• Shawna Lum moved to Barcelona from Los Angeles after several failed relationships.
• She said the dating scene differed in Spain because men were "more emotionally available."
• The 31-year-old has now been married to a European she met in Barcelona for three years.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Shawna Lum, 31, of Barcelona. She runs a company that offers advice to would-be expats. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I sustained neck and spine injuries when I was doing CrossFit a few years ago. They still cause me a lot of pain. My Spanish husband, Dan, 31, goes out of his way to try to ease the symptoms.

We'll be in a long line at a grocery store, and he'll gently massage my back because I've been standing for so long. He's always kissing me in front of people on the street. He's not afraid of PDA.

Most of the men I dated in the US before I moved from Los Angeles to Europe eight years ago were uptight about it. One brushed my hand away when I reached over to hold his hand in a restaurant. Another was clearly uncomfortable when I ruffled his hair.

In the US, the guys I met were uptight. If I wanted to bring up something emotional that happened in my life, they weren't available to talk about it. Three out of four of my serious boyfriends ended our relationship by text message.

The other dumped me while I was grieving the loss of a beloved aunt. He distanced himself because he was clearly not comfortable with consoling me. In 2016, I started to get depressed that I was never going to be in a relationship that worked out.

I'd spent part of the previous year in Spain as part of my college degree, and I felt happy and carefree. I decided to quit my traineeship as a manager for an oil and gas company and enroll in a master's program at a business school in Barcelona.

I got to know people at Meetup events

I mostly wanted a challenge and a change of scene. Still, my motivation was partly fueled by my search for romance. I thought it would be fun to meet some European guys.

Dating felt less forced in Spain. Instead of going to a flashy place for dinner, I enjoyed doing more adventurous things with people, like cycling or hiking all day.

Meanwhile, I turned to Meetup, a website that organizes trips and events. At events such as volleyball tournaments, yoga workshops, and ceramics projects, you mingle with like-minded people. It's a great way of making connections, whether friendly or romantic.

Another difference between dating in Spain and the US is that more of the guys I dated seemed ready for commitment. If I dated someone and it became an ongoing relationship, they'd call me their "girlfriend" because it was exclusive.

I met Dan, who was born and raised in Malaga, on the Costa del Sol, when I was riding my bike in 2017. I was impressed because he was fluent in Spanish, English, and Portuguese. We played ping pong, went dancing, and meditated together. He was open and talked about his emotions in a way I'd never heard from my ex-boyfriends.

We moved in together, and I got a "partnership visa" in 2018. I employed a lawyer, but it was relatively easy to obtain once I proved cohabitation. I switched from teaching English to freelance work in digital marketing, mostly building websites for American clients.

People from different generations spend time together

Dan, a DJ and music producer, and I got married in October 2021. Sadly, my father was diagnosed with a terminal illness during COVID. Dan supported us throughout. He prioritizes family and community — a common theme in Spain. The different generations mix well. One of the nicest things is seeing kids, young people, and older folks strolling together along La Rambla or gathering in the plazas in Barcelona.

My relocation experience inspired me to set up my company, MoveOverSeasNow, focusing on Europe and South America. I coach Americans on everything from obtaining citizenship by descent to navigating health systems and financial planning for their move.

I deal with many couples but plenty of singles, too. Many of them are inspired by tales of finding romance. While I can't guarantee they'll meet the partner of their dreams in their adopted country, I tell them they'll have fun looking.

Do you have an interesting story to share with Business Insider about moving to a different country? Please send details to this reporter at [email protected].

• In "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter," Natalia moves away from her adoptive parents.
• The DePaul family, who were interested in adopting Natalia when she was a child, took her in.
• Natalia now lives with the DePaul family in New York.

In "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter," Natalia Grace Mans leaves her adoptive parents to live with a new family — the DePauls.

In the second episode of the documentary series, which premiered on Investigation Discovery and Max on Monday, Nicole DePaul, 49, and her daughter Mackenzie, 19, travel to Nashville to pick Natalia up from church without her parents' knowledge. They then bring her to live with them in upstate New York where Nicole lives with her husband Vince DePaul, 51.

The DePauls are a family of little people, and Nicole and Natalia both have the same form of dwarfism, producer Shannon Evangelista told The Hollywood Reporter. They also have a connection dating back to Natalia's childhood, when the family considered adopting her.

Here's everything you need to know about the DePauls, and where Natalia lives now.

The DePaul family tried to adopt Natalia as a child

The DePauls were one of three families interested in adopting Natalia Grace in 2009. As part of that process, they met with Natalia at a museum and had her over to their home several times.

Natalia and Mackenzie got along well as children and bonded when Natalia visited for holidays. After Christmas, however, the adoption fell through and they weren't able to see each other again.

"Things just got really messy with the attorneys. It had nothing to do with Natalia. It was heartbreaking," Nicole said in "Natalia Speaks," the second installment of the series that aired in 2024.

Nicole says in a confessional in episode one of "The Final Chapter" that she still thought about the adoption not going through. She even kept a picture of Natalia and her daughter as kids, as well as Natalia's Christmas stocking.

"There's a lot of guilt because, well, maybe there was something we could have fought harder when we tried to adopt Natalia," she says in episode one of "The Final Chapter."

As the two previous seasons of "The Curious Case of Natalia Grace" recounted, after the DePauls' adoption attempt fell through, Natalia ultimately wound up being adopted by Kristine and Michael Barnett, the Indiana couple who later claimed she was really an adult posing as a child, legally re-aged her, and then left her on her own in an apartment when they moved away to Canada. Natalia went to live with Cynthia and Antwon Mans, another Indiana couple who had fostered and adopted multiple children, while the Barnetts were charged with neglect in relation to her abandonment (Michael was eventually acquitted, and the case against Kristine was dropped).

Nicole DePaul helped Natalia leave the Mans family

In "The Final Chapter," Natalia Grace's boyfriend Neil contacts Nicole on Natalia's behalf, asking her to help Natalia leave the Mans family, who had formally adopted her in 2023 after she'd lived with them for a decade. Though Nicole's husband, Vince, was hesitant about bringing Natalia into their home, Nicole agreed to help Natalia.

