• Livestreamer N3on pays an army of "clippers" to post snippets of his content on social media.
• Clipping is one of his top expenses: He paid out over $1.4 million in a recent five-week period.
• The clipping economy can expand a streamer's audience and also incentivize inflammatory content.

You may have never tuned into N3on's livestream. Thanks to "clipping," he might have popped up in your social feeds anyway.

The top-10 Kick streamer, 21, belongs to a group of livestreamers who have gained mainstream attention in recent months thanks to clipping, where people are paid to post grabby moments from longer videos or podcasts on social media platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram.

An hourslong stream might only get 40,000 live viewers, but a successful clip can fetch millions of views, helping a streamer land partnerships with brands and celebrities.

Streamers like N3on have helped create an elite class of professional clippers who command high prices. Clipping is one of N3on's largest expenses. In a recent five-week period, he paid out over $1.4 million to 303 clippers, according to a document his team shared. In any given month, he estimated that he's paying at least one clipper upward of $100,000.

"I feel like my life is clipping now," he said.

N3on, whose real name is Mikyle Rafiq, said he has a network of around 1,000 clippers. About half belong to a group he and fellow streamer Adin Ross built. The rest are paid by Kick.

Other top creators also have clippers who post on their behalf. YouTuber MrBeast has his own clipping platform, Vyro, that helps promote his content.

Rates for clippers can vary depending on factors such as a streamer's level of fame. Rafiq pays clippers on the higher end of the market for a big Kick streamer — $40 per 100,000 views, or $50 if he especially wants to incentivize them.

Clipping has its defenders and critics

Clipping can help a creator reach a wider audience that might not be watching their livestream or podcast — and get them into the center of internet discourse.

On the other hand, the clipping economy can incentivize creators to create inflammatory moments and stretch the truth.

"A lot of it is staged," said Mustafa Aijaz, VP at SoaR Gaming, a digital entertainment company and creative agency. "Audiences will call it out as clip farming. But people will still watch it."

Rafiq, who's been trying to reform his negative public image, said he used to do "crazy stuff" and even paid clippers to post bad PR about him to keep his name relevant.

He said sometimes eye-catching clips can come from subpar streams.

One of his most-viewed clips came from a stream he and former rapper Iggy Azalea did from a yacht that ran into technical problems and was barely seen.

"The clippers made it seem like it was this insane, crazy stream," Rafiq said. "No one actually watched the stream. They just saw the clips, and they're like, 'Wow, N3on and Iggy had a great time on this yacht.'"

• MrBeast's next growth act may come from AI-produced videos.
• Jimmy Donaldson's company is looking for someone to lead a production team with AI at the foundation.
• MrBeast has been expanding his company while looking for ways to save.

YouTube's biggest star, MrBeast, is looking for a leader to help his company create "AI-native" productions.

A job posting says that Beast Industries wants to build a new production capability in which AI is "not a tool but the foundation."

It calls for someone who can help define "what AI-native entertainment looks like, develop original formats, and build systems that enable content to be conceived, produced, and scaled with AI at the core."

MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, wouldn't be the first creator to delve into AI. Fellow superstar creator Steven Bartlett has been making fully AI-animated shows since last year.

Still, as YouTube's top creator with 479 million subscribers, Donaldson's moves in the space will be closely watched by the entertainment community.

Many production studios are adopting AI across production, marketing, and visual effects, and startups are raising millions on the promise of helping legacy Hollywood transition to the AI era.

So far, entirely AI productions are largely the realm of animation, podcasts, and short-form video.

In the micro drama space, apps including TikTok's Pine Drama and Vigloo have character-driven dramas generated by AI. These AI dramas account for 10% of Vigloo's library, a spokesperson said. The Beijing-based startup StoReel recently raised $34 million to make AI micro dramas.

AI-driven productions would solve some problems for Donaldson.

He is famous for his viral, high-budget challenge and giveaway videos, though the company has been tightening up spending. One of the job's listed expectations is to use automation to make more content, faster.

Making AI-driven videos also directly addresses the risk any creator faces when they build a company that relies on their time and persona. As Donaldson expands his company to consumer products and services, it limits his bandwidth to star in his own videos. He recently hired former NBCU unscripted executive Corie Henson to head his studio division and is looking to broaden the company's video franchises. He said this week his company now has 750 employees.

Donaldson himself has shared concerns about AI's risk to his industry.

After OpenAI released Sora 2 last fall, Donaldson mused on X about what AI's advancement will mean for creators, adding, "Scary times."

He also released — and then removed — a tool that used AI to generate video thumbnails last year, after receiving backlash from creators.

• Meta and YouTube were found negligent in a landmark social media addiction trial.
• The case centered on a woman who said social media harmed her mental health from a young age.
• The case is viewed as a key test of how juries may see dozens of similar pending lawsuits.

