• I prefer watching TV shows and movies with the captions turned on. So do 63% of Americans under 30.
• But each streaming app has a slightly different way of turning on captions, which is confusing.
• There is literally nothing else going on in the world more terrible than this, I'm pretty sure.

I can't remember exactly when I started watching TV and movies with captions turned on, but it probably started with a show that had British accents that I — as a boorish American — struggled to understand.

Now, even though I don't need closed captioning, I almost always use it. And I'm not alone — a recent YouGov poll found that 63% of Americans under age 30 prefer watching TV with subtitles turned on.

It's great to be able to understand every nuance and whispered word, but something grinds my gears like no other: Each streaming service seems to have its own way of turning on captions — and it's hard to keep them all straight.

Inevitably, I'll start pushing buttons or sliding my thumb around the Apple TV remote — trying to find the right menu and the magic combination of gestures. Sometimes, this means accidentally pausing my show. Sometimes, it means accidentally turning it off. Sometimes, I manage to actually exit out of the app entirely.

Perhaps I should show you how hard it is to turn on subtitles

I should start with a disclaimer: I'm using an Apple TV set-top box that's connected to my TV. Things may work differently with a Roku or a Google Chromecast. (Using captions on mobile and desktop versions of streaming apps is easier because you don't have to fumble around with a remote control.)

Perhaps it's best if I show you. Allow me to take you on a tour through the annoyingly subtle ways each streamer does captions differently.

Netflix

To add captions on Netflix, there's a speech bubble on the lower right-hand side of the screen that shows up when you start a new show. Or you can swipe up on your remote to pull it onto the screen.

Personally, I find this the easiest and most intuitive way to do captions, but that may be partly because I've used Netflix the longest.

Amazon Prime

For Amazon Prime, you swipe up to open the menu, but BE CAREFUL!

You could easily tap the "Play from the Beginning" button, which will restart your episode. (Nooooooo!) The menu is on the lower left, under "Subtitles."

Click into that, and then tap "On" or "Off," which is confusing because does that mean you want to TURN on captions? Or does it mean that subtitles are already on? And how do you know which way it's toggled? Don't swipe right into "Languages," where you'll see "English [CC]" because that isn't actually the option to turn subtitles on or off — it's the menu to choose subtitles in a different language.

Basically, good luck!!

Disney Plus

On Disney Plus, you swipe down on your remote to access the menu. with Info/Audio/Subtitles.

Then, you choose from a list of languages that have been formatted in paragraph mode rather than a drop-down list. From there, you find "Engish [CC]." (Presuming you're looking for English like I am.)

Max

For Max, you swipe up and tap into the little speech bubble icon at the bottom right.

This will open a menu on the bottom right of the screen.

From there, it's pretty self-explanatory.

Peacock

On Peacock, you swipe up and open up a menu on the bottom left.

Make sure you skip over the "Restart" and "Next Episode" prompts before you scootch right into the "Subtitles and Audio" menu.

Apple TV+

On AppleTV+, or on movies or shows from the iTunes Store, the menu is on the bottom, and in list order.

This is almost identical to Netflix — but with one extra button to minimize the screen on the bottom right.

YouTube TV

Now, let's get to YouTube TV. Look, I'm not a religious person, but I know that hell is real because only Satan himself could have designed the user interface on the YouTube TV app.

First, you swipe down on the remote — but not too quickly, because then it will automatically drop you into a menu with thumbnails for other shows to watch. From that thumbnail menu, you have to swipe lightly back up, but not too far up or you'll get back into the show.

This will put you in the most far left "More to watch" option. From there, you have to scroll to the left several times to finally reach the CC button, which will open a new menu below. If this sounds confusing, IT IS.

Why are captions so hard?

Another disclaimer! I'll be honest: I am only 95% sure these are the right pathways for each app's caption settings. Because although I tested each app while writing this story, I kept messing up and fumbling around — sometimes going back a step or two and getting angrier and angrier as I went.

It is entirely possible that you have to actually swipe left when I said right, or up when I said down. But if I had to try these one more time, it might have actually driven me to madness. And that's sort of my point: This shouldn't be so hard!

You'll have to take my word that I'm capable when it comes to using a remote. I've put in the 10,000 hours of clicking around my TV. I know how to turn off motion smoothing; I've programmed a VCR to record. And yet, I still find captioning incredibly frustrating — and accidentally restart or stop my shows all the time.

Closed captions are a serious matter for some

I should say here something that's obvious, but important: Captioning is an accessibility issue. I am a hearing person who just prefers to use captions, but for someone who needs captions, confusion about how to turn them on could be a real problem.

Meredith Patterson, who's the president of the National Captioning Institute, told me she supports what's become the more ubiquitous use of captions. "We want closed captioning to be 'the norm' regardless of context and are committed to making that a reality," she said.

In the last few years, AI technology has made captioning easier and better than ever — more things can be captioned with fewer errors and latency, and ultimately, Patterson said, that's what matters to the people who need it.

How to improve captioning for everyone

I can imagine why streaming services want to have slightly different functionality. They want to have their own distinct identities. And they're all obviously committed to captioning, which is a good thing. Once you figure out how to work captions on each streaming app, they do work. (None responded to my request for comment on this story.)

But captions are so hard to access! At least for me. And there are some basic functions you want to be consistent when it comes to technology: You expect the privacy policy of a website to be in small print at the bottom; you expect to find customer service at the very top or very bottom of a shopping site; you know where to find notifications in a social app.

For a streaming service, turning on captions should be standard and easy.

Do you have a story to share about using captions on streaming services? Contact this reporter at [email protected].

• Melania Trump is supporting a bill that aims to stop AI-generated nudes.
• Deepfake nudes are a growing issue in schools that is affecting young people — especially girls.
• This is a perfect issue for the first lady to take up: It's bipartisan and relevant.

Melania Trump appeared at a roundtable on Capitol Hill on Monday to support a proposed bill that would tackle the issue of nonconsensual sexual images, especially deepfake nudes.

This is a perfect issue for the first lady to take on. It's bipartisan — and is something everyone agrees is awful and a scourge to young people.

It also hits a rare sweet spot of retaining some anti-tech and anti-AI feelings without actually impeding Big Tech. (In fact, Big Tech companies like Meta and TikTok have supported the bill.)

Nonconsensual sexual images created with AI, or deepfake nudes, have exploded as an issue in high schools and even in middle schools, where images are created to harass and shame peers. It's especially affected young women, although it's also affected boys.

People have created sexualized images and videos of celebrities for years by using photo-editing software, but AI has made it that much easier. There are "nudify" apps that do this with just a few taps. 404 Media has reported on how Instagram has struggled to take down ads for these kinds of apps, which are against Meta's rules.

On Monday, Thorn, an organization that advocates against online child sexual abuse and exploitation, published a report based on its survey of 13-to-20-year-olds: It said one out of eight young people who responded said they knew someone personally who had been a victim of a deepfake nude image. These images, sickeningly, put a victim's real face on an AI-generated body.

"By closing a key legal gap, this bill criminalizes the knowing distribution of intimate visual depictions of minors — whether real or AI-generated — when shared with intent to harm, harass, or exploit," Emily Slifer, Thorn's director of policy, told Business Insider.

For the people affected, such images can be devastating. The New York Times called the issue an "epidemic" in a story about how AI images have wreaked havoc in suburban high schools and middle schools. During Monday's roundtable, several young women shared their experiences.

In the past, Melania Trump has rarely gotten involved in the weeds of legislation, so putting her weight behind this bill sends a signal. Using her prominent position, she can push for action that actually will make a difference.

The "Take It Down Act," a bill introduced by Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, along with a bipartisan group of senators, including Democrat Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, would criminalize publishing these kinds of nonconsensual images and make it easier for victims to get images removed quickly.

During Donald Trump's first presidency, the first lady launched a "Be Best" initiative, which was aimed at stopping online bullying. At the time, the amorphous slogan and the fact that the president himself was no stranger to hurling insults on social media made it a bit of a punchline among some people.

But in the last two years, the effect of social media on teen mental health and the dangers of a "phone-based childhood" have become front-of-mind issues for parents and regulators. The timing for the return of Be Best is perfect.

"As first lady, my commitment to the Be Best initiative underscores the importance of online safety," Melania Trump said during the roundtable with Cruz and others. "In an era where digital interactions are integral to daily life, it is imperative that we safeguard children from mean-spirited and hurtful online behavior."

Cyberbullying is actually quite complicated.

For social platforms, there's a tension between banning people for being jerks online and upholding the values of free speech. Elon Musk's X and now Mark Zuckerberg's Meta platforms have both loosened policies around speech that some people, including me, would consider abhorrent — like anti-trans slurs.

But some stuff, of course, should clearly not be allowed — like child sexual abuse material, or sexualized photos that are either fake or used without someone's consent. It makes sense for Melania Trump to say that out loud.

