• When Dapo Bankole moved to Canada in 2012, he had years of IT experience under his belt.
• But he struggled to find a professional job for months and did minimum wage work to make ends meet.
• Bankole said he thinks companies weren't hiring him because he lacked Canadian experience.

This as-told-to essay is based on a transcribed conversation with Dapo Bankole, 47, about moving to Canada from Nigeria. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

My Canadian Dream began in 1993. I was living in Nigeria, where I was born, and had to sit an exam. My brother's friend drove me there. A few months later, I asked after him and was told he moved to Canada.

It was the first time I heard about someone relocating to a new country. I dreamed of doing the same.

I studied biochemistry at university and completed a postgraduate program in computer science. I worked in IT for around 12 years in Nigeria, where I gained experience in computer engineering, billing administration, and team management

My desire to relocate heavily influenced my life. When I courted my wife, I told her about my dream because I didn't want it to be a problem for her. I started getting myself ready to move by gaining IT certifications through a Canadian society.

In 2012, I moved to Canada with my wife and two children after successfully applying for permanent residency in the country.

But it ended up taking me around nine months to find a professional job. I struggled to get my foot in the door and provide for my family's basic needs. I feel I was overlooked because I didn't have Canadian work experience.

I applied for professional jobs in Canada but didn't hear back

We arrived in Canada in 2012 and stayed with my sister, who had moved there ahead of me, for two months before we got an apartment.

My wife worked in a bank in Nigeria, but when we moved she decided to pursue her hobby of making clothes, so she went back to school to go into fashion design. Meanwhile, I started job-hunting.

I applied for professional jobs, such as analyst and project manager positions, but it mostly was crickets. I wasn't hearing anything back.

Peers who were also immigrants asked to look at my résumé. I'd put Nigeria all over the place, someone suggested I remove it. When I did, I started getting follow-up calls.

I felt I wasn't getting opportunities because of my lack of Canadian work experience. Recruiters didn't say it directly — it was subtle. In phone conversations, recruiters would ask where my experience was based. I'd explain it wasn't in Canada, and the conversation would continue, but they'd never get back to me.

It became glaring that companies weren't hiring me because I lacked local experience, but I'd never get it if they didn't hire me. It's a chicken-and-egg situation.

I took on minimum-wage work. We struggled with our basic needs.

After a month or so of job-seeking, I started applying to lower-wage jobs as well. Living in Canada wasn't cheap, and I needed to stop depleting my savings.

I worked at a call center for CA $10 an hour for around two months. Then, I got a job as a grocery store clerk doing night shifts. I also did evening shifts unloading cargo from planes at the airport.

I kept my days free to pursue more professional opportunities. I didn't want to get stuck in a low-wage job. But it meant I hardly saw my kids. They were asleep when I got home and went to school when I was asleep. They started speaking to me less, and it made me question why we left Nigeria.

We were comfortable in Nigeria, but we lived in a basement in Canada. We struggled to cover our basic needs. There was a day when I only had around $10 left and had to decide whether I'd use it to buy food or put gas in the car. I'd never been in that situation.

Moving back to Nigeria at that stage would have meant starting all over again there, so we decided to push through the pain of integration.

I received help from a mentorship program and was eventually hired as a business analyst

During my struggle to get a professional job, my confidence levels crashed and I started to doubt myself.

Through an organization that offered loans to immigrant professionals, I received some money to attend a short training course. I interacted with professionals on the course who listened to me. I found myself leading conversations and felt my confidence being restored.

I also joined a mentorship program that reaches out to companies on your behalf. They didn't have a magic wand that automatically gave people jobs, but it leveraged social capital on behalf of immigrants like me.

They helped me get an unpaid opportunity, which led to a full-time offer for a business analyst job. I was able to keep doing my night shift work to make money in the interim and actually kept my grocery store job for months afterward for extra income.

Even though the road isn't completely smooth, it always becomes easier once you have that initial foot in the door.

I stayed in the business analyst role for around two years before I was headhunted by another company to work as a senior business analyst. In 2015, I started my own business. My team of six builds software and consults with organizations on software and implementation.

Employers should give people like me a chance

The program I did gave me an in-route for Canadian experience, but I don't think it's right to filter out candidates who don't have Canadian experience.

You don't need Canadian experience to succeed in Canada. You only need experienced people who are ready to do whatever it takes to fit in and deliver on the work priorities. We should give people a chance to prove themselves.

Immigration shouldn't make people suffer. It should help them transfer their skills, which can positively impact the economy.

Do you have a story about how relocating to a new place impacted your career? Email Charissa Cheong at [email protected]

• A JetBlue passenger opened an emergency exit on a taxiway in Boston, the FAA said.
• One witness said that the man was arguing with his girlfriend before the incident.
• A pilot told air traffic control that the passenger was subdued by an officer on board.

A JetBlue passenger delayed his fellow travelers after opening one of the plane's emergency exit doors.

The incident occurred while Flight 161 was preparing to take off from Boston Logan International Airport on Tuesday, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement.

It added that the Airbus A320, heading to Puerto Rico, was on a taxiway when the passenger opened an emergency exit. This also caused the slide to deploy.

Fred Wynn, a passenger on the plane, told local CBS outlet WBZ-TV that he was sat just in front of the man and his girlfriend.

"Boyfriend and girlfriend were arguing behind in me," Wynn said. "Boyfriend got mad, got up walked down the center aisle, grabbed the emergency door, ripped it off, completely off."

He added that the man was handcuffed by an FBI agent before state police boarded the plane and escorted him away.

In an audio recording archived by LiveATC.net, one of the pilots tells air traffic control a law enforcement officer subdued the passenger.

"I can hear all the passengers screaming. Looks like they tried to grab him before he went out," he added.

Data from Flightradar24 shows that the flight took off almost three hours later than scheduled and landed in San Juan at 3:17 a.m. local time.

Passengers on other flights told WBZ-TV that they were also delayed because the runway was temporarily disabled since the slide was deployed.

According to FlightAware data, 95 flights, or around 17%, were delayed at Logan Airport throughout the day.

Massachusetts State Police told CBS that one person was detained after the incident.

"Shortly before takeoff, a passenger who wanted to deplane opened an aircraft door suddenly and without warning," state police said. "Other passengers restrained the individual until troopers arrived on scene to detain them for further questioning."

JetBlue and the Massachusetts State Police did not immediately respond to requests for comment sent by Business Insider outside US working hours.

• BYD released a video of its $233,000 electric supercar leaping over potholes and road spikes.
• The Yangwang U9 comes with intelligent suspension that allows it to "jump" up to six meters forward.
• The U9 is part of BYD's efforts to diversify into luxury EVs as it looks to take on Tesla.

BYD's most expensive EV has a novel way of dealing with potholes.

The Chinese Tesla rival launched its first supercar, the $233,400 Yangwang U9, last year and has now shown off the luxury EV's ability to "jump" over potholes and road spikes in a new video.

In the video, released on BYD's Weibo account on Monday, an autonomously-driven U9 accelerates to 120 km/h before using its suspension to launch itself up to six meters forward over a pothole, a set of road spikes, and a chalk flag.

BYD is known for its ultra-cheap electric vehicles, such as the $10,000 Seagull, but like other Chinese automakers, it is now expanding into higher-end luxury vehicles.

The company began selling the U9, which has a top speed of 192 mph and can sprint from 0 to 62 km/h in just 2.36 seconds in February 2024.

The luxury EV can charge from 30-80% in just 10 minutes and is packed with futuristic features.

Its DiSus-X intelligent suspension allows the U9 to leap over small holes, "dance" to music, and drive with only three wheels, as the company showed off at the vehicle's launch last year.

BYD's Yangwang brand offers its most high-end models. The Yangwang U8 hybrid SUV, which BYD began selling in April 2023, comes with an onboard drone and can even float on water for short periods.

While the Tesla rival's luxury offerings frequently turn heads, BYD's in-demand affordable EVs and hybrids have turned the company into arguably Elon Musk's most potent challenger.

The Chinese automaker announced record annual sales earlier this month and is expanding into a host of new markets. BYD announced on Tuesday that it was sending nearly 5,000 electric vehicles to Europe aboard its third purpose-built container ship.

• As a professor, I use grades to help my students identify strengths and areas for improvement.
• Students panic when they get bad grades because they attach their self-worth to their performance.
• I'm working to change that by teaching my students that bad grades can be valuable.

When I was a college sophomore, I stopped looking at my assignments and exam grades to loosen the association between straight A's and my self-worth. At the end of each semester, I checked my course grades before enrolling in the next term, but that was about it. The strategy didn't fix all my overachieving and perfectionistic tendencies, but it did set a foundation for a healthier perspective on success and self-worth.

Now, as a professor, I encourage my doctoral students to develop a similarly detached relationship with their grades, and I'm often surprised by how much resistance this evokes.

Some students balk at the possibility that anything less than an A on any assignment could be inaccurate, urging me to consider their effort more than their performance. But that's not what grades are meant to mean.

Students have rightfully attached a lot of meaning to their grades

Granted, the landscape of higher education has changed dramatically since I was in college and graduate school, especially in terms of the competitiveness of college admissions.

Survey data in the US confirms that getting good grades is a significant stressor for most high school teens. I spent three years working as a staff psychologist for a large university counseling center, so I have seen this stress firsthand, and it can be devastating.

A number of other factors have been cited as contributing to younger generations' stress about grades. For example, parenting styles such as helicopter parenting can put even more pressure on students to perform well.

Social media and its association with increased depression and anxiety among youth also have an effect on self-worth. Finally, increased evidence of racial bias in educational testing has caused students to distrust the enterprise of testing, and rightfully so.

