Peggy K's Creator News

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.

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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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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.

Creator Weekly: US TikTok Problems, Project Genie 3D Worlds, StreamElements Tip Jar

2026-01-31T06:27:00.000-08:00

Welcome, readers. This week there is a surprising lack of YouTube updates. But there are updates for TikTok, Bluesky, Patreon, StreamElements, and lots of new AI features.

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What do you know about the new US TikTok? Take this week’s quiz.

New Tips and Tutorials

If you are creating videos with Google Vids try their new animated caption options.

US TikTok Has A Difficult First Week

There have been many complaints about the new US TikTok, including bad suggestions in the new “for you” feed (trained on US data) and videos about recent protests in the US not getting views.

Some creators are getting notices of corrections for “inauthentic view counts”. Is that intentional? Or is it migration pains?

TikTok says a power outage at a data center “caused a cascading systems failure”, which could explain the issues. As of this writing (January 30th), the latest update was on January 27th, which says “made significant progress in recovering our U.S. infrastructure with our U.S. data center partner”. But there are still issues.

Many US creators are deleting the app and looking at alternative platforms.

UpScrolled claims “every voice gets equal power. No shadowbans. No algorithmic games. No pay-to-play favoritism.” It’s been described as a cross between TikTok and Instagram. In the past few weeks it has grown from 40,000 to over a million users (with 500,000 sign-ups over the weekend of January 23), as US users look for a TikTok alternative. The Australian company was founded by Issam Hijazi, a Palestinian-Jordanian-Australian technologist. It will be interesting to see if it grows beyond this.

TikTok alternative Skylight can also stream videos from Bluesky because of its AT Protocol integration.

And some people are using Loops.video which federates with platforms using the ActivityPub protocol, like Mastodon, PixelFed (created by the same developer) and Peer Tube.

And Substack had to chime in, with co-founder Hamish McKenzie declaring “The best insurance against censorship and cultural coercion is to build direct relationships.” Which is why the platform happily hosts literal Nazis.

Google Expands Cheaper AI Plus Subscriptions

Google AI Plus subscriptions are now available in 35 additional countries (including the US). The subscription includes 200GB of storage, plus expanded access to Google’s AI features (but less access than AI Pro and AI Ultra subscriptions). Existing Google One Premium 2TB subscribers in the countries where Google AI Plus is available will automatically get access to Google AI Plus as well. See the feature details. If you are using Google’s AI creative tools, it includes:

Flow: 200 monthly AI credits (Free accounts include 180 AI credits)
Gemini: “More” image generation and editing with Nano Banana Pro
Gemini: Veo 3.1 Fast video generation model access.
Google Vids: “Help me generate video”
Google Photos: “Limited” remix generations and photo-to-video generations.
Google Slides: Gemini features, including generating slides, custom images, infographics; remove background from an image; refine text.
NotebookLM: Higher limits for generating Audio and Video Overviews, Infographics and Slides. Increased notebook size with up to 100 sources per notebook (Free accounts can use 50 sources).

Create Your Own Worlds

Google AI Ultra subscribers in the U.S. can now access Project Genie, an experimental research prototype that lets users “create, explore and remix their own interactive worlds” using prompts from text or your own images. As you move around and interact with the 3D world, it generates the path in real time.

This is early days, but apparently the potential to “disrupt how video games have been made for over a decade” was enough to cause the stock prices of video game companies (including Unity Software, Roblox and Take-Two Interactive) to drop significantly.

How YouTube Uses Gemini for Recommendations

“Teaching Gemini to Speak on YouTube” is an interesting and not overly technical talk about how YouTube is using Gemini for its recommendation systems.

The system takes into account video title, description, transcript and info from sampled frames. Plus user demographics, and watch and engagement history.

The conclusion:

"I think you're going to see recommendation and generative content start to come together in the future, where we're going to be recommending a personalized version of a piece of content, and in the future instead of recommending content we may even start creating it."

(This is not too different from Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of AI that he discussed in Meta’s recent earnings call. Read on for more details about that.)

Patreon Moving All Users to Subscription Billing

Patreon says that Apple has made changes that will force all creators to use subscription billing, rather than first-of-the-month or per-creation billing (which are used by 4% of users). Subscription billing charges patrons from the day they join, and then monthly on that day of the month.

US fans can still bypass Apple app store fees by allowing fans to join on the mobile web.

Patreon says they will try to make the transition easier with new features such as annual memberships, automatic repricing over time, and offering free trials and complimentary memberships. The deadline for change is November 1, 2026.

StreamElements Asks for Money

StreamElements is a platform that offers streamer tools like alerts, widgets and overlays. It also has a Sponsorship marketplace for Twitch streamers. One of their big selling points is that the tools are all “free forever”. But it sounds like that may not have been a sound business plan.

This week they set up a tip jar, which asks for donations to help them cover monthly costs (“Keep it Free”), with money going to server infrastructure, and other streaming tool costs.

As of this writing they have 47 supporters (out of more than 2 million users), who have donated $3,273, against their $300,000 monthly costs. This doesn’t seem like it’s going to really help.

Why now? They say, “With the current business climate and rising infrastructure expenses, we want to be more transparent about what it takes to power millions of streams while staying free and independent. This gives the community a way to chip in and help us stay independent.”

While they are committed to being “free forever”, if they fully run out of money they could end up being acquired by a company that isn’t so generous, or shutting down completely.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

YouTube Shorts has a new AI-powered Remix feature that lets you add an object.

YouTube added new protections for teens that prevent search results from appearing for search queries linked to age-restricted or violative content. More information about teen safety.

There are new features for the Edits video editing app: copy and paste fonts and clips from one project to another (iOS), timeline settings that include toggle guides, frames and how edits are applied, apply edits made to your main track to other clips, and some previously launched features are now available for Android.

StreamYard added @ mentions to the in-studio chat. This shows a prominent notification to the mentioned participant.

Spotify launched Messages (private messaging for content sharing) in August 2025. This week they added group sharing with up to 10 people. The focus on in-app private messaging is definitely a trend, with recent updates on Instagram, Threads and TikTok, and YouTube experimenting with the option.

Web Publishers and Search

Google Search is updating AI Overviews. It uses Gemini 3 as the new default model. The big change is that you can “easily ask a follow-up question right from an AI Overview, and jump into a conversational back and forth with AI Mode.” Google says there are “prominent links to keep exploring”, although that’s not really obvious to me from the graphics Google shared. This is available globally on mobile.

In response to possible new requirements for Google Search by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), Google says they are “exploring updates to our controls to let sites specifically opt out of Search generative AI features.” They note, “Any new controls need to avoid breaking Search in a way that leads to a fragmented or confusing experience for people.” There is no indication when this could be available.

Social Media

Meta announced their plans for 2026. Yes, it’s mostly about AI. Some highlights:

Nearly 10% of daily Reels views come from content made with the Edits editing app. It’s not just repurposed TikToks and YouTube clips.
AI dubbing of Reels will expand to more languages. It’s currently available in nine languages.
AI replacing creators? This seems to be a recurring dream for social platforms. During Meta’s latest earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg said: "Soon we'll see an explosion of new media formats that are more immersive and interactive and only possible because of advances in Al, our feeds will become more interactive overall. Today, our apps feel like algorithms that recommend content. Soon, you'll open our apps and you'll have an Al that understands you and also happens to be able to show you great content or even generate great personalized content for you." (Emphasis added)

Bluesky shared their predictions for 2026, future plans, and 2025 Transparency Report, noting “The best way to predict the future is to help build it.”

Bluesky’s users grew from 25 million to 41 million users, and have been working to scale their abuse systems. They promise appeals are reviewed by humans, even if the takedown was by an automated system.
People will post more during live sports and “you had to be there” events. They are making Feeds more central to the app, with new curation tools for live events.
People will click more links (“the bloodstream of the internet that carry us to all its marvelous places.”)
People will scroll less and rather use the platform more intentionally. They are working on improved “who to follow” suggestions and discovery, including topic tags.
People will think more before they post. New features they are working on include drafts, longer videos, more photos per post and easier-to-create threads.
There will be more integration with other Atmosphere-based apps.

X may be adding content warnings on manipulated images. There’s a vague post by Elon Musk, a reshare of an anonymous account mentioning the new feature. Musk’s post says “Edited visuals warning”, which is mighty vague. How will this work? There are no details.

More AI Updates and Tips

Google Chrome with Gemini 3 has a new “auto browse” agent that can browse the web for you, shop and even fill out forms and sign in to your accounts (using Google Password Manager). It will pause and get your confirmation for some tasks like making a purchase or posting on social media. This is rolling out in the US to AI Pro and Ultra subscribers. Other new features include an AI side panel, editing photos or creating infographics from web pages, and recommendations based on your connected Google apps and Personal Intelligence.

Google Photos updated its AI image-to-video to allow you to use your own custom prompts, rather than being limited to “Subtle Movement” and “I’m feeling lucky” options. And all photo-to-video creations may now include audio. Generated videos can be edited and “refined”. This is available to 18+ users. Learn more.

VSCO has added the ability to edit photos with a text prompt, including removing or adding objects, and adjusting levels for contrast and other settings. This requires a VSCO Pro subscription.

