Each week, we handpick a selection of stories to give you a snapshot of trends, updates, business moves, and more from around the creator industry.

This week, a TikTok patriot passes on, a cross-country journey supports charity, and a new shark just dropped.

Creator commotion

RIP, Patriotic Kenny. The 84-year-old, who brought in millions of TikTok followers with his positivity and electric scooter videos, died this week. The cause of death was lung cancer. Kenny was a political activist throughout his final years, and he was one of the TikTokers who campaigned on the app’s behalf in D.C.

VidCon has announced the 2026 class for its “Hall of Fame.” Last year, the VidCon Hall of Fame launched as a way to honor trailblazing creators who have made an undeniable impact on the digital economy. In 2026, the honorees will include four multi-hyphenates who defined the creator economy before that term was ever in use: Markiplier, Michelle Phan, Philip DeFranco, and Cassey Ho of Blogilates.

Kareem Rahma’s Keep The Meter Running premiere party was quite the vibe. After breaking out with Subway Takes, Rahma is teaming up with YouTube to launch a new show that premiered its first two episodes at an exclusive party. The guest list included comedians like Ramy Youssef and Eric Andre as well as creators like Tinx. If you think Rahma deserves these accolades after grinding on the subway for so long, then I 100% agree.

The biz

Justin Leusner’s NBA arena tour raised $100,000 for Make-a-Wish. Leusner, a sports creator in the Jesser mold, visited all 30 NBA venues over a one-month span. He discussed his fundraising feat in a YouTube blog post. “I’ve wanted to visit all 30 NBA arenas since I was in elementary school,” Leusner wrote. “At 23 years old, I finally did it…but in 1 month, with an iPhone, a world record on the line, and a goal to raise $100,000 for Make-A-Wish.”

A24’s adaptation of The Backrooms is primed for a big opening weekend. Kane Parsons’ directorial debut, which adapts a series he kicked off on YouTube, will hit theaters at the end of May. When it does, it is projected to reach an opening weekend gross of about $50 million. That would be an opening-weekend record for A24 and would cement creators’ shared status as Hollywood darlings.

Ben Relles enters the land of Make Believe with his new startup. Relles, a former programming exec at YouTube, has recruited some YouTube vets to join him on the leadership team at Make Believe, a company that will focus on the interactive video formats of the future. LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoffman is a backer — and he’s even teamed up with Make Believe to develop his own AI avatar.

Grab a bite

You can now order Binging With Babish meals via CookUnity. Babish, whose real name is Andrew Rea, makes delectable dishes out of a souped-up studio kitchen in New York City. We longer have to assume that Rea’s food is as tasty as it looks, because he’s sending his cooking all over the country as a CookUnity chef. The base price for each Babish meal will be $15.99.

The Golden Balance is opening a restaurant in his hometown of Flint, Michigan. If you want to learn how to prepare Mediterranean, Levantine, and Middle Eastern classics, Ahmad Alzahhabi — who is known as The Golden Balance online — is one of the best cooking instructors out there. With a stall at the Flint Farmers’ Market, Alzahhabi will give his fans a chance to taste some of his creations, including his famous chicken-over-rice recipe.

Netflix wants to be Feastables now? As part of a continued push into consumer products, Netflix is teaming up with The Ferrero Group to move into the confections category. Netflix is positioning its consumables as a tie-in for its contribution to the Wonka franchise, but I think the streamer just wants to copy MrBeast. It seems like everyone on YouTube is doing it, so why not Netflix?

Platform headlines

YouTube tests a layout that removes the Subscriptions tab from its mobile app. Subscribing is an iconic part of the YouTube experience, but could the platform ever do away with the action that follows “like” and “comment”? An ongoing experiment depreciates the Subscriptions tab for some YouTube users. In a world defined by algorithmic feeds, that might not feel like such a huge change.

Stephen Colbert is done with The Late Show, but he’s just getting started on TikTok. Colbert launched his official TikTok account shortly before he hosted his final late-night show on CBS. If Colbert is going to get busy on TikTok, I have a message for him: Short-form videos feel like the perfect vehicle for bringing back the classic Colbert Report segment “The Word.”

Netflix attracted a peak audience of about 17 million concurrent viewers for its Rousey vs. Carano MMA fight. Women’s combat sports have become a dependable niche for Netflix ever since the thrilling undercard to the Paul/Tyson fight two years ago. Ronda Rousey’s return to The Octagon turned into another feather in Netflix’s cap. The streamer is really getting used to this live sports thing.

The internet is a strange place

A creator’s deep-sea video revealed one of the world’s rarest sharks. Barny Dillarstone dropped a camera into the ocean in Indonesia, and the results were unprecedented. After sighting a few common shark varieties, Dillarstone noticed an Indonesian Houndshark. According to experts, this may be the first time that particular variety has been caught on camera.