• AI chatbots are becoming more prevalent everywhere you look — in kid-friendly apps, too.
• There's not a lot of research about how kids and chatbots interact. Kids might tend to overshare.
• Some parents are concerned.

Companies are rushing to add AI chat elements into their consumer apps and services — including ones aimed at kids and teens.

We don't exactly understand how younger people interact with AI chatbots, or what the potential social and emotional implications are if they regularly use them. And some parents are concerned, especially for younger kids who might not be able to understand what's real and what's not.

Chris, a mom in Los Angeles who asked not to use her last name out of concern for her children's privacy, told me she recently had an alarming encounter with her 10-year-old daughter and an AI chatbot.

With her permission, her daughter had downloaded an app that gave her extra emojis to use on her iPad's keyboard. One day, the app suddenly added an AI chatbot with an "Ask AI" feature suggesting kid-friendly searches about Pokémon or Skibidi toilet memes.

Chris's daughter had been talking to the chatbot, had given it a name, and told it her name, which it was using to talk with her. She told her mom the AI chatbot was her "friend." Chris, unsettled by this, said she deleted the app.

AI also offers an opportunity for kids

Of course, there's also a big opportunity for AI chatbots to be useful for kids — for learning and in school settings, for amusement, and for emotional and therapeutic situations.

In late 2023, the singer Grimes partnered with toy makers to sell a line of AI chatbot plush toys, voiced by Grimes herself, with a speaker and microphone inside. It could chat with kids. (I immediately bought one — although my kids pretty quickly lost interest.)

Another AI robot, Moxie, which was $800, touted itself as being able to help with social and emotional learning. The robot, which launched early during the pandemic, eventually lost funding and shut down. Parents whose kids had become attached to their robot friends were distraught. The company figured out an open-source solution so owners could keep their robots going after its corporate owners had left them behind.

Research on AI chatbots for kids is limited

Large language models, or LLMs, like ChatGPT, are still very new, and there hasn't been a huge body of scientific or academic research into how teens and kids use AI chatbots or might be affected by them. Other than limiting sexual or violent content, there isn't universal guidance on how to design a chatbot for kids.

Dane Witbeck of Pinwheel, which makes kid-friendly phones, said squeezing AI chatbots into apps for kids and teens is a bad idea. "When we give kids technology that's not designed for kids — it's designed for adults — we've already seen there are real harms, and the downsides can be severe."

A researcher at the University of Cambridge published a paper this past June urging LLMs aimed at kids to be designed in a child-safe way, especially considering what it called the "empathy gap" in chatbots that kids don't often pick up on.

Ying Xu, assistant professor of AI in learning and education at Harvard University, has been studying how AI can help elementary school-age kids with literacy and math. Xu sees good potential for educational settings. (She cited the Khan Academy Kids app as an example of AI being used well for kids.)

Xu told Business Insider that although there is already research on how kids use things like Siri and Alexa, the more complex nature of the new LLMs hasn't fully been understood when it comes to kids.

"There are studies that have started to explore the link between ChatGPT/LLMs and short-term outcomes, like learning a specific concept or skill with AI," she said over email. "But there's less evidence on long-term emotional outcomes, which require more time to develop and observe."

James Martin, CEO of Dante, an AI company that creates chatbots for various uses, including educational ones for kids, told Business Insider that parents' concerns are justified.

"Oversharing isn't just possible, it's inevitable," he said. "Kids tell AI things they wouldn't tell parents, teachers, friends. The AI doesn't judge. It doesn't guide. It just responds."

How adults can think of AI for their kids

When you consider children still young enough to believe in Santa Claus, you can imagine how using chatbots that talk like humans can sometimes be confusing. It's hard enough for some adults who have formed romantic attachments to AI chatbots.

There's also concern about how AI chatbots are being used for mental health support — LLMs can tend to reinforce what you're saying rather than challenge you, as a human therapist might.

Tatiana Jordan, CMO of Bark, a company that makes parental control monitoring software and phones designed for kids and teens, said that right now, we're at a time when no one knows for sure how AI chatbots affect young people emotionally.

"We're just getting studies about what the past 15 years of screen time has done to kids," she told Business Insider.

Nearly all the industry watchers I spoke to agreed on one thing: AI chatbots are here to stay, and parents should think about how to safely teach their kids how to use them rather than avoid them completely and hope they'll go away.

"None of us can stop what's coming with AI," Jordan said. "We have to educate our kids that it's a tool. It can be a positive tool or a harmful one."

• Mark Zuckerberg performed in a sparkly blue jumpsuit at his wife's 40th birthday.
• Zuckerberg copied singer-songwriter Benson Boone's Grammy appearance with the performance.
• Zuckerberg tagged Boone and the singer's new release in a series of Instagram posts and stories.

Mark Zuckerberg pulled out all the stops at the birthday party for his wife, Priscilla Chan.

In a Friday Instagram post, the Meta CEO revealed that he donned a Benson Boone-style jumpsuit and performed onstage at Chan's 40th birthday party.

"Your wife only turns 40 once! Shoutout to @bensonboone for the jumpsuit and new single," Zuckerberg wrote alongside a video of him taking the stage in a dark dress suit only to have two people pull it off, revealing the sparkly blue jumpsuit underneath.

Boone's new release — "Sorry I'm Here For Someone Else," which came out late Thursday — played over the video. Zuckerberg's singing could not be heard, but the sound of a cheering audience was prominent.

Like Boone at the Grammys, Zuckerberg also jumped off a piano, though it should be noted that Boone front-flipped from a piano, a stunt that Zuckerberg did not attempt in the video he shared.

Boone replied to Zuckerberg's video with "I can't believe my eyes," adding on his Instagram story, "@zuck you're wild for this."

It wasn't immediately clear if Zuckerberg wore Boone's exact jumpsuit or a replica. The Meta CEO did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In his stories on Instagram, Zuckerberg shared a picture of the jumpsuit on a hanger and tagged Boone.

"Ok I get it… it's pretty snug," Zuckerberg wrote in another story where he appeared to be wearing the jumpsuit under a dress suit.

This isn't the first sign of the Zuck-Boone bromance

Boone and John Cena appeared in a promotional video for Meta Ray-Bans over the summer. In the video, Boone performed stunts around the Meta campus while filming with the smart glasses.

After Boone's performance at the Grammys, Zuckerberg congratulated him on Threads.

Around that time, in an interview, Zuckerberg talked about his appreciation for Boone's music.

"Priscilla and I, we call him the musical Harry Potter because he grew up not knowing he had a gift," Zuckerberg said.

• Starbucks is retiring 13 of its less popular and more complicated drinks.
• This includes several of its famous Frappuccinos.
• Good riddance, I say!

First, let me say: If the Chocolate Cookie Crumble Crème Frappuccino was your favorite drink, I'm sorry. Accept my condolences that it's among the 13 beverages to be deaccessioned from Starbucks' menu —  never to crumble or frapp again.

I know the retirement of your favorite obscure-flavored, mass-market food or beverages can be painful. I still mourn Diet Vanilla Coke in a 20-ounce bottle. (2002-2005, RIP.)

But with a clear head, anyone can see that the list of drinks that Starbucks' new CEO is axing makes sense. Quite simply, things had gotten out of hand.

Here are the drinks headed off to sweet treat Valhalla:

1. Iced Matcha Lemonade
2. Espresso Frappuccino
3. Caffè Vanilla Frappuccino
4. White Chocolate Mocha Frappuccino
5. Java Chip Frappuccino
6. Chai Crème Frappuccino
7. Caramel Ribbon Crunch Crème Frappuccino
8. Double Chocolaty Chip Crème Frappuccino
9. Chocolate Cookie Crumble Crème Frappuccino
10. White Chocolate Crème Frappuccino
11. White Hot Chocolate
12. Royal English Breakfast Latte
13. Honey Almondmilk Flat White

Look, I'm sure the Caramel Ribbon Crunch Crème Frappuccino hits a certain sweet tooth. By no means am I yucking anyone's yum — but goodness gravy, these drinks are ridiculous.

Most of these drinks are probably higher in sugar and calories than people expect. (A 16-ounce Caramel Ribbon Crunch Crème Frappuccino has 420 calories and 22 grams of fat — or nearly 30% of your daily fat guideline.) I'm not proposing Starbucks shouldn't offer dessert-ish drinks, but I can understand why Starbucks doesn't want its drinks to be synonymous with unhealthy indulgences.

To be clear: No one, certainly not my primary-care physician, would ever accuse me of being a healthy eater — and I love a novelty sweet treat. I am not joking or saying this for effect, but I literally was ambiently snacking on a few of the new Post Malone novelty Oreos while writing this.