In episode two of "The Final Chapter," Nicole and Mackenzie pick Natalia up from her church without the Mans family's knowledge and bring her to live with them in upstate New York. Despite leaving her parents, Natalia's attachment to them led to some friction between herself and Nicole.

In the show, Nicole and Mackenzie also speak about the effect that Natalia being in their home had on the family. Nicole said in a confessional that she saw her daughter "a lot less" than she previously had, and Mackenzie said that Natalia's presence made the "environment kind of stressful."

Now, Shannon Evangelista, one of the docuseries' producers, says that the DePauls are Natalia's "No. 1 advocates." Nicole told People that she has no plans to adopt Natalia, who is now legally an adult, and though their relationship hasn't always been smooth, she trusts her.

"Did she probably do weird things in the past? Yeah," Nicole told People. "[But] when you take in a child, you take that child as your own. You don't just get rid of them when they don't fit into your puzzle."

Natalia says in "The Final Chapter" that while she regretted the manner in which she left her parents, she appreciated that living with the DePauls allowed her to "explore."

"Learning everything that I have about how to live with my dwarfism — it's been a great experience," she told People. "I love it. I mean, of course, I still miss my siblings and everything. But I love it. I feel free."

Nicole and Vince DePaul did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"The Curious Case of Natalia Grace: The Final Chapter" will finish airing on Investigation Discovery and Max on January 7.

• Tech entrepreneur Mike Johns got stuck in a wayward Waymo while headed to the airport last month.
• The malfunctioning autonomous car drove in loops around a parking lot for several minutes.
• A Waymo spokesperson told BI the problem has since been addressed by a software update.

Mike Johns was on his way to the airport last month when he decided to try something he'd only done once before: take a Waymo.

However, as soon as the autonomous vehicle picked him up, Johns told Business Insider he knew something was amiss.

"When I got in, the car went in a circle," Johns said. "At first, it was no big deal —  I figured it was gonna turn or do something — but, by circle number two, that's when I'm feeling like it's a prank."

The Waymo Johns ordered on December 9 to take him to the Scottsdale, Arizona airport back home to Los Angeles then looped around the parking lot again and again.

Johns, an AI consultant and the founder and CEO of the brand strategy agency Digital Mind State recorded the incident and his call with customer service on his phone. He posted about the experience on LinkedIn, writing: "My Waymo experience sucked."

"By lap number four, I knew this ain't a prank — and because the circle was going around this little island, I felt the nausea, the dizziness, start to happen," Johns told Business Insider. "That's the part that I really didn't like. And at that point, you know, I started to think 'What the hell's going on?'"

A Waymo spokesperson told Business Insider the incident delayed Johns' trip by a little over five minutes and that the looping issue was addressed by a regularly scheduled software update. It's unclear when the update was issued.

The spokesperson, however, declined to answer questions about how often such malfunctions are reported or about Waymo's procedure for identifying and fixing problems before they impact passengers.

Johns ultimately made it safely to the airport and to his flight on time after the Waymo got back on track. He did not have to pay for the trip.

A history of wayward Waymos

It's not the first time a Waymo has maneuvered itself in unexpected — and unwanted — ways. Passengers have regularly reported incidents since Waymo, a subsidiary of Alphabet, launched its driverless taxi service to the public in 2020.

In 2021, a self-driving Waymo went rogue and blocked traffic in Arizona in an incident a YouTuber documented from the backseat, BI previously reported.

In 2023, a traffic jam made up of a dozen Waymo vehicles caused gridlock in Phoenix. A software glitch was to blame, The Arizona Mirror reported.

And last September, a stalled Waymo blocked Vice President Kamala Harris' motorcade, per The San Francisco Standard.

The behavior of Waymo's driverless cars has also made headlines for baffling first responders at emergency scenes, blocking public transit, and refusing to pull over for police.

"In that moment, it feels almost like a hijack. That was the longest seven minutes — especially when you're not expecting it," Johns said. "It's a really crazy feeling because it's already when you're in an autonomous vehicle. It's this ghost in the machine scenario."

A lack of liability

While troubling, Johns has not indicated any plans to pursue legal action. Even if he did, Los Angeles personal attorney Jordan Peagler told BI that it's unlikely Johns has any legal recourse over the incident.

"He likely signed an arbitration agreement as part of the user terms of service so he won't be able to sue," Peagler said.

The Waymo terms of service include limitations of liability and an indemnification clause that protects the company "from and against any loss, liability, claim, demand, damages, expenses or costs" arising from users' experience with the service.

Moreover, Waymo does not "represent or warrant that our Services or servers are free of viruses or other harmful components. You assume the entire risk as to the quality and performance of the Services," the terms state.

Technically, Johns could have a personal injury claim if he missed his flight and had to incur additional expenses or for physical suffering if he became nauseous, Peagler said. However, "it would be so trivial that no attorney would pursue it."

Peagler added that self-driving rideshare vehicles are such a new and developing field that there is no set standard for personal injury yet. Moreover, he said that a malfunction would have to substantially impair the vehicle's operation to rise to the level of negligence.

Johns said by publicizing his experience, he isn't looking to stop Waymos from accepting passengers, but he does want the company to be more transparent about these types of malfunctions and the technology's limitations.

The Waymo terms of service do not, at the time of publication, warn of potential vehicle malfunctions or any risks of using the driverless technology.

"It's a new world that we've never known before and autonomous vehicles are ushering in a new economy," Johns said. "And I'm super all for it, but the big thing that we have to be aware of is the fact that we're all a part of the experiment — and we're paying to be a part of the experiment."

• Throughout human history, cities have been abandoned or reclaimed by nature.
• Sometimes people rediscover these cities using technology or by a stroke of luck.
• These five cities, buried under rock, ice, or vegetation, have resurfaced.

Humans have been building cities for centuries, but they don't always last. In some cases, nature has reclaimed them. Other times, people simply built on top of older structures.

Technology, including lidar and radar, helps uncover some lost or abandoned cities. Warming temperatures and drier conditions have caused other towns to resurface.

Here are five hidden cities buried by rock, snow, or vegetation that people have rediscovered.