Some teachers actually like YouTube in classrooms. There’s a lot of talk these days about classroom tech bans and the potential effects those regulations could have on youth attention spans. Some educators, however, don’t want the crackdown to go too far. Teachers in Manitoba are lobbying the Canadian government in hopes of exempting YouTube from any under-18 social media bans that come into effect.

A Charlie Kirk memer earned an $835,000 settlement in court. After being jailed over a Charlie Kirk meme he posted in the wake of the pundit’s assassination, retired police officer Larry Bushart won a court case he filed on First Amendment grounds. In this case, the judge has set the dankest of precedents.

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Platforms like Patreon and OnlyFans let creators distribute paywalled videos that can only be watched by their financial backers. Now, YouTube is testing a different approach to gated content: What if videos could only be watched by the fans who are most active within a creator’s community?

That’s the gist of Top Fans, a new distribution option that is beginning to roll out on YouTube. By choosing to upload videos that can only be watched by 1% of their fans, creators can reward the viewers who show them the most loyalty.

YouTube first alluded to Top Fans during its Made On presentation last year. At the time, the platform’s execs positioned the feature as an engagement tool for the artists who art part of the YouTube Music community. A blog post published at the time claimed that musicians would be able to share “just-for-fans content directly to their most dedicated fans.”

“We’re introducing new ways for artists and their top fans to connect on a more personal level,” reads the post. “It’s about rewarding loyalty to the fans who are there from day one.”

Fast forward eight months, and some YouTube users are starting to spot the Top Fans option in the wild. Videos published that way won’t just be limited to the top 1% of a channel’s viewers; the remaining 99% won’t be able to watch the clip, even if they receive a direct link to it.

Creators who have spotted the feature have proposed several uses for it. Top Fans posts could be used to express controversial takes or test experimental formats among a trusted group of viewers. In a creator meta dominated by direct fan relationships, Top Fans videos could offer a more egalitarian form of gated content than the typical paywalled Patreon post.

YouTube could benefit from its new distribution option, too. If Top Fans posts catch on, viewers could start marathoning their favorite creator channels to break into the top 1%. That would increase YouTube’s overall watch time while simultaneously rewarding the platform’s most passionate users.

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There’s a new creator-led line of monthly build kits arriving at a major home goods retailer, but I’m not talking about Crunchlabs. MrBeast is channeling his buddy Mark Rober by launching family-friendly build kits through his MrBeast Lab Swarms toy line. The kits will be available at Lowe‘s, where kids will be able to congregate to complete their builds as part of a series of summertime workshops.

Beginning on May 30, MrBeast will drop a new Lab Swarms build kit each month. Lowe’s will be the exclusive home of those collectible products, and the chain will also provide a space where kids can assemble the $15 toys they just acquired. The MyLowe’s Rewards Kids Club workshops will reward participants with a MrBeast badge they can show off to their friends. A digital version of the badge will also be attainable.

MrBeast is a longtime Lowe’s partner. He is part of the roster for the company’s creator program, and Lowe’s was both a sponsor and a build partner for the second season of MrBeast’s Prime Video original series Beast Games.

To expand that partnership, MrBeast added a new wrinkle to the MrBeast Lab line he launched alongside Moose Toys last year. Like Rober’s CrunchLabs, MrBeast’s build kits are designed to encourage tinkering and creativity among his young fans. Promoting those qualities through periodic product releases has become a key component of Rober’s business. The expansion of his content empire also boosts his CrunchLabs sales, according to Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos.

Buildable products don’t just benefit creators — they also encourage kids and parents to work together on collaborative, DIY projects. According to a Lowe’s press release, 87% of Gen Alpha parents want to improve their connections with their kids through that type of joint activity.

“I have been obsessed with building things since I was a kid — it started with Lego forts and lately it’s building businesses and crazy large-scale sets for our videos,” MrBeast said in a statement. “I’m psyched about the Kids Club partnership with Lowe’s because we’re giving kids more access to being creative and seeing their own projects come to life.”

The registration form for the Lowe’s workshops can be found here. Parents of MrBeast fans who want to take advantage of these opportunities may want to act quickly. For the creator and his 489 million YouTube subscribers, the Lab Swarms builds are about to be the hottest summertime activity.

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Growing a YouTube channel to 50 million subscribers is no small feat, but Genevieve’s Playhouse has pulled it off. Ten years after its initial launch, the family favorite still makes regular appearances in our weekly rankings of YouTube’s 50 most-viewed channels. To date, the primary Genevieve’s Playhouse hub has picked up more than 41 billion lifetime YouTube views.

A channel that big typically contains the work of many hands, but the most striking thing about Genevieve’s Playhouse is that it is still a family business. Many kid-friendly channels have cut deals with companies like pocket.watch and Moonbug, which take the reins of top family IP and turn those properties into sprawling multiformat franchises.

Robert Mann, the disembodied voice who narrates many Genevieve’s Playhouse uploads, has gotten help from agencies and networks as he has scaled up his content enterprise. All the while, he has retained creative control over the brand inspired by his daughter’s toy-toting adventures.