Professors and teachers struggle to see eye-to-eye on grading

I've noticed a widening gap between my and my students' assumptions about grades. To me, grades are a form of feedback in a learning environment. Therefore, students who are learning something new will not get high grades at the outset unless they have a particular strength in the area. No one who ever mastered their craft (or even came close) did so without receiving critical feedback. It's necessary for growth and completely separate from a person's intrinsic worth. In this way, a bad grade can actually be viewed as an opportunity.

Many of my students, on the other hand, consider grades to be an indicator of their career potential and worth. For them, every assignment is a high-stakes test of their fundamental value as a person and a professional. Within this framework, low grades are neither useful nor informative.

As an anonymous student of mine said on a course evaluation last year, "Giving students low grades does not facilitate learning."

Professors I know are changing their techniques to loosen students' grips on grades

Some academics have responded to these challenges by adopting effort-based grading practices. Others, like myself, have abandoned multiple choice exams and closed-book testing for written assignments and oral presentations.

Some of my colleagues now tell their students on the first day of class that everyone will get an A, rendering the resulting A's meaningless in the hopes of facilitating real learning.

I don't have a solution yet, but for now, I continue to use grades as a form of feedback. It is not easy sometimes to be the first teacher who has ever told a student that their writing isn't strong or assign what I think is a fair grade, knowing that it might cause a student to doubt their career potential.

At the end of the day, though, I respect them too much to collude with any system or mindset that confuses grades for goodness.

• A millennial paid off more than $100,000 in student loan debt in two years by juggling two jobs.
• Secretly working multiple remote jobs allowed him to double his income.
• He said being "overemployed" is stressful at times, but the financial benefits are worth it.

Adam paid off his student loan debt last month, after more than doubling his income by juggling multiple remote jobs.

Two years prior, he had roughly $118,000 in student debt and was earning about $85,000 annually from one job as a security risk professional. Adam, who is in his 40s and based in Arizona, was eager to become debt-free as soon as possible. He started looking for ways to boost his income and discovered "overemployment."

Since early 2023, Adam has secretly juggled two full-time remote roles simultaneously. While his overemployed lifestyle has been stressful at times, he said he typically doesn't work more than 55 hours a week across his gigs — and that the financial benefits have outweighed the downsides.

"I would like to be a millionaire before I turn 50," said Adam, whose identity was verified by Business Insider but asked to use a pseudonym due to fear of professional repercussions. "I want the financial freedom to give more time to family and friends."

Adam is among the Americans who have worked multiple remote roles on the sly to boost their incomes. Over the past two years, BI has interviewed more than two dozen job jugglers who've used their extra earnings to pay off debt and travel the world. To be sure, holding multiple jobs without company approval could have professional repercussions and lead to burnout. But many current and former overemployed workers have told BI the financial benefits outweigh the downsides.

Job juggling is worth the stress

In 2022, Adam began supplementing his income by driving for food delivery platforms like DoorDash. But after growing frustrated by his meager earnings, he decided to explore other options. That same year, he watched a YouTube video about people secretly working multiple jobs to boost their incomes.

When Adam began looking for a second remote gig in early 2023, he said his two main goals were to double his income and pay off his student loans within two years. In February 2023, he landed a second remote security risk professional role that pushed his combined earnings to more than $170,000 annually.

Adam said working multiple jobs has been challenging at times. He said it can be difficult to juggle overlapping meetings and deadlines, and that coordinating vacation time across both jobs can be laborious — as each employer has a different policy and approval process. While he's generally been able to manage his workload, he said it can be difficult when colleagues quit or are out of the office, and he's asked to pick up some extra work.

"Managing priorities and ensuring both roles receive adequate attention requires careful planning and adaptability," he said.

While these challenges have been stressful at times, Adam said he's generally been able to avoid burnout. He tries to stay organized and automate his work wherever possible. Outside work, he makes an effort to spend plenty of time with his friends and family. When he needs a break during the workday, he sometimes plays video games.

"I have learned to manage stress pretty well," he said.

Looking ahead, Adam said he has no plans to stop job juggling. His goal is to boost his combined income to at least $250,000 annually by swapping one of his jobs for a higher-paying one or starting a consulting business on the side.

"I do plan on staying overemployed for the foreseeable future," he said. "The way I am overemployed may change."

Are you working multiple remote jobs at the same time and willing to provide details about your pay and schedule? If so, reach out to this reporter at [email protected].

• VC firm Flybridge is using AI for writing investment memos, a critical part of any diligence.
• It's making the generator available for public use via its website and GitHub.
• Flybridge aims to help founders refine pitches and save investors time on routine tasks.

When Chip Hazard, a longtime startup investor at Flybridge, finds a startup he wants to fund, he writes a multi-page investment memo for his partners, outlining in detail all the risk factors and opportunities of a business. Now, he's using AI to help write these documents and saving hours of work.

It's the latest example of how venture firms are eating their own dog food. Investors aren't only funding startups exploring the application of large language models and "agents." They're also experimenting with these tools internally to improve how they source deals, research companies before investing, and track performance.

"If we could free up capacity on more routine tasks and therefore give us more time for judgment," said Hazard, "that's a good trade in our business."

This week, Flybridge is unveiling the AI-powered memo generator to the public — free for anyone to use.

How it works

Following the release of ChatGPT, Hazard made a cheeky bet with an associate at his firm: he promised a bottle of wine from his private collection if the associate could build an artificial intelligence that writes investment memos.

Flybridge's memo generator looks like a simple web form. The user uploads a pitch deck and a transcript of the pitch, fills in the round size and valuation, and adds links to the founder's LinkedIn page and the company website.

Under the hood, the memo generator was built on top of OpenAI's o1 model, according to Daniel Porras Reyes, a self-taught developer and Flybridge associate. This model is considered superior to its successors because o1 was designed to spend more time thinking before providing an answer, improving its output quality.

Flybridge used CrewAI, a portfolio company, to build "agents" — a new set of artificial intelligence tools that can work autonomously without much human supervision. Those agents can search the web through Exa, a search engine designed for use by agents, and create content about a company's competitive landscape or market size.

In as little as three minutes, the memo generator spits out a Word document with sections on the opportunity, risks, business model, go-to-market strategy, and team. It also proposes a list of follow-up questions for the founders.

Hazard said that by releasing the tool to the general public, Flybridge hopes that founders will run their pitch decks or investment memos through the generator before they meet with the firm. This could give founders an idea of how their pitch comes across so they can smooth out the kinks ahead of time.

Like most generative AI tools, the memo generator sometimes gets it wrong. It might leave a competitor off the list, said Porras Reyes, or reach a wrong number in the financial projections, Hazard added. Still, Hazard said the product shaves hours off of production; he spends less time writing a founder's bio, for instance, and more time thinking about whether they have the right characteristics and the best idea.

Hazard said if the memo generator was more capable, users might be tempted to "check their judgment at the door." He continued, "The point is to have it 'good enough' that you can then start to really apply your judgment."

Founders and investors can access Flybridge's open-source investment memo generator on its website or clone the project on GitHub.

• Nutrition expert Tim Spector said that most people get enough protein, but not fiber.
• He recommended people focus on increasing the amount of fiber they eat each day.
• His tips include switching meat for beans and eating different types of plant-based protein.

Protein-enriched foods such as cereal bars, energy drinks, and pasta have taken over grocery store shelves as consumers try to up their protein consumption. But a top nutrition scientist says that we're focusing on the wrong macronutrient.

More than half of Americans meet or exceed the minimum daily requirement of protein — 0.36 grams of protein per pound of body weight each day — according to the US Department of Agriculture's Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2020-2025.

Yet the Guidelines said more than 90% of women and 97% of men in the US don't meet the recommended intakes for dietary fiber.

Tim Spector, a British epidemiologist and cofounder of the nutrition company ZOE, told Business Insider that people should focus more on increasing their fiber intake than protein if they're aiming for a healthier diet. Fiber is great for gut health, can improve heart health, and can help ease constipation, BI previously reported.

Other health practitioners may not agree with Spector's call to prioritize fiber. Rosa Becerra-Soberon, a registered dietitian at Top Nutrition Coaching, told BI that the main goal should be focusing on a well-balanced diet with enough fiber and protein.

Spector shared three tips on how to hit your protein intake goals while getting enough fiber as part of a healthy diet.

Prioritize natural protein sources

Spector doesn't eat meat often but wrote in his cookbook, released in the US in 2025, that he still gets around 1 gram of protein per kilogram of his body weight per day, mostly from plants and whole foods

While plant-based protein sources tend to contain less protein than meat, they contain more fiber. According to the US Department of Agriculture, 100 grams of fried tofu contains about 18 grams of protein and 4 grams of fiber.

Becerra-Soberon said that if you don't consume meat, you should make sure you get all the essential amino acids by eating grains and seeds.

Swap meat for beans and lentils

Spector wrote that replacing meat with legumes is a great way to increase your fiber intake while meeting your protein needs. Legumes like beans and lentils are protein-heavy, but higher in fiber and better for the environment than meat.

For example, canned chickpeas contain about 8 grams of protein per 100 grams, as well as 7 grams of dietary fiber. Chicken has 22 grams of protein per 100 grams, but no fiber, according to USDA data — and tends to be more expensive than chickpeas.

Longevity researcher Dan Buettner previously shared dietitian-approved recipes for cooking with legumes with BI.

Variety is key

Because plants generally contain less protein than meat, Spector wrote that he incorporates "a good mix" of plant-based protein sources into his diet throughout the day. This is because different whole foods contain different amounts of protein, so you might have to eat a "variety of nutrient-dense whole foods to take care of your protein needs," he wrote.

For example, Spector's go-to breakfast of yogurt, kefir, berries, nuts, and seeds contains about 30 grams of protein from multiple sources. He might also have butter beans with quinoa for lunch and a portion of tofu for dinner, he said.

His colleague at ZOE, Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, previously shared his favorite bean chili recipe, which he eats for lunch every day. The recipe includes beans and farro, both of which are good sources of protein and fiber.

