Where 8 Billion People Actually Look

A data essay about the internet you think you know.

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views, streams, and likes generated today across major platforms
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Section 01

You think it's music & entertainment.

Ask anyone what dominates YouTube and they'll say music videos, influencers, pop culture. Here are the 10 most-viewed videos in the history of the platform. Watch the colors.

Baby Shark
16.47B
Despacito
8.91B
Wheels on the Bus
8.29B
Bath Song
7.31B
Johny Johny Yes Papa
7.13B
See You Again
6.86B
Phonics Song
6.81B
Shape of You
6.62B
Gangnam Style
5.78B
Hanuman Chalisa
5.06B
Children's content
Music
Religious
Meme

Half of YouTube's top 30 videos are nursery rhymes. Baby Shark alone has been viewed more times than there are humans on Earth — twice. The gap between #1 and #2 is 7.56 billion views — a number larger than any other video's total count.

Cocomelon, a children's channel, has 200 million subscribers. PewDiePie, once YouTube's undisputed king, has 110 million. He's now ranked 12th.

The most powerful force on the internet isn't pop stars or influencers. It's toddlers pressing replay.
Section 02

You think celebrities run it.

The biggest names on the internet aren't the ones on magazine covers. Here's who actually holds the records — and who you expected.

Spotify
Most-followed artist: Taylor Swift? Drake? Beyoncé?
Arijit Singh — an Indian playback singer. 172 million followers.
22 million more than Taylor Swift. Most Westerners have never heard his name.
Instagram
#2 most-liked post ever: Kylie Jenner? Beyoncé? Kim Kardashian?
A photo of an egg. 60.5 million likes.
Posted by @world_record_egg in January 2019. Still #2 behind only Messi's World Cup photo.
TikTok
Most-followed person: a pop star? an actor? a dancer?
Khaby Lame — a former factory worker who never speaks. 160M followers.
Lost his job during COVID. Started making silent reaction videos. Now bigger than every musician, actor, and athlete on the platform.
Facebook
#4 most-followed page: Netflix? Nike? Coca-Cola?
Mr. Bean. A fictional character from 1990. 139 million followers.
More followers than Netflix, YouTube, Coca-Cola, or Shakira.
Spotify
#3 most-streamed song ever: Drake? Bieber? Bad Bunny?
Sweater Weather by The Neighbourhood. 4.37 billion streams.
A 2012 indie rock song. Became a Gen Z anthem on TikTok years after release.
Instagram
#4 most-liked post: a celebrity announcement?
Kishore Mondal — an unknown Indian singer. 51.9 million likes.
A reel of him singing. No label. No PR team. Just a man and a song.
The internet's biggest names are people most of the world has never heard of. And most of the world has never heard of yours.
Section 03

You think it speaks English.

The internet has a geography. It just isn't the one you imagine.

🇮🇳
India
20–30 of the top 100 YouTube channels
Top video is a prayer in Awadhi — not even Hindi. T-Series owns India's YouTube.
🇵🇷
Latin America
#1 most-streamed album on Spotify is in Spanish
Bad Bunny's "Un Verano Sin Ti" — 21.7 billion streams. Fully reggaeton. Fully Spanish.
🇫🇷
France
4 music videos with 1 billion+ views
"Dernière danse" has 1.37 billion views. Most English speakers have never heard it.
🇸🇦
Arabic World
Top 10 videos: 7.2 billion views combined
"LM3ALLEM" has 1.2 billion views. Egyptian folk songs compete with modern pop.
🇵🇰
Pakistan
Top videos are Islamic hymns by a 7-year-old girl
Aayat Arif's devotional naats have over 2.5 billion combined views.
🇨🇳
China
#1 YouTube music video: only 300M views
1.4 billion Chinese speakers, nearly invisible on YouTube. The Great Firewall created a parallel internet most of us will never see.

One song — "Zaroori Tha" by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan — appears on both India's and Pakistan's most-viewed lists. 3.4 billion combined views. A single melody bridging one of the world's deepest geopolitical divides.

The English-speaking internet isn't the internet. It's a neighborhood that thinks it's the whole city.
Section 04

You think the numbers are real.

Every record on the internet comes with an invisible asterisk.

The Claim
Top 3 most-retweeted tweets are inspiring viral moments
The Reality
All 3 are cash giveaways. People retweeted for money, not meaning.
The Claim
Chinese state media pages have ~500M Facebook followers
The Reality
Facebook is banned in China. CGTN, Xinhua, China Daily, People's Daily, Global Times — 5 state outlets, 493M followers, on a platform their own citizens can't access.
The Claim
FIFA World Cup 2018: 3.57 billion viewers
The Reality
Independent analysis: inflated by 400%+. The same method claimed the Tour de France had 5 billion viewers — more than the world's TV-owning population.
The Claim
Michael Jackson's memorial: 2.5 billion viewers worldwide
The Reality
Measured audience: 31 million in the US, 6 million in the UK. The two countries with the highest interest.
The Claim
A video hit 1 billion YouTube views in under 24 hours
The Reality
Discord's April Fools' loot box trailer — auto-looped. YouTube later adjusted the count.
The Claim
BTS's keyboard mashing got 1.1 million retweets
The Reality
The tweet: "Ohmmmmyyyyggghghhhhhhhgggggggggdhdhsjsixudb..." — The most powerful fan army in history can move any metric on any platform, for any content, including gibberish.
The Claim
An AI-generated sunset got 32.9M Instagram likes
The Reality
Posted by an unknown account (jiangzhibin24). More likes than any post by Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, or Kim Kardashian. Not a single pixel was real.
Half the internet's biggest numbers are bought, botted, looped, inflated, or auto-played by toddlers. The other half might be too.
Section 05

You think it's 8 billion voices.

The internet isn't flat. It's a power law — a handful of dots the size of continents, and billions of dots too small to see.

MrBeast
465M
More subscribers than the entire population of the United States.
YouTube #1 · TikTok #3 · Twitter #2 retweet
Messi + Ronaldo
55%
of Instagram's top 20 most-liked posts belong to two footballers.
Ronaldo: Facebook #1 · Messi: Instagram #1 post
Baby Shark
16.47B
More views than every human alive — counted twice.
Gap to #2 (7.56B) exceeds every other video's total
Google + Meta
7 of 10
of the world's most-visited websites are owned by two companies.
Google, YouTube, Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Gemini
Top 17 Apps
10B+
downloads each. Out of millions of apps on the Play Store.
Only 141 apps have ever crossed 1 billion downloads
ChatGPT
#5
most-visited website on Earth. It did not exist before November 2022.
Ahead of Twitter, Reddit, Wikipedia, TikTok, and Amazon
The internet isn't 8 billion voices. It's a handful of empires, a billion toddlers on repeat, and a lot of bots pretending to be people.

8 billion people are online.

Now you know where they actually look.

Every number in this essay comes from Wikipedia's "List of most..." articles.
The data is public. The illusion wasn't.