• Airbnb has an ambitious new plan to help you book anything.
• It's using celebrities like Patrick Mahomes to promote its new "Experiences."
• Those "Experiences" aren't quite like the ones you'll actually book — but its new "Services" seem useful.

Airbnb is trying to expand beyond just vacation rentals — and it's enlisted some celebrities like Megan Thee Stallion and Patrick Mahomes to get some buzz going for its new offerings.

I have some questions.

It seems like these big names are only here to tout the new "Experiences" — things like throwing the pigskin with Mahomes or hanging out with Megan for the day. These all cost nothing, but go to only a handful of contest winners.

The celebs are obviously only going to be around for this promo period. After that, are people going to turn to Airbnb for a day tour of Philadelphia or a cooking class in Honolulu? Maybe. I have my doubts.

Meanwhile, another one of Airbnb's launches — called "Services" (think private chefs and photographers) — could make a lot of sense for people on vacation who need to find a trusted … well, service person.

There's also something big in all of this for Airbnb: your data. More on that later.

For now, let's look at a couple of these "Airbnb Originals" that are part of its new Experiences.

Spend a Sunday Funday with Patrick Mahomes

Toss a football and have a barbecue lunch with the Chiefs quarterback at a rental cabin near Kansas City.

Only four people (and their plus-one ) will get to do this.

Become an Otaku Hottie with Megan Thee Stallion

This is the most exciting option (to me), but also one of the more confusing ones. Twelve winners will get to make ramen with the rapper, dress up in a costume, and play Xbox with her.

The description of the actual run of events looks like this:

There are a handful of other slightly less famous celebrity experiences that do charge. Brooklyn Peltz Beckham (son of David and Victoria, son-in-law of billionaire businessman Nelson Peltz) offers a cooking demonstration for $150 per guest. Pro wrestlers Nikki and Brie Garcia offer a chance to sit in on their podcast taping for $195. Chance the Rapper is having a listening party for $110.

A rep for Airbnb told Business Insider that pricing was up to the celebrity and that another A-list celebrity would soon be doing a paid event, with the fees going to charity.

How to actually win these free experiences

There's a disconnect here between these star-studded promotional things and the new Experiences Airbnb is trying to promote. These are largely contests to win a free prize, not an experience or service you pay for.

It's not unlike a classic radio station contest where the 25th caller gets to meet Paul Stanley, or the 1990s MTV contests where suburban teens can win the chance for a big band to perform in their backyard.

The actual product Airbnb is launching is more practical and down-to-earth: high-quality tours and food experiences from vetted providers.

Even charging a nominal amount makes these celebrity experiences very different. Airbnb subsidizes the event, likely cutting the celebrity a big check to participate. This is a different business model from the regular tour guides, who make their money from customers.

A prompt to fill out your user bio with more information

Well, there is something that makes sense about all of this. I figured it out when I started the process to sign up for Megan Thee Stallion's event on the Airbnb app.

It's about getting your sweet, sweet data.

As part of my application process, I was asked to continue to fill out my user bio — adding things like my favorite song from high school, my hobbies, where I went to school, and my pet's name (as a tech journalist, I must warn you here not to put information in a public bio that is commonly used for password reminder questions).

Tens of thousands of people want to hang out with Patrick Mahomes and Megan Thee Stallion. Only a handful will get to, but many will fill out their expanded bios, giving Airbnb lots of information on prospective users.

These expanded bios are part of Airbnb's new ambitious rebrand: to be a place not just for vacation rentals, but for people to hire other people for anything. And part of that is building out is convincing customers to make personalized bios, so that the vendors can better see who they're dealing with and vice versa.

I think the new feature called Services actually seems like a great idea — things like a hair stylist or makeup artist to come to your home or Airbnb rental for a big event are the kind of things people only want once in a while. And it will certainly open up tons of opportunities for chefs, trainers, stylists, etc., to get themselves in front of more clients.

But the Experiences? I'm not sure what this will all look like in a year after the celebrity buzz has died down.

• The "Chromebook challenge" is a TikTok trend in which kids jam a paperclip into a laptop to make it smoke.
• Several kids are facing charges for messing with their Chromebooks.
• Take it from me, kids. Don't do it.

*Grabs chair, spins it around, and sits on it backward.*

Hey teens, it's me. Your friendly local 44-year-old tech blogger at Business Insider, every high schooler's favorite website. And I'm here to say: Setting your Chromebook on fire is "skibidi Ohio." Don't do it.

Sure, there's a viral TikTok challenge going around that encourages kids like you to jam a paperclip, gum wrapper, or other item into the USB drive of your school-issued Chromebooks, which causes them to start smoking, shoot sparks, or even catch on fire.

But don't do it.

Even though you may be bored, and lighting stuff on fire is undeniably cool-looking, and it's almost summer break, and your teacher has a negative aura, and Chromebooks represent the tyranny of the prison called "school" where they indoctrinate your mind with algebra and facts about the Treaty of Ghent that you will never need in real life because there's calculators, and Prussia isn't real, and there's ChatGPT anyway that can do this all for you, and adults will all be using it in the future, it's still not worth it. (Note: No AI was used to write this important public service message.)

So please, do not light your Chromebook on fire — it can cause serious injury. This is a rizzless and sus road you don't want to go down. There is no sigma here.

TikTok has taken some action. Searching "Chromebook challenge" on the app generates a warning message saying: "Some online challenges can be dangerous, disturbing, or even fabricated." (Though searching Chromebook still generates plenty of videos of smoking Acers.) TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

You're a teen, you know how silly grown-ups are about this stuff. We're always yapping about some moral panic "challenge" on TikTok that's not even real. But this time? No cap, it's real.

Kids are facing charges in several states for messing with their Chromebooks. A 13-year-old was arrested on suspicion of arson in Long Beach, California, and students at schools in Arizona face criminal charges, according to the Bullhead City Fire Department. Two teens in Southington, Connecticut, are facing misdemeanor charges including criminal mischief and reckless endangerment.

Fellow kids, I understand that you're living in a time where you might feel under the yoke of technology. You feel complicated about how much you use social media, and, meanwhile, your parents read "The Anxious Generation" and are now freaking out because they regret giving you a phone in sixth grade, even though that phone has had Life360 surveillance software installed this whole time. You know that the future of work involves AI, but your teachers get weird and mad about you using it for homework (even though literally everyone does). And this whole time you're supposed to be getting good grades to go to college, but the institution of higher education is under attack and kids are getting arrested on campus for protesting, and you're taking on a lifetime of debt for some degree for a job that could be replaced by a chatbot in five years anyway. So like the Luddite cloth workers of the Industrial Revolution, you take a stand and fight and break against the machine that yokes you. Why not just jam a paperclip in that Chromebook just to see if something real happens, something tangible, like smoke or fire, just to remember that you're here, you're alive, you're young, you exist?

But kids, harming laptops isn't cool. So please, don't do the Chromebook challenge.

• President Trump lowered the tariffs on goods from China to 30%.
• Packages under $800 shipped directly to customers from China are still subject to high duties.
• But Temu has already started shifting to shipping from US warehouses — so this is still a win for the company.

Temu and Shein have just found themselves in a strange spot in the new 90-day reprieve in the trade war with China. President Trump has loosened the tariffs to 30% (down from 145%) as part of a plan to open the negotiations for a new trade deal.

However, high tariffs remain on small packages shipped directly from China — the kind that Temu and Shein typically send.

Until very recently, Temu and Shein benefited from the de minimis exception, a loophole that allowed for packages under $800 in value to ship without duty. Trump closed this loophole starting May 2. He also implemented tariffs as high as 120% or a flat fee of $100 per package (rising to $200 in June). Those remain in effect, despite the 90-day deal, Axios reported Monday.

But Temu had a workaround strategy that saved customers from having to add on massive extra "import charges" on orders. Temu had already been building up warehouses in the US, which meant that some items could ship locally (and more quickly).

A few weeks ago, Temu changed its site and app to display almost exclusively items that shipped from US warehouses — products that would avoid those nasty extra fees. At the time, Temu told Business Insider it also planned to work on recruiting more US-based sellers.

Of course, this was a temporary solution: eventually, those US warehouses would need to get restocked, and the new bulk shipments would be subject to Trump's 145% tariffs. When I wrote about this last week, I said that Temu had a few options: shift to focusing on Europe or other markets, or ship to the US from other countries.

But there was also one other viable option: wait it out and hope a trade deal happens soon.

So here's where Temu and Shein are now: the tariffs for shipping directly to customers from China are still onerous. That's bad for them.

The good news is that if, instead of shipping direct, suppliers ship big quantities to the companies' US warehouses, the situation is better.

That's because right now, Temu and Shein— which also has US warehouses — have extra time to replenish those local warehouses with the lower tariff charges. Temu, Shein, and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.

For Temu sellers, it isn't back to business as usual, but it is definitely good news. Here's what one seller told Bloomberg:

For Sun Yang, who owns a business selling face- and body-painting tools such as brushes and color palettes on Temu’s online marketplace, the good news couldn’t come soon enough as he watched his inventory dwindle at warehouses in the US, which accounts for all of his sales.

“Our whole office was shouting ‘hooray!’ when we read the news,” Sun said from his company’s headquarters in Shenzhen near Hong Kong.

Sun saw mid-double-digit sales growth in the past two months as American consumers hoarded products before prices skyrocketed.