Mann has received numerous offers from companies that want to buy into Genevieve’s Playhouse, but he has been choosy. “I have a big tendency to just say no to a lot of these things,” Mann told Tubefilter. “It’s only recently that we’ve entertained doing stuff like the toy line and the cartoon.”

The toy line Mann speaks of is built out of a partnership with Bonkers Toys, a company that helps creator-led channels transition into the toy aisle. After inking retail pacts with an eclectic list of partners that ranges from Addison Rae to Skibidi Toilet, Bonkers is stocking big-box shelves with Genevieve-inspired playthings that encourage children to embrace their creativity during playtime.

YouTube is a key promotional tool for that toy line, and that’s where the new Genevieve’s Playhouse cartoon series comes into play. Brightly colored episodes show off the figurines kids can buy at stores like Walmart.

An undertaking of this size is a major transition for Mann, but the person in charge of Genevieve’s Playhouse made sure to break into retail his way. For example, he was very meticulous about the language he used to discuss the new toys. “We won’t tell people to go buy our toys,” he told Tubefilter. “I never made anything I wouldn’t be comfortable with my own daughter watching.”

That level of precaution defined Genevieve’s Playhouse long before the Bonkers deal. Mann made sure to point out that his family spends their own money to buy the toys featured in their videos; they don’t collect freebies. When his daughter would appear in videos as a young girl, he would wait for her to “age up” before uploading those clips. That way, he made it harder to connect the toddler appearing on screen to a real-life persona.

Even with such a careful approach, Genevieve’s Playhouse has encountered its share of moderation-related issues. In the past, YouTube has erroneously flagged the channel for depicting “child-endangering sexuality.” Mann has also received fraudulent copyright claims for free-to-use background music. In some cases, those false positives have taken years to resolve.

To gain access to an “intermediary” who could “interface with YouTube,” Mann took Genevieve’s Playhouse “through the [multi-channel network] revolving door.” Those deals, however, did not live up to expectations. It wasn’t until the channel linked up with creator agency Underscore Talent that Mann got the support he needed. “They’ve been everything the MCNs promised they’d be,” he told Tubefilter.

That brings us to the setup that underpins Genevieve’s Playhouse to this day. The brand remains more independent than many of its contemporaries, but Mann has assembled a small group of trusted partners who have helped his brand go beyond its YouTube roots.

Bonkers Toys is one of those partners, but Mann is making sure that Genevieve’s Playhouse remains a venture for kids and by kids. “We started making these blank books. We have thousands filled with characters,” he said. “They’re characters we role-play as, so it seemed natural to develop these toys using those as inspiration. They’re basically designed by a kid.”

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The global podcast industry raked in $9.2 billion last year, surging 27% from 2024. That’s a neat chunk of change–a chunk that’s expected to grow in 2026 and beyond.

And, unsurprisingly, Spotify wants to scoop up as much of it as possible.

At its third annual Investor Day, its VP and Global Head of Podcasts Roman Wasenmüller said the platform’s podcast ambitions are in their second year of profitability.

Spotify was possibly the first major platform to start splashing big cash on podcast development. In 2019, it spent $500 million to acquire Gimlet Media and Anchor, the technological bones; then, a year later, it paid for the flesh that is content, doling out $100 million for an exclusive deal with Joe Rogan. (That deal later renewed for $250 million.) Spotify has also signed deals with other podcasters, and has invested in making video podcasts a significant part of its platform.

Of course, for all this to be a success, Spotify needs its podcast division to mimic the music division: Podcasters, like musicians, need to find enough reasons to upload their content, so Spotify can make money off ads run on that content.

To that end, Spotify is wooing creators with a new product: Memberships. This is exactly what you expect from the name–and exactly like Channel Memberships, the product already wielded by one of Spotify’s top podcast competitors, YouTube.

Per TheWrap, Spotify’s goal with Memberships is to give creators more direct access to their fans on platform. This makes sense, because not only does challenger YouTube have a paywall program where creators can offer VIP access and content, but subscriber site Patreon is the #1 driver of consumer revenue for podcasts.

But what if creators already comfortably have membership programs set up on Patreon etc? No problem: Spotify said those creators can mirror-distribute any paywalled membership content through its portal Spotify Open Access.

Basically, Spotify knows creators’ fans are willing to pay to support shows and access more content. If it can cut into that market and keep creator/fan interactions on-platform, it stands a chance to make more money.

Or does it? We aren’t sure yet if Spotify will take a cut of creators’ subscription revenue. YouTube, Patreon, and more do, though, so there’s precedent for it to take a little for itself. The question is, will its membership program–and the rest of its suite–edge out its growing number of podcast space competitors?

There’s also one more thing to consider. As Spotify makes these efforts to draw in creators, it’s also launching an LLM tool that will generate podcasts for listeners.

Yep: Another announcement today was “Personal Podcasts,” a gen AI thing that Spotify says will “generate short, private, personalized audio directly inside Spotify.”

