Peggy K's Creator News

Creator Weekly: Shorts Thumbnails, Substack AI Scans, Facebook Verified

2026-07-25T06:25:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! This week there are updates for YouTube communities and Shorts, new tools at Substack and Facebook to show who’s human, new features for Instagram, X, Google Photos and more.

Before you read on, check your Google Account’s security and sign-in options. The best time to secure your account is now!

Google now lets you add a selfie video to help you sign into your account. If you have a single device (like your phone), set this up to make sure you can still sign in if your device is lost. Set it up at g.co/signin-selfie. Manage your selfie videos. Learn more.

OK, now read on!

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This week’s Top Updates

Upload a custom thumbnail for your YouTube Shorts.
New YouTube Community features, including Community-only posts and quote posting.
For monetizing creators: YouTube is launching free Membership trials (you can opt out your channel) and shows Open Calls for brand deals.
Use Ask Studio to generate thumbnails in YouTube Studio.
Substack partnered with Pangram to let readers and creators scan for AI-generated content.
Facebook Verified is a free badge that shows you are human.
Facebook is showing users even more videos.
Instagram now lets you change the music on a published post.
X lets you add a custom thumbnail to videos.
Google Photos has redesigned and improved Ask Photos.
Plus updates for Meta AI, WordPress, Google Search, Patreon and more.

YouTube Shorts Custom Thumbnails

Channels in the YouTube Partner Program can now add custom thumbnails to Shorts in YouTube Studio on desktop.

You can upload a thumbnail, or use a frame selected by YouTube. This is the same as for long-form videos.
The option to select any frame and add text is still available in the YouTube app.
YouTube may only display thumbnails with a 2:3 aspect ratio. If your Short is 9:16, don’t have important details on the edges of the thumbnail.
Thumbnail A/B testing is not available for Shorts.
Shorts thumbnails do not display in the Shorts feed (that isn’t new).

New YouTube Community Features

YouTube is adding new Community features for creators and fans. Learn more.

For Creators:

Community-only posts that don’t appear on the Posts tab
More moderation options in YouTube Studio
Quick mod assignments from the 3 dot menu on a Community post in the main YouTube app.

For Fans:

Quote a creator post as a new post.
Access Communities from more places on YouTube
New notifications of creator interactions (like when they pin your post)

Substack scans for AI-generated content

Substack is partnering with Pangram, a tool that lets you scan notes, replies, comments, and posts, then estimates how much was written with AI assistance. It works on text longer than 100 words.”

This is currently available on the web and iOS (and Android soon).

In the long term, Substack is considering letting creators set Reply Rules around AI content, and let readers set their preferences about AI content recommendations.

Substack creators can also add a “how I made this statement” to their profile.

Substack explains why they added this feature:
“We care about this at Substack because it gets to the core of our mission to build an economic engine for culture. When content made by no one takes over parts of the internet that are supposed to be human, it pollutes the commons and makes it hard to discover and hear human voices.”

Substack authors have questions though. What if the AI scanner gets it wrong (and these tools frequently get it wrong)? And what will Pangram do with all the Substack writing it ingests?

Originally, Substack said users can use Pangram on draft posts, and “report and remove any scans on your own work that you believe are mistaken.

They later backtracked slightly, saying:

"We read all of your feedback, which we take seriously as we continue to evolve the product and host open conversation on this topic. Based on your comments, we made a change yesterday so that publishers can disable scanning on a post-by-post basis without having to scan the post first or interact with Pangram at all."

But that doesn’t address the potential issues around misidentification, and the feeling that this encourages writing in a “non AI” style. That is galling when the AI style is based on human writing in the first place.

YouTube and Video

YouTube is launching one month free Membership trials for eligible channels and “select qualified viewers”. Creators will not earn any revenue from the trial Membership, but the hope is that this encourages more people to become paid Members. Creators can opt out (or back in) on the Membership tab in YouTube Studio.

YouTube now shows Open Calls for Brand deals. This is designed to make it easy for Creators to start making Brand deals for the first time. How it works:

A Brand creates an open call for Shorts, and if your channel meets the criteria you will see them on the Earn tab in YouTube Studio.
You can see the deal terms, submit a Short, and if the Brand approves your video, you will get the offered payment. Brands can request one round of edits.
Brands can use your Short as an ad for 180 days, and can contact you directly to negotiate additional use.
This is currently available to YouTube Partners in the US, and will be available soon in the UK, India and Indonesia.

You can now use Ask Studio in YouTube Studio on desktop to generate thumbnails for long-form videos. Generated thumbnails are based on your title and video, and match the same style, topics and audience as the rest of your channel. You can brainstorm, then fine-tune the suggestions. You can start with a simple prompt “create a thumbnail for my video”.

If you use the AI creation tools in the YouTube Shorts editor, you can find your AI creations in the “Recent Creations” tab in the AI Playground.

Restream off-stream editing lets you edit any scene while your stream is live, without interrupting what’s on screen. This is still in testing, but will start rolling out soon. Watch the demo.

StreamYard now lets you see YouTube Gifts powered by Gems live. (Restream also has this feature). Gifts can be given by fans on vertical live streams if your channel is in the YouTube Partner Program in a supported country.

Discord no longer lets you set up a Discord role for TikTok LIVE subscribers. This let Creators offer a Discord server as a perk for paid TikTok LIVE subscriptions. Existing connections will remain active.

Web Publishing

New York Times: How Google’s A.I. Search Is Imperiling the Open Web
And Google’s response: Google: We Send Billions Of Clicks To Websites Weekly Through AI Search

WordPress shares how to find a local WordPress meetup or event.

Social Media

Facebook Verified is a new free badge that indicates a real human (but not which real human) is behind an account.

You record a selfie which is compared to your existing profile photos.
Badges appear in Marketplace, Dating, Groups and Profile, and will eventually be added to Feed posts.
This is available to users 18 and older, in good standing with the “fraud, scams and deceptive practices” Community Standards, and have not exhibited inauthentic behavior.
It is not available for Pages or personal profiles with Pro Mode.
This is separate from Meta Verified, a paid subscription that is supposed to provide impersonation protection and enhanced support.

Facebook wants to be TikTok? They are going to start testing Immersive Video internationally in “video-heavy countries” (it may come to the US next year). This is “a reimagined experience that puts a subset of people who we think want more video on Facebook into full-screen video the moment they open the app.” People can opt out, and Classic Feed will still be available.

Instagram now lets you change the audio on a post or carousel that you have already published (if you added the audio in the app). Your likes, comments and shares won’t be lost. Instagram notes this lets you “stay current” by swapping in trending songs.

X now lets you add a custom thumbnail to your videos. You can choose a frame and customize it or upload your own design. Currently only available for iOS.

Tools

Google Photos has redesigned Ask Photos. Previously Ask Photos was very slow related to classic search, and was often overkill if you just wanted to find photos of a specific person, place or thing (rather than a complex query). Now, if you enable Ask Photos, the app decides whether classic search would be better. You can toggle between classic and Ask results.

You can now create Combo charts in Google Sheets.

Meta AI can now “make plans, connect to email and calendar apps, create slides, and handle tasks on your behalf”. It uses Muse Spark to research and compile information or create a daily briefing. (I’m not sure why you would want this unless you are deep in the Meta ecosystem, but it’s there.)

Creator Weekly: YouTube AI Monetization Policy, Google Image Search, Beehiiv Communities

2026-07-18T06:30:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, did you celebrate World Emoji Day on July 17th 📆 🥳? Party with pictures!

This week there are updates for YouTube creators, Twitch, Google Image Search, beehiiv, Google Vids, Edits and more.

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Top Updates

YouTube expanded its Inauthentic Content monetization policy description to provide more examples and more explicitly call out some AI-generated content.
Google Image Search turned 25 and is getting a Pinterest-like redesign, with easier access to Collections. Google is also adding AI image generation in Search AI Mode.
Beehiiv launched Communities where you can engage your subscribers.
YouTube is testing a redesigned “insights-first” YouTube Studio Analytics (renamed Insights).
YouTube shared a report highlighting their positive impact on the U.S. economy.
Twitch lets you create Clips by saying “Twitch, Clip That” during your livestream.
Google Vids now has Gemini Omni for video generation and selfie avatars.
You can now control the emotion and pacing of AI voiceovers and avatars in Google Vids.
Automating dubbing and lipsyncing in Instagram Reels is expanding to more languages. Plus caption translation.
The Edits video editing app lets you import your own fonts.
TikTok is launching an AI literacy project.
Tumblr lets you recover a deleted account for up to 30 days.
Patreon is blocking AI training crawlers from posts.
Facebook no longer lets you create multiple personal profiles.
X is boosting visibility of your posts to mutuals.
Flickr will start removing inactive accounts in August.
NotebookLM is now Gemini Notebook.
Plus updates for Spotify, Gmail, LinkedIn, Restream and more.

YouTube Updates Monetization Policy

YouTube updated its Inauthentic Content monetization policy, splitting it into 3 types, with additional examples. I’ve written up a detailed overview, but these are the basics.

You are not allowed to monetize:

Generic or Repetitive Content: Multiple videos minimal variation, mass-produced appearance, and generic templates.
Unsatisfying or Offputting Content: Videos that rely on shock value without a narrative for views. It includes fake (but realistic-looking) visuals of fake news, like a celebrity death.
AI Personas for Sensitive Topics: AI-generated personas giving information or advice on health, legal issues, finances or politics.

While it’s not all about AI-generated content, it definitely has that in mind as a common tool used to generate masses of generic content.

YouTube's VP of Trust & Safety Matt Halprin noted that this is not a change in monetization policy. The policy just has more examples now, which should hopefully be more transparent.

Helprin shares more details about the inauthentic content monetization policy in a video with Creator Insider. They had some AI fun.

New Look for Google Image Search

Google Image Search is 25 years old with a couple new features.

Google Image Search is turning more Pinterest-like with "dynamic, immersive gallery of images ... updated in real time and intelligently tailored to your unique interests." Your Collections appear as tabs above the main gallery, making it easy to add images and switch between a Collection and the search results. The bad news for creators is that it appears image source details are less visible. This will be available in the US, in English.

Google is also adding image generation with Nana Banana to AI Overviews in Search. That will be available in regions that support image generation in AI Mode.

It will be interesting to see if these changes have an effect on Search traffic to sites with many indexed images.

Communities in beehiiv

Beehiiv started as a newsletter platform. Over time more features have been added that keep your audience on the platform (or, to look at it another way, meet your audience where they already are). This includes tools to build your website and host your podcast.

This week beehiiv had their big “Summer Release” event, and the big announcement was Communities. Instead of creating a community on Discord or another 3rd party platform, this lets you and your subscribers engage where they already have an account.

Available for all paid plans.
Set your community to free or limit to paying members.
You can sync your newsletter posts and podcasts to give people something to talk about.
Customize the look to match your beehiiv website and newsletter.
Members can post text, images and audio (video coming soon).
Members can comment, react, reply and repost, as you would expect in a Community.
Create custom channels for specific topics. (Similar to Discord and Slack.)
Each member has their own profile, and you can follow specific profiles.
Communicate privately with direct messages or group chats.
Includes moderation tools and analytics.

If your audience is primarily through beehiiv, this could be a good way to build a community around your content and brand. But communities aren’t portable. Even if you could export the contents, there is nowhere to import them.

Also, if you have a significant audience that’s on YouTube or Instagram or that listens to your Podcast on Spotify or elsewhere, this probably isn’t the best option. Beehiiv also offers Discord integration, where you could also have your YouTube Members or other subscribers and fans.

Also announced:

Copilot, beehiiv’s in-app AI agent. It can give you performance insights or build automations.
Native podcast hosting on all plans.
Rebuilt visual editor for your newsletter, including real-time collaborative editing.
Programmatic ads. Insert an ad block into your newsletter and beehiiv will fill the slot with the “most relevant, highest-paying opportunity for your audience.”
Improvements to podcast hosting, digital product selling, the website builder, and paid subscriptions.

YouTube and Video

YouTube is testing a “streamlined insights-first experience” in YouTube Studio. If you are in the test group, send feedback!

Analytics renamed Insights
Updated user interface, grouping related metrics and charts
Click any chart or metric to open Advanced Mode
Simplified date ranges, custom date ranges only in Advanced Mode
AI Insight Cards: Channel summary, Content patterns, Audience loyalty, Video summary
Trends tab turning into Research tab
Saved Keywords retired (you can export yours as a CSV file or access in Studio Mobile)

YouTube shared their 2025 U.S. Impact Report. This is meant to show how awesome YouTube is for the U.S. economy, so take the numbers with a pinch of salt. But this is what they say the numbers are:

YouTube’s creative ecosystem contributed $60 billion to the U.S. GDP and supported more than 540,000 “full-time equivalent” jobs (including hiring editors, renting studio space, and buying from local suppliers).
All 50 states have at least 10 channels with over 1 million monthly views.
76% of small and medium-sized businesses with a YouTube channel, say YouTube helped them grow their customer base.
77% of creators who say they have a media or entertainment career started that career on YouTube
67% of viewers discuss a YouTube video with a friend or family on a monthly basis.
94% of teachers who use YouTube use YouTube content directly in lessons or assignments.

YouTube’s Creator Insider channel has tips for using Shorts to grow your long form video audience. The tl;dw version:

Add a related video to your Short.
Use a verbal call to action, telling people why they should click the related video.
Reward the click immediately, by making sure your long form video dives right into the content.
Use vertical live streams.

Twitch now lets you create Clips with just your voice. Say “Twitch, Clip That” while you are live and Twitch creates the clip for you. This is rolling out in English for Partners and Affiliates. You can turn this on or off in your stream Clip Settings. Created Clips appear in your Clip Manager. Learn more.

Restream now lets you create additional clips from a project you have already processed for clips. Clips can be specific selections or AI-selected. Creating Clips require a paid subscription.

Gemini Omni is now available in Google Vids. This means higher quality video generation, edit videos by typing changes, or create a personal selfie avatar to insert into your movies. (Selfie avatars are also available in the YouTube Shorts editor and in the Gemini app.) These new features are available to consumer accounts with a Gemini Pro or Ultra subscription and select Workspace editions. This is not available in the European Economic Area, Switzerland or UK.

If you are using Google Vids AI Avatars or AI Voiceovers, you can now customize the pacing and emotional delivery (like [amused] or [confusion]). Plus you can add sound effects. This is available to all users with personal Google Accounts.

Instagram and Facebook expanded Reels dubbing (with lip syncing) to more languages. And you can translate your captions and voice together.

The Edits video editing app now lets you import your own fonts, generate styleable lyrics from selected music, and video effects search.

TikTok is launching an AI literacy project. As part of that, they are joining the C2PA Steering Committee. They say they have labeled over 3 billion videos as AI-generated content using C2PA Content Credentials (which they implemented 2 years ago), creator labeling tools and their own invisible watermarking technology.

LinkedIn shared video best practices: don’t wait too long to get to the point, don’t assume everyone is listening (use captions), and don’t rely on a single shot (add variety to your visuals).

Web Publishing and Search

Useful information if Google Search Console isn’t indexing your website: Google On Discovered vs Crawled Not Indexed Quality Issues & AI-Generated Content

Tumblr now lets you recover deleted accounts for up to 30 days. Previously deletion was immediate and permanent. Note that deleted individual sideblogs, rather than entire accounts, cannot be recovered.

You can now connect your apps to AI Mode in Search, just like you can in Gemini. Currently available apps include Instacart, Canva, and YouTube Music.

Social Media

Patreon has partnered with Cloudflare to block AI training crawlers from published posts.

Facebook launched the option to create multiple personal profiles in 2023. The idea was to have the ability to separate your interests and audiences. Apparently it did not catch on. It is now no longer possible to create new profiles. Existing profiles are not affected. (Thanks for the tip Diego!)

Threads now lets you add a flair when composing a community post.

X tweaked their algorithm to boost visibility of your posts to mutuals (people you follow, who follow you back). They expect that this should increase replies to your posts from people you care about and “help clusters form around interests more easily”.

Tools

The latest version of Snapseed, Google’s pro image editing app, has expanded RAW file support.

Flickr is going to remove inactive accounts starting 30 days after July 15th. Inactive accounts are free accounts with no photos, no comments, no favorites or other activity for at least 90 days. To keep your account active, all you need to do is sign in before August 31st.

NotebookLM has been renamed Gemini Notebook. Google says it will soon be enabled in AI Mode in Search.

Eligible users can now “Talk to Spotify” (beta) to get more information about what you are listening to or revisit your listening history. It’s not only for music. While listening to a podcast or audio book you can ask about the story, author or participants (“What other podcasts has this guest been on?”). This is rolling out to 18+ Premium subscribers in the US, Ireland and Sweden.

Gmail now lets you customize how you want your writing refined. Previously you could choose a pre-set like Polish, Formalize or Shorten.

There’s a new Google Noto font with 3D emoji. They are offered as open source raw .OBJ files that you can do with what you will.

Thanks for reading 🌼

YouTube Clarifies Inauthentic Content Monetization Policy

2026-07-16T12:21:26.016-07:00

This week YouTube renamed the Inauthentic Content monetization policy Generic or Repetitive Content. They added two new categories of content that violate monetization policies: Unsatisfying or Offputting Content and AI Personas Related to Sensitive Topics.

In July 2025 YouTube renamed the Repetitious Content monetization policy Inauthentic Content. This was not a policy change. Instead the update was meant to "clarify that this policy includes content that is mass-produced or repetitive", including new examples. At the time it seemed pretty clear that this was addressing the masses of low-quality AI slop flooding the platform.

This update is a similar clarification.

Note that this does not affect the Reused Content policy.

Are these new monetization policies?

YouTube says explicitly that this is NOT a policy change. Instead this is meant to be a better explanation of current policy.

They also make clear that the policies do not only apply to AI-generated content. It doesn't matter how you create your content, as long as the policies are followed.

This seems like a timely update. Creators who lose monetization often seem to focus on how "unfair" YouTube is, without carefully reading and understanding the policies. Having monetization policies explained in greater detail should hopefully make the system more transparent.

What is "Generic or Repetitive Content"?

The YouTube Help Center has a detailed explanation of the monetization policies, with examples. This is the quick overview.

The main Inauthentic Content policy has been renamed Generic or Repetitive Content.

Generic or repetitive content includes content that looks like it’s made with a template, or that may feel repetitive to viewers after watching several videos in a row from the same channel.

Examples of what violates this policy

What is not allowed to be monetized:

Content with "minimal variation across videos".
Image slideshows or scrolling text without additional value.
Content that appears mass produced, with "generic or unoriginal templates".
The same storyline template across multiple videos.

Context matters! Videos are expected to have educational value, commentary, narrative, and original insights or perspective.

You are allowed to use the same intro and outro, as long as the main content varies from video to video. You are also allowed to have a series that includes the same characters or type of content (like product reviews).

What is "Unsatisfying or Offputting Content"?

Unsatisfying or Offputting Content is "content that relies heavily on emotionally manipulative formulas, mimics existing formats or stories to a degree that the videos feel interchangeable, or appears designed to shock or surprise viewers for the sole purpose of getting views."

Examples of what violates this policy

A brief overview of examples that illustrate what is not allowed to be monetized:

Repeatedly using themes of violence or loss without building a narrative.
Relying on shock value to get views.
Repetitive scenarios of animals in peril, especially relying on generic templates.
Unrelated clips stitched together to shock or surprise viewers.
Realistic-looking, but fake, visuals of a celebrity death or natural disaster that tricks viewers.

Your content should have a cohesive storyline, show your authentic perspective, and express your unique creativity.

How is this applied? The first I noticed this update was a Reddit complaint that a channel was demonetized for "Unsatisfying or Off-Putting Content". The channel content is just videos destroying vacuum cleaners, fans and other appliances.

This policy overlaps with the Advertiser Friendly Content Guidelines, which already prohibit shocking content.

You Cannot Monetize AI Personas Related to Sensitive Topics

AI Image generated with Nano Banana. Prompt: generate a realistic looking medical doctor, lawyer and financial analyst. It should be a group of head and shoulders only.

YouTube's monetization policy explicitly prohibits videos with an AI-generated "expert" that provides advice on what YouTube considers "sensitive topics".

This includes topics that could have serious personal impact:

Health
Legal issues
Finances
Politics

The policy does not appear to be limited to realistic looking AI-generated personas. YouTube does not mention any exceptions for cartoon personas.

Can AI-Generated Content Be Monetized?

You are allowed to use generative AI tools to create monetizable videos. YouTube even offers AI tools in the Shorts Editor, YouTube Create app, and YouTube Studio.

As long as your videos comply with YouTube's monetization policies, the way your video is made should not matter.

How can AI be used?

You can monetize videos where you used AI to help create something original.

Visualize a unique character
Create unique background visuals
Edit videos scripts

And pretty much all video editing software has AI-powered tools for improving your audio, lighting or adding effects.

The YouTube also requires disclosure of realistic AI-generated or meaningfully altered content. YouTube recently added automatic AI detection and clearer AI content labels, but you are still expected to manually disclose realistic AI use.

What can you do if monetization is disabled on your YouTube channel?

If your monetization is disabled for Community Guidelines violations, visit the Earn tab in YouTube Studio for more details.

You have 21 days to submit an appeal. Before you appeal, carefully read the monetization policies, and honestly evaluate your content for compliance. Even if YouTube got it wrong, there was likely something on your channel that appeared to be a policy violation. Understanding that can help your appeal.

If you do not appeal, or your appeal is unsuccessful, you can reapply for the YouTube Partner Program after 90 days. That gives you time to edit or delete videos that violate monetization policy, and upload new videos.

More information

Creator Insider: YouTube's VP of Trust & Safety on YouTube's Inauthentic Content Policy
YouTube Help Center: YouTube channel monetization policies
YouTube Help Center: What to do if your YouTube monetization is disabled
YouTube Help Center: Disclosing the use of Generative AI content.

Creator Weekly: YouTube Shows, Meta Muse Image Backlash, Search Console social profiles

2026-07-11T06:30:00.000-07:00

Hello readers! This week YouTube expanded access to Shows, a new Meta AI tool caused backlash, Google Search Console will track your social media performance in search, and more.

✉ Subscribe to get Creator Weekly by email.
🔴 Join Creator Weekly Live on YouTube.

Top Updates

YouTube Shows are available to all channels in the YouTube Partner Program.
YouTube Creator Music in YouTube Studio will no longer offer paid licenses. Music will either be free or offer revenue sharing
Ask YouTube searchbot is now available on desktop. YouTube shared tips for creators to have their content appear there.
The Meta Muse Image model launched with the option to prompt with any public Instagram profile. After backlash that was removed. You can still edit your own images, generate new images or use new AI effects for Instagram Stories.
X launched a new Video Editor and Recorder in the iOS app.
Google Search Console lets you see how your social posts on Instagram, TikTok, X and YouTube are performing in the search results.
Substack newsletter authors can now offer paid digital perks. And you can import your podcast hosted elsewhere into your account. Plus a bunch of other new features.
Bluesky has improved search results and filters.
Threads lets you set your Likes to private.
Reddit blocks 23 million spam views per day with automated systems.
If you want to read AI-generated articles, apparently LinkedIn is the place to be.
Google Photos added Video Remix to the Create tab. It uses Gemini Omni to change your background, add effects or transform into art styles.

Shows for all YouTube Partners

YouTube Shows are now available to all Creators in the YouTube Partner Program. Shows are a specialized playlist, similar to Podcasts. Learn more.

You can convert an existing playlist, or create a new one.
A Show has seasons that are split into episodes that are either “serial” (meant to be watched in order, listed oldest to newest) or “non-serial” (watched in any order, listed newest to oldest).
A Show has a Show Page with texted poster art (with your stylized title or logo) and optional backdrop as part of your channel. This is eligible for inclusion in Recommended Shows and the Continue Watching shelf on the YouTube homepage.
YouTube recommends a Show have a consistent story or topic, consistent look or feel (intro, thumbnail style, video format), and high quality video and sound.

YouTube Removing Creator Music Paid License Option

YouTube launched Creator Music in 2022, with the promise of “affordable, high-quality music licenses that offer … full monetizing potential”. It launched in beta in the U.S., with the promise of expansion to more creators.

It’s four years later and Creator Music is still in beta, and still only available to channels in the YouTube Partner Program in the U.S.

Now YouTube is phasing out paid licenses in Creator Music on August 10. I wouldn’t be surprised if very few creators actually licensed songs, which can be expensive (hundreds or thousands of dollars). And even if you pay for a license, the terms often limit the license duration. So you would have the expense of the license, but only be able to use the song for, say, 2 years. Not a great deal.

Creator Music will instead focus on free tracks, and tracks that allow revenue sharing.

Existing paid licenses will remain valid until expiration. Unused licenses will be automatically refunded.

Meta Muse Image Backlash

Meta released the Muse Image image generation model. Meta says “it uses advanced reasoning to understand complex prompts, seamlessly blending multiple photos into high-quality creations”. It’s available in Meta AI and powers Instagram Stories effects, and will be coming soon to Facebook, Messenger and tools for advertisers.

There was immediately a backlash. One of the new Muse Image features in Meta AI is the ability to prompt new images by @-mentioning any public Instagram account. Instagram said this would be great for “playful edits between friends.” But anyone who has been on the internet for more than a day can imagine how this could be abused by prompting with the profiles of celebrities, people you dislike, or just random profiles for the lulz.

You could opt out your Instagram account, but you would have to find the buried settings. Most people likely didn’t realize that they were opted in by default.

I doubt Meta cares about what I think or what the typical low-follower-account Instagram user thinks. But they do care what Hollywood thinks. There was also pushback from organizations like SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) and agencies representing megastars. I’m guessing that got Meta’s attention.

Three days after the feature was announced, it was removed. Meta said they “heard the feedback that this feature missed the mark, so it’s no longer available.”

How can you try Muse Image?

In Meta AI you can edit your photos (use suggested prompts for inspiration), create detailed infographics (with legible text), or generate an entirely new image. Muse Image uses Muse Spark to understand your prompt, taking “multiple steps behind the scenes — planning its layout, looking up real-time web context, and intelligently blending multiple visual references at once.”
Instagram has added more than 30 new AI-powered effects (U.S. only). Some of the effects are meant to be subtle, making changes like enhancing the lighting in an image.

YouTube and Video

YouTube Gifts for vertical live streams launched in 45 new countries, including Japan, India and the UK.

The Ask YouTube conversational search bot is now available in the US on desktop. Ask about planning a trip, learning a new skill, comparing products, or about video content. Responses may include clips from long form videos, Shorts and text. Learn more.
What does this mean for Creators? YouTube says:

This is “an additional path for viewers to discover your channel and drives highly engaged users to your content.”
Views within Ask YouTube count towards YouTube Partner Program eligibility and total view count. (But the views aren’t monetized)
If you want your videos to appear in Ask YouTube use descriptive titles, add clear video chapters, and, of course, create high quality content.

YouTube suggests using interactive stickers (poll, quiz, Q&A) on your Shorts to build your audience and community.

X launched a new Video Editor and Recorder in the X iOS app. Features include customizable overlay captions and green screen. The goal is to encourage more original content uploaded directly to the platform.

StreamYard now lets the livestream host allow guests to have access to slide controls.