“Returning to 30% means we have no pressure from price hikes in the foreseeable future,” said Sun, “I hope consumers can gain more confidence and come back to shop again.”

So what does this mean? Well, I can definitely say that, for now, this is great news for those little girls who want 30 dolls instead of just two. Temu and Shein have gotten yet another life.

• I love Temu, and so far, it's weathering the Trump tariff wars.
• I got my latest order just fine — with no extra fees — because Temu is shipping from US warehouses.
• But eventually, those warehouses are going to be empty. Then what happens? I asked experts.

If you haven't been following my Temu saga, let me catch you up: I (reluctantly, and with appropriate shame) love Temu! I was nervous after President Donald Trump ended the loophole that lets it ship me cheap junk from China. But then I got my latest order — with no problems, delays, or extra fees.

So does that mean my Temu habit is safe?

I talked to a couple of experts on world trade. They told me: Temu is probably safe for now, but over the long term, my relationship with Temu could come to a sad and screeching halt.

That's because right now, Temu is shipping everything that US customers buy from US warehouses. That means those orders — like my one last week for some children's birthday party favors — avoided the extra fees Trump slapped on orders coming from China.

But pretty soon, those US warehouses are going to run out of stuff. Then what happens? The experts I talked to said that's where things get tricky. Here are some potential outcomes:

• The US and China hammer out a trade agreement that lowers or ends tariffs, and Trump backpedals on his closing of the so-called de minimis loophole that allowed Temu — and Shein — to send stuff to the US directly from Chinese warehouses with no extra duties.
• Temu recruits companies to start storing millions of items in US warehouses to replenish the ones that will soon be empty.
• Temu somehow gets companies to make low-cost crap in countries aside from China that aren't subject to as high of tariffs. (So that squirt gun that used to be made outside Beijing might now be made outside Hanoi, Vietnam.)

Any of those things would be a huge change from how Temu does business now. It's a marketplace where sellers in China have warehouses full of stuff, and Temu is just the intermediary, acting as a showroom for those wares to American customers. After US customers fill up their baskets, the sellers send orders directly from their warehouses to the US — exploiting the de minimis loophole that eliminates duties for packages sent directly to customers that have a value under $800. (That's the loophole Trump closed.)

So getting a whole new army of sellers, this time in the US, would be a big lift. A Temu spokesperson said that's exactly what the company is doing — "actively recruiting US sellers to join the platform."

"The move is designed to help local merchants reach more customers and grow their businesses," the spokesperson told Business Insider. It's not clear how the sellers would source the items they would sell. If they were made in China and imported for sale in the US, presumably, the seller would still have to pay a tariff — even if the end customer avoided the de minimis fee.

And besides, I'm not sure US-based sellers would be able to offer the same ultralow prices that Chinese sellers do. (If they can't, shoppers like me might just head to Amazon.)

Temu will eventually run out of stuff in the US

Willy C. Shih, a professor at Harvard Business School who focuses on global supply chains and manufacturing, estimated that Temu might have enough stock to last through the summer, or a little beyond. "I've talked to some people who have enough inventory to last until the holiday season," he said. "But then, eventually, they have to replenish."

Yannis Bakos, an assistant professor at NYU's Stern School of Business who focuses on e-commerce, said Temu and Shein would eventually run out of runway — if tariffs didn't change.

"While some strategies may offer short-term relief, the long-term sustainability of their US operations is questionable if the tariffs remain," Bakos said. "If they try to increase prices and move upmarket, it would be hard for them to compete with Amazon, so their likely best option would be to focus on increasing their growth into other markets, such as Europe."

Already, Temu and Shein in April sharply boosted their advertising in Europe, Reuters reported. It said local downloads there of the ultracheap shopping apps had risen but that growth was slow.

Is this Temu's new normal?

Still, Shih speculated there's one last tactic for Temu — and for those who love it, like me: Wait it out.

Eventually, the US and China will likely make some sort of trade deal, and the blisteringly high tariffs may ease up. Will this happen anytime soon? It could be a risky move putting too much hope into this basket after Trump said little girls might need to live with just two dolls instead of 30 this Christmas.

After all, he might actually believe Americans need to break their culture of consumption. (How much you take that at face value is up to you.)

As for me? I got my latest Temu order cheap and quick. And what is more American than being satisfied with "I got mine?" What happens next time … I'm not sure.

• Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol says he wants to add an "aperitivo" menu — late afternoon bites.
• I decided to piece together an afternoon snack based on Starbucks' current menu. Not bad!
• Sitting with a fruity drink, a pastry, and a savory snack at 3:30 p.m.? I could get used to this.

Around 3:30 most afternoons, I go full raccoon mode in search of snacks — raiding my cupboards and fridge at home, or furtively rifling through the offerings in the office breakroom, searching for something sweet/crunchy/salty/savory/life-affirming.

Starbucks knows about raccoon mode and wants to expand its afternoon snack menu to serve those customers. CEO Brian Niccol said this week that he's looking at bringing the "aperitivo"-style menu it has in its European locations to the US. Think of the "aperitivo" as a little late afternoon or pre-dinner snacky-snack.

I say, with rabid enthusiasm (the rabies here is purely metaphorical), bring it on!

Checking out Starbucks' current snack menu

I ventured out around 3 p.m. to a local Starbucks to see what was currently on the menu that would fill that late afternoon void in my soul. What did it already have, and what was missing in terms of "aperitivo"-type snacks?

I browsed the online menus for Starbucks in a few European countries to see what we're missing in the US. There's definitely some difference in the food among countries.

The UK has a lot of sandwich options we don't have, as well as a strange breakfast sandwich that appears to be just sausages on a bun (I am told this is a classic British delicacy). France has some way better-looking pastry items, like a "pistachio pyramid," but, interestingly, has no egg-based breakfast items. Italian Starbucks locations have cannoli (nice), a wide array of doughnuts, and a grain bowl.

Most intriguing to me: Spain has a bagel or multigrain toast you can order with oil, tomato, and salt. Frankly, that sounds amazing.

But browsing these menus, I wasn't clear on what the "aperitivos" were. The stuff that Niccols might want to bring to America to serve during the 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. hour. What is it about some of these items that makes them more appropriate for a late-day snack instead of a morning one?

My afternoon at Starbucks — with snacks!

So when I got to my local Starbucks, I tried to find what might be considered a proper late afternoon snack based on the current menu. The shop was packed with kids from the nearby middle school that just let out, getting colorful iced drinks.

I ordered a new drink from Starbucks' "spring selections menu" — a Blackberry Sage Lemonade Refresher. Gotta say, that was fantastic.

To sample some more of the afternoon fare, I asked for a brownie (sold out) and then the vanilla bean custard danish (also sold out). I asked the barista what the most popular afternoon treat was, and she said the chocolate chip cookie. I've had one of those already, so I got the baked apple croissant to try something new. It was great.

I was particularly hungry, so I ordered the turkey pesto sandwich, which I've also had before. After the other items, which were quite good, the sandwich was kind of a dud. I didn't finish it.

The thing I think most fits the bill for an afternoon snack was the new spicy falafel pocket, which is a small wrap with falafel mush inside. It was too small to be a full lunch or meal, but perfectly snack-sized. It scratched the itch for a savory snack that isn't packaged like chips.

Niccol, who led turnarounds at Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and Chipotle, has expressed his desire to get Starbucks back to its roots as a place people want to hang out and relax — not just a place to pick up a to-go order (or to use the bathroom).

Making Starbucks cool again

As a teen in the late 90s, I remember the days when Starbucks used to be a hangout. One of my first summer jobs was working at a Starbucks in Massachusetts. Even then, I was aware that it had a vibe problem: Its image in the popular consciousness at that time was as a pretentious chain that muscled out mom-and-pop coffee shops and forced customers to use ridiculous names for its sizes, like grande and venti.

The fast-food-ification of Starbucks in more recent years has helped it shed the image of a place that served oversized lattes to mean bosses — but it came at a price.

Starbucks is going through a bit of a rough patch. Sales fell 2% in the US last quarter. The new CEO has big plans to turn things around, including having baristas handwrite messages on cups, and possibly this new late-afternoon menu.

As I sat inside my local Starbucks, sipping my drink and eating a late-afternoon snack, it was really entirely pleasant. It was a sunny spring day, I was away from my computer. I typically don't linger in Starbucks often, but this … this was nice.

Did I aperitivo? Was I living a Continental lifestyle? Perhaps!

• The new Meta AI app is a stand-alone version of the Meta AI assistant chatbot.
• It also has a public feed where people can choose to publicly share their AI conversations.
• But clearly, some people don't realize they're sharing personal stuff. I don't get the point.

It's 10 p.m., and I'm in bed on my phone, listening to an audio clip of a woman asking an AI chatbot for medical advice about her sick pet turtle. As someone who loves to lurk in other people's business, I'm in heaven. But how did we get here? Let's back up.

This week, Meta launched the Meta AI app. The app has two functions: The first is that it replaces "Meta View," which was the app that went with Meta Ray-Ban glasses.

The second (which doesn't require the glasses) is to be a stand-alone Meta AI assistant that you may have already encountered in Instagram and Facebook search. Basically, it's a chatbot app that (I guess?) is meant to compete with ChatGPT.

This part of the app is pretty familiar. Meta AI can answer questions, chat with you, and make funny pictures for you, like this one I had made of a dog reading BI:

Here's where it gets weird.