Starbucks menu cuts are supposed to improve service

A representative for Starbucks told Business Insider that the move to cut these whimsical sugar bombs will help make the rest of the service at Starbucks better. In an email to my colleague, Starbucks said it will "make way for innovation, help reduce wait times, improve quality and consistency, and align with our core identity as a coffee company."

I worked at Starbucks in the late 1990s, at the dawn of the Frappuccino era, and I can tell you from experience that making these drinks was slow, labor-intensive, and unpleasant. I'm sure that the methods have gotten more efficient in the last 20 years, but I'd wager that these are still some of the most annoying drinks to make — they take extra time and require the baristas to learn obscure ingredients and ratios, which can lead to more errors in drinks.

Starbucks' new CEO, Brian Niccol, has said that he wants the chain to get back to its origins as a place people want to hang out — and shift away from the mobile app ordering that exploded during the pandemic. Part of the rise of mobile ordering is that it allowed — even encouraged — people to add extra syrup pumps and toppings for increasingly elaborate customized drinks that would go viral on TikTok.

The drinks got wackier and wackier, and it's time to rein it back in.

A Frappuccino is a wonderful invention, and the addition of the Mocha Frappuccino was inspired and brilliant. But when we're getting down to the difference between the Double Chocolaty Chip Crème Frappuccino and a Chocolate Cookie Crumble Crème Frappuccino? Get real.

These nonsense drinks have been mercifully taken out behind the dumpster and murdered. And it's the right call. Bravo, Starbucks.

• BI readers told us how they'd answer the DOGE email asking for a list of work accomplishments.
• Nearly half of you said you'd be happy to send a list of five things you got done last week.
• "I submitted and for 30+ years had my staff submit a weekly activity report every Friday," one person said.

On Monday, Business Insider asked readers to weigh in on what they'd do if they were suddenly asked to make a list of five things they'd accomplished at work last week — like DOGE asked federal workers to do.

Nearly 120 readers responded, with a wide range of opinions. Only 18% of people said they wouldn't do the list at all. They'd accept that they might lose their job over their refusal. Some said they'd do the list — but begrudgingly.

And nearly half of the people who replied said that not only would they willingly fill out the list of five accomplishments, but they'd also do it with a smile and relish the chance to brag about their work.

Clearly, the political tenor of the DOGE office and feelings about Elon Musk factored in. Quite a lot of the people who weren't his biggest fans had some colorful insults and invectives about the moonlighting Tesla CEO. "Stupidly childish and toxic" was one of the more safe-for-work critiques of DOGE's actions.

There were also some people who seemed excited by the idea that the "list-five-things" email could lead to cutting government waste.

A reoccurring theme was that while they didn't like the way DOGE was going about its work — which many said seemed insulting and threatening to workers — the idea of being expected to list out your weekly accomplishments is, indeed, a good idea.

"I really don't hate it in theory as much as I distrust the people enacting this strategy," wrote one reader.

Anthea Rowe, a communication coach who works with mid-career professionals, thought there was something good in the exercise.

"We should all be prepared, at any time, to answer the question, 'What did you do last week?' And our answer shouldn't simply include a list of activities: 'I worked on search engine optimization for our website.'" Rowe wrote. "Instead, we should ideally report the outcomes we created last week: 'I increased visitors to the web pages of our priority products.'"

(Rowe told me over email that she doesn't endorse what DOGE is doing, and is Canadian, so this isn't really her purview anyway.)

Other people pointed out that a regular listing of duties and accomplishments is common for some in the private sector. For professionals like lawyers or consultants who track billable hours for their clients, they're probably already doing this. As are some workers in industries like tech, where "stack ranking" for sorting people for layoffs is common.

"I don't see what is wrong about your boss asking what did you do last week," one person said. "Federal employees are cuddled all their working career. They don't live in a real world where people get fired or laid off all the time. Why isn't the media acting the same way when Amazon or Microsoft laid off people this year? Wake up people, you need to work," the person said.

Another also supported the request for an email list: "I submitted, and for 30+ years had my staff submit, a weekly activity report every Friday. It created high-performing organizations. Staff actually embraced it," the person said. "It was broadly viewed as management support and engagement. You never heard anyone say, 'My boss doesn't know what I do or doesn't help.' I cannot understand the resistance unless someone is trying to hide out somewhere."

Chatting about this with my coworkers, my boss's boss said she always encourages people to keep a running "Hype List" of their accomplishments so they can whip it out at review time.

But, of course, that's under very different circumstances than what's happening right now with federal workers. As long-term career advice, keeping track of your accomplishments — in writing — and making sure your boss knows about them is probably a great thing. That's not what's happening right now at DOGE, where many workers find the gesture undermining and insulting instead of empowering.

"Unfortunately, this isn't too different from what a lot of teachers are currently having to deal with," said Rachel Shearer, a middle school teacher. "We're constantly asked to show proof of what we are doing (both regarding our lessons and what we do outside our lessons, like contacting parents, documenting student behaviors). I think that this kind of micromanaging is extremely demoralizing and counterproductive; I do my best work when I know that I'm not constantly being watched and scrutinized," she said.

Ellen Predham, a former HR professional with more than 40 years of experience, said the issue was in the messaging.

"I think the intent is fine, but the communication of this request was all wrong," she said. "Email should have come from cabinet heads, not Musk, and definitely should not have said if you don't, you're resigning — a terrible way to communicate with folks."

Still, if federal workers don't respond — and some departments have exempted their employees, even as Musk has extended the deadline — they could lose their jobs. Or at least that's the threat that's on the table.

But that's partly the point, one reader said.

"How can a manager provide a meaningful performance review if they don't know what an employee is doing and their productivity?" asked the reader, a management consultant. "How would an organization determine sufficient staffing?"

We might soon find out.

• Meta has been pushing lawmakers to make Apple and Google's app stores responsible for verifying age.
• Several states just introduced bills that would require parental consent for teens to download apps.
• Apple has squashed this attempt before, but this is a small win for Meta.

The backstory to the ongoing feud between Meta and Apple is so ancient and entrenched — like the Hatfields and McCoys, House Atreides and Harkonnen, or Katie Maloney and Tom Sandoval — that it's hard to remember all the slights and tiffs along the way.

Here's an incomplete backstory: Meta doesn't like Apple's tight-fisted control over its devices, which Meta says is preventing it from developing more features for its smart glasses. Apple's Tim Cook has publicly taken swipes at Meta over its privacy stumbles. And in January, Mark Zuckerberg went for the jugular, saying on Joe Rogan's podcast that Apple hasn't "really invented anything great in a while."

Vicious.

One front of the current battle is over who should be responsible for restricting kids and teens from accessing social media apps — something both companies argue the other should do.

Meta has published a blog post from its head of safety stating its position that the app stores — Apple and Google — should be the ones restricting app downloads for younger users. Apple has concerns this would invade privacy, and critics worry this would encroach on free speech.

And it appears Meta just won a small victory.

The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that nine states have introduced bills in the last two months that would require Apple and Google to take up the unwanted task:

Both Apple and Meta think the onus to verify user ages shouldn't be on them. Apple last year helped kill a bill in Louisiana that would have forced app stores to handle age verification. Meta, along with social-media companies Snap and X, last week sent a letter to legislators in South Dakota arguing app-store verification would be simplest since app stores already collect user information.

"It looks like the policy-debate equivalent of a game of 'not it,'" said Kate Ruane, director of a free-speech campaign at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit that has opposed many child-safety laws on the grounds that they are ineffective and infringe on free speech and privacy.

Keeping kids safe online is a multifaceted issue with no single good, clear answer.

Lawmakers are finding themselves vexed by how to come up with solutions to a problem their constituents clearly care about. According to a 2024 Pew Report, 38% of parents said they argued with their teens about screen time, and 43% said that it was "hard" to manage their kids' phone use.

But don't count this as a total win for Meta just yet. These bills are merely introduced, not passed, and a similar bill introduced in Louisiana was eventually shut down after intense lobbying efforts by Apple.

• DOGE has asked federal workers to list five things they did last week in an email due Monday night.
• Would you do it? Or just be mad about it?
• We want to know! Tell us in this form.

Let's say you're a great employee. You're diligent, hardworking, effective, and well liked around the water cooler. You file your expense reports on time, remember the names of your coworkers' kids, and never microwave fish in the kitchenette.

Or maybe you're bad at your job and a nightmare to be around. I don't know your life, and I don't judge. Either way.

Suddenly, your boss' boss' boss (or some vague HR group but not quite HR) is asking you for a list of five things you did last week. And if you don't respond to the email by midnight, it will count as your resignation.

I know this sounds improbable, but just close your eyes and picture it.

So, what do you do?

Do you say "screw this" and not reply because it seems like a ridiculous mind game meant to intimidate you and devalue the actual work you do?

Do you respond with some form of malicious compliance, listing off some stupid answer — maybe just a single word for each bullet point, or something 10,000 words long and trollish? Maybe use this AI chatbot?