Ice-penetrating radar recently captured an image of a frozen town in Greenland.

In April 2024, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists accidentally caught a glimpse of the Cold War past, buried 100 feet under Greenland's frozen landscape.

Over 900 miles north of Nuuk, the country's most populous city, there was once a secret town of Army workers. Now the only way to see the frozen city, known as Camp Century, is through ice-penetrating radar.

"It's sort of like an ultrasound for ice sheets, where we're mapping out the bottom of the ice sheet," Chad Greene, the cryospheric scientist who took the picture, told Business Insider.

While there are other radar images of Camp Century, this newer device, the UAVSAR (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar), is more powerful. "That is the highest-resolution image that we've ever gotten to see at this camp," Greene said.

Camp Century was a military base that was supposed to operate as a small town while holding Cold War secrets.

Remote and inhospitable, northern Greenland seemed like an ideal place for a Cold War military base. The US Army Corps of Engineers started constructing Camp Century 26 feet below the ice in 1959.

They dug tunnels large enough for an electric railroad to connect to a supply base over 150 miles away. The 2-mile-long complex, powered by a nuclear reactor, was large enough for 200 soldiers. So they didn't miss the comforts of home, they would have access to a gym, game rooms, library, and barber shop, Popular Science reported in 1960, while the base was still under construction.

The Army told journalists that scientists used Camp Century as a base for collecting and researching the world's first ice core samples. While that was true, the frozen city was also part of Project Iceworm. That mission, to launch ballistic missiles from under the ice, was kept under wraps and was eventually scrapped.

Army officials thought Camp Century would remain buried forever, but that now seems unlikely.

The Army's expectation for Camp Century after abandoning it in 1967 was that snowfall would keep it "preserved for eternity," a group of engineers wrote in a 1962 journal article. Over the decades, dozens of feet of ice and snow have further covered the base. The problem is that warming temperatures could reverse that trend.

If Camp Century melts, thousands of gallons of radioactive waste could surface as well. A 2016 study predicted the area will start losing ice by 2090.

Lidar data helped researchers find thousands of Maya structures in Mexico.

Luke Auld-Thomas was deep in a Google search when he hit the jackpot … for a graduate student in archaeology, at least. It was lidar data for environmental analysis, but he was interested in what was under the trees.

To capture that kind of information, a plane flies over an area and the lidar sensor emits millions of pulses of light that are used to measure the distance between the plane and the objects below. Some light slips between the tree canopy to the ground, which can reveal forgotten structures.

The dataset covered an area of Campeche in Southeastern Mexico where Lowland Maya civilizations once flourished. However, the area is so dense with trees, it's impossible to see structures from the sky. Archaeologists had never studied this particular spot, so Auld-Thomas wasn't sure what the data would show.

It turned out that there were thousands of structures under the leaves.

"The locals were aware of the ruins nearby, but the scientific community had no idea," Marcello Canuto, a Tulane University professor and Auld-Thomas' advisor, told Business Insider.

The researchers were surprised to find one of the most densely populated settlements at the time.

When Auld-Thomas and Marcello started looking at the lidar data, they were surprised to see an entire city, packed with buildings. It may have been home to 30,000 to 50,000 people between 750 and 850 CE.

The city covered around 6 square miles. The team found over 6,700 structures, including houses, plazas, temple pyramids, and a ballcourt. Some areas were dense while others were more rural, Canuto said.

"There's also causeways, like roads, terraces, hydraulic canals, reservoirs, things that suggest that the landscape is being modified for a series of reasons," he said, including transportation and growing food.

Based on the city's scope, Canuto said it may have served as a regional capital that would have been home to elites or a royal family.

The researchers called it Valeriana, after a nearby lagoon.

Scientists still haven't visited Valeriana.

Right now, everything the researchers know about Valeriana comes from the lidar data. That information can help see the size and shape of buildings and the size of the city, but they need to visit the site to learn more.

"What lidar doesn't tell you is what's below the surface," Canuto said. The Maya may have buried some objects or structures, or soil may have covered them.

Canuto said many of the stone buildings have likely crumbled over the centuries. They may be decorated or have important architectural features that lidar can't reveal.

While Canuto isn't planning to go to Valeriana himself, he hopes researchers from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History will study the site.

"That's the point of open data is to say, 'Look, it's open to everybody, so make use of it,'" he said.

A Nevada drought uncovered a ghost town.

A decades-long megadrought continues to bake the Southwestern US.

In the early 1980s, Lake Mead, the Hoover Dam's reservoir, was nearing its full capacity of 9.3 trillion gallons of water. In 2022, it was at its lowest level since 1937, when it was first filling up, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

Satellite images showed a "bathtub ring" of mineralization where water previously covered the shore. A once-wide section of the lake narrowed and then disappeared in the past 20 years.

As the evaporating water revealed the bed below, the remnants of an abandoned town began to emerge.

A small town had to make way for the Hoover Dam.

In 1928, President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill ordering the construction of what would become the Hoover Dam. It was completed in 1936, causing the Colorado River to start rising.

As water pooled in valleys, Lake Mead began to form. Unfortunately for the residents of St. Thomas, Nevada, they were right in its path.

Mormons settled the town in 1865, though most burned their homes and moved after a dispute over taxes, according to the National Park Service. By the 1880s, newcomers had found the town, which would eventually become home to around 500 people.

When the river water started flooding, the town had everything from a school to a post office to an ice cream shop.

In 1838, the last resident escaped by boat.

"St. Thomas, for a long time, you couldn't get to without scuba diving," Michael Green, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas history professor, told The Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2019.

The drought changed that.

St. Thomas is a symbol of climate change.

St. Thomas started peeking through the disappearing lake in 2002. Walls, foundations, bits of metal, and broken glass litter the earth now.

The town reemerged in 1945 and 1963 but the lake swallowed it up again. It's unclear when that may happen again because climate change is fueling water loss in the Colorado River, a 2023 study found.

Lake Mead rose 16 feet in 2024 after coming dangerously close to the "dead pool" level, when the Hoover Dam would no longer be able to release water downstream to Arizona and California, SFGate reported.

Archaeologists found a limestone cave leading to an enormous underground city in Turkey.