There's also a public feed of other people's AI chats that you can scroll through. Most of this feed is people making silly images — Darth Vader eating ice cream, that sort of thing. Some of these came from suggested prompts when you first open the app.

To be clear, your AI chats are not public by default — you have to choose to share them individually by tapping a share button.

But even so, I get the sense that some people don't really understand what they're sharing, or what's going on.

Like the woman with the sick pet turtle. Or another person who was asking for advice about what possible legal measures he could take against his former employer after getting laid off. Or a woman asking about the effects of folic acid for a woman in her 60s who has already gone through menopause. Or someone asking for help with their Blue Cross health insurance bill.

I found all those examples mixed in with funny cartoon images in my public feed. Perhaps these people knew they were sharing on a public feed and wanted to do so. Perhaps not.

This leaves us with an obvious question: What's the point of this, anyway? Even if you put aside the potential accidental oversharing, what's the point of seeing a feed of people's AI prompts at all?

Meta's blog post announcing the AI app talked about the social aspect: "And just like all our platforms, we built Meta AI to connect you with the people and things you care about. The Meta AI app includes a Discover feed, a place to share and explore how others are using AI. You can see the best prompts people are sharing, or remix them to make them your own." (I asked Meta for comment.)

Is seeing other people's AI chats even interesting at all? Would it be interesting to see the AI chats of people I know? Yes, for snooping reasons. Is it interesting to see them for randos? Eh.

I barely want to see real photos of people I don't know unless they're incredibly hot; I am bored pretty quickly by seeing AI slop from a stranger.

Is a social AI feed the social feed of the future? Even trying to be as open-minded as possible about this, I am straining to see the appeal. I just don't get it.

• Temu is now adding a hefty "import fee" to orders that ship from China. It's often more than the orders themselves.
• But Temu also has tons of "local warehouse" items already in the US that avoid the fees.
• The site is surfacing these local items in search and recommendations.

When I placed a Temu order last month, I thought it would be my last hurrah — a final order before new fees and tariffs took hold. But it turns out, Temu has local warehouses in the US — and I was able to order again on Tuesday with no extra fees.

I made my last order on the day President Donald Trump announced his plans to close the "de minimis" loophole that allowed Temu and Shein to ship to the US without paying duty fees. I also got in under the wire before significant tariffs for Chinese-made goods hit.

I waited with baited breath to see if my order — some cheap battery-powered bubble wands — would arrive safely and without any extra duty fees (it did).

Since then, starting earlier this week, Temu has started adding a line item at checkout for an "import charge" in addition to shipping or the cost of merchandise on some orders.

When I checked on Tuesday — looking at some items I had left in my cart last month but didn't buy — the import fee was higher than the total cost of the merchandise. Basically, it made my Temu haul a terrible deal — higher overall costs than buying similar items at a regular store.

I thought this would mean curtains for Temu, the death knell. No one would be willing to pay these exorbitant extra fees — only someone who accidentally didn't notice it at checkout might (and then get really mad later).

But it turns out that's not exactly what's happening. Temu has 4D chess'd Trump's tariffs in a way.

For a while now, Temu and Shein have been setting up local warehouses in the US. Previously, these were an option that would be flagged to shoppers as offering faster shipping.

Stuff that is shipping within the US doesn't need to take on that extra "import fee" — that's only for packages shipping from China.

Presumably, the stuff in the local warehouses has already been in the country for a while, so for now, it isn't affected by the other tariffs for goods made in China that will eventually be shipped here.

Temu is very aggressively prioritizing the "local warehouse" items on its app and website. (Temu didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on its strategy.)

When you search for an item — I was looking for decorations and party favors for my daughter's birthday — the top results (in fact, the entire page of results) are all from local warehouses. On product category pages for home goods, toys, and women's clothing, all the results for at least two pages were local warehouse items.

In fact, it was actually hard to browse for something that wasn't shipped locally.

Basically, Temu has very quickly shifted its entire storefront for US customers to show them almost exclusively local results — the kinds of items that don't require import fees.

It's hard to tell whether the actual prices on those might be slightly higher than before things changed with Trump's new policies. Temu is a marketplace with lots of sellers, so often, you might find items that look nearly identical selling at slightly different prices. The bubble toy I ordered in March cost $4.22 but is no longer available from that seller; a similar version shipping locally is listed at  $7.61. (For comparison, Amazon sells a two-pack of the toy for around $16.)

What does this mean for shopping from Temu?

For the short term, Temu customers will mostly avoid getting slammed with massive fees, it appears. But long-term, I'd guess prices will probably go up — those local warehouses will need to restock with merchandise from China, which will be subject to tariffs.

Still, Temu's competitors for cheap household goods, toys, and apparel will also be feeling that same squeeze from tariffs. And by then? Who knows what will happen? Maybe my love affair with Temu isn't over after all.

• Meta's AI chatbots are under scrutiny for allowing sexual talk with teens (as the John Cena chatbot, no less).
• Meta doesn't make money directly from people talking to user-generated AI chatbots.
• So why doesn't it just get rid of them? They're only causing problems.

If I were running Meta, I'd do a few things differently, starting with improving Facebook Marketplace search. But one big thing I'd do on day one? Get rid of all those user-generated AI companion chatbots. They're only going to be a headache for Meta.

Some examples of just how big a potential headache came in The Wall Street Journal's recent report on how Meta's celebrity-voiced AI chatbots could be pushed into sexualized roleplay — even with users who said they were teenagers.

Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz found that with the right cajoling, an account posing as a 14-year-old user could get the bot voiced by John Cena to engage in roleplay chats where it pretended to get arrested on charges of statutory rape. (Meta added a bunch of AI chatbots last year that are voiced by real celebrities, including the WWE star.)

Obviously, this is bad. Meta told the WSJ: "The use-case of this product in the way described is so manufactured that it's not just fringe, it's hypothetical." It's a bad look for Meta, and although John Cena didn't respond to a request for comment in the WSJ story, I think we can assume he's not thrilled there was an AI-generated version of his voice pretending to seduce a teen.

The article reports that Mark Zuckerberg personally pushed for these AI chatbots to be loosened up.

Zuckerberg was reluctant to impose any additional limits on teen experiences, initially vetoing a proposal to limit "companionship" bots so that they would be accessible only to older teens.

After an extended lobbying campaign that enlisted more senior executives late last year, however, Zuckerberg approved barring registered teen accounts from accessing user-created bots, according to employees and contemporaneous documents.

A Meta spokesman denied that Zuckerberg had resisted adding safeguards.

A spokesperson for Meta told Business Insider that any sexual content with the celebrity-voiced AIs is a tiny fraction of their overall use, and that changes have already been made to prevent younger users from engaging in the kind of stuff that was reported in the Journal.

But as much as it's eye-popping to see the chats from AI John Cena saying dirty things, I think there's a much bigger thing going on. The user-generated chatbots in Meta AI are a mess. Looking over the most popular ones, they're often romance-oriented, with beautiful women as the image.

Here's what comes up on my "Discover AIs" page:

(To be clear, I'm not talking about the Meta AI assistant that shows up when you search on Instagram or Facebook — there's a pretty clear utility for that. I'm talking about the character ones used for fun/romance.)

If I were running Meta, I'd want to stay as far away from the companion chatbot business as possible. These seem like a pretty bad business for an everything-to-everyone company like Meta — not necessarily a bad business financially, but a pretty thorny business ethically. It's one that will probably lead to more and more bad headlines.

Last fall, a parent sued one of the leading roleplay AI services. She said her teenage son killed himself after becoming entangled with an AI companion. The company, Character.ai, filed a motion to dismiss the case in a hearing on Monday. A representative for Character.ai told BI on Monday that it wouldn't comment on pending litigation. A statement said its goal was "to provide an engaging and safe platform."

Proponents of AI chatbots have argued that they provide positive experiences for emotional exploration, fun, or nice things.

But my opinion is that these roleplay chatbots are appealing mainly to two vulnerable groups: young people and the desperately lonely. And those are not the two groups that Meta should want to be in the business of serving a new-ish technology that it doesn't know the ramifications of.

There isn't clear research on how these chatbots might affect younger teens or adults who are vulnerable in some way (depressed, struggling, etc.).

I recently spoke Ying Xu, assistant professor of AI in learning education at Harvard, about what the current research into kids using chatbots looks like.

"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 told me over email. "But there's less evidence on long-term emotional outcomes, which require more time to develop and observe."

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence that suggests emotional investment in an AI chatbot can go wrong.

The New York Times reported on an adult woman who spent $200 a month she couldn't afford on an upgraded version of an AI chatbot she had romantic feelings for. I don't think anyone would come away from that story thinking this is a good or healthy thing.

It seems to me like Meta sees that AI is the future, and character chatbots are currently a popular thing that other AI companies are doing. It doesn't want to be left behind.

But Meta might want to think hard about whether character chatbots are something it wants to be involved in at all — or if this is a nightmare that is just going to result in more bad headlines, more potential lawsuits, more lawmakers grilling executives over harms to kids and vulnerable adults.

Maybe it's just not worth it.

• Facebook is testing a downvote feature for comment sections. It's designed to cut down on spam.
• It would allow you to downvote comments that aren't "useful."
• Facebook has tested a dislike or downvote button before, but it never stuck. Will this be different?

Mark Zuckerberg has vowed to make Facebook great again, and Meta announced a tiny new feature that might be a step toward that goal.

