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.
Redfin is doing a geoguessing-themed game of skill to give away a million-dollar house in its app, based on clues found in its Super Bowl ad, and Rainbolt is part of the promo — but he’s not allowed to help, based on the rules here.
Meanwhile, Salesforce’s Mr. Beast ad promises a million-dollar giveaway based on the clues in its 30-second ad.
Why you can’t label your way into consensus reality amid the AI deepfake apocalypse.
We can confirm that basic features in the US do seem to work reliably now on the new Trump-friendly entity’s servers, even if the algorithm still seems a little wonky at times. Per TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC:
We have successfully restored TikTok back to normal after a significant outage caused by winter weather took down a primary US data center site operated by Oracle. The winter storm led to a power outage which caused network and storage issues at the site and impacted tens of thousands of servers that help keep TikTok running in the US.
Great, but how many of ya’ll have abandoned the platform?
Nick Shirley and others like him are reminiscent of yellow journalism of the 19th century, updated and turbocharged by social media algorithms.
Without explaining why its cloud status page doesn’t list any outages, TikTok USDS part-owner Oracle outed itself as the previously unnamed “US data center partner” that experienced a power outage over the weekend, blocking videos from publishing and unraveling its all-important algorithm for a few days.
Michael Egbert, Oracle Spokesperson:
Over the weekend, an Oracle data center experienced a temporary weather-related power outage which impacted TikTok. The challenges U.S. TikTok users may be experiencing are the result of technical issues that followed the power outage, which Oracle and TikTok are working to quickly resolve.
It follows Snap in reaching an agreement to resolve the first of several cases slated to go to trial this year about social media’s alleged harm to users, an attorney for the 19-year-old plaintiff confirmed. That leaves Meta and YouTube as defendants in the case going to jury selection today.
TikTok’s US service crashed early Sunday morning, and as of late Monday night, it still hasn’t fully recovered.
After finally announcing the problem started with a power outage at an unnamed partner’s data center, TikTok USDS followed up with an updated statement saying, “While the network has been recovered, the outage caused a cascading systems failure that we’ve been working to resolve together with our data center partner,” and listing some of the bugs users are experiencing. There’s still no ETA for a full fix.
Despite claims floating around social media, the truth is a bit more complicated, not least by the fact that TikTok in the US is still largely down, about a day and a half after its data center power outage problems started.
While tweets from random users, the governor of California, and PopBase claimed TikTok US DMs now censor “Epstein,” testing it from our end showed that its messaging feature bans many innocuous single-word messages, like “test.” Using the convicted sex offender’s name in a sentence, however, goes through unbanned.
Oracle and a group of investors now control TikTok in the US, and promise to retrain the app’s algorithm on US user data. Though TikTok blames some of the issues users experienced over the weekend on a power outage, many are still concerned about how their feed could change.
Whether this is just a regular outage or a result of this week’s changes in management, reports tracked on Downdetector and Reddit confirm many people are having trouble loading TikTok right now.
If the mobile app loads, it’s not consistently showing comments or other features, and the algorithm managing the For You page doesn’t feel like it’s working correctly.
Update, January 26th: TikTok is still having problems in the US, which it says are connected to a data center power outage.
A pair of bipartisan lawmakers introduced the Transparency and Responsibility for Artificial Intelligence Networks (TRAIN) Act in the House, letting copyright holders see if AI models were trained on their work. It’s already been introduced in the Senate, and counts the Recording Industry Association of America and SAG-AFTRA among its endorsers.
[Congresswoman Madeleine Dean]
It’s been a long, confusing, and at times tiresome saga, but according to Semafor, the Chinese and U.S. governments have given the green light for ByteDance to sell TikTok’s American arm. The target closing date set back in December was today, January 22nd, 2026.
The San Diego convention previously allowed AI images to be displayed under certain conditions, but has now banned any partially or wholly AI-generated materials entirely, following backlash from artists. The policy change has been welcomed, but without reliable AI-detection methods, enforcement may prove challenging.
[404 Media]
Sephora is partnering with Korean beauty retailers Olive Young to bring more K-beauty products to international consumers in-store and online. In the last decade, K-beauty has had a meteoric rise outside of Korea; the industry has especially thrived in the TikTok social media era, where new products and releases are used to relentlessly drive beauty trends. Now US retailers are in an “arms race” to cash in on the popularity.
[The Business of Fashion]
Move aside Ben Affleck, Adobe’s former product chief is also musing on how AI will impact human jobs:
“We must cultivate our sources of taste, override the ancestral ‘logic’ that has restrained us since the dawn of humanity, and learn to be jazz partners with thinking technologies.”
Uh, sure, Belsky. How did those NFT predictions turn out?
In a Joe Rogan interview on Friday, Affleck spoke for several minutes about how he believes generative AI will (or won’t) impact creative industries, saying it’s “going to be a tool, just like visual effects.”
”I don’t think it’s very likely that it’s gonna be able to write anything meaningful, or that it’s going to be making movies from whole cloth, like Tilly Norwood. That’s bullshit.”
TikTok will roll out new age detection technology in Europe that uses profile information, posts, and “behavioral signals” to guess if a user is under 13, then flags suspected accounts for moderators to review, reports Reuters.