Midyat, in southeastern Turkey, has long held religious significance, as evidenced by its monasteries and churches, some of which were built in the 6th century.

In 2020, researchers on an excavation project unexpectedly found an entrance to a sprawling subterranean city, Agence France-Presse reported in 2024. Its construction was even older than the above-ground churches, dating back almost 2,000 years.

The city's inhabitants, possibly fearing persecution, fled underground and created an entire world.

As many as 60,000 people may have lived in the city.

Tunnels carved into the rock connect dozens of rooms in the underground city, known as Matiate. Researchers found coins, human and animal bones, and areas for storing food and wine, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2022.

People occupied the site for hundreds of years and had many reasons for seeking shelter under ground.

"To protect themselves from the climate, enemies, predators and diseases, people took refuge in these caves, which they turned into an actual city," Mervan Yavuz, the Midyat conservation director, told AFP.

Some may have been looking for a place to safely practice their religions, Yavuz added. "Pagans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, all these believers contributed to the underground city of Matiate."

Tourists may start visiting the underground city soon.

Workers have only excavated a tiny fraction of Matiate, which covers an estimated 9 million square feet.

"Our aim is to gradually uncover the entire underground city and open it to tourists," excavation leader Gani Tarkan told Daily Sabah last year.

Eventually, Matiate could rival the size and popularity of another of Turkey's underground cities, Derinkuyu.

Disappearing chickens helped a farmer locate the underground city of Derinkuyu.

In 1963, a man in the Cappadocia region of Turkey kept losing chickens during renovations on his basement, the BBC reported in 2022. They would slip through a gap in the wall and disappear. It turned out the wall concealed a tunnel to a long-forgotten city.

Located nearly 280 feet under the ground, the cavernous rooms and tunnels were once home to 20,000 people.

The region's stony spires hide 18 levels of living space connected by tunnels.

Cappadocia's rock is made from volcanic ash and forms natural spires. Known as tuff, the rock is easy to carve and shape, which may have helped residents build the underground tunnels and dwellings.

The city is ancient, with some estimates of its age at around 3,000 years. In 370 BCE, Xenophon of Athens described a site that seemed to match what's now known as Derinkuyu.

After its rediscovery, archaeologists and others began excavating Derinkuyu, eventually finding over 600 openings leading to the city. Storage rooms, stables, and schools covered 171 square miles. There was a well for water and ventilation shafts bringing in fresh air.

While residents didn't seem to live underground permanently, they could hide from violence or harsh weather for months at a time, the BBC reported.

Derinkuyu is now a tourist draw.

In the 1920s, Cappadocian Greeks left the city behind after the Greco-Turkish War. They likely knew about the metropolis beneath their feet but took that knowledge to Greece.

Following Derinkuyu's rediscovery, it became a huge draw for the region.

Visitors can now explore several levels of Derinkuyu to see how people sought refuge for hundreds of years in the claustrophobic caves.

• A brush fire erupted in Pacific Palisades amid a powerful windstorm that's set to get stronger.
• The Palisades Fire quickly grew to more than 700 acres, prompting mandatory evacuations in the area.
• Local reports showed people abandoning cars and fleeing on foot amid traffic gridlock.

A major brush fire erupted in the Pacific Palisades, an affluent neighborhood of Los Angeles, in the first hours of a powerful windstorm on Tuesday.

The Palisades Fire broke out around 10:30 a.m. Pacific Time and quickly ballooned. As of 2:20 p.m. PT, the fire had spread across 772 acres.

Mandatory evacuation orders were issued for the area all the way down to the Pacific Ocean.

Westwood Recreation Center was open to evacuees and their small animals as of Tuesday afternoon.

Live footage on ABC7 showed houses burning Tuesday afternoon, though no official counts of damaged structures have been released.

Further evacuation warnings prompted residents to prepare to flee, or to flee early if they have pets or need extra time to evacuate.

These warnings covered the Topanga Canyon area and an additional swath of the hills down to La Costa Beach. Warnings and orders also covered the entire region between Santa Monica and Malibu as of Tuesday at 2 p.m. PT.

The fire could spread further and grow stronger as extreme winds in the area are forecast to peak in the evening through Wednesday morning. As winds pick up, humidity is set to decrease.

"Just about everything is going to get worse before it gets better," Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, said in a video update Tuesday afternoon.

Evacuees abandoned cars as traffic stalled

Palisades Drive, the major road out of the neighborhood, was packed with slow-moving lines of cars shortly after noon, as people evacuated beneath a smoky haze and bright-orange flames licked the hillside in the distance, shown live on ABC7.

The state agency CalFire reported that the fire was on both sides of Palisades Drive.

ABC7 spoke to multiple people who were evacuating on foot, including some who had abandoned their cars on the road.

One resident told the news channel that "a whole bunch of neighbors" were stuck in their homes on Palisades Drive.

"This is apocalyptic. We've had small fires, nothing like this," the resident added.

Jonathan Vigliotti, a CBS News correspondent who was on the ground as a neighborhood went up in flames, said on X that there was "mass panic in the streets."

Historic windstorm is 'worst possible scenario'

Officials have not yet determined how the fire started, but it erupted during a high-risk major windstorm that created extreme fire conditions in the area.

Warm, dry Santa Ana winds from the deserts of Nevada and Utah are expected to bring gusts up to 100 mph to Southern California through Wednesday morning.

The National Weather Service called the windstorm "life-threatening and destructive" and warned that these could be the strongest north winds in 14 years.

With low humidity and dry vegetation in the region, the winds created a perfect storm for fire ignition. The NWS urged residents to be ready to evacuate, as such winds can rapidly spread any fire that breaks out.

"This is pretty much the worst possible scenario for a firefight," David Ortiz of the LAFD told local news station KTLA.

• Meta announced Tuesday it's doing away with third-party fact-checking in favor of community notes.
• Several lawmakers told BI the move is an indication Mark Zuckerberg is catering to Trump.
• Some business leaders praised Meta for the change while others expressed concern.

Meta is carrying out the biggest overhaul to its content moderation system in years.

The company announced on Tuesday that it's replacing third-party fact-checking program with user-generated community notes, like those on Elon Musk's X, formerly Twitter.