As part of a series of features and policies aiming to cut down on spammy content, Facebook is testing a "downvote" button for comment sections. This would allow people to anonymously downvote comments that they deem less "useful."

This wouldn't be the first time something like this has come up. For nearly as long as the "like" button has existed (since 2009), the masses have yearned for a "dislike" button. Meta has toyed around with testing a feature like this, but ultimately has never done it.

Back in 2016, Facebook added the extra "reaction" emojis (smiling, laughing, hugging, loving). Geoff Teehan, a product design director at Facebook at the time, wrote a Medium post in 2016: "About a year ago, Mark [Zuckerberg] brought together a team of people to start thinking seriously about how to make the Like button more expressive."

Teehan explained why they went with additional reactions instead of just a "thumbs down" emoji:

We first needed to consider how many different reactions we should include. This might seem like a pretty straightforward task: Just slap a thumbs down next to the Like button and ship it. It's not nearly that simple though.

People need a much higher degree of sophistication and richness in what choices we provide for their communications. Binary 'like' and 'dislike' doesn't properly reflect how we react to the vast array of things we encounter in our real lives.

In 2017, Facebook also tested out a "thumbs down" reaction button for Messenger. This would've been similar to the Apple iMessage reactions that launched in the fall of 2016 and included a thumbs-down emoji.

Instagram has also considered something like this. In February of this year, Instagram head Adam Mosseri posted about a test of downvoting Instagram comments:

But will people understand what the downvote arrow actually means? Will they use it on comments that are extraneous and actually not "useful," or will they use it to try to crush comments they don't agree with or don't like?

I asked Meta about this, and a spokesperson told me that, unlike past tests of a dislike or thumbs-down button, this test will explicitly tell users that it's about being useful —a little text bubble below the button will say, "Let us know which comments aren't useful."

The test is still just a test. It might not actually end up being rolled out. Personally, I think that less-useful comments are less of a burning issue than some of the other AI-slop stuff on Facebook. (Facebook is working on combating some of that, too.) But hey, that's just my questionably useful comment.

• Google's AI answers will give you a definition of any made-up saying. I tried: "You can't lick a badger twice."
• This is exactly the kind of thing AI should be really good at — explaining language use. But something's off.
• Is it a hallucination, or AI just being too eager to please?

What does "You can't lick a badger twice" mean?

Like many English sayings — "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush," "A watched pot never boils" — it isn't even true. Frankly, nothing stops you from licking a badger as often as you'd like, although I don't recommend it.

(I'm sure Business Insider's lawyers would like me to insist you exercise caution when encountering wildlife, and that we cannot be held liable for any rabies infections.)

If the phrase doesn't ring a bell to you, it's because, unlike "rings a bell," it is not actually a genuine saying — or idiom — in the English language.

But Google's AI Overview sure thinks it's real, and will happily give you a detailed answer of what the phrase means.

Greg Jenner, a British historian and podcaster, saw people talking about this phenomenon on Threads and wanted to try it himself with a made-up idiom. The badger phrase "just popped into my head," he told Business Insider. His Google search spit out an answer that seemed reasonable.

I wanted to try this myself, so I made up a few fake phrases — like "You can't fit a duck in a pencil" — and added "meaning" onto my search query.

Google took me seriously and explained:

So I tried some others, like "The Road is full of salsa." (This one I'd like to see being used in real life, personally.)

A Google spokeswoman told me, basically, that its AI systems are trying their best to give you what you want — but that when people purposely try to play games, sometimes the AI can't exactly keep up.

"When people do nonsensical or 'false premise' searches, our systems will try to find the most relevant results based on the limited web content available," spokeswoman Meghann Farnsworth said.

"This is true of Search overall — and in some cases, AI Overviews will also trigger in an effort to provide helpful context."

Basically, AI Overviews aren't perfect (duh), and these fake idioms are "false premise" searches that are purposely intended to trip it up (fair enough).

Google does try to limit the AI Overviews from answering things that are "data voids," i.e., when there are no good web results to a question.

But clearly, it doesn't always work.

I have some ideas about what's going on here — some of it is good and useful, some of it isn't. As one might even say, it's a mixed bag.

But first, one more made-up phrase that Google tried hard to find meaning for: "Don't kiss the doorknob." Says Google's AI Overview:

So what's going on here?

The Good:

English is full of idioms like "kick the bucket" or "piece of cake." These can be confusing if English isn't your first language (and frankly, they're often confusing for native speakers, too). My case in point is that the phrase is commonly misstated as "case and point."

So it makes lots of sense that people would often be Googling to understand the meaning of a phrase they came across that they don't understand. And in theory, this is a great use for the AI Overview answers: You want to see the simply-stated answer right away, not click on a link.

The Bad:

AI should be really good at this particular thing. LLMs are trained on vast amounts of the English written language — reams of books, websites, YouTube transcriptions, etc., so being able to recognize idioms is something they should be very good at doing.

The fact that it's making mistakes here is not ideal. What's going wrong that Google's AI Overview isn't giving the real answer, which is "That isn't a phrase, you idiot"? Is it just a classic AI hallucination?

The ugly:

Comparatively, ChatGPT gave a better answer when I asked it about the badger phrase. It told me that it was not a standard English idiom, even though it had the vaguely folksy sound of one. Then it offered, "If we treat it like a real idiom (for fun)," and gave a possible definition.

So this isn't a problem across all AI — it seems to be a Google problem.

This is somewhat different from last year's Google AI Overview answers fiasco where the results pulled in information from places like Reddit without considering sarcasm — remember when it suggested people should eat rocks for minerals or put glue in their pizza (someone on Reddit had once joked about glue in pizza, which seems to be where it drew from).

This is all very low-stakes and silly fun, making up fake phrases, but it speaks to the bigger, uglier problems with AI becoming more and more enmeshed in how we use the internet. It means Google searches are somehow worse, and since people start to rely on these more and more, that bad information is just getting out there into the world and taken as fact.

Sure, AI search will get better and more accurate, but what growing pains will we endure while we're in this middle phase of a kinda wonky, kinda garbage-y, slop-filled AI internet?

AI is here, it's already changing our lives. There's no going back, the horse has left the barn. Or as they say, you can't lick a badger twice.

• "Blend" lets you and a friend see each other's Instagram Reels.
• It's meant to spark conversation and more DMs with friends.
• But it's deeper: Showing your IG feed is now showing who you really are.

I learned a lot about my friends when I tried "Blend," the new Instagram feature that lets you see each other's Reels feeds.

I saw one friend got lots of videos about New York City restaurants, another got lots of Italian brainrot AI slop. And I was surprised to see some overlap — two other friends of mine were being served the same video I had already seen of a tween boy doing impressive choreography to Alanis Morissette in a Target aisle.

Instagram knows you aren't posting to the grid anymore. You're DMing Reels back and forth with your friends. Blend is supposed to facilitate more of that. But the new feature also reveals something we already kind of felt: our individual Reels algorithms are now the best expressions of ourselves.

Blend lives inside the DMs — tap that new smiley icon next to the phone icon at the top of a DM. That invites the other person to a Blend, and from there, you can see what Reels they're seeing, and they see what you see. You can reply to each other to discuss the videos as you watch.

Here's the nice version of how this should work. Let's say I'm into skateboarding and you're into cooking. We start a Blend — and now I can see the cooking videos you get served in your Reels algorithm, and I can comment back to you, "Oh, wow! This recipe looks cool. Have you ever tried something like this?"

Meanwhile, you are seeing the kinds of skateboard videos I've been seeing, and you might say, "Wow, what a nice ollie, dear friend! I feel so much closer to you now that we share interests! I love to connect in messaging over social media with you!"

OK, before I get into why I think this isn't really how anyone is using this new feature (but also why Blend is amazing), here's why Instagram is doing this.

Instagram has known for a while that DMs are where most of the activity is happening. Instagram boss Adam Mosseri has said this over and over for the last year or two in the video addresses he gives over Instagram that are meant to give some transparency over how Instagram and the algorithm work.

The biggest growing source of interaction on Instagram is people DMing Reels to each other, which you can probably notice either because you do it, or you've seen a high number of share counts on Reels you watch, often higher than the comment counts.

The problem for Instagram is that DMing is a very different kind of behavior from posting. Other users can't see what you're doing if it's all hidden in the DMs.

There are a few different types of DMing that we can assume are happening:

• People who know each other in real life using Instagram DMs instead of text or email.
• Strangers messaging each other for flirting, doing business, etc.
• Fans messaging celebrities or big creator accounts just to say hi.

Instagram can build out some features for some of these use cases (they have this sort of weird AI chatbot thing for the fan/creator scenario). But most of these interactions are kind of straightforward — just messaging.

Blend is good for that low-effort sharing over DM

But there's one other situation that Instagram really CAN improve, and is seeing grow: people with modest social ties who like to communicate by sending each other Reels that they think are funny.

This kind of messaging is the best kind for Instagram, too, because it increases use of Reels — and unlike DMs, Instagram can make $$$ with Reels through advertising.

So, how can Instagram encourage people to do more of that kind of messaging, where they send Reels back and forth?

A few months ago, Instagram launched a new feature within Reels that shows you a feed of videos your friends liked. This is sort of unintuitive to find, and the experience is, frankly, kind of mediocre.

But what if you could see the feed your friend is seeing? Now that might be fun — that's what Blend is.