Web Publishing

Last week Cloudflare announced new filters for AI bots. I noted that if you use Cloudflare you need to check your settings to be sure you aren’t blocking the Googlebot or Bingbot. AdWeek reports that some publishers are considering intentionally blocking the Google crawler. Why do that? As search traffic disappears, publication content appears in the AI Search Overviews, which only benefits Google.

Google Search Console added Platform Properties, a new property type that lets you see how your social platforms (including Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube) are doing in Search. Run a Performance Report to see clicks, impressions and which posts and queries are driving traffic. There’s also an Insights Report with an overview and Achievements. This will become available over the next few weeks.
To add your social profiles:

Open Search Console.
Open the Welcome page (https://search.google.com/search-console/welcome) or click your current list of Properties and choose + Add Property.
Choose your platform and verify the connection.

Substack announced a number of new features:

Paid subscriber “Perks”: In addition to subscriber-only content, you can offer downloadable files, invites to live sessions or other perks.
Save Notes: You can save Notes in the Substack app for Android or iOS.
Scheduled Chats: Schedule a new Chat thread to engage with fans.
Polls in Substack Notes or Posts.
Text formatting: Superscript and subscript, text and highlight colors
Redesigned Podcast and Video Player: Subscribers can adjust playback speed, listen offline or turn on a sleep timer.
Podcast distribution support: Any podcast hosted elsewhere with an RSS feed can be distributed on Substack.
Filter subscriber questions: Live video Q&A can have chat filtered to only show questions.
Reorganized video settings: Podcast controls, clipping, transcripts, auto-publish to YouTube all in one place.
Improved Clipping: Full-screen viewing, control captions and layout.
Model Context Protocol (MCP) support: Integrate with Claude, ChatGPT and other AI to ask about performance, subscribers, engagement and other analytics. (Available to bestsellers only)

Beehiiv has added Linktree integration, which lets people subscribe to your newsletter directly from your Linktree “link in bio” page.

Social Media

Bluesky has improved search with more relevant results and filters for keywords, date range, language and more.

Threads now lets you set your Likes to Private. That way only you and the person who posted the liked post will see the Like.

Reddit shared their improvements in fighting spam. Their automated systems block more than 23 million spam views per day and revoke about 2 million inauthentic votes per day. They are also expanding automated enforcement of harmful content (in English) like hate, harassment, and violent threats.

A recent study by Pangram suggests LinkedIn is the “most AI-saturated platform” with more than 40% of long form posts likely fully AI-generated (comments are also frequently AI-generated). And nearly half of article posts on X appear to be at least partially AI written. Of the platforms they reviewed, Substack has the most human-written AI content, with only 10% of articles fully AI-written.

LinkedIn shared tips for increasing your reach, including regular posting, engaging with comments, framing your post as a question and answer, and aiming for between 200 and 300 words. There are more tips in the article. No, it doesn’t say to plug all that into AI, but that’s probably what people do.

Tools

Google Photos has added Video Remix to the Create Tab. Use Gemini Omni to transform videos into shareable video clips. Learn more. (It weirds me out that the announcement calls this "making memories". It's not doing that! It's turning video of actual moments into a fantasy.)

Background replacement, relighting effects, art styles (watercolor, sketchbook, oil painting effects)
Requires AI Plus, Pro or Ultra subscription.
Available in 14 countries, including the US, India, and other select countries in South America, Asia and the Middle East. See the list.
Must be 18+
Videos must be backed up, and 9:16 or 16:9 (otherwise they will be center cropped). Learn more.
Your original video must be under 60 seconds long, and you can remix a 1 to 10 second clip.

Creator Weekly: YouTube Image Post Music, Edits Bilingual Captions, X Live Studio

2026-07-04T06:30:00.000-07:00

Summer is in full swing, and I hope you are keeping cool! This is a holiday week, with just a few updates including news from YouTube, Meta, Substack and X.

🌐 Subscribe to the Creator Weekly Newsletter to get posts in your Inbox every Saturday.
🔴 Join Creator Weekly live on Sunday to discuss this week’s updates.

Tip of the week: Use the Google Vids Screen Recorder extension to record both your screen and yourself. Captured video can be edited in Google Vids (which is free for everyone). It’s great for creating tutorials. Check out my video to see the results.

Top Updates

Celebrate the US’s 250th birthday with silly YouTube Shorts effects, historical images, American music and live streamed celebrations.
Add licensed popular music to your YouTube image posts to make them more engaging if they appear in the Shorts feed.
Gemini Omni is available to generate clips in the YouTube Shorts editor and YouTube Create app. And you can use a selfie Avatar.
YouTube shared tips for creating Shorts and using Ask Studio.
Edits video editing app can auto-generate bilingual captions, and add overlays to templates.
Meta Glasses have new Instagram Stories video and editing features.
X launched Live Studio (beta) for live stream management.
Substack posts include automatic translation and country-specific leaderboards.
AdSense ad intents may now show Gemini generated content in addition to display ads.
Cloudflare can filter AI bot traffic by type (Search, Training, and Agents). Check your default settings!
Social media GIFs aren’t quite the same, as Google kills the Tenor API.
Threads live chat can have co-hosts and lets you easily share to our feed.
There are updates for Apple Creator Studio, Gemini with Google Photos and Slides,

The US at 250 🇺🇸🎆

The United States Declaration of Independence was adopted 250 years ago today, on July 4, 1776.

YouTube suggests posting content around the 4th of July and “you could be featured on the YouTube homepage.” There are also new Shorts effects: Fireworks, Food Ranker and Coloring Book.

If you search for America 250 content on YouTube in the US, you’ll see featured content on a dedicated shelf.

C-SPAN has partnered with YouTube to broadcast America 250 celebrations on YouTube TV and livestream on YouTube. Watch C-SPAN.

Google Arts & Culture has Making of a Nation: America at 250, celebrating the history of the American Revolution with objects and documents from top museums and archives.

Spotify gave an overview of American music artists and creators.

Flickr shared American historical images from museums and archives on the platform.

YouTube and Video

YouTube has expanded the music options for image Posts. Image posts can appear in the Shorts feed on mobile devices, giving them more visibility. You can add up to 15 seconds of audio, choosing from the royalty-free tracks in the YouTube Audio library, licensed and popular music, or AI-generated Dream Tracks. Music and text overlays can be added when creating a Post in the YouTube mobile app. Posts show in the Shorts feed will count as Views in Analytics.

Back in May, YouTube added the Gemini Omni video model to YouTube Shorts Remix. Now it’s available for the “Create Video” option in the YouTube Shorts editor and YouTube Create app. Generate videos up to 10 seconds, using up to 3 reference images. You may even be able to use an Avatar version of yourself.

Five tips to inspire your first YouTube Short.

There’s an official guide on how to get started with Ask Studio in YouTube Studio.

The Edits app now lets you easily add automatically-generated bilingual captions, in English, Indonesian, Russian, Portuguese, Gujarati, Spanish, Hindi, Korean, Bengali, German, Italian, Thai, French, Japanese, and Kannada. Also new: lock the position of clips in templates and new summer sound effects.

There are new Instagram Stories video creation features for Meta Glasses, including immersive Spin View (viewers can rotate their phone to see the full perspective), Multi-Cam syncing of your glasses and phone cameras in Stories, and the option to adjust playback speed, reframe the action, and balance the audio.

If you use StreamYard for multi-aspect-ratio streams (or dual format streaming), you can now create separate portrait and landscape layouts.

X introduced Live Studio in beta (x.com/i/live-studio). This is a livestreaming dashboard that is part of their Creator Studio suite of tools. It makes it easy to schedule or start live streams, live chat controls, real-time analytics and the option to download completed streams.Access requires an X Premium subscription. Learn more.

Web Publishing

If you have AdSense ad intents ads on your website, users that interact with a link, anchor or chip may see related Gemini-generated content, in addition to display ads. AdSense says, “This not only drives additional revenue for you when users click on ads, but also keeps users engaged with your page through related Gemini-generated content.”

Readers can now translate Substack posts from English into 15 different languages, and from 100 languages into English. They have also added new country leaderboards in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and UK.

If you use Cloudflare to protect your website (including on their free tier), there are now more granular options for managing AI traffic. You can now separately control access to AI bots for Search, Training and Agents. Starting September 15, the default settings will block Training and Agent on pages that display ads (which implies a human visitor goal), while Search is allowed. Warning: enforcement uses the most restrictive applicable rules, which means multi-purpose crawlers (Googlebot, Applebot, BingBot) are included if you block Training.

From SEO Roundtable: Google's Head Of Search - Liz Reid: We Want Great Content To Shine.

Social Media

Why are GIFs on social media different now? On June 30, Google killed Tenor API access for 3rd party developers. Tenor is a GIF database, sort of like Giphy. If you use GBoard, Google Chat or Google Messages and have inserted a GIF, that is Tenor. Google had an API that let developers use that functionality in their own apps for free. It was used by many platforms, including Discord, X, Bluesky, and WhatsApp. Many platforms have switched to Klipy, which has a different selection of GIFs, which may mean your fave is missing. (Tenor is still in use on Google properties.)

Instagram published a complete guide to Instagram stories. Everything you need to know.

Threads community live chat has new features, including up to 3 co-hosts, community champions as hosts, an easy way to share messages from live chat to your feed, and translations. The live chats are public “real time” discussions, available inside communities on mobile. They are working on the desktop version.

X has said they want to better reward original creators, penalizing creators that simply aggregate popular content. Head of Product Nikita Bier announced this week that an experiment “removing the Top-30 highest paid revenue share accounts [using the old payment formula] from the For You timeline increased both time spent and daily active users on X.” All these accounts posted a high volume of copied content. Those 30 accounts supposedly have had their revenue cut “up to 99%” since then. It’s not clear to me if the issue is the volume of posting, or what they post (often engagement or rage bait) or both.

Tools

Apple Creator Studio, the recently-announced creative app bundle for Apple devices, has new features. This includes new AI tools and integration of Pixelmator Pro, across Final Cut Pro, Keynote, and other apps, and new music tools for Logic Pro. Find out about all the updates here.

Gemini now lets you connect Personal Intelligence with Nano Banana and Google Photos.This lets Gemini generate “deeply personalized” images, based on your “taste and lifestyle.” This is available to eligible users in the US.

You can create a full presentation with Gemini in Google Slides. Previously you could only create one slide at a time. Ground the information in your Google Drive files and match the style of another presentation. The generated slides are fully editable. This is currently only supported for English. This is available for personal Google Accounts with an AI Pro or Ultra subscription, and select Workspace editions.

The Google Drive mobile app now has access to AI Overviews and Ask Gemini. This is available for personal Google Accounts with an AI Pro or Ultra subscription, and select Workspace editions.

If you are a WhatsApp user, you can now reserve a username. The username lets you communicate with people without revealing your phone number. Creators and small business have the option to claim their existing Instagram or Facebook username on WhatsApp.

Getty Images will likely terminate its merger agreement with Shutterstock. This is likely due to concerns from UK regulators. The stock image platforms announced their planned merger in January 2025, so this has been ongoing for over a year.

Interesting Reading

Talking Points Memo: TikTok Doesn’t Want Us To Talk About the News

Prospect Magazine: Life at the end of the metaverse

SEO Roundtable: Fraudulent DMCA Takedowns Wreak Havoc In Google Search

Thanks for reading! 🌼

Creator Weekly: YouTube Shorts Player, Instagram for TV, Facebook Creator Studio

2026-06-27T06:25:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, especially friends in Europe, I hope you are staying cool. There is no summer vacation for creator updates!

This week there are updates for YouTube Shorts and Instagram viewers, YouTube and Facebook creators, website owners and more.

✉ Subscribe to get Creator Weekly in your email inbox every Saturday.

🔴 Join Creator Weekly live on Sunday

Top Updates

YouTube Shorts player redesign with 2x speed, hearts replacing likes and Clear Screen mode. The dislike button is gone.
YouTube Studio Content tab redesign with Notices, Visibility, and Estimated Revenue.
YouTube Studio app Account Status page gives an overview of any critical channel issues.
YouTube Studio has new AI-powered comment filters that let you search by general topic or mood. You can also find similar comments.
Instagram for TV expanded to more devices and has more features for Reels viewing.
Twitch users can export Clips directly to Snapchat.
Restream can now connect to AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT to manage your streams.
Google Search Generative AI Reports are available to more website owners.
Google Search released the June 2026 Spam update.
Beehiiv partnered with Cloudflare to let you control AI crawler access to your site, lets you offer Group Subscriptions to your newsletter, and has a new partnership with Spotify to let podcast subscribers access your content in both places.
WordPress(dot)com has an experimental Feature Clip tool to turn posts into vertical videos.
Blog on Offprint, Leaflet or pckt.blog, which are built on AT Protocol, to federate with Bluesky. Bluesky offers a discount on Pro plans.
Cannes Lions 2026 saw big platforms, brands, and advertisers gather to celebrate ads. Google and YouTube, TikTok, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), Snap, LinkedIn and Pinterest announced new ways for Brands and Creators to connect (plus ad design tools). Most interesting? Collab posts on LinkedIn.
Facebook is bringing back the Facebook Creator Studio app with AI powered insights, brainstorming, and comments. Plus a new Creator Dashboard.
Plus new Gemini features and more.

YouTube Shorts Player Redesign

YouTube Shorts player in the YouTube app is getting a makeover. Learn more.

The new Clear Screen mode temporarily hides icons and other overlays.
You can play Shorts at 2x speed by pressing the side of the screen. You can then pull down to lock the speed at 2x for that Short.
It’s easier to mute the audio by tapping the screen to pause, then tapping the mute icon.
A heart ❤️ replaces the like 👍 button
The dislike👎 button is gone. Use the “Not Interested” and “Don't Recommend This Channel” options in the menu instead. You can see historical Dislikes stats for your Shorts in YouTube Studio Analytics.

These changes only affect the Shorts player, so you won’t see changes for long form videos or live streams.

YouTube Studio Content Tab Updates

YouTube updated the Content tab in YouTube Studio, better organizing the most important information about video status . (Watch a brief video overview or learn more about the Content tab).

Notices

The Notices column shows any warnings about your content, including policy and copyright issues. There are icons if there is an alert. Hover over the icon to see a card explaining the limitations, or in the mobile app, tap on the icon.

A dash (-) means no current restrictions
A black (i) in a circle is an informational notice, with info that does not currently affect your content. That can include copyright claims on content before you monetize, or that your video has licensed music.
A yellow i in a circle means a partial limitation. It includes age restriction, limited ad earnings, comments disabled or other issues that limit your content’s reach, earnings or feature access.
A red X means a complete limitation, including blocked, removed, locked as private or ineligible to earn revenue.
A stack of lines with a checkmark means that YouTube is still running system checks.

This replaces the green and yellow monetization icons, which focused on suitability to run ads. The new Notice icons give more detailed information about any issues.

Visibility

The Content tab also includes a clearer Visibility column (Public, Private, Members Only, Unlisted, greyed out if YouTube has placed this on your video). This is the visibility you have set. Any limitations, like copyright descriptions, are now in the Notices column.

Earnings

There is also a new Estimated Revenue column (with numbers that take about 2 days to process). This includes earnings from ads, Shopping, YouTube Premium and fan funding.

The Likes/Dislikes ration was removed

The Likes/Dislikes ratio was removed. Information about Dislikes can still be found in Analytics for individual videos on the Engagement tab. You can also use Ask Studio to just ask about likes and dislikes on a video.

Instagram for TV

Instagram for TV is getting new features. It launched small in December 2025, when it was made available for the Amazon Fire TV. It expanded to Google TV in February. This week it’s available for Samsung TVs (2020 or newer) in the US, with new features that are supposed to make it better to watch together with your friends.

Channels based on your interests, with shelves of Reels organized For You, Popular with Friends, and From People You Follow
Cast from your phone (including your Instagram Saved tab) to Google TV and Fire TV.
Stories along the top of the player (just like the web).
Horizontal video shelf.
Also being explored (but not available yet) are more creator-friendly formats: longer-form video, episodic series, live on TV.

Instagram’s VP of Product Tessa Lyons says she hopes that by the end of the year “creators really see Instagram as a place for long-form content”, which would (literally) play nicely on TVs.

Web Publishers

Google Search Generative AI Reports in Search Console show how your site is viewed in Google’s AI Overviews, AI Mode, and generative AI features in Discover. It launched in the first week of June to select website owners in the UK. This week it started rolling out to more sites in more countries.

Google Search released the June 2026 Spam Update. Google says this is a “normal spam update”

Google Search Console has a new Verification FAQ that should answer your questions about verifying your website in Console.

Beehiiv has a new partnership with Cloudflare, which lets you see how AI crawlers access your web content and decide which services get access. This is available to all beehiiv publishers with a connected custom domain.

Beehiiv now lets you offer Group Subscriptions. The purchaser becomes an account admin, and can distribute the newsletter to individuals in their organization

If you host your podcast on beehiiv, you can now sell premium podcast subscriptions through beehiiv, and give subscribers access to the content on Spotify.

WordPress(dot)com (not to be confused with the free open source WordPress content management system) launched a new experimental Feature Clip tool that uses AI to generates a vertical video from a post. The video is 9:16, 8 seconds long, 720p and can be downloaded as a MP4 file. You can generate 10 clips per site every 24 hours.This is available for Premium, Business and Commerce plans.

If you use WordPress(dot)com to run your newsletter, you can now add a welcome message, describe subscription tiers, and optionally offer a free plan.

If you want to try blogging on a platform built on AT Protocol (which federates with Bluesky), you can get 25% off a Pro plan at Offprint, Leaflet or pckt.blog. All three platforms use the Standard.site schema, and links render quite nicely on Bluesky.

Cannes Lions 2026

This week was the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. And by creativity, they mean ads. It’s been called the Oscars of the advertising industry. Big advertising platforms like Google and Meta use it to announce ad-related updates. And it’s a huge gathering for players in the “creator economy”, including creators and influencers.

One of the themes was new tools to connect Creators and Brands. If you are an advertiser, also do check out the links (there are tons of AI-powered updates, of course).

Google is adding new tools for advertising on YouTube. Part of that is a new Content & Creator Insights API, “providing richer information about YouTube creators and audiences, enabling more effective media planning for agencies.”
TikTok added the ability for advertisers to build custom Creator Networks within Content Suite, “allowing advertisers to build a curated pool of creators, employees, partners, or brand advocates to receive campaign briefs or turn their existing brand-relevant videos into high-performing ads”. This is launching with Starbucks, building on their Green Apron Program of employee creators.
Meta announced that Creator Marketplace will now include Facebook Creators, in addition to Instagram Creators. And the Partnership Ads Hub is making it easier for businesses to find creator content to turn into an ad, with creator consent (creators can give pre-permission to speed up the process), and paid performance insights. The new Meta Creator Marketing Hub will launch later this year, combining the Creator Marketplace and Partnership Ads Hub.
Meta is bringing Live Video Ads to Instagram and expanding them globally on Facebook to “expand awareness of shopping streams”. They are also expanding the Affiliate Partner program, adding new live shopping tools, and making it easier for viewers to buy.
Snapchat will be launching the Snap Creator Network, an AI-powered system to help match creators and brands. This is a “first step toward a more agentic creator marketplace, where AI can turn advertiser intent into ready-to-launch creator campaigns, managing discovery, activation, and fulfillment end-to-end.”
LinkedIn added a new Collaborative Posts feature that lets pages and members share post authorship. All collaborators are listed at the top of the post. This is being tested over the next few months.
Pinterest is adding AI-powered shopping experiences.

More Social Media

Pinterest now lets creators link their Amazon Storefront, easily tag Amazon products in pins, and feature items from their Storefront on their profile.

Facebook is bringing back the Facebook Creator Studio app, “reimagined as an AI-powered companion app.” Facebook originally removed Creator Studio in 2023, pushing Creators to use its Business Suite platform instead. The new app includes:

Facebook Creator Assistant, which you can use to ask questions about your content, get personalized guidance or brainstorm ideas.
Personalized insights into your content.
AI-powered comment prioritization, highlighting the “most important” comments and drafting replies “in your voice”.
Creator Dashboard, which will be split from the Professional Dashboard. There will also be a separate Business Dashboard. Meta finally realized the needs of Creators and businesses are not the same.

Tools

Gemini has new features:

There’s a Google Play connected app to find and install apps and make in-app purchases.
Businesses can connect their Google Business Profile for real-time insights, and there are new business notebooks to organize your files.

Worth Reading

Aresluna: Show your hands honor for the strange power they bring you. This is an interactive history of designing “finger-friendly interactions” on typewriters, keyboards, and screens.

Social Media Today: Meta plans to replace 90% of content review staff with AI. What could possibly go wrong?

Looking toward the future in Scientific American: Young American Scientists

Thanks for reading! 🌼

Creator Weekly: UK teen social media bans, YouTube Membership Smart Pricing, Threads Communities

2026-06-20T06:30:00.000-07:00

Summer is officially here! Be sure to take a break now and again to enjoy the outdoors (this is also a reminder for me).

This week there are new limits on teens using social media, updates for YouTube Partners, Twitch Streamers, writers on Substack, Beehiiv, and Mastodon, Threads Communities, LinkedIn Profiles and more.

Subscribe to the free Creator Weekly newsletter.
Join Creator Weekly live on Sunday.

Tip: If you live stream AND you are on Bluesky, be sure to set the LIVE badge on your profile. Learn how.

Top Updates

UK will ban social media for under-16s and limit live streaming for all under-18s.
YouTube Partners can update Membership pricing every 12 months, and optionally use new smart pricing recommendations.
Twitch rolled out Dual Format streaming to all, and 4K streaming to Affiliates and Partners. If you don’t want to set up Dual Format streaming yourself, use Streamlabs.
Twitch has a new Creator Certification program for Sponsorships.
Google Vids added new Veo video generation tools and expanded the selection of default AI avatars.
Edits video editing app can export video up to 15 minutes, and has new AI Restyle and Opacity Blending tools. Plus new Reel metrics if you are sharing to Instagram.
Substack has a new Creator Kit media kit tool and will add brand partnerships.
Beehiiv MCP (which lets you connect to AI platforms) now have write access to create posts, launch polls, and more.
Mastodon launched Collections (curated lists of profiles) and email Newsletters.
Bluesky now lets you reply to specific messages in Group Chats and wants to hear from you about Communities.
Facebook added AI Mode in search (with info from Groups & Reels) and can make cutout collages and videos from your camera roll.
Threads hit 500 million monthly users, and has added new Communities features and “Your Algo” to influence your feed algorithm.
Instagram image carousels can have a separate caption for each image.
LinkedIn simplified the look of Posts, enabled GIF replies and lets you add Connected Apps to show your expertise.
Android 17 is rolling out with Screen Reaction recording, AI music and video tools and more.
Plus more updates for website owners, video creators, live streamers, Android phones, Adobe Firefly, Google Play Books, Google Scholar and more.

UK to limit Social Media to 16+

Under-16s in the UK will be banned from social media starting in Spring 2027. This is similar to the recent age restrictions in Australia.

But the UK regulations take it further. 16- and 17-year olds will not have access to live streaming or being able to be contacted by strangers by default, including on gaming platforms.

The ban will apply to Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and X, but not messaging services. Social media companies, including YouTube, Meta and Snapchat, argue this will push teens to the less safe corners of the internet.

And it’s not clear it will work. Natalia Perez-Gonzalez at Creator Spotlight notes that in Australia, where under-16s were banned from social media last year, 60% of 15-year-olds who previously had accounts were still using those platforms.

A ban doesn't make teenagers disappear — or even protect them — so much as it scatters them into group chats, DMs, gaming servers, and uncovered apps with far less moderation and far less visibility. It also pulls teens out of the open, legible spaces where brands, media, and the rest of us currently read the first signals of what's coming.

She also notes that teen girls set the trends, or at least are good at identifying trends. Platforms cater to that, so banning younger teens may make the internet less vibrant. And it’s not clear that limiting teen expression online is a good thing.

It’s also concerning that this will require platforms to collect more personal information. Adults will NOT have to verify their age if their account:

has been open more than 16 years
has a credit card connected to it
linked to an email address that’s age-verified in other ways
completed age verification under the Online Safety act

Even so, many 16 and 17-year-olds and adults will have to go through age verification.

Possibly related: Meta and YouTube have recently added new tools for parents and a safer experience for teens.

YouTube and Video Updates

YouTube is updating the pricing of Memberships to reflect current exchange rates. You have until August 17 (60 days) to decide whether to use the recommended market pricing or set custom prices.

There are also new smart pricing recommendations inside YouTube Studio, with personalized suggestions based on your location, your members’ location, your audience and your engagement with members. Pricing for new members can be updated once every 12 months per Membership tier (current members keep their pricing). YouTube is clear that they don't guarantee the recommended prices will increase your earnings, so use the suggestions with caution.

If selling things is your passion, YouTube shared a short explainer on how to get started with the YouTube Shopping Affiliate Program.

Twitch launched a Creator Certification program. Complete the brief Creator Camp course and get a special badge, training to maximize sponsorship opportunities and early access to Open Invite campaigns. The course covers Sponsorships on Twitch and creating brand suitable content.Learn more.

This week Twitch rolled out Dual Format streaming for all streamers and 2k (1440p) streaming for Partners and Affiliates. Vertical stream VOD expire after 7 days

Streamlabs now supports dual format streaming to Twitch. The desktop app uses cloud based streaming, which uses less upload bandwidth and doesn’t tax the CPU and GPU on your computer as much. That keeps stream quality high. Dual Output to one vertical and one horizontal destination is free. Streamlabs also supports dual streaming to YouTube.

StreamYard added bulk actions to manage your media assets like overlays, backgrounds and videos.

Google Vids has new Veo video generation tools. This is available to personal Google Accounts with an AI Pro or Ultra subscription, and Google Workspace accounts. Generated clips are standard definition (720p) and 8 seconds long. Now you can:

Extend existing video clips
Generate multiple clips at once

Google Vids expanded the default AI avatar selection from 23 to 53, including new photorealistic, 3D cartoon and graphic novel styles. You can also generate avatars in 16 new languages. And custom avatars can now be used to prompt generated video clips where they can move around. This is available to personal Google Accounts with an AI Pro or Ultra subscription, and Google Workspace accounts. Learn more.

The Edits video editing app has added longer video export (up to 15 minutes), Restyle with an AI prompt, and Opacity Blending (blend stickers, text and captions with your video). If you use Edits to post to Instagram, there are audience insights that you can share as a PDF, and compare metrics for up to 3 Reels.

TikTok has new rules for shopping livestreams. TikTok wants “lively verbal interactions” with your audience while showing your face. They prohibit AI-generated voices or audio recordings, screen recordings, or still images or animated content that covers more than half the screen. And you have to demonstrate and reference the promoted product.

Web Publishers

Google Search Central News has a new video covering Generative AI Reporting in Google Search Console, Search Profiles for US creators and publishers, and more tips from the SEO community.

And in the latest episode of Search Off the Record, Google’s John Mueller and Martin Splitt discuss whether you should use Markdown for your website. Does it help AI crawlers understand your site? Probably not. And Markdown can hurt discovery.

If you are a bestseller publisher on Substack you can use the new Creator Kit tool to create a media kit to share with potential sponsors. Substack says that a new platform for brand partnerships is “coming next”.