There’s an interesting study from Rand Fishkin of SparkToro that looked at reproducibility of AI recommendations. Real people entered prompts in Claude, Gemini and ChatGPT hundreds of times, ranging from recommendations for kitchen knives, cancer hospitals on the West Coast, science fiction novels, and Los Angeles Volvo dealerships. And the results were different almost every time. (Do read the article!) What this means for businesses and website owners is that there is no good way to see how you are ranking in the AI results. What it means for people trying to find information is that you may need to run your prompts multiple times to get a true sense of what top recommendations are, and even then it’s unclear what the recommendations are based on.

South Korea has a new law that forces companies to label AI-generated content. Clearly fake output, such as cartoons, can have an invisible watermark, but realistic images must have a visible label. AI systems for medical diagnosis, loan approvals and other “high-impact” uses must document how decisions are made. And “extremely powerful AI models” must publish safety reports. Depending on who you ask, it either goes too far, or not far enough.

Thanks for reading! 🌼

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Creator Weekly: TikTok US Deal, YouTube's 2026 Priorities, Substack TV

2026-01-24T06:22:00.000-08:00

I hope you are all staying warm this weekend!

This week YouTube announced their priorities for 2026, TikTok has a deal that lets them stay in the US, and there are more updates for YouTube, Substack, Threads, X and more.

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YouTube’s Priorities for 2026

As is custom, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan published an overview of the platform’s plans for 2026. What’s YouTube’s vision? “When creators hold the keys to their own production and distribution, the only limit is their imagination.” and “For every idea a creator dreams up, we provide the business model to match.”

There are four broad areas YouTube is focusing on:

“Reinventing entertainment: Creators are the stars & studios” (Shorts, music, YouTube on TV).
“Building the best place for kids & teens” (improved parental controls)
“Powering the creator economy” (shopping features, brand deals)
“Supercharging & safeguarding creativity” (AI-powered features, fighting deepfakes and AI slop)

This isn't too different from their 2025 priorities, other than an additional emphasis on making YouTube safe for teens and kids.

By the numbers

Shorts averages 200 billion daily views.
YouTube has been #1 in streaming watchtime in the U.S. “for nearly three years”.
In the past four years they’ve paid out over $100 billion to creators, artists, and media companies.
An average of more than 1 million channels per day used YouTube’s AI creation tools in December. (This is less than 1% of all channels.)
An average of more than 6 million viewers per day who watched at least 10 minutes of autodubbed content. (This is about 5% of daily viewers.)

Coming soon

More formats in the Shorts feed. They started by experimenting with image Posts in the Shorts feed last month.
A focus on making YouTube a “premier shopping destination”. Soon, when a creator recommends a product, you’ll be able to buy it without leaving the YouTube app.
Continuing to make it easier for successful partnerships between brands and Influencer Marketing Agencies on the one side and creators on the other.
New generative AI tools to create a Short with your own likeness, produce games with a prompt, and experiment with music.
YouTube is working to reduce the spread of “AI slop” (low quality AI-generated content), by “actively building on our established systems that have been very successful in combatting spam and clickbait, and reducing the spread of low quality, repetitive content.”

TikTok US Deal

Right at the deadline, TikTok confirmed the establishment of TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC for U.S. users.

Under the new structure 45% will be owned managing investors Silver Lake, Oracle (owned by Larry Ellison), and MGX (Abu Dhabi’s state investment firm). TikTok parent company ByteDance retains 19.9% ownership and “affiliates of certain existing investors of ByteDance” will own 30.1%. That leaves 5% for “new investors”.
There is interoperability with outside-the-U.S. TikTok, to “provide U.S. users with a global TikTok experience, ensuring U.S. creators can be discovered and businesses can operate on a global scale.”
This also covers CapCut, Lemon8 and “a portfolio of other apps and websites in the U.S.”
The new CEO is Adam Presser, who has worked at TikTok and is a former WarnerMedia executive.
This new entity will “retrain, test and update the content recommendation algorithm on U.S. user data”. ByteDance still owns the algorithm.
Regarding U.S. national security, which is the ostensible reason this had to be done: “Our foundation is a comprehensive data privacy and cybersecurity program we operate under defined safeguards to protect national security and secure U.S. user data, apps and the algorithm. We safeguard the U.S. content ecosystem, holding decision-making authority for trust and safety policies and moderation.”

Does this meet the requirement of the law? Apparently that requires the end of any “operational relationship” between ByteDance and TikTok in the U.S., but that isn’t how the current deal is structured.

What this means in practical terms for U.S. users is still becoming clear.

U.S. users have to agree to an updated Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. While there are concerns, the new terms aren’t hugely different (some of the current concerns are because the new terms are under more scrutiny than the previous version).

Notable changes include:

Language that allows for “customized ads and other sponsored content” from third parties based on user information, including ads outside of TikTok.
A new section on generative AI content, which prohibits AI-powered bots, interfering with TikTok’s AI tools and misleading, unlabeled AI content. Notably, they will collect and store any prompts or AI output, including any metadata.
TikTok will collect precise location data, unless you have opted out.
There have been understandable concerns about other demographic and personal data being collected, but (as in the previous version of the terms) this only applies to content you disclose in your content or in survey responses. Of course how this is used may be different under the new ownership.
There have not been any changes to the Community Guidelines.

And what about the retrained algorithm? It may mean that U.S. users see different trends than the rest of the world. President Trump wants the content to be “100% MAGA”. Could that happen? There are concerns that with the company under the control of his allies, conservative content will be favored.

Also notable is that “Seller Shipping” will be discontinued for U.S. merchants and brands. Merchants will have to fulfill sales on the platform using TikTok’s logistics, rather than handling their own shipping, and this change is apparently a “logistical nightmare”. TikTok Shop sales make up a substantial portion of the platform’s revenue.

So what do users have to do?

If you are in the U.S., the next time you sign in to the TikTok app or TikTok on the web, you’ll be prompted to accept the new terms and privacy policy. You don’t need a new version of the app.

Everything appears to be the same at the moment. But that may change.

Substack Has a TV App

Substack launched a TV app (beta) for Apple TV and Google TV. No, you can’t read newsletters on the big screen.

This is for “video posts and livestream from the creators and publications you’re subscribed to”. Substack says that in future updates it will support audio posts, search and improved discovery, and previews of paid content for free subscribers.

YouTube, of course, is all-in on TV viewing, and Instagram launched a TV app for Reels viewing last month.

Animated Captions in Google Vids

Google Vids, Google’s Workspace-integrated video editor, now lets you add styled, animated captions that are synced with the video. It’s currently available in 30 languages.

Vertical videos for TikTok, Reels and Shorts often have animated captions, and it helps get your message to people who scroll with the sound off, have hearing issues, or just capture attention.

This is available for Google Workspace accounts, and personal Google Accounts with a Workspace Individual or AI Pro/Ultra subscription. (A more limited version may be available for free personal accounts.)

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

In the YouTube mobile app, the entry points for the channel video list are being consolidated. All video management will be on the channel page. That means that if you start on the “You” screen, and tap “Your videos” it will open the video tab on your channel. Tap the 3 dot icon on a video or Short for options like editing a Short thumbnail.

In the YouTube Studio app and main YouTube mobile app, the video settings list has been simplified, with most of the options hidden under a “Show More” button. YouTube says this is to “make managing content more intuitive, lightweight, and accessible.”

Twitch is updating Custom Discount Promotions for Partners and Affiliates. This lets monetized streamers run their own promotions. Twitch is adding more allowed promotional time and promo tokens, a “Start a Promo” quick action button and will be reducing restrictions around starting your own promotion before a Twitch-wide promotional event.

Vimeo now offers integration with Google Meet. This lets you connect your Vimeo account with your Google Account for Meet (which has cloud recording enabled). Recordings are imported automatically into Vimeo, where you can use their editing platform. Also new this month are 4K screen recordings and more video layouts in the editor. Vimeo was acquired by Bending Spoons and 2025, and most of their staff (including the engineering team) was laid off this week.

StreamYard added new professional visual filters and controls to fine tune your webcam output (brightness, contrast, saturation and so forth). Any changes are applied immediately without interrupting your stream.

You can now enable monetization on your YouTube livestream inside Restream Studio.

Adobe released new versions of Premiere (“new AI-powered tools and workflow improvements make it easier to isolate subjects, refine edits, and stay focused on the story rather than the mechanics of editing”) and After Effects (“new creative possibilities for motion and compositing, with expanded animation, 3D, and performance enhancements that let artists spend less time waiting for rendering and more time designing”). Learn about all the updates.

Social Media

Meta is rolling out ads on Threads globally, touting the platform’s “400 million monthly active users”. There have been ads for U.S. users for some time, and they aren’t particularly intrusive.

X launched “Starterpacks” (yes, all one word). These are recommended people to follow, grouped by topic. X Head of Product Nikita Bier says they “scoured the world for the top posters in every niche & country” to put them together. But X misses part of the power of Starter Packs on Bluesky, that anyone can create one (they can be delightfully specific). Social Media Today’s Andrew Hutchinson suggests this feature could be totally relevant for some niches, “Like conspiracy theorists, or morons, or both.” LOL.

Canadian social media management company Hootsuite has a pilot project deal with the US Department of Homeland Security. According to reports, they have set up social listening services, which ICE can use to monitor online conversations about the agency. A 2020 contract with ICE was cancelled after Hootsuite employee backlash.