Becerra-Soberon also recommended little additions of protein throughout the day, such as sprinkling hemp seeds on meals, which contain 31 grams of protein and 4 grams of fiber per 100 grams, or eating almond butter as a snack, which contains about 21 grams of protein and 10 grams of fiber per 100 grams.

While eating healthily can be more expensive, BI has previously reported on how to eat healthily on a budget.

• When I decided to start my career as a personal assistant, I didn't expect to learn so much.
• It's a much more intimate job than I expected, and I've become a better listener and communicator.
• I enjoy being relied on for tasks big and small, and taking part in my boss's successes.

Like many people, when I think of the unique relationship between a personal assistant and their employer, the first thing that comes to mind is Miranda Priestly and Andy Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada. And while I've worked with my fair share of Miranda Priestly-types, I've also had the privilege of developing meaningful relationships with others I've worked for as a personal assistant.

When I first made the decision to switch career paths and become a personal assistant, I didn't think I'd learn anything profound. I thought managing someone's life would be easy — scheduling appointments, responding to emails, grocery shopping, making travel arrangements, and being the point of contact for other staff members.

These tasks, while seemingly easy to complete, gave me a glimpse of the person I would be working for and how integral my role in their life would now be. I never expected the deep relationship I'd develop with my employer and what that would teach me about true partnership. A relationship built on mutual trust, understanding, and respect.

Being a personal assistant is a much more intimate job than I expected

They trusted me to handle the most delicate parts of their world, and being relied upon so completely was something I had never experienced before. I had only ever been responsible for myself, but now, I was also responsible for ensuring this person's life ran smoothly. I felt needed and like my contributions added value to the company as a whole, even if that contribution was merely rearranging the day's calendar to allow a last-minute meeting or an urgent doctor's appointment.

In the past, I have worked jobs where the most I knew about my boss was how they took their coffee. I didn't know their allergies, the intricate details of their personal lives, or their favorite place to vacation. Now, that knowledge is merely an extension of my job description. I know every single detail about this person who was once a stranger — their dreams of one day having a big family, their anxiety after a difficult health diagnosis, their determination and ingenuity when starting a new business venture, and even their anger when confronted with bigotry in the professional world.

Being a personal assistant is an unconventional partnership with your employer, one which forgoes typical workplace professionalism because of how closely you need to work together. I have gained so much genuine fulfillment because of how much I love having the opportunity to help someone pursue greatness, care for them when necessary, and ensure that their world continues to spin on its axis.

When my boss was on a business trip abroad, and their transport from the airport to the hotel failed to arrive, I was responsible for ensuring they got to their destination safely. It was this moment that I truly realized how important my role in their life was. I was holding the pieces of their life together and gave them the ability to dedicate their time to their fast-growing company, their family, their friends, and the parts of their life that they'd never had the opportunity to prioritize before.

I feel like my boss's success is my success, too

Many companies preach about fostering a collaborative work environment, but I had no idea what that really meant until I started working with someone so intimately and learned the value of "we" in the workplace. Their wins were my wins because I had played a small role in their success. When I helped organize a networking event for industry professionals, and the company was featured in a prominent publication, or when we secured a $10K brand deal with a well-known beauty conglomerate — these were milestones we achieved together because we had both put in hours upon hours of work. Our shared success had never felt so rewarding because we had done it together, as partners.

For us to succeed individually, we needed to work well together in order to achieve our goals. I believe that my success in this role can be credited to the fact that I didn't work for a Miranda Priestly type, and instead, was seen as the second half of a whole and not merely a job title.

Cementing my role as a meaningful counterpart in this unique partnership allowed me to look at the other relationships in my life and how they have grown because of my career. I am a better communicator and listener, and I am more empathetic, attentive, and adaptable. I know what it takes to be a great partner and how using our individual knowledge and skills can ultimately lead to our mutual success — whether that be in my professional or personal life.

People say life takes a village, but in this case, I think it takes a badass personal assistant.

• An Audible ad has sparked a debate on TikTok over audiobook speed preferences.
• Someone in the ad said that anyone who listens to audiobooks "real fast" is a "psychopath."
• Critics argued the ad's tone was condescending, while others said taking offense was an overreaction.

An Audible advertisement has caused a stir on TikTok, upsetting some fans with the suggestion that there is a right — and wrong — way to listen to audiobooks.

Over the weekend, Audible released an ad promoting its narration speed feature in which celebrities, authors, and audiobook narrators were asked for their thoughts on the ideal listening speed.

Some said they liked to listen at 1.5 or above ("SNL" star Bowen Yang said 1.8). Others, however, were purists and thought the right pace was "the speed at which it was recorded."

But one remark struck a nerve, particularly on BookTok — the community of literary fans on TikTok.

One respondent suggested that she thought people who "go real fast" were akin to being a "psychopath."

While some viewers saw the video as lighthearted fun, others took offense and felt Audible was alienating its audience.

"I listened to your judgmental ad on 2x speed 🙄" one viewer commented. Another asked: "Is this rage bait??"

Some said they found the tone of the ad condescending, especially as consuming audiobooks and other media at a faster speed can be helpful for some people with ADHD.

Sonya Barlow, an author and presenter who has been diagnosed with ADHD, for example, told Vice in a piece about speed-watching movies that she thinks it helps her to focus.

"I'm used to running around. So when I watch TV or listen to podcasts, it's not that I am rushing the show; more that I'm avoiding the silences and long pauses in between, which can slow things down," Barlow said.

Stephanie Mitropoulos, who posts book reviews to her 88,000 followers on TikTok, made a video in response.

"They literally have a clip of someone saying that if you listen over one time speed, you are psychopathic," she said in her video, which amassed more than 300,000 views.

Mitropoulos said her preferred speed was somewhere around 1.85, and she knew of many other people who liked to listen to 1.5x or above.

She said she thought it was "absurd" to make such a flippant comment.

"Why would you even post that? Why would you put that out there? Why are we trying to shame people for listening at the speed that is most comfortable for them?" Mitropoulos said. "I don't spend $16 a month to be called a psychopath."

Many commenters echoed Mitropoulos's views, but others thought it was an overreaction.

In the comments under Auduble's original video, viewers have shared dismay that some were upset by it.

"This is what made people upset?" one person wrote. "This can't be it."

A TikToker called Emma Skies, who has 174,000 followers on her BookTok account, said in a video she feared society was "losing context" and taking the ad too seriously.

"Do we truly think that it's strange or anger-inducing or offensive that when a performer, an audiobook narrator, is asked, Hey, at what speed do you think your performance and your peers' performances are best consumed? And that that performer says, 'the speed at which I performed it'?" Skies said.

She felt the ad was intended as a joke and not meant to mock anyone — especially as Audible was promoting the speed function.

"Nobody cares. They're not going to stop you," she said. "There's a reason that that's an option on Audible."

In a message to Business Insider, Skies said her video was less about Audible and more about "encouraging people to keep in mind the context of any piece of media they see, even silly little ads."

Skies also pointed to Audible's royalty rates, which, at 25%, have been criticized as lower than the industry standard.

Authors who are exclusively linked with Audible benefit from a higher rate of 40% — something Skies also took issue with.

"Audible Exclusives are hoarded not only from other retailers (as one might expect of a retailer exclusive), but also from being available to public libraries because of Amazon's monopolistic business practices," she said.

Amazon and Audible did not respond to requests for comment from BI.

• A software engineer left a FAANG company for Oracle in 2024 due to a cultural mismatch.
• He felt micromanaged and a lack of trust at the FAANG company even though he worked intense hours.
• Oracle offered a structured onboarding process and a collaborative environment, and he plans to stay.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with a 27-year-old software engineer at Oracle who previously worked at a FAANG company. The source's name and full employment history are known to Business Insider but are not named to protect their privacy. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

In March 2022, I interviewed with a FAANG company for a software engineering role.

I heard back from my final round within a few days and started about three weeks after signing the offer. I didn't stay at the FAANG company very long because the culture was not a fit for me.

I'm now at Oracle and don't plan on leaving. Here's how my work experiences at both companies compare.

The FAANG company seemed more focused on personality fit during the interview process

After an HR screen and a tech screen, I had a final round of four interviews back-to-back, each lasting 45 minutes. Three interviewers were senior engineers, and one was the hiring manager.

The personality questions were more detailed than the technical questions. They wanted to know if I demonstrated the company's leadership principles, so they asked questions like "Can you tell me about a time you affected change in a company?" and "Can you tell me about a time you went above and beyond for a customer?"

The technical questions were on standard LeetCode and system design. I was asked to whiteboard and design a service similar to Instagram and discuss how I'd engineer it to scale to a billion users.

The FAANG company sought candidates willing to work long hours

The interviewers didn't ask directly how long I was willing to work, but they asked: "Tell me about a time when you had to meet an aggressive deadline." The hiring manager also told me the team I'd be joining was fairly new and wanted to roll out the technology they were developing quickly.

I did notice a few more red flags. Everyone I interviewed with had joined within the past year and a half. Most folks I interviewed with at Oracle had been at the company for four to six years.

One of the senior engineers at the FAANG company said it's fast-paced and has a work-hard culture, so there's a lot of turnover. However, I'd also get to learn a lot and work on features that millions of customers would use, and I was looking forward to that experience.

My Oracle interview process took longer

I interviewed with Oracle in February 2024 and started in March.

The steps were the same, but the Oracle process focused more on technical ability than the FAANG company.

In the final round, I was interviewed by two senior engineers, the hiring manager, and a product manager. The senior engineers and my hiring manager also asked me standard LeetCode and system design questions. My hiring manager asked if I had data center experience, which I didn't. The product manager asked me to go deep into the technical stuff I previously worked on.

The offer negotiation process was pretty similar for both companies

Both times, I had competing offers and asked them to match compensation. They matched it by increasing the amount of vested stock they'd give me, and I got a 10% total compensation increase from both.