Beehiiv has added write access to the beehiiv MCP (Model Context Protocol). If you connect your beehiiv account to Claude or other AI (like Gemini), you can use it to create and edit posts, launch products and polls, or build multi-step automations. Write access requires a paid plan; free accounts can use the MCP for analytics and similar tasks.

Social Media

Mastodon launched Collections, curated lists of profiles to follow. It’s designed to minimize the potential for spam.

You can only be included if you opt in to “Feature me in discovery experiences”
Collections can include up to 25 profiles.
There’s no “follow all” shortcut.
Collections can be shared with a link
Collections appear on the creator's profile, under the Featured tab.

Mastodon has redesigned profiles to be more “ergonomic” and easier to edit.

The new Newsletter feature on Mastodon lets you opt-in to allow anonymous users (not signed in to Mastodon or a Fediverse account) to follow your posts by email.

Designed for institutional accounts, journalists, bloggers and creators with their own server.
It must be enabled for your server, as this can be expensive to manage.
Your account must have an assigned role with the necessary permissions. (Mastodon says discuss it with your server admin)

Bluesky updated Group Chats so you can reply to specific messages. Group Chats just launched, and are a first step towards Communities.

And if you are interested in building a Community on Bluesky, the design research team wants to hear from you.

Facebook added AI Mode in search. Ask a question and Meta AI will base the answer in public posts in Groups and Reels. The example is looking for travel suggestions, which is pretty low stakes. But there is a lot of bad information and promotional content posted on Facebook, which seems like would make this not particularly valuable.

If you have given Facebook access to your camera roll (!) , there is a new AI editing option that can create cutout collages and videos. You can also change your clothing with AI, like adding your soccer team’s jersey.

Threads has reached 500 million monthly active users, bringing it close to the activity on X. There are a new Community and timeline features:

Communities are out of beta.
Communities Hub on the left menu to find your Communities and suggested Communities.
Distinct Community Icons
Community Progress to show if a topic is close to becoming a Community.
Community Champion status to more users.
Local Communities for Japan, Korea and Taiwan.
“Your Algo” to indicate which topics you do or don’t want to see. The changes can last 1, 3 or 7 days. This is available in the US, Canada, UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Instagram image carousels can now have up to 20 slides, with a separate caption for each slide. This is a “long-requested feature”.

LinkedIn is simplifying the look of Posts in the main feed so there is “less visual noise”. What that means in practical terms is there are just small icons for Like, Comment, Repost, Send (and no text labels). Follow the link to see what it looks like.

LinkedIn added Connected Apps. Connect the apps you use and they will display on your profile with a statement about how you use the app (which is provided by the app, and cannot be edited).Apps include (or will include soon) Adobe Express, beehiiv, Buffer, duolingo, fiverr, GitHub, HeyGen, HubSpot, Magic Patterns, Replit, Riverside, Sprinklr, Zapier and a bunch more. The purpose is “building credibility”, but note that it does not include professional software like Adobe Creative Cloud, Microsoft Office, Figma, AutoCAD, or Affinity.

And now you can add GIFs to your LinkedIn comments.

Tools

Adobe Firefly AI Assistant has new tools, including brand kit creation, short product video creation, create video from storyboards (and create storyboards), Quick Cut (assemble footage into a first draft that you can edit). You can also use natural language, invite collaborators and set workflow preferences. AI Assistant is available in public beta for Premiere, Photoshop, Illustrator, Frame.io and InDesign. It’s available in private beta for for After Effects.

Upgraded Adobe Firefly can save elements (characters, locations, objects) and let you organize projects. This is available in private beta. Sign up here.

Adobe Premiere has new features including faster AI masking, new audio editing controls, single word captioning, new dynamic transitions and improved connections to Firefly and Adobe Stock. There are also updates to After Effects, Photoshop, Illustrator and Lightroom. Click the link for details.

Google Calendar now lets you choose from 24 default colors for events, rather than 11, and there is a full color picker on the web.

Google Scholar is a repository of research articles. This being Google, it has an AI-powered Scholar Labs search feature. With the latest update, it’s faster, scans more papers, and allows users to do 10x more searches per day. For each paper in the search results, it describes why it might be relevant. And you can ask follow-up questions. My take is that this looks useful, but don’t rely on the AI-generated descriptions which can be misleading.

Google Play Books now has Book Insights. Yes, this is an AI chatbot that lets you ask about the plot, characters, locations or other information. No spoilers, because it will only reference the text up to your current reading location.

Android 17 is starting to roll out. It includes the new Screen Reactions recording (record yourself, along with your phone screen), and a lot more.

There are also creative features in this month’s Pixel drop (see availability by device):

Screen Reactions (with Android 17) are coming first to Pixel devices.
Create videos with Gemini Omni remixed from your photo or video references. Requires an AI subscription.
Create original music tracks with lyrics in Gemini from a photo or text prompt.
Real time voice translation between English and Hindi. Requires a Pixel 10a or higher device.

Microsoft introduced the new Surface Pro (which can be used as a tablet or laptop) and Surface Laptop. Both ship with Affinity “pinned to the start menu” for professional design, photo and publishing tools. Canva acquired Affinity in 2024, and it is free to use.

Creator Weekly: YouTube DMs, Instagram Grid, Spotify Podcast Plays

2026-06-13T06:30:00.000-07:00

Hello dear readers, this week the World Cup tournament begins, with features for fans and creators. Plus there are creator updates for YouTube, Spotify, Instagram, Threads, Bluesky, and more.

📰 Subscribe to the free Creator Weekly newsletter.
🔴 Join Creator Weekly live on Sunday.

Top Updates

There are World Cup features and content for creators and fans.
Apple Podcasts will get better support for video podcasts on Macs and tvOS, editing with Apple Intelligence in Photos features, and more from WWDC 2026.
YouTube DMs have expanded to the US, Brazil and more countries.
The YouTube Creator Responsibility Policy now prohibits using YouTube’s tools to create content that harms others (including spam).
The YouTube Remix button has moved.
YouTube’s portrait mode mobile player has been simplified.
You can now view non-music YouTube Shorts in picture-in-picture mode.
Spotify has redefined a podcast “play” to require watching or listening for at least 30 seconds.
Spotify for Creators also added new analytics data and graphs.
Restream now lets you automatically publish Live Clips as you stream. And you can now livestream to Patreon directly.
The Edits video editing app lets you try Beta features, and will soon have a desktop version.
AdSense expanded PayPal Hyperwallet payments in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Google Search Central posted guidance on hiring an SEO and using 3rd party SEO tools.
Canva has new integrations with Google Gemini.
NotebookLM can now help you research and output information in more formats.
Instagram lets you reorder your profile image grid.
Instagram “Your Algorithm” is coming to the main feed, and Adam Mosseri explained why top down algorithmic feeds make people feel bad.
Bluesky now lets you attach up to 10 photos to a post, create Group Chats with up to 50 people and share your profile with a QR code.
LinkedIn added a Creator Marketplace to connect Creators with Brands (now in Alpha).

World Cup For Creators and Fans

This week starts the World Cup, the biggest sporting event in the world.

Here in the Bay Area, it feels like there hasn’t been that much ado about the matches being played locally. The Australian team has been welcomed as they make Oakland their home base, and there are local watch parties, but people don’t want to pay big prices to attend matches for low ranked teams.

It will be interesting to see if excitement builds over time.

Of course this is going to be a Creator and fan bonanza, both for big names, and anyone else who wants to join in.

On YouTube there is an official international group of FIFA World Cup 2026 creators sharing their experiences. There are also official effects in the Shorts editor, available to everyone.
On TikTok fans should search for “World Cup”, then tap “Play Now” to unlock collector cards. There is also the new TikTok Pro Events app in the US with curated FIFA World Cup 2026 feeds, merch, and content from the TikTok team of official Creator Correspondents.
Meta Threads has a dedicated event Live Chat and World Cup Community, special stickers & emoji, live scores and collect media highlights.
Instagram added enhanced World Cup search to surface top Reels, Stories and profiles. There’s also a new Goal! AI voice effect in DMs, with a “surprise” animation.
Facebook lets you double tap the Facebook logo at the top of the Feed to enter Football Mode with “themed reactions and other surprises.” You can use AI “Wear It” in Stories to add your team’s jersey to your photo, or add soccer-themed stickers. There are also new protections for players (from harassment) and fans (from getting scammed).
On Bluesky you might want to add this sports journalist Starter Pack.
SnapChat also has official creators (and athletes) posting, special Lens and Bitmoji collections, creative tools and a World Cup Topic Chat.
Twitch has a Football Fest category, a special badge you can get by watching at least 15 minutes of content in the Football Fest 2026 Event Category, and a special FootballHype emote. Clearly they don’t have permission to actually refer to the World Cup, but they are getting in on the action.

Apple WWDC 2026

This week Apple announced their latest features and tools at their annual World Wide Developers Conference. I’m going to list a few highlights, but you can get a more comprehensive overview here.

Apple Podcasts in tvOS gets a redesign with “video podcast playback, a new sidebar navigation …, and support for the podcast creators’ episode and show artwork.
Apple Podcasts on the Mac have an improved video podcast experience, including picture-in-picture support (coming this fall).
Apple Podcasts are adding a new “search within show” option to find episodes faster.
iCloud Shared Albums are getting a number of improvements including new collaborative temporary albums, support for more file types, full resolution sharing and the ability for even non-Apple users to participate.
Siri AI and Apple Intelligence is integrated across the Apple ecosystem from the new Image Playground to communications in Mail and Messages to answering questions and more. These are powered by Apple Foundation Models, which are “custom-built in collaboration with Google and its Gemini models”.
The Photos app has new AI editing features, including Spatial Reframing (to change perspective), Extend (to expand images), and improved Clean Up (to remove objects).
Image Playground now lets you generate high-quality photorealistic images (rather than cartoons). You can use it to create Lock Screen wallpapers, Contact Posters or share the images.
You can have Safari monitor web pages for changes.

Apple also made a big point to explain that European users will have delayed access to the new Siri AI, due to the Digital Markets Act.

YouTube and Video

YouTube DMs have expanded outside Europe, and are now available in the US, Brazil and several other countries. There's also a new messaging icon to make it easier to manage your conversations. This is designed for sharing videos with friends and family, rather than for Creators to communicate with fans.

You can only invite people to chat with a link shared on a 3rd party platform. No inviting channel names or handles.
You must be 18 (and possibly verify your age).
In the mobile YouTube app only.

YouTube updated its Creator Responsibility policy to add that “using YouTube’s features, tools, or services to create new or modified content that harms or is intended to harm others is considered a serious violation.” This includes creating spam and covers both on- and off-platform behavior. Violations can result in loss of access to YouTube features or monetization being disabled. The Creator Responsibility policy was introduced in February 2018 as part of the fallout of the Logan Paul incident.

The Remix button under YouTube videos is now in the Share menu (rather than being a separate button). This is available in the YouTube mobile app, and opens the Shorts editor.

YouTube simplified the mobile player in portrait mode. Watch to learn more.

Like, dislike, share and ask have new icons.
The Like count moved from the like button to below the video title (next to the channel name).
The horizontal scrolling list of action buttons is replaced with a 3 dot menu icon (including Save, Download and Report options).
No changes for landscape, desktop or TV.

Picture-in-picture viewing for YouTube non-music Shorts is now expanding to everyone globally. YouTube Premium subscribers can access picture-in-picture music content.

YouTube ended the Shopping tags in posts experiment. You can no longer tag products, and as of July 3rd viewers will no longer see existing product tags.

Spotify has updated their definition of a “Play” for podcasts, and now will count the number of times a podcast was watched or listened to for at least 30 seconds. This is the Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting (AMP) Measurement definition. How does this align with other platforms? Apple reportedly counts every play longer than 0 seconds. YouTube counts a a TrueView ad view after 30 seconds, and it’s assumed that long form video views are counted the same way (although YouTube just says they count “legitimate views”, without any timeframe).

Spotify for Creators has also added new data and graphs to help Creators understand their podcast analytics.

Audience segments: New or returning fans.
Trends: Compare your latest episode to the rest of your episodes.
Engagement: Insights on comments, followers, audience retention.
Full history available in your Analytics overview.
Jump from homepage overviews directly to in depth charts.
Discovery Journey: How your show reaches new audiences on Spotify, including impressions, plays and episode completion. And which episodes drive your growth.

Restream now lets you automatically publish Live Clips as they are created (and while you are still streaming). You can choose which channels (platforms) clips post to, set a minimum “virality” score (so only the best clips post) and add preset captions. This requires a Live Clipping subscription, which includes 250 clips for $59 per month (spendy!). Learn more about Clips.

You can also use Restream to live stream to Patreon directly. You can choose the visibility, including limiting to Patreon paid tiers.

StreamYard now lets you easily download your chat after the livestream ends.

Streamlabs now shows Twitch Power-Up alerts.

The Edits video editing app has more new features:

Search for specific topics in the Inspiration tab to find the right template (like “Birthday”)
15 new in and out animation effects (iOS only)
Create multiple project versions.
Snap and align elements to each other for precision editing.
The Beta tab in your settings lets you try new features before they launch.
And Edits AI Assistant and Desktop version is coming soon.

Web Publishers

The new Desktop Mode plugin for WordPress (by Automattic) creates a “desktop-style workspace” for admins. You’ll see a dock on the side, windows and all your content and plugins. Like a computer desktop, but inside your WordPress account.

AdSense publishers in Latin America and the Caribbean can now choose PayPal Hyperwallet as their payment method. This was already available in the US, China and Argentina. Follow the link for the full list of supported countries. Once Hyperwallet is set up, you can choose to get a payout to PayPal, and other options.

Google Search Central posted a new document: Google Search's Guidance on Third-Party SEO Tools & Advice. Their take away message: “Some third-party services provide data that some users of those tools misinterpret as somehow being from Google. Third-party tools don't have access to our internal ranking data. They can't guarantee performance. Any predictions are their own and like predictions generally, may not happen.”

Google Search Central also posted: Do You Need an SEO? Tips for Hiring an SEO. It has helpful questions to ask when hiring someone, and what to be wary of.

From Sparktoro: In 2026, Less than One Third of Google Searches Still Send a Click. In 2019 49% of Google Searches ended without a click, but now zero-click searches are up to 68%. Dire for websites. The advice is that your website is still important, if you want to appear in search, but also, “Learn how to storytell, entice, promote, and educate in short-form content: video, audio, images, and text that can live on the walled gardens that dominate our online experiences.”

Canva and Gemini

Canva has integrations with Claude, ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini and Perplexity. What this means is that you can generate designs referencing your Canva Brand Kit, search and summarize your Canva Content, edit text and images through prompts and resize designs.

Canva’s Magic Layers, which turns a flat image into editable layered objects and text, is now available to all users in Google Gemini and Open AI ChatGPT. All you need to do is connect Canva in the Gemini or ChatGPT settings, or prompt @canva. Learn more.

For Gemini, you need to be sure to be using a personal Google Account and have Keep Activity turned on. You also need a Canva account. Canva is only available at gemini.google.com and in the Gemini mobile app.

AI Tools

Google’s NotebookLM is getting a number of updates:

Gemini 3.5 and Antigravity, with deeper research and more complex analysis.
More output formats, including PDF reports, data visualization charts, structured data (csv, json), Excel and Powerpoint files and more.
It can now help guide building your source repository in the chat.

Google Gemini 3.5 Live Translate is Google’s new audio translation model, with “near real-time speech-to-speech translation in over 70 languages”. This will be available in the Google Translate mobile app and Google Meet (for Enterprise).

Social Media

You can now reorder your Instagram profile image grid. Changes are saved immediately and shown to your profile visitors. As Instagram says “first impressions matter”, and this makes it easy to make sure your best, most interesting, or most important images are seen first. And if you have a vision for the way your profile should look, you no longer have to carefully upload images in the desired order.

The Instagram Plus subscription is now available, with “fun little extra features”, meant for everybody, “not just professionals”.

Extend Stories from 24 to 48 hours.
See how many times your Story was rewatched.
Search your Story viewer list.
Preview someone else's Story by long pressing.

“Your Algorithm” is coming to the main Instagram feed (rather than just Reels and Explore). Instagram head Adam Mosseri shared some thoughts about the bad feelings caused by the shift to a purely algorithmic feed.
“Who you follow used to be a meaningful tool for shaping your experience. As recommendations took over the main feed, that tool quietly stopped working.” and “I think this loss of agency is part of what people feel when they feel uneasy about social media - not the content itself, but the sense that the experience is happening to them rather than being shaped by them.”
Picking the Instagram topics you prefer in your feed are supposed to make this better, and Instagram is “actively working on supporting requests for people, different moods or vibes, content types, and more.” See How to “Tune your algorithm” in the Android or iOS mobile app.

You can now attach up to 10 photos in a Bluesky post. They also redesigned the carousel so that it only appears if there are at least 5 photos.

Bluesky added Group Chats, with up to 50 people. You can add people using a link. This is a step they are taking towards enabling Communities on the platform.

Bluesky also now lets you share your profile using a QR code. Click the Share button on your profile in the mobile app to get yours.

As I posted last week, video comments are now available on Reddit. It should be interesting.

Discord added a new “You Bar” to simplify navigation in the mobile app. It also helps you jump directly to your notifications, profile and settings.

Discord now end-to-end encrypts all voice and video calls (outside of stage channels).

LinkedIn has launched a Creator Marketplace that lets Brands connect with Creators. Eligible Creators will be able to sign up via a new Monetization tab, and create their profile showcasing handpicked content, choosing how Brands can contact them, and evaluate Brand requests.. This is currently in alpha, featuring select Brands and Creators in North America, in English.

Interesting Reading

404 Media: Chatbots Keep Telling Stories About Lighthouse Keeper 'Elias Thorne'. We Might Know Why.

TechCrunch: Bending Spoons is going public. Bending Spoons has made more than 50 acquisitions, including AOL, Eventbrite, Vimeo, WeTransfer, Evernote, Brightcove, Filmic Pro and StreamYard. Its business model is to acquire struggling businesses, fire the original staff, then increase prices. It will IPO in the US this summer. A former StreamYard team member says, “Every platform they acquire is maintained just enough to keep the revenue flowing. They’re not innovators, they're private equity with a motivated tech team.”

Thanks for Reading! 🌼

Creator Weekly: Creator Search Profiles, Twitch Dual Format Streaming, Facebook Creator Assistant

2026-06-06T06:30:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, this week there are new updates for creators, website owners, live streamers and more.

Google is letting YouTube, TikTok and Instagram creators customize their Search Profile and giving webmasters more information about their site’s appearance in AI Search results; Twitch is rolling out Dual Streaming and AI stream summaries; Facebook has a new AI creator assistant, and
has added video replies.

To watch this week: WWDC26, Apple’s annual developers conference, starts June 8. Watch the keynote live on the Apple YouTube channel.

Get the Creator Weekly newsletter in your Inbox every Saturday.
Join Creator Weekly live on Sunday.

This Week’s Top Updates

Google launched Creator Search Profiles. Creators with a significant following on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and X can set up a followable profile highlighting top content.
At TwitchCon Rotterdam, Twitch announced the rollout of Dual Format streaming, 2K streaming, Auto Clips (in beta), AI stream summaries, and more.
Edits, Instagram’s video editing app, now lets you import audio, match volume and select from hundreds of sound effects.
DaVinci Resolve 21 is now available with AI tools, updated editor, photo image editing, and creator features.
Google Search Console is rolling out insights for webpages in AI Search features.
Google Search Console has a new setting to let website owners opt their site out from appearing AI Search features.
AdSense lets you share the full IP address of site visitors in bid requests for personalized ads.
WordPress plugins will be held up to 24 hours for review before distribution, to help find security issues.
Tumblr is adding a Comments tab to blogs.
Substack lets you set rules for post replies.
Google Photos will extract your wardrobe.
Google Drive and Pixel Camera added multi-page scanning.
Dreambeans is a new Google experimental app that creates customized daily informational stories.
Facebook Creator Assistant lets you ask about your post and Reel performance and brainstorm new ideas.
Bluesky lets you upload larger videos (up to 300 MB).
Reddit launched video replies. Mods aren’t happy they are enabled by default.
X added “React with Video” to the iOS app.
Plus what I’m reading, what is bother me, and more new features and updates.

Creator Search Profiles for Creators on YouTube, Instagram, X, and TikTok

This week Google launched Search Profiles for creators and publishers.

Showcase articles, videos and social posts
Customize your Profile with avatar, bio, website, social links
People can follow Profiles for content in Discover
May trigger a Knowledge Panel in Google Search
Initial launch in the US

Creator eligibility for Google Search Profiles: 18+, content follows Google policy guidelines, and minimum followers on at least one platform:

YouTube: 100,000
Instagram: 100,000
X: 100,000
TikTok: 300,000

You can go to profile.google.com/claim to set yours up.

YouTube and Video

YouTube says there are 2 billion hours of Shorts viewed on TVs every month. Part of the appeal is snackable viewing and watching with friends and family. Learn about the growth of Shorts on TVs from Creator Insider.

Episode 2 of The Brand Deal Desk discusses how to pitch yourself to a brand, using YouTube’s Media Kit.

There was some excitement when a YouTube executive mentioned they were working on integration with publisher paywalls. This would simplify things for publishers with paid subscribers on multiple platforms. But, alas, YouTube issued a statement that there are no plans to launch paywall integration with news publishers, claiming the executive was misquoted.

This week Twitch made a number of major announcements at Twitchcon Rotterdam:

Dual Format streaming (simultaneously in horizontal and vertical formats) is coming out of beta,and rolling out next month. Twitch says they will be adding server-side transcoding for Partners and “many Affiliates” to “offset the strain this can put on some systems”.
2K streaming (1440p) is launching for Partners and Affiliates. Bitrates have increased to up to 7.5 Mbps for 1080p and 9 Mbsp for 1440p, for sharper streams during fast-paced gameplay.
Avatars have been added to notifications to improve engagement, and there will soon be new ways to send notifications (for example adding a guest or changing games)..
For viewers: Stream summaries are a new AI feature that generates a brief synopsis of what happened before you started watching the stream. This is experimental and still rolling out.
New features for Clips: Auto Clips in beta (say “Twitch Clip That” to indicate a moment to be clipped), add captions (edit text, timing and style), share to Twitch Stories, and Clips may appear in the live feed.
New monetization and community features: GIPHY GIFs in chat, gift subs for all viewers who are watching (up to 1000), Bounty Board for Affiliates, Twitch Gameplay Ads for Creator Sponsorships, increased Streamer-Lead Promos, Eurozone streamers can get SEPA payouts with no conversion fees. Also, announced last week Creator Badge Drops and Custom Power-Ups.
New Guilds: Asian Guild, Disability Guild, Indigenous Guild.
More mod appreciation.

Meta is testing a “Series” feature for Instagram and Facebook Reels. Creators create a collection of videos that lives in a new tab on the Creator’s profile.

TikTok launched a pilot of the TikTok Pro Events app in the U.S., starting with the World Cup. Perform tasks in the app (like search for trending hashtags) to earn stars, then redeem stars in the TikTok Shop and other places.

TikTok and the Sundance Collab have launched a four-week live online course on scriptwriting for micro-series. Applications are open.

Restream added Studio chat comment management tools, including pinning comments to show later and dimming already-shown messages.

Restream now lets you stream to an embedded web player, and you can track metrics in Stream Analytics.

StreamYard has new controls to make it easier to add background music.

Edits (the free video editing app from Instagram) has added new audio features:

Import your own audio
Match volume across clips
200 new sound effects.

Blackmagic Design launched DaVinci Resolve 21 (video editing software which you can download for free). Some of the many new features:

Photo image editing with Hollywood color grading tools, non-destructive edits, cropping and reframing, and organizing your images.
AI IntelliSearch to find specific objects, faces or keywords in dialog.
Advanced AI Speech Generator
AI CineFocus for advanced focus adjustment
AI Face Age Transformer, Face Reshaper, and Blemish Remover to make actors appear the way you want.
Extreme Quality AI Ultrasharpen and AI Motion Deblur
Editor and color management updates
For content creators: support for Lottie animations, instant picture-in-picture layout, support for Final Draft and plain text screenplays, square and vertical video resolutions, visual noise reduction, track and follow objects, and more.

Web Publishers

A point of frustration for website owners is that there is little visibility into how sites appear in AI Mode or AI Overviews. To change that, Google is testing a new setting in Search Console that lets website owners “decide if they want their site to appear in and help ground responses in Google’s generative AI Search features (like AI Overviews, AI Mode or AI Overviews in Discover).” This will not be used as a ranking signal outside of the AI Search features.

This is available to a subset of website owners in the UK. Why the UK? Google is “engaging with regulators like the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority to ensure website owners have the right tools as user preferences evolve.”

Google is also rolling out Search Console insights for the appearance of pages in AI Search features, including impressions and information about which pages appear in AI responses, and in which countries. Notably it does not include the click through rate, or click data (maybe not relevant if people don’t click the links?)

The Google Search May 2026 Core Update is complete. Did your site’s ranking change?

AdSense now lets you share the full IP address in bid requests for personalized ads. AdSense says this can “help you maximise the value of your inventory” as buyers use the full IP address to assess ad impression quality. Full IP address sharing is restricted on non-personalized ads, limited ads requests and restricted data processing requests. It is turned off by default.

WordPress has a new “Protect the Shire” initiative, designed to make their code (and thus the code on your WordPress site) as secure as possible. To that effort, new plugin releases will wait up to 24 hours before they are distributed, giving the plugin review team time to review the code.

Tumblr is adding a Comments tab to blogs, in addition to Posts, Likes and Following. It will show posts people have been commenting on, and you can find your own comments. Comments from people you follow may also be surfaced in your For You feed.

Substack has added “Reply Rules”. This lets you set rules for reply comments on your posts, and if you have automated moderation enabled it learns your preferences and automatically hides comments that don’t meet your policy. This seems good for moderation, but is another step towards Substack being a fully social platform.

Tools

Google Photos Wardrobe is a new tool that compiles the clothes you are wearing in your photos and organizes them so you can try different outfits and whatnot. Face Groups must be enabled. This is available in Brazil, India and the US to AI Pro and Ultra subscribers (and other “select users”) using Android devices.

In the latest Android drop, Google Drive, Files and Pixel Camera have added multi-page scanning, letting you scan multiple pages or documents at once and scan long receipts. It is, of course, AI: “AI works in the background to remove shadows, enhance the image, and ensure each page is only captured once”.

Google Labs is testing Dreambeans, using information from your Gmail, Calendar, Photos, YouTube and Search history to “curate stories that inspire and delight you.” This is available to Google AI Ultra subscribers in the US.

Social Media

Facebook Creator Assistant is a new chatbot that provides “personalized recommendations based on a creator’s content style, performance, and community and gets smarter over time as it learns their goals.” It lets you ask questions about the performance of your Reels, changes in your audience, and other insights. This is available to creators in the US, Canada and India. Personalized and specialized chatbots seem to be the future.

Facebook’s AI-powered Reels translations are currently available in 9 languages, and will be expanding to Arabic, Bahasa Indonesian, French, Thai and Vietnamese. The dubs preserve the tone of the creator’s voice, and there is optional lipsyncing. Translated dubbing is available to creators with at least 1,000 followers, in countries with Meta AI.

The maximum size of Bluesky video has been increased from 100MB to 300MB.