In another page from Musk's playbook, Meta said it's moving some teams — specifically its trust and safety teams, responsible for writing the company's content policies and reviewing content — out of California into Texas and other locations in the US.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the decision was about getting "back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms."

Democrats: Zuckerberg's sucking up to Trump

Democratic lawmakers told BI at the US Capitol on Tuesday that they saw the move as a sign that Zuckerberg is trying to appease President-elect Donald Trump ahead of his return to the Oval Office.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York said Zuckerberg was "kissing Trump's ass" in making the change.

"I think that Mark Zuckerberg is trying to follow in Elon's footsteps, which means that actually, they're going to use this guise of free speech to actually suppress critics of Trump and critics of themselves," Ocasio-Cortez said. "That's why they're moving to this system. It's a model for their own self-aggrandizement."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts told BI that Big Tech CEOs "want a government that works for them, and they're making clear that sucking up to Donald Trump is one of the ways they think they'll get that."

Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida said the change appeared to be symptomatic of authoritarianism.

"It's not just about the legislation they pass, or what they push, but it creates this environment of fear and self-censorship, and a place where companies will begin to do the things he wants them to do without him forcing them to do it," he said, referring to Trump.

"They're surrendering essentially to implied threats by the government, which is very dangerous," Rep. Jerry Nadler of New York said.

Trump himself told reporters Tuesday that he believed Zuckerberg's changes at Meta were "probably" in response to previous threats Trump has made to the Meta chief executive, including to jail him.

Republicans: A good sign, but we'll see

Republicans offered more mixed reactions to Zuckerberg's decision, with some expressing skepticism while others saw it as a win. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas told reporters at the Capitol that what the Meta CEO said "sounds good" but that the "proof will be in the pudding."

He also said he saw Zuckerberg's move as the product of both political positioning and a sincere evolution in his thinking.

"I've had multiple conversations with Mark on this topic," Cruz said, "and I will say, he had previously expressed an interest in protecting free speech."

Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, meanwhile, called the decision a "ploy to avoid being regulated." For several years, she's been pushing a bill to increase social media protections for kids.

"Can any of us assume Zuckerberg won't return to his old tricks?" wrote Sen. Mike Lee of Utah on X.

Republican Rep. Randy Weber of Texas, meanwhile, wrote on X that it was "a great day for freedom of speech."

"It seems like Meta is finally taking a page from Elon Musk's playbook & letting Americans make decisions for themselves. It's about time Meta owned up to censoring Americans," he added.

Tech and business leaders react

In the tech and business world, some of Zuck's peers congratulated him and Meta on the move.

Musk said in separate tweets that the decision was "cool" and "awesome."

X CEO Linda Yaccarino called it "a smart move by Zuck."

"Fact-checking and moderation doesn't belong in the hands of a few select gatekeepers who can easily inject their bias into decisions. It's a democratic process that belongs in the hands of many," she wrote.

David Marcus, the former Meta exec in charge of the company's Libra cryptocurrency project, said the change marked a "massive step in the right direction towards free expression for Meta."

Other tech and business figures were more skeptical of the decision.

Yoel Roth, the former head of Twitter's trust and safety department, said, "Genuinely baffled by the unempirical assertion that Community Notes 'works.' Does it? How do Meta know? The best available research is pretty mixed on this point. And as they go all-in on an unproven concept, will Meta commit to publicly releasing data so people can actually study this?"

And in response to a message from Zuckerberg saying Meta will work with Trump to "push back against foreign governments going after American companies to censor more," Mark Cuban wrote on Bluesky: "Translation: Americans are going to see Tariffs on products from countries you believe censor Meta services as a means of pressuring them into removing any restrictions that impact your profitability in those countries. Also: You'll have carte blanche to take posts that no longer have restrictions, making them a more explicit representation, and train your AI Models."

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

• Ted Farnsworth is the former CEO of Helios and Matheson Analytics, which previously owned MoviePass.
• The documentary "MoviePass, MovieCrash" shows how he blew through hundreds of millions of dollars.
• He and former MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe pleaded guilty to securities fraud.

In the HBO documentary "MoviePass, MovieCrash," Ted Farnsworth is the CEO of the publicly traded Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY) when the company takes a majority stake in the movie-theater-subscription startup MoviePass in 2017.

Under Farnsworth's watch, MoviePass became a sensation after he and then-CEO Mitch Lowe dropped the monthly subscription fee from $30 a month to $10. It led to millions of subscribers and the company being hailed as the Netflix of movie theaters. Farnsworth and Lowe touted themselves in the press as the masterminds behind it all.

The documentary — based on reporting by Business Insider —reveals the more complicated reality of the phenomenon, showing how MoviePass cofounders Stacy Spikes and Hamet Watt were pushed out of the company after the arrival of Farnsworth and Lowe.

With Farnsworth and Lowe at the helm, hundreds of millions of dollars were spent to not just keep the unsustainable $10-a-month plan going, but also on lavish parties at Coachella, and starting a movie production arm best known for releasing the 2018 movie "Gotti," a biopic on notorious crime boss John Gotti starring John Travolta that received a 0% critics' score on Rotten Tomatoes.

In 2020, both HMNY and MoviePass went bankrupt (Spikes has since relaunched MoviePass), and two years later, Farnsworth and Lowe were charged with securities fraud.

As the documentary shows, the crash of MoviePass is just one of many failed ventures of the 61-year-old Farnsworth. Business Insider reached out to Farnsworth for comment but didn't get a response.

Here's a rundown of many of those companies (some of which went bankrupt), what Farnsworth did after MoviePass, and why he's currently in jail.

Note: "MoviePass, MovieCrash" is based on Business Insider's award-winning reporting on the company.

Mid-1990s: Farnsworth ran the Psychic Discovery Network, promoted by La Toya Jackson, that received more than 50 complaints from the FTC

Farnsworth's first major attention came when he ran the 900-number psychic network, which became famous thanks to its star promoter, La Toya Jackson.

A 1998 bulletin from the Federal Trade Commission noted the Psychic Discovery Network as a company that received more than 50 complaints in 1997. It had a total of 60.