TheWrap reports Personal Podcasts will let users write prompts, add outside text, PDFs, or links for context, and choose a voice. The LLM will then crunch up all that info and spit out something to listen to. Spotify said it added the generator “after seeing strong demand from users creating custom audio with their own agents and saving it to Spotify.”

So, listeners can choose to explore the millions of podcasts on Spotify’s platform, engage with those creators, and get everyone paid via ad revenue and/or Memberships…or they can listen to an LLM. We’re sure lots of people will do both, but it is a little odd to see Spotify push for creators, only to introduce a generator that could go up against them for traffic.

Personal Podcasts will come out in beta sometime soon, to Premium subscribers in the U.S.

Onstage at Investor Day, Spotify’s co-CEO Gustav Söderström went full-throttle on AI. He said the platform is “entering the era of Generation, where the experience isn’t just selected from a catalog. It’s shaped by each of our users, in real time, around their taste, context and intent.”

“Today, there is no media player for both public and private content–or put differently–there is no media player for the generative era,” he added. “We believe Spotify will become that. Another way of thinking about this generative era is that ‘Computers finally understand English.’ This puts infinite creativity and control in the user’s hands.”

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On the heels of a study that examined political polarization on social media feeds, a fresh batch of research is shedding light on gender-based disparities. A report published in Cornell University‘s arXiv database shows that recommendation algorithms treat male and female accounts differently, especially in the realm of political content.

To run their experiment, the researchers created 160 virtual accounts. 80 of those accounts were seeded with “male-coded” categories like cars, sports, and gaming, while the other 80 received a female-coded base in categories like how-to and style. Each account also received a baseline seed of political content regardless of gender coding.

Then, the researchers turned on the recommendation pipeline. In total, the accounts were exposed to more than 500,000 algorithmic recs, and that sample revealed some modest — but significant — gender differences.

Since all accounts were seeded with political content, they were all recommended political content, but 56% of that content was served to female-coded accounts. The topics of those recs also varied based on gender; male-coded accounts were more likely to see content based around issues like crime and military defense, while female-coded accounts saw more posts related to international affairs and cultural concerns.

“Within-group similarity was consistently higher than between-group similarity, indicating that the recommendation system allocated different political content to different gender-coded profiles,” the researchers wrote. They also indicated that “male-coded users were steered toward a narrower set of confrontational domestic-order issues, whereas female-coded users were exposed to a broader informational environment populated by more multidimensional, moderate, and establishment-oriented macro and public-policy issues.”

Translation: The spread of political issues served to female-coded accounts was more varied, whereas male-coded accounts had more siloed experiences that honed in on certain issues. Gender differences on social media don’t just relate to the content of algorithmic recommendations, but to the diversity of those recs as well.

As with the study on political polarization, the gender study demonstrates the subtle forces that invisibly shape social accounts. It helps to be aware of these algorithmic differences — even if individual users may lack the agency to adjust their feeds.

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Zohran Mamdani‘s social media presence played a crucial role in his victorious campaign to become New York City’s Mayor. Now, as he gets acclimated to life at Gracie Mansion, he is giving back to the digital denizens who fueled his election. In a new Twitch show titled Talk With The People, Mamdani will adopt the role of a streamer as he answers questions from his constituents.

Mamdani will host Talk With The People on a Twitch account tied to his mayoral status. According to Polygon, the first episode of the series will go live at 4 PM ET on May 21. It will be simulcast across Mamdani’s accounts on platforms like YouTube and TikTok.

A politician holding a town hall on social media is an unusual move (especially outside of election season), but Mamdani represents the next generation of elected officials. While many of his colleagues struggle to find common ground with creators and their fans, Mamdani makes clever, stylish videos that draw inspiration from popular YouTube and TikTok channels. That’s why, in a time when so many politicians want to limit access to TikTok, Mamdani is making sure his administration can utilize the app.

Talk to the People is the latest iteration of that novel strategy. The show’s title references a recurring radio program hosted by former N.Y.C. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in the 1940s. Like his predecessor from 80 years prior, Mamdani is using ubiquitous communications technology to provide a signal boost for his platform.

“With the launch of Talk with the People we’re bringing City Hall to the platforms where New Yorkers already are — speaking directly with the people,” Mamdani said in a statement. “By launching the country’s first recurring cross-platform stream hosted by an elected official, where I’ll answer New Yorkers’ questions live on Twitch, we’re opening up a direct line of conversation between our government and the people, especially younger generations who’ve been ignored for too long.”

What kind of questions will Mamdani receive? Will his Twitch viewers actually buy into the show’s core concept, or will they spam the mayor’s chat with the usual deluge of spam, memes, and emojis? Tune into Mamdani’s socials if you want to learn whether his innovative program is more Poggers or OmegaLUL.