More AI Updates and Tips

Meme yourself in Google Photos. The new “Me Meme” feature in Google Photos (in the U.S.) lets you combine your own photo with a template using generative AI.

If you are still using Paint for Windows, Microsoft is adding two new features: use AI to generate coloring book pages from a text prompt, and a new Fill tolerance slider (to adjust levels).

As I covered last week, Personal Intelligence in Gemini lets you connect your Google services (like Gmail, YouTube history, Search history, Photos). Personal Intelligence is now also available in Google Search AI Mode. Google says this is especially useful for queries about shopping or planning travel.

404 Media reports, “Comic-Con Bans AI Art After Artist Pushback”. Last year AI art was allowed in the art show, as long as it was labeled as such, and was not for sale. It even allowed AI art “in the style of” an artist, meaning that it could compete with the original artist’s work.

Adobe launched Firefly Foundry, commercially safe AI models. This is a business tool for creating "proprietary, IP-protected generative AI models - responsibly trained on your brand or franchise".

Thanks for reading! 🌼

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Creator Weekly: YouTube Simplified Search, Monetize Controversial Content, Apple Creator Studio

2026-01-17T06:33:00.000-08:00

Tech companies are back up to speed after the winter holidays with new product updates and features. There’s news from YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Bluesky, Instagram, Search and AI updates from Gemini, ChatGPT, and Grok.

There are two new ways to get your Creator Weekly news:

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New Tips and Tutorials

Make it easier for your blog readers to add your site as a Google Search Preferred Source by adding a button or link.

Are you caught up with the latest Creator Trends? Watch my recap of 2025 and predictions for 2026.

To Do & Try

The YouTube team on the Creator Insider channel want to know what you want to hear about. Post your suggestions in their comments. Yes, you can add PeggyKTC.com as a preferred source.

Simplified YouTube Search Filters

YouTube updated their search filters: “We are simplifying and reorganizing the filter menu to make it more intuitive and improve the overall search experience. This includes removing some options that were not working as expected and had contributed to user complaints.”

There is a new option to Filter for Shorts or VODs (long-form videos)
“View Count” has been renamed “Popularity”, and the “Sort by Rating” option was removed. It now takes into account signals such as watch time in addition to views.
“Sort By” has been renamed “Prioritize”. That better describes how the results are sorted.
Removed “Upload Date - Last Hour”. There are still other Upload date filters.

Learn more about advanced search filters.

YouTube Allows Monetization of More Controversial Content

YouTube updated its advertiser-friendly guidelines to allow monetization of some controversial topics including abortion, self-harm, suicide, domestic and sexual abuse, as long as the content is descriptive, non-graphic and/or dramatized. Previously those topics could not be monetized at all.

Content about child abuse or eating disorders are still ineligible for ad revenue.Learn more.

Google Veo “Ingredients to Video”

The new Google Veo 3.1 “Ingredients to Video” lets you generate videos from up to 3 reference images and a prompt. This helps you create clips with consistent characters and/or settings.

Availability:

YouTube Shorts app (English, “in most countries”). Watch a demo.
YouTube Create app (Android in India, US, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia). This will roll out more broadly, including iOS in the “coming months”. Watch the demo.
Google Vids (Workspace or Google AI subscription). Ingredients launched in Google Vids last month, but now you can create vertical clips with “faster pace and engaging shots”.
Gemini app. This lets you output vertical and landscape video.
Flow. Google’s movie creation platform supports output up to 4K resolution. It’s also now available for Google Workspace users.

Generated clips have an embedded SynthID watermark. Video watermarks can be detected by the Gemini app, if you want to check whether something was created by Google’s AI tools (it doesn’t detect Adobe’s Content Credentials watermark).

Spotify Expands Video Podcaster Partner Eligibility

The Spotify Partner Program for video podcasters is expanding eligibility. It now requires:

1,000 engaged audience members over the last 30 days (previously 2,000)
2,000 hours consumed over the last 30 days (previously 10,000)
3 published episodes (previously 12)

They are also simplifying sponsorships with ad slots that can be removed, replaced or scheduled ahead of time. And podcasters can directly publish and monetize videos from a variety of hosting platforms (like Acast or Podigee).

Apple Creator Studio

The new Apple Creator Studio subscription gives you access to Apple’s creative apps for Mac and iPad. It includes:

Final Cut Pro (video editor, including Motion and Compressor)
Logic Pro (music editor, including Mainstage)
Pixelmator Pro (image editor).
Intelligent (AI) features and premium content for Keynote, Pages, Numbers, and (later) Freeform.

Apps can still be purchased individually.

At $12.99 per month, the subscription is significantly less expensive than Adobe Creative Cloud.

Bluesky Shows When You Are Live

If you live stream and are on Bluesky, the latest version includes the Live Now beta. This lets you add a temporary “Live” badge on your avatar when you go live on Twitch. Viewers can click it to land directly on your stream page.

The beta is currently limited to Twitch and Streamplace links, but Bluesky says they may support other streaming platforms in the future.

Gemini Personal Intelligence

Google launched Gemini Personal Intelligence. The killer feature is that it connects Gemini to your personal data in Google services, including Gmail, Google Photos, YouTube and Search.

Google says your personal data, like photos, is not used for training (although prompts and responses may be).

Note that you may discover it’s not properly seeing your YouTube History. That is because it does not access your YouTube data that is on a brand account. So if you are like me, and you do all your watching signed into a brand account channel, the new Gemini Personal Intelligence won’t be able to access that data.

This is available to US Google AI Pro and Ultra subscriptions. It’s off by default, so you need to enable access to your data.

Video Creators

If you are using YouTube’s “Promotion” feature to advertise your channel or a video, you can now target viewers with specific interests, such as Gaming or Beauty, in addition to viewer demographics and locations. Learn more.

The first Edits updates of the new year. The video editing app added the ability to add Instagram links, new video effects, add multiple video and audio takes to your storyboard, plus weekly ideas based on Reels you’ve already shared.

Meta shared details on how their engineering team uses surveys in the Facebook Reels feed to identify user “True Interests” and improve recommendations. Why surveys?
“[Signals such as likes, shares and watch time] can be noisy and may not fully capture the nuances of what people actually care about or want to see. Models trained only on these signals tend to recommend content that has high short-term user value measured by watch time and engagement but doesn’t capture true interests that are important for long-term utility of the product.”

Disney+ announced they will add a feed of vertical videos, meant to increase viewer engagement.

Restream now lets you set up simultaneous vertical and landscape livestreams to YouTube. This requires using the Restream plugin with OBS.

StreamYard has doubled the character limit for their Notes feature, letting you and your co-hosts see more information during your broadcast.

Web Publishers and Search

A new pivot to video? The Press-Gazette reports that referral traffic from Google Search and Google Discover was down by a third in 2025, and they expect the trend to continue in 2026. Facebook referrals are slightly up over the past year. Meanwhile publishers are focusing their efforts on YouTube, AI Platforms and TikTok.

Beehiiv launched several updates, including Dynamic Content available to all users on the Max Plan, add automations triggered by a product purchase, website improvements, and bulk actions on posts (tags, authors, hiding or archiving posts).

Social Media

The rebooted Digg platform has launched to the public. You join communities based on your interests, and community members post, comment, and upvote content. They plan to verify that an account represents a real person using AI and other new tech.

Bluesky now supports stock ticker symbol tags (“cashtags”) as hashtags.

Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted about the apparent unstoppable influx of AI-generated content, and says they will look to verify authentic content and original creators. This, while Meta is pushing its generative AI tools, seems disingenuous. Social Media Today’s Andrew Hutchinson notes, “[Mosseri] is a corporate drone, with little personality or passion about anything in particular, and no matter what, he’s going to tow the company line, and say whatever is best for Instagram and/or Meta, no matter what” and “has no understanding of what creative people really want or need.”

Related story in Wired: Pinterest Users Are Tired of All the AI Slop

Instagram had to announce that it had NOT suffered a data breach. People did receive unrequested password reset emails, but that was apparently due to requests from an “external party” that didn’t have account access.

Instagram now lets most users see “your algorithm” for Reels, and add and remove topics to improve your feed. This is available in English in “most countries.”

X now has a Creator Studio hub, with creator tools (AI Inspiration, Analytics), monetization, and support. This is available in the mobile app and desktop.

X now lets all Premium subscribers post long-form Articles. Previously you had to be a Premium+ subscriber. Is it worth paying $8 per month? Probably not, unless your audience is mostly on X and you can earn revenue from Subscriptions or Creator Revenue Sharing.

More AI Updates and Tips

X is under fire for allowing GrokAI to create nude or “bikini” deepfakes of real people, including teens and children. After Elon Musk downplayed the seriousness of the issue, and framed criticisms as censorship, X is actually making changes as multiple countries investigate and consider banning the platform. Andrew Hutchinson at Social Media Today has the latest.

OpenAI is bringing ads to ChatGPT, supposedly in alignment with their mission to “ensure AGI benefits all of humanity.” OpenAI says the ads will not influence ChatGPT answers, and will be clearly labeled. Of course they suggest this is a good thing, and will help “small businesses and emerging brands trying to compete” (which I read as businesses that no longer get clicks from search). They will begin testing ads in the US for free and Go tier users.