Reddit launched video replies directly in comment threads. They envision this as a way for artists to talk to fans, experts to answer questions, and other creative uses. Comments can include one video plus text. This will be available in all SFW communities starting June 11. Mods can disable this feature, but many aren’t happy this is enabled by default (imagine the worst that could happen with Redditors posting video comments).

X launched “React with Video” in the iOS app. That lets you create a reaction video, with you as an overlay on top of the post you are reacting to.

What’s Bugging Me

404 Media reports on hackers using Meta’s new AI support chatbot to hijack Instagram accounts by simply asking the bot to change the email address. It’s fixed now (supposedly), but it suggests Meta didn’t even do basic security testing before launch. Read the story: Hackers Simply Asked Meta AI to Give Them Access to High-Profile Instagram Accounts. It Worked

404 Media also explains how marketers and spammers are manipulating Reddit to show up in Search: Companies Are Using Reddit to Manipulate ChatGPT and Google AI Search. This is bad for Reddit and bad for people using Search.

What to Watch & Read

Long time video creator Tom Scott answered questions about being a Creator and his YouTube works. It's useful information, from his own experience. Beyond thumbnails and the YouTube algorithm, I think the important take home message is to stop overthinking and just make stuff and try different things.

Science fiction writer Ted Chiang in The Atlantic: No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious

Adobe is supporting the CREATOR Act (Creative Rights for Artists’ Technique and Originality are Reserved Act). This updates US intellectual property law to protect style reproduction from intentional, commercial AI-enabled impersonation. They say it’s “narrowly focused”, aimed at deliberate commercial impersonation of identifiable artists. This has bipartisan support in Congress.

Rabbit Hole investigated: The Unsolved Mystery of Lorem Ipsum

Thank you for reading! 🌼

Creator Weekly: YouTube Custom Feed, Facebook Plus & Instagram Plus, Patreon Privacy Settings

2026-05-30T06:25:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, would you pay for advanced creator features on your favorite platform? Meta is betting you will.

Plus YouTube has launched multiple updates (yes, mostly AI-related), Bluesky lets you highlight when you are live, people can set their favorite news sites and blogs as Preferred Sources for Google Search AI Mode, Patreon is adding profile profile features and more.

Tip of the week: Create an avatar of yourself to use when you create videos in the Gemini app with Gemini Omni. Creating an avatar is also rolling out gradually to YouTube.

Join me live: Creator Weekly is live on Sunday to discuss this week’s updates.

Top Updates

YouTube lets you create your own custom feed (US only)
Labels on realistic AI content on YouTube are more visible. And YouTube is getting better at detecting AI-generated content.
Ask Studio chatbot in YouTube Studio can now remember multiple conversations for 30 days.
YouTube Premium subscribers can turn on “Auto Speed” for podcasts, which will automatically adjust playback speed during lengthy intros or information dense segments.
CapCut Pad is a new version of the CapCut video editor for Android tablets and Chromebooks.
Spotify added shareable user clips from video podcasts.
Vimeo is faster, has new profile pages, and simplified review options (which some pros hate).
Google Search now shows Preferred Sources in AI Overviews, AI Mode, and link carousels. Have you added a “Add as a Google Preferred Source” link to your blog or news site?
NotebookLM now syncs sources with Google Drive, so that you are always using the latest version.
Google Workspace icons have a new modern gradient look.
Meta launched Facebook Plus and Instagram Plus subscriptions, with exclusive Creator Story and Profile features. Meta One is an overall subscription with features for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and expanded use of Meta AI tools.
Patreon’s new social Quips feed requires creators to merge personal and creator profiles. Profiles will also show your Memberships by default, and display “Mutuals”. New privacy settings let you control what people see.
X is trying to reward original content, by taking impressions from large accounts that reupload content from small accounts, and awarding them to the original posters.
Bluesky now lets you add a “Live” badge when you go live on YouTube, Substack and Beehiiv, in addition to Twitch.
Plus more updates and articles to read.

YouTube and Video

YouTube’s new “Your custom feed” lets you design a personalized content feed that you can pin as a saved chip at the top of the Home page. Use a prompt describing a mood, favorite topics, or specific interests. It can be general like “give me something different beyond my usual feed” or specific like “help me unwind after work with guided meditations under 10 minutes”. Learn more.

Launch by tapping the “Your custom feed” chip at the top of the Home page.
Available to signed-in viewers in the US.
Only available in English.
Edit the prompt at any time.
Videos you watch from your custom feed may influence your Home recommendations.
YouTube is “continuing to closely monitor the feature’s impact on views, watch time, and revenue.”

YouTube is improving AI labels. The disclosure label for “photorealistic and meaningfully AI altered or generated content” is now more visible. Instead of being buried in the description it will either appear directly below the video player for long-form videos or as an overlay on Shorts. Unrealistic, animated or only slightly altered AI content will continue to have the AI disclosure in the description. An AI label will not affect recommendations or monetization of the video.

YouTube is also updating its systems to better identify AI-generated content. As a creator, you are still required to disclose realistic AI in your videos. But if you don’t, and YouTube detects photorealistic AI content, they will add a label. You can appeal, if YouTube gets it wrong, but if you are using YouTube’s AI tools, or fully generative AI use is indicated in the C2PA metadata, the label is permanent.

The Ask Studio chatbot in YouTube Studio can help you understand your channel’s performance and content, and brainstorm new content. In the latest update, Ask Studio conversations are saved automatically for 30 days. There is a new list view to let you manage and access different conversation threads. Learn more.

Nano Banana is now in YouTube Effect Maker, letting you create “fun, imaginative transformation effects with open prompts that don’t require visual scripting”. Try Effect Maker at effects.youtube.com .

There are new YouTube Premium features for podcasts.Learn more.

“On the go” mode: listener-friendly controls when playing podcast video in the background.
Auto Speed: “intelligently adjusts playback speed during relevant moments”, like slower speech, lengthy introductions or information-dense segments.
Ask Music for podcasts: AI podcast recommendations. This is in addition to AI-generated music playlists.
High quality audio on TV.

New YouTube Creators series: THE BRAND DESK “Explore the perks and pitfalls of managing yourself, then learn how to scale creator partnerships into a sustainable business. Plus, step inside YouTube Creator Partnerships in Studio to learn quick, practical ways to boost visibility, attract brands, and maximize audience reach.” Watch episode 1.

CapCut Pad by Bytedance is now available for Android tablets and Chromebooks. It has “larger workspace, easier controls, and more room for your timeline.” Install it from Google Play.

The main Instagram camera now has a teleprompter (imported from the Edits app).

Spotify has added user clips from video podcasts.

Users can create a clip while listening to an episode.
The clip, episode, chapter or timestamp can be shared via Spotify Messages or to third party sites.
Clips are saved in Your Library.

StreamYard now lets you react to YouTube gifted memberships inside your StreamYard chat and respond in real time.

Vimeo, which was acquired by Bending Spoons in 2025, has been rebuilding the platform and adding new features to make it more “valuable”.

Faster uploads, page loading and search.
Simplified review: anyone with a link can comment, even without an account. And comments have timestamps and emoji reactions. (Some pros using this feature really DO want there to be a login wall for comments, so this hasn’t gone over great).
Profiles have a new design and more customization options.
Simplified showcase setup.
Translations in bulk.

Web Publishers and Search

Google Search has made several updates to highlight links in the search results:

AI Overviews and AI Mode use Preferred Sources. Links to a Preferred Source will be clearly labeled. Add a Preferred Sources button to your website or blog for readers to click. Or people can add preferred sources manually at www.google.com/preferences/source.
For some searches on a developing topic you’ll see a prominent link carousel, which will highlight Preferred Sources.
Other searches may show a carousel with “helpful perspectives” from online discussions, forums and social media.
There is a new “Highly Cited” badge for articles many other stories have cited.

Write is a new minimal writing editor on Wordpress(dot)com. It’s in beta (click the link to sign up).

WordPress(dot)com shares “everything you need to know” about WordPress 7.0: AI foundations, editing and admin improvements, flexible design controls, new and improved blocks, and performance, accessibility and developer updates.

WordPress(dot)com Reader now has a Social Feeds section that lets you read posts from people you follow on Bluesky, Mastodon and other Fediverse platforms.

Beehiiv CEO Tyler Denk argues that Substack is a closed ecosystem, especially with its algorithmic feed and requirement to allow Apple In-App Purchases. He notes open is good for creators, and email is an open protocol. (And, of course Beehiiv is email-first)

Tools

Google’s NotebookLM will now sync sources with Google Drive (Docs, Sheets, Slides). That way if you update a spreadsheet or slide deck, it’s automatically updated as a NotebookLM source. It also means that if the file is deleted or your access is revoked it will be removed from your notebook.

As was noticed last week, Google Workspace (Gmail, Drive, Meet, Chat, and so forth) icons have a new “modern” look. That means all the colors are gradients. Beyond that, the look is very much pre-2020, when the blocky multi-colored icons were launched.

Social Media

Meta One has launched, as one of several new subscriptions. Facebook Plus and Instagram Plus subscriptions include premium tools for creators and businesses. Meta One is an all-in-one subscription that includes Facebook Plus, Instagram Plus, WhatsApp Plus in one package, with additional Meta AI use (currently being tested in a few countries). None of these replace the Meta Verified subscription which is “focused on verification, identity protection and extra support.”

Features for Instagram Plus subscribers reportedly include seeing how many people rewatched your Story, create unlimited audience lists for Stories (not just “Close Friends”), extend a Story beyond 24 hours, post directly to your profile and highlights without it going to your followers’ feeds, additional profile pins and more. Facebook Plus subscribers also have new Story and profile features. (It feels like YouTube will be the last platform that isn't pay to play.)

Threads now lets you add music to your posts.

There’s a new Facebook Guide to making better affiliate videos.

LinkedIn answers common questions about LinkedIn video.

Patreon wants to be a social network: Patreon Creators must combine their personal fan profiles and Creator profiles by July 6. Patreon has privacy controls that let you decide how your memberships and activity appear. This unlocks Patreon’s new Network, with a new Home feed and Tweet-like “Quips” posts.

Part of this change is making Patreon memberships more visible, along with new granular privacy controls. Any new memberships you join after July 27 will be shown publicly, unless you turn this feature off. On the updated Creator Page, there is a list of the creators you subscribe to. And when a fan visits your page, they’ll see mutuals - members of your community they also subscribe to.

X is doing more to reward original content. Head of Product Nikita Bier says that they “identified a number of large accounts that have been programmatically reuploading content from smaller accounts to game the revenue share program and circumvent crediting the original author.” Now the impressions on those posts will be attributed to the original creator. That has the potential to shift the X ecosystem, with large accounts usually driving most of the views.

The latest version of Bluesky has updates for sharing articles, live streams and images:

Use YouTube, Substack and Beehiiv links to go live, in addition to Twitch and Streamplace links. When people click your profile with the LIVE badge, they are taken directly to your stream.
Dynamic Standard.site link cards. Used by Leaflet, pckt.blog, Offprint and other blog and longer article sites.
Updated GIF picker and improved photo viewer.

What’s making me mad

Stat News reports Sally Kornbluth, President of MIT isn’t mincing words about the recent losses to science. America built the world’s greatest research engine. Now it’s shrinking.

“In daily life, people may not feel the effects right away, or even in 10 years. But we will feel it. And when someone we love needs therapies that could have emerged but didn’t or when other countries now investing in science can launch new science-based industries or run their societies on vast resources of fusion energy or reap the benefits of quantum computing power or advanced medical breakthroughs, America will wish it sustained its leadership in scientific research here and now.”

Interesting reading

Pope Leo’s encyclical on AI: Pope Leo Warns AI Images Are a 'Powerful Amplifier' of Disinformation

YouTube shows submitted for consideration for Primetime Emmy Awards: Julian Shapiro-Barnum “Celebrity Substitute”, Michelle Khare “Challenge Accepted”, Sean Evans “Hot Ones”, Cleo Abram “HUGE* If True”, Brittany Broski “Royal Court”, and Kareem Rahma “SubwayTakes”.

News and Documentary Emmys were announced this week, and YouTube-centered journalists Jorge Ramos (Spanish language news) and Johnny Harris (outstanding graphic design), who publish on YouTube.

Thanks for reading! 🌼

Creator Weekly: Gemini Omni Video, Spotify Memberships, Twitch Creator Badge Drops

2026-05-23T06:30:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, it’s Memorial Day weekend, which people use to mark the unofficial start of summer with BBQs. It feels like many people forget it’s meant to be a day of mourning for those who died in US military service. I’m going to take a moment of silence out of my holiday to remember.

This week was Google I/O, which was all about AI. Even if generative AI isn’t your thing, it’s useful to know where it may be popping up.

There are also updates for YouTube, AdSense, WordPress, Spotify , Facebook, LinkedIn, and more.

Join me on Sunday for Creator Weekly Live.

Top Updates

Gemini Omni is the new “Nano Banana” for creating and editing video, and is available in the Gemini app, Google Flow, YouTube Shorts Remix, and the free YouTube Create app.
Ask YouTube answers queries with a mix of text and relevant videos.
Google Flow movie maker has an AI Agent to help with brainstorming and tasks, a shareable Tool creator, song editing updates and a new mobile app.
Google Pics is a new Google Workspace AI-powered image creation and editing tool, making it easy to edit objects and text in generated images. Plus integration with Slides.
Google Search search box is now AI focused, search can generate interactive visuals, and you can have a search Agent working for you 24/7.
Spotify podcasters can easily monetize with memberships and sponsorships. Listeners can use AI to create a custom podcast.
YouTube improved TV viewing with AI search, more info in descriptions, and expansion of Stations.
YouTube image Posts can have music and added text and appear in the Shorts feed.
Twitch launched new monetization and community features including Creator Badge Drops and Custom Power-Ups.
Kick has a new algorithmic feed, and is reducing discovery of inorganic streams.
WordPress 7.0 (Armstrong) is now available, with AI Connectors, updated dashboard and new layout blocks.
AdSense Collapsible Anchor Ads (now Dynamic Anchor Ads) are now available on desktop, with the possibility of increased revenue for your site.
Google Workspace app icons (Gmail, Drive, Meet, Chat, Slides, Sheets, Calendar) have a new gradient look.
Adobe is adding a Connector to Gemini to direct connection in Creative Cloud apps.
Facebook added new web publishing tools, the Content Planner calendar and Reels Bulk Uploader.
Automatically share Threads posts to Instagram Stories.
LinkedIn is trying to crack down on AI slop posts and comments.
X is limiting posting of non-Premium subscribers.
Plus what’s bugging me, a couple interesting reads and more.

Google I/O: AI Everywhere

This week was Google I/O, Google’s annual developer conference. Google uses it to announce new features and give an overview of the direction they are taking this year. And, not surprisingly, it’s AI in everything.

And overall, I found it not that exciting. It felt very much like more of the same we’ve been seeing for the past couple of years. There’s some neat video generation using Gemini Omni, AI summaries taking over Google Search results, chat tools to improve productivity in Gmail and Docs, and agents completing tasks on your behalf.

For creators, here’s what’s new:

Gemini Omni: “Create anything from any input”, like Nano Banana for video.

Combine images, audio (currently voice references), video and text as input, and output “high-quality videos grounded in Gemini’s real-world knowledge”, its “intuitive understanding of physics” and “knowledge of history, science and cultural context”.
Edit any video with natural language, changing environment, angle, style or details and characters and scenes stay consistent.
Generate an “explainer” video from a few prompts.
Use Avatars to create a digital version of yourself, using your own voice. (Not available in the EEA, Switzerland or UK).
Availability: Gemini Omni Flash is rolling out to the Gemini app and Google Flow for AI Plus, Pro and Ultra subscribers, and YouTube Shorts and YouTube Create App.

Ask YouTube: Designed for complex search queries and follow up questions. Answers include relevant Shorts and long-form videos. Casey Newton points out it "might return a synthesized answer that stitches 30 seconds from three different videos -- and resolves your question well enough that you never click into any of them."
Availability: Premium members age 18+ in the US. But this will roll out to all YouTube users “soon”.

Remix Shorts with Gemini Omni. Reimagine any Short with Remix enabled. You can use a text or image prompt, and remix up to 10 seconds of video. Watch the demo. Some users may be able to Remix using a personal AI Avatar. And soon coming to the Shorts AI Playground for generating stand-alone clips.

Gemini Omni in the YouTube Create app. No AI subscription is required.

Google Flow: Google’s AI-powered movie making platform.

Gemini Omni Flash. (Google AI subscribers)
Google Flow Agent to help with brainstorming, creating, and editing. It can even bulk edit. (Everyone
Google Flow Tools: Use natural languages to create new tools in Flow (like a video resizer or custom shader). Tools can be shared with other Flow users and remixed. (All Flow users can use existing Tools, Google AI subscribers can create and remix Tools)
Google Flow Music: Highlight and edit sections of a song to change the beat, lyrics or other features. Create “cover song” versions to reimagine your originals.
Google Flow Music videos: Use Omni Flash to create a music video. (Google AI subscribers)
Flow (Android in Beta) and Flow Music (iOS) mobile apps. Apps for both platforms are coming soon.

Google Pics: AI image creation and editing tool in Google Workspace, using the latest version of Nano Banana.

Object segmentation: Every element is treated as an object you can modify or remove.
Text editing and translation. Edit images in Google Slides and Drive.
Collaborate with shareable canvases.
Available now to trusted testers, and eventually available to AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.

Watermarking: All generated images and video clips are watermarked with SynthID. Gemini can check images and videos for the SynthID watermark, and will soon be able to check C2PA Content Credentials (which can show if the origin was AI or a camera, or if it’s been edited with generative AI tools).

Google Search: The search box is now redesigned for AI queries, with AI-powered suggestions, and search with images, files, videos or Chrome tabs as input. You can have Search generate interactive visuals, right in the search results (no need to visit the original website source). And there are also personalized AI agents to monitor for changes to a specific question 24/7. Watch the promo video.

Spotify Podcast Updates

This week was Spotify Investor Day, where they announced a number of updates for podcast creators, music artists and listeners.

Verified by Spotify is expanding to podcasts, in a move meant to thwart impersonation. This will be available to podcasts based on audience engagement, audience authenticity and compliance with Spotify policies.

Spotify will be launching a new tool that allows fans to create covers and remixes from participating artists and songwriters. This will be available to Spotify Premium subscribers as a paid add-on. The idea is that this will be another revenue stream for artists and songwriters who opt in (or whose label opts in).

Spotify announced new podcast features

Ask Spotify questions about a podcast you are listening to, with real-time answers. (Available in US, Sweden, Ireland).
Creator Sponsorships: creators and publishers in the Spotify Partner Program can book and manage sponsorships for video content.
Memberships: Creators can offer exclusive experiences for Members. And Creators can import and export Members across platforms. Launching initially for “select creators”.
Personal Podcasts: Users can “generate and schedule short, private audio episodes tailored to their interests”. You can add context with text, PDFs or links and customize the output, which is for you only.

Studio by Spotify Labs is an AI tool that can “help to find the audio you want faster”, including researching topics, organizing information and completing tasks. It’s personalized by connecting to your calendar and inbox. It can create a daily briefing, personalized playlist or generate a short podcast. The output is saved to your Spotify Library.

Spotify for Authors soon will launch Audiobook Creation Tools (beta). This allows self-published authors to create audio versions using ElevenLabs AI voice technology.

YouTube and Video

YouTube has made improvements on connected TVs and game consoles:

Conversational AI Search
Chapters in descriptions
Gaming title cards in video descriptions
Like counts on video watch pages
Improved ranking on the Top Channels shelf
“Up next” teasers at the end of videos
“Stations” is expanded to more channels, with curated videos in a continuous stream

YouTube now lets you add music to photo and carousel Posts in the Shorts feed (an experiment that launched last month).

Add up to 10 photos
Optionally add text overlays
Add audio from the YouTube Audio Library or AI Dream Track
More creative features will roll out this year.

TikTok One with Creator AI Search is designed to help Brands find creators for their promotional campaigns. Brands can search using a campaign brief, then either Shortlist or Invite creators immediately. There are also tools for finding brand-relevant content to boost.

Twitch has new features to “reward viewers who show up” for your big moments.

Creator Badge Drops are custom badges unlocked by subs or minutes watched.
Custom Power-Ups (powered by Bits) trigger fun effects.
Twitch is testing different types of Hype Trains with different triggers and rewards (like Community Trains where all viewers get an emote).
These are available to all eligible monetizing streamers (which can be almost anyone over 18).

StreamYard lets you easily rearrange guests and media in the stream backstage area.

Streaming platform Kick is trying to “level the playing field” for discovery, with a new algorithmic feed (rather than high to low viewers), and is reducing discovery for streams with inorganic viewer activity.

Apple announced new accessibility features, including automated subtitles for videos played on your device. (Android has had this feature for years)

Web Publishing

Google Search May 2026 Core Update is rolling out.

WordPress 7.0 (Armstrong) is now available.

Connect external AI (OpenAI, Claude, Gemini) in a central hub.
Updated dashboard, with a new look, review revision versions, manage fonts.
New layout blocks: Gallery with lightbox slide show, hide and reveal blocks based on viewer device, Patterns to fine tune design, and custom CSS.

WordPress(dot)com announced a number of new features, including automated Posts to Podcasts, an Achievement Badge page, WordPress Workspace for Mac, and Easy Site Editor (in beta).

AdSense collapsible anchor ads are coming to desktop and wider screens, along with a name change to “dynamic anchor ads.” AdSense says this is to “better host high-value demand, like outstream video and responsive display ads,” meaning potentially more revenue. This will launch automatically for your site if you have enabled both “anchor ads on screens wider than 1000px” and “collapsible anchor ads.”

If you are an AdSense publisher and use TFCD (Tag For Child Directed Treatment) or TFUA (Tag For Under Age of Consent), that is being replaced with the new TFAT (Tag for Age Treatment). You can tag for CHILD, TEEN or UNSPECIFIED. The old tags will need to be replaced. If you don’t recognize those acronyms, no need to update.

Tools

Google Workspace icons (Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, Meet, Chat, Gmail, Calendar, Tasks) have a new look with gradient effect colors. Some of the icons look similar to the versions before G Suite became Google Workspace in 2020.

You’ll soon be able to use Gemini to direct creation in Adobe Creative Cloud apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere and Express. This is a similar tool to Adobe’s Claude Connector and Firefly AI Assistant. You describe what outcome you want, and Adobe’s creative agent figures out which tools to use and the correct sequence.

Firefox is undergoing a redesign (“Project Nova”) to make the browser “feel cleaner, warmer, faster and more adaptable.”

There is a new Bing Image Search with an AI-guided experience. You can try it out now (click the link for details).

Social Media

Facebook added more Creator publishing tools on the web.

Content Planner calendar: schedule posts, note your publishing cadence and performance of past posts at a glance.
Reels Bulk Upload: Upload in bulk, schedule publishing in advance, add descriptions, run copyright checks, edit videos in the Reels composer.
Available from the Creator Dashboard Content tab > Create on the web. This is available with Professional Mode enabled on your Profile or Page. Check it out www.facebook.com/professional_dashboard/content/content_library/

Threads now lets you automatically share your posts to Instagram Stories.

LinkedIn says it’s trying to crack down on AI slop, automation tools and generic content by reducing the distribution beyond the poster’s immediate network. You also filter for comments and conversations by verified members (identity verification is free). The kind of content they are targeting:

Content that is generic or repetitive, “even if it appears polished on the surface”.
Comments posted using automation tools with little or no human involvement.
Responses that just restate the original post.

In an interesting move, X is limiting the ability of non-Premium subscribers to post. Before you get annoyed, the new limits are still pretty high: 50 original posts and 200 replies per day. Most non-spammers/junk posters won’t ever post that much.

What’s bugging me

Techcrunch: Google Search as you know it is over. “With the revamped Search experience, the new search box simply expands to accommodate longer, more conversational queries, rather than making you decide what type of search experience or mode you want to choose at the start of your query.”

The mode I want is search, not an AI summary with information that may have been taken out of context, retrieved from a dubious source, or simply fabricated.

Interesting Reads

Platformer: Google's James Manyika is betting that doomers are wrong about AI and jobs. His view is that jobs are changing, but still need people.

Steve Mould on YouTube: You’ve Never Seen a Real Photo. It’s about how photos represent color and the Lippmann Plate technique.

Thanks for reading! 🌼

Creator Weekly: YouTube Likeness Detection, AI Search SEO Myths, Instagram Instants

2026-05-16T06:30:00.000-07:00

Here in the Bay Area, it feels like spring is winding down and we’re moving towards summer. I’m ready for that warmer weather.

If you are a student who is about to graduate, now is the time to move your data to your personal account (now including Photos). There are also cultural events to watch, and major updates for YouTube, Twitch, Search Optimization, Instagram and more.

Subscribe to get Creator Weekly in your Inbox every Saturday.

Top Updates This Week

New creator video features are coming to Android 17, including screen reactions and updates to Instagram, Edits, and Adobe Premiere.
At YouTube Brandcast, YouTube announced new Creator Shows, Affiliate Partnerships Boosts (YouTube Shopping), Custom Sponsorships and more advertiser features.
YouTube is expanding AI likeness detection to all 18+ creators.
YouTube DMs are now available in 31 European countries.
In YouTube Analytics you can now find estimates of co-viewers (people watching your videos on the same device).
YouTube is working on auto dubbing tools for creators and will add more languages.
When you convert Google Slides to a Google Vids video you can add an AI avatar.
The Edits app has new features, including transition controls, adjust sticker and text opacity and more sound effects.
The TikTok GO program is now in the US, allowing creators to earn from hotel and attraction bookings.
YouTube is adding dual ingestion for live streaming across formats.
All Twitch streamers worldwide can now monetize, but only Affiliates and Partners can cash out.
StreamElements is negotiating to be acquired. Streamers are switching to other platforms for overlays.
Google Search shared a guide on how to optimize your website for generative AI Search features, including mythbusting on what you don’t need to do (despite what “gurus” are trying to sell you).
Google Analytics has a new metric that lets you track chatbot traffic.
Instagram launched Instants, a way to share unedited photos with friends that disappear after 24 hours.
Threads redesigned their logo and added @meta.ai to answer your questions.
Bluesky post embeds now play video without opening a new tab.
New tools for soon-to-be-graduates to transfer their Google Photos, Google Account Security, Google Form customization, and Gboard.
Plus find out what’s bugging me this week, and what project is worth viewing.

What to Watch this Week

live on YouTube

on Saturday May 16 at noon Pacific Time (21:00 CEST). There are contestant videos on the official Eurovision Song Contest Channel and Spotify has your Eurovision 2026 Playlist.

Tiktok is celebrating International Museum Day on May 18 with live programming from museums around the world.

If you are interested in Google I/O (May 19-20), you can register and create a schedule of sessions you want to view. Yes, it looks like it’s going to be all about AI. Watch the keynote live.

Quick Tip

Use Google Photos AI Remix to create a business selfie. It doesn't replace a professional photo, but it's quick and easy in a pinch. Yes it's AI generated, but unlike some Photos remix options the result actually looked like me.