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Topping Tom Brady on the football field is no small ask, but topping him in the realm of sports trivia might be a bit easier. The legendary QB and current FOX Sports analyst puts his sports acumen to the test in the first episode of a new YouTube trivia show titled Chasers.

Brady is working behind the scenes for Chasers, which comes from his production company Shadow Lion. He also steps in front of the camera for the first episode, serving as the inaugural celebrity guest for host Kevin Bonner. As it turns out, Brady’s football knowledge base is almost as big as his trophy collection.

With a format based around trading cards, Chasers makes connections between its questions and its guests. In that sense, it shares some commonalities with the chicken wing interview show Hot Ones; both shows turn basic questions into deep dives, exploring guests’ personal histories in the process.

Chasers is also drafting off of a growing number of sports trivia shows that live on YouTube. Quizzing is a content category that’s tailor-made for short-form consumption. After all, retention is the key to success on Shorts, and what better way to keep viewers watching than by making them wait until the end of the video to learn the answer to a stumper? Some sports trivia channels with big followings on Shorts, like Bebida, have used the same “find the connection” trivia format Shadow Lion is bringing to Chasers.

Brady’s trivia show also brings him closer to a community of sports eggheads who frequently collaborate with one another in quiz competitions. The biggest names in the sports world are eager to team up with creators — just look at Steph Curry — and YouTube’s Brandcast presentation made it clear that the platform is more than willing to facilitate partnerships between legendary athletes and rising creators.

“Cards and collectables are on fire, but often times people don’t know where to start,” Bonner said in a statement. “Chasers, an original home-grown Shadow Lion social show, will be an open door that starts with great conversation and invites people of all ages into the space.”

Chasers can be found on a YouTube channel of the same name. With its synthesis of trading cards, trivia, sports, and creator culture, Shadow Lion’s series is certainly ambitious. But if you watched Tom Brady play, you know that he likes to throw deep — and he tends to connect when he does.

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A new report on podcasts found that video shows are “changing the picture” for the entire industry, following a year where global revenue surged to $9.2 billion.

Management consulting firm Owl & Co.‘s 2025 Global Podcast Economy Report pulled together 300,000 data points from 1,600+ publishers; the firm also personally spoke to ~100 of those publishers to get a bead on what they’re experiencing.

“The same pattern kept surfacing: publishers that treated video as a monetization layer, not just a discovery channel, grew revenue the fastest,” Hernan Lopez, Owl & Co.’s founder (and also the founder of Wondery), said in a newsletter about the report.

The report chronicled an impressive jump in global podcast revenue, from $7.5 billion in 2024 to the aforementioned $9.2 billion in 2025. Direct advertising still drives the lion’s share of that revenue ($5.3 billion, up 28% YoY), followed by consumer purchases ($2.2B, up 22% YoY).

Programmatic advertising, meanwhile, “remained stable,” Owl & Co. found, and was “driven by AdSense.” Programmatic accounted for $1.3B of revenue in 2024 and $1.4B in 2025.

In 2025, $6B of the global $9.2B earned came from the United States. Owl & Co. estimated that the U.S.’s total podcast revenue for 2025 accounted for a full 2% of all U.S. digital ad earnings.

And video podcasts alone accounted for $2.3B of the U.S.’s podcast earnings in 2025. That’s 41%, up from 28% in 2024.

Which brings us back to a central question Owl & Co. poses in this report: What counts as a podcast? YouTube and Spotify have spent years battling to lock down video podcast creators; they’ve signed hosts and networks for exclusive deals, have ramped up tools for podcast creation, distribution, and monetization, and have talked up their podcast traffic.

But at what point does a “video podcast” just become…a video? Are these shows different from regular YouTube uploads because everyone’s sitting around in the same room with a mic? Is there some definitive element that makes an episode of Rotten Mango, for example, different from Dr Insanity‘s true crime deep dives?

For this report, Owl & Co. figured it would follow in YouTube’s footsteps. The platform launched its first podcast charts last year, and some of the content that popped up there surprised us. Had those been podcasts all along? Lopez said YouTube decided not to judge podcasts based on internal judgment; instead, it deemed shows podcasts if the creators said they were podcasts.

“[I]f a creator calls it a podcast, who are we to argue?” Lopez said. The report added that Owl & Co. considers self-publishing “a key distinction between TV and video podcasts,” and that podcasts “often, but not always” have an RSS feed.

Ultimately, Owl & Co.’s viewpoint is that “an expansive, flexible definition [of “podcast”] is more sustainable than a restrictive one.”

“What it means to be a podcast is changing,” it said, “and that has implications for creation, monetization, and discovery.”

Those implications can be seen in Owl & Co.’s breakdown of podcasting’s 27% YoY leap in revenue from 2024 to 2025. Of the companies it spoke to, 74% reported growth in their podcast business. 37% said their podcast businesses were “significantly better” in 2025 vs 2024.