Apple will now use Google Gemini models to power Apple Intelligence as “the most capable foundation for Apple Foundation Models.”

Google Trends Explore has a new Gemini AI side panel that identifies and compares related trends to your area of interest. You can edit the search terms, and filter by country, time and property (Web Search, YouTube Search, Image Search, News Search, Google Shopping).

Google Translate is getting a boost from Gemini. In addition to improved more natural translations and live speech-to-speech translation (in beta).

Gmail is getting new Gemini AI features for everyone: AI Overviews for conversation summaries (for everyone) and for inbox questions (AI Pro and Ultra subscribers); “Help Me Write”; Suggested Replies (updated Smart Replies); and for trusted testers, a separate AI Inbox with an email briefing. These features are rolling out in English in the US.

The Wikimedia Foundation announced new partnerships, providing Wikipedia access to more AI platforms. New partners include Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, MistralAI and Perplexity. Google was already a partner. This allows the companies to “...integrate human-governed knowledge into their platforms at scale. By doing so, they help ensure that the work of our global volunteer community reaches billions of people with the accuracy and transparency that Wikipedia represents.”

Businesses are learning the hard way that just because you can create an AI tool, doesn’t mean you should. Evoto makes photo editing tools for professional photographers. It’s not a surprise that those customers were mad when Evoto released an AI Headshot Generator, positioning it as a tool for creating professional headshots without having to hire a photographer. The company has since apologized and removed the tool (which they claim was inadvertently released early). It’s not clear they will recover customer trust.

2025 Top Creator Trends and Predictions for 2026

2026-01-10T06:36:00.000-08:00

Looking back at the past year there were a number of notable trends.

See also: Top YouTube Updates of 2025 and 10 New YouTube Features to Build Your Audience

There has been a continuation of 2024 Creator Trends, with more vertical video and updates to platforms like Substack and Patreon where creators can (supposedly) “own” their audience. And, of course, there is more generative AI in everything.

But in 2025 Creators were affected by political decisions that affect policy and economics, there was pushback against AI-generated content, and “authenticity” is the new watchword.

Next week I’ll be back with the usual creator update news.

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My top creator trends for 2025 (and into 2026)

More of the old internet shut down
TikTok almost shut down in the US
Free video editing tools for everyone
No more free lunch
Platforms add features to make it harder to “own your audience”
Pushback against AI
People stopped clicking links in Search
More hateful content and misinformation
Choose your own adventure
Authenticity is the trend for 2026

More of the old internet shut down

While none of these shut-downs were a big surprise, it feels like more and more of the old web where people blogged and shared links is disappearing.

Netvibes shut down its RSS reader/feed aggregator on June 2. Netvibes launched in 2005.

Mozilla shut down Pocket, the social bookmarking platform that originally launched in 2007 as “Read It Later”.

Typepad, the blogging platform that launched in 2003, shut down in September. It hadn’t allowed new sign-ups since 2020, so it wasn’t a big surprise.

Google stopped redirecting most goo.gl short links. The shortener launched in 2009. There was a reprieve for some links that saw active use, but this still breaks many links on older web pages and in technical papers. The service stopped generating new links for non-Google users in 2019.

As a side note, Google’s drive to add AI features to all of its products and services has meant older products with few recent updates (like Google Scholar, Snapseed, and Blogger) have suddenly gotten new AI features. I’d go so far to say that any Google product without any AI features may be for the chopping block.

TikTok almost shut down in the US

US law required Chinese company ByteDance to transfer ownership of TikTok, CapCut and other apps to a US company by January 19th. US users were blocked from those services, but only until an Executive Order from the incoming Trump Whitehouse on January 20th postponed enforcement for 75 days. TikTok blocked US users for just over a day.

No Deal

All that was needed was a deal to transfer TikTok, CapCut and other ByteDance services to a US company, with China’s approval, before the new deadline. That didn’t happen. So the enforcement deadline was extended in April, then in June, and again in September. The latest deadline was December 16.

By mid-December there was supposedly a deal in place. One that would be finalized by January 22, just over a year after the ban was supposed to go into effect.

But in late December, the Chinese government issued a statement that “hopes that relevant parties can reach a solution regarding TikTok that complies with Chinese laws and regulations and achieves a balance of interests.” That certainly doesn’t sound like the deal is finalized. So we shall see.

Video Boom

The uncertainty around TikTok’s fate prompted many platforms to add or redesign their video feeds, including Bluesky, X, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Twitch and YouTube were also welcoming to TikTokers looking to change platforms.

Instagram also launched Edits, a free video editing app that was designed to rival ByteDance’s CapCut.

Free Video Editing Tools for Everyone

In 2025 there were a slew of new video creation and editing apps, ranging from pure generative AI to mostly manual editing with (of course) optional AI tools.

Especially notable is that these video tools can all be used for free.

What’s driving this trend? It seems to be a combination of companies needing a way to showcase their generative AI video models, getting people to pay for advanced features, more clips or faster video generation. Also, as noted above, some are clearly designed as an alternative to CapCut.

AI Showcases
These new platforms designed to showcase AI video generation all launched in 2025. They can be limited or slow without a paid account.

Google Flow: “AI filmmaking tool” using Google’s latest video model (currently Veo 3).This is meant for professional quality movie making. It requires a Google account.
OpenAI Sora app: A social iOS app, powered by OpenAI’s latest video model (currently Sora 2). Turn yourself into a “character”.
Meta Vibes: A feed of AI videos generated by Meta AI, available both in the app and web. It’s easy to post your creations to Instagram and Facebook Stories and Reels.
Bing Video Creator: This is a simple, browser based video clip generator, powered by OpenAI’s Sora video model. It requires a Microsoft account.

Web based video editing with AI tools

Google Vids: This Google Workspace-integrated web-based video editing platform launched in 2024, but was only made available to free Google Accounts in 2025. Most of the AI tools require a paid AI or Workspace subscription.
Adobe Firefly Video editor (beta): Browser-based video editor where you can combine AI-generated clips and music with your own footage. You can edit either by timeline or by editing a transcript. Generative AI use is limited, but you can pay for a Firefly subscription or purchase additional credits.
Adobe Express: The browser-based design platform has new video creation tools, including video generation and generating short clips from longer videos. Generative AI use is limited, but you can pay for a Firefly subscription or purchase additional credits.
Canva: The browser-based design platform launched Video 2.0 with an updated timeline editor. Most of the AI tools require a Pro or Business account.

Mobile Video Editing Apps

Instagram’s Edits: Free app with regularly-added new features designed to compete with CapCut. It has optional integration with Instagram, but can be used to create a watermark-free video to upload to any platform. Currently totally free for both iOS and Android.
YouTube Create: Free app that launched in 2023, but was largely neglected until this year. It’s now available in 21 countries for iOS and Android, with templates and AI tools for creating draft videos from your camera roll or generating clips. Free with no watermarks.
Adobe Premiere: Mobile version of Adobe’s professional video editor. It’s currently free for iPhones (Android users can sign up for future updates).
Google Photos: The video editor in the Photos mobile app got a major redesign and new AI-powered features. It’s much simpler than Edits, Create or Premiere, but useful if you want to make a quick video from clips and images in your Photos library.
And if you want to create videos for a specific platform, TikTok Studio, YouTube Shorts editor, and Instagram Reels Camera have all had significant improvements (and AI features, of course).

No Free Lunch

Nothing is truly free. There were a few changes in 2025 that suggest that platforms are trying to cut costs.

Facebook started deleting live stream archives after 30 days and Twitch limited storage of Highlights and Uploads. Flickr stopped letting free accounts download large images.

And that does suggest all those free video editing apps and sites are designed to get you to pay.

Newsletter platforms add features that make it harder to “own your audience”

In 2024 the common wisdom was to own your audience and not rely on algorithmic feeds to distribute your content. That could mean publishing an email newsletter or hosting your own community. But the lines are becoming blurred as platforms roll out new features.

Substack, for example, started as a newsletter platform, and has since introduced social features, live streaming, chat, and encourages users to consume the content on the Substack mobile app or site. Even though it still touts itself as a place to “build on your own land”, changing platforms means losing access to those community and discovery tools.

Patreon similarly has gone beyond a platform for Creators to communicate with their patrons. It now also has live streaming and discovery features such as collaborative posts and a Twitter-like “Quips” feed. And you can even publish a newsletter.

My newsletter platform, Beehiiv, hasn’t added a social feed, but it has expanded well beyond newsletters. You can now build your own website (or blog) and sell digital products.

It’s getting more difficult to tell them apart. And all these new features could end up as a huge time sink for Creators whose primary platform is YouTube, Instagram or their own blog. And ultimately it does lock people into the platform, even if it isn’t as bad as big social media platforms.

Pushback against AI

There is a rising tension between Creators, viewers and readers, and the companies that make generative AI tools. People feel that social media, YouTube, are becoming overrun with “AI slop”, while some of those same platforms offer AI tools that easily create such content.

For example, YouTube was heavily criticized when it appeared they were “AI upscaling” Shorts without Creator consent. Their explanation that they were using “traditional machine learning technology” to adjust some videos, rather than generative AI, didn’t make anyone happier. YouTube did finally add a setting to turn off YouTube’s automated visual enhancements, AI and otherwise.

Creators are having to balance their use of AI-powered tools and what’s often perceived as a lack of authenticity or care, while at the same time having their work and likeness copied without credit.