Creator Features Coming to Android

In preparation for Google I/O, Google announced a bunch of new features for Android. Android 17 features of special interest to creators includes:

Screen Reactions: Record your screen and yourself as an overlay at the same time (typical reaction video style). Coming this summer, first to Pixel devices.
Improved Instagram Camera: Ultra HDR, video stabilization, night sight, optimized sharing.
Instagram for Android Tablets
Edits video editing app updates: AI upscale photos and videos, sound separation (wind, noise, music) to boost or remove.
Adobe Premiere app (coming soon), including exclusive templates and direct posting to YouTube Shorts.
APV Video Format : A storage-efficient pro format. Currently available for Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and vivo X300 Ultra, and coming to more devices with the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor.

YouTube and Video

At Brandcast, YouTube’s annual event for advertisers, there was a focus on why YouTube is good for brands (of course). If you monetize, happy advertisers can mean more revenue. And they announced:

Creator Shows: talk shows, competition shows, travel shows, unscripted (“reality”) shows, microdramas, docuseries and edutainment. Looking at the descriptions, they all have a high production value, made-for-TV vibe.
New promotional tools good for advertisers and creators, including

Affiliate Partnerships Boost (boost organic content with a brand’s products tagged for YouTube Shopping). YouTube notes, “a win-win for Creators too, who earn with YouTube Shopping affiliate links”.
Allow viewers to make purchases with Google Pay on their CTV (internet-connected television).
Custom Sponsorships: “Uses AI to dynamically surface videos tailored to a brand’s desired moment”
Multimodal AI Video Generation with Nano Banana, Gemini and Veo. If this sounds cool, try Pomelli marketing video generator in Google Labs.
Masthead with Custom Content Shelf. This is the giant ad you see at the top of the YouTube Home page.

YouTube is expanding likeness detection to all creators age 18 and older. You can enable this in YouTube Studio desktop on the Content Detection tab.

Once you have gone through verification, YouTube will be able to detect altered or synthetic (AI) content featuring your face.
Team channels should have each member added as a Channel Manager so each can onboard separately.
If your face is detected you can easily submit a privacy removal request.
This is rolling over the next few weeks.

YouTube expanded video sharing DMs to 31 European countries. To use DMs you must be at least 18 years old, and your channel must not be on a Brand Account. (Thanks for the tip Nina!)

YouTube now estimates co-viewers for unique reach stats in Analytics. That means if 3 people are hanging out watching your video on a television, that would be one view, but it increases your unique reach by 3. How does Youtube estimate those numbers? Creator Insider explains they use estimates based on “industry standards” (that is like the way Nielsen ratings for TV shows are calculated). YouTube notes this can be useful for creators negotiating sponsorships or brand deals.

YouTube has an overview of how automated dubbing works. The team is working on more languages, expanding Expressive Speech to more languages, and “building tools so creators can adjust and improve the dubs applied to their videos.”

When you convert a Google Slides presentation to a Google Vids video, you can now add an AI avatar. Google says, “Avatars are dynamically inserted throughout the imported slides to make the generated Vid feel more relatable and engaging.” But be sure you know your audience, as some people will be put off by artificial talking heads. This is available to personal accounts with a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription and select Google Workspace editions.

Instagram’s Edits video editing app has new features: Duration controls on transitions (iOS only), change the opacity of text and sticker opacity, more sound effects, and support for iOS Live Photos.

TikTok expanded the TikTok GO program to the US in connection with the Local Feed that launched in February. When a creator features a hotel, restaurant, attraction or local service, that can be connected to booking platforms. There are opportunities to earn commissions on completed bookings.

Live Streaming

Dual ingestion for YouTube livestreams across formats allows customization of simultaneous vertical and landscape streams. You get two streamkeys, one for vertical and one for landscape. The downside: you need double the amount of bandwidth, because you are sending two streams.

All Twitch streamers worldwide now have access to monetization and community building through Channel Points, emotes, subs, Bits and badges, even without Affiliate status. But there is an important limit (that earned them a Community Note on X): Streamers who aren’t an Affiliate or Partner cannot cash out. Instead of getting a payment, “Spendable Balance” earnings can only be used to purchase Bits or Gift Subs on Twitch. Twitch also made it easier to reach Affiliate status, so this update may encourage more streamers to work toward that goal.

Is StreamElements shutting down? In January StreamElements set up a tip jar to help "keep it free".It sounds like that wasn't nearly enough (currently there are only 51 supporters). Amid rumors, they posted an Official Update on X, that they are “in positive discussions with potential acquirers and working to find the best path forward for creators, customers, and our team.” If it is acquired it seems likely that some features will go behind a paywall, but that’s better than shutting down completely. Creators are talking about switching to Streamlabs, Streamer.bot and other platforms for livestream overlays.

StreamYard now lets you customize the position of overlays.

Web Publishers

Google Search published a new guide on optimizing your site for generative AI Search features. The bottom line: your website should provide a unique point of view; have non-commodity content that is helpful, reliable and people-first; add high quality images and video; write and organize content for human readers; and quality is more important than quantity. On the technical side, make sure your site can be crawled, has a good page experience, use JavaScript best practices, and focus on human readability, not perfect HTML code. If this sounds familiar, these are the SEO best practices Google has long recommended.

Google also does some optimize-your-website-for-AI mythbusting: If someone tries to sell you “secrets” or special tools to get your site to appear in AI results, first check to see how many of the recommendations are on the “what you don’t need to do” list.

You don't need LLMS.txt files, special markup, or markdown
Don't overfocus on structured data
Don't bother with "chunking" content
Don't rewrite content for AI
Inauthentic mentions on blogs, forums, videos may be considered spam or low quality content

Google Analytics GA4 has a new AI Assistant traffic measurement that lets you track chatbot traffic from chatbots like Gemini, Claude, and ChatGPT. Learn more about understanding your site’s traffic using Analytics Default Channel Groups.

Social Media

Instants by Instagram is a new way to share “spontaneous, unfiltered photos” with designated close friends or mutuals (people you follow who follow you back). It’s very Snapchat-like.

The images disappear after viewing, and are only available for 24 hours, and friends can react and reply in DMs.
Your Instants photos are saved in your archive for up to a year, and can be reshared as a Recap to Stories.
There is also a separate Instants app (available in select countries) for quicker camera access.
Apparently this new feature has caught some users by surprise, as they inadvertently sent unedited photos to all their friends. Fortunately you can Undo and retract images.

Threads has an updated ampersand-like logo and italic wordmark. Designer Chris Clare explain the thinking behind the changes, in part to make it more clearly separated from Instagram.

Meta AI is now available in Threads in select countries. You can tag @meta.ai and you will get an answer back. Just remember questions and answers are publicly viewable. Currently this is available in Argentina, Malaysia, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Singapore. (There is a Community Note on the announcement that says “No one asked for this. We want voice notes back, not more AI”)

Meta introduced Incognito Chat with Meta AI in the app and WhatsApp. The conversations are private, and even Meta cannot access it.

Bluesky post embeds now play video inline (so no need to open a new tab). It works in most browsers other than Firefox.

X is rolling out a History tab in the iOS app that includes Bookmarks, Long Videos, Articles and Likes.The idea is that you can revisit the content at your leisure.

Premium Business subscribers on LinkedIn can now offer paid 1-on-1 consultations from their LinkedIn Profile, no third party platform for bookings, payments or video hosting required.

After shutting down after being overwhelmed by spam, Digg is apparently relaunched again as an aggregator of AI news posts. Jason Kottke says, “instead of an underwhelming Reddit clone, it’s now just scraping noted fascist cesspool “X” for AI news and telling us that Sam Altman is influential in AI? This is embarrassing. It’ll probably be a huge success.”

Tools

If you are graduating 🎓, you can transfer your Google Photos photos, videos and albums from your school Workspace for Education account to a personal Google Account, along with emails and Drive documents.You can't transfer contacts, chats, or your YouTube channel.

Review the latest Google Account security features, and implement what you can: Passkeys, Recovery Contacts, and Password Manager.

You now have more options for header cover images on a Google Form. Previously you could only use a preset image, upload an image or select an image from Google Photos. Now you can also select photos from your Google Drive, Google Image Search or a URL.

Google just announced a 3D emoji collection. Noto 3D emoji will be available across Google later this year (starting with Pixel phones).

Android Quick Share is expanding to be able to share with more devices. Pixel phones can now share with iOS AirDrop. It will expand to Samsung, OnePlus, Vivo, Xiaomi and HONOR phones later this year.

Gemini can read your handwritten notes (maybe). Take photos of each page of notes, upload them to Gemini, and ask for a study guide or summary.

If you use the Gboard keyboard on your Android device to convert speech to text, the new Gemini Rambler feature will rewrite what you speak, making it more polished. Personally, I find this a bit weird. I don’t need a polished message from friends, and I can follow some rambling.

The Microsoft Edge browser has some fresh new updates, mostly powered by Copilot AI. There’s a redesigned new tab page that “brings together chat, search, and web navigation in one place”. Journeys (in English only) organizes your browsing history to let you continue browsing where you left off. Plus Copilot can pull context from open tabs to better give you information in chat.

What’s Bugging Me

404 Media: At Least We Know the Washington Post Isn't Buying Views (This is about the new podcasts from Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post Opinion Editorial department)
“Talented journalists—especially video journalists and podcasters—lose their jobs but the channels and feeds they created and built are zombified and repurposed for an executive’s passion project, staffed by people who have no idea what they’re doing.These projects inevitably also cost lots of money but with the added bonus that no one watches them. The project inevitably fails and is ignored into the oblivion. ”

What’s Cool

See America: Architectural photographer Carol Highsmith has spent decades photographing all 50 states (plus D.C. and Puerto Rico). The Library of Congress has a new interactive map to help showcase more than 70,000 rights-free photographs.

Spotify is 20 years old. To celebrate, open the mobile app and view Your Party of the Years to see your First Day on Spotify, First Streamed Song, total Unique Songs you’ve listened to, and your all-time most streamed artist. Plus you can find your All-Time Top Songs Playlist.

Creator Weekly: Snapseed Update, Twitch Viewbotting, AdSense Vignette Ads

2026-05-09T06:30:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, I hope you are enjoying spring weather and not glued to your internet device (I’m trying to get out more). This week there are updates for YouTube, Twitch, AdSense, Threads and more.

I am debating whether to live stream this Sunday, as I’m feeling better this week. If you catch me, stop by and say hello in the live chat. It’s like riding a bike, right?

Get Creator Weekly in your email inbox every Saturday.

This Week’s Top Updates

YouTube Studio now has an account status overview.
YouTube enforces Community Guidelines in channel descriptions.
YouTube advertiser-friendly Shocking Content policy prohibits monetization of young-looking subjects in distress.
YouTube tests mobile app redesign with swipeable feeds.
Twitch cracks down on viewbotting and is testing Streamer Shouts messages to fans.
Edits video editing app has new Instagram stats, caption customization controls and AI Fuse for blending photos into video.
Google Search AI Overviews and AI Mode have new features to highlight websites and online discussions (your Reddit comment may appear there with your handle).
AdSense is updating vignette ad behavior to comply with the new Google Search spam policy that prohibits back button hijacking.
The Medium Partner Program will now reward editors, in addition to writers.
Beehiiv now lets free accounts connect to Claude (and other AIs) for analysis of your newsletter data.
The Android Snapseed “pro” photo editing app is getting a major update with Camera “film looks”, faster editing and new editing tools, plus a redesigned Home tab. (This was available for the iOS app in February.)
Instagram is allowing some creators to label themselves as “AI creators”.
Threads DMs are now available on desktop. Plus there are new music stickers and animated mini stickers in posts.
Plus updates for Chrome, Gmail, Amazon Photos, Bluesky, Acorn and more.

YouTube and Video

You can now find an overview of your YouTube account status in YouTube Studio mobile. Open the YouTube Studio app, click your profile picture, and then select Account Status. It shows Copyright and Community Guideline violation status, and your channel’s monetization health.

YouTube will hide channel descriptions that don't follow the Community Guidelines, starting May 18. You can edit the description to restore visibility. Example: Minors sharing personal contact information.

YouTube updated their advertiser-friendly guidelines to clarify the policy around Shocking Content. If the content features young-looking subjects (human or not), in distress, featuring shock or disgust like gore, it won't be eligible to earn ad revenue.

YouTube is testing a layout redesign in the mobile app, with Subscriptions feed moved to the top of the screen. This will be “swipeable” to make it easier to move between feeds. Other feeds (like Movies & TV) may also be moved to the top navigation.

Twitch is cracking down on viewbotting. Channels that “persistently viewbot” will have a cap on the streamer’s concurrent views based on “historical data regarding that creator’s non-viewbotted traffic.”

Twitch is testing Streamer Shouts: “Personalized messages sent to groups of viewers post-stream to celebrate moments and milestones - delivered straight to their Activity Feed”

Twitch also made it easier to see a channel’s active Drops.

StreamYard is making it easier to keep track of which live chat comments you’ve already shown on screen.

The Edits video editing app has a few new features:

If you share to Instagram Reels there are new stats that show which engagement rates (skip, share, like, save, repost, comment) impact your views the most.
New Transcription Controls for generating captions that let you censor words, add filler words and control punctuation.
The Fuse tool uses AI to blend photos into video. (US only, generation limits may apply)

Publishers and Search

Google Search added new features to AI Overviews and AI Mode that highlight websites and online discussions. Google says “we're building AI in Search to help you discover the richness of the web, connecting you directly with the sources and creators you’re looking for.” Features include:

Suggestions for “Further Exploration” with links to in-depth articles.
Paying news media subscribers will see links from their news subscriptions highlighted.
Responses may include a “preview of perspectives from public online discussions, social media, and other firsthand sources.” This will show the creators name, handle or community name for context. It includes social media (like Reddit), forums, and other sources.
There are more links within AI responses, next to the relevant text.
Hover over an in-line link and it will pop up a preview with the link title and site name.

AdSense is changing the behavior of vignette ads to comply with the new Google Search spam policy that prohibits back button hijacking. Vignette ads will no longer trigger when a site visitor navigates backwards (the other triggers remain, and are still intrusive). The Google Search policy that prohibits back button hijacking goes into effect on June 15. Pages that are engaging in back button hijacking may be subject to manual spam actions or automated demotions, which can impact the site's performance in Google Search results.

The Medium Partner Program will start rewarding editors, in addition to writers. "The TL;DR is that when a publication editor in a qualifying publication assigns themselves to a story in the publication submission queue, that editor earns 25% of what the story earns. The writer will keep all their original earnings." This sounds like a good way to commit to rewarding quality content.

Microsoft explained how AI systems have forced Bing search indexing to evolve. They point to a recent webinar about optimizing your content “in the era of AI”.

The Beehiiv MCP (Model Context Protocol) lets you connect to your AI platform of choice. It is now available for free accounts. It lets you analyze your subscriber data, content archive, surveys, polls, podcasts, audience and other data. Suggested starting prompt: "Audit my beehiiv account and tell me the single biggest thing I'm not doing that could help me grow my audience." How to connect the MCP. It’s optimized for Claude (Anthropic developed the protocol). It appears that MCP connectors are only available in Gemini for developers and enterprise customers.

Beehiiv has updated hosted podcast pages to include broad distribution (Apple, Spotify, etc), episode pages, full transcripts, playlist of recent episodes, video embeds and more.

Tools

Snapseed, Google’s “pro” photo editing app, is rolling out a major Android update. It includes the Snapseed Camera, which can be used for “film looks” and custom styles, a redesigned Home tab, non-destructive and batch editing, new editing tools and faster editing overall. This redesign was available to iOS devices in February. Get Snapseed for Android.

If you use Amazon Photos has been redesigned to shift the focus from storage to discovery. Your Home page now has curated collections of photos (like trips or people) and you can search using natural language.

Skills is a new AI feature in Chrome that makes it easier to repeat tasks when you open new web pages or documents. Save your most effective prompts and run them with a single prompt. This is currently only available for Google Workspace Business, Enterprise and Education accounts.

Help Me Write in Gmail can now better contextualize using Google Drive and Gmail content. It will also try to match your usual tone and style. For personal Google Accounts this is available with a Google AI Plus, Pro or Ultra subscription. It’s also available for Google Workspace.

Social Media

Instagram is testing allowing creators “who often create with AI” to label themselves as an “AI creator”. The label appears on the profile and alongside content. Will any of the accounts that post AI-generated images that they pretend are real photos use this? I’m guessing not.

Supposedly there was a major purge of bot followers on Instagram, with some celebrity accounts losing literally millions of followers. Most reports from normal accounts noted a drop of less than 5%.

Finally (yay!), Threads DMs are available on desktop.

Threads has new music stickers that add a nice music player to your post.

Threads is also testing animated mini stickers in posts. The announcement used animated letters ransom note-style (click to see), which are pretty visually exhausting.

Meta is going to use automated AI systems to detect underage (under 13) teens. It will use both visual clues and age estimation (but not facial recognition), and contextual clues like posts about school or birthdays. Why? Because teens and kids often don’t provide an accurate birthdate.

Bluesky now lets you launch Germ’s end-to-end encrypted messaging from Bluesky profiles. Germ runs on the same AT Protocol as Bluesky.

Acorn is a new online community platform built on the AT Protocol used by Bluesky. It was developed by Blacksky. Communities can create follow Starter Packs, set moderation policies, and users can build feeds for announcements and other content.

What’s Bugging Me

Sometimes YouTube’s systems for flagging inauthentic content are going to get it wrong. But it also seems like the appeal system isn’t working. This story about animator Nathan Little’s demonetization is a case in point.

Interesting Reading

Charlie Warzel @ The Atlantic: How Short-Form Clips Took Over the Internet

Another old time search engine is gone. Ask.com, formerly Ask Jeeves, shut down on May 1st. It launched in 1997, a year before Google. Google’s Danny Sullivan reviewed the site in 1998, explaining how you could use it to “ask questions to give you answers” (it wasn’t AI, it was people!).

Creator Weekly: YouTube Comment Search, Instagram Original Content, Google Search Preferred Sources

2026-05-02T06:29:00.000-07:00

Here we are in May already. I hope spring has sprung where you are reading this from!

This week there are a bunch of YouTube updates, plus news for web publishers, Instagram, Firefly and more.

New this week

YouTube Creator updates: replace copyright-claimed music with AI generated instrumentals, search your channel’s comments by topic rather than keywords, add multi-language thumbnails, and set channel guidelines.
YouTube Live on mobile lets you preview effects before you start the stream.
StreamYard lets you stream to Vimeo natively.
Instagram’s Edits app added text customization, favorite effects, and the ability to generate video clips with AI.
Devine may (or may not) be the reincarnation of Vine. It wants real creators, not AI slop.
YouTube Viewer updates: Ask YouTube conversational search, global availability of picture-in-picture, Home feed thumbnail experiment, build your own multiview in YouTube TV and a Shorts shelf on the Google TV Home screen.
Google TV lets you remix and voice search your Google Photos, create a dynamic slideshow screensaver, and use Nano Banana and Veo to generate images and video clips.
Google Photos will also create a digital closet of your clothes (from what you are wearing in photos).
For web publishers: Preferred Sources for Google Search is available in all languages, learn about AI Overviews and SEO and the WordPress(dot)com “social” theme.
Instagram now requires original content for photos and carousels to be eligible for recommendations, taking aim at content aggregators.
LinkedIn lets you purchase ads to promote off-platform events.
And in AI: Gemini can create formatted files, Adobe Firefly AI Assistant is now in public beta, Adobe image and video editing tools in Claude, Canva’s Magic Layers made a huge mistake, and Google AI Overviews spread misinformation.
Plus what’s making me smile and frown this week

YouTube and Video

⇨ For Creators

If your YouTube video has an audio copyright claim, you can use the Replace Song Tool in YouTube Studio desktop to AI generate a royalty free instrumental track (you can pick from four options).

YouTube Studio on desktop now lets you search comments based on “topic or meaning”, letting you find “semantically similar” comments without needing exact search terms. Select a comment, then use the 3 dot menu to select the option to find similar comments or do a search. You can still search as previously, using the “keywords” filter.

Add multi-language thumbnails to your YouTube videos, and viewers will see the thumbnail in their preferred language. In YouTube Studio desktop, open a video details, then click the Languages tab on the left menu. You’ll see the option to Add a thumbnail for each language listed.

Now all YouTube channels with access to at least intermediate features can set channel guidelines for comments, live chats and (new) communities. Learn more.

You can now preview special effects before you go live in the YouTube mobile app.

Did you know that you can add a countdown sticker to your YouTube mobile livestream? Learn how.

StreamYard now lets you natively stream to Vimeo. This is available on all StreamYard plans but requires a Vimeo Advanced or Enterprise plan.

New to the Instagram’s free Edits video editing app:

Save favorite color adjustments and effects to their own tab
Customize text outline and line heights
Generate AI video clips (limited countries, generation limits)
Features in Beta in the Android app: Versions (multiple versions of an edit)
Exclusive Euphoria Season 3 filter

Is Vine back? The new Divine app includes 500,000 Vine videos, “restored from a community-created archive”. It claims it will prevent AI slop by requiring C2PA creation details or recording in the app. You can watch a stream of short videos by The app was funded by ex Twitter CEO and cofounder Jack Dorsey and built by one of the developers of original Twitter. It’s built on Nostr, an open source protocol. Currently it requires an invite to use.

⇨ For Viewers

Ask YouTube is a conversational search experiment available to Premium subscribers in the US, that lets you take a deep dive. For example, ask to plan a road trip and you will get a mix of videos, Shorts and text with sights and local tips to create your itinerary. You can then ask for coffee shops along the route. Opt in at http://youtube.com/new

YouTube’s picture-in-picture (shrink content into a small draggable window as you browse) is now available globally for all non-music long form content in the mobile app. Premium membership is required to use picture-in-picture for music videos. Learn how to use it.

YouTube is testing “new ways to make the Home feed more immersive” on mobile devices. They are experimenting with automatically adjusting video and thumbnail sizes. For creators, they note “some thumbnails may appear cropped”, but they are not editing the original files. This is just a test to see what increases engagement.

If you have a YouTube TV subscription, you can now build your own live content multiview (not video on demand or DVR content), including sports, news, movies, or whatever else you want to watch.

New viewing and AI features in Google TV for YouTube and Google Photos include:

YouTube Shorts “for you” shelf on the Home screen (coming this summer)Google Photos dynamic slideshow screensaver
Use Gemini to voice search your Google Photos library
AI Remix your Google Photos
Generate images and video with Nano Banana and Veo

Web Publishers

Preferred Sources for Google Search Top Stories is now available in all languages. Publishers can add an “Add as a Google Preferred Source” button to their site to make it easy for traders to add it.

On this week’s Google Search “Off the Record” podcast, guest Nikola Todorovic (director of Software Engineering at Google Search) talks about how Google tests and launches search changes, the role of machine learning and AI over the past decade+, and what website owners (and SEOs) should focus on.
No surprise at the advice: “website owners … need to continue making sure that their products, that their websites, that their platforms are providing value to the user.”

WordPress (dot) com has a new “social” theme that lets you create a blog that has short social-media like posts. They suggest you can use it to import old posts from Twitter, Bluesky or other platforms.

Tools

Google Translate launched 20 years ago. It now includes pronunciation practice in the Translate Android app, available in English, Hindi and Spanish, in the US and India. And live translate (hear translated speech in headphones) is now available for iOS and Android.

Google Photos will extract the clothes you are wearing in your photos and create a digital closet you can filter, or use to try on or create outfits.

Google Earth now supports the import of shapefiles, in addition to KML and GeoJSON files. You can also upload 3D files in GLB file format.

Social Media

Instagram expanded its Originality Guidelines for Reels to include photos and carousels. To reward original content, the algorithm was updated so that “accounts that primarily re-upload others' work without adding meaningful creative input will no longer be eligible for recommendations across Instagram.”

This will likely affect Instagram aggregator accounts that share Tweet roundups, memes or Pinterest images. Meta says “Creators who want to use content from others should put their own spin on it and add real creative value to stay eligible for recommendations.”

Spotify added a “Verified by Spotify” badge for artist profiles. They use signals both on the platform and off the platform (like concert dates) to confirm an artist is who they say they are.

LinkedIn’s new Off-Platform Event Ads let you promote events that don’t have a LinkedIn Event page.

There is now a separate X Chat app, letting you chat with anyone on X. It does use encryption, but that may have vulnerabilities.

More AI Updates

You can now use Gemini to create formatted downloadable files. Create and export from the chat to PDFs, Microsoft Word and Excel, Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, LaTeX, RTF and more.

Adobe Firefly AI Assistant is now in public beta. Describe what you want to create and the Assistant generates a workflow across Creative Cloud apps.

Adobe tools are now available inside Claude to edit images or video. For example, “Upload a horizontal clip and ask to reformat it for YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels, or any platform.”

Canva’s AI Magic Layers tool can turn a flat image into a file with layered editable elements. But it has messed up big. It was found to turn the word “Palestine” in images into “Ukraine”, which is a massive mistake. It’s apparently fixed now, but clearly you need to review your designs very carefully if you use that tool.

Futurism: Analysis Finds That Google's AI Overviews Are Providing Misinformation at a Scale Possibly Unprecedented in the History of Human Civilization. Most of the AI Overviews are correct, but even a small percentage of incorrect information over trillions of searches is a lot of bad information that most people will never question for accuracy.

What’s making me mad

Ars Technica: National Science Board eviscerated; Trump admin fires all 22 members

A project I love

50x50: Science Across America is a YouTube project that is a “road trip” across 50 states, with 50 creators each profiling a science researcher in their home state. The videos will appear on the creator’s own YouTube channel in collaboration with the new 50x50 Science Across America channel. Creators should be selected by now, and their videos will be published this fall.

Creator Weekly: YouTube Kills Clips, Beehiiv Webinars, Threads Live Chat

2026-04-25T06:21:00.000-07:00

Dear readers, this Earth Day week, it's worth taking a moment to think about what you can do to explore and appreciate the works around you.

This week there are updates from YouTube, Beehiiv, Edits, Threads, Google Photos and more. Announcements at Google Cloud Next suggested that the future is Agentic AI. Plus group live chat is where community is at (at least on Threads and X).

Celebrating Earth Day

OnEBoard’s Bob Danley shared how regular folks can participate in observing nature and the world around us.

Google: Celebrating Earth Day 2026: How Technology and Collaboration Are Protecting Our Planet (Google Earth, Satellite Imagery and more)

Flickr: Earth Day. Every Day

This week's top updates

Google Cloud Next: Workspace Intelligence and AI Agents
YouTube adds timestamped link sharing from the mobile app and kills Clips
YouTube limits push notifications to engaged users
YouTube expands likeness detection to the entertainment industry
YouTube fans can give Gifts on mobile landscape livestreams replacing Super Stickers.
Edits mobile video app is one year old and has new features coming.
Google Vids least you create branded avatars
Google Photos adds subtle face airbrushing and changing the angle of portraits.
Beehiiv now lets paid accounts host paid webinars on the the platform.
Threads launched event Live Chat for Communities.
X is shutting down its Communities and encourages group chats instead.
Bluesky now lets you post higher resolution photos
Plus more updates for YouTube, Twitch, StreamYard, ReStream, Instagram, Meta Accounts and more.