Or do you just accept that this is another annoying requirement at work, like taking a two-hour compliance training webinar or eating sheet cake at 11 a.m. for the boss' birthday, and just do the thing because you have to?

Or perhaps you view this completely differently — as a welcome chance to boast about your accomplishments and remind your managers that you are a valued contributor to the team and the mission.

Perhaps it's even a chance to point out that you've been doing duties above and beyond your job description. Hey, you could even use it as a chance to knife your colleagues in the back and write, "Taught Steve how to add rows in Excel (again)."

(Steve, you know what you did, and you had it coming.)

I want to know what you, an actual human person, would do in this situation. Obviously there are many federal workers who are figuring this out and weighing these options right now. But, honestly, think hard within yourself and, like … what would you do?

Tell us! Here's a Google form to fill out. It's got a poll and space for you to tell us what you'd say. It's anonymous (unless you want to tell us who you are) and easy. Or at least I guarantee it'll be more painless than actually having to do your real job.

Tell Us What You Did Last Week [Google Form]

• AI-generated recipes are popping up all over Facebook — and real people are making them.
• Some people don't realize they're making a dish from a recipe written by a robot.
• I had to try making one myself, just to see how it would turn out.

AI-generated recipes are popping up all over Facebook — circulating from pages that pump out eerie-looking images of food by the hour.

Unlike the "Shrimp Jesus" type of AI-generated slop, this food-centered stuff flies under the radar because it looks so much like an existing genre that's already all over social media: gooey cheese-pull style food porn.

So, while an image of an old woman standing next to a crocheted tank is obviously fake, no one is going to bat an eye at a recipe for a healthy weeknight dinner.

I looked into a few Facebook pages that are posting what appear to be AI-generated recipes with AI-generated images. (How'd I come to suspect? The images had telltale signs of AI, like disappearing tines on a fork or weirdly shaped fingers or distorted edges.)

What I found most surprising: People are actually cooking these AI-generated recipes. Sometimes, they're even enjoying the results.

So I had to get in on the kitchen action myself. I made one of the salmon dishes — let's call it "SalmonGPT."

One popular Facebook page pumps out recipes each hour

I focused on Lora Chef, a Facebook page with more than 150,000 followers. It's one of many similar recipe pages with some telltale AI features that are proliferating across the platform. The page's profile picture features an attractive brunette woman. It also links out to a website, which offers a signup for an email recipe newsletter.

The phone number on the Lora Chef Facebook page didn't work when I tried multiple times over several days. I emailed the contact address listed and initially got a reply— "hi, how can I help you?" — but the account didn't respond to subsequent emails with my questions, like who was behind the page and to confirm it was using AI. I also sent a Facebook direct message and didn't get a reply. According to the page's "about" section, its managers are located in Morocco and Turkey.

In theory, AI-generated images are supposed to be labeled on Meta platforms, but it's a tricky task, and let's be honest: AI chicken parm isn't going to destabilize democracy. Meta pointed to this policy and declined to comment further.

Lora Chef has lately been posting a new recipe to Facebook about once an hour, which means there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of recipes. (I gave up scrolling when I got as far back as December, but the page was created in July 2024.)

The images all have a similar appearance. Specifically, almost all the dishes have the same beige sauce oozing out over the food — usually from a spoon, fork, chopsticks, or some other utensil that only AI could dream up. The sauce looks oddly similar in all the dishes, but in their titles, the recipes refer to it as a garlic sauce, white sauce, cream sauce, garlic aioli dipping sauce, etc. (Even the desserts have the same-looking sauce.)

The dishes look reasonably appealing, and a lot of them have comments from real people expressing things like "yummy!" or saying they'd like to try it. Very commonly, people tag a friend in the comments — perhaps suggesting it to a spouse for dinner.

A food writer in Omaha, Nebraska, told me that AI recipes are latching onto something.

"I can see the interest people have in the recipes, which all feature trendy ingredients like cottage cheese — or heavily featuring protein, and all with very bright, appealing photos," said Sarah Baker Hansen, who runs a food website and writes for the nonprofit Flatwater Free Press. "It seems designed for clicks, shares, and comments."

Still, she said, when looking at recipes across lots of different Facebook pages, "I think it's pretty obvious which posts are computer-generated and which are actual recipes made by humans, with photographs taken by humans."

These people actually cooked the recipes

In the comments on the Lora Chef page for a vegetables and tzatziki dip, Lizzy Mimzy said the sauce ended up tasting exactly like ranch. When I chatted with her, she said she had made several other dishes from the page but hadn't realized it was AI. "I was wondering why the pictures looked like all similar colors and textures," she said.

"AI-generated kinda takes away from the real love people put in their food," Mimzy said.

Jacq Dolittle commented that her boyfriend had made the "grilled chicken and broccoli bowl with creamy garlic sauce" — one of the page's most popular posts, with more than 2,600 comments and 25,000 shares on Facebook. She told me it turned out a little bland but still good. "I have heard AI recipes are always a bit off, LOL," she wrote.

Other dishes seemed to have some problems.

On a popular Parmesan-crusted chicken recipe, several comments mentioned that the chicken needed to be pan-fried, not baked, to achieve the kind of brown crust in the image. One comment read: "I didn't realize this was AI-generated until after I made it, and I'm disappointed in myself. The sauce isn't too bad aside from being watery, and the chicken itself tastes like nothing LOL."

I made AI salmon with avocado crema and lime

I had to test out one of these recipes for myself. I'm no stranger to trying AI-suggested food — I once made pizza with glue in the sauce because Google's AI answers suggested it.

From the Lora Chef page, I picked a recent recipe for salmon with a — you guessed it — white sauce because it seemed relatively easy, and I needed it easy because I am a very, very bad cook.

The cream sauce called for a food processor, which I wasn't entirely happy to have to drag out of the cupboard, but OK.

The salmon called for some spices on top and then pan-frying in olive oil. My husband, the chef of the family, remarked that canola oil would typically be preferred because of its higher smoke point. (Perhaps this was an AI mistake.)

In the end, I served it over rice, and it was ... fine. Somewhat bland, both the fish and the sauce. But I ate the AI food and lived.

AI, it seems, is capable of generating acceptable recipes for common dishes. This makes sense — there's a lot about cooking that is replicated over and over, and the same steps tend to follow each other in the process. This is perfect for AI.

But even though generative AI can do some things capably, it doesn't always do things well. Real recipe writing is nuanced and difficult work — cooks test out each step and use their knowledge to avoid pitfalls. For example, my salmon called for sesame seeds on top (I skipped them), but those seeds probably would've burned in the pan (although they would have been good for baked or roasted salmon). A human recipe writer would've intuitively known this.

On the scale of what harm AI-generated content flooding Facebook might do, recipes are certainly not like political misinformation or a financial scam.

But unlike other AI-generated stuff, which might just elicit a comment or a "like" from an unsuspecting person, there are actually people out there spending their evenings cooking and eating these recipes.

• General Mills and other brands are launching high-protein versions of their products.
• This trend mirrors past health fads like low-carb and low-fat diets, with new influences.
• Social media and health influencers are amplifying the protein craze and other diet trends.

Protein is having a moment, and big packaged food brands like General Mills are keeping up.

An article I read that fascinated me on New York Magazine's Grub Street looks at how big brands synonymous with carbs — Wheaties and Cheerios, for example — are trying to muscle their way into the latest craze for more protein.

(Wheaties Protein Maple Almond offers 22 grams of protein, up from 3 grams in the classic Wheaties flavor. That's some swole flakes.)

Big supermarket brands launching high-protein versions of their stapes (I await protein Oreos, personally) feels like the absolute peak of a food/health trend cycle. As Grub Street points out, this isn't so far off from the Atkins low-carb craze of the 2000s or the low-fat fad of the 1990s. (I will forever remember the taste and texture of the SnackWell low-fat brownie.)

Underlining the trend, General Mills said in December, when it launched a high-protein version of Cheerios, that its research showed 71% of consumers were trying to get more protein in their diets, and their new products were looking to "meet people where they are."

Of course, there are new factors at plan now, too, like patients on Ozempic whose doctors encourage them to eat diets high in protein to aim to prevent muscle loss, which can be a side effect of GLP-1 inhibitors.

Health food fads come and go — for example, gut health drinks seem to be the latest version of antioxidant-rich beverages. (Remember Pom Wonderful?) Olipop, a line of canned beverages marketed as a healthy version of soda, just raised $50 million in a funding round that valued it at $1.85 billion, Bloomberg reported.

MAHA movement and others help push health trends on social

I have a theory that social media of this moment has supercharged protein mania.

There seems to have been a vibe shift that exhibits itself in more nontraditional health crazes lately: Think the MAHA movement, raw milk influencer moms, the Liver King, and other carnivore diet enthusiasts. Then there's the popularity of pop science gurus like Andrew Huberman espousing diet and exercise ideas.