Oracle's RSU vesting is spread evenly across four years. At the FAANG company, the four-year stock vest schedule was 5% for year one, 15% for year two, 40% for year three, and 40% for year four.

After my first year at the FAANG company, I received a 3% raise on my base pay. I haven't received a raise at Oracle yet.

I found Oracle's onboarding process to be much more structured

The initial few weeks at both companies were spent getting access to code bases, familiarizing myself with the teams' work, and having a lot of 1:1 meetings.

At Oracle, everyone helped explain the organization's overall mission. The team had an onboarding document that I could follow that outlined expectations.

There was no structure or clear expectations in the first few weeks at the FAANG company. Management also didn't focus much on helping people get onboarded.

My FAANG coworkers seemed very focused on their level of seniority

Almost every single engineer I met in my first week at the FAANG company either asked me a question about how I could help them get a promotion or was very closed off and wouldn't communicate much. One midlevel engineer asked me in our first meeting whether I'd be open to being "mentored" by him so he could use me as a data point to support his coming promotion.

Another engineer I met with told me, "That is between me and my manager," when I asked him about his long-term career goals during our first meeting. I asked my skip-level manager a question about the team, and he told me my question was better suited for a lower-level manager, not him.

At Oracle, everyone was friendly and gave me information and advice on succeeding.

Oracle has a sense of teamwork and collaboration that the FAANG company did not have

In my experience, micromanagement is virtually nonexistent at Oracle. Management and executives allow engineers and other contributors to set their own deadlines and expectations. I felt trusted.

The culture at the FAANG company was one of the most intense I've been part of. My teammates and I regularly worked until late into the night, and there was lots of micromanagement, which is one of the reasons I left. It felt like there was a lack of trust in lower-level employees.

It affected both my mental and physical health. My sleep pattern was chaotic, and I skipped a lot of meals because of the constant stress and anxiety.

Since I left the FAANG company for Oracle, I haven't looked back

The final straw was when the FAANG company asked me to relocate to a different state with three-months notice. I told my manager I'd move but immediately started searching for external jobs.

I got my Oracle offer shortly after. When I finally gave my two weeks' notice at the FAANG company, I felt a huge weight lifted off my chest.

Changing companies improved my mental health, and my stress levels dropped dramatically. I plan to stay at Oracle long-term.

Want to share your Big Tech job experience? Email Lauryn Haas at [email protected].

• Most AI chips are made in Taiwan by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
• Startups focused on lowering the cost of AI are working with US manufacturers.
• AI chips are being made at fabrication facilities in New York and Arizona.

Attempting to compete with Nvidia is daunting, especially when it comes to manufacturing.

Nvidia and most of its competitors don't produce their own chips. They vie for capacity from the world's most advanced chip fabricator: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company. Nvidia may largely control which companies get the latest and most powerful computing machines, but TSMC decides how many Nvidia can sell. The relationship between the two companies fascinates the industry.

But the bottom line is that there's no manufacturer better and there's no getting ahead of Nvidia for the types of manufacturing capacity relevant to AI.

Still, a few startups think they can find an advantage amid Nvidia's dominance and the ever-fluctuating dynamics surrounding the island nation of Taiwan by tapping chip fabs in the United States.

Positron AI, founded by Thomas Sohmers in 2023, has designed a chip architecture optimized for transformer models — the kind on which OpenAI's GPT models are built. With faster access to more memory, Sohmers claims Postiron's architecture can compete on performance and price for AI inference, which is the computation needed to produce an answer to a query after a model has been trained.

Positron's system has "woefully less FLOPS" than an Nvidia GPU, Sohmers joked. However, his architecture is intended to compensate for this with efficiency for Positron and its customers.

Smaller fabs are 'hungrier'

Positron's chips are made in Chandler, Arizona, by Intel-owned firm, Altera.

Intel acquired Altera, which specializes in a specific type of programmable chip, in 2015. In 2023, some early Positron employees and advisors came from Altera — bringing relationships and trust. The early partnership has given Positron some small influence over Altera's path and a cheaper, more flexible manufacturing partner.

The cost of AI comes from the chip itself and the power needed to make it work. Cutting costs on the chip means looking away from TSMC, Sohmers says, which currently holds seemingly infinite bargaining power.

"Fundamentally, Positron is trying to provide the best performance per dollar and performance per watt," Sohmers said.

Compared to other industries, AI offers a rare proposition: US production is often cheaper.

"In most other industries, made in the USA actually means that it's going to be more expensive. That's not the case for semiconductors — at least for now," Sohmers said.

Many fabs are eager to enter the AI game, but they don't have the same technical prowess, prestige, or track record, which can make finding customers challenging.

Startups, which often lack the high order volumes that carry market power, are a good fit for these fabs, Sohmers said. These less in-demand fabs offer more favorable terms, too, which Sohmers hopes will keep Positron competitive on price.

"If I have some optionality going with someone that is behind but has the ambition to get ahead, it's always good from a customer or partner perspective," he said, adding, "It gives both leverage."

Taking advantage of US fabs has kept the amount of funding Positron needs within reason and made it easier to scale, Sohmers said.

Positron isn't alone. Fellow Nvidia challenger Groq partners with GlobalFoundries in upstate New York and seeks to make a similar dent in the AI computing market by offering competitive performance at a lower price.

Less inherent trust

It's not all upside though. Some investors have been skeptical, Sohmers said. And as an engineer, not going with the best fab in the world can feel strange.

"You have a lot more faith that TSMC is going to get to a good yield number on a new design pretty quickly and that they have a good level of consistency while, at other fabs, it can be kind of a dice roll," he said.

With a global supply chain, no semiconductor is immune from geopolitical turmoil or the shifting winds of trade policy. So, the advantages of exiting the constantly simmering tension between Taiwan, China, and the US serve as a counterweight to any skepticism.

Positron is also working on sourcing more components and materials in North America, or at least outside China and Taiwan.

Sourcing from Mexico, for example, offers greater safety from geopolitical turmoil. The simpler benefit is that shipping is faster so prototyping can happen quickly.

It's taken a while, but Sohmers said the industry is waking up to the need for more players across the AI space.

"People are finally getting uncomfortable with Nvidia having 90-plus percent market share," he said.

Got a tip or an insight to share? Contact BI's senior reporter Emma Cosgrove at [email protected] or use the secure messaging app Signal: 443-333-9088.

• The Mazda CX-50 Hybrid is a compact hybrid crossover SUV that's all-new for 2025.
• I recently drove one in top-spec "Premium Plus" trim.
• I was impressed by the peppy hybrid powertrain, athletic looks, and smartly designed cabin.

I recently reviewed a Mazda CX-50 Hybrid in top-spec Premium Plus trim, with an as-tested price of $42,065. I was impressed by the SUV's efficient hybrid powertrain, athletic looks, and smartly designed cabin.

The base ICE 2025 Mazda CX-50 2.5 S Select starts at $30,300, while the most affordable hybrid variant is $33,970. My Alabama-built Mazda CX-50 Hybrid Premium Plus test car starts at $40,050.

14 features stood out to me and helped make the CX-50 one of the best compact hybrid SUVs that I've tested so far.

Athletic looks

The CX-50 might be the best-looking SUV in the segment. It features the latest derivative of Mazda's signature Kodo design language, marrying its traditional curves with a more rugged, squared-off athletic look.

Toyota hybrid system

The CX-50 Hybrid is powered by a 2.5-liter, 176-horsepower, naturally aspirated four-cylinder engine paired with a 118-horsepower electric motor up front, a 54-horsepower unit on the rear axle, and a 1.59-kWh battery pack.

The total output is 219 horsepower.

The engine and hybrid system are sourced from Toyota. It's the exact same powertrain found under the hood of the rival RAV4 Hybrid.

Standard AWD

As with all Mazda SUVs, the CX-50 Hybrid comes standard with all-wheel drive. It is equipped with an e-AWD system that uses a rear-axle electric motor instead of a traditional physical linkage.

Great fuel economy

My test car's EPA fuel economy figures are 39 mpg city, 37 mpg highway, and 38 mpg combined.

That's 10mpg better in combined fuel economy than the most efficient ICE CX-50.

Fun to drive

Compact hybrid SUVs are generally designed to be sensible, fuel-efficient transportation for the masses.

The CX-50 Hybrid is certainly that, but it also brings a good dose of Mazda zoom-zoom to the party. It's the most fun I've had driving a small hybrid SUV.

The steering felt well-weighted and offered a decent amount of feedback for a vehicle of its type. The Mazda's suspension is a bit stiffer than most of its rivals, which helps it approach corners with great composure, but it does compromise ride comfort a tad.

The hybrid powertrain delivers peppy performance, especially in Power mode, thanks to the ample torque from its electric motors.

As in other applications of the Toyota Hybrid system, intrusive engine noise can be problematic, especially under hard acceleration.

Premium cabin

The CX-50's cabin is simply terrific. Material and build quality are top-notch, while its overall design exudes a truly premium feel.

The smartly located audio controls on the center console are easy to reach for both the driver and passengers.

Attractive leather upholstery

My CX-50 Premium Plus test car featured beautiful red leather upholstered seats with black accent stitching.

Updated infotainment system

The CX-50 comes standard with a crisp-looking 10.25-inch touchscreen.

The screen is only a touchscreen when Apple CarPlay or Android Auto are initiated. In all other instances, the system requires the use of the cumbersome rotary controller on the center console.

Fortunately, Carplay and Android Auto are standard on all trim levels.

The CX-50 Hybrid is equipped with a standard backup camera.

Digital driver cockpit

In front of the driver is an advanced cockpit with a stylish heated leather-wrapped steering wheel. The CX-50's instrument cluster features a pair of analog gauges flanking a configurable central 7-inch LCD display that's designed to mimic a circular gauge.

My test car also came with an optional color head-up display.

Panoramic Moonroof

Premium and Premium Plus trim CX-50 Hybrids can be had with this large power sliding panoramic glass moonroof.