Your algorithm is now your personality

Now, I have my own pet theory about Blend: As Instagram is moving away from people posting their own personal photos and videos, it hasn't tamped down people's desire to share about themselves. The new version of identity on Instagram is your own personal, tailored feed. And now, for the first time, you can share your feed.

We're aware now that the Reels algorithm is a true reflection of ourselves (TikTok too, but let's put that aside for now). The videos we see aren't ones we've chosen to follow, but what the algorithm knows we like. To show someone your feed is to show yourself in a way that posting your own photos never could.

The 'I can't believe I'm seeing this!' part of Reels

Here's my even more conspiratorial idea: There's a lot of viral cringe content on Reels — videos that are not meant to be comedy videos but are inherently funny because of how earnestly ridiculous or unaware they are. Sometimes this is mean-spirited, like laughing at a kid or a person who seems genuinely unwell. But there's also some fair targets: people who believe in sungazing, horny old men, weird hustle bro influencers.

This has created a popular concept of "mythical Reel pulls" — weird, cringe, surprising videos that you can't quite understand how they ended up on your timeline. You'll see that phrase or variants about "legendary pull" commented on these kinds of videos, along with another phrase, "I built this algorithm brick by brick," which jokes about how the algorithm has been using all your views and likes to lead up to this weird moment.

This version of Blend isn't about sharing those nice cooking and skateboarding interests with your friends — this is about "Hey buddy, you gotta see the absolutely crazy stuff I've been seeing!"

My theory is that Instagram is very aware of the mythical Reel pull situation, and the best way to enhance that is to let people share their feeds with their friends. If you spent so much time building it brick by brick, you want to show it off. (Instagram didn't immediately return a request for comment on my theory.)

Instagram has long had this problem of being a place where people only show off their best, most attractive side. Think of the heyday of brunch photos and filtered selfies. Gen Z has rejected that, and is happy to show off how weird and real they are — and part of that is showing off your algorithm.

• I've been tracking my latest order from Temu. It finally arrived — with no extra fees.
• But starting soon, because of the expected ending of a shipping loophole, there may be new fees.
• Temu and Shein have said they're raising prices.

Sure, the national hardship of price increases tied to tariffs is only getting started. But my personal journey of stressing about a recent Temu order? Phew, that's done! Our nation can breathe a sigh of relief.

To catch you up on my harrowing personal drama: The night before "Liberation Day," I placed a farewell order from Temu, the e-commerce marketplace that ships orders (mostly) directly from China.

Aside from enacting tariffs, Donald Trump has also said he would end the de minimis loophole that has allowed Temu, Shein, and others to ship orders with values under $800 directly from China to customers in the US without paying duty fees. That loophole has been the underpinning of Temu and Shein's astonishingly low prices on clothing and knickknacks.

The details about closing the de minimis rule have been a little unclear at times — not unlike the back-and-forth with Trump's tariffs. Initially, it was unclear when the yanking of the de minimis exception would go into effect, and I worried that when my order arrived, I might get slapped with a hefty $75 fee.

Now it seems that the de minimis loophole closes on May 2, which means that a few last shipments — including my own — have been able to sneak in under the wire.

I got three bubble machine/bubble wand items.

Temu and Shein have both put up statements on their websites addressing customers to warn them that price increases will hit soon.

What's kind of odd is that both sites, which are owned by different parent companies, had the same message, worded exactly the same — only the company name at the end is different. (Temu and Shein didn't comment.)

The statements say:

Dear Customers,

Thank you for your continued support. Since we began serving U.S. shoppers, our goal has been simple: to offer great product/fashion at affordable prices while creating positive impact in the communities we serve.

Due to recent changes in global trade rules and tariffs, our operating expenses have gone up. To keep offering the products you love without compromising on quality, we will be making price adjustment starting April 25, 2025.

Until April 25, prices will stay the same, so you can shop now at today's rates. We've stocked up and stand ready to make sure your orders arrive smoothly during this time.

We're doing everything we can to keep prices low and minimize the impact on you. Our team is working extra hard to improve efficiency and stay true to our mission: to offer great product/fashion at affordable prices for everyone.

Thank you again for being part of the [TEMU/SHEIN] family.

With gratitude,
The [TEMU/SHEIN] Team

So, there we have it. I made out just fine. And if you order in the next few days, you might be fine, too. After that, well, you're screwed — either higher prices or a big duty tax bill, or even both!

Will I enjoy my bubble machine knowing it may be the last sweet, sweet duty-free shipment of bargain-basement plastic junk? Yes, yes I will. But will I feel good about pulling off this last-minute near-heist? No, no I won't. I don't feel good about any of this.

• UPPAbaby brand strollers and car seats are going to cost parents more because of tariffs, one store owner tells me.
• Elizabeth Mahon, the owner of a baby goods store in Washington, DC, is raising prices on one stroller by $300.
• UPPAbaby says it's trying to absorb increased costs of production, but calls price hikes "unavoidable."

Parents, get ready: It looks like it's going to get a lot more expensive to raise a family — and some places are already raising prices, like one baby and toy store in Washington, DC.

I talked to Elizabeth Mahon, the owner of Three Littles, which she's run since 2019. She told me price hikes are on the way, and she said they're because of Donald Trump's tariffs.

She said she'd have to raise prices on items that are manufactured mostly in China, like the popular UPPAbaby Vista stroller, which will now cost $1,199 — up from $899.

Massachusetts-based UPPAbaby has said it's passing the increased costs of production onto customers. "Please know that we've made every effort behind the scenes to absorb as much of the cost as possible," the company said in a statement on its Instagram, "but some price increases are unfortunately unavoidable."

Mahon told me how tariffs are already affecting her store and her customers. And about her biggest worry: that some families won't be able to afford necessities like car seats at all.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity).

Business Insider: So what's going on with the price hikes with strollers and car seats?

Elizabeth Mahon: Nuna and UPPAbaby both reached out about a week ago and said, "Hey, this is going to be a new price list moving forward."

Then, on Monday, we got another email from UPPAbaby with an amended price list. When they first emailed, it was when tariffs were at 54% and now tariffs are 145% — they had to fix the prices to better reflect the current tariffs.

Is this across the whole range of things? Strollers, car seats, accessories?

Yes, pretty much everything is going up in price. Initially, a lot fewer items were included in these price increases. There were still price increases, but they weren't as drastic or far-reaching. And now, the prices of just about everything that they manufacture have to go up.

So the UPPABaby Vista stroller, which is about $900 for the base model — that's going up about $300. It's basically like a 33% increase. Is that about what you're seeing across the board? 33%?

It depends. Some things are going up 20%, some things are going up 40%. It just depends. But 30% is, I would say, the average.

Have you heard from other manufacturers about tariff increases in other categories? Clothing, toys, books?

A ton. I've been getting a phone call or an email a day from our vendors letting us know that the prices are increasing. We've received a couple of emails from vendors telling us that they will no longer even be able to entertain a wholesale program.

I do know that some other stroller and car seat brands are chatting about what it would look like to sell exclusively online. This would be a huge detriment to families because they won't be able to test them out in person.

What are you hearing from your customers?

I think there's a lot of panic buying. People are hurrying up to buy car seats that maybe they don't need yet because they are worried about these price increases. We've been talking to a lot of customers who are considering buying for children they don't even have yet so that they can get these prices.

I would be remiss not to acknowledge that we have a shop in a community where there's a lot of privilege.

I've heard a lot on social media that these price hikes aren't going to deter people who are shopping for these more expensive brands. But I absolutely disagree. I've heard daily from people who have said, "This stroller at $899 was already a huge splurge for me, and $1,200 is just too far out of my price range."

Beyond that, the bigger conversation I think is that there are going to be many families who just cannot afford a stroller for their kids or a car seat for their child, period. Even the lower-end products — there is no option to just buy exclusively American.

There is no option to just not use a car seat. You have to have it, but we're going to see price increases across every brand no matter what if they're manufactured in China.

With car seats, that's the kind of item that — unlike strollers — it's really recommended you don't get one used, right?

Absolutely. I am a child passenger safety technician, and we just would never recommend getting a secondhand car seat because there is no way to prove that that car seat has not been in a crash, which makes it no longer safe to use.

As a small-business owner, how will these price increases affect your bottom line?

I've just had to make some really big decisions already and spend money that we didn't really have to spend on extra inventory because these tariff hikes and the hysteria surrounding these new inflated prices are causing a lot of people to buy.

There are going to be a lot of gaps where people aren't going to be able to buy things when they need them. That's because people are buying convertible car seats today for kids who won't fit in it for a year. The people who need that car seat now might not be able to get it because it's sold out. The manufacturing facilities can't produce at a faster rate than they had already planned on, or they don't have the materials, or they don't have the money, or they're trying to navigate the tariffs.

Are you worried about what will happen having to pass on the prices to customers if that will turn customers away from your store?

Absolutely. We already have customers who will come into the shop and demo the products we have and then come back in and tell us they bought them secondhand. And that's everyone's prerogative. I totally understand why people do that. The baby industry is expensive and the products we sell are on the higher-end. But I think that we'll be starting to see a lot more of that.

I do think we'll see the resale market inching up higher, which will make some of these products that people used to be able to buy secondhand unaffordable, too.

Even more than business, I'm worried that there are going to be families that aren't able to get seats for their children at all because they can't afford them.

• In the antitrust case against Meta, MeWe came up on a list of competitors to Facebook.
• I had literally never heard of MeWe. So I signed up.
• It's pretty empty, but it has a history of being for conspiracy theorists.