Why were they better? Companies reported reasons like:

• “Podcasts increasingly bought alongside radio/audio”
• “This [video-to-audio] transformation is redefining podcast companies as full-scale media producers, closer to TV networks than traditional audio publishers”
• “Industry maturity, additional inventory”
• and “Growing demand from platforms for audiovisual content and higher metrics”

While direct ads grew and programmatic ads stayed the same, another major revenue driver remained dependable: community subscriptions. Owl & Co. found that Patreon “accounts for more consumer revenue than any other company,” and that listeners who subscribe to their favorite shows through Patreon (and other platforms like Supercast and Substack) “think of themselves as supporters, not just subscribers.”

Owl & Co.’s forward look from this report advises podcast publishers to lean more on money from supporters instead of relying on platform earnings. It noted that it’s seen “YouTube CPMs and sell-through rates fluctuate (and are generally lower outside key markets).”

“The $9.2B podcasting market is still maturing,” it concluded. “As the industry evolves, new entrants can win and incumbents can reinvent themselves. Those who succeed will determine the definition of podcasting.”

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Duolingo may be dialing back its “unhinged” marketing strategy, but it is still developing eclectic, unique features that set it apart from other apps. Its Focus Mode is a particularly clever idea. By preventing users from accessing other apps until they’ve finished their studies, Duolingo keeps its language learners on task while also grabbing more screen time for itself.

When a Duolingo user turns on Focus Mode, they choose any number of apps to affect and set the number of lessons they wish to complete. Until those tasks are done, the selected apps will appear greyed out on the user’s home screen. Focus Mode, of course, is completely optional. If you must use one of the blocked apps, you can override your settings on Duolingo.

We’ve seen screen time limits on apps before. Instagram users can program a pop-up that cuts off their scrolling after a set period of time, while YouTube offers its community many different ways to take a mandated break.

Duolingo’s twist on that feature, which it began testing earlier this year, is interesting for a few reasons. A productivity aid built on the Apple API acknowledges that minimizing distractions isn’t about taking a break from a single app. If you really want to focus, you need to cut yourself off from social media entirely.

By interacting with other apps, Duolingo’s focus mode also subtly advantages its home app. After all, if you can’t access your other distractions, Duolingo becomes that much stickier, even if it features an owl yelling at you about your Mandarin proficiency.

“In an era where every app fights tooth-and-nail for screen time, Duolingo just flipped the script,” reads one review of Focus Mode. “Instead of begging for your attention, it’s taking your distractions hostage until you pay the language-learning ransom.”

Given its uneven share price, Duolingo could use that extra jolt of user attention. Perhaps the app’s future is as an anti-distraction tool. If you try to learn a really difficult language like Hungarian or Basque, you could end up being far more productive than you ever thought possible.

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The Tribeca Festival returns this year for its 25th anniversary, and from June 3-14, film fans, industry attendees, and more will fill venues across New York in celebration of storytelling across film, TV, music, podcasts, digital content, and beyond.

Founded in 2001 by Jane Rosenthal, Robert De Niro, and Craig Hatkoff as “an act of healing” after the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center, Tribeca is still on “a mission to reunite our community through the power of storytelling,” Rosenthal said in a statement.

“Today, that purpose feels more urgent than ever,” she said. “As we navigate an increasingly divided world, the same spirit that rebuilt our city after 9/11 now fuels a new generation of artists and storytellers.”

Tribeca Festival will screen a whopping 118 feature films this year (103 of those are world premieres, setting a new record for the festival), plus 86 short films. Rosenthal said this 2026 lineup “includes stories from filmmakers who make us think, feel, laugh, cry, and ask why.”

“Tribeca remains dedicated to the artists’ voices and diverse perspectives that challenge us to see one another more clearly,” she added.

Tubefilter will have more details about Tribeca X, the festival’s two-day slate of special programming for the creative advertising industry and our digital content industry, over the next couple of weeks.

For now, though, we have a preview of the major tentpoles Tribeca Festival attendees will get to see. Folks interested in attending can pick up tickets here.

Opening night with Questlove, Earth, Wind & Fire, and The Roots

The 2026 festival will kick off June 3 at Beacon Theatre, with the world premiere of HBO original documentary Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial VS That’s the Weight of the World).

Directed by Academy Award- and Grammy Award-winner Questlove (aka Ahmir Thompson), the film follows its titular iconic band through their long journey as generation-defining artists. Its premiere will be followed by live performances from both Earth, Wind & Fire and The Roots.

“We are thrilled to welcome Questlove to the Festival to premiere a film that represents everything Tribeca stands for: creative pioneers at the top of their game in front of and behind the camera, showcasing the joy and community that great art manifests,” Cara Cusumano, Tribeca Festival’s Director and SVP of Programming, said in a statement. “Paired with a rare live performance from Earth, Wind & Fire and The Roots, Opening Night will be a once-in-a-lifetime New York event that reflects the energy, creativity, and communal experience that has defined Tribeca for 25 years.”

Questlove added that it is “an absolute honor to bring this project to the Tribeca Festival.”