Control the AI in your feed

Platforms are still not great at detecting AI-generated images and videos. AI tools from Google and Adobe watermark their output, but that isn’t always automatically labeled when shared. And despite policies that require labeling of AI content, many people don’t do that.

That said, platforms like TikTok and Pinterest allow users to try to adjust the amount of generative AI content they see in their feed. How well that works is an open question.

Opting your content in (or out) of AI training

Do you want AI bots to scan your content, so it appears in AI Search results? Or do you want to prevent your work from being used for training? How about billing AI companies for use? Companies have been working on ways of managing how your content is used by AI scraper bots.

Adobe’s Content Credentials lets Creators add attribution as metadata to their digital work. You can use it to indicate if you allow your content to be used for generative AI training.
YouTube also has a setting that lets you opt your videos into third party AI training. Of course you can’t opt out of having Google train their AI with your videos.
The RSL Collective offers a license for publishers to use on their site to try to collect royalties from AI companies training their models with that content.
Creative Commons CC Signals similarly is a licensing scheme for data and content use by AI systems. They are working with the RSL Collective.
Cloudflare lets users add an “AI Labyrinth" to lock up bots through irrelevant resources to prevent them from crawling a site without permission. They are also testing a “pay per crawl” feature that directs AI crawlers to pay publishers for access.
SEO gurus suggest adding a llm.txt file or “chunking” content on your website rank well in LLM-powered searches. You almost certainly don’t need to do either of those.

Fighting Impersonation

Generative AI makes it much easier for bad actors to create deepfakes of real people. Platforms like Spotify and YouTube are updating impersonation policies, and giving creators tools to detect and block misuse of their voice or likeness.

People Stopped Clicking Links in Search

In March 2025 Google Search expanded AI Overviews and launched AI Mode, which runs multiple related searches simultaneously, then compiles them into an answer. Both AI Overviews and AI Mode are now available globally.

The problem? People don’t click the links in AI summaries, resulting in the dreaded Alligator Graph in Google Search Console. Impressions from Search are going up, while clicks are going down, resulting in a graph that looks like open alligator jaws.

For my site, that started in early April, which correlates pretty closely with the expansion of AI powered Search results.

This is concerning, to say the least. The implicit value exchange used to be that Google would crawl your website, and in exchange your site would appear in the Search results, which would bring traffic to your site. But now, Google crawls your site, summarizes the information there, and no longer sends traffic.

For their part, Google says the traffic they now send is “higher quality”, although that is a small comfort with so few total clicks.

And they recently started to highlight links better in the search results, including adding a link description and making links more visible.

It isn’t clear if this will prevent the demise of informational sites that no longer get visitors.

Choose Your Own Adventure

People don’t trust algorithmic feeds.

Platforms are realizing that people belong to a diversity of communities and interest groups, and that the most popular content is pretty much the lowest common denominator. YouTube’s Trending tab was removed in July for that reason, and Reddit is “moving away” from r/popular and the claim that it is the “Front Page of the Internet”.
Adjust the topics you want to see in your Instagram Reels feed, customize frequency of popular topics in the TikTok For You feed, plus YouTube is testing “Your Custom Feed”.
You can add publications as Preferred Sources for Google Search Top Stories.
You can follow Creators and Publishers in your Google Search “Discover” feed.
Focus on recommendations from friends, with private collaborative video feeds on Instagram and TikTok. YouTube is also testing video sharing in DMs.

Authenticity in 2026

Are you your real self when you are online? As we’ve seen in 2025, people are pushing back against generative AI content, they distrust “algorithms”, and are looking for authenticity.
How that will manifest in 2026 is unclear.

It may lead to less polished-looking content.
Identity verification

X started showing what country accounts are based in (revealing a number of fake accounts).
LinkedIn added free identity verification.
Reddit is testing identity verification, especially for journalists and public figures. It’s not clear how that will work with the vast majority of users with pseudonymous profiles.

Age verification is becoming a legal requirement, mostly to prevent young teens from creating accounts or seeing age-restricted material. But it means that under-18s will find it harder to masquerade as adults.
We may see more use of generative AI tools in truly creative ways, with disclosure.

It will be interesting to see what the new year brings!

YouTube's 2025 Updates: Building Engagement, New Stats, Monetization and Second Chances

2026-01-03T06:30:00.000-08:00

One of the things I do at the end of December is look back at all the changes that happened over the past year. And it turns out that in 2025 there were a ton of updates for Creators, not only on YouTube, but also Meta’s platforms (Threads, Facebook, Instagram), Twitch, TikTok, Reddit, and so much more.

What that means in practical terms is that there’s much too much to review all in a single article. So this week I’m going to give an overview of YouTube’s top updates in 2025 and next week I’ll recap 2025 Creator trends going into 2026.

You can find my personal 2025 recap here, with links to my top posts and video tutorials.

Thank you so much for reading, watching and joining me live!

YouTube’s Top 2025 Updates

YouTube is dominating entertainment. YouTube Creators are “The New Hollywood”, it’s the top video streaming platform, and where people get their podcasts. Part of the magic is that it’s for all types of Creators, both big and small.

In 2025 YouTube launched a number of new features that improved the platform both for viewers and Creators.

This year’s themes:

Building viewer engagement: expansion of Hype, Communities, Collaborations, Top Fan Leaderboards and more.
Video editing tools: AI-powered tools in the Shorts editor, expanded availability and new features in the YouTube Create app, automated Short Highlight videos from vertical live streams, and Clips from long-form podcast videos.
Live streaming updates: Dual streams, vertical streaming features, Top Fan Leaderboards, new monetization options.
Monetization updates: Less interruptive midroll ads, new Shopping features and options for Brand deals. For landscape live streams there are new side-by-side and “take a break” midroll ads.
Improvements to YouTube Analytics: including a new advanced analytics interface and new metrics.
YouTube Studio features: there’s Title A/B testing, Likeness detection (to spot deepfakes) and new comment settings and filters.
Improvements for viewers: an updated video player and improvements to YouTube on TVs.
AI in everything: generative AI creative tools, AI chatbots, AI summaries and so on. In August, I gave an overview of YouTube’s AI features, and there have been more since then. I’ll note that YouTube’s AI tools are not available in all countries.
Second Chances: YouTube has a pilot project that allows creators with terminated channels to possibly come back after a year and create a new channel.
Age limits and verification: Governments around the world are starting to require more limits on teen use, which requires platforms to verify user ages. YouTube, of course, is affected by this. They limited live streaming to users age 16 and older this year. And under-16s in Australia have been banned from the platform. To support this, YouTube and Google use AI to estimate user age, sometimes requiring additional verification.

Read on for more details!

What to look forward to in 2026: Recommendations beyond Algorithms and Authenticity

One of the current shifts across social platforms is adding features to help users to find content they are interested in beyond personalized algorithmic feeds.

In 2025 YouTube removed the “Trending” tab, noting that there are “many fandoms”, and a single trending list didn’t capture that reality.

And people are increasingly wary of being fed recommendations by “algorithms”.

So what do people like? Sharing videos with their friends. Instagram and TikTok both have created collaborative feeds based on direct messaging and what your friends are watching.

In November, YouTube started experimenting with video sharing in DMs. It’s early days, with few features, and only available in Ireland and Poland.

The other trend is letting people pick topics they are interested in, rather than showing a purely algorithmic feed. TikTok, Instagram, and Pinterest all let people at least partially control what topics they see, and TikTok and Pinterest even let people limit the amount of AI-generated content in their feed.

Along those lines, YouTube is testing “Your Custom Feed” that lets you “update your existing Home feed recommendations with a simple prompt.”

I expect both of those features to expand in the coming year.

The other shift is a backlash against AI-generated content, something we’re already seeing. That may mean that authentic (or “authentic”) content gets a boost. It may mean more creators on camera or less polished-looking visuals. It will be interesting to see what the trends are a year from now.

Building Community and Increasing Viewer Engagement

The most exciting new features this year aren't entirely new. Some have been in test mode since 2024 or even earlier. But this year they were made available to (almost) everyone.

YouTube Communities: After a long test phase, YouTube Communities rolled out to almost all channels, changing the “Community” tab to the “Posts” tab. Communities were made available on desktop, and got new features like pinned posts, the ability to manage viewer posts in YouTube Studio (on the Community tab), Community post re-sharing and direct links.

New Posts Features: a “New Posts” button lets you see Posts within the Shorts feed and a dedicated Posts shelf on your channel Home tab. You can add up to 10 images (up from 5) to an Image Post and YouTube is experimenting with showing those Posts in the Shorts feed.

Collaborations: YouTube launched Collaborations on videos. There can be up to 5 channels collaborating, and the video is shown to fans of all of those channels. It’s also easy to subscribe to all the collaborators. There is a host channel, and watch time and revenue only goes to the host.

Automatic Dubbing: AI-powered automatic dubbing is now available to all channels with Advanced Settings enabled. There are currently 28 languages that can be dubbed to English, and 20 languages that English can be dubbed into. Dubbing is enabled by default, but you can turn it off in your channel settings in YouTube Studio. And finally, a few weeks ago, YouTube rolled out a setting that lets viewers set their preferred languages.