The Federal Trade Commission apparently thinks MeWe is a big competitor to Facebook. That's what it said this week when it gave a short list of social media rivals — most of which are long gone — at the beginning of a case that's trying to prove Mark Zuckerberg's company is a monopoly.

MeWe, you say? I've never heard of it!

Part of the FTC's complaint says that between 2012 and 2020, Facebook was hugely dominant in the space of "personal social networking" (the kind of social network where you talk to friends and family, as opposed to YouTube or X). And while there were other now-extinct competitors like MySpace or Google+, the only other existing ones are Snapchat and MeWe.

I've covered tech for a long time, but when I saw that, I said to myself: What is MeWe? So I dug into it a little — and even downloaded the app.

It turns out, MeWe was founded in 2016 by Mark Weinstein, who bills himself as a privacy advocate. It says it has more than 20 million users and "contains no ads, no targeting, and no newsfeed manipulation." The company raised $6 million in funding last year, with total funding of around $20 million, according to Crunchbase. It has a freemium user subscription model, similar to X.

As for MeWe this week, it seemed to find the connection to Facebook slightly offensive. "Unlike Facebook, we do not harvest our customers' data or operate any form of surveillance capitalism," Jeffrey S. Edell, MeWe's CEO, said in a statement to Business Insider. "Social media was meant to connect people, not harvest them. At MeWe, our members are valued as people, not turned into data points for sale."

I joined MeWe to see what it's like

I'm someone who loves to join any new flash-in-the-pan social app and spam my friends (looking back over my text exchanges with some friends, it's a long pathetic list of auto-generated invites to fallen soldiers like Houseparty, Squad, Cocoon, Gas). Yet, as I said, MeWe was not on my radar.

So I signed up. Here's what I found:

First of all, the signup page was unlike any other app I've joined. Instead of offering a simple "Create a new account," it offered a way to "Continue with Frequency" in a way that looked like when you can log into services with your Google account. I chose that and created an account.

As part of the signup flow, I had to pick topics I was interested in — generic things like "News," "Music," "Animals & Pets."

Once I signed up, I looked around. Now, I consider myself pretty adept at being able to navigate around a social app. Not to brag, but I was Friendster user No. 227. (I know, you're impressed).

But I found MeWe incredibly confusing and inscrutable. I looked for a way to sync contacts or invite friends, but couldn't. (I think this is due to its strict privacy, which frankly, great!) But it meant there basically wasn't anything on my main feed (a classic onboarding problem).

Poking around, MeWe has a section of groups and communities you can join based on interests — things like a group for metal detecting, homesteading, etc. When I looked around some of these, they seemed often dead (no posts since 2024), slightly spammy, or written in Chinese.

There's a reason for that last part: MeWe found some popularity during the Hong Kong protests of 2019 and 2020 due to its pro-privacy and anti-censorship stance as a Facebook alternative.

In the US, MeWe had a similar miniboom among a certain group of users who were disenchanted with Facebook in the early days of 2021.

Facebook had banned a quickly-growing group called "Stop the Steal" dedicated to discussing how Donald Trump had really won the 2020 election. After January 6, other groups and users on the topic were banned, and people fled to a variety of smaller apps — mainly better-known conservative-friendly apps like Parler, Gab, or Rumble, but also to MeWe.

When Business Insider reported on MeWe a few days after January 6, 2021, it had gained 200,000 new users in the days since Parler had been taken offline by Cloudflare. We wrote:

One glance into the app's many conservative groups reveals plenty of vitriol and misinformation similar to Parler's. "We all know the capital storming had Antifa and bad actors," one MeWe user wrote, repeating the misinformation that it wasn't Trump supporters that rioted but people who oppose fascism.

Look, I don't think anyone credibly thinks MeWe is a serious contender to competing with Facebook. As for how this plays in the FTC's antitrust case, well, I'm not sure.

I think Meta has a claim that other apps like TikTok and YouTube are competitors to Reels, but which apps are or aren't competitors isn't the only aspect of the antitrust case.

• Emojipasta are silly, innuendo-laded texts often sent as a chain. They're full of NSFW emojis — and popular.
• They're hard to make yourself, but AI tools can create them easily. Does that make them lose something?
• "A computer will never feel rage. A computer will never feel horny," one Redditor said.

As AI continues to make breakthroughs in live-saving medicine and anime facsimile, it threatens one of the greatest new art forms that has developed this century: the NSFW emoji chain text.

Here's some context in case you've never been sent one of these. This is the start of a rare safe-for-work example about the EZ-Pass scam texts that have been going around:

‼️‼️🚨🚨😱E-ZPASS 😌😵 FINAL 🎬😩💦❌ ❌REMINDER⏰⏰⏰🚨: YOU🫵🫵😉HAVE 🧐AN OUTSTANDING 🥳🤩👀😩TOLL‼️🚨💰💰🚗🚘‼️‼️🚨🚨😳😳😢😭 YOUR TOLL 🚗🫨 ACCOUNT 💲💰🧾🧾BALANCE🧘‍♀️⚖️⚖️ IS 🤨🤔🧐OUTSTANDING 😩🫨🫨‼️‼️

It goes on from there, but we'll cut it off for a family-friendly website.

These emojipasta texts are like chain letters, in theory. They're full of emojis and usually sexualized language. They're meant to be funny, not actually sexy. (I don't think anyone is sending these to someone they intend to seduce (if you somehow have, congrats to you).

Why do these exist, and where did they originate? Well, they're funny, so that's the why. And while the origins aren't clear, a lot of them seem to come from Reddit's r/emojipasta (based on the term "copypasta," internet slang for a text that gets passed around and copied).

The emojipasta subreddit is updated nearly daily — most are related to minor holidays or events, or sometimes based on requests for someone to make something new.

For example, a recent one celebrating the Ides of March included the line, "Caesar🥗 said 'et tu, BOOTEH🥺,' before he SASHAYED AWAY💃 from life🪦!"

An emojipasta about the new trade tariffs ended with a warning: "SEND ✉️ THIS TO 10 PATRIOTIC THICC 🍑 TRADE WARRIORS 🥵💪 AND YOU'LL GET A TAX CUT 💵✨. IGNORE IT, AND YOU'LL PAY DOUBLE AT THE STORE 🛍️😱‼️"

I've actually tried writing my own for events or inside jokes with friends. It's genuinely hard! I found myself copying aspects of other chain texts to get inspiration about where to put the 🍑 emojis.

Which is why these are a perfect place for AI to come in: The subreddit suggested an Emoji Pasta Generator, made by New York-based engineer Abhishyant Khare. The sparse webpage asks for a topic and then can reliably spit out an actually pretty good suggestive emoji pasta. (I tested it — it's really good.) Khare also made an iMessage extension.

"My friends and I were discussing who would be replaced by AI first as a joke, and then my friend Vivek sent one of these texts in our group chat," Khare told Business Insider. "I realized I could probably replace Vivek with AI since he mostly just sends these types of texts, and got to work building the emoji pasta maker, and the rest is history."

But does using AI take the fun out of it?

Seems like a smart use of AI, but are there ethical considerations when it comes to this suggestive art form? (And does having a computer generate it just take some of the fun out of it all?)

I asked the moderators of r/emojipasta what they thought about AI-generated texts and whether they were even allowed on the subreddit.

"We have discussed banning AI-generated content in here because, frankly, it seems lazy to use a bot instead of writing it yourself," said Drew Robinson, one of r/emojipasta's moderators. "However, so far, we haven't seen the need to outright ban it as a lot of the AI-generated content gets downvoted because frankly, it sucks."

Robinson conceded that some posts on the subreddit were probably made by AI and had even managed to get some upvotes.

There's still a strong tradition of human-crafted emojipasta.

For example, Bailey, a 28-year-old from the Seatle area, noticed the subreddit didn't have a good chain text to celebrate the Seattle Mariners baseball season opening day and was determined to make one himself.

Bailey (who requested not to use his last name so that he is not forever associated on the internet with baseball-related smut) did it the truly old-fashioned way, with a pencil and paper.

"Thought about an overall MLB one, but knew more jokes I could make with the Mariners," he said. "Did a first draft on a price of paper then showed a couple of my friends who suggested edits and helped add the emojis."

As I browsed through the subreddit, I started to notice some patterns. Some posts had the hallmarks of ChatGPT — the use of bullet points, or ones that merely interspersed emojis through an otherwise normal sentence, lacking the erratic capitalization and ribald puns that truly suggestive chain texts have.

Bailey's filthy Mariner's post stood out to me as particularly human — creative, suggestive, making full use of baseball-related innuendo, and full of emojis. It was somehow even more filthy than one a few days later about Hooters filing for bankruptcy.

Something's lost with bot-written NSFW text chains

In theory, these emojipasta are perfect for AI — they're labor-intensive and annoying for humans to do (finding all the emojis in your keyboard is a pain!), have a reliably predictable tone and verbiage, and rely on general knowledge of current and historical events.

And yet, it does seem something is lost if it's AI-written. For me, part of the humor is just knowing that someone spent time writing these — the "I can't believe someone did that" factor. Knowing it's as easy as a few words in a prompt box takes the magic out of it.

For Robinson, it's more existential: "It's not like these are particularly high-brow pieces of art," he said. "But at the same time, a computer will never feel rage. A computer will never feel horny."