This kind of stuff has always existed — and I'm not a health expert, so some of these things might or might not be for you — but I do know a lot about the culture of the moment, and it feels like these ideas about optimization and macros and an obsession with protein have gone — forgive the obvious metaphor — on steroids.

There's real science behind how getting more protein in your diet is (probably) a good idea. I have even found myself influenced to try eating more protein (although with these egg prices, I'm not sure I can afford to).

Still, maybe don't take things as far as Grub Street writer Chris Gayomali did, when he did this:

I came across a category of people who drink chicken-breast smoothies. Rather than subjecting themselves to supplements or powders, they'll throw some shredded chicken breast into a blender with other smoothie ingredients.

I was curious. Maybe this concoction could offer a perfect marriage of the unprocessed simplicity of chicken breast with the convenient efficiency of a protein bar. So after picking up a pack of chicken tenderloins at the store and boiling three (150 grams uncooked, about 48 grams of protein), I tore the chunks of flesh into the blender and added a splash of water plus everything I could find in my freezer: the crumbly end of a bag of raspberries, two bananas, some blueberries, a forgotten package of açai.

The result looked like a normal berry smoothie and, on first sip, tasted like one. Then the back end arrived, coating my tongue in what I can only describe as a slick film with the viscosity and taste of a can of Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup.

I don't think I'll ever recover from visualizing that, Chris!

• We all know eggs are expensive — probably forever. And they're missing from grocery shelves, too.
• As if that weren't enough, there's other egg-related bad news: Their shells chip more often.
• When will this nightmare end? (I asked an eggspert: Probably never!)

Sorry to stress you out, but the egg situation is getting worse and worse.

According to eggsperts — no, I will not apologize for that — not only are there super-high prices and empty shelves: But we're also looking at a return to eggs with weak and unusually chippy shells.

You already know egg prices went up. They're on everyone's mind — at least egg-eating minds. A dozen eggs cost an average of $4.15 in December, according to federal statistics — up from $2.51 the previous December.

And in a true sign of the eggpocalypse: Waffle House is now adding a 50-cent surcharge for eggs — for each egg, that is!

On TikTok, Magda S. has been tracking egg prices in a spreadsheet that's online and open to the public. She didn't want to reveal her last name, but her full identity is known to BI.

Magda has gone viral for the stunt and said she plans to continue to update her spreadsheet for the next four years — to mark whether egg prices decline during Donald Trump's presidency.

"Everyone wants to talk about eggs," she told me.

If you haven't been to a grocery store lately, you might not know another part of the egg emergency: Shelves have started to run bare.

A worsening avian influenza outbreak has caused an egg shortage across the US. Viral videos of customers swarming the egg pallets at Costco are all over social media. Last weekend, thieves made off with 100,000 eggs from the Pete & Gerry's distribution center in Pennsylvania.

My local grocery store in Connecticut has put a limit on the number of cartons per customer (two). A friend who's a workout enthusiast who used to eat five protein-rich eggs every morning lamented to me that his "macros" were in disarray.

Egg prices aren't the worst of it — the chips are back

Now, things are probably going to get even worse. Because the eggs — if you can even find them, not to mention afford them — are going to start getting chippy again.

More than a year ago, I had noticed that it seemed like eggshells were chipping into the bowl or pan more often when I was cracking them. My cracking technique hadn't changed, but it seemed like I was suddenly having to fish out little bits of shell all the time — something that was previously a rare occurrence.

It turned out that I wasn't wrong — something about the quality of eggshells at the time had made them chippier than before.

So last March, I spoke to Sheila Purdum, professor of animal science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, who specializes in poultry. She explained that the 2022 bird flu outbreak had a lingering effect on egg production. Because so many hens had to be destroyed, the remaining healthy hens were kept laying eggs past the typical age of their, uh, "retirement."

Hens are typically considered past their laying prime by age 2 or 3. By this age, hens can still lay eggs, but there are downsides: The eggs tend to have thinner shells, which are more prone to breaking in the container or chipping into the bowl when you crack them.

Thankfully, over the past year, I've anecdotally noticed that eggs seemed back to normal, cracking like they used to. This made sense, as chicken flocks rebounded, even if prices were going up.

But the current shortage of eggs and the avian influenza continuing have me worried. So I reached back out to Professor Purdum to see if we're in for another round of weak shells.

Unfortunately, probably so. Purdum told me she predicts that 15% to 20% of the US flock will be made up of older hens to make up for lost younger ones that were culled because of the flu.

Still, things aren't all doom and gloom.

"Scientists and nutritionists like myself are already conducting research about how to keep 'old' hens healthy and producing good eggshells!" Purdum said. "Work is being done. There is hope."

In the future, we might still be shelling out the big clucks for eggs, but we can hope that they at least won't be too chippy.

• Donald Trump's executive orders could stop cheap shipping for e-commerce orders direct from China.
• That would be bad news for Temu and Shein.
• The biggest question: What will happen to the $2.74 mousepad I ordered from Temu last week?!

A few days ago, I noticed I needed a new mousepad. The cloth covering was starting to peel away from the rubber. So I went to Temu — more on that in a minute.

Mousepads are some of those things that — in theory — you should never buy; they just come into your life like cheap umbrellas or Mason jars.

But due to decades of repetitive motion from typing, my weary wrists need the kind of mousepad with the ergonomic padded blob at the end, not the plain, flat ones you accumulate for free.

So, spend my own money I must.

Now, I personally have conflicted feelings about shopping on Temu, but a mousepad is kind of a perfect Temu item: quality doesn't really matter, and a $3 one is the same as a $10 one — at least to the human eye. As a price-sensitive shopper, I went for it.

I found a plain, gray mousepad with a wrist rest on Temu for $2.74 and ordered it.

Well, it wasn't quite that simple — Temu requires a $15 minimum for an order to ship, so I threw in a few other items — a squishy elbow rest pad, a new phone case, some hair scrunchies.

Then, disaster struck. Shortly after my order was placed, President Trump declared an end to the "de minimis" exemption. There's still some discussion as to exactly what his executive order will mean, but de minimis is the law that allows orders under $800 to ship directly from China to US customers without encountering duty and tax. It's a big part of how Temu and Shein have operated in the US so successfully.

Then, things went apocalyptic for my mousepad: Tuesday evening, the USPS stopped taking inbound parcels from China to the US. By Wednesday morning, the USPS had reversed that decision, resuming service.

What all of this means for Temu and similar sellers like Shein isn't exactly clear, but let's just assume it's not good. (Temu didn't respond to a request for comment.)

Still, both e-commerce platforms have advanced beyond only shipping direct from mainland China, and now many of their sellers have warehouses in the US to ship orders domestically.

On the homepage of Temu, the top promoted section is for "local warehouse stores" — sellers from warehouses in the US.

Shein's website has a less prominent tab for "QuickShip" items that ship from the US, which isn't visible at all on its mobile app.

While relations with one of our largest trade partners are up in the air, I have great news about my mousepad (which I'm sure you were worried about).

My Temu order appears to be still moving along in processing to be shipped.

• Researchers at Notre Dame studied news coverage of teens using their phones and social media.
• They found the news stories lacked one key perspective: teens themselves.
• The stories focused on the potential harms — not on any positives.

As a parent, I'm consumed with worry about the potential harms of the so-called phone-based childhood. Sometimes I wish I could put my own kids in a Faraday cage.

Still, as a tech journalist who has covered this topic, I know it's more complicated than just phone + social media = bad.

So I was intrigued when I came across a study by researchers at Notre Dame that found that media narratives on the issue tended to be one-sided. In other words, the stories often didn't include potential positives.

It's important to look at how news organizations might be shaping public opinion about kids and phones. Headlines drive discussions in Congress, in local governments, and on the playground. Right now, the resounding takeaway seems to be: Screens and social media are terrible for kids.

To analyze media coverage, the researchers searched 10 large news outlets for articles from 2020 to 2024 that mentioned the Kids Online Safety Act or other search terms around youth online safety. They found that all the coverage focused on potential harms, like issues with mental health, self-harm, sextortion, or screen addiction.

They also found that articles tended to focus on restrictive methods as solutions — taking away phones completely or banning phones in schools, for example.

This doesn't surprise me. Sure, there's more coverage of the harms because, frankly, there are harms! For example, a recent Pew survey found that about four out of 10 teens said they felt they spent too much time on their phones, and the US surgeon general suggested adding warning labels to social media for young people. Even TikTok discussed internal research about how quickly teens could become addicted to its platform.

But what struck me most about the Notre Dame study was a third finding: that most of the media coverage the researchers analyzed failed to include youth voices. In other words, the articles about teens often didn't quote any teens.

