas
15. Trella - expiration date
16. Grace Enger - The Alchemist
17. The Last Dinner Party - Prelude to Ecstasy
18. Annika Bennett - Live From Mother Earth
19. Melt - If There’s a Heaven
20. Orla Gartland - Everybody Needs a Hero
21. Odie Leigh - Carrier Pigeon
22. Sammy Rae & The Friends - Something for Everybody
23. Bonny Light Horseman - Keep Me on Your Mind/See You Free
24. Caity Krone - Nose Job
25. Jo Hill - girlhood.

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kevin zheng 🍯 @ze.vin · 18/12/2024

TubeStats.org, our platform transparency dashboard for YouTube developed at @idpiumass.bsky.social, was referenced in @washingtonpost.com! www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2...

screenshot of an excerpt of the linked article on The Washington Post's website

Kevin Zheng, a researcher at the University of Michigan, co-founded TubeStats.org, a website that tracks YouTube content statistics. With his collaborators, he published an academic article that tried to quantify the percentage of YouTube videos with small audiences. The paper found that there is "another" YouTube apart from the most popular accounts and videos — one where people "store video or share content with a small audience (from classroom assignments to video greetings for friends to simulcast religious services)" — and that this part of YouTube is more common than the ones that aim for virality.

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kevin zheng 🍯 @ze.vin · 21/12/2023

3. Most of YouTube doesn’t get many views Odds are, the videos you watch have >1,000 views, but those videos were just 13% of our sample. 4.9% don’t have any views at all. Even more stark is when it comes to comments and likes — 72.6% have no comments and 88.7% have no likes.

chart of view count ranges on YouTube and their relative frequencies

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kevin zheng 🍯 @ze.vin · 21/12/2023

2. YouTube is mostly not in English Our current best estimate is that 32% of videos where we can detect spoken language are in English, with 10.5% in Hindi, 8% in Spanish, slightly fewer in Portuguese, and just over 6% in Arabic.