Comfy rear cabin

With 37.8 inches of legroom, the CX-50 doesn't have the most spacious rear cabin. However, the leather rear bench seat offers ample room for two adults.

Rear seat passengers have dedicated AC vents and USB sockets.

Spare tire

The CX-50 is one of the rare hybrid SUVs in this segment with a spare tire. In many cases, the underfloor space traditionally occupied by the spare tire is repurposed for batteries or left empty to save costs or weight.

The spare tire shares the storage compartment with the subwoofer for the CX-50's stellar 12-speaker Bose audio system.

Expandable cargo compartment

Open the power liftgate, and you'll find 29.2 cubic feet of cargo space behind the rear seats. Fold the down rear seats, and cargo capacity expands to 56.3 cubic feet

Good standard safety tech

Even the entry-level CX-50 comes standard with important assistance tech, such as adaptive cruise control, blind spot monitoring, lane keep assist, and rear cross-traffic alert.

• AT&T began implementing its staggered five-day return-to-office mandate on Monday.
• Workers told BI that limited available desks and elevators at some locations complicated their office return.
• As more workers are slated to arrive in phases, projects to add capacity are underway.

The first wave of AT&T's five-day return-to-office mandate started on Monday. Conversations with half a dozen AT&T workers across the country this week indicate it hasn't been off to a smooth start.

At the Dallas-based telecom giant's Atlanta offices, AT&T employees told Business Insider that a lack of enough open desks, parking lots that quickly filled up, and a limited number of elevators is complicating the company's plan to phase out hybrid work.

Internal documents obtained by BI suggest that AT&T is aware that its RTO mandate is asking more people to work on-site than the number of workstations it has at some of its offices.

An internal FAQ that was updated last week said that employees in at least one division should expect workstations for 70-80% of those who are assigned to a particular location.

"As a reminder, employees should not leave personal items, make signage, or add name plates on desks," the document said. "These items will be removed."

A spokesperson for AT&T did not provide immediate comment when contacted by Business Insider.

The document follows a memo last month from CTO Jeremy Legg sent to employees that said his AT&T Technology Services division "will not offer one-for-one seating per employee" under the new RTO rules.

One employee at the Atlanta offices told BI on Monday that he arrived before 7 a.m. to ensure he got a workspace.

Another Atlanta worker said he arrived before 6 a.m. and that the available desks he saw had been filled by employees by 9 a.m., at which point some employees sat in the dining area or around conference tables.

"I actually enjoyed coming to the office and even came four to five days a week," the employee said. He said that he felt the working environment "has deteriorated" as more employees returned to the office since last year's three-days-in-office requirement.

The worker said AT&T employees have already been competing for space and sometimes speaking over one another while conducting simultaneous Microsoft Teams meetings. The elimination of hybrid work is heightening those challenges, the employee added.

The two Atlanta workers, as well as employees at other offices, told BI that finding open parking in a timely manner has been a challenge for themselves and for colleagues, especially at offices that have been converted from less-dense cubicle setups to more tightly packed floor plans.

In communications sent to employees, AT&T has said it will continue to monitor workspace capacity and usage and will make adjustments accordingly. Legg's memo said that the company anticipates some percentage of workers to be out of the office each week due to sick days, work travel, vacation, or other reasons.

Workers in Atlanta also reported seeing signs in front of the office's elevators (which they said have seen increasingly long wait times) with motivational quotes recommending they use nearby stairs instead.

Workers said the signs included phrases like "There is no elevator to the top of the corporate ladder," and "There will be challenges, but each step you take brings you closer to who you're meant to be. Take the stairs." It wasn't clear exactly when the signs were placed, but the Atlanta employees said the signs were gone by Tuesday morning.

One of the Atlanta employees told BI that an additional elevator is planned to be installed at the location.

Meanwhile, more workers are slated to arrive this year under subsequent phases of the company's five-day RTO mandate. AT&T previously said different divisions are setting their own schedules according to their business needs.

AT&T's move away from hybrid work follows similar moves from Amazon, Dell, and others that are requiring workers to be in the office for the entire workweek.

"We believe there is great value in having people connecting, collaborating, and innovating together in an office setting," said one AT&T memo, which was distributed after the initial return-to-office mandate was announced in 2023. "Consolidating our work locations will also help us reduce costs and simplify things for our employees and our customers."

Nearly all of the dozen workers BI has spoken to in recent weeks have said they feel that the new rules may be an attempt to reduce its US workforce.

"This is not about collaboration," one of the Atlanta workers said. "If they can cut costs and have people leave because they're uncomfortable, that's the sweet spot."

If you are an AT&T employee who wants to share your perspective, please contact Dominick via email or text/call/Signal at 646.768.4750. Responses will be kept confidential, and Business Insider strongly recommends using a personal email and a non-work device when reaching out.

• Mark Zuckerberg's plan to replace fact checkers with "community notes" is a familiar one.
• A similar system of community moderation is already in place on Elon Musk's X.
• On X, community notes let users add context to posts. Meta has said it seems to work well.

Mark Zuckerberg says Meta will use "community notes" to moderate content on its platforms like Facebook and Instagram — but what exactly does that mean, and how has it worked on other platforms?

Meta said the feature would function much like it does on Elon Musk's platform, where certain contributors can add context to posts they think are misleading or need clarification. This type of user-generated moderation would largely replace Meta's human fact-checkers.

"We've seen this approach work on X — where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context and people across a diverse range of perspectives decide what sort of context is helpful for other users to see," Meta said in its announcement Tuesday.

Musk, who has a sometimes-tense relationship with Zuckerberg, appeared to approve of the move, posting "This is cool" on top of a news article about the changes at Meta.

So, will it be cool for Meta and its users? Here's a primer on "community notes" — how it came to be, and how it's been working so far on X:

How the 'community notes' feature was born

The idea of "community notes" first came about at Twitter in 2019, when a team of developers at the company, now called X, theorized that a crowdsourcing model could solve the main problems with content moderation. Keith Coleman, X's vice president of product who helped create the feature, told Asterisk magazine about its genesis in an interview this past November.

Coleman told the outlet that X's previous fact-checking procedures, run by human moderators, had three main problems: dedicated staff couldn't fact-check claims in users' posts fast enough, there were too many posts to monitor, and the general public didn't trust a Big Tech company to decide what was or wasn't misleading.

Coleman told Asterisk that his team developed a few prototypes and settled on one that allowed users to submit notes that could show up on a post.

"The idea was that if the notes were reasonable, people who saw the post would just read the notes and could come to their own conclusion," he said.

And in January 2021, the company launched a pilot program of the feature, then called "Birdwatch," just weeks after the January 6 Capitol riot. On its first day, the pilot program had 500 contributors.

Coleman told the outlet that for the first year or so of the pilot program — which showed community notes not directly on users' posts but on a separate "Birdwatch" website — the product was very basic, but over time, it evolved and performed much better than expected.

When Musk took over the platform in 2022, he expanded the program beyond the US, renamed it "community notes," and allowed more users to become contributors.

Around the same time, he disassembled Twitter's trust and safety team, undid many of the platform's safety policies, and lowered the guardrails on content moderation. Musk said in 2022 that the community notes tool had "incredible potential for improving information accuracy."

It's unclear how many users participate in community notes contributors. It's one of the platform's main sources of content moderation. X didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

How the community notes feature works on X

The community notes feature is set to roll out on Meta's Instagram, Facebook, and Threads platforms over the next few months, the company said in a statement shared with BI. Meta said the feature on its platforms would be similar to X's.

On X, community notes act as a crowd-sourced way for users themselves to moderate content without the company directly overseeing that process.

A select group of users who sign up as "contributors" can write a note adding context to any post that could be misleading or contain misinformation.

Then, other contributors can rate that note as helpful or not. Once enough contributors from different points of view vote on the note as helpful, then a public note gets added underneath the post in question.

For instance, here's an example of a community note attached to a recent X post:

X has made the complex ranking algorithm behind the feature transparent and open-source, and users can view it online and download the latest data.

X says that community notes "do not represent X's viewpoint and cannot be edited or modified by our teams," adding that a community-flagged post is only removed if it violates X's rules, terms of service, or privacy policies.

Similar to X, Meta said its community notes will be written and rated by contributing users. It said the company will not write notes or decide which ones show up. Also like X, Meta said that its community notes "will require agreement between people with a range of perspectives to help prevent biased ratings."

Facebook, Instagram, and Threads users can sign up now to be among the first contributors to the new tool.

"As we make the transition, we will get rid of our fact-checking control, stop demoting fact-checked content and, instead of overlaying full-screen interstitial warnings you have to click through before you can even see the post, we will use a much less obtrusive label indicating that there is additional information for those who want to see it," Joel Kaplan, Meta's chief global affairs officer, said in Tuesday's statement.

Potential pros and cons of community notes

One possible issue with the feature is that by the time a note gets added to a potentially misleading post, the post may have already been widely viewed — spreading misinformation before it can be tamped down.

Another issue is that for a note to be added, contributors from across the political spectrum need to agree that a post is problematic or misleading, and in today's polarized political environment, concurring on facts has sometimes become increasingly difficult.

One possible advantage to the feature, though, is that the general public may be more likely to trust a consensus from their peers rather than an assessment handed down by a major corporation.

Maarten Schenk, cofounder and chief technology officer of Lead Stories, a fact-checking outlet, told the Poynter Institute that one benefit of X's community notes is that it doesn't use patronizing language.

"It avoids accusations or loaded language like 'This is false,'" Schenk told Poynter. "That feels very aggressive to a user."

And community notes can help combat misinformation in some ways. For example, researchers at the University of California, San Diego's Qualcomm Institute found in an April 2024 study that the X feature helped offset false health information in posts related to COVID-19. They also helped add accurate context.