Stories often exclude teen voices

Karla Badillo-Urquiola, an assistant professor of computer science and engineering at Notre Dame, and Ozioma Oguine, a doctoral student focusing on human and computer interaction, talked to me about the paper.

Oguine said media outlets should strive for more teen perspectives.

Having written some of these stories myself, I'm guilty of this, especially when an article is about something specific in the news related to social platforms or lawmakers. But I do appreciate getting to actually hear from teens, as my colleague Kelly Burch did when she interviewed high schoolers about the TikTok ban.

Oguine said their research suggested that online safety was being viewed from a "one size fits all" kind of bucket. It also largely didn't include perspectives out of the mainstream, like from gay or minority youth.

"I think news outlets might probably want to take a look at how can we include marginalized perspectives into this conversation? What are the lived experiences of youth from marginalized backgrounds, and are there any benefits of online technologies to them?'"

As a result, the main narrative in the news about the dangers of phones and teens can lack nuance.

This doesn't mean Badillo-Urquiola doesn't believe that social media or phones can be harmful. (She does.) But their assessment of more than 150 news articles uncovered something surprising: They were all about the risks and harms, not potential benefits, of online experiences. (Their research, which focused on news items about policy, didn't include some positive stories, such as social media's ability to be a "lifeline" for LGBTQ+ youth.)

One thing the researchers observed was that coverage mainly focused on controlling screen time — taking away phones in school, for example — instead of more holistic approaches.

"A lot of the work that I am doing is sort of how do we move beyond parental mediation strategies to look at more community-based practices and creating more social and ecological supports for these youth," Badillo-Urquiola said. "That's what we wanted to look at: Is any of that coming out in any of these articles? For the most part, it's not, right? It's still very parent-focused."

This is a theme I've heard before — that putting the onus on parents to be in charge of their kids' online safety isn't fair to parents, some of whom might not have the time or knowledge to navigate a bunch of in-app controls and settings.

"The idea isn't to take away parents out of the equation," she said. "The idea is to actually give more support to parents so that they are able to make decisions."

As a journalist who's written about this stuff, I found myself slightly defensive. It's not always our job to suggest solutions to the problems we're reporting on, after all — and the idea that the media writes only about "bad news" is overly simplistic.

But there's something here — the public understanding of the topic of teens and social media is somewhere between an unprecedented public health crisis and a fake moral panic, depending on your viewpoint. This study certainly will be in my mind when thinking about how to frame future coverage.

• A new bill introduced in Connecticut would force movie theaters to list a movie's "real" start time.
• This would mean you could time your visit to skip the ads and trailers before finding your seat.
• Boo! Hiss! Trailers are part of the magic of moviegoing.

Imagine you're Nicole Kidman, wearing a sparkling dark suit, entering an empty theater. You take your seat with your big soda, the flickering light illuminating your face. Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this. The joy and thrill of seeing a movie in the theater always comes with a moment of anticipation: the trailers that come before the movie.

And yes, sometimes now, even ads. But watching these, that's just part of the experience, right? We go in knowing that there will be a few minutes before the movie starts. As a chronically late person, I find this buffer of an extra 10 or so minutes useful.

One lawmaker from Connecticut is trying to change this.

State Sen. Martin M. Looney, a Democrat representing New Haven in the Connecticut State Senate, has proposed a bill that would require movie theaters to list the real start times of a movie — not when the trailers start.

This means that a theater's website would have to list both the time the ads or trailers begin and the time the actual film begins — something like:

"A Complete Unknown" 7:00 p.m. (film starts at 7:08 p.m.)

Looney did not respond to a request for comment from BI, but he told the Register Citizen, which first reported on the bill: "It seems to be an abuse of people's time. If they want to get there early and watch the promos, they can. But if they just want to see the feature, they ought to be able to get there just in time for that."

Sure, we've all been slightly frustrated having to sit through not just trailers but also regular advertisements when we paid for a ticket just to see a movie. But to me, sitting through the previews feels like a small price to pay for the pleasures of moviegoing.

(Although like much in politics, it's a divisive issue. Several of my colleagues love the idea of knowing a movie's true start time.)

Ads and trailers also are a part of revenue for some theaters at a time when movie ticket sales have not recovered from the start of the pandemic, and as streaming has eaten into their business.

A spokesperson for the National Association of Theatre Owners declined to comment about the bill.

The trailers before the main attraction also allow movie lovers to learn about new movies. An EMARKETER report based on a YouGov poll from late last year found that in-theater trailers or ads were the No. 3 most likely way people saw promotions for new movies in the US and Canada — after TV and social media.

Some theaters aren't thrilled by the idea.

Ryan Wenke, CEO of the Prospector Theater in Ridgefield, Connecticut, which is a nonprofit that employs adults with disabilities, told Business Insider that their movies typically start about five minutes after listed showtimes.

"I hope the 2025 legislative session prioritizes more pressing issues like disability rights and employment opportunities for underrepresented populations," Wenke said.

• Sometime in 2023, public perception of Mark Zuckerberg warmed up.
• But the tide has turned after Meta's big fact-checking changes and Zuck's Joe Rogan appearance.
• Want proof? It's not an exact science but just look at Meta's own AI summaries on Zuckerberg.

RIP the Zuckermoon.

Thus concludes a brief window of time when Mark Zuckerberg got to enjoy a honeymoon of sorts in the public eye — when he was both cool and beloved.

As a semi-professional Zuckologist, I'd peg the start of the Zuckaissance as July 2023 when Elon Musk tried to challenge the Meta CEO to an MMA cage match, and Zuckerberg posted a shirtless (jacked) selfie. This was around the same time Threads launched. It offered a new place for people disillusioned with changes on X — and Zuckerberg himself started posting playfully there.

But the warmth of the lingering "Hot Zuck Summer" seemed to abruptly go ice cold this month when Meta announced changes to its content policies and Zuckerberg went on Joe Rogan's podcast.

Now, it seems that the new Zuck 3.0 lost some of the fans that the CEO had won over.

Still, we can't rely on just my own personal vibes-based assessment of how public perception of Zuckerberg has seemed to turn. Which is why it's great that Meta — which declined to comment on this story — has its own sentiment analysis of sorts: Meta AI, which writes summaries of the comments people make beneath Facebook posts.

Zuck's getting roasted in the comment section

Let's look at Zuckerberg's own Facebook page and the AI-generated summaries below pictures from key points in Zuck's transformation.

For instance, take this photo he posted with his wife, Priscilla Chan, on January 1:

The AI summary of the comments is largely positive — commenters, the AI says, have wished the couple a happy new year:

(Of note: I think the "daddy robe" thing may be a reference to a photo of Priscilla wearing a fashionable robe in a photo of Zuckerberg gifting her a statue of herself — itself a moment that brought a lot of positive attention for being a cool Wife Guy.)

Now let's look at a similar photo of the couple, all dressed up for the inauguration earlier this month:

Meta's AI summary of the comments beneath the photo isn't quite as kind. It says commenters accused Zuck of "selling out," among other things:

Ouch.

The evolution of Mark Zuckerberg's image

I ask you now to think purely about Mark Zuckerberg's public image, not the realities of the human or the nuances of the company.

For a long time, public perception of Zuckerberg was focused on him being awkward and robotic, with his closely cropped hair and nervous mannerisms, like the widely memed 2018 congressional hearings where he appeared impossibly parched.

Sometime in the spring of 2023, things changed. Zuckerberg started posting more relaxed, personal things to Facebook and Instagram. He seemed to even be having fun on his new platform, Threads.

You know the rest — his new hairdo, hobbies, physique, and clothes all made him look like a fun, cool guy. He wore custom shirts with his own name! Someone paid $40,000 for his used chain! He seemed self-aware with a sense of humor about himself. And compared to his fellow tech billionaires, Zuckerberg seemed, frankly, pretty normal.

Whether his personal image shift was purely self-propelled or shaped by some of Meta's PR people or other advisors, we'll never know and are free to make our guesses. It's true that his PR people have some control over his public output, but it's also worth noting that he routinely has gone over their heads to post things they didn't want him to, like posting a joke about surfing in the midst of a scandal.

We know from emails that former Meta board member Peter Thiel advised him not to act like a boomer-pleasing millennial (like cringey Pete Buttigieg) and instead present himself in a way that would be embraced by his age-group peers. Whether that advice played into his sartorial choices, we can only guess.

Whether purely organic or not, the image makeover worked.

It also helped that during this time, Meta was enjoying a nice moment: record profits and a respite from any major public controversies.

That is, until now.

Controversial new policies at Meta lost him some fans

The decision to get rid of the fact-checking program and replace it with community notes and new loosened rules on speech on controversial topics, like allowing slurs for transgender people, rubbed some people the wrong way.

Changes at Meta itself, like removing tampons from the men's room in its corporate offices, didn't go over so well with all employees. And then there was Zuckerberg's appearance on Joe Rogan's podcast where he spoke about a desire for more "masculine energy," which raised more eyebrows.