Google Cloud Next: Agents Everywhere

This week was Google Cloud Next, Google’s annual conference setting Cloud and Workspace to Enterprise Customers. As usual there are plenty of updates for everyone. This year's focus: AI Agents

Read the keynote (with links)

The big picture from CEO Sundar Pichai

Workspace Intelligence is the theme for Workspace apps like Docs, Drive, Gmail, Sheets and Chat. If you use Google's productivity suite, check out what's coming at the link.

Everything announced at Cloud Next 2026

YouTube and Video

YouTube now lets you “Share at Timestamp” on mobile. Following the link opens the video at the timestamp. This was previously only an option on desktop.

YouTube is also killing Clips, which YouTube started publicly testing in January 2021.

Clips let you select and share an up-to-60-second segment of a video, adding your own description.
You can find the Clips you created from YouTube videos, or that fans created from your videos, at https://www.youtube.com/feed/clips
Existing Clips will remain available, but you won't be about to create new ones.
If you want to repurpose Clips, they can be Remixed into Shorts from the Clip page.
What's the alternative:

Share a video link at the timestamp the segment begins. This is now available on mobile.
Create Video Clips from your own long form videos in YouTube Studio. AI suggestions are available for Podcast videos in English in the US and Canada.
Video Clips for Shorts and auto-suggestions for clippable moments will roll out later this year.

YouTube likeness detection is expanding to the entertainment industry, including talent agencies, management companies, and the celebrities they represent (it's not clear if celebrities between agents qualify). This detects visual face matches, and it's meant to detect AI generated deep fakes. This is also available to creators in the YouTube Partner Program, even if you aren't a celebrity.

Subscribers who enable all notifications from your YouTube channel won't actually get all notifications unless they actually watch your channel or click on the notifications.

No engagement for about a month means you will stop getting mobile push notifications.
The notification will still be in your YouTube inbox.
YouTube tested this and found this resulted in fewer people turning off push notifications entirely.
It's also unlikely to cause a drop in views as many channels don't get a significant number of views from notifications in the first place.

YouTube Monetization update: Gifts replace Super Stickers on landscape live streams and premieres on mobile. Previously Gifts were only available in vertical streams

You must enable Gifts (not available in all locations)
Gifts are not available on desktop
Viewers buy Jewels, Jewels buy Gifts, and Gifts come with Rubies that help the creator earn.

YouTube viewer update: “With Voice Boost, you can now amplify vocals and reduce background sounds to make spoken dialogue clearer in the videos you’re watching.”

YouTube Live update: “YouTube fans can now earn Experience Points (XP) for their watch time and Super Chat replies during vertical live streams, which helps Creators easily spot their most active community members.”

Twitch is recruiting streamers with a following on other platforms for fast-tracked Twitch Partner status.

StreamYard now lets you pop out the live chat into a smaller window.

ReStream lets you easily share analytics, recordings and live chat transcripts with an (optionally) passcode-protected link.

Web Publishers

Beehiiv launched Webinars. You can host live events with up to 10,000 participants, sell tickets, and you stream from Beehiv (with screen sharing, chat and video recording).

You can easily create a landing page on your Beehiiv website.
Selling digital products (like Webinars) requires a paid plan.

Beehiiv also introduced metered paywalls (so people can read a few articles for free each month) and paid subscription trials.

Editing Tools

The Edits mobile video editing app is one year old. It's free and doesn't add a watermark, although there are special creators and analytics for Instagram Reels. They have shipped 130+ new features since the launch. What's coming:

upgrades for captions (including bilingual captions), advanced color adjustments, speed curves.
making most tools customizable
pinning your favorite tools
getting more insights about your Instagram followers
create more complex templates with overlays, keyframes, and video effects

Google Vids now lets you upload your brand logo, and then uses the power of Nano Banana 2 to create a branded AI avatar. See the link for an example. You can save the branded avatar to retain brand consistency. If you didn't have a Workspace account, this is available to personal accounts with an AI Pro or Ultra subscription.

TikTok paused it's experimental Meme Remixer, that let users use AI to edit frames from other's videos. It's currently evaluating user feedback.

Google Photos added a digital airbrushing Touch-up Tool.

Requires Android 9+ and 4GB+ RAM.
Options for adjusting faces include heal blemishes, smooth, under eyes, irises, whiten teeth, eyebrows and lips. You can adjust the intensity of the change.
John Nack, who lead the launch of Google Photos more than a decade ago, notes a lesson learned was that “cosmetic stuff can be welcome, but only as opt-in, not as AI-imposed judgement of your appearance.”

Google Photos Auto Frame can now adjust your photo angle. It can interpret photos as a 3D scene, and “keeps what was originally visible and intelligently generates previously hidden content”. It can also reduce distortions of near objects taken with a wide angle lens.

Social Media

Threads is making it easy to quote post. When you compose a post you can click the Quote icon, which brings you to a list of all your Posts, Likes and Saves for easy quote posting.

Threads launched Live Chats. These are public time-limited public group chats that you can host, join or watch. Up to 150 people can join, and thousands can follow. They are starting with creators in the NBA Threads community, to talk about the basketball playoffs.

Threads topic communities are apparently still growing, and the place for public “niche conversations”. Live Chats live within Communities.

Meta’s Accounts Center is being updated to the new Meta Account over the next year. It will show all your accounts and devices. It's meant to help you easily manage your account security and settings for Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, Threads, Meta AI, AI glasses, and Meta Quest headsets (and optionally WhatsApp). It should not change your daily experience with Meta products.

Instagram has a new Snapchat like app called Instants. Friends can view shared photos once, and they disappear after 24 hours. The images are also viewable in the Instagram app.

Instagram has designed a new interface for Insights stats. The same data is there, with new Reels stats including share rate and skip rate.

Better photos on Bluesky: Bluesky increased the maximum image resolution to 4000 x 4000 and maximum file size to 2 MB. And if you post multiple images they now display in a carousel.

X launched custom timelines, which are personalized feeds based on particular topics you are interested in. They can be pinned for easy access in the app.

X is shutting down Communities “due to declining usage” and apparently loads of spam. They are being replaced by XChat group chats and custom timelines. Group chats can currently have 350 members, but that will eventually expand to 1000.

More AI Updates

Adobe Firefly “expands AI video and image editing with studio-quality audio, advanced color controls and precision image adjustments.”

Adobe Firefly AI Assistant (previously Project Moonlight) over time learns your preferred tools and aesthetics. Click the link to join the beta waitlist. “With Firefly AI Assistant, you describe the outcome you want and the assistant orchestrates and executes the steps behind the scenes, connecting creative logic and best-in-class tools across Adobe’s creative apps. You no longer have to map the process. You can start from the outcome.”

Spotify is now available inside Claude, to help you get music and podcast suggestions. You can also see where your Spotify is playing.

Microsoft has launched Copilot's agentic capabilities in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

Brett Weinstein: Flickr: The First and Last Great Photo Platform

Interesting Read

PetaPixel: Antigravity Is Preserving Historical Sites in 3D Using its 360° Drone

Creator Weekly: YouTube Live Ads, Canva Offline, AdSense Offerwall

2026-04-18T06:35:00.000-07:00

What's new this week? There are updates from Canva, YouTube, AdSense, Google Search, video and image editing tools and more.

Join OnEBoard this week for our annual Earth Day special. (Note the later than usual time for the live stream)

Video Tip: Does Gemini use your emails for training?

This week's top updates

YouTube Live Streams with automated ads will pause ads when viewers engage.
YouTube Shorts music library is available in the YouTube Create video editing app.
YouTube is testing image Posts in the Shorts feed.
Hate YouTube Shorts? Set your Shorts feed allowed viewing time to zero.
Google Vids AI voiceovers are more expressive and available in more languages.
AdSense Offerwall ads and now generally available to publishers (but consider whether they are worth adding).
Google Search spam policy now prohibits browser back button hijacking.
Chrome on desktop will now open links side-by-side with the AI Mode results.
Canva added offline editing mode. Plus editable AI image creation.
Cavalry Pro 2D animation software is now free to all with a Canva account.
DaVinci Resolve 21 added Lightbox image editing.
Edits video editing app added caption text find and replace and advanced video color adjustment.
Google Photos improved the cropping tool and now lets you adjust video playback speed.
Instagram now lets you adjust topics for Your Algorithm for Explore.
Tumblr apologized for incorrect suspensions.
European users can share their camera roll with Facebook for suggestions and AI edits.

YouTube and Video

Ads shouldn't interrupt live stream engagement. YouTube will automatically create a personal ad-free window right after purchase of Super Chat, Super Stickers, or gifts (automatic ads must be enabled). And when Live Chat engagement is "at its peak" ads will be held back for everyone.

The YouTube Shorts music audio library is rolling out to the YouTube Create video editing app. “Use "Slip Edit" to find the best segment of a song, or "Find Beats" to add visual markers for perfectly timed cuts.” These tracks are ONLY licensed for Shorts. Videos must be directly published to Shorts. If you save a video longer than 15 seconds to your device, licensed tracks will be removed.

YouTube is testing image Posts and carousels in the Shorts feed, "the first of many updates coming to Posts as we continue to expand the format." Features: Up to 10 images, add text overlays, and add royalty free music.

You can now set your YouTube Shorts Feed viewing time limit to zero. This does not totally remove or hide Shorts from the YouTube app (despite some click bait headlines), but you may not see them on the Home tab.

Google Vids has expanded AI voice-overs to 24 languages and 30 conversational voices to choose from. Voices are also more expressive, letting you include instructions (be excited!), bracket notation for pacing (like [pause]), and sound effects (like [laugh]). These features are available to everyone, including free Google accounts.

StreamYard now lets you customize your QR code with your own branding.

Web Publishers

Offerwall in AdSense is now generally available. This is a popup overlay that prevents site visitors from viewing the content until they complete an action like watching an ad or giving you their email. It's quite intrusive so consider carefully before implementing.

Google Search spam policy now explicitly prohibits back button hijacking, where clicking the browser back button does not take you to your previous page.

Enforcement begins June 15, and violating pages may be subject to manual spam actions or automated demotions.
Google notes “some instances of back button hijacking may originate from the site's included libraries or advertising platform.” So review your site behavior!

Chrome on desktop will now open links side-by-side with the Search AI Mode results. It will answer your additional questions "from the context of the page and across the web". Will this encourage people to actually click the links more often? That remains to be seen.

Did you get an email from Google Search Console about long-verified website properties “starting” to get impressions? You aren't the only one. Google's John Mueller confirmed they were sent in error.

Google shared their 2025 Ads Safety Report, with a focus on AI enforcement. For Publisher (AdSense) enforcement, AI systems “contributed to” detection and enforcement on more than 97% of the new than 480 million pages active in 2025. The top policy violation by far? Sexual content. See the link for ad enforcement stats.

Image and Video Editing

This week was Canva Create, which Canva uses to make big product announcements.

Offline Mode. Canva Offline lets you create and edit designs without an Internet connection. It syncs to your account when you are online again.
Cavalry Pro 2D animation software is now free to all with a Canva account. Try it at cavalry.studio.
Capture One and DaVinci Resolve now support native Affinity .af files.
CanvaBrand inside Affinity. Design brand elements and logos, then export to your Canva Brand Kit.
Affinity has a new AI connector with Claude.
Print Shop is an improved platform for creating and ordering physical products with your design.
Canva AI 2.0 assembles designs from components, with all elements remaining editable and layered. It can connect to your Slack, Gmail, Drive, Zoom and more to use that context.

Alex Heath interviewed Canva’s CEO Melanie Perkins on the Access podcast, who said “If you come into Canva and you hate Al, you actually can just completely use Canva exactly the way you always use it.”

Adobe Stock now has AI Studio built in, so stock images can be easily tweaked, so “you can turn that almost-perfect content into exactly what you need.” There are easy commands to change the color or mood, and you can easily pair AI audio with video. You can also animate still images into 5 second clips.

DeVinci Resolve 21 public beta is now available for free. Feature highlights:

Photo image editing with Lightbox View, albums, instant AI powered search, “Hollywood” colorgrading, non-destructive edits, cropping and reframing, Resolve FX tools, and direct image capture.
Improved text tools.
Animate Fusion Effects.
AI tools: Intellisearch, Speech Generator, CineFocus, Face Age Transformer and Reshaper, Ultrasharpen, Motion Deblur

Edits mobile video editing app has new features:

Caption text find and replace (when the same name is spelled wrong every time)
Text word highlighting, adjusting size and color
Save your favorite font and text styles
Advanced video color adjustment
Improved project management

Google Photos has an improved cropping experience, with more accurate image previews, more reliable cropping and rotation, and smoother visuals.

You can now change the video playback speed in Google Photos for Android from 0.25X to 2X.

Personal Intelligence in Gemini is now integrated with Nano Banana 2, which can use your personal context to create more personalized images. If you connect your Google Photos to Personal Intelligence, it can use your people labels to generate images with you, your family and friends.

Adobe Firefly has made it easier to tweak images so they are exactly what you want.

Social Media

Instagram now lets you adjust topics for Your Algorithm for Explore in addition to Reels. This is available in English.

If you are in the EU or UK you can optionally give Facebook access to your device camera roll. In return Facebook will suggest images to share, and let you create AI powered “fun collages and edits”. They only use your images to improve Meta AI if you “choose to publish or share them in interactions with any AI at Meta feature”.

Tumblr apologized for a rash of incorrect suspensions. The trans community felt disproportionately affected and Tumblr noted ‘they have the highest proportion of LGBTQIA+ folks on social media, so ... those communities might feel that disproportionate impact.”

Tumblr also say that profile information isn't used in moderation decisions. "Going forward, we’re committed to finding a better balance: being more transparent with our community about issues that matter, even when we can’t share everything."

X wants to reward original content, reducing Creator revenue sharing payouts for reposts and gratuitous use of BREAKING in headlines.

More AI Updates

If you find yourself using the same AI prompt in Chrome over and over, you can now save your prompt as a Skill. There's also a library of ready-to-use Skills built-in to Chrome to get you started.

Leo Wattenberg: Make Art, Not Content —Or: AI Slop doesn’t threaten Artists, Capitalism does. This visual is spot on:

As for the big social media platforms, I see them perform similarly to Goethe’s Magician’s Apprentice, initially welcoming the flood of content, but eventually drowning under the weight of petabytes of AI-generated content clogging up every pipeline on their site.

What's Making Me Think

Video documentary maker Dan Olson (Folding Ideas) visited Beast Studios. He talks about why he (and others) were invited, and reflects on creating content, fandom and what's wrong with Beast Games.

Thanks for reading! 🏵️

Creator Weekly: YouTube Media Kit, AdSense Auto Ads, Instagram Shopping Reels

2026-04-11T06:30:00.000-07:00

As I wrote this, the Artemis II astronauts successfully returned to Earth. It was a triumph of physics, engineering, math and human ingenuity. It was a bright spot this week.

If you are in a music mood, the Coachella Music Festival is live on YouTube.

There are updates this week for YouTube, AdSense, Instagram, Substack, Reddit, SEO and more. There are also AI updates for Gemini, Lyria, Firefly, Meta Muse Spark and Copilot.

This week's top updates

New metrics in the YouTube Media Kit for Creators
AI Avatars in the YouTube Shorts editor
Nano Banana is now available in YouTube Create.
StreamElements integrates YouTube Creator Partnerships and its own data to match advertisers with creators.
Twitch Affiliates can participate in the latest Minecraft Sponsored Campaign.
Instagram creators can earn by tagging products in Reels.
Instagram now lets you edit comments.
Chrome adds a vertical tabs list.
Google really wants you to know your Gmail data isn't used for training Gemini.
Microsoft is killing Publisher.
AdSense Auto Ads have new advanced settings giving more control over ad placement.
Substack added new features for live streaming, Posts and Notes.
Reddit killed r/all.
Mastodon launched Starter Pack-like Collections.
Gemini added Notebooks that sync with Notebook LM.
Lyria 3 Pro can generate better songs up to 3 minutes long.
Microsoft is removing Copilot entry points from some parts of Windows, because users said it was too much.
Meta released the Muse Spark AI model, and it will be everywhere.
Adobe Firefly lets you create a custom model based on your own images.
Plus learn about what DeepMind thinks is the future of AI, how C2PA can be used to indicate an image isn't AI modified, what's wrong with Google AI Overviews, how to avoid the trap of chasing clicks and more.

YouTube and Video

All the inside information for YouTube creators is now on one channel! Subscribe to the Creator Insider channel to stay informed.

The YouTube Media Kit for creators now includes information not found in Analytics, like your viewers’ family status, household income, audience and shopping interests. The customized Media Kit is available to all creators in the YouTube Partner Program. Learn more.

YouTube Shorts has a new feature that lets you create an AI avatar of yourself, based on your selfie and voice. It's also available in the YouTube Create video editing app. You can use a prompt to make a short video with your avatar, or to insert it into another Short as a Reimagine Remix. YouTube says this is rolling out slowly.

Nano Banana is now available in the YouTube Create app. You can upload up to 3 reference images as “ingredients” to generate a new image. Learn more.

If you have a Gemini subscription, you can now edit your AI generated scripts when you convert Slides to Google Vids. Previously you could only edit after the import was complete.

StreamElements is now a YouTube Creator Partnerships API partner. In an announcement aimed at advertisers, they said “By combining YouTube’s data layer with our data science engine, BOSS, we turn creator marketing into a measurable growth system built on deep audience insights, real purchase intent across 3M YouTube Partnered channels, and outcome prediction before you spend.”

StreamYard now lets you add live polls.

For the first time, Twitch Affiliates can participate in a sponsored campaign (previously limited to Partners). Twitch says they are "expanding access because we believe in supporting creators at every level." Streamers can earn up to $1000 with the Minecraft campaign.

Instagram is adding more shopping features to Reels, including the ability to tag products. “Meta noted that it is not taking commissions from the new product links. Instead, the feature is designed to uplift the creator economy across the platform.”

Businesses can link their Wix site with TikTok to make it easier to run product ad campaigns.

Go audio only! On Spotify, Family Plan managers can now switch off video content for plan members. There are also new video control settings for individual users.

Tools

If you tend to accumulate lots of open browser tabs, the latest version of Chrome has a feature for you: a vertical tab menu.

Google wants you to know that your Gmail email remains private, even if you use the built in AI tools.

Google doesn't train Gemini or other foundational models on your emails
If you grant Gemini access, it's only used for tasks like summarizing
Gemini in Gmail doesn't retain your data

Google has stated this multiple times, and it's a sign of how little trust people have in Google and other big Tech companies.

Microsoft is killing Publisher in October 2026. They recommend exporting your files as PDFs, which can then be imported into Word. They also recommend using Word or PowerPoint as an alternative platform, with templates available in Microsoft Create.

Web Publishers

AdSense has made a major update to the Auto Ad banner settings, giving you more control over the ads on your site. The new Advanced Settings (replacing “fine tube your ads”) let you specify the maximum number of ads per page, the minimum spacing between ads, and whether you want the system to find more potential ad placements. This goes into effect April 16.

If you run a paid newsletter on WordPress (dot) com using Jetpack Newsletters, you can now comp a subscription. Give family, friends or select fans free access.

Tumblr engineering had a Hack Day, with new features whipped up, including a unified Inbox, GIFs in replies, in-blog search filters, Memories that resurface old posts, Reblogs with videos and more. They may or may not be implemented in production.

Substack added a bunch of new features.

Schedule live streams for other publication contributors, edit scheduled live streams, easier access to stream keys and select the publication for the live stream
Post templates
Schedule Notes (Substack’s Twitter-like stream posts)
On your publication homepage there is a new customizable Subscribe block
Use a Callout block to highlight content in a post.

Barry Adams on SEO: The Dangerous Seduction of Click-Chasing

Lily Ray @ AlgoRhythmic: Google’s Response to the NYT AI Overviews Article Doesn’t Tell the Full Story. She writes, "... the main fix for Google is to stop generating AI Overviews at all when the underlying web corpus doesn’t support a confident, sourced, consensus answer."

Social Media

Reddit has officially killed r/all (but it's still available using old Reddit). Also new: Video posts in comments in select communities and the Advisor role for moderators.

You can now edit Instagram comments within 15 minutes of posting.

The new version of Bluesky lets you search without clicking, using just keyboard shortcuts.

Mastodon is launching its first iteration of Collections. These are shareable bundles of profiles, similar to Bluesky Starter Packs. They can include up to 25 profiles, and you can opt out from being included. Madison is looking for feedback.

X says it is purging bot accounts.

X now lets you edit (or use Grok to generate) images before you post.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), has left X. They noted “an X post today receives less than 3% of the views a single tweet delivered seven years ago.” They are still on Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube.

AI Updates

Gemini is introducing Notebooks that sync with NotebookLM. You can add your Gemini chats as well as documents. This is rolling out to Gemini Plus, Pro and Ultra subscribers on the web, and will soon expand to mobile, free users and more locations.

Lyria 3 Pro now lets you generate music up to 3 minutes long, with improved musical composition in the Gemini app. Personal accounts with an AI Plus subscription (included with Google One Premium) have access, as do select Workspace Editions.

Google also shared a Lyria 3 ultimate prompting guide.

Microsoft acknowledged user complaints about Copilot in Windows. They are “reducing unnecessary Copilot entry points, starting with apps like Snipping Tool, Photos, Widgets and Notepad.”

Meta released their new Large Language Model (LLM) Muse Spark. Meta AI (and meta.ai) have a new look, and lets you switch between quick answer Instant mode and Thinking modes. The new model is supposed to be better at answering local, shopping and health questions. And, of course it's going to be inserted everywhere, including Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and more.

Adobe Firefly Custom Models let you train an AI model on your own images. This can capture your illustration or photographic style. Or remember a character that appears in multiple scenes. This is currently in public beta.

On Spotify, listeners can use prompted playlists to discover podcast episodes. Podcasters need to opt in to Chapters in Spotify for Creators for content to be surfaced this way.

What's making me think

Cleo Abrams interviews DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis on the hardest problem AI ever solved, and the future of AI.

The C2PA standard not only can include whether an image was AI generated, but also info about standard edits like cropping. Watch this really interesting discussion on how it works in general and how it applies in Google Photos and Pixel phones.

What's Bugging Me

EFF wrote: Blocking the Internet Archive Won’t Stop AI, But It Will Erase the Web’s Historical Record. It will be a great loss if a decade from now, what we're seeing online today is no longer available.

Thanks for reading! 🏵️

Creator Weekly: YouTube Hearts, Google Vids Updates, Beehiiv Podcasts

2026-04-04T06:29:00.000-07:00

Hello readers, I hope you had a non-foolish week. Unlike days of yore, most tech companies no longer join in April Fools Day pranks. I don't miss that, especially with jokes getting harder to distinguish from real life.

A couple of exceptions: Threads let people toggle on a Comic Sans version, Snapchat trolled Meta with Reals, and Twitch switched to their original site layout. Funny? Maybe worth a chuckle.

And don't miss Google's big update that allows Gmail username changes.

New This Week

Google Vids has multiple updates, including Veo 3.1 video generation for all, customizable AI avatars that can interact with objects, export to YouTube and a screen capture extension for Chrome.
YouTube added bulk comment hearting, expanded access to Effect Maker and AI chat on TVs.
YouTube is launching Stations, a new TV viewing experience.
LinkedIn requires live streams to be scheduled.
TikTok added Cameo integration.
CapCut Video Studio is a new AI powered video editor for the Web.
Creators Guild of America launched Mosaic, an IMdB for digital media creators.
You can now change your Gmail username without losing your Google Account photos, docs or email.
Surf launched RSS feed based Social Sites to build your community.
Beehiiv now hosts podcasts for distribution.
Google Search shared an explainer on the Googlebot.
EmDash from CloudFlare wants to be the spiritual successor to WordPress.
Patreon lets you use a custom URL for your profile.
Bluesky’s Attie AI assistant for creating custom feeds gets no love.
Instagram allows Trial Reels to be scheduled.
Facebook shared best practices for monetization.
Reddit Pro Tools are available to all eligible publishers.
And lots more, including the tech news that's bugging me this week.

Google Vids Gets Multiple New Features

Google Vids is Google's video editor for Google Workspace. It's available to all accounts (but AI features aren't available to everyone). This week there were a slew of updates.

Now anyone with a Google Account can use Veo 3.1 to generate video clips in Google Vids.
Directly export videos from Google Vids to YouTube. Videos are set to Private, but can be made public in YouTube Studio. Note: This does NOT give the option to select a channel, which I assume means channels on Brand Accounts are not supported.
The new Google Vids Screen Recorder Chrome extension lets you make screen recordings up to 30 minutes long. Optionally record your camera or screen + camera. You can make minor edits and share or use Google Vids for advanced editing. Get the extension.
You can also customize the AI avatars, including appearance, background location and clothing. Custom avatars can be reused on multiple projects. (Requires a Workspace Business, Enterprise or Essentials account or AI Pro or Ultra subscription.)
And Google Vids AI avatars can now be directed to interact with objects.

YouTube and Video

YouTube's new Comments to ❤️ feature identifies comments that deserve a heart and then lets you heart all of them at once (after review). More information.

YouTube Effect Maker is available to all creators with Advanced features in eligible regions. Plus:

AI video effects
Effects added to channel Editor permissions (with the expectation this allows creation of branded effects)
Try it at effects.youtube.com and join the Effect Maker Discord

YouTube's conversational AI tool for asking questions about videos is now available on TVs.

Coachella Music Festival will be live on YouTube once again, starting April 10. This year live streams will be available in 4k resolution, and multi streaming is now available on TVs. And there is a brand new feature called Stations, “a 24/7 interactive and uninterrupted music viewing experience featuring both iconic archival performances and 2026 festival highlights”. It's YouTube’s take on FAST (free ad-supported television). Technically it's a live broadcast based on a playlist, which is easy for creators to launch. We'll see more of these.

CapCut Video Studio is a new AI-infused timeline-free platform to create and edit videos on the web. It supports ByteDance's Dreamina Seedance 2.0 video generation model. Try it.

All LinkedIn Live livestreams will have to be scheduled ahead of time starting June 22. They note “you can still go live on short notice by scheduling your event just minutes in advance.” The goal is to make Live simpler, more discoverable and more impactful. Note: To live stream, a profile or page must be at least 30 days old and have at least 150 followers or connections.

TikTok and Cameo have a new integration that makes it and easier for TikTokers to sign up for Cameo, and easier for fans on TikTok to request a video. Cameo is a platform that lets you pay for a custom video shout-out from pop culture personalities.

StreamYard update: Change the size of display names and headlines

Tools for You

This is big! US users can now change their Gmail username for their Google Account. The old Gmail username remains as an alias, and all your Photos, Docs, Emails and YouTube channel will be unaffected by the change.

The Creators Guild of America launched Mosaic, an “IMDb for creators”. It includes behind-the-scenes credits for writers, videographers and editors. Individuals must meet professional eligibility standards and entries are verified by third parties.

If you are a creator using an iPhone to shoot video, you might want to check out the new DualShot Recorder app. It simultaneously records in vertical and landscape. Developer Derrick Downey says he's working on bringing it to the Play Store too.

Google Slides update : “Gemini can now create fully editable, brand-matched slides using dynamic layouts tailored to your specific content.” Requires a Workspace Business or Enterprise account or personal account with AI Pro or Ultra subscription.

Digital Publishers

Google Search explains how the Googlebot works and what it means that it only fetches the first 2 MB of your site.

If your blog is hosted by WordPress dot com, now all paid plans include plugins, global styles, font uploads and custom CSS. This includes the Personal plan for $5 per month.