Meta and Google were found negligent in a social media addiction trial in Los Angeles on Wednesday, potentially setting the stage for dozens of similar lawsuits that have been brought against Big Tech companies.

The case centered on a 20-year-old woman, identified as KGM, who said her use of social media from a young age was detrimental to her mental health and accused the companies of knowingly engineering their products to addict kids.

After nine days of deliberation, the jury found Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, and Google, which owns YouTube, negligent. In a 10-to-2 vote, the jury also ruled that the two companies knew their design was "dangerous" but failed to warn the plaintiffs.

The jury awarded the plaintiff $6 million. That's $3 million in compensatory damages and an additional $3 million in punitive damages.

The jury determined Meta was responsible for 70% of the harm, while YouTube was responsible for 30%. That means the total damages owed by Meta is $4.2 million, while YouTube owes $1.8 million.

The plaintiff's lead counsel, the Lanier Law Firm, called the verdict "a referendum" in a statement. "For years, social media companies have profited from targeting children while concealing their addictive and dangerous design features," the statement said.

Spokespeople for Meta and Google both said the companies disagreed with the verdicts and plan to appeal.

"Teen mental health is profoundly complex and cannot be linked to a single app," a Meta spokesperson said. "We will continue to defend ourselves vigorously as every case is different, and we remain confident in our record of protecting teens online."

"This case misunderstands YouTube, which is a responsibly built streaming platform, not a social media site," the Google spokesperson said.

The Los Angeles state court trial has been viewed as a bellwether, offering a key test of how juries may see similar personal injury lawsuits brought by over 2,000 individuals. Meta has said potential damages in certain cases could reach into the "high tens of billions of dollars."

TikTok and Snapchat were also defendants, but settled the lawsuit before the trial began.

Meta executives testified at the trial last month, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri, drawing large crowds of media and concerned parents, including some involved in other social media addiction lawsuits. YouTube's VP of engineering, Cristos Goodrow, also testified.

The companies have argued that plaintiffs' struggles are due to myriad reasons and can't necessarily be linked to social media.

During Meta's closing argument at the Los Angeles trial, Paul Schmidt, one of the company's attorneys, said the plaintiff needed to prove that if Instagram were taken away from KGM, her "life would be meaningfully different."

"The evidence has shown just the opposite," Schmidt said.

In January, Meta warned investors that its mounting legal battles related to youth safety could "significantly impact" its 2026 financial results. Attorneys for more than 100,000 individual arbitration claimants have "sent mass arbitration demands relating to 'social media addiction'" since late 2024, the company said in a 2026 10-K, specifically noting the case in Los Angeles, as well as a separate case in New Mexico.

The New Mexico case, which occurred at the same time as the Los Angeles trial, addressed different legal and technical issues.

On Tuesday, a jury in New Mexico ordered Meta to pay $375 million after a verdict came down in the state's lawsuit against the company about sexual exploitation.

Meta said it would appeal the case.

• YouTuber Caleb Hammer drags people for their poor financial decisions on his show "Financial Audit."
• He revealed the one mistake he sees people make the most — and why it's not entirely their fault.
• He also shared what he splurges on, having paid down his own debt.

YouTuber Caleb Hammer has built a career digging into people's poor money decisions on his show, "Financial Audit."

He says there's one mistake he sees most consistently.

"It's the cars," he said during a wide-ranging interview with Business Insider. "People are obsessed with getting whatever big truck or SUV that has the new year on it. And they say it's the safety features, because, you know, we were making cars one year ago that were just killing everyone. So you've got to get the 2027 Ford F-150 Turbo edition."

Hammer, who also sells a budgeting app, Dollarwise, and financial education courses, conceded that it's not entirely people's fault that they fall into the car trap.

"You need to have a car to have a job, and you need to have a job to have a car," he said. "We have that endless loop because we have horrible public infrastructure in this country. We built everything around the car. So people are stuck in that loop."

Still, he said, people will also try to justify spending beyond their means on their "dream car."

"It doesn't make sense," he continued.

Hammer, 31, speaks from experience. He once racked up $120,000 in debt by paying for college, a car, and some impulse buys. He taught himself about money management, which inspired him to start his show.

Now, he has a mortgage and a modest amount of debt, and has shifted his priorities. He spends on the occasional dinner out, his dogs, and hiring good people for his company.

"I still love McDonald's," he said. "I try not to get it, and my girlfriend doesn't want me to because it's bad for me. But at least I can afford it."

Hammer said he doesn't see the financial situation of everyday Americans improving anytime soon, especially with the rise of buy-now-pay-later services.

"With Klarna being baked into everything and Afterpay, unfortunately, I have a feeling the show's going to be going till I'm done," he said.

Read our full interview with Caleb Hammer here.