2000: Auction site Farmbid.com lasts less than a year

Farnsworth tried to use the popularity of the Psychic Network and the dot-com boom to capitalize on the multitrillion-dollar agricultural business in the early 2000s with the site Farmbid.com.

A 2000 Wired story touted the company as a site that featured "farm auctions, links to wholesalers, a detailed weather center, and even a 'farm chat' area."

But the farming industry wasn't that into it. According to Sunbiz, the official Florida business registry, the company folded in less than a year.

2001: He gets into the beverage space with XStream

Farnsworth founded the company XStream Beverage Network Inc. in 2001, touting it as "an emerging developer, marketer and distributor of new age beverages."

He tried to buy a European energy drink called Dark Dog, but that deal never closed, according to Bloomberg.

By 2007, he was able to buy Global Beverage, which had in its stable Rudy Beverages, founded by famed 1970s Notre Dame football player Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger.

In November of that year, Farnsworth resigned as chairman of XStream, and its stock dropped 99%, according to Bloomberg.

2007: Farnsworth becomes CEO of Purple Beverage

Farnsworth's failure with XStream didn't stop him from trying another venture in the drink space. He became the CEO of Purple Beverage Co., touting an antioxidant-rich drink.

The stock for Purple Bev went as high as $3.24 in April 2008, according to Bloomberg, thanks partly to Farnsworth landing celebrity spokespeople like Chaka Khan and New York Yankees Hall of Fame pitcher Mariano Rivera. But by the time he resigned a year later, the stock had plummeted by 99%.

2012: He oversees a vitamin company that flatlines within a year and is sued by FedEx

Farnsworth became the chairman of LTS Nutraceuticals Inc., a multilevel-marketing vitamin company. In 2011, it traded as high as $4.85. But by 2012, with Farnsworth running things, the stock fell 99%. It's unclear when he left the company because it didn't make periodic regulatory filings, according to Bloomberg.

In 2013, FedEx sued the vitamin company, saying it was owed $26,000. According to The Miami Herald, the judge ruled in FedEx's favor.

2016: Farnsworth’s Zone Technologies merges with HMNY to become publicly listed on the Nasdaq

Over a decade after Farmbid, Farnsworth went back into the tech space with an app called RedZone Maps (through a company called Zone Technologies). The app flagged where crimes were being reported in a user's area.

A year later, Zone Technologies merged with Helios and Matheson to become publicly listed on the Nasdaq. That same year, Farnsworth was named CEO of HMNY.

2017: HMNY acquires a majority stake in MoviePass

Since its birth in 2011, MoviePass had been trying to figure out a monthly subscription price that attracted moviegoers and would make a profit. By 2017, the company was on the brink of running out of money when Farnsworth got connected with MoviePass' then-CEO, Mitch Lowe. A deal was made for HMNY to take a majority stake in MoviePass. By that summer, Farnsworth and Lowe dropped the price to $10 a month, and the rest is history. With a huge rise in subscribers for MoviePass, the HMNY stock initially soared. But by 2020, MoviePass and HMNY went bankrupt.

At the time of bankruptcy, the company said it was under pending investigations by the Federal Trade Commission, SEC, four California district attorneys, and the New York attorney general.

In 2021, Farnsworth and Lowe settled with the FTC and reached a $400,000 settlement with the California district attorneys.

2021: Less than a year after MoviePass' bankruptcy, Farnsworth founds Zash Global Media and Entertainment

After MoviePass' bankruptcy, Farnsworth quickly landed back on his feet by starting a media company called Zash in less than a year. He later merged it with the publicly traded company Vinco Ventures. He acquired a TikTok rival called Lomotif and even tried (unsuccessfully) to buy the National Enquirer.

By the end of 2022, Vinco stock had cratered and is now worth less than one cent.

In 2024, Business Insider reported on Farnsworth's business tactics while at Zash. They mirror how he operated at MoviePass and some other ventures over the decades: Get involved with a publicly traded company, help raise funding from his finance connections at favorable terms for them, drive up the company's stock with splashy announcements, and leave retail investors with big losses when the stock crashes.

2022: Farnsworth is charged with securities fraud related to his time at MoviePass

In 2022, Farnsworth and Lowe were each charged with one count of securities fraud and three counts of wire fraud by the Department of Justice, which alleged the two "engaged in a scheme to defraud investors through materially false and misleading representations relating to HMNY and MoviePass's business and operations to artificially inflate the price of HMNY's stock and attract new investors."

2024: Farnsworth sits in jail

Farnsworth has been in a Florida jail since August 2023.

During Farnsworth's time out on bail, he traveled from his home in upstate New York to Miami on multiple occasions without notifying his probation officer and was involved in a domestic incident that resulted in a restraining order, which he also didn't report, according to Bloomberg.

His bail was revoked in an August 2023 hearing. He's now in jail awaiting sentencing.

2025: Farnsworth pleads guilty to defrauding investors

In January, Farnsworth pleaded guilty to defrauding investors in the movie-ticket subscription service MoviePass, the US Department of Justice announced.

This came on the heels of Lowe pleading guilty to securities fraud conspiracy in September 2024.

Farnsworth also pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge for a second scheme related to a video-sharing platform he was involved with while under investigation for MoviePass.

January 7, 2025: This story has been updated to reflect new details.

Bonita Mersiades is a FIFA whistleblower and a former head of corporate and public affairs at Football Australia. She played a key role in Australia's bid to host the 2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups, a bidding season at the heart of a major FIFA corruption scandal that led to the indictment of 14 officials and executives.

After she was fired in 2010, Mersiades became a prominent whistleblower and helped expose "the FIFA way," the culture of bribery and corruption within FIFA. Her efforts contributed to investigations that led to high-profile FIFA arrests in 2015. She is the author of "Whatever It Takes: The Inside Story of the FIFA Way" and the founder of Fair Play Publishing, a company specializing in nonfiction stories about football.

Mersiades speaks with Business Insider about the ongoing culture of corruption within FIFA, the controversial 2018 and 2022 selections of Russia and Qatar, and the history of misconduct and misogyny within the world of football. She speaks about the future of the World Cup tournament, which has been awarded to Saudi Arabia for 2034.