Improved Comments:

Expansion of voice replies to comments. This lets a creator post an audio reply to a comment on their own channel. The comment is transcribed for reading on desktop (and for people who don’t want to listen.)
You can limit comments to subscribers and members only, and set how long the commenter must have been a subscriber.
Comments are now threaded, making it easier to follow conversations.

Hype and Leaderboards: Hype expanded to 39 countries, including the US. This was originally launched in 2024 in Brazil, Taiwan and Turkey. There are Hype video Leaderboards that show the most hyped videos in a location broken down by category. Only new videos on channels with 500 to 500,000 subscribers can be hyped, with smaller channels getting a boost to even the playing field. When you Hype a video, you can also create a Post to share that and maybe get a hype train rolling.

YouTube Courses: YouTube Courses expanded to more creators, and the requirements got tighter: Courses must have the intent to teach, include at least three different videos, and not be age-restricted. Viewers can track their course progress and get a badge when they finish watching. Like podcasts, a Course is just a specialized playlist, so it’s easy to set up. Sadly, there is no way to monetize other than with ads. One-time-payments for courses were discontinued in November.

Playlist Voting: YouTube added the option to upvote and downvote videos in a playlist. That can let fans or friends decide which video they like best or change the order of a community music playlist.

Video Editing Tools

One of the big trends in 2025 is the proliferation of video editing apps and tools, especially with generative AI features. On mobile devices you can use the new Instagram-associated Edits app or the free Adobe Premiere mobile app (with built-in Shorts maker), if you want to move beyond TikTok’s CapCut. That’s not to mention all the AI-first video creation tools from Google, Meta, OpenAI and so forth.

It’s no surprise that YouTube has been investing in its video editing and creation tools as well.

YouTube Shorts Editor

The YouTube Shorts editor is available in the YouTube mobile app. While it has a number of AI-powered tools, you can use it with just your own video clips.

If you do want to use AI tools, you can start by opening the Shorts AI Playground, which helps you find Shorts AI tools all in one place. Just open the Shorts editor in the YouTube app, and tap the sparkle icon at top right to find those features.

Also new this year:

Create Shorts up to 3 minutes long. Starting in October 2024, any vertical or square video up to 3 minutes long became Shorts (the previous time limit was 1 minute). But the Shorts editor in the YouTube app was still limited to one minute until January 2025.
YouTube now automatically tags a location on restaurant and travel-related Shorts. You can turn this off in the video details in YouTube Studio on desktop.
There are editing guides to show you where you should not place text, stickers or important visuals.
Improved timeline and clip editing.
Use your gallery photos and effects in templates. The Shorts template creator automatically gets attribution.
The YouTube Shorts Editor uses Google’s latest video generation models, starting with Veo 2, then updating to Veo 3. You can generate very short clips, backgrounds, and animate still photos.
A new Remix feature that lets you “Extend with AI”, making the clip longer.
Create voiceovers with text-to-speech.
Automatically sync your clips to music.
Image stickers from your photo gallery.
AI-generated stickers from a text prompt.
Quiz stickers and “smart” Q&A Stickers
Shopping product stickers (for monetizing creators).
Dreamtrack music with vocals and speech-to-song.
Stylize editable captions.

If you want to create your own effects, YouTube has made their Effect Maker Tool available almost everywhere except Europe. This lets you create effects that can appear in the Shorts editor.

YouTube Create App

The YouTube Create video editor app finally got some updates. The app launched to very limited availability in 2023, and was mostly neglected in 2024.

In 2025 YouTube Create app availability expanded to 21 countries and was finally made available for iOS devices (after having been limited to Android).

It also gained new features, including templates, “Edit with AI” video creation from your gallery, and AI video generation.

Editing in YouTube Studio

If you have access to the Creator Music (beta) in YouTube Studio, you can use Dreamtrack to generate music tracks. The sound may not be the best, but the tracks don’t have licensing or copyright limitations.

On desktop there is a new AI-powered Clip creator that automatically suggests video clips from videos in a Podcast playlist.

A note that the YouTube video editor on desktop no longer lets you revert to the original video after editing. This setting was apparently being abused.

Live Streaming

Live streaming also has a number of new features for engagement and monetization.

YouTube is pushing vertical live streaming, as those videos can be discovered in the Shorts feed and tend to get more engagement than landscape live streams.

Top Fan Leaderboards were added to encourage engagement. Fans get points by chatting or by tipping with Super Chats, Super Stickers or Gifts (on vertical live streams). Fans can disable their participation and creators can turn it off on a stream.

The “Take a Break” option in the Live Control Room lets you show ads or a default video while you are taking a break of up to 5 minutes.

Side-by-side ads show while the stream is ongoing. The ad is on one side, while the muted stream continues. This is a replacement for regular mid-roll ads, which show in place of the stream.

For channels with Memberships enabled, it’s now possible to start a public live stream, and switch to Members Only. The idea is that this will encourage viewers to pay for Membership.

You can add a Managing Moderator, who can not only moderate the live chat, but also change settings like blocked words, message delay, participation mode, and the community defaults.

YouTube is rolling out Dual Streams, which let you stream in landscape and vertical formats simultaneously and one shared chat. This can currently only be controlled in Live Control Room, but more options and features should be available soon.

Specifically for vertical live streams:

Gifts are a way for fans to engage and tip vertical live streamers. Fans purchase Jewels with real money, and Jewels are used to purchase Gifts for monetizing creators. Creators can now enable Gift Goals to encourage people to add them, and there are new interactive Gift Effects.

And once a vertical live stream is over, AI automatically creates Highlights Shorts that you can optionally publish.

Policy Updates

Updated Policies: Violence, Gambling, Medical Misinformation

Updated harassment policy to prohibit ghoulish content of dead people narrating their own deaths, and content mocking the death or serious injury of an identifiable individual.

Began age-restricting scripted content with human actors that focuses on scenes of torture or violent death of a person showing blood. This is in alignment with TV and movie standards.

YouTube will also now age-restrict graphic gaming content that focuses on torture or “mass violence against non-combatants”.

Tightened up the gambling policy, which already only allowed promotion of gambling or casino sites certified by Google Ads or YouTube. The first step was to include URLs, links on images, text, any visuals like logos, and verbal references. Then it was expanded to include gambling with digital goods like NFTs or video game skins and social casino sites.

Updated the medical misinformation policy to prohibit content that falsely claims tobacco or nicotine are not addictive or harmful.

Second Chances

If your YouTube channel is terminated, you now have only one year to appeal a channel termination or content removal, and the number of appeals is limited.

And YouTube has been cracking down on violations of its circumvention policy. YouTube has long prohibited creators who had a channel terminated from creating or using new channels. Now this is being more strictly enforced (with many complaints).

But it may not be over. There’s what YouTube is calling a pilot program to give some creators with terminated channels a second chance. In some cases, if creators wait at least a year after their channel was terminated, they will have the option to create a new channel. The original content and subscribers are not restored.

Analytics and YouTube Studio Features

YouTube Studio is the home of settings and stats for creators.

Updated YouTube Analytics

Advanced Analytics got a complete makeover, with controls and filters on the sidebar, a menu of popular reports, and the option to save reports.

There are also new metrics:

The way Shorts views are counted changed. Instead of only counting a view when a Short is actively watched, it now counts a view when a Short starts playing. And they play automatically in the Shorts feed, making a “view” more like an impression, which is more in line with the way views are counted on TikTok and for Instagram Reels. The old Views are now counted as “Engaged Views”.

Device type stats show what percentage of watch time is from viewers on computers, mobile phones, tablets, and TVs. For many channels this highlights the shift to watching on the big screen.

Watch behavior stats break down your audience by new viewers, casual viewers and regular viewers (consistently watching for at least 6 months!). It also shows which content is popular with each type of viewer.

Content Tools

On the Content tab, you can now filter Playlists by description and visibility, not just the title. And you can see playlist views.

YouTube added Title testing to Thumbnail testing (which launched in 2024). Now you can test three title-thumbnail combinations. The winner is the combination that results in the most watch time.

Likeness Detection is rolling out to all creators in the YouTube Partner Program (by January), as a way to fight against deepfakes. To that end, the Copyright tab in YouTube Studio is now the Content Detection Tab. Once Likeness Detection is available for your channel, you’ll have the option to set it up with your ID and face and it will scan videos for unauthorized use of your likeness. When there’s a match, you can request that video be removed.

There are now clearer and more detailed copyright claims, including potential impact (for example what percentage of your audience might not be able to view the claimed video).

Manage Comments

The comment moderation settings were reorganized and renamed Community Moderation settings.

YouTube is expanding access to AI-powered comment suggestions, which are customized to (supposedly) use your tone and style. And if you comment in multiple languages, you may see suggestions in multiple languages.

And you can sort your comments by “most relevant” in addition to “newest” on the Community tab.

Get AI-Powered Help

“Ask Studio” is an AI-powered chatbot that is customized so you can ask it about your channel’s performance.

That’s in addition to a separate YouTube Help AI Chat that can provide information from the YouTube Help Center. Try “speak to an agent” to see if you have access to human support.

Monetization

YouTube and Google made a number of updates to monetization. If you make money, YouTube makes money, so everyone wins.