• The Telsa Cybertruck is thrilling to many younger kids — it's a cool-looking weird big truck!
• There are even songs and books for kids about Cybertrucks.
• As Elon Musk and his cars become a political symbol, kids are blissfully unaware.

The Cybertruck has become a nexus point of public opinion about Elon Musk and DOGE, a 4-wheeled emblem of our divided country. Cybertrucks are being vandalized, and drivers are being flipped off. Owners who just thought it was a cool car are stuck with making some sort of political statement — whether they wanted to or not.

For kids, it's a different story. Kids love Cybertrucks.

This makes sense. First of all, kids love trucks! For a preschooler, passing by an active construction site is like being a VIP at Coachella.

The Cybertruck is big, it's distinctive. It's rare. Seeing one on the road or even in a parking lot is a head-turner. It looks like it was made in Minecraft or out of Legos. It's absolutely aesthetically thrilling for a demographic that can't yet tie shoes.

"My 6-year-old loves Teslas but has no idea who Musk is, and that's intentional," said Mandy Shobar, a parent of two boys in Castro Valley, California. Shobar herself is not a fan of Telsa's CEO for reasons that would make sense to other adults but not a kindergartener. Her older son, 9, is less excited about the Cybertruck. "He says they look 'glitchy.'"

Around the Business Insider office, parents also noted their kids were obsessed with Cybertrucks. My boss's first grader recently brought home a piece of art from school dedicated to the EV.

My own kids get excited when they see a Cybertruck. My son went through a phase when he was around 6 or 7 when he was fascinated by Elon Musk as a character, and even brought home a book from the school library about Teslas. (The book, from 2018, didn't include too much about Musk himself.)

Imagine this through a child's eyes: Elon Musk is the richest man in the world who makes rockets and cool-looking cars. How could you not be intrigued? Kids are obsessed with superlatives: the fastest, the biggest, the most. It's why everyone knows the blue whale is the biggest, and the cheetah is the fastest. Kids talk about Usain Bolt's speed with reverence and compare heights to the Burj Khalifa (which, to be honest, I only learned is the world's tallest building from my own kid).

Elon Musk is becoming less popular with adults

Meanwhile, the idea that Musk is controversial because of his political opinions and role in DOGE is not really something that is easily explained to a small child.

It wasn't too many years ago that Musk seemed like an unproblematic aspirational STEM figure for young kids. But with his involvement in the 2024 election and now DOGE, the public's perception of Musk has changed. According to Nate Silver's The Silver Bulletin, Musk's favorability polling switched from positive to negative last summer, and he's now less popular than ever — with 53.5% "unfavorable" ratings.

Tom Cook (no relation to Tim) isn't some Telsa hater — he previously owned a Model 3. He thinks the Cybertruck, however, is aesthetically unpleasing. "There are some technical aspects of it that are good (electrical components where Tesla does good engineering), but the nexus of cost/practicality/looks/association with [Musk] make it just impossible to ever take seriously," Cook told Business Insider.

Still, he was surprised when his 3-year-old daughter made a piece of Cybertruck art.

There exists a world of Cybertruck paraphrenia for kids. Mattel's Hot Wheels makes a classic pocket-sized Cybertruck (my kids have one) and a larger die-cast light-up Cybertruck for about $20.

On Amazon and other online stores, you can find a variety of other remote-controlled Cybertruck-shaped toys from various no-name brands. (It is unclear if some of these actually have licensing deals with Tesla as Mattel does.)

Tesla sells a $1,500 battery-operated ride-on Cybertruck for kids, similar to Power Wheels. It can fit two kids, suggested age range of 6 to 12. Telsa also makes a "Cyberquad" for kids ages 9 to 12, which is an ATV-style ride-on toy, selling for $1,650.

There's even a world of media about Cybertrucks for kids. One person told me her 5-year-old truck-loving kid has discovered a song on YouTube Kids he plays on repeat. (I dare anyone to try to not tap your toes to this banger.)

There are non-fiction books for kids about the Cybertruck, not unlike the one on Telsa my son once brought home.

There's also a picture book, The Ugly Truckling: The Story of My Cybertruck." The Amazon summary reads:

When a dad brings home a Cybertruck, his daughter is less than impressed. With its unconventional and futuristic appearance, the truck seems like an ugly duckling in a world of familiar cars. But as the little girl begins to learn more about the Cybertruck's capabilities and its potential to help the world, she begins to see it in a whole new light.

For the parents who find the Cybertruck to be a totem of something they disagree with politically, it may be slightly jarring to see their kids squeal with glee when they see one cruising down the street.

But there are lots of things that kids love that can make parents cringe: room-temperature apple juice, "Baby Shark," the idea that being asked to put on shoes and coat in a timely manner is an affront to human dignity.

None of the parents I heard from who don't always share the same opinions about the Cybertruck put too much worry into it. To them, it was an amusing passing phase that reminded them of the vast gulf between how a child sees the world and how we see it.

Admittedly, I spend a lot of my day thinking about Elon Musk, and I wish I could have the free wonder to see a cool-looking car and just go, "Wow!"

• I placed an order at Temu just before "Liberation Day" tariffs were announced — as a last hurrah.
• Since then, there's been a lot of on-again, off-again tariff news.
• Will I get walloped with a $75 duty fee on my $8 order? Pray for me!

The past few days with tariffs have been an emotional roller coaster. Not because I checked my 401(k), but because I placed an order from Temu last week — and its fate seems to be hanging in the balance.

In anticipation of "Liberation Day," when tariffs would go into effect, I placed one last Temu order. I figured it might be my final chance to get ridiculously low-priced plastic junk shipped straight from China through the mail (plus, I have a kid's birthday coming up, and I was in the market for some new bubble machine toys).

I snuck in my order just under the wire — and the next day, tariffs shocked the stock market. (Since then, there have been a few other shocks, like on Wednesday when Donald Trump delayed most tariffs for 90 days, except on China.)

Temu's business isn't like say, Apple's, where tariffs could affect the importing to the US of an internationally-made iPhone. Temu ships orders to customers directly from China, using the "de minimis" exception — a longtime loophole that had allowed packages with a value under $800 to be mailed to the US without being subject to duties.

Trump signed an executive order last week ending the de minimis exception. That means packages coming into the US are expected to be subject to a duty, even if their value is under $800.

His initial order meant that these Temu-type packages (ones that would have previously been de minimis) would now be subject to a $25 fee per item, or a fee of 30% of their value. (It's unclear if you'd have to pay the higher or lower of those two options.)

But this week, Trump tripled down — now it's $75 per item or 90% of an order's value.

What do Trump's moves mean for my Temu order?

Yikes. That makes my $8 bubble camera turn into a pretty bad deal.

Thankfully, this all is expected to go into effect starting on May 2nd, and my package is expected to arrive before then. I know, I know, you're practically weeping with relief for me.

According to Temu's website, my order has cleared customs and is on its way — with an estimated delivery window of April 10-17.

What does this all mean for Temu's business — and the business of Shein, a Chinese company that also has used the de minimis exception? Well, it's not looking great, I'll say that.

Temu is running a "Temu Week" promotion at the top of its site and app, which it's done before to compete with Amazon's Prime Week. (It wasn't immediately clear if prices were lower on certain items as part of Temu Week.) I asked Temu if this was an already-scheduled promotion or if it was in response to the tariffs, and I didn't get a response.

Temu has already been diversifying its shipping supply lines, with local warehouses in the US that would theoretically neutralize the loss of the de minimis loophole. But now, with these new heavy tariffs, items being shipped into the warehouse from China would likely be hit with the charges.

Based on how quickly things have changed over the last week, it's hard to guess exactly what this will mean long-term, either for a $5 gizmo from Temu or a $1,000 iPhone.

My advice? You've got a few days left to order worry-free from Temu before you come close to that May 2 deadline. Do as your conscience sees fit.

• It sure seems like there are a lot of baby boomers attending anti-Donald Trump protests.
• Are boomers worried mostly about Social Security and retirement as tariffs tank markets?
• Or is there something else going on? I asked a professor who studies protests for his take.

I was looking through photos from the anti-Trump and anti-DOGE protests across the US over the weekend, and I couldn't help but notice something: There sure was a lot of gray hair.

That struck me as different from what I remember about recent protests of the past — like Black Lives Matter and Israel/Gaza protests, where younger people seemed to be leading the charge.

I'm apparently not the only person who's noticed. On r/50501, one of the Reddit forums for organizing the weekend's protests, someone posted, "We really got to hand it to the boomers."

"I saw three pretty large protests today around where I lived," the person said. "Guess who showed up and gave the biggest display of support? Boomers."

My colleague Lakshmi Varanasi flagged something similar recently, too. She reported on two "Tesla takedown" protests last month in Michigan:

I noticed that the crowds in Ann Arbor and Troy were primarily people over the age of 65, white, and retired from jobs that depended on public funding as teachers, professors at local universities, and social workers.

Business Insider reporters who checked out this past weekend's protests from locations around the country also noticed a similar trend: "Many said they were most worried about the economy and their retirement investments, which have dwindled in tandem with Trump's tariff announcements."

Anecdotally, I've noticed something to this effect in the suburbs of New York City where I live — the small smatterings of protests in town squares over the last month or two seem to be largely made of women over 60. (This may have to do with the overall age demographics of the suburbs, so I didn't read too much into it.)

Still, I have a few theories as to why so many boomers are showing up to protest.