Surf launched social websites powered by feeds. It brings together social posts, videos, podcasts, newsletters and community conversations across social platforms.

You can include profiles and creators from Bluesky, Mastodon, Threads, YouTube, podcasts, blogs and RSS feeds.
There are already social sites created by Wired, The Verge, and Rolling Stone for their communities. Details at the link.

Beehiiv is adding podcast hosting in a move that completes with Patreon and Substack.

Upload new episodes directly to beehiiv, and they are distributed automatically to every major podcast platform including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and Castro.
Episodes have their own page on your Beehiiv website where people can listen or navigate to their preferred podcast platform.
Your podcast can be added to your paid newsletter subscription, and Beehiiv doesn't take a cut (although you do need a paid account).

Patreon lets you add a custom URL to your profile (so it's your home page), has new post formatting options, distinct sender email addresses for emailed posts,

CloudFlare launched a new open source CMS called EmDash. They call it the “spiritual successor to WordPress”, and it's “compatible with WordPress functionality, [but] no WordPress code was used”. It's supposed to be very fast, and it's designed to solve security problems with WordPress plug-in architecture. You can try an early version today. WordPress and WordPress dot com’s Matt Mullenweg isn't that impressed.

Social Media

Bluesky improved its “Suggested For You” follow suggestions on people's profiles.

Attie is a new AI assistant being built by Bluesky to help users create custom feeds. People hate it.

Its Bluesky profile is currently the second most blocked (the only profile disliked more is US Vice President JD Vance).
Former Bluesky CEO and current Chief Innovation Officer Jay Graber notes the goal is the give people more control over their feeds, not generate content, and they are listening to feedback.
Some of the backlash comes from the sense that Bluesky is working on this instead of basic features. There's also a strong anti-AI sentiment, especially among artists and writers who left other platforms because of their AI use.

Reddit Pro Tools are now available to all publishers with domain verification. The tools allow publishers to see how their links are being shared on Reddit, easy publication via RSS feed and AI powered suggestions on which subreddits to post in. Publishers can also highlight and organize posts on their profile.

Instagram lets you schedule trial Reels in advance (if you have access to trial reels).

Facebook shared best practices for monetization. Tip: try to maximize watch time of your Reels.

Snapchat expanded eligibility for its Creator Subscriptions monetization program.

What's Bugging Me This Week

Nota News is an AI news company that was meant to expand local news coverage by generating articles based on public information like city council meeting videos. Instead it's been found plagiarizing actual local news coverage with no credit given. The sites have now been taken down and Nota News claims they were just meant to be an experiment. It turns out you can publish articles very cheaply if you start with someone else's hard work.

What's Making Me Smile

Hello, world! Photo of Earth taken from Artemis II, which will be going around the moon. We are all in this photo.

Thanks for reading! 🏵️

Creator Weekly: YouTube Shopping Expansion, Sora Shutdown, Music in Google Vids

2026-03-28T06:31:00.000-07:00

This week's theme is shopping. You may be seeing more creators promoting products on YouTube and Instagram.

Plus OpenAI is killing the Sora app, X was going to limit monetization outside users home region, plus new features for Instagram, Twitch, YouTube and more.

This week's top updates

YouTube Creator Partnerships matches advertisers and creators
YouTube Shopping expands to more creators
Meta adds shopping features to Instagram Reels
Generate music in Google Vids with Lyria 3
Edits has new fonts and templates
Rushes is a new Vimeo replacement
Twitch improves mobile streaming
StreamYard has a new look
Restream adds sharing and analytics features
Ghost adds members only podcasts
WordPress dot com allows AI agents
Beehiiv adds AI integration for audience insights
Mastodon launches friendlier user profiles
Reddit labels good bots
X tried to limit international creators monetizing US politics, then backtracked
OpenAI kills the Sora video generation app
Wikipedia bans AI generated articles
Gemini makes it easier to switch chatbots
And learn what's bugging me this week.

YouTube and Video

YouTube Creator Partnerships (formerly BrandConnect) now uses Gemini to help connect advertisers and creators. It has the same features as Brand Connect, plus new ways for advertisers to find creators to connect with.

Gemini will be able to analyze billions of data points – including audience similarity, organic brand mentions, and subscriber growth – to suggest creators tailored to a brand’s specific identity and campaign goals.”
Advertisers will be able to send queries to multiple creators at once.
YouTube Creator Partnerships is currently available to creators in the US, India, Indonesia, UK, Brazil, Australia, and Canada. It will be expanding to creators in more countries in 2026.
Creators can share their Channel Insights with brands. This isn't me, but a reminder that this can (and maybe should) be set if you are interested in Brand deals.
Advertisers can use creator partnerships boost (formerly known as Partnership ads) to “turn authentic creator content into high-performing ad assets.”

The YouTube Shopping affiliate program is now available to all creators in eligible countries in the YouTube Partner Program with at least 500 subscribers (formerly it required 5,000 subscribers). This lets you tag products from “favorite brands” in Shorts, regular videos on demand, and live streams.

Facebook and Instagram are also adding Shopping features in posts and Reels for monetizing creators. Meta added new affiliate partners and easier checkout to make more viewers able to buy.

Use YouTube Effect Maker (effects.youtube.com ) to turn a selfie into a short video clip using an AI prompt. Once you create and publish the effect, others can use it in the Shorts editor too. Watch for details.

You can now generate music tracks in Google Vids using the Lyria 3 text-to-music AI model. You can generate 30 second clips or full songs up to 3 minutes, with limits depending on your account type. This is available for Google Workspace plans and consumer accounts with an AI Pro or Ultra subscription.

ByteDance’s new AI video plus audio generation model, Dreamina Seedance 2.0 is rolling out in CapCut. It won't be available globally until copyright issues (especially with Hollywood) are resolved.

The Edits video editing app added AI font styling, improved Transform tool for fine tuned changes, more detailed templates, and easier to find links to Reels, profiles and your own content.

Rushes is a new platform for independent professional filmmaker s to host, share and review videos. Founder and filmmaker Guy Loftus wrote:

“A year later and it’s finally here, my big middle finger to Vimeo [acquired by Bending Spoons in 2025] pulling all the community features for U.K./EU users and jacking the price up… I built this mainly for people in Europe who felt insulted by the way Vimeo treated them. But, as I found out, a lot of people all over the world feel quite similar. It’s not for people who have terabytes of videos they want to store, it’s for filmmakers and creators that want a decent place to host their work and like to be inspired by other awesome people.”

Live Streaming

Twitch improved its mobile live streaming options. It's easier to view and moderate chat. Use other apps on your phone (like maps, notifications, or messages) while streaming. And if your connection drops, viewers will see a BRB message for 90 sections to allow you to reconnect.

StreamYard has a new look and redesigned duck logo, “ to celebrate all the improvements—big and small—that the team has brought to Streamyard in the last year”. Bending Spoons acquired StreamYard in 2024.

Restream has had several updates this month:

Blogs and Newsletters

The Ghost newsletter and blogging platform is now integrated with Transistor.fm, showing Members-only podcasts.

This sounds like it could backfire: WordPress.com now lets AI agents write and publish posts, and more

The Google Search March Core Update is rolling out, so you may see changes in search ranking.

Beehiiv MCP uses an open standard to allow AI (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and others) to connect to your newsletter to get audience insights or analyze your site. Early access is available to paid accounts.

Mastodon has a new profile look, meant especially to be an improvement for institutional users and to make Fediverse discovery more intuitive, including:

Filter for boosts and replies
Featured hashtags, and viewers can easily filter an accounts' tagged posts to see all with the same hashtag
Easier to view all pinned posts
Updated handle explainer
Removed Following You badge (since most people didn't find that useful)
Easier to edit your own profile

Reddit says “Humans welcome (bots must wear name tags)”. They will label "good bots" as [App], and continue to remove spam and “nefarious bot content”. To that end, Reddit is adding human verification for "automated or otherwise fishy behavior", and they are making reporting suspected automation easier. They are also "exploring ways to confirm humanness and comply with [various identity and age confirmation laws] without compromising user identity.” That sounds like the harder task.

On Instagram you can now reorder photos and videos in a carousel after publishing. You can also remove (but not add) items.

X made a new policy for monetizing creators that would give more weight to impressions from people in the same country or region. The reason? X “hopes this will disincentivize gaming the attention of US or Japanese accounts [specifically calling out posts on US politics] and instead, drive diverse conversations on the platform.” This drew backlash from creators who explained they were trying to reach a wide audience and usage of X in their home county is low. X owner Musk then indefinitely paused the change.

Linktree, mostly known for Creator “link in bio” pages, has Social Analytics, giving creators a “unified view of how their activity across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube connects to their Linktree engagement data”. The platform’s updated Insights Chat draws on that days to give customized guidance for social media performance.

More AI Updates

OpenAI is shutting down the Sora video generation app. Its novelty wore off pretty quickly, but even so it apparently is extremely expensive to run. And OpenAI is shifting its focus to business and coding. Disney also withdrew from a billion dollar investment that allowed use of Disney characters and included select Sora videos appearing in the Disney+ app.

Wikipedia’s new policy does not allow AI-generated or rewritten content, but does allow using LLMs to assist basic copyediting and translation with subsequent human review. They note “Caution is required, because LLMs can go beyond what you ask of them and change the meaning of the text such that it is not supported by the sources cited.”

In a competitive move, you can now import preferences and chats from other chatbots into Gemini.

What's bugging me this week

A company called Webinar.TV records Zoom meetings without permission then uses AI to turn them into “podcasts” for profit. It's thought that it often gains access to the meetings via 3rd party extensions, like those with calendar permissions. Subs affected meetings also had links shared publicly.

Thanks for reading! 🏵️

Creator Weekly: YouTube Reimagine, Canva Magic Layers, Facebook Creator Fast Track

2026-03-21T06:30:00.000-07:00

I'm still not fully back up yet, so no live stream this week again. You should watch this week's OnEBoard Tech Topic, because I'll have a tip!

Top Updates

YouTube launches Reimagine AI remix tool.
YouTube now lets you add language-localized thumbnails.
Canva Magic Layers turns flat images into editable layers.
Facebook Creator Fast Track guarantees monthly earnings for popular YouTube, Instagram and TikTok creators.
Substack adds a built-in video recording studio
Meta cancels (then uncancels) the VR Horizon World metaverse.

YouTube and Video

YouTube launched Reimagine, an AI Shorts Remix tool that lets you generate an 8 second clip from a single Shorts frame. You can use two images from your mobile gallery to insert a person (yourself?) or object. It's powered by the Veo video generation model. Creators can disable all remixing on their Shorts if you don't want people to do this. Yes, I tried it and I find it a bit uncanny.

YouTube is testing “Discover videos with previews”. On your home tab you will see 5-10 previews from recommended videos showing “short engaging moments”. Watch the whole video, or add to your Watch Later playlist.

When you do a travel or shopping related search YouTube on mobile, you will see a grid of Shorts about related places and products.

If you upload multiple language audio tracks to your YouTube videos, you can now add language-localized thumbnails. Learn how.

The Edits video editing app has more new features: new cinematic visual and sound effects, sharper camera, masking on the main track and frame-by-frame precision trimming (iOS only).

What is Substack? It's not really a “newsletter” platform. Substack now has a built-in video recording studio. Features include:

Up to 2 guests on camera
Screen share
Add a logo or wordmark
Select a thumbnail frame and add text

Blogs

Tumblr announced that reblogs in a chain get their own notes. After 49,000 mostly negative comments, the change was reversed.

WordPress launched my.wordpress.net, which runs WordPress in your browser. Sites are private by default, and meant to be a private workspace for drafting and exploration. It lives in your browser (make backups frequently) with about 100 MB storage. If you want to make it public you can move to a hosted WordPress installation.

AI Graphics Tools

Canva launched Magic Layers, an AI tool that converts flat images into editable multi-layered designs, including text. It's designed to let you edit AI generated images (including from other platforms), but it's not limited to those. It's currently in public beta in the US, UK, Canada and Australia.

New features for Google's NotebookLM AI tool:

Use EPUB ebooks as a source.
New ways to visualize info: Slide revisions and export as PPTX, new infographic styles, cinematic video overviews, improved flashcards and quizzes.
Ask for artifact creation (like quizzes) in the chat.
Features are generally available, except cinematic video overviews, which require a Workspace account or AI Pro subscription

Social Media: Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, X

Facebook has a new invite-only Creator Fast Track program. Will creators stay after the payments stop?

YouTube, Instagram, TikTok creators with 100k followers can earn $1,000 per month or $3,000 per month with more than one million followers
Increased reach on eligible Reels
Plus earn with Facebook Content Monetization

In addition to Facebook's new emphasis on original content, there are new monetization metrics to help creators better understand earnings.

Qualified Views: Views that may be eligible to earn money
Earnings Rate: Earnings per 1,000 qualified views
Non-Qualified Views: Breakdown showing why views don’t qualify for earnings

There's now a Meta AI support assistant for Facebook and Instagram, which can help with things like resetting your password or updating your profile. They are also rolling out the support assistant to people who need help logging into their Facebook and Instagram accounts, “starting with select cases” in the US and Canada.

Remember when Facebook decided to go all in on the metaverse, even changing the company name to Meta? That didn't work quite as expected. Meta announced on Tuesday that its Horizon Quest metaverse platform would no longer be available in VR. And a twist, a couple days later, they reversed that decision, maybe because it sounded so bad. But it seems billions were spent on the not very popular platform. (Meta says the metaverse is actually VR and AR and mobile. So everything?)

A small, useful update: Instagram finally lets you pause Reels with a tap.

Automated accounts on Bluesky can now voluntarily label themselves as bots. Bluesky says that there may be additional policies for automated accounts in the future.

X launched Creator Subscriptions 2.0, that let's creators lock any thread in a post for paid subs only. Plus subscriber-only articles will appear in the main profile feed, and onboarding subs is easier.

If you upload images to X, you can block Grok from editing them.

X wants users to help improve the Reply algorithm with down votes.

X added AI article summaries for long-form X posts (not linked articles)

What's bugging me this week

Google Search is testing replacing article headlines in the search results with bland AI generated versions. This is terrible, as a good headline not only tells you what the article is about, but also gives a sense of the framing and tone. It's how I choose which article to click.

Creator Weekly: Big YouTube Thumbnails, Instagram Creator Tools, Digg Reboot Killed by Spam

2026-03-14T06:30:00.000-07:00

Hello readers!

As you probably noticed, there was no newsletter last week.

I had a serious health emergency, and recovery is going to take some time.

I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to do things going forward.

For now, there will be a briefer newsletter each week. I'm not sure when I will start live streaming again.

So that's good news, that I'm feeling good enough to write all this. But video is more logistically complicated. (And I am definitely not camera ready).

Here are the updates that will help you stay in the know!

YouTube

News

Last fall, YouTube announced a bunch of new features that would improve viewing on big screens. That included much larger video thumbnails. Now all creators can upload thumbnails up to 50 MB, up from 2 MB. Time to make sure your thumbnails are looking good.

Hollywood Reporter: YouTube Gives Political Figures and Journalists Access to AI Deepfake Detection Tool. The tool is also available to all creators in the YouTube Partner Program.

YouTube Partners

YouTube Studio mobile app update: Creators with more than one YouTube channel connected to their AdSense account will now be able to see aggregated payment activity across all channels, a breakdown of payment activity for a single channel, and payment history for the past 12 months (including a payment breakdown of taxes withheld and other adjustments).

This will only be available to users who have access to YouTube revenue data for multiple channels via a single account sign-in (either through channel permissions or brand account permissions). Learn more.

Instagram and Meta

Instagram is making creator tools available to more users. All personal accounts will have access to the Insights Dashboard, Trending Audio, and Scheduled Content. Personal accounts with at least 1,000 followers will gain access to Trial Reels, Channels, and Instagram Live. Professional accounts have additional access to Trial Reels at 200 followers, plus Monetization and Ad Tools.

Facebook has clarified its original content policy for creators. While third party content can be used as long as new content is the focus, minor low value edits will not be considered original. And those reels will be deprioritized. They have also updated their content protection tool to also detect potential impersonation.

The Edits video editing app has a new voice over teleprompter tool, freeze frame and will help you find sound effects.

What's Got Me Riled

The Digg reboot that launched in beta a few weeks ago has already shut down due to spambots. “The internet is now populated, in meaningful part, by sophisticated AI agents and automated accounts. We knew bots were part of the landscape, but we didn’t appreciate the scale, sophistication, or speed at which they’d find us.” A small team will continue to work on trying to build something different.

AI-powered grammar checker Grammarly added an Expert Review feature that would let you select an AI version of a journalist, author or academic to give you writing suggestions. They apparently didn't ask any of those writers if they wanted to participate, and they are pissed. The feature has been removed, but there's already a lawsuit.

Thanks for reading!

Creator Weekly: YouTube Voice Replies, Twitch Suspensions, Google Vids Longer Videos

2026-02-28T06:30:00.000-08:00

As February comes to a close there are several new features from YouTube, Twitch, Discord, Google Vids, Threads and Bluesky. You should review your Amazon Wishlist settings and check your AdSense reports. And on the AI front Google updated Flow and released Nano Banana 2.

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✅ Take this week’s quiz

What do you know about Google’s AI Music Generator? Take this week’s quiz.

To Do & Try

ProducerAI, “built with, and for, a passionate community of [music] artists”, is now part of Google Labs. It includes “Spaces”, which lets music artists “use natural language to create completely new instruments” and effects. Try it at www.producer.ai.

Google Photos for Android now lets you create custom stickers from your photos. You do need to start with a photo that has a clearly defined subject in the foreground. This feature is already available for iPhone and iPad. Try it.

YouTube Voice Replies

YouTube voice replies are now available to all creators.

This lets you record and post voice replies to comments on your own channel using the YouTube and YouTube Studio mobile apps.

Only the transcription of the recording appears on desktop (so speak clearly!).

Google Vids Longer Videos and Cartoon Avatars

Google Vids now lets you create videos up to 30 minutes long (previously 10 minutes). You can import video and audio clips up to 90 minutes/4GB, but they need to be edited down to 30 minutes for full editing capabilities. This means you can now edit recorded meetings in Vids!

The free browser-based (desktop only) Google Vids video editor is available to everyone with a Google Account, but free personal accounts don't have access to all the generative AI tools.

You can use Google Vids to create either landscape or vertical videos and it's integrated with Google Drive.

Google Vids also added 2D and 3D cartoon avatars, meant to be more approachable and engaging than realistic avatars (which I think are a bit uncanny valleyish). These are available to Google Workspace accounts or personal accounts with an AI Pro or Ultra subscription.

And the AI avatars can now speak Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, Korean and Japanese, in addition to English.

Twitch “Modernizes” Its Suspension Policies

Twitch updated its suspension policy to make restrictions better match the offense. There are now two suspension types: streaming suspensions and chatting suspensions.

If the Community Guidelines violation happens while streaming or creating content (such as stories), the penalty is restriction on going live and disabled live chat on their channel (existing clips and VODs will still be available). It will not affect watching streams or participating in chat on other channels.

If Community Guidelines are violated in chat, the streamer can continue to stream and chat on their own channel, but won’t be able to chat on other people’s streams.

Suspensions can last from 24 hours to 30 days. If there are multiple violations, the length of the suspension will increase for each subsequent violation.

High severity violations may result in both a chatting suspension and a streaming suspension, and could mean losing access completely.

If you believe your channel was suspended in error, you can appeal.

Twitch notes that only 2% of active users have received a suspension, and only 10% of suspended users reoffend.

Discord Cuts Ties With Persona

Discord has cut ties with Persona, which it was testing as an age verification platform in the UK. Persona is widely used for age and identity verification, including by Google AdSense (optionally), LinkedIn and Reddit.

Security researchers discovered that Persona “performs 269 distinct verification checks and scours the internet and government sources for potential matches”. That includes comparing selfies to terrorist watchlists and other databases.

Persona says concerns are based on a misunderstanding.

Persona CEO Rick Song explained, “What was found was uncompressed files of a front end that’s already on every single person’s device,” he said, adding the information is available on the company’s help center and API documentation. “I don’t think having uncompressed files online is good,” Song went on, but added the information found by the researcher is the uncompressed version of a company’s compressed source map online. ... I think this is one of these in which the contents of it seems scarier, but…internally, we didn’t consider this even a major vulnerability.”

He also denied any connection to the US Government, ICE, or Peter Theil’s Palantir.

Discord still needs to verify adult users, somehow, as it’s required by various governments. They say that “90% of users will never need to verify their age to continue using Discord exactly as they do today”. That’s because users either don’t access age-restricted content, or their internal age assurance systems determine the user is an adult.

One of their previous vendors had a security breach that exposed 70,000 user photo IDs, which does not inspire confidence.

They say they will roll out more verification options, such as credit card verification. They will also be transparent about which third party vendors they use.

They are also building a new “spoiler channel” option, so community owners don’t need to age-gate channels with “spoilers, politics, and heavier conversations” to give members a choice about seeing them.

There will be more information as they roll out changes globally.

Amazon Wishlists May Expose Your Address

You should definitely not share your Amazon wishlist publicly or with anyone you don't trust, because your mailing address may be exposed. If this affects you, you should have received an email from Amazon this week.

Amazon no longer lets you opt out from receiving items from 3rd party sellers. To do that, Amazon must share your shipping address, and that could be revealed to the purchaser as well.

Amazon suggests using a PO box or non-residential address if you share your Wishlist publicly.

Flow For Images

At Google I/O in May 2025, Google launched Flow, their AI filmmaking platform. This week it got a major redesign and a shift to image generation.

Google says “you’ve told us you're looking for more than just a video generation tool. We hear you: Today we're introducing a redesigned interface that brings image generation to the forefront, offers flexible asset management, and gives more precise control over editing.”

Google Labs is shutting down Whisk and ImageFX and moving “their best capabilities” into Flow. In March you can opt in to have your projects and media from those platforms migrated over to your Flow library.

The Flow library is also getting an update, with the ability to group your images and videos into collections, and easier searching and sorting.

For editing you can use the new lasso tool to select an area or draw on images then use natural language prompts to edit. Plus there are now buttons to extend clips or add or remove objects.

Try Google Flow. Free accounts have limited access.

(This sounds very much like a full-fledged filmmaking platform probably didn’t have broad enough appeal, hence adding other AI image creation tools.)

Nano Bana 2

Google Nano Banana 2 (Gemini 3.1 Flash Image) is now available in the Gemini app with new templates to get you started. It’s also available in AI Mode and Lens in Google Search, AI Studio and Google Cloud (demos), Flow, and Google Ads.

The latest model includes:

“Real-world knowledge” that uses information and images from web search
A wider range of image resolutions (from 512px to 4K)
More legible text and translations
Maintains up to 5 consistent characters and 10 objects in a single workflow.
It’s also better at following instructions and has improved image “aesthetics”.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

Portraits is a Google experiment that creates a “coach” chatbot based on an expert’s writings (mostly self-help sorts of things). You can try Portraits here. YouTube started testing creator Portraits in December. The most recent addition on YouTube is Evan Carmichael, who teaches people to “believe in yourself.” If you are in the US and at least 18, you can give it a try. It is not available if you are signed into a Brand Account channel.

Is YouTube the “future of news?” YouTube thinks so.

YouTube Creator Liaison and “YouTube Insider” Rene Ritchie was on the vidIQ podcast to talk about AI-generated and “Inauthentic” content (YouTube wants your unique voice, no matter the tools), getting your content discovered, changing niches, shadow bans and more.

TubeBuddy (video SEO and analytics platform) has been acquired by GameSquare. Tubefilter reports: GameSquare just bought TubeBuddy. So...what is GameSquare?

Twitch will no longer enforce their policy against multi-platform streamers who display a Combined Chat (from multiple platforms).

StreamYard improved their AI Clip tool, which is now “3x faster”.

Web Publishers

There was an AdSense issue between February 12th and 18th that prevented anchor ads from being closed on iOS devices. That may result in a significant increase in click through rate. AdSense doesn’t mention this, but I suspect that will result in higher than usual invalid activity deductions for February.

Social Media

Instagram for TV has expanded to Google TV devices in the US. This launched in December for Amazon Fire TV. It lets you watch Reels on the big screen, with recommended channels and search.

Bluesky now supports Bandcamp embeds. You can play songs directly in Bluesky (if you enable external media).

If you connect your podcast to your Threads account, you can now add rich link previews. Upload a video clip, and select the “add podcast link” option to add a preview card that links to the full episode. Threads supports links to podcasts on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and iHeart.

John Oliver on why Twitter/X is worse than you think: Twitter: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

Communication and Collaboration

Google has updated the video player in the Google Drive app for iOS. This change launched for Android last year.

In Chrome for desktop, you can save PDF files directly to Google Drive. They can be found in the “Saved from Chrome” folder.

More AI Updates

The lesson here is “don’t trust what AI chatbots tell you” and maybe “have a blog”. BBC reporter Thomas Germain writes: I hacked ChatGPT and Google's AI - and it only took 20 minutes. He wrote a post on his personal blog about how he’s a top competitive hot dog eater, and both Gemini and ChatGPT quickly incorporated that information (Claude suggested it wasn’t true). This makes it easy for spammers and unsavory sorts to spread false information.

And it should go without saying that you shouldn’t rely on AI for health decisions: ‘Unbelievably dangerous’: experts sound alarm after ChatGPT Health fails to recognise medical emergencies (even though you can submit your medical records).

Opal, Google’s experimental AI mini-app creator now lets you add agents for interactive experiences.

Google Translate has new Gemini features that can better translate idioms and colloquial phrases with an “understand” button for more information. It also lets you ask follow-up questions. This is available in the US and India in the Translate app (and will be available soon on the web).

Creator Weekly: Apple Podcast Video, YouTube Shorts Editor, Snapseed Camera

2026-02-21T06:35:00.000-08:00

This week I am loving watching the sliding, twirling, and swooshing in the Winter Olympics (from warm inside, of course). It’s amazing to see what the athletes can do. And I like the camera work with drones and the skating videographer for an immersive experience. But now I think I’m ready for spring.

This week there are updates for Apple Podcasts, YouTube Shorts, LinkedIn, Restream, Meta, Snapseed and more.

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What do you know about Google Family Groups? Take this week’s quiz.

New Tips and Tutorials

My tech tip for this week is how to archive a single Gmail label, creating an archive for a project, trip, or sender.

To Do & Try

Google I/O: The dates for Google I/O were announced. You can register and play this year’s puzzles.

Make Music: Custom music generation is now available in the Gemini app, using the Lyria 3 generative music model. It can generate both music and lyrics, starting with a text prompt, photo or video. It will output a 30 second track with cover art generated by Nano Banana. This is also available in the YouTube Shorts Dream Track editor in the US, and rolling out to other countries (but not the European Economic Area). Google notes “Lyria 3 is designed for original expression, not for mimicking existing artists.”

Apple Podcasts Adds Video

Apple Podcasts will soon have video (“this spring”). Fans can “seamlessly switch between watching and listening to a show”, and download videos to watch offline.

Creators distribute their video through “participating hosting providers and ad networks” (video is HLS format -- Apple’s HTTP Live Streaming), and will also be able to dynamically insert video ads

Video podcasts are already available on Spotify, YouTube, and other platforms.

