YouTube, Instagram, SoundCloud, and other online platforms are changing the way people create and consume media. The Verge’s Creators section covers the people using these platforms, what they’re making, and how those platforms are changing (for better and worse) in response to the vloggers, influencers, podcasters, photographers, musicians, educators, designers, and more who are using them.
The Verge’s Creators section also looks at the way creators are able to turn their projects into careers — from Patreons and merch sales, to ads and Kickstarters — and the ways they’re forced to adapt to changing circumstances as platforms crack down on bad actors and respond to pressure from users and advertisers. New platforms are constantly emerging, and existing ones are ever-changing — what creators have to do to succeed is always going to look different from one year to the next.
Videos that include topics like reproductive rights, self-harm, suicide, and abuse will be able to earn more revenue now as long as they don’t include graphic scenes or descriptions, as spotted by Tubefilter.
Previously, videos that even mentioned potentially controversial topics would often be demonetized.
The solution is using Bluesky, of course. Naturally, a user with a blue check next to their name told Grok to put a bikini on the butterfly and the AI did — which seems like an even stronger advertisement for Bluesky than the one Bluesky itself posted.
Apple’s new Creator Studio subscription is pitched as an Adobe alternative, but a lot of Verge commenters made it clear: without a decent equivalent to Lightroom, it won’t work for most photographers.
Nevpaurion:
For the love of god make a lightroom alternative so i can stop giving adobe my money.
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As part of a partnership between TikTok and FIFA, select media partners can livestream “parts of” World Cup matches as well as “post more curated clips and access special content produced by FIFA for TikTok.”
Beyond part one’s exposure of affiliate revenue hijacking, MegaLag digs into Honey’s “extortion” by adding limited-use “friends and family” type discounts and lying to the store owners about never removing codes for unaffiliated businesses while trying to sign them up as partners.
Other misdeeds described include marketing Honey’s for-adult-use-only browser extension to kids in partnership with channels like Mr Beast, who encouraged kids to install it everywhere they could, while collecting data on everyone who installed its extension, even if they never signed up. And despite a cease-and-desist from PayPal’s lawyers, this series isn’t over yet.
On Thursday night, the White House Live News section featured YouTuber @RealMattMoney, for reasons that remain unclear. According to Bloomberg, “The White House is aware of the incident and looking into the matter, a White House official said on the condition of anonymity.”
During Semafor’s Mixed Signals podcast, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said TikTok is “very much applying lessons they’ve learned in China to the rest of the world:”
Super apps, which are very popular in China, are not popular in the same way outside of China, and I think they’re turning into a Chinese super app — and that may or may not work outside of China.
The Screen Culture and KH Studio YouTube pages have suddenly disappeared, taking their fake clips with them, reports Deadline. An earlier Deadline investigation showed how they operated, mixing official movie footage with AI-generated images, which some movie studios were profiting from by claiming the ad revenue they brought in.
YouTube spokesperson Jack Malon provided this statement to The Verge:
After their initial suspension, these channels made the necessary corrections in order to be readmitted into the YouTube Partner Program. However, once monetizing again, they reverted to clear violations of our spam and misleading metadata policies, and as a result, they have been terminated from the platform.
Emanuel Maiberg at 404 Media reports that a hacker has gained access to a server farm stuffed with phones churning out AI influencer ads. It’s owned by a startup called Doublespeed, which advertises “bulk content creation” and just got a million bucks from Andreessen Horowitz. Neat.
An analysis of social media posts following Swift’s album release found “inauthentic” activity online. The Taylor Swift media ecosystem is divided over what it means.
“Grow up, Mr. President. Grow up, Brendan Carr.”
A report by Gudea, which tracks online conversations, describes how accusations of white supremacy and Nazism spread following Swift’s album release this fall. According to the report, just 3.77 percent of users accounted for more than a quarter of the conversation; it also found overlap between the users driving the Swift discourse and users active in an “astroturf campaign attacking Blake Lively.” Naturally, the inauthentic discourse then prompted real backlash and responses, making it an even bigger discussion.
Behind every influencer is an army of the influenced. These are the stories of credit card debt and piles of mass-produced clutter.
On the slop-filled internet, Jeremy Carrasco uses his platforms to spread AI literacy.
After the Trump administration used Carpenter’s song “Juno” in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) propaganda video, the pop star responded, calling it “evil and disgusting.” The White House account has since deleted the post — but they’ve picked this fight with musicians before.
Frog costumes, Luigi hats, and the press frenzy at the viral murder trial.
His latest work, “Regular Animals,” features Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and Beeple himself (aka Mike Winkelmann) as robot dogs that walk around taking photos and poop out stylized images, 256 of which are NFTs. Beeple told Page Six that the piece represents how we now “see the world through their eyes.” Eurgh.
Fans of Adobe’s experimental camera app can finally use it with the front camera on the latest iPhones. Project Indigo was slow to support the iPhone Air and 17 series, at least partly due to problems with the new selfie camera those devices employ. Adobe finally rolled out support for those phones in late October with the selfie camera disabled. Now, selfies are back on the menu with an update that arrived yesterday.
US-based car reviewers are going gaga over Chinese EVs. Their audiences wonder why they can’t buy them.
Boing Boing plunged the depths of Etsy to find this 3D-printed replica of the Chernobyl power plant, complete with a ruined reactor that lights up and spews “smoke” when you use it as a diffuser or humidifier.
If that’s too morbid for you, how about an Oceangate Titan sub bathtub bubbler?
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Honestly, that’s insulting.