All of this has seemed to lead to at least some of the people who had warmed up to Zuckerberg over the last couple years now starting to get the ick.

Now, to be clear, we need to put this possible vibe shift on Zuckerberg in context: There have always been millions — billions! — of people around the world who love and admire Mark Zuckerberg.

There are still big fans today — some people in the US were thrilled by Meta's CEO aligning himself more with the Trump administration.

And although some people made gestures toward quitting Meta platforms over the recent changes — Zuckerberg called that "virtue-signaling" — there's been no real dent to the company.

It's entirely possible that after a while, the recent news cycle will be forgotten and people will go back to enjoying his relatable Wife Guy antics.

• Theo Vonn fell out of a broken folding chair at the Trump inauguration and blamed Logan Paul.
• Logan denied tampering with the chair, and eventually, the beef was squashed.
• I wish I never knew any of this.

Inauguration Day for Donald Trump was a time of heightened emotions for a nation healing from a contentious election. For one man, this was tumultuous not just in the soul, but literally: Podcaster Theo Vonn fell out of his folding chair in the audience at the inaugural ceremony.

Here's what happened:

Vonn's folding chair seemingly collapsed, and Logan Paul, who was sitting right behind him, posted a video of it to X.

For some context, Trump appeared as a guest on both of the men's separate podcasts during his 2024 campaign.

Trump's various podcast appearances were considered a cunning strategy to appeal to young male voters that helped him win the election.

Vonn, Paul, and other podcasters like Joe Rogan were invited to attend the inauguration.

After Vonn fell out of his chair, he accused Paul and his brother Jake of somehow tampering with the chair as a prank, quote-tweeting his post with: "thought we was past the pranks boys."

In a reply to a fan, Vonn had some harsher words about the Paul brothers:

Logan Paul denied that he was involved. He suggested that Vonn was to blame as he sat in a chair that he knew had a structural flaw.

But thankfully, two days later, the two podcasting giants had worked out their beef.

(Vonn and Paul did not respond to requests for additional comment, and to be fair, we can't say for 100% certain the chair mishap wasn't a stunt, although it does look real.)

As a side note, I'd like you to please observe in Paul's video that you can see OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang looking on first in apparent shock and then amusement.

I know what you're thinking: Why should I care about this, and in fact why should I even know about this? You're desperate to rewind to two minutes ago before you knew any of this ever happened because now you are forever cursed to walk this earth until your dying day with the sentence "Theo Vonn and Logan Paul squashed their beef over inaugural chairgate" rattling around in your brain.

But you can't go back. You have this knowledge now. You know that Theo Vonn fell out of his chair and blamed Logan Paul (who denied it), but now they have made up. Don't look away from this. Accept that you are now changed. This is who you are. You're someone who knows all the details of a feud that started in the overflow audience room at the presidential inauguration.

Like the folding chair, our nation and our democracy can be unstable. But like the bonds of friendship between two men who podcast, our nation can always heal.

• Instagram Reels has added a new feature that shows you a feed of videos that your friends liked.
• It's meant to help you bond with friends over videos, Insta says — but it could get weird.
• The "With friends" feed is designed to minimize embarrassment — but be careful out there.

I come with great news for anyone whose Instagram activity might suggest their carnal impulses: The new "With friends" feature on Instagram Reels is (probably) not going to expose you as a cartoon wolf with your eyeballs bulging out. Here's why:

The new feature in the Reels tab shows you a feed of videos that your friends have liked, with a message box at the bottom that lets you send a direct message to the friend who liked them. The idea accelerates a practice that was already common: DMing your friends Reels that you think they'd like. Now, Instagram is doing some of that work for you.

"We want Instagram to not only be a place where you consume entertaining content, but one where you connect over that content with friends," wrote Instagram head Adam Mosseri in his announcement of the new feature.

I know. You're worried. The idea that suddenly your friends will see all your liked videos is giving you sweaty flashbacks to the now-defunct "Following" tab in the Activity Feed that showed all the likes, comments, and follows your friends were making on other people's Instagram posts.

The Following tab was notorious for awkwardly outing embarassing behavior, most commonly men getting caught liking a bunch of Instagram models' photos. Instagram got rid of this feature in 2019, and when I reported on it going away, people told me all sorts of horror stories: seeing their boyfriend or even dad liking photos from bikini models, or a priest catching a fellow priest replying to thirst traps.

But the new "With friends" feature for Reels will work slightly differently. A spokesperson for Meta confirmed to Business Insider a few key factors that make it different from the old "Following" tab.

First of all, you only see likes from mutuals — in other words, someone you follow who follows you back — not just anyone you follow, like celebrities or other creators. You won't see what Kim Kardashian likes on Reels (unless Kim happens to follow you back).

Secondly, it only will show Reels videos that are eligible for recommendation. That means they have to be from public accounts in good standing. (Some accounts that have had a content strike against them, for example, might not have their videos eligible to be recommended to strangers.) For a while, political accounts weren't eligible for recommendations, although Meta has announced it is changing that.

Crucially, the "With friends" feed still is algorithmic — serving content it thinks you will like. The old "Following" tab was a chronological list of everything that everyone liked. The new feature targets videos it thinks you and your friend will like in common.

Here's a generic heteronormative example: If a husband is liking a bunch of bikini babe videos, it's unlikely his wife will see those videos in the "With friends" feed because Instagram knows she's not interested in that content. However, he's not totally out of the woods — his activity might show up in the "With friends" feeds of his buddies who also like bikini babes.

I spent some time looking through the "With friends" feed on my own account — and I didn't see anything embarrassing or weird from my friends. (And I 100% believe my friends are capable of weird and embarrassing activities.)

Three friends liked a video of a cute baby bat from the Oakland Zoo. Two friends liked an interview clip of Hugh Grant from Vanity Fair. A friend who has been learning to surf liked a surfing video. A friend who is a volunteer firefighter liked multiple meme videos about firefighters. A bunch of people liked Spencer Pratt videos, but who doesn't these days? Several people liked a vintage clip about the '80s band The Lounge Lizards. (Honestly, the most surprising part of this whole exercise was that so many people from very disparate parts of my social world all seem to care so much about The Lounge Lizards.)

The only time it felt too invasive was seeing someone I know only professionally liking a video from what I assume was their kid's local Girl Scout troop talking about their cookie sale.

Still, algorithmic stuff is never 100% clear on what it serves you and why. So you might have a very different experience from me, and it's possible your friends might see more of your activity in ways you don't expect.

As always, stay say vigilant and safe out there, people! Trust no one.

• TikTok might go away. (Or not? Probably not? Who knows!)
• Whatever its fate, TikTok changed how people consume and post to social media.
• The TikTokification of American life isn't going anywhere — even if the app disappears.

Even if TikTok goes away, part of it will be with us forever: It's impossible to erase the TikTokification of the entire internet — or the effect the app has had on, well, everything.

Sure, there are several possibilities now that the Supreme Court has upheld the TikTok ban: One possibility is that TikTok actually goes away in the US on Sunday, existing in history as a strange several-year blip — replaced by either incumbent apps like Instagram and YouTube Shorts, or something new. (RedNote? Probably not, but who knows!)

In the last week, when things were looking pretty dire for TikTok, I started talking to colleagues about what TikTok actually meant — what its legacy meant. And we all realized that, essentially, there were almost no aspects of American life that had been untouched by TikTok. OK, well maybe not EVERYTHING — I'm being a little dramatic here, but it's very easy to rattle off a bunch of industries and corners of culture that were massively changed by TikTok.

Book publishing is one of the perfect examples of a fusty old thing — an industry that's existed for centuries and one that you'd think would be threatened by people's free time being sucked up by a video app. But instead, BookTok became this juggernaut force for selling and marketing books.

The beauty industry, homebuying, restaurants, the customization of Starbucks drinks, the music industry, sorority recruitment — all changed by TikTok.

Still, those various activities had already been disrupted by social media platforms that came before TikTok: Instagram, Facebook, Twitter — even MySpace. But TikTok represented something even more — an entire cultural shift.

TikTok changed us to the online core

As someone who has spent most of my career trying to observe how people act online, I've come to believe there are a few things about TikTok that have changed humans on an almost molecular level. It's changed the way we interact online — which is much bigger than just how lipstick is marketed.

TikTok's algorithmic feed upended all that we had previously understood or enjoyed about social media.

Social media has long been about followers and a direct relationship with the person whose content you're viewing. Before TikTok, follower count was important — and it was rare that a single post would go viral on its own.

TikTok flipped this completely.

It's almost hard to remember now that most other social apps have copied TikTok's "For you page," but this way of organizing your feed was new and almost confusing at first.