LinkedIn Fights Inauthentic Comments

LinkedIn is trying to keep discussions authentic. Their policy does not allow automated comments “submitted to LinkedIn via a browser extension, script or third party tool, without human action involved in clicking the comment button”.

VP of Product Management Gyanda Sachdeva notes automated comments are usually low quality. To help improve comment quality, automated comments will be removed from the “Most Relevant” section, may be removed from outside the commenter’s network, and users who continuously post low quality automated comments may have their ability to use LinkedIn restricted.

Live Stream Portrait + Landscape With Restream

Restream now lets you stream in landscape and portrait at the same time from Restream Studio on the web.

You can stream to the same YouTube channel in both formats at once, or assign different formats to different destinations (for example, Landscape on YouTube and Portrait on Instagram).

Restream Studio is “cloud powered” so there’s no extra load on your computer.

There aren’t currently customization options for the vertical stream (that layout is based on your landscape layout), but that will be coming soon.

Restream is my streaming platform of choice, so I’m looking forward to using this for vertical + landscape livestreams on YouTube. You can do that in YouTube Studio’s Live Control Room, but my experiments with that have been awkward, and there aren’t any nice layouts.

I’ll note that Restream also lets you dual stream with their OBS plugin. StreamYard has a similar feature available for paid plans.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

In the YouTube Studio mobile app, your Shorts will be displayed in a grid, rather than as a list. If you prefer the list format, you can switch back by tapping the list view icon at top right.

In the YouTube Shorts video editor, you can now edit individual video clips in context with other elements (audio, video, visual overlays). You can make “precise adjustments and edits to the timing of each clip with zooming and snapping, rearranging or deleting clips to create a rough cut”. On Android you can split videos into segments for editing.

YouTube digital Gifts powered by Jewels (which fans can give during vertical live streams) have launched in Canada. Fans spend real money to purchase Jewels, which can be used to send a Gift to a vertical live streamer. Previously this was US only. Learn more.

YouTube is testing their conversational AI chatbot that lets you ask about videos on smart TVs.

If you’re in London: YouTube's first video belongs in a museum. Now it's in one.

In StreamYard you can now customize a ticker that appears on-screen in your live stream.

Web Publishers and Search

Google Search Console AI-powered configuration (announced in December) is now available to everyone. This lets you describe the analysis you want in natural language. The AI tool helps by applying filters, configuring comparisons, and selecting the metrics to analyze.

WordPress(dot)com now has a WordPress AI Assistant integrated with the WordPress Editor, Media Library, Block Notes and AI Website Builder. It uses your site’s content and layout to give personalized assistance with design, editing and creating new images (using Google’s Nano Banana). This requires a Business or Commerce plan.

Photos and Image Design

Snapseed the pro photo editing tool acquired by Google in 2012, has added a camera. The camera lets you choose what type of film to emulate (choose Kodak Gold, Fujifilm Superia or a number of others), and the images can be manually fine-tuned. This is available in the free iOS Snapseed app. The Android Snapseed app has not been updated since 2024.

Pomelli is an AI experiment from Google Labs to help small businesses create marketing campaigns. You can try it here. It has a new feature, Photoshoot, that lets you start with a productimage (“don’t worry about polish”), then generates professional-looking images that are “on brand”. You can even add context by using your product URL to create campaigns.

If you use Google’s NotebookLM to create slides, you can now make prompt-based revisions. You can change the image, remove a text box, and otherwise prompt changes to the slides. (This is not as good as making them actually editable, but better than nothing!)

Social Media

Mastodon.social (one of the main default Mastodon servers) has finally added a Help Center. Mastodon also has plans to improve server discovery and the onboarding process, a redesigned profile for creators, and an option for organizations to offer updates by email. At its heart their commitment is “building a social web that puts people first.”

Snapchat is launching paid Creator Subscriptions. Fans can receive exclusive content, priority replies to a creator’s public Stories and an ad-free experience. Creators set their own monthly pricing. This launches in Alpha on February 23, with select participating creators in participating markets on iOS devices.

Threads made it easier to share a post to an Instagram Story without leaving the app.

Social Media Today: Meta Looks to Sneak Through Facial ID Update

The US Midterm elections are this November, and Meta shared their plans. Fact checkers were removed last year, and were replaced by Community Notes. Community Notes only display if “contributors who usually disagree with each other” agree it should be published, which means the most partisan content will never display a Note (which I believe is the intent of the policy change). Political ads have a “paid for by” disclaimer, and AI-generated or altered realistic looking people or video of events will now be labeled “AI Info”, rather than “digitally created”.

Meta is retiring the messenger(dot)com website. You can still use facebook(dot)com/messages on the web instead.

More AI Updates and Tips

Google released Gemini 3.1 Pro, which has a “smarter, more capable baseline for complex problem-solving”. It’s available in the Gemini app and NotebookLM for AI Pro and Ultra subscribers.

404 Media reports Pinterest Is Drowning in a Sea of AI Slop and Auto-Moderation. On the one side there is a lot of low-quality AI-generated images there, and on the other side Pinterest’s automated systems label non-AI images as AI.

An AI agent wrote a hit piece on an open source project maintainer, after its submitted code was rejected, but that’s not the disturbing bit. Tech news site Ars Technica reported on this, but the article it published included fabricated quotes. The article’s author has apologized for that, saying he was sick, rushed to finish the article, and did not verify the quotes provided by ChatGPT. There’s such a rush to use generative AI tools that are known to “hallucinate”, and apparently there’s no fact checking. It does not bode well for journalism.

Prices will be going up: A 'seismic' Nvidia shift, AI chip shortages and how it's threatening to hike gadget prices

Creator Weekly: Discord Age Verification, Threads For You Customization, AdSense Vignette Triggers

2026-02-14T06:30:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine’s Day! Dear readers, I ❤ you all!This week there’s updates for Discord, YouTube, TikTok, AdSense, Threads and more.

📨 Subscribe to get Creator Weekly by email.
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Join Creator Weekly Live on Sunday, 10:30AM Pacific time (6:30PM UTC). Join me live or watch the recording.

✅ Take this week’s quiz

What do you know about YouTube auto-dubbing? Take this week’s quiz.

New Tips and Tutorials

If you are in a Google family group with Google One Premium storage, you may already have access to the new Google AI Plus subscription features.

Discord Will Require Age Verification

Discord will use the teen-appropriate experience by default for all users, starting in March.

They do use age prediction, and say “For the majority of adult users, we will be able to confirm your age group using information we already have.” But if Discord doesn’t think you are an adult, age verification will be required to change communication settings, access sensitive content or speak on stage. Options will be "privacy forward" video selfies or document submission.

This has made many people concerned about privacy, but Discord has been trying to reassure users by explaining that facial scans don’t leave your device, IDs are immediately deleted after they get your age, and Discord only receives your age and not your identity.

Customize Your Threads Feed

Threads is rolling out Dear Algo in the US, New Zealand, Australia and UK. You just mention “Dear Algo” in a public post, and describe what you want to see more or less of.

You can also reshare other people’s Dear Algo requests if you see one that looks interesting.

If your submission is approved, your For You feed is then updated for 3 days based on the request. Any content you engage with may affect your For You feed for the longer term.

Posts that appear because of your Dear Algo request are labeled as such.

From my experiments, it’s better at concrete requests (“more posts about Oakland food”) than abstract ones (“less rage bait”).

TikTok (US) Gets a Local Feed

TikTok U.S. launched a Local Feed tab that features local travel, events, restaurants, shopping and posts from local creators and small businesses. It does not include content from under-18 or private accounts.

This requires accurate location information from your device to TikTok, which is off by default. You can enable precise location sharing with the TikTok app in your device Location Services settings.

More AdSense Vignette Ads

There are new triggers for AdSense vignette ads, which you can opt out of. The setting was added February 9th, but the new triggers won’t be active until March 9th.

Vignette ads pop up when users navigate between pages on your website. There are now additional triggers, including reaching the end of an article and start scrolling back up or don’t navigate away, is inactive for at least 30 seconds followed by user interaction (like scrolling), and navigating via the browser back button.

This is opt-out if you have vignette ads enabled (see the linked article for details).

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube will now automatically turn on captions if you mute your phone or tablet. The captions turn off when you unmute. And you can always manually turn on or off the captions. This is not currently available for Shorts.

YouTube Shorts has a new AI-powered tool: Add Motion. This lets you turn a photo of yourself into an 8 second Short using preset motions. You can find this in the YouTube Shorts editor by tapping the Sparkly Icon > Make Me Move. YouTube recommends uploading a full body image for the best result. It automatically adds the required AI disclosure. This is available everywhere except the European Economic Area, Switzerland and UK.

YouTube has simplified the video sharing options on desktop. They have removed Blogger, Tumblr, Kakao, VK, OK, and Mix. Currently you can share directly from the video watch page on desktop to X, WhatsApp, Facebook, Email, Reddit, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. You can also get the video link or embed code (if you want to add it to your Blogger blog or website)

YouTube is running a “small” experiment to improve notifications. Viewers who haven’t recently engaged with a channel, despite getting push notifications, will not receive any additional push notifications from that channel. It will not affect notifications in the YouTube app or the subscription feed.

You can edit your YouTube live stream monetization settings from inside StreamYard. Turn on monetization, and choose the frequency of the ads (Conservative, Balanced, Aggressive). Restream added a similar feature last month. Your YouTube channel must have monetization with ads enabled to use this feature.

The Design Better Podcast featured Nate Koechley, UX Director at YouTube and Matthew Darby, Director of Product Management, talking about designing YouTube and “the algorithm”. “As Nate and Matt explain, what users say they want doesn’t always match what actually makes them happy on the platform. They also discuss their work exploring ways to give viewers more agency and control, including the possibility of using natural language to tune your feed.”

Monetizing Twitch streamers that were grandfathered into a very favorable 70/30 split have been moved to the Twitch Plus Program at Level 2. Unlike non-legacy streamers, they will not have to meet the subscriber minimum requirements to remain at Level 2 (which has caused some confusion).

Twitch streamers and mods can now delete their own chat messages. This is currently available on desktop and coming soon to mobile.

Twitch is testing pause ads. When a viewer pauses, the ads appear at the sides and bottom of the screen. Pressing play makes the ads disappear. Twitch says, “We'll monitor feedback and may evolve this experience over time as we explore more ways to generate revenue for our creators with less intrusive formats.” There is also an ongoing skippable ad experiment.

TikTok alternative platform UpScrolled is having growing pains. TechCrunch reports that “users have reported the app is not taking action on the creation of usernames and hashtags that contain racial slurs, and hasn’t been able to properly moderate harmful content.”

Restream introduced local recordings a few months ago. The idea is that each live stream participant’s computer captures their own video, so a bad internet connection won’t ruin the show. The files upload automatically and the host can download the audio and video. They just published more details about best practices for recording with up to 4k resolution.

New in the Edits video editor app: Valentine’s Day fonts, presets, and sound effects; speed up clips up to 100x; and Korean fonts.

Substack has added live video scheduling on Android and desktop.

Web Publishers and Search

The Google Search Central “SearchOff the Record” podcast asks Do you still need a website in 2026? (transcript and other platforms). If you know Betteridge’s law of headlines, you know the answer. Google’s Martin Splitt and Gary Illyes discuss discovering new information, monetization, the benefit when “you own the house”, social media and why “it depends”.

Web Science and Digital Libraries Research Group at Old Dominion University: How to archive web pages in bulk using the Internet Archive Google Sheets service

Google has made it easier to request removal of “non-consensual explicit images” from Search. In the search results, tap the 3 dot menu icon and select the option to “Remove Result”. You can then select the option “it shows a sexual image of me”. Multiple images can be reported at once.

Bing Webmaster Tools now includes AI Performance insights to show how your content appears “across Microsoft Copilot, AI-generated summaries in Bing, and select partner integrations.” It’s too bad there isn’t one tool that can show webmasters “AI” performance across platforms.

Bing Search Blog: Elevating the Role of Grounding on the AI Web

Beehiiv has a new Media Library which lets you share assets between publications, organize into folders, and find images with advanced search filters. It also has an image editor where you can crop, rotate, resize, adjust colors, annotate or generate an image with AI (they are “testing the latest models to deliver the best possible output for your content.”). Max and Enterprise plans also include Getty Image credits.

Beehiiv has also added native Website Analytics (in beta). It shows unique visitors, page views, traffic sources, bounce rate and session duration.

And Beehiiv has expanded the types of digital products you can sell, including files (ebooks, templates, research reports, guides), links (website access, memberships, affiliate offers), or time (coaching, consulting, 1:1 sessions). You need a paid account, but Beehiiv does not charge any fees.

Substack has improved the home page theme editor and added the option for nicely formatted recipe embeds for posts.

New from The Guardian: Revealed: How Substack makes money from hosting Nazi newsletters. Exclusive: Site takes a cut of subscriptions to content that promotes far-right ideology, white supremacy and antisemitism.

Social Media

Bluesky now lets you save drafts of your posts in progress.

Facebook now lets you animate your profile photo with Meta AI. You can also use Meta AI to restyle images you share to Stories and turn text posts into images with “gently animated” backgrounds (click the rainbow “A” icon when preparing your post).

Social Media Today: Russia Blocks WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram Access

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Seven Billion Reasons for Facebook to Abandon its Face Recognition Plans

Communication and Collaboration

You can now listen to Gemini-powered Audio Summaries of Google Docs files. You can adjust the playback speed and style (persuader, coach, and so forth). This is available for Google Workspace Business and Enterprise (Standard and Plus), and Google AI Pro and Ultra subscriptions.

There is a new Figma for Google Chat plugin that lets you receive notifications, preview files, see and reply to new comments and tags.

Google Meet has a neat new feature that lets you undock screen shared content into its own window, so you can resize it or move it to a secondary screen.

More AI Updates and Tips

OpenAI deprecated GPT-5, GPT-4o, GPT-4.1 and GPT-4.1mini. Current models are GPT-5.1 and -5.2. This would not usually be that noteworthy, except that many people are upset because they were using the older models as friends/boyfriends/girlfriends. The more recent models have safeguards that prevent the chatbot from being so sycophantic, and added reminders that the chatbot isn’t a real person. Discussion on Reddit (and SubredditDrama).

ByteDance (TikTok’s parent company) has a new AI video model, Seedance 2, that uses “multi-lens storytelling” to generate several very short scenes with the same style and characters.

Creator Weekly: YouTube Auto-Dubbing Expansion, Twitch Business Managers, Google Discover Core Update

2026-02-07T06:23:00.000-08:00

Even though the weather has been beautiful here in the Bay Area, I’m planning to spend a good bit inside watching the Winter Olympics and Super Bowl. I’m not usually a big football or skiing fan, but I can’t resist the big events.

Whether you are staying in or going out, check out this week’s updates from YouTube, Google Search, Google Vids, Facebook, X, and more.

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What do you know about Super Bowl ads on YouTube? Take this week’s quiz.

Sports

It’s all sports this week. The Winter Olympics began in Milan, Italy and Sunday is the Super Bowl in Santa Clara, California. The big platforms have geared up, setting the stage for creators to record related content and viewers to get an inside look at the action.

🏂Google and YouTube: Tune into the 2026 Winter Olympics with Google
🏂Meta: Watch the NBCUniversal coverage of the Winter Olympics on the Meta Quest.
🏈 Google: How Google Cloud is helping Team USA elevate their tricks with AI
🏈 YouTube: How to watch Super Bowl LX and the Super Bowl LX flag football game on YouTube
🏈 YouTube: Watch the Super Bowl ads on the Ad Blitz channel.
🏈 Twitch: Cam Skattebo, Micah Parsons, Ashton Jeanty, and more Face Off at Twitch’s Seventh Annual Streamer Bowl
🏈 Bluesky: There’s an automatic live event in Discover and Explore for NFL games and a Starter Pack of sports reporters to follow.
🏈 Apple: Apple Music kicks off Bad Bunny’s Road to Halftime ahead of Super Bowl LX
🏈 Threads: Has a booth for creators and podcasters to record content that you can find with #NFLThreads.
🏈 X: X Calls on Users To Submit Grok-Generated Video for Super Bowl Promotion

YouTube Auto-Dubbing Available to All

YouTube auto-dubbing is now more widely available:

Available to all channels (it can be turned off in your publication settings)
Real-time translation from 27 languages →English and English → 20 languages
Expressive Speech that “captures a creator’s original emotion and energy” in 8 languages (English, French, German, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish)
Automatic Smart Filtering (won't dub when it shouldn't, like music or silent vlogs)
Won't harm discovery of the video in the original language, and may increase discovery in other languages.
YouTube is testing lip syncing, to match the speaker's lips more closely to the dubbed audio.

Viewers can set their preferred languages, and YouTube will default to the original audio in those languages.

More Google Vids Features

Google Vids has expanded access to more features for both personal and Google Workspace accounts. Features now available include:

read-along teleprompter
transcript trim (edit words or silences from the transcript to edit your video)
styled captions

Recent updates are making Google Vids a pretty decent free video editing tool, especially if you don’t need the premium AI-powered features.

Less Clickbait in Google Discover

The Google Search February 2026 Discover Core Update is rolling out to US users in English (it will eventually expand to all users in all languages). This is an update specifically for Discover on mobile devices (in the Google app, google.com on your Android device or by swiping right on your phone).

The update will show users more locally relevant content, less clickbait, and “more in-depth, original, and timely content from websites with expertise in a given area, based on [Google’s] systems' understanding of a site's content”.

If you want your website or blog to appear, Google recommends:

avoiding clickbait and sensationalism
using accurate page titles and headlines
including “compelling, high-quality images” (large images should be at least 1200 px wide and have max-image-preview set to large)
providing an “overall great page experience”

Twitch Channel Business Managers

Twitch has added a new Business Manager role.

A Business Manager added to your channel can access your Analytics Overview, Stream Summary, Earning Analytics and Sponsorships Portal (including the Creator Profile) to manage sponsorship opportunities on your behalf. Business Managers cannot view your Revenue/Payouts or change your payment method.

Add a Business Manager on your Creator Dashboard under Community > Roles Manager.

Other roles are Editor, Moderator, Lead Moderator, VIP and Artist. Learn more.

Adobe Backtracks on Animate Shutdown

Adobe faced a backlash when they sent an email to users announcing they would be discontinuing Adobe Animate on March 1, with access to files and project data only until March 1, 2027.

Professional animation studios use Animate for their projects, meaning they would have to quickly migrate to a different platform.

Adobe ended up having to post a clarification and apology a few days later, noting it “did not meet our standards and caused a lot of confusion within the community”. The platform is instead in maintenance mode, meaning there will be no new features, but they will not be removing access either to the software or files.

But this uncertainty is likely to give a boost to competing platforms like ToonBoom and Moho Pro.

Alphabet Posts Record Revenue

In this week’s Alphabet Q4 earnings call, CEO Sundar Pichai shared some interesting stats:

First time reaching more than $400 billion in annual revenue
Search revenue increased 17%. In Search, people “engage in longer, more complex sessions” using AI Mode, and 1 in 6 queries is voice or images, rather than text.
YouTube’s annual revenue was more than $60 billion (including ads and subscriptions). YouTube is the number one “livingroom” streaming platform in the US, including a 75% increase in “podcast” viewing. There strong subscription growth, especially for YouTube Music and NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV. More than 1 million users per day use AI creation tools, and more than 20 million users per month issue the Gemini “Ask” tool.
Cloud subscription services grew 48%, “driven by demand for AI products”.
More than 325 million paid subscriptions for consumer products (including Google One and YouTube Premium).
Gemini has more than 750 million active monthly users, with increased engagement after the launch of Gemini 3.
Lowered Gemini costs by 78% “through model optimizations, efficiency and utilization improvements”.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

TikTok U.S. is now “back to normal after a significant outage caused by winter weather took down a primary U.S. data center site operated by Oracle.” The power outage affected content posting, discovery and the real-time display of video likes and view counts. Oracle is one of the “managing investors” of the TikTok USDS Joint Venture, so it’s unlikely they will switch to a more reliable server provider.

TikTok U.S. also explained their updated privacy policy, especially how they may collect “sensitive personal information” and your location. Your personal information is only collected if you share it with TikTok. And soon there will be a new setting that lets you choose whether to opt in to share your precise location (the advantage would be seeing local creators, businesses and events). It seems reasonable to me, but it comes down to whether people trust the new ownership.

Twitch CEO Dan Clancey is hosting a new podcast “Let’s Chat”, a series “about Live Streaming and the ways that creators and their communities are shaping culture.” His first guest is NFL star Cam Skattebo. Watch or listen on YouTube.

StreamYard lets you create a custom branded welcome card for guests.

Restream now lets you share three screens at once. They note that sharing more screens increases the load on your computer, and you should stop sharing once that screen is no longer “on stage”.

Web Publishers and Search

Reminder: On February 10 Facebook will be disabling the Facebook Like Button and Facebook Comment Button for third party sites. Facebook says they will “gracefully degrade” by turning into an invisible 0x0 pixel element, which should not break your website. But it’s probably better to remove the plugin code from your site.

Google says Googlebot (its web crawler) only crawls the first 2MB of a supported file type, and the first 64MB of a PDF file. From a rendering perspective, each resource referenced in the HTML (such as CSS and JavaScript) is fetched separately, and each resource fetch is bound by the same file size limit that applies to other files (except PDF files). For context, 90% of web pages are less than 151 kb, so this should not be an issue for most websites. Google’s John Muller says “If you want to publish a novel, make it a PDF.”

The Internet Archive Wayback Machine Link Fixer plugin is now available on WordPress.org. This was created as a collaboration between the Internet Archive and Automattic. It scans posts for outbound links and creates an archive page if one isn’t available, and when a linked page goes offline, it creates a redirect to the archived version.

Social Media

Social Media posting platform Fedica now includes LinkedIn analytics, in addition to X, Threads, Instagram, TikTok, Mastodon and Pixelfed analytics. The platform also supports posting to Bluesky, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and YouTube.

Meta is making it easier for “brands to discover, evaluate and connect with creators for partnership ads campaigns using Instagram’s Creator Marketplace.” There is a new homepage, which is expanding to businesses globally. Businesses will see creators that tagged their brand or expressed interest in partnering, and be able to search for similar creators to a specific creator.

Instagram posted “tips and tricks” for finding the best stickers to use on your Stories, Reels and Posts.

You can now customize your Substack page with a custom theme, including colors and branding. This is now available in the iOS Substack app. The app also now shows your subscribed substacks at the top of the screen, with a focus on those with new posts. This seems yet another feature to keep subscribers in the Substack app.

X awarded a million dollar prize (and big honorable mention prizes) to articles posted on the platform in January (using the long-form article feature). Social Media Today has the rundown on the winners. Would you believe they align with X owner Elon Musk's pet topics?

X has added the option to include images in polls.

X announced the new Grok Imagine 1.0 AI video generation model, with 720p resolution, 10 second video, and improved audio. It is available at grok.com/imagine (although that page wouldn’t load for me).

Communication and Collaboration

Automatic speech translation in Google Meet is now available to Google Workspace Business and Enterprise (Standard and Plus) accounts, and personal accounts with a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription. It can translate between English and Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, and Italian in real time, but only one language pair can be active at a time. It’s currently desktop only. Per-user limits apply.

Gemini can help “proofread” your Gmail emails, making suggestions to make it more concise, use active voice, improve sentence structure and word choice. (Although be sure not to blindly approve every suggestion, lest your writing seem bot-like). This was previously limited to AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, but now is available to all Workspace Business and Enterprise accounts, plus personal accounts with a Workspace Individual or Google AI Plus, Pro, or Ultra subscription.

Google Workspace organizations can now add on a AI Expanded Access subscription, giving higher access to Google’s AI features, including advanced image and video generation, Gemini, NotebookLM, Workspace Studio and Google Meet speech translation.

More AI Updates and Tips

Use the Canva plugin for ChatGPT to create and edit designs inside the chat. You can edit text across entire designs (like slide deck) with a text prompt (like changing the writing style or translating). It also includes Brand Kit integration, so a “marketer can draft a campaign social post or presentation slide in ChatGPT and know it’s on-brand by default”. This is in addition to previously launched research tools. This is rolling out to ChatGPT users with Canva Free, Plus and Pro subscriptions, outside the EU.

Adobe Firefly now offers unlimited image and video generations with Firefly and other image models, including Google Nano Banana Pro, GPT Image Generation, and Runway Gen-4 Image. This is included with Firefly Pro, Firefly Premium and other plans. “Sign up before March 16 and get unlimited image and Firefly video generations up to 2K resolution in the Adobe Firefly app.”

The latest version of Firefox will have new settings where you can block current and future generative AI features. Current features include automatic translations, alt text in PDFs, AI-enhanced tab grouping, link previews and AI chatbot in the sidebar. It sounds like these are opt out, rather than opt in.

Peggy K's Creator News

Creator Weekly: Shorts Thumbnails, Substack AI Scans, Facebook Verified

This week’s Top Updates

YouTube Shorts Custom Thumbnails

New YouTube Community Features

Substack scans for AI-generated content

YouTube and Video

Web Publishing

Social Media

Tools

More to read and watch

Creator Weekly: YouTube AI Monetization Policy, Google Image Search, Beehiiv Communities

Top Updates

YouTube Updates Monetization Policy

New Look for Google Image Search

Communities in beehiiv

YouTube and Video

Web Publishing and Search

Social Media

Tools

YouTube Clarifies Inauthentic Content Monetization Policy

Are these new monetization policies?

What is "Generic or Repetitive Content"?

What is "Unsatisfying or Offputting Content"?

You Cannot Monetize AI Personas Related to Sensitive Topics

Can AI-Generated Content Be Monetized?

What can you do if monetization is disabled on your YouTube channel?

More information

Creator Weekly: YouTube Shows, Meta Muse Image Backlash, Search Console social profiles

Top Updates

Shows for all YouTube Partners

YouTube Removing Creator Music Paid License Option

Meta Muse Image Backlash

YouTube and Video

Web Publishing

Social Media

Tools

More Reading

Creator Weekly: YouTube Image Post Music, Edits Bilingual Captions, X Live Studio

Top Updates

The US at 250 🇺🇸🎆

YouTube and Video

Web Publishing

Social Media

Tools

Interesting Reading

Creator Weekly: YouTube Shorts Player, Instagram for TV, Facebook Creator Studio

Top Updates

YouTube Shorts Player Redesign

YouTube Studio Content Tab Updates

Instagram for TV

More YouTube and Video Updates

Web Publishers

Cannes Lions 2026

More Social Media

Tools

Worth Reading

Creator Weekly: UK teen social media bans, YouTube Membership Smart Pricing, Threads Communities

Top Updates

UK to limit Social Media to 16+

YouTube and Video Updates

Web Publishers

Social Media

Tools

Recommended Reading

Creator Weekly: YouTube DMs, Instagram Grid, Spotify Podcast Plays

Top Updates

World Cup For Creators and Fans

Apple WWDC 2026

YouTube and Video

Web Publishers

Canva and Gemini

AI Tools

Social Media

Interesting Reading

Creator Weekly: Creator Search Profiles, Twitch Dual Format Streaming, Facebook Creator Assistant

This Week’s Top Updates

Creator Search Profiles for Creators on YouTube, Instagram, X, and TikTok

YouTube and Video

Web Publishers