For more: https://www.amazon.com.au/Whatever-Takes-Inside-Story-FIFA/dp/1925914682

• Rebecca Yarros is best known for writing "Fourth Wing."
• The third book in her romantasy series will be released on January 21.
• Yarros has already published over 20 novels, and two are being adapted into shows and films.

Rebecca Yarros has been busy for the past two years.

Since January 2023, Yarros, 43, has become a household name thanks to her bestselling novel "Fourth Wing" and its sequel, "Iron Flame."

She also released two titles unrelated to "Fourth Wing" and had two of her works optioned for screen adaptations while raising six children with her husband, Jason.

The third book in the "The Empyrean" series, "Onyx Storm," will hit bookshelves on January 21, and readers are on the edge of their seats to see how dragon rider Violet Sorrengail's story will continue.

Ahead of its release, take a look back at the prolific author's career, from writing her first novel to hitting The New York Times bestseller list with her romantasy debut.

The military defined much of Rebecca Yarros' early life

Both of Yarros' parents were lieutenant colonels, so she moved around frequently during her childhood, as she told The New York Times.

Yarros shared on her website that she enrolled in the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, for college, where she had a vocal scholarship. When she was 19, she met Jason Yarros at a karaoke bar. The New York Times reported that he was a private in the Army at the time.

The couple tied the knot in 2002, and Yarros dropped out of school when they were expecting their first child shortly after they got married.

Yarros and her husband have six children, including their adopted daughter Audrey-Grace, who inspired them to found the nonprofit One October. Today, the couple lives in Colorado, and they have a cat, two dogs, and two chinchillas in addition to their children.

Yarros published her first book in 2014

Yarros got her degree in history and English from Troy University online while she was raising her children.

Her husband Jason continued to serve in the military until 2019, and he was deployed to Iran and Afghanistan multiple times throughout their marriage.

The "Fourth Wing" author told the Times that she started reading romance books and writing them at night when she developed insomnia after her husband was injured during one of his deployments.

She first wrote an urban fantasy in 2011 but couldn't sell the book. Then, in 2014, Entangled Publishing released her debut novel "Full Measures," the first installment in the "Fight & Glory" series.

Since then, Yarros has published over 20 books, and many of her works are inspired by the role the military played in her life.

However, none gained the traction "Fourth Wing" did when it was released in 2023.

'Fourth Wing' changed everything

In 2020, Yarros and four of her children were diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome after she started passing out frequently and getting migraines, The Times reported. The rare group of genetic disorders weakens the body's connective tissues and can cause an array of health problems.

The diagnosis helped inspire Yarros to write "Fourth Wing," which Entangled's burgeoning romance imprint, Red Tower, published in April 2023.

In the novel, 20-year-old Violet Sorrengail's mother forces her to enter the Rider's Quadrant at Basgiath War College to train to be a dragon rider, even though she spent her life preparing to become a Scribe.

Violet not only hasn't been preparing to be a Rider, but her medical condition — which isn't named in the novel but Yarros confirmed on Instagram is Ehlers-Danlos — makes training more risky for her than her classmates. Plus, many of her peers have it out for Violet, as they are the children of the Rebels her mother helped destroy.

But Violet proves surprisingly powerful, and her success at the school brings her closer to Xaden Riorson, the son of a rebel and someone she never expected to fall for.

"Fourth Wing" became an instant New York Times bestseller and BookTok sensation, finding an eager audience as the romantasy genre, which blends romance and fantasy, grew in popularity.

Red Tower published the second book in "The Empyrean" series, "Iron Flame," in October of 2023, just six months after "Fourth Wing" came out. It was a massive success despite a messy rollout, with the books selling over 1 million copies combined in the first half of 2024 alone, according to Publisher's Weekly.

Yarros isn't slowing down anytime soon

The third installment of "The Empyrean" series, "Onyx Storm," will be released on January 21. Yarros is attending a midnight release party for the book at Barnes & Noble The Grove in Los Angeles to celebrate.

The author has started sharing snippets of the book on her Instagram, hinting at how Violet and Xaden's story will continue.

Yarros plans for the series to have five books in total, and she is still publishing titles unrelated to Violet's world amid the rollout of "The Empyrean" series. Indeed, Yarros published "Variation," a contemporary romance, in November 2024.

In addition to writing books, the author will be busy with adaptations of her works in the coming years.

Amazon MGM Studios bought the rights to "The Empyrean" series and already started working on making a TV show based on "Fourth Wing," as Deadline reported in October 2023. Michael B. Jordan's Outlier Society will produce the show, with Yarros serving as an executive producer. Moira Walley-Beckett, who produced "Breaking Bad" and "Anne with an E," will be the showrunner.

Casting has yet to be announced for the series, nor has a release date. In a clip of a Q&A shared on TikTok, Yarros said she doesn't have control over casting, though she made clear to the team working on the project that she doesn't want Xaden to be whitewashed.

"They know how staunch I am against whitewashing Xaden," she said. "I think that's the biggest thing."

In the series, Xaden is described as having "warm tawny skin," dark hair, and stubble.

The Hollywood Reporter also revealed in October that Yarros' 2023 novel "In the Likely Event" is being adapted into a Netflix film by Lindsey Ferrentino. Yarros will be an executive producer on the project as well.

Red Tower and Yarros have not announced a release date or title for the fourth "Empyrean" book, though it likely won't come out too far in the future given the author's rapid writing pace.

• The parent company of fast-casual chain Panera Bread has a new CEO.
• The restaurant has undergone a menu overhaul and seen lawsuits over highly caffeinated beverages.
• It's the latest in a series of leadership switches at restaurant chains over the past 12 months.

The parent company of fast-casual chain Panera Bread is getting a new chief executive, the latest in a series of CEO transitions at major restaurant chains.

Panera Brands said Tuesday that current CEO José Alberto Dueñas, who has held the job for the last 1 ½ years, would step down immediately but remain as a "special advisor" to the new CEO until the end of March. Paul Carbone, Panera's CFO, will serve as interim CEO as the company looks for a permanent leader.

