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Creators

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.

Featured stories

Adobe Substance 3D’s AI features can turn text into backgrounds and textures

Two new beta tools for Adobe Substance can generate object textures and staging environments using text descriptions.

Why Figma CEO Dylan Field is optimistic about AI and the future of design

The leader of design toolmaker Figma on life after the failed Adobe deal and what comes next in a live interview from SXSW.

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TikTok
TikTok’s (formerly) favorite congressman is really, really sorry.

“I did not handle this situation well from top to bottom, and that is why I have been completely roasted on this app,” said Rep. Jeff Jackson, who posted an explanation of his vote to ban TikTok on TikTok.

He tried to clear up his vote by explaining he thinks a ban is unlikely, but some commenters are still livid.


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You can watch March Madness games for free in the Vision Pro.

The NCAA’s March Madness Live app is also getting a new, swipeable vertical video highlights feed.

The “Vision Pro compatibility” means the iPad app, so you won’t get any “spatial” features, but at least it’s there (unlike, say, YouTube). What, did the Samsung Gear VR app not do well or something?

The NCAA also says it’s offering “expanded live game radio” for Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.


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Sports Illustrated gets a new lease on life.

Minute Media, which operates an even less dangerous version of Medium for pro athletes called The Players’ Tribune, is picking up the contract to run Sports Illustrated after the previous operators published AI-written content, fired the CEO, laid off the entire staff, and said it would close the print magazine. This all really happened!

Anyway, Minute Media specializes in “short form sports content creation,” and its CEO Asaf Peled says tells the New York Times that SI will somehow continue to do in-depth journalism even though it is “an exception to our core strategy.” Sure.


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Youtube
FineWoven case dirty? Just clean it! It’s okay!

Faruk from the iPhonedo YouTube channel wants to lay the online “drama” around Apple’s scratch-prone case to rest. So he spruced up the grossest one he says he could find on eBay.

After bringing it back to life, he has a message about product upkeep for his viewers. Text alone doesn’t do his delivery justice — keep your ears open around the 7:30 mark.


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TikTok
How to get free, on-demand music in the pre-streaming service era.

I’ll be telling my grandchildren this was Napster.


Is YouTube Music testing Google’s Hum to Search feature?

A Reddit commenter posted a screenshot today showing what they said is the Hum to Search option in the YouTube Music on iOS

Google has let you search by humming a tune for years and started testing it in the Android YouTube app in August. Like 9to5Google, I’m not seeing it on my own iOS or Android devices. Are you?


A screenshot showing a new icon of a waveform next to the search field
Is Hum to Search coming to YouTube Music?
Image: Izmir_Stinger / Reddit

Instagram’s Threads: all the updates on the new Twitter competitor

The latest app taking on Twitter is getting a boost from Instagram’s billions of users.

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Prepare your final popcorn bowls for the last Twitch Prime Video Watch Party.

A Twitch help page says it’s ending the feature that lets people watch Amazon Prime Video and chat together on April 2nd, as its usage has “declined over the years” since its 2020 rollout.

The feature lives on for Prime Video subscribers. But if you and your friends want to watch Ricky Stanicky or whatever, the host will need to have an ad-free subscription.


Watch Parties

[help.twitch.tv]

How the House revived the TikTok ban before most of us noticed

TikTok mobilized users to lobby Congress, and it backfired spectacularly.

Are we really going to ban TikTok?

On The Vergecast: what we do and don’t know about TikTok, why all the other apps are trying to be TikTok, and the photo scandal rocking the royals.

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TikTok faces a $10.9 million fine in Italy over child safety concerns.

Italian regulators imposed the fine after finding that TikTok “failed to implement appropriate mechanisms” to monitor content on its platform, “particularly those that may threaten the safety of minors.”

It cites the “French scar” challenge as one of the “potentially dangerous” types of content disseminated by TikTok’s algorithm, which involves users pinching their face so hard it leaves a mark.


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This e-commerce darling couldn’t cut it IRL.