Sure, there were still some big creators who had massive followings, but there was a democratization of virality: Suddenly, every high school had a kid who had gone viral at least once on TikTok.

As TikTok grew to be more than just teens dancing, it became understood to everyone using it that if you posted, there was a chance lots of strangers might see your content — even if you weren't a big influencer or famous person. Almost Warholian — in the future, everyone will get 10,000 views on a random TikTok post. "I didn't expect my last post to blow up," is one of the most common intros to a TikTok you'll see.

As people accepted the idea that you might actually be perceived by others on the app, something strange happened. Instead of an Instagram effect where people felt pressure to look their best and put forth an idealized version of their life, people — especially young women — were more willing than I'd ever seen before on social media to post images of themselves looking, uh, not-so-perfect. Lying in bed with unbrushed hair, no makeup, unflattering angles — things you'd never, ever see on Pinterest or Instagram. As a millennial woman raised on Instagram, I admired Gen Z's daring to look like crap on the internet — it was refreshing and honest.

Those changes are here to stay, no matter whether TikTok shuts down for a day, or forever, or is saved by some executive order.

TikTok uncorked something in the way we consume and the way we post — and that's not going back in the bottle.

• A Chinese app known as RedNote is surging with new users from the US.
• I downloaded it and found users posting gleefully about giving away their data to China.
• The frenzy around RedNote might be short-lived, however.

I spent time on the Chinese app Xiaohongshu, also known as RedNote, which Americans are flocking to — a phenomenon that could become even more interesting after the Supreme Court upheld the TikTok ban on Friday.

It was an amusing and utterly confusing experience.

The app is flooded with posts deriding the US government when I visited it earlier this week. It seems impossible to parse what's potentially propaganda, what's ironically pretending to be propaganda, and what are earnest complaints about the US government — or earnest welcome messages from Chinese citizens.

What's clear, however, is that many Americans are furious, and they're doing what angry Americans do best from their couches: make memes. One video with over 30,000 likes shows a scene from the movie "Brokeback Mountain" where the two main characters reunite and hug, with the caption, "Me being reunited with my Chinese spy."

Many users joked — using the hashtag "TikTokrefugee" — about giving all their data to the Chinese government. One speculated that RedNote users were being assigned a new Chinese spy to watch them.

My feed, overall, was chock full of dark humor about being fine with giving data to China or using the app "just to say FU to our govt," as one user put it.

Many posts expressed anger toward the US government, or at least joy in what people perceived to be the government's embarrassment when it discovered that young people were signing up for an app that could be even worse of a national security issue than TikTok.

Sure enough, RedNote and Lemon8, an app owned by TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, hit the top two spots on the Apple App Store rankings on Monday. I mean, yes, it is pretty funny!

Admittedly, I also chuckled at another genre of memes, about how people would rather sign up for a dubious Chinese app than switch to Instagram Reels. One video I saw showed a cat labeled "Americans" loudly rejecting a cup of yogurt with the Instagram logo on it.

The RedNote frenzy may be short-lived, however. The app is difficult to navigate for English speakers, and some new users have reported it barred them (though it's possible these issues relate to the phone-verification system, which I also found to be buggy).

It's also possible that users are downloading RedNote and other Chinese apps not to replace TikTok but to send a signal to the US government.

"It really is just retaliation towards the government in the simplest way but in a way that feels very native to Gen Z," Meagan Loyst, the founder of the investor collective Gen Z VCs, told my colleagues Dan Whateley and Sydney Bradley.

Who knows what will happen with TikTok after the Supreme Court's ruling. It's likely going to go dark on Sunday, but it could get a reprieve from the incoming Trump administration.

One way or the other, for at least a few days this week, there was some level of cathartic steam being released — the frustration that millions of TikTok users feel that the app they enjoy is likely going away — at least for a little while.

• Mark Zuckerberg wants more "masculine energy" at Meta. There's some disconnect with the user base.
• In the US, 61% of men use Facebook — while 78% of women do.
• Academic studies suggest men and women view frequent posting to social media as a less masculine trait.

Mark Zuckerberg said he thinks Meta needs more "masculine energy" and that the company's culture has been "neutered" in the last few years.

There might be a disconnect between Zuckerberg's ambitions — which he shared on Joe Rogan's podcast last week — and the actual social platforms he runs. In the US, more women use Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp than men. (Global numbers aren't available.)

Facebook — still the most popular social network — is where the gender divide gets even more obvious. A 2024 Pew Research Center report on social media use showed that 61% of adult men in the US used Facebook "at all," while 78% of adult women did. That 17-point difference is greater than the divide between men's and women's use of any other social network except Pinterest.

If you look back at a similar 2013 Pew report, 66% of men and 72% of women used Facebook. However, the most current metric is slightly different, measuring internet-using adults, not all adults. But even a decade ago, there was still a noticeable gap between the genders — and it's gotten bigger.

Quite simply, Facebook is in some way a women's platform — or at least it leans that way.

Now, of course, it's an exaggeration to say that men "don't" use Facebook — a majority of them say they use it or have an account.

But that doesn't tell us how they're using it, exactly — if they're frequently posting or engaging or just checking in once a month. I don't have data about which gender actually uses Facebook more, but I have some ideas based on both research and my own anecdotal experience that suggest that women are driving the daily conversations on the platform.

It's important to note that these stats are for US users, which makes up only a fraction of the 3 billion-plus users. Globally, the gender breakdown may be quite different; Meta doesn't release its own statistics on gender and declined to comment for this story.

So why don't more men use Facebook?

Why do more women than men use Facebook? I have some theories, some of which are sweeping generalizations about gender — like that some men don't find as much value or pleasure in keeping up with old acquaintances as women do.

You can see in the Pew study that other platforms like X (Twitter) and Reddit have more male users. This doesn't seem surprising at all, and you can probably come up with some easy theories in your mind right now as to why.

For our purposes, we're talking about traditional gender roles here. (I recognize the irony in talking about gender this way when Meta has just changed its content rules to allow for more hateful rhetoric about trans people). I am sure that there are many people out there — perhaps even you, dear reader — who don't use Facebook this way and can't relate to any of this. That's OK.

Frequent posting on social media is perceived as "feminine"

There is some interesting academic research that can help us try to make sense of this female energy. A study published last year looked into perceptions of masculinity and the use of social media. Participants were to rate the masculinity or femininity of a person who posts either frequently or infrequently. What they found was that consistently, people rated men who post frequently as being less masculine.

Andrew Edelblum, assistant professor of marketing at the University of Dayton, who authored the paper, and his coauthor tried different "bias-breakers" in their surveys: What if the man wasn't posting about himself but posting about other people? Or what if the man was posting not as a regular person but as a professional influencer who was doing it for work? They found that the perception remained the same — frequent posting was viewed as feminine.

Perhaps men, sensing this perception, stop themselves from being active on Facebook.

"What we found is, and we're drawing on, what at this point is kind of a well-known phenomenon of 'precarious manhood,'" Edelblum told Business Insider. "It's essentially the idea that 'man card' credentials are really hard to gain but very easy to lose."

Anecdotally, I have noticed that Facebook seems to be predominantly used by women. My male friends rarely use Facebook, and as I poke around many corners of the platform, either for professional or personal reasons, I tend to see fewer men posting in groups or even listing things on Marketplace.

I'm incredibly active on Facebook — I spend hours there a week, mainly in groups that are nearly all women — groups for parenting, fans of "Vanderpump Rules," shopping, or decorating (now that I think about it, perhaps Facebook being a matriarchal society is why I have more unregretted user seconds spent on there than, say, X).

I also see some well-worn gendered division of household labor dynamics play out: For example, my kid's school has an active Facebook Group, but it's almost all moms. Same with a group for hiring local babysitters. Even a non-gendered general local town group or a Buy Nothing group seems to be mainly used by women.

My husband deactivated his own Facebook account in 2009 after deciding it was "uncool," but I recently whined to him that it was unfair that I had to be the sole Facebook admin for the family. (He made a new account with a fake name so he can browse Marketplace at least.)

So what does this mean?

Mark Zuckerberg's comment about wanting more "masculine energy" was about his company's internal culture and the need to be more aggressive instead of accommodating external critics.

This has seemed to play out in some ways that appear boorish, like removing the tampons in the men's bathrooms that were meant to accommodate a handful of trans or nonbinary employees and visitors.

I do wonder if part of Zuckberg's apparent personal King of the Bros rebrand is hoping to entice younger men back to Facebook, trying to demonstrate that you can be both masculine and a frequent Facebook poster.

It seems that his comments and his actions aren't really meant for the nosy housewives who are among the biggest users of his platforms. His peacocking, new politics, and Joe Rogan appearances are meant for Silicon Valley workers who work at or invest in his products — and many of them seem to love it.

But somewhere, I do worry that people have forgotten something that seems clear to me: Facebook is powered by feminine energy.