In announcing the move, Zuckerberg said Meta's past content moderation practices have resulted in "too many mistakes" and "too much censorship." He said the new feature will prioritize free speech and help restore free expression on Meta's platforms.

Both President-elect Donald Trump and Musk have championed the cause of free speech online, railed against content moderation as politically biased censorship, and criticized Zuckerberg for his role overseeing the public square of social media.

One key person appeared pleased with the change: Trump said Tuesday that Zuckerberg had "probably" made the changes in response to previous threats issued by the president-elect.

• Some advertisers are expressing concerns about Meta's commitment to brand safety.
• Meta this week unveiled a new approach to content moderation, removing third-party fact-checkers.
• Many ad industry insiders doubt it'll lead to major spending shifts, however.

Meta's new plan to shake up its content-moderation policies has some advertisers worried about the social giant's brand-safety standards. Despite that, ad insiders who spoke with Business Insider generally didn't expect the changes to hurt Meta's business.

"It's the final nail in the coffin for platform responsibility," an ad agency veteran told BI. They and some others interviewed asked for anonymity to protect business relationships; their identities are known to BI.

The industry reaction — or lack of it — reflects both advertisers' reliance on Meta and the shifting conversation around how brands should approach "brand safety" or "suitability," which refer to when marketers try to avoid funding or appearing next to content they deem unsuitable.

"A lot of brands have shied away from platforms that are too tied to news or controversy, mostly out of fear of cancel culture," said Toni Box, EVP of brand experience at the media agency Assembly. "But at some point, we have to ask: Are we missing opportunities to connect with people during meaningful moments because we don't trust audiences to tell the difference between a news story and an ad?"

The brand-safety tides are shifting

Meta used to bend over backward to address advertisers' brand-safety concerns. But brands weren't mentioned in Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's video announcing the changes or in policy chief Joel Kaplan's interview on Tuesday morning with Fox News' "Fox and Friends."

Instead, their pitch was about preventing the censorship of speech. Meta said it plans to replace third-party fact-checkers with a community-based fact-checking program, addressing criticism that the previous system was too partisan and was often overcorrective. The company also said it would loosen some content moderation restrictions on topics that are "part of mainstream discourse" and be more open to reintroducing political content to people's feeds.

Meta did give a very brief public nod to advertisers. A Meta spokesperson pointed BI to a LinkedIn post from Meta ads exec Nicola Mendelsohn that said the company continued to be focused on ensuring brand safety and suitability by offering a suite of tools for advertisers. In an email from Meta account reps to ad buyers, copies of which were viewed by BI, the company said it knew how important it was to continue giving advertisers transparency and control over their brand suitability. And in an interview with BI, Meta's chief marketing officer Alex Schultz said advertisers' primary brand safety concerns were around hate speech and adult nudity and that its tools would focus on "precision and not be taking down things we shouldn't be taking down."

Despite private grumbling from some advertisers about the changes, and how they appeared to be timed to appease incoming President Donald Trump, industry insiders said they don't expect much public blowback on Meta.

Advertiser boycotts and similar actions were once seen as a point of leverage for marketers. One high-profile example was the 2020 #StopHateFor Profit movement when hundreds of major brands protested Meta's policies on hate speech and misinformation.

But brand safety has recently become a political hot potato and been a flash point for some influential, right-leaning figures.

Last year, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Jim Jordan, began investigating whether advertisers had illegally colluded to demonetize conservative platforms and voices. Elon Musk's X went on to sue the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, the brand-safety initiative at the center of Jordan's investigation, and some of its advertiser members after they withdrew ad dollars from the platform. GARM discontinued activities days later. Jordan has continued to press advertisers about their involvement in GARM, and X's litigation against it and some of its members is ongoing.

A media agency employee told BI that they had clients who were now more cautious about criticizing platforms in public or saying they would pull spending.

Industry analysts also said that — politics aside — many marketers would likely continue to spend with Meta so long as it delivered them the audiences and ad performance they had come to expect. Meta commands about 21% of the US digital ad market, behind only Google, according to data firm EMARKETER.

"For us, after Google, Meta is the next-best performer as far as ROI is concerned," said Shamsul Chowdhury, VP of paid social at the digital ad agency Jellyfish, referring to the return on investment advertisers get from their campaigns.

Advertisers are split on whether the changes will improve Meta's platforms

Some advertisers who spoke with BI said they had outstanding questions about the new thresholds Meta would apply to removing posts, what's on the road map for monitoring trends around misinformation, and whether they would still be able to effectively apply their own third-party brand suitability software to content on Meta's apps.

Advertisers said they would pay close attention to how Meta's Community Notes-like feature would work in practice, especially as some hadn't been impressed with X's performance in this area with a similar feature.

"This is a major step back and likely going to result in serious issues where social platforms, not just Meta, are going to hide behind the notion that their users do the moderation and fact-checking for them and they are free speech platforms," said Ruben Schreurs, CEO of the marketing consultancy Ebiquity.

It's not entirely clear how effective X's Community Notes have been. A study published last year by researchers at the University of Luxembourg, University of Melbourne, and JLU Giessen concluded that X's "Community Notes might be too slow to effectively reduce engagement with misinformation in the early (and most viral) stage of diffusion." Still, a separate study from the Qualcomm Institute within UC San Diego found Community Notes helped counter false information about Covid vaccines.

Some advertising execs supported Meta's announcement. Two media agency reps said increasing the number of conversations people are having on the platform could benefit Meta and advertisers alike by boosting engagement.

"I think the best news is free speech and mitigation of harmful or dangerous content remains the primary focus of this maturing program, and Meta has taken a forward position here," said John Donahue, founder of the digital media consultancy Up and to the Right.

Mike Zaneis of the ad initiative the Trustworthy Accountability Group said Meta's announcement should be seen as an evolution of the platform's brand-safety standards and not a retreat from protecting users and marketers.

"The speed and accuracy of the Community Notes tool is impressive and it's the increased transparency that makes a fundamental difference for users and marketers alike," Zeneis said of X's implementation of the concept so far. "If something seems to be working, we shouldn't discourage others from adopting the approach just because it hasn't been precisely tested."

• Microsoft OneDrive is a cloud storage service that lets you backup, sync, or share your files.
• Microsoft OneDrive comes with a Microsoft 365 subscription, but there is also a free version.
• You can use OneDrive on devices like computers, laptops, tablets, phones, and even Xboxes.

OneDrive is Microsoft's cloud-based online storage solution.

Most OneDrive users get access as a part of a Microsoft 365 subscription, which includes Microsoft Office and 1TB of OneDrive storage space. But you can also get a free OneDrive account with 5GB of space.

OneDrive lets you keep files that you create and store on your computer in sync with the cloud. You can connect any number of other devices, such as laptops, phones, tablets, and even your Xbox with OneDrive, letting you keep those files in sync and making them available from anywhere.

In addition, OneDrive lets you back up specific locations from your computer to the cloud. If you turn this feature on, you can automatically keep files stored on your Desktop, in the Documents folder, and photos in your Pictures folder on your OneDrive, effectively giving you a reliable automatic backup of your most critical files.

In 2024, Microsoft also incorporated its Copilot AI tool into OneDrive, enabling features like a chat mode, where you can ask Copilot questions, and AI-curated summaries and comparisons of your files.

How to get started with OneDrive

In Windows 11, OneDrive has been deeply integrated into the operating system, making it easy to configure and use. Even if you are using a different operating system, though — such as a Mac or Windows 8 — using OneDrive is still quite similar.

Here are the main things you need to know.

Sign in and start using OneDrive

If you are using OneDrive for the first time, you'll first need to download it — if it isn't already installed — and sign in. After you sign in to your OneDrive account, you'll be prompted to configure the service based on your needs.

Use OneDrive to back up files on your computer

By default, OneDrive can keep the files on your computer's OneDrive folder in sync with the cloud. But you can also enable a continuously synced OneDrive backup of the Desktop, Documents, and Pictures folders.

To do this on a PC, open Settings, navigate to the Sync and backup tab, hit Manage backup, and toggle whichever folders are labeled Not backed up.

For a Mac, select the OneDrive icon in your Menu bar, then open Preferences, navigate to the Backup tab, hit Manage backup, and click Start backup for any folders that aren't already backed up.

Share OneDrive files with other people

OneDrive makes it easy to share individual files or even entire folders with other people. You can invite people to share your files or share a link to those shared files.

There are several different ways to share files and folders on OneDrive, including passing along a "Share" link and using the OneDrive "Share" button.

Delete files from OneDrive

Need to remove a file, document, or photo? There are a couple of ways to delete files from OneDrive, but you should know it will remove the file across your OneDrive enabled devices.

For Windows users, click File Explorer on your task bar, then select your OneDrive folder. Select all of the items within that folder that you want to delete, and press Delete.

For Mac users, open Finder, find the OneDrive folder, select the items you want to delete, and drag and drop them into Trash.

Stop OneDrive from syncing

You might need to pause syncing temporarily or permanently stop OneDrive from syncing a particular folder on your computer.

To do this on Windows or Mac devices, right-click the OneDrive icon on your taskbar. To pause syncing, choose whichever length of time you'd like to temporarily stop syncing for. To permanently stop syncing, click Quit OneDrive.

The path to homeownership is lined with middlemen. Real-estate agents, mortgage brokers, attorneys — all help push a deal through and then claim a fee when the ink dries. Most buyers are aware of these parties, but one group mostly flies under the radar. Their fees are often hidden, lumped in with other charges or buried in paperwork. If you bought a home in the past decade or so, there's a decent chance you unknowingly paid hundreds of dollars for their services.

These are appraisal management companies, little-known players that have flourished in the aftermath of the 2008 housing crash. The job of an AMC is fairly straightforward: When someone wants to get a mortgage for a house, the lender will order an appraisal of the property to determine how much it's worth (and, by extension, how much they're willing to lend). But the bank or credit union typically won't hire an appraiser directly; they'll enlist an AMC to manage the process. The lender pays an agreed-upon sum to the AMC, which uses a chunk of that money to pay the appraiser and keeps the rest.