Less Interruptive Midroll Ads

YouTube changed the way midroll ads are placed, making them less “interruptive”. Many creators placed slots for midroll ads every minute, trying to maximize ads. Since many of those interrupt the flow of the video, it was a bad user experience. YouTube now encourages automatic ad placements, rather than manual placements, although that works for some content better than others.

The new side-by-side ads for live streams similarly don’t interrupt the stream as much as regular midroll ads do.

From the other side of the business, Google started offering “Peak Points” ad slots to advertisers. This uses Gemini AI to determine peak moments in popular videos, and place ads there. Hopefully not in an interruptive ad slot.

Brand Deals

YouTube is making it easier for creators to connect with brands.

Google Ads now has a Creator Partnership hub, which lets advertisers connect with creators using BrandConnect. Brands can post an “Open Call” that lets creators submit their content (currently only available for Shorts).

And creators can enable Channel Insights sharing that lets Brands see your channel viewer demographics and other stats.

Monetization Policy Updates

YouTube updated their YouTube Partner Program guidelines to better identify “mass produced” and “repetitious” content. The repetitious content policy was renamed “inauthentic” content policy to better reflect this.

YouTube updated their monetization policy and now fully monetizes videos with strong profanity in the first 7 seconds. Previously that would get limited ads. The original policy was modeled on policy for TV shows, but advertisers now have the controls to choose where their ads appear.

YouTube started making additional reviews of uploads for ad suitability. This could take up to 24 hours, but is more accurate than the original quick review. That made it less likely for a video to be initially approved for monetization, only to have monetization turned off.

YouTube also cracked down on Shopping tagging violations, requiring tagged products to be meaningfully related to your content, be used as designed, and shown nicely.

Note that if you block ads on your videos by category, the AdSense ad-blocking controls have been cleaned up a bit. “Video Games (Casual & Online)” was removed, but was still covered by the "Video Games, Consoles & Accessories" and "Online Games & Puzzles" categories. They also deprecated the Bare Skin/Significant Skin Exposure categories, which are still partially covered by the “References to Sex”, “Swimwear” and “Underwear” categories.

New Payment Methods

AdSense now supports payments using PayPal Hyperwallet. Once this is set up, your payment is transferred to your “Hyperwallet”, where it then can be collected by transferring to paypal, Venmo, actual cash, and even cryptocurrency. This initially rolled out in the US, and has expanded to China and Argentina. I expect it will become more broadly available in 2026.

Viewer Updates

All those Creator updates are only meaningful if people are watching. Updates for viewers in 2025 included:

Hide end screens: End screens on videos can end up obscuring the video. Now you can click on the eye icon to hide those suggested videos and subscribe buttons.

Blurred thumbnails in the search results: If you do a search with results that may include sexual themes, the thumbnails are blurred so there aren’t unexpected surprises. You can unblur them.

Trending Charts: YouTube killed the Trending tab, but added Top Podcast charts. There are also charts for trending music videos and movie trailers.

New visual interface: YouTube rolled out a new visual interface with a cleaner and more immersive video player, custom “Like” animation on some videos, smoother saving to playlists, and improved “double tap to seek”.

Find Public Content: On a channel’s Videos tab, you can now filter for Public or Members-Only content. YouTube began showing Members-Only content on that tab to everyone, which can be frustrating if you are not a paid Member to the channel and you are looking for videos to watch.

Improved TV viewing: On TVs, YouTube added screen immersive previews, a “From your top channels” shelf, a dedicated Shorts shelf, improved Search, Creator discovery cards and Shows. Creators can upload larger thumbnails, for better visuals.

Visual Enhancements: YouTube also wants to make lower resolution videos look better with AI upscaling. You can turn this off in your channel settings.

Previous Recaps

My 2025 Year in Review

2026-01-02T22:34:00.000-08:00

Thanks to everyone for reading and watching in 2025! Here's a brief recap of my year.

15 Years as a Google Product Expert!

Social Media

In 2025 my YouTube channel gained nearly 1700 subscribers, with a year-end total of 8,598 subs. My goal for 2026 is to reach 10,000 subscribers, which should be doable!

I stopped posting on X, because reading posts there isn’t enjoyable and my shared link posts don’t get any engagement. I don’t miss it.

I am currently active on Bluesky and Threads. You can follow me from the Fediverse at @peggykolm@threads.net.

Newsletter and Posts

This year I published:

50 Creator Weekly newsletters (subscribe to get the free weekly email!)

A 50-part series: 10 Years Ago This Week, which looked at the top tech updates in 2015. Most popular posts:

YouTube

⭐ 52 Live streams, including 50 Creator Weekly Live episodes.

⭐ 112 Shorts, including a weekly "Creator Weekly in a Minute" and "10 Years Ago This Week"

Top Short overall: Get YouTube Achievement Badges (published November 2024)
Top Short published in 2025: Get AdSense Payments through PayPal Hyperwallet
Top 10 Years Ago This Week episode: Friendster is Back? (it’s interesting that the top YouTube episodes are quite different than the top blog articles)

⭐ 3 Long Form Videos

Top Video: Manage YouTube Mid-Roll Ads

⭐ Weekly YouTube Quiz

The most popular by far: How many followers do you need to live stream on Instagram? I don’t know why this took off, but it has more than 21,000 responses.

⭐ Weekly tech tips and chat with OnEBoard. My top tips:

What’s on the horizon for 2026?

Creator Weekly Live Podcast. You can now listen to episodes of the weekly live stream as a podcast. Add the podcast in YouTube Music.

Tutorials. Since I’ve completed the 10 Years Ago This Week series, I will have more time for tutorials, which are my most popular content. I’ll be using YouTube’s title and thumbnail testing tools to try to expand my audience on YouTube and writing complementary articles.

Building subscribers. I have been neglecting promoting my newsletter, which I need to work on. And I hope to reach 10,000 YouTube subscribers!

My watchword for 2025 is Focus!

10YATW: Tracking Santa is Open Sourced

2025-12-23T00:14:00.000-08:00

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing tech highlights from 2015 that still resonate a decade later.

Ten years ago, Google open-sourced their Santa Tracker and built a new Santa's Village.

Watch the Short version.

Tracking Santa

Santa Tracker and Santa's Village in December 2015

Google launched their first Santa Tracker in 2004, shortly after acquiring a company called Keyhole, which would become Google Earth. In 2007 they officially partnered with NORAD, which had been tracking Santa since the 1950s.

In 2012, NORAD switched to using Bing Maps. Google continued on their own, using a "new route algorithm" and a site where you could visit Santa's Village to play mini-games and get into the holiday spirit.

Open Source Santa

In 2015 Google made their Santa Tracker open source, including both the Android and Polymer-based mobile-optimized web versions.

Probably not coincidentally, Polymer 1.0 (an open-source JavaScript library for building web applications developed by Google), was released a month later.

Santa's Village Update

In 2015 Santa's Village also got an update, with new games (with support for Cardboard VR), a music maker, Happy Holidays translations and holiday traditions from around the world.

On Christmas Eve you could watch Santa deliver presents around the world.

The View from 2025

Santa Tracker and Santa's Village in 2025, just a day before Christmas

Ten years later you can still visit Santa's Village.

It has been tweaked a bit over the years, of course, but the look is the same. You can still play the same games, learn coding with the Code Boogie, or create your own Elf Jam Band.

Some things have changed. Mrs. Claus appears and the village is more conservation minded. The elves ride bikes instead of cars, and Santa gets electricity from wind turbines and solar panels.

I think it's notable that there aren't any new generative AI elements, despite those being inserted into literally every other Google product and service. Is it abandoned? Or just meant to focus on simpler times?

But the important thing is that you can still track when Santa will arrive.

The Web Moved On

The open source code for Santa Tracker Web and Santa Tracker Android is still available, although it has not been updated for a number of years.

Polymer, which was shiny and new in 2015, hasn't been updated since 2020 and is now in maintenance mode. Using Lit Web Components is recommended instead.

But the code and components are still available if you want to track Santa yourself.

10 Years Ago This Week: Google brings Cardboard VR to the masses

References

Santa's Village (December 2015) or visit the current Santa's Village and Santa Tracker

Google Official Blog, 23 December 2008, Tracking Santa: The backstory

Google Blog, 2 December 2015, Jingle all the way to Santa's Village

Google Blog, 22 December 2021, The Googlers who help track Santa each Christmas

Creator Weekly: YouTube languages, Instagram Reels on TV, Twitch Lead Moderators

2025-12-20T06:30:00.000-08:00

Dear readers, this is the last of the significant updates for 2025. I’m expecting most platforms to (hopefully) go on holiday until 2026. That means this week there are a ton of smaller updates for YouTube, Instagram and more.

There won’t be a newsletter or live stream on the 27th. Stay tuned for my own recap of the year on January 3rd.

I hope you have a fantastic holiday!

📨 Subscribe to get Creator Weekly by email.

🗓 Ten Years Ago This Week: The questions you ask reveal who you are

To celebrate 10 years of Creator Weekly, I’m sharing highlights from 2015.

Google’s “Year in Search” in 2015 started with the statement “The questions you ask reveal who you are”, and went on to highlight trends for social change, helping others and working towards peace.

The 2025 Year in Search has a totally different vibe. It’s about using Google’s AI to ask “conversational” search questions, mostly about pop culture and sports. Changing times? Good business? Get all the details.