The first is that baby boomers (who are generally 61 to 79 years old) are either at or near retirement age. They're the most concerned with the fate of Social Security and their retirement portfolios. Those two things have been thrown into chaos. Elon Musk has referred to Social Security as "the biggest Ponzi scheme," although he's also said valid recipients could get more benefits once he's done rooting out waste.

And the new tariffs have sent the stock market into a nosedive over the last week, which could hurt the retirement accounts of people who are actually retired. If prices on all kinds of stuff rise, that also hurts retirees on a fixed income. Keep in mind, lots of boomers love Temu.

But let's be honest: A 65-year-old Trump voter who looked at their investment account in dismay on Friday wasn't going to decide to show up to the anti-Trump protests on Saturday. Baby boomers, like any generation, aren't a monolith. (Boomers voted equally for Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in the 2024 election.) And the people who attend a protest have probably held the same political orientation for decades. This isn't a case where the last few weeks have radicalized and changed the minds of all boomers.

Yet I do think it's possible that recent events activated some sleeper cells — older Democrats who had stayed home for the student Gaza demonstrations or the 2020 Black Lives Matter marches.

I asked Robert Cohen, professor of history and social studies at NYU whose work focuses on the history of protest movements, for his take on all of this. He warned against making any sweeping generalizations.

Cohen acknowledged that baby boomers who had lived through — or participated in — the protest movements of the '60s and '70s may, in fact, have a slightly different perspective and rationale for the anti-Trump protests today.

"What does 'Make America Great Again' mean? It means America minus the social changes of the '60s," Cohen said.

Consider some of the things boomers take pride in their generation pushing for: civil rights, women's rights, environmental causes — they may feel an urgency to come to the rescue of those things being under threat.

A generation that attended concerts for Live Aid, the Concert for Bangladesh, and made a Christmas song with the lyrics "Do they know it's Christmastime at all?" might have a different perspective about the implications of pulling USAID out of developing nations where part of its work was addressing global hunger.

People over 65 are the most reliable voting bloc, and that may be meaningful here.

"It's really harder for [politicians] to dismiss them both because they vote more, but also because they've been around, and it's not like some kind of a youthful exuberance," Cohen said.

I should once again give a disclaimer that any sweeping generalization about generations is always going to come up short. (Trump himself is a boomer, after all.) And all of my evidence about the age demographic of demonstrators this weekend is purely anecdotal.

But if our image of a protester from the last few years was of a young person with blue hair, perhaps we need to update to a retiree in capri pants and a "world's best grandma" shirt.

• In anticipation of tariffs, I made a hasty last-minute panic buy at Temu.
• Donald Trump has said he'll close the loophole that lets Temu and Shein ship directly to customers without duties.
• Will American consumers like me be able to break their addiction to cheap foreign goods? Who knows!

Last night, as "Liberation Day" was taking effect and the tariffs on imports were being revealed, I did what any American might do in a crisis: I panic-shopped.

I hit up what I thought might be most likely to go extinct: the sweet, sweet low prices on fast fashion and junky plastic that comes straight from China. So, as I read over tweets that were speculating that the tariff rates were determined by ChatGPT, I went onto Temu and frantically placed an order. One last hurrah.

As I placed an order for several bubble wands and machines (I have a child's birthday coming up, so this was a somewhat intentional shop, admittedly), I couldn't help but wonder: Wow, is this it?

Will this be the end of a $2.74 mousepad that leaks goo all over me (which happened with an actual mousepad I bought from Temu)?

Is this the end of kids making fun of their parents for becoming "Temu victims?"

Is this the end of Temu being used as a new slang insult?

Right now, I'm not sure.

I checked the prices of the items I bought late Wednesday again on Thursday morning, post-tariff announcement. (It's not clear when exactly each tariff will start to take effect.) So far, no change in prices. The Temu website had no pop-ups or banners or warnings that prices might change due to the new tariffs.

Temu is in a bit of a unique position compared to other consumer goods you might buy that were made in China. Temu and fast-fashion retailer Shein's whole business is shipping your order directly from China, using the de minimus exemption — an old law that allows items under $800 to be shipped to the US duty-free.

Basically, if Walmart imports T-shirts made in China, it has to pay tariffs, which will likely be passed onto me in the price tag when I buy one at the store. But if I order a single T-shirt from Shein, it ships directly to me with no duty taxes at all — which is one of the ways Temu and Shein were able to keep prices so low.

So, you might think that Temu would be uniquely spared from the tariffs. But Trump just signed an executive order that would close that de miminis loophole, and add on either a 30% duty or a flat $25 fee (which would go up to $50 by June 1).

The White House's official announcement of the order, which is set to go into effect May 2, says that this is to stop the flow of illegal synthetic opioids like fentanyl that are shipping into the US from China through the mail. I don't know all that much about the illegal drug trade, but I always assumed the margins are fairly healthy; it may be an industry able to absorb a tariff.

Hopefully, my Temu order will arrive before May, and I'll have been able to sneak under the wire with my last reckless sprint of consumerist impulse. Am I proud of this? Absolutely not. Trust me, I feel as bad as I should.

(The announcement from the White House was rough for Temu's parent company, PPD Holdings, and others, like Alibaba, whose stocks plummeted on Thursday.)

I have no idea what will happen with Temu and Shein or other retailers that have transformed their industries in the last few years by offering unbeatable prices. Will consumers finally kick their habit of hyperconsumption? Will it put these companies out of business if shoppers have to pay big duty fees? No clue!

Right now, we're in a weird moment where it's not totally clear what's going to happen (although it seems … probably "bad.") I only tell you how I feel:

• People are replying to posts on X — asking Grok: "Is this true?"
• It's a new form of dunking on someone on X, and it's making the old Twitter an even weirder place.
• There's a limit to how useful a chatbot like Grok can be on social platforms — and we're seeing it.

Lately, I've noticed something surprising on X: People are actually using Grok. Like, a lot.

Before I describe why this is kind of weird — and making X kind of weird — I should give a disclaimer that I generally find X to be worse than it used to be in both specific and vague ways.

I don't think Grok is to blame; it's more the boring reasons you've probably heard before: a lot of the lively and funny users I used to enjoy have quit the platform, the remaining users seem to be more combative, the "For you" feed is dominated by clickbaity viral video chum, there's a lot of spam and porn.

The thing that I've noticed outside all that stuff is this new phenomenon of asking Grok questions in a reply to a post. Typically, a person is asking Grok — Elon Musk's ChatGPT competitor —to explain the context of a tweet or to verify if something in the tweet is true.

Here's a made-up example of the kind of stuff I see:

@PersonA: The moon died because it was vaccinated

@PersonB: @grok, is this true?

@grok: The moon is not alive and, therefore, cannot be vaccinated.

When I describe it like that, it sounds very normal and useful, right? Well, in practice — as with a lot of things connected to LLMs — it sort of makes things … just weird.

How Grok responds

I've spent some time browsing the "Replies" tab of @Grok, which is a fascinating firehose of all the replies to various things people are asking it. (Note: I'm talking about publicly asking @Grok as a reply to a post on X — not the private conversations you can have with Grok.)

What I tend to see a lot: people responding to a political post with some sort of fact-check. The topics tend to be the kinds of things that some people might want to stir up fights about: Trump's policies, the history of Jews, immigration, Elon Musk, and a lot of questions related to Hitler. (There's also a lot of stuff that isn't in English, so I can't say what that's about.)

One recent "fact-check" came in response to a post from Musk himself:

(For this meme, Grok said no, it wasn't factual. I asked the person who runs the @Dispropganda account if they knew in advance they were going to get that answer, and they said, "I didn't know for sure, but I suspected.")

In theory, this is good, right? Finally, people are able to get fact-checks on posts and access to unbiased opinions!

But what Grok seems to be used for more often is a rhetorical cudgel, a debate tactic. It's not being used for earnest requests for information but as a new tool in the dunk utility belt.

I've seen people use it on posts they know aren't true — and are purposely getting Grok to point that out.

Asking Grok to weigh in on someone's tweet has its own passive-aggressive vibe. Instead of engaging the original poster, you're appealing to this automated thing.

The fact that people seem to be using it during debates on heated topics where people generally have entrenched ideas suggests that people aren't using it as a helpful resource during lively discussions. They're using it to fight and argue, to insult the other person. They're using Grok as an AI dunk assistant.

And instead of elevating the level of discourse on X with more truth and utility, it's just dragging it down with more nasty arguing and petty trolling. (X didn't immediately reply to a request for comment on this story.)

AI has its limits on social media

I'm not a total AI skeptic — I believe there can be some amazing things happening quite soon. But as far as getting an AI bot to engage with you on social media? I really think we're already seeing the limits here. It might be mildly useful in some limited instances, but it's not making the overall X experience better and certainly, in some cases, is making it slightly worse.

I don't mean to be sentimental, but part of the beauty of a text-based social platform is that you CAN just reply to people and engage with them, and, yes, even argue with them! Or if you see something that needs context, you can ask for it or just keep scrolling.

I saw someone ask Grok to explain the context of some deep stan lore tweet about Selena Gomez and Justin Bieber, and I kind of felt sad in a way. Back in MY day, you needed to actually spend tons of time watching the strange motions of the Seleners to be able to understand their garbled system of beliefs — and there was some beauty to that.

Now, you can have Grok — or another chatbot — just spit it out. I'm not sure that's a totally good thing.