118 feature films, 86 short films

This year’s lineup includes a record-setting 103 feature-length film world premieres, with an overall slate that “balances high-profile premieres with breakout discoveries, reflecting Tribeca’s role as both a launchpad and a showcase,” festival organizers said.

Some highlighted performances and in feature-length films include:

• Susan Sarandon and Aubrey Plaza in The Accompanist
• Katie Holmes writing, directing, and starring in Happy Hours alongside Joshua Jackson
• Alicia Vikander and Wagner Moura in The Last Day
• Paul Rudd and Jeremy Sisto in Rain Reign
• Sofia Boutella, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Lizzy McAlpine, Simon Pegg, and Quentin Tarantino in Only What We Carry
• Zach Braff in Clean Hands
• Alison Brie, André Holland, Tom Sturridge, and Dustin Hoffman in The Revisionist

Highlighted documentaries include:

• Carmelo Anthony in Born Melo
• Chris Evert and Martina Navratilova in Chris & Martina: The Final Set
• Bob Odenkirk and David Cross in Bob and David Climb Machu Picchu
• Rider Strong, Danielle Fishel, and Will Friedle in Boy Meets World‘s 30th anniversary lookback Doc Meets World
• Will Ferrell, Maya Rudolph, and Dana Carvey in Playing POTUS
• Former New York governor Mario Cuomo in Mario
• IX XI, from debut filmmaker Sean Wilsey, follows 12 stories from September 11
• Miss Representation: Rise Up, followed by a post-screening discussion with Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, Dr. Safiya Noble, Nina Jankowicz, and Jim Steyer

Among highlighted first-time directors are:

• Sean Ono Lennon with threeASFOUR: Full Circle
• Zach Woods with The Accompanist
• Gabriel Basso with Iconoclast
• Quinn Whitney Wilson with Jean-Michel (co-directed by Viridiana Lieberman)
• Doron Max Hagay with She Keeps Me Young
• Ellie Sachs with Lucy Schulman
• and Lara Everly with Selah

Tribeca will also showcase music videos (highlights: Linda Perry’s Beautiful from Sara Gilbert, Jack White’s Archbishop Harold Holmes starring John C. Reilly, Benson Boone’s Mr. Electric Blue, and 5 Seconds of Summer’s new Everyone’s a Star) and, last but certainly not least, offer a sizable roster of short films.

2026’s short film program is “organized around thematic blocks spanning hope, humanity, and resilience,” the festival says, with “standout performances” from:

• Alan Cumming in Kiloran Bay
• Nina Dobrev in General Admission
• and Asante Blackk and Malia Pyles in You Tryna Say You Love Me?

The festival also notes several female-led short documentaries (White Belt and Couture to the Max), plus themes of activism and social justice (The Baddest Speechwriter of All from Ben Proudfoot and Stephen Curry, The Second Life of Freddie Nole from Dana Nachman), as well as “imagining a sometimes sinister version of humanity’s future and its relationship with technology” (Holo, directed by Alexander DeSouza and starring Shane West and Zelda Williams).

Whoopi Goldberg once more curated a lineup of animated short films for Tribeca; 2026 attendees can expect to see:

• Apart, directed by Pola Maneli and written by Spike Lee
• Me, Myself, and Mary, voiced by Chris O’Dowd and directed by John Michell
• and The Upstairs Neighbors by Connie Qin He

“Twenty-five years in, Tribeca remains a festival built on discovery and cultural conversation,” Cusumano said in a statement. “This year’s film program once again brings together global premieres, iconic talent, and daring new voices to transform screenings into unforgettable shared experiences. From legends and trailblazers to bold emerging artists, these films reflect the creativity, vitality, and diversity of New York and the world, and a festival that continues to evolve alongside the creators shaping what comes next.”

TV and podcasts

Tribeca’s programming also includes TV and the ever-expanding world of podcasts.

Cusumano said this year’s TV and podcast roster “reflects a creative landscape where stories move fluidly across formats and expands the Festival beyond the screen into shared, live moments of discovery. Together, they embody Tribeca’s commitment to interdisciplinary storytelling and to championing the voices shaping culture today, wherever and however those stories are told.”

TV programming will highlight new series, documentaries, and comedies, “anchored by live conversations with the creators and casts behind them,” organizers said.

Featured shows and conversations include:

• Survivor‘s 50th anniversary
• Alejandro Sanz: When No One Sees Me
• Not a Very Good Murdered and The Palladino Files, both from Ronan Farrow with Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato
• FX’s Adults season 2
• Netflix’s final season of Survival of the Thickest
• Hulu’s Alice and Steve
• Amazon Prime Video’s Every Year After
• and the BBC’s Dear England

For podcasts, Tribeca describes 2026 as its “largest and most ambitious” year to date, “transforming the Festival into a live stage for the medium’s most influential voices.”