The AMC is basically a transaction coordinator that matches the bank with an appraiser, ensuring independence so that lenders don't pressure appraisers to contort their valuations. In many instances, however, the AMC's haul from an appraisal can match or exceed the amount paid to the person actually determining the value of the home. Most buyers will never realize this, since the AMC and appraisers' costs are often lumped together under an innocuous title like "appraisal fee" on closing paperwork. Appraiser groups complain that AMCs don't even solve the problem they're supposed to address — the middlemen, they say, are incentivized to find the cheapest appraiser so they can pocket more money, resulting in shoddy appraisals and a bad look for the industry. All those fees from millions of home transactions each year add up: Data on the industry is scarce, but an analysis of public filings from one of the country's largest AMCs suggests these companies charged consumers about $12 billion in a recent five-year span.

Some consumer advocates consider opaque appraisal fees to be one of the most egregious examples of hidden costs in homebuying. As buyers face a rise in closing costs — the pesky fees, like title insurance, that pile up at the end of a transaction and usually total thousands of dollars — AMCs are attracting more scrutiny. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, as part of its crusade against junk fees, announced over the summer that it would look into various mortgage costs as well as "the growing power that appraisal management companies can wield over individual appraisal professionals."

The appraisal is a notorious pain point in the home-sale process: A low valuation can sink a deal, since the buyer may have to pick up the difference between their mortgage amount and the sum they've offered to the seller. Both buyers and homeowners are known to gripe about appraisals they see as faulty, delayed, or needlessly expensive, but few are aware of appraisal management companies' hand in the process. AMCs are unlikely to go away anytime soon, but people familiar with appraisals tell me consumers should at least know exactly what they're paying for — and have the chance to push back.

An appraisal is a critical part of any home purchase or refinancing. Sound appraisals don't just protect lenders from risky loans; they may also prevent consumers from overpaying and ending up underwater on their home, with more left on the loan than the house is worth. A typical valuation, which a 2023 survey by the National Association of Realtors found tends to cost a lender about $500, is based on a physical inspection of the property and research on comparable sales in the area. Those fees are typically passed directly to the borrower.

AMCs have been around for decades, but it wasn't until 2009 that they gained prominence. Before the financial crisis, lenders mostly worked with in-house appraisers or contracted directly with independent professionals to carry out the job. These cozy relationships offered ample room for fraud. Low appraisals were undesirable to a lender, because a borrower might not have the money to cover the gap between their offer and the mortgage amount. To avoid losing out on a deal, lenders pressured appraisers to deliver the goods (and blackballed the ones who refused). Both sides worked to pump up home values and keep the good times rolling — until the entire facade collapsed.

A web of new regulations — first through the Home Valuation Code of Conduct, then the Dodd-Frank Act — aimed to create some distance between lenders and appraisers. A lender could still technically manage appraisals in-house under the new rules, provided they separated the two sides of the business. Most decided it would be easier and cheaper to outsource the whole process to an AMC. Mark Schiffman, the executive director of the Real Estate Valuation Advocacy Association, the leading trade association for AMCs, estimates that 200 to 300 AMCs handle 70% to 75% of appraisals ordered by lenders in the US.

AMCs start by billing the lender a lump sum, which includes the amount they'll eventually pay the appraiser. The total fee for a simple single-family home could be about $500, while a more complicated job could run more than $1,000. The lender gets to select the services it wants the AMC to provide. The AMC will then send the requirements to its network of qualified appraisers, who submit bids for the work. The AMC chooses an appraiser, checks the quality of the appraisal, and then submits the report to the lender. The burden of paying for all of this, though, ultimately falls on the buyer, who foots the bill alongside their other closing costs, detailed in paperwork before a sale or refinancing wraps up. In some states the lender is required to separate the appraiser's fee from the total amount billed by the AMC, but it often appears as a single "appraisal fee."

There are other ways for a buyer to deduce the AMC's cut — the appraisal report, for instance, might include an invoice that shows exactly how much the appraiser made from the job, which could then be subtracted from the total appraisal fee. But appraisers tell me AMCs often discourage them from including an invoice for fear of confusing the buyer with two numbers — I saw one order from an AMC that specifically told the appraiser not to include an invoice in their report. The typical consumer probably wouldn't know to look for a difference anyway. Pretty much everyone I talked to for this story agreed that hardly anyone outside the appraisal world knows of AMCs. A buyer sees a bill for $600 or $700 and assumes all that money goes to the guy who crunched some numbers and nosed around their house for a few minutes.

Josh Tucker, an appraisal manager at a bank in Texas, has spent the past two years gathering evidence of the fee imbalance through a nonprofit he cofounded known as the Appraisal Regulation Compliance Council, which aims to root out fraud in appraisals. His organization has collected hundreds of examples of appraisal orders from some of the largest AMCs — Class Valuation, Clear Capital, Solidifi, and Nations Valuation Services, among others — and compared them with the standard fee schedules the AMCs provide to lenders. Other internal documents show the appraiser's fee alongside the AMC's fee. In many instances the AMC's cut roughly matches or exceeds the amount paid to the appraiser. Take, for example, a single-family home in California that was up for refinancing. The appraisal was managed by Solidifi, a nationwide AMC based in Buffalo, New York, that says it handles about one in nine appraisals in the US. The appraiser's fee was listed as $375, but the AMC fee was a whopping $725, for a total cost of $1,100 to the client. In another case, a townhome in Georgia, both Solidifi's and the appraiser's fees were about $300. A Solidifi spokesperson tells me that appraisers generally receive the majority of appraisal fees, adding that the company provides fee transparency to the lender and the appraiser by disclosing the breakdown for every transaction. The spokesperson also says that the company follows all applicable state and federal regulations, including paying customary and reasonable fees to appraisers.

Tucker calls AMCs' charges "one of the fees that is absolutely price gouging the consumer." It's unclear how much AMCs rake in in total, but securities filings from Real Matters, the publicly traded parent company of Solidifi, offer an approximation. Each year the company estimates the "total addressable market" for AMC services in the US. In the five years from 2019 through 2023, lenders ordered about 28 million appraisals for purchase and refinance mortgage originations. Real Matters multiplies that volume by Solidifi's average revenue per transaction to arrive at a dollar figure estimating how much Solidifi could bring in if it captured every single one of those transactions: $16.4 billion over those five years. Take into account the estimate that AMCs manage about 75% of appraisals and assume that Solidifi's fees are in line with the rest of the industry, and it appears AMCs could have charged consumers about $12.3 billion in that period, or about $2.5 billion a year.

This is a ballpark figure, since AMC fees vary by company and their revenue depends on the number of loans in a given year. But it may also be a conservative estimate; Real Matters says its estimate of appraisal volume is low because it doesn't include certain types of loans for which there isn't good data. Solidifi reports healthy margins on the appraisals it manages: After subtracting the payment to the appraiser and other "transaction costs," Solidifi keeps anywhere from 22% to almost 28% of the fees it charges lenders, depending on the year. And again, that fee is passed along to the borrower as part of closing costs.

Schiffman, of the AMC industry group REVAA, says that cases in which the AMC's fee outweighs the appraiser's are rare and that AMCs have their own costs to bear.

"It's more of an anomaly than anything else," Schiffman tells me. "Usually it's about the same. Sometimes it's higher, sometimes it's way lower." Chris Likens, the CEO of Nations Valuation Services, tells me his company's fees on a transaction never exceed the amount paid to the appraiser.

In some instances, both Schiffman and Likens say, an AMC may actually end up losing money on an appraisal if it turns out to be more complicated than expected. Both also note that finding an appraiser isn't the only thing AMCs do — they provide quality control after the appraisal to protect both lenders and consumers from faulty valuations. However, a 2018 working paper from the Federal Housing Finance Agency found that AMC and non-AMC appraisals "share a similar propensity for mistakes" and concluded there was "no clear evidence of any systematic quality differences between appraisals associated and unassociated with AMCs."

One solution, at least, seems pretty simple: Require lenders to make AMCs' fees clear to consumers. Have a line in the closing paperwork that shows what the AMC is making and another that shows what the appraiser billed. The website of one nationwide AMC advises mortgage lenders to check how their AMC's fees compare to the average, suggesting that "your AMC should retain about $100 to $125 per appraisal" with the remainder going to the appraiser. Yet the Appraisal Regulation Compliance Council has collected hundreds of examples in which the AMC's cut well surpassed that figure. And if lenders benefit from knowing the exact split, it seems reasonable for the consumer — the person actually paying for all this — to also have the chance to decide whether they're getting a fair shake.

Some states already require the fees to be disclosed separately in closing documents, but there's no federal mandate in place. In a letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over the summer, leaders of various appraisal industry associations argued that the agency has the ability to require this kind of disclosure under the Dodd-Frank Act. During a rulemaking session in 2013, the CFPB actually considered such a provision but ultimately decided against it. The CFPB concluded that requiring breakouts of the charges could "produce information overload" for consumers. The appraiser groups say that the decision was a mistake.

"This unused authority has allowed AMCs to abuse the conflation of where the singularly paid 'appraisal fee' flows after the consumer provides payment," the executives wrote, "reaping significant financial benefits while harming consumers and lenders along the way."

Schiffman tells me REVAA isn't opposed to a disclosure requirement, though he argues it would be an additional administrative burden and could confuse the consumer. Tucker, though, says it shouldn't be prohibitively difficult. And consumers, he tells me, have a right to know where their money is going.

"We have a captured industry," Tucker says, "where these middlemen get to kind of do whatever they want."

James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team.

While Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk never did face off in that cage match, "Uncle Elon" has bested Zuck in the political arena, becoming one of the most powerful unelected figures in modern US history. Now, in hopes of forging a friendlier relationship with the Trump administration a second time around, Zuckerberg seems to be following a new mantra: If you can't beat Elon, be him.