Outdoor Voices, a popular athleisure brand once seen as the next Lululemon, is closing all of its stores on Sunday. The direct-to-consumer lifestyle brand was valued at $110 million in 2018, but has been on the decline following internal friction. It’s the end of an era for the e-comm startup once considered a model for founders — the company will go back to selling strictly online.


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Steven Mnuchin is working to create a buyer for TikTok.

The former Treasury Secretary said on CNBC Thursday that he’s “going to put together a group to buy TikTok.” Such a group would need to have massive buying power, since the app boasts 170 million US users, and has an estimated value in the tens of billions of dollars.

The House passed a bill Wednesday that could force TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance to sell it, or be banned from the US.


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“I’m an old man. Get me that Lenovo.”

If we’re going to start banning software, let’s start banning software.


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TikTok
TikTok CEO tells users to “make their voices heard” against a bill that could ban the app in the US.

Now that the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act has passed in the House of Representatives, TikTok CEO Shou Chew made — what else — a short video appealing to the app’s users to speak up against a ban.

He doesn’t address the possibility of a sale, saying the bill will take away their app if it becomes a law, but that “We believe we can overcome this together.”


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The Verge
If Congress wants to ban TikTok it should probably show us the evidence of Chinese interference.

We’ve heard so much about the dangers of TikTok from both sides of the aisle, and even had Trump flip-flop his position ostensibly over the political calculations of banning an app 170 million Americans use. But what exactly did the House select committee see in its secure briefing that led them to vote 50-0 in favor of the bill that would ban the app? If this thing is going to move forward in the Senate it seems like we should at least know the basics.


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Instagram
Nancy Pelosi is playing TikTok-toe.

The former House Speaker said passing a new bill that incentivizes China-based ByteDance to sell TikTok “is not an attempt to ban TikTok. It’s an attempt to make TikTok better. Tic-tac-toe. A winner.”

After the bill passed out of the House with 352 votes, it now must clear the Senate to reach the president’s desk.


Pinterest launched an AI tool that lets users filter search results by body type.

The filter starts with “a visual cue to select between four body type ranges.” It’s only available in the U.S. for women’s fashion and wedding-related items, but it will expand to men’s fashions later this year.

Pinterest says this will make its site a more “inclusive” place, but with 16 choices, it’s hard to represent every body type, even with the power of AI, and a prompt to save your selection didn’t appear in our tests.


Pinterest’s new body range tool shows row rows of different body types
Image: Pinterest
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YouTube Music may be laying the groundwork for a “trim silence” podcast feature.

It appears Google is further optimizing YouTube Music for podcasts as it prepares to sunset Google Podcasts at the end of this month.

9to5Google reports spotting a line of code that indicates it is building out a “trim silence feature,” which is standard on Google Podcasts and other podcast listening apps. It automatically skips long stretches of silence that appear in an episode, saving the listener a bit of time.


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The child influencers making other people rich.

Kids are big business for brands looking to partner with influencers — and yet, Illinois is the only state in the US where kids appearing in sponcon are entitled to a cut of earnings.

This Cosmopolitan piece illustrates the longterm psychological effects of being a child working on online content. It also shows that our legal system has a lot of catching up to do with influencer culture.


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I’ll have what she’s having!

“This is not an attempt to ban TikTok. It’s an attempt to make TikTok better. Tic-tac-toe. A winner. A winner.”

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TikTok
TIL song-slaying AI sensation “There I Ruined It” starts with a real person’s voice.

I can’t get enough of ad agency creative Dustin Ballard’s AI hijinks: he made The Red Hot Chili Peppers sing a grocery list, turned Lil Jon’s “Get Low” into a time-honored Christmas classic, and showed up a congressional hearing on AI. That’s just a taste.

Recently, he revealed the process — it starts with his own voice!


The Kate Middleton photo scandal is a rare — and consequential — flub

A wave of wire services retracting a doctored image of the Princess of Wales and her kids set off a firestorm of conspiracy theories.