As Davy Gardner, Tribeca’s Head of Podcasts & Audio, explained, “This year marks our most expansive program yet, deepening our focus on independent podcast discoverability and creating even more opportunities to celebrate exceptional new work.”

The Tribeca Podcast Stage is a dedicated space for live events throughout the festival. Those will include:

• The New York Times’ Cannonball with Wesley Morris
• Vox Media’s On with Kara Swisher with host Marc Maron
• Slate’s Death, Sex & Money with host Anna Sale (in conversation with Peter Dinklage and Erica Schmidt)
• and WNYC’s The New Yorker Radio Hour with David Remnick

The Tribeca Festival’s push for more podcast programming includes an expansion into Spanish-language shows and the debut of the Showcase List, “a new curated section recognizing exceptional independent podcasts released since last year’s Festival.”

Bringing everyone together: talks, reunions, and retrospectives

Fresh film screenings are obviously an enormous part of Tribeca, but the festival also offers numerous talks with creative celebrities and experts, plus reunions and retrospectives looking back at masterpieces and cultural touchstones.

As part of these talks, Tribeca will award Bruce Springsteen with the 2026 Harry Belafonte Voices for Social Justice Award, an honor established by Tribeca’s former Chief Content Officer, the late Paula Weinstein. Per Tribeca, the award recognizes artists who “don’t just speak out, but actively use their platform to advance equality, dignity, and human rights.”

Springsteen will mark his reward reception onstage in a chat with longtime friend and fellow activist Bono.

Retrospectives and reunions to look forward to include:

• Taxi Driver‘s 50th anniversary, with a screening and conversation ft. Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese
• Bridget Jones’s Diary‘s 25th anniversary, with a conversation ft. director Sharon Maguire and star Renée Zellweger
• a 4K presentation of Daft Punk’s Electronica, celebrating its 20th anniversary with a conversation from member Thomas Bangalter
• iconic lesbian neo-noir Bound‘s 30th anniversary, with a conversation ft. director Lilly Wachowski and stars Gina Gershon and Joe Pantoliano
• the 20th anniversary of documentary Small Town Gay Bar

Tribeca is also bringing back its Storytellers Series, which will feature conversations with Paul Rudd, Dwayne Wade, Finneas, Sean Penn, Este Haim, Anthony Willis, Keke Palmer, and Whoopi Goldberg.

“Tribeca Festival has always been a home for artists and audiences to connect through meaningful storytelling, and this 25th anniversary festival is no different,” Meredith Mohr, Tribeca Festival’s Senior Vice President of Artist Relations, said in a statement. “This year’s conversations, reunions, and retrospectives celebrate the creative voices and cinematic moments that continue to shape how we experience film, music, and culture.”

As we mentioned above, folks interested in attending and experiencing this wealth of programming can pick up tickets at this link. We’ll see you there!

The Tribeca Festival is a Tubefilter partner.

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On the heels of its annual Brandcast presentation, YouTube made more announcements at the Google I/O tech conference. As we’ve come to expect, several new and upcoming YouTube products have been built using generative AI, and a Gemini-powered tool for YouTube Shorts is one of the most intriguing new additions.

Gemini Omni can put you anywhere — even in someone else’s Shorts

There are already a handful of genAI tools that enhance and transform existing Shorts clips, and YouTube’s Gemini Omni integration is the latest addition to that arsenal. It can be found in the Shorts Remix menu, and it employs Google’s proprietary AI model to reimagine videos.

The remixing options made possible by Gemini Omni go far beyond basic AI prompts. Users can turn their live-action videos into animated clips or change the identity of the individuals depicted in those uploads. So if you’ve ever wanted to take a MrBeast Short and add your face to it, now you can — as long as you’re willing to lend your likeness to Gemini.

Videos changed with Gemini Omni will receive digital watermarks and will link back to the original clips. Creators can opt out of Shorts Remix features at any time.

For YouTube, enabling AI features and protecting against them is a balancing act

YouTube made its Google I/O announcements just one day after expanding its likeness detection tool to all creators. By letting users control deepfaked versions of themselves, YouTube added another layer of protection that functions similarly to its copyright infringement tracker, Content ID.

Just as Content ID facilitated the rise of brand-name IP on YouTube, the likeness detection tool opens the floodgates for AI content. Now that creators can (in theory) control unlicensed AI representations across YouTube, the platform can roll out products like Gemini Omni while trusting that the use of those creative aids will be kept under control.

As long as YouTube’s anti-deepfake protections work, there will be more opportunities to develop products that use AI as boldly as Gemini Omni does. Therefore, it will be important for the platform to continue scaling up its moderation tools alongside its AI product suite.

An I/O full of AI

Gemini Omni isn’t the only new AI-powered product on YouTube. Google I/O attendees also got a first look at Ask YouTube, a conversational chatbot that will surface video recommendations based on conversational prompts.

Premium subscribers are the first YouTube users who will get their hands on the chatbot. For more details about YouTube’s AI-powered innovations, check out this blog post.

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