Kalley Huang

Senators grilled the CEOs of Meta Platforms, TikTok, X, Snap and Discord for four hours at a hearing about child sexual exploitation online on Wednesday, criticizing how their platforms allowed child sexual abuse material to spread and enabled the extortion of young people. The senators used the ...

Careful readers of this newsletter may recall that Fanfix, which helps creators earn money directly from their followers through subscriptions and paid messaging, sued Passes, another fan subscription company, in Los Angeles County Superior Court earlier this month.I spent some time looking into ...

More than four years ago, Jess Maddox, an assistant professor of digital media at the University of Alabama, pitched a course to teach students how to create content. Her department wasn’t interested. This spring semester, she started teaching a course about just that.“It was important for me to ...

Artifact, the news app created by Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, is shutting down, the company announced in a blog post Friday. The startup, which uses artificial intelligence to suggest news that people might be interested in, had launched in January 2023. “We have built something that a core group of users love, but we have concluded that the market opportunity isn’t

In recent years, creators have made inroads into traditional entertainment through brand partnerships and other collaborations. One sign of that relationship: creators at mainstream media’s marquee events. For the last three years, YouTuber Emma Chamberlain has been a red carpet correspondent ...

A federal judge on Thursday denied X its request to temporarily block a California law that requires social media companies to disclose how they moderate certain content on their platforms. The company formerly known as Twitter sued the state of California in September over the law, claiming that it violated free speech rights under the First Amendment. The law, AB 587, requires social media

Meta Platforms will start testing multimodal artificial intelligence in its Ray-Ban smart glasses, chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth said in a post on Threads Tuesday. The test will be available through an opt-in early access program in the U.S., he said. Multimodal AI models understand and generate text, images and other mediums. This feature will “take advantage of the camera on the

During the pandemic, Serena Kerriganlivestreamed her dates on Instagram every week, introducing a new prospective mate each time. Over the course of 2020, she dated 50 people. The series, called “Let’s F—ing Date,” won her an audience that now totals 600,000 followers on TikTok and nearly ...

The creator economy is global, but many creators make content in only one language. To reach more fans, some creators are replacing the audio with a translated version, known as dubbing. But dubbing can cost as much as $75 per minute, according to Bunny Studio, which provides creative services ...

Creators have started using generative artificial intelligence to make their jobs easier, and more startups are looking to provide those tools. At least 19 creator startups center on AI, according to our Creator Economy Database.Still, creators are worried they won’t get credit for their work. ...

Meta Platforms for the first time identified the most common countries that are sources of fake accounts targeting people in other countries as part of coordinated campaigns to manipulate public opinion. In its quarterly report on adversarial threats, Meta said the most common homes for the accounts it removed were Russia, Iran and China, in that order. Meta highlighted recent activity from

After the surprise ouster of Sam Altman from OpenAI over the weekend, X was atwitter—pun intended—with real-time updates about what was happening. Our feeds were flooded with heart emojis, cryptic messages about what’s next, posts saying “OpenAI is nothing without its people” and, of course, ...

A top executive of Meta Platforms questioned the excitement around generative artificial intelligence Thursday at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s CEO Summit. Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, said the hype around the technology in recent months has been “somewhat breathless” and outpaced what generative AI can do. “They don’t know anything,” Clegg said of large language

Meta Platforms, Alphabet, ByteDance and Snap must face lawsuits alleging they designed their platforms to attract and be addictive to children, thereby harming their mental health, a federal judge ruled on Tuesday. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the First Amendment and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which

It’s Kalley again. On Friday, my colleague Sylvia and I reported on ongoing challenges at Meta Platforms over how to limit content that’s risky to young people. A centerpiece of the debate over youth safety and well-being is what sort of content Meta should limit on Instagram, Facebook and its ...

Before Meta Platforms decided in June to lower the minimum age for usage of some Quest virtual headsets to 10 from 13, employees had warned that the move increased the risk that children would see content on the app store meant for older people, two people with knowledge of the situation said. ...

In the third quarter, TikTok users sent more than $250 million worth of digital gifts to U.S.-based livestreamers on the video app, my colleague Erin reported last week. Those virtual tips are turning into significant revenue for creators. TikTok turns over half of those proceeds—calculated ...

As funding for creator economy startups has dried up, some companies are turning to unconventional means to raise money. In March, the newsletter platform Substack raised $7.8 million in what it called a “community round,” inviting its writers to invest in the company. Now, more startups are ...

The Federal Trade Commission is looking closely at “each of the layers” of artificial intelligence development for anti-competitive behavior, Chair Lina Khan said at an event in San Francisco on Thursday. That scrutiny extends to large cloud providers’ investments in AI startups, she said. “With AI, we are already hearing concerns about potential bottlenecks,” Khan said. As the FTC eyes the

It’s Kalley Huang, reporting from The Information’s Women in Tech, Media and Finance Summit in Yountville, Calif.Creators and influencers are increasingly launching their own companies to expand their audiences and to generate revenue beyond sponsorships. But their names aren’t enough to sell ...