On Tuesday, Meta announced it would end third-party fact-checking and replace it with a more hands-off content-moderation policy in which users police one another through community notes — just like Musk's X. In a video announcing the changes, Zuckerberg said that "governments and legacy media" had pushed for more censorship in recent years, and that Meta had decided its "complex systems" had "too many mistakes and too much censorship." "The recent elections," the Meta CEO added, "also feel like a cultural tipping point towards, once again, prioritizing speech." His language would have sounded natural coming out of the mouth of Musk, who shared Zuckerberg's video on X and dubbed Meta's move "cool."

Community notes is only the latest page Zuckerberg has taken from his billionaire rival's playbook. Whether conducting mass layoffs or removing the guardrails to social media or joining forces with Musk against their shared competitor OpenAI or spending time at Mar-a-Lago, Zuckerberg has been following Musk's lead more often.

This isn't the first time Zuckerberg, who has helmed Facebook since he was 19, has reinvented himself. From the brash, hoodie-wearing Harvard dropout in Facebook's early days to the suit-wearing, meat-smoking, Silicon Valley nice guy in the years after the company went public to the hardened, martial-arts-practicing "wartime"-mode Zuck who emerged in the wake of the most turbulent period in company history, Zuckerberg has fashioned several personas that approximate what his company most needs him to be at the time. In 2025, don't let his longer hair, oversize T-shirts, and statement jewelry fool you. The persona Mark Zuckerberg has taken on to ensure Meta's success as his historical adversary Donald Trump returns to the White House acts a lot like Donald Trump's right-hand man, Elon Musk.

When Musk bought Twitter in 2022, he shaved content moderation to bare bones in the name of free speech and cut more than 80% of its staff, sending shockwaves through the tech world. Many speculated that Twitter would crack under the pressure, and die. When, despite some hiccups, the platform continued to function largely as normal, Zuckerberg, like several other tech CEOs, applauded Musk for making Twitter "leaner" (doing so on the Musk superfan Lex Fridman's podcast). Meta also laid off 11,000 workers days after Musk took over Twitter, and Zuckerberg then dubbed 2023 "the year of efficiency" at Meta, cutting another 10,000 people. Zuckerberg now also plans to move trust-and-safety workers from California to Texas, following in step with Musk, who has relocated X from San Francisco to Texas, where he has also located Starlink and The Boring Company.

And as Zuckerberg stayed quieter throughout the 2024 presidential election after Meta took heat for misinformation in 2016 and 2020, Musk did the opposite. The world's richest man appeared onstage alongside Trump, backed Trump with more than $250 million, and posted to X incessantly in support of the now president-elect. Musk has again come out on top, as he now sits at the pinnacle of political influence and is poised to radically reshape government spending as he and Vivek Ramaswamy spearhead the Department of Government Efficiency. Big Tech's other power players who want a favorable relationship with Trump are left to follow in his path.

Since November, Apple's Tim Cook, Open AI's Sam Altman, and Amazon have each donated to Trump's inaugural fund. Zuckerberg has done that and more, including visiting Mar-a-Lago to have dinner with the president-elect; naming UFC CEO Dana White, a close Trump ally, to Meta's board; and promoting Joel Kaplan, a longtime Republican lobbyist, to chief global affairs officer. (On Tuesday, Kaplan gave an interview on "Fox & Friends" to promote the company's content-moderation changes.)

All of this is meant to quell a once adversarial relationship between Zuckerberg and Trump, who had threatened to imprison Zuckerberg if his social sites interfered with the 2024 election and years ago accused Facebook of being "anti-Trump" and colluding against him (Zuckerberg pushed back against such claims).

As my colleague Peter Kafka wrote of the community notes news: "There's no way to see Zuckerberg's moves as anything other than a straightforward attempt to please Trump and the incoming president's conservative allies, who have often complained that Zuckerberg's properties were biased against them." Even Trump said Tuesday that Meta was "probably" responding to his own past threats against Zuck by pivoting.

The very fact-checkers who will soon be dismissed by Meta began with a program in December 2016, after Facebook faced harsh criticism for its role in spreading misinformation in Trump's first election a month prior. Meta actively worked to downplay political content following the January 6, 2021, insurrection, and it suspended Trump from Facebook and Instagram (Meta lifted the suspension in early 2023, saying the public should be able to access what politicians are saying; the move came shortly after Musk allowed Trump back on Twitter). When Meta launched Threads, its own Twitter competitor, in 2023, the Instagram head, Adam Mosseri, said the new app would not encourage breaking news and politics posts. But Musk, who has rebuilt X in his own image to favor conservative and far-right accounts, has found that a social-media site can win when embracing the president. On Tuesday, Meta also said it would reverse course and stop downgrading political content, and start phasing politics back into users' feeds. (A Meta spokesperson referred to past public statements but did not provide new comment for this story.)

Early research on X's community notes shows the move has led to mixed results when it comes to combating misinformation. But changes at X have certainly proved a mammoth victory for Musk, whose wealth has grown by an estimated $200 billion since the election. As he's molded himself more in Uncle Elon's image, Nephew Zuck may also find himself in Trump's favor.

Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

• Getty Images and Shutterstock are merging.
• The merger aims to save $200 million and boost revenue in three years.
• The new company will face competition from AI image-generation tools like Adobe's Firefly and DALL·E 3.

Getty Images and Shutterstock are merging in a deal that could help the company better prepare for artificial intelligence.

On Tuesday, Getty's stock jumped 24%, while shares of Shutterstock rose 14%, a sign that investors welcome the merger.

The combined company, which will be called Getty Images, will be worth $3.7 billion, Getty said in a release on Tuesday. It expects the deal to generate up to $200 million in cost savings over three years and come with more revenue opportunities.

On a call to announce the merger, Craig Peters, Getty's CEO, who will head the new company, and Paul Hennessy, Shutterstock's CEO, gave little weight to AI risks, saying AI is an opportunity for the companies.

"Our businesses have not seen any impact as a result of GenAI," Peters said. He said the companies would benefit from combining their products with AI.

"We see increased usage in our stock content from our AI customers, and we're seeing new customers coming into the franchise for our AI products," Hennessy said. "There's a one plus one equals to three on that front."

The companies are two of the largest in the visual content business. They provide editorial photographs and stock images used for content creation.

Getty is offering to pay about $28.85 in cash, or about 14 shares of Getty Images shares, for each Shutterstock share.

Details on the timeline of the combination were not announced.

The combined Getty and Shutterstock business will have stronger finances and plans to invest in content creation, event coverage, and generative AI, the release said.

Companies across industries are being proactive about AI-proofing their core businesses.

Getty and Shutterstock's stock image businesses face competition from AI image-generation tools such as Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, OpenAI's DALL·E 3, and Adobe's Firefly.

Getty also offers an image-generation service, trained on Nvidia's Picasso. In October, Shutterstock-owned GIPHY, a GIFs and stickers library, announced a partnership with TikTok to provide AI-powered GIF recommendations on the platform.

In June, Hennessy said Shutterstock earned $104 million in annual revenue from AI licensing agreements in 2023. He also projected that this revenue could reach up to $250 million annually by 2027.

Wedbush analysts led by Michael Pachter called the deal "Bigger is better," while reiterating their outperform rating on Getty.

"The two companies are highly complementary, with each stock photo service serving a different niche in terms of customer size, geography, asset type, and platform type," they wrote in a note on Tuesday.

The analysts added that they expect the deal to pass antitrust scrutiny because the industry is so competitive.

• Russian daily losses hit another record high in December, the UK MOD said.
• The ministry said this marks the fifth straight month that Moscow's daily losses have climbed to new highs.
• Russia's worst day for losses was on December 19, when 2,200 of its troops were killed or wounded, per the MOD.

December marked the fifth month in a row that Russian losses in Ukraine broke records for average daily highs, the UK's Defense Ministry said on Tuesday.

"The average daily Russian casualties reached a new monthly war high during December 2024," the ministry wrote in an intelligence update. "The daily average loss rate was 1,570, the fifth straight month that Russian Forces have sustained new war high average daily losses."

It said Russia suffered its highest daily loss in the war on December 19, saying that 2,200 of its troops were injured or killed that day.

Citing figures reported by Ukraine, the ministry said December was "likely the most costly month of the war for Russia," with a total of 48,670 dead or wounded.

The ministry added that December was the sixth straight month that Russia suffered an increase in its monthly losses.

It did not say if these numbers included losses taken by North Korean troops, of whom Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview on Sunday that 3,800 were killed or wounded.

The British ministry has regularly said over the last year that Russia has increasingly been suffering from high losses due to its reliance on mass infantry assaults aimed at wearing down Ukraine's defenses.

Ukrainian brigades, which say they are sometimes outnumbered one to five and often underequipped, have slowly yielded about 1,600 square miles of territory in 2024.

But the grinding assault has come at a high cost for Russia, with the Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War estimating that Moscow lost about 40 troops for each square mile it seized.

The UK Defense Ministry added in its Tuesday update that Russian monthly losses would likely continue to worsen as the Kremlin fights on multiple fronts, often sending infantry on foot to exhaust Ukrainian defenses.

The strategy, while producing limited results, has heightened perceptions that the war hinges more than ever on either Ukraine or Russia's ability to sustain their resources on the battlefield.

Questions now hang over American aid to Kyiv, with President-elect Donald Trump, who repeatedly said he wants a swift resolution to the war, set to take office on January 20.

But a chief worry for both sides is also manpower. Ukraine has been struggling to replenish its ranks as the war drags on, pivoting in 2024 to a now much-criticized system of creating fresh brigades instead of reinforcing existing ones.

Meanwhile, Russia has been sticking to mass recruitment by offering large bonuses to new soldiers. In December, it announced that it was pouring $126 billion, or about 32.5% of its federal budget for 2025, into defense spending.

The Russian Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.