🔴 Creator Weekly Live

Join Creator Weekly Live on Sunday, 10:30AM Pacific time. Join me live or watch the recording.

✅ Take this week’s quiz

What do you know about new Insights in Google Search Console? Take this week’s quiz.

Video Creator and Live Streaming Updates

Apparently TikTok finally finalized a deal to divest its U.S. operations. ByteDance will retain 20% ownership, and the remainder will be held by a consortium of new investors. The deal should be finalized by January 22, 2026.

YouTube is adding new settings for video language preferences. This is in response to feedback from viewers that they didn’t want YouTube to assume which language they wanted audio to default to. Learn more.

If you create clips from your long-form videos in YouTube Studio, there are now AI-powered Suggested Clips to make it easier. This feature is limited to videos in a Podcast playlist for creators in the US and Canada. Learn more.

You can now use “Edit with AI” to create a short video in the YouTube Shorts editor. Select up to 25 images or video clips and a template, and they will be assembled into a video. You can change the audio, add text and more. This feature is also available in the YouTube Create app.

The YouTube Create video editing app is available for iOS in 19 more countries, the same countries where it’s available for Android devices. Learn more.

YouTube is expanding access to Channel Guidelines, and bringing them to Communities. All channels with access to intermediate and advanced features will be able to create commenting guidelines. Those are shown to viewers the first time they post a comment. You can find the setting in YouTube Studio > Channel Settings > Channel Guidelines. Learn more.

There are now comment summaries in the YouTube Studio mobile app. This can be found at the top of a video’s comment section in the app by clicking the “Get Summary” option. Learn more.

YouTube is testing a new location and functionality for the “Dislike” button on Shorts. They note that people seem to use “Dislike” and “Not Interested” interchangeably. The experimental thumbs down button will be labeled “Dislike” for some and “Not Interested” for others. If you are in the experiment and click the thumbs down option under the 3 dot menu, you will be shown an optional survey (and you are encouraged to fill that out).

YouTube is testing showing image Posts in the Shorts feed. All image Posts created through the "Create" button may be shown in the Shorts feed during this test. A Post can include up to 10 images. YouTube is also "exploring music with this experience."

Nano Banana (Gemini 2.5 Flash Image) is coming to YouTube Posts in the US, Canada, New Zealand and India in English. You can use Nano Banana to edit image Posts. This is available in the main YouTube app when you add an image to your Post and click the Edit button. Edited posts will show a “Made with AI” disclosure.

YouTube is testing “Create Mode” in the YouTube mobile app. This “will showcase content creation tools, including experimental AI-generated features to create images, video clips, green screen backgrounds, music tracks and more.” If you are in the experiment you may see Create Mode when you tap the + icon.

A “small group” of YouTube Creators are joining Portraits. Portraits is an AI experiment that lets you have a “conversation” with an AI version of a real person based on their writing and other works. In this new experiment, if you are at least 18 years old, in the US, and watching YouTube on desktop, you “may see the option to “Talk to Creator’s Portrait” on a participating creator’s channel, where viewers can engage with the creator’s Portrait by asking questions and exploring topics related to their content.” The participating Creators have not been listed.

Update for YouTube Partners: Super Chat Goals are now available on vertical livestreams. Learn more.

YouTube is testing a new location and functionality for the “Dislike” button on Shorts. They note that people seem to use “Dislike” and “Not Interested” interchangeably. The experimental thumbs down button will be labeled “Dislike” for some and “Not Interested” for others. If you are in the experiment and click the thumbs down option under the 3 dot menu, you will be shown an optional survey (and you are encouraged to fill that out).

In 2029 the Oscars will be exclusively streamed on YouTube. It’s the first major awards show to leave the television networks entirely. There are questions.

YouTube is pulling its data from the Billboard Music Charts in January. Why? “Billboard uses an outdated formula that weights subscription-supported streams higher than ad-supported. This doesn't reflect how fans engage with music today and ignores the massive engagement from fans who don’t have a subscription.”

New podcast stats from YouTube: 1 billion monthly active podcast viewers and over 700 million hours of podcasts viewed on TVs in October.

The Edits video editing app now lets you add effects to specific people or objects in your video. Examples: Use Tag to add a label to an outfit, use Outline or Dither to outline a person for emphasis, use Blur to blur a person or reveal an object, or use Sparkle to add subtle emphasis.

Also new in the Edits app: Add a “stylish” Title, New Years sound effects and fonts, more text and caption preset styles, more fonts for Indian languages, and highlight specific words in captions.

Substack is adding auto-generated thumbnails for live video recordings.

Twitch has added a Lead Moderator role. The Lead moderator can add and remove other mods and update moderation settings. Learn more.

StreamYard has made a major update to its AI Clips tool. You can use text prompts to help it find the clips you want, say “Clip that!” during your stream for the previous 30 seconds to be clipped, full customization controls and enhanced processing (create clips up to 3 minutes long from videos up to 6 hours).

Snapchat launched QuickCut, a video creation tool that “helps Snapchatters turn their favorite Memories into beat-synced, ready-to-share videos in seconds.” You can use Lenses and Sounds to customize the videos, which are shareable on Snapchat.

Google Vids video editor now lets you add more realistic AI-generated avatars powered by Veo 3.1. This is available with Google Workspace Business, Enterprise, Essentials, Nonprofits, and Google AI Pro and Ultra subscriptions.

Adobe Firefly video creation tools have been upgraded:

Firefly Video Editor (beta) is a browser-based video editor that lets you combine generated clips, music tracks and your own visuals. You can edit in the timeline or edit by text (for talking-head clips). Try it.
Prompt to Edit controls let you make precision edits.
The Firefly Video Model lets you upload a reference video to show the camera motion you want to reproduce.
Topaz Astra in Firefly Boards lets you upscale low resolution clips to 1080p or 4K.

Web Publishers and Search

Google lets people customize Top Stories in the Google Search results by adding Preferred Sources. This is now available globally in English. It will be available in all supported languages early next year.

Not new, but important to know if you have your own website: Google's Danny Sullivan & John Mueller On SEO For AI: It's The Same

Beehiiv updated its Automations with new triggers and Workflow Builder.

Social Media

A move that likely will alienate businesses, brands and publishers alike: Facebook is testing a link-posting limit for professional accounts and pages. If you hit the limit, you need to pay for a Meta Verified account. It is still just being tested, so it may not be widely implemented.

Threads is adding more Communities and testing community champion badges for active members.

Instagram has increased the number of hashtags you can include in a caption for a Reel or post to five. They recommend using fewer, more targeted, hashtags to improve your content’s performance.

Instagram has launched a TV app for watching Reels. It may sound odd, but YouTube has found people like watching Shorts on their big screens, so why not Reels too? Reels are grouped into channels that match your interests. It doesn’t sound like there’s a way to focus on Reels from people you follow. It’s currently available for Amazon Fire TV, and has limited functionality as it is being tested.

Bluesky has a new “Find your Friends” feature that does not give the platform access to your contacts. Upload and verify your mobile phone number and Bluesky can match you with contacts who have also opted in. The data is stored as hashed pairs (your number, plus the contact’s number), which would be extremely difficult to reverse engineer. Invites are sent via text message from you, not Bluesky.

Productivity

Google Meet now lets you present audio with stereo sound and share your device’s audio when presenting a window or your entire screen.

Two excellent Google Chat updates: The new Feeds app automatically delivers updates from an RSS feed (blog, news site, YouTube video, podcast, Bluesky profile and so forth). And you can automatically block messages from people who are not in your Contacts.

Create Presentation is a new AI-powered feature in Adobe Express, Acrobat Studio and Acrobat AI Assistant. Generate the presentation from your files and a prompt, and refine and edit your slides in Adobe Express.

Google shared tips on how to create slides with NotebookLM. For example, you can create rough slides in Google Slides, import that as a source, then use NotebookLM to pretty them up. You can also refine existing slides with your brand colors or visuals.

NotebookLM now lets you turn your sources into structured tables that can be exported to Google Sheets.

You can now upload NotebookLM notebooks to Gemini Apps for analysis, in addition to documents, spreadsheets, images and videos.

CC is a new experimental AI agent in Google Labs. You give it access to your Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive and the web, and it delivers a “Your Day Ahead” briefing to your email inbox every day.You can reply to emails to customize it or ask it to remember todos. Sign up for the waitlist.

More AI Updates and Tips

The new Mozilla CEO announced AI would be coming to Firefox. After significant pushback, they had to clarify that Firefox will not be an “AI browser”. They will have a full opt-out available “early next year”.

The Gemini app can now verify if a video was created with Google AI. It is able to detect a SynthID watermark in both visual and audio tracks.Videos can be up to 90 seconds long and 100 MB. It unfortunately cannot detect AI-generated videos created with tools that don’t add the SynthID watermark. Gemini can also detect AI-generated images.

You can now use Opal to build interactive “Gems” in the Gemini app.

Google’s Nano Banana now lets you doodle the edits you want to make to a photo or other image.

Gemini 3 Flash is now the default model in the Gemini app, and is starting to roll out to AI Mode in Search. Google says “you can use it to help you see, hear and understand any type of information faster.”

The updated ChatGPT Images model can now generate more realistic images and more readable text, and edit images that “adhere to your intent more reliably”. Images is available from the sidebar in the ChatGPT mobile app and on the web, with preset filters and prompts.