"I am immensely proud of leading Panera during this transformative period for the Company," Dueñas said. Panera Brands includes the eponymous chain as well as Caribou Coffee and bagel chain Einstein Bros.

Dueñas joined Panera in mid-2023, with the chain describing his appointment as its "next generation of CEO leadership and Board governance in preparation for its eventual IPO." While the company reportedly filed confidentially to go public in late 2023, it has yet to list.

Dueñas also oversaw the Panera chain's "largest menu transformation ever" in 2024, which included more focus on items like mac and cheese and sandwiches and bigger portion sizes.

The menu changes also eliminated Panera's Charged Sips range of beverages, which contained high levels of caffeine. The drinks were the subject of multiple lawsuits, which alleged that they left some customers with permanent injuries and problems such as body shakes.

The executive change at Panera is the latest of several CEO switches at major restaurant chains over the past year amid a tough consumer spending environment for brands from McDonald's to Nike.

Brian Niccol, formerly the CEO of Mexican grill chain Chipotle, took over the top job at Starbucks in September in an abrupt end to former CEO Laxman Narasimhan's time in the role. Starbucks has reported falling sales in key markets, including the US and China, for much of the past year.

Scott Boatwright, previously Chipotle's COO, took over as interim CEO in August.

Meanwhile, former P.F. Chang's CEO Damola Adamolekun has helmed Red Lobster since September, the same month that the seafood-focused chain emerged from bankruptcy.

Subway CEO John Chidsey retired at the end of 2024, the year after he oversaw the sandwich chain's sale to private equity firm Roark Capital in a deal worth about $9 billion.

Do you work at Panera and have a story idea to share? Reach out to this reporter at [email protected]

• Ted Farnsworth pleaded guilty to defrauding investors in MoviePass and Vinco.
• Farnsworth has been in prison since August 2023.
• MoviePass's $10 plan led to its popularity but was unsustainable, causing bankruptcy.

Ted Farnsworth pleaded guilty on Tuesday to defrauding investors in the movie-ticket subscription service MoviePass, the US Department of Justice announced. He bought the company in 2017 while CEO of Helios and Matheson Analytics (HMNY).

Farnsworth, 62, also pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge for a second scheme related to a video-sharing platform he was involved with while under investigation for MoviePass.

Farnsworth has been in federal custody since August 2023.

"Farnsworth was anxious to accept responsibility for his conduct," Farnsworth's lawyer, Sam Rabin, told Business Insider in a statement. "The most important step in doing that was to plead guilty to the crimes with which he is charged. He did that today."

The Department of Justice charged Farnsworth and then MoviePass CEO Mitch Lowe with securities fraud in 2022. The DOJ alleged that Lowe and Farnsworth "engaged in a scheme to defraud investors through materially false and misleading representations relating to HMNY and MoviePass's business and operations to artificially inflate the price of HMNY's stock and attract new investors."

The DOJ also recently charged Farnsworth and others with using "the same strategy to defraud" investors in Vinco Ventures, another publicly traded company.

Lowe, the former MoviePass CEO, pleaded guilty to securities fraud conspiracy in September 2024.

The rise and fall of MoviePass

In 2017, HMNY became the parent company of MoviePass. Farnsworth and Lowe launched a $10-a-month plan that made the service very popular. As subscriptions soared into the millions, HMNY's stock skyrocketed.

However, the $10 plan — which allowed subscribers to see a movie a day in theaters — was not sustainable, and the company burned through hundreds of millions of dollars. By 2020, both MoviePass and HMNY went bankrupt.

MoviePass founder Stacy Spikes, who was ousted by Lowe and Farnsworth from MoviePass in 2018, bought back the company in 2021.

MoviePass — under Spikes' leadership — is currently available nationwide.

The story of the rise and fall of MoviePass is chronicled in the documentary "MoviePass, MovieCrash," which was released in May and is based on BI's award-winning reporting.

• Amazon delayed its full return-to-office plan in some places because of insufficient office space.
• An internal list shows where Amazon employees will work three days a week until space is ready.
• The list has more than 40 locations where the full five-day RTO policy is delayed.

Amazon delayed its five-day return-to-office plan in some locations because of a lack of space, as Business Insider recently reported.

An internal Amazon list viewed by BI shows where employees are being asked to continue following the company's policy requiring only three days a week in the office.

The locations include major tech hubs such as Santa Clara, California; Austin; Beijing; Shenzhen, China; and Bengaluru, India.

Amazon's original guidance required employees to work from the office five days a week beginning January 2. An Amazon spokesperson told BI on Tuesday that buildings were ready for most employees on that day.

The company's real-estate team late last year started notifying employees that they could continue following their current in-office guidance until workspaces were ready, with delays stretching as late as May, according to internal Amazon notifications viewed by BI.

The company has said the return to office will improve collaboration and bring other benefits. CEO Andy Jassy, in a memo announcing the mandate, said Amazon made the decision to "further strengthen" its culture and teams.

Here are more of the Amazon locations where employees are being told to continue working three days a week in the office: Raleigh, Annapolis Junction, Baltimore, Columbia, Austin, Cupertino, Irvine, Nashville, Boulder, Charlotte, Houston, Jersey City, Newark, Atlanta, Dallas, East Palo Alto, Mexico City, Santa Clara, São Paulo, Tampa, Miami, Brooklyn, Columbus, New York, Sacramento, Hamburg, Munich, Tel Aviv, Amman, Milan, Cairo, Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Dubai, Istanbul, Beijing, Hyderabad, Shenzhen, Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Shanghai.

Are you a tech-industry employee or someone else with insight to share?

Contact the reporter, Ashley Stewart, via the encrypted messaging app Signal (+1-425-344-8242) or email ([email protected]). Use a nonwork device.

• I left a stable job to pursue freelance tech work because I wanted more flexibility and freedom.
• My family, especially my mother, was concerned about my choice and didn't understand.
• After some trial and error, I finally found a stable career in the freelance tech world.

I was lucky to land a job immediately after college as an IT support intern, which later transitioned into full-time employment. For three years, I followed the path most expected of me. Eventually, I felt trapped and chose to resign.

That one decision set many things in motion, including a complete shift in how I viewed work.

My mother was the first to voice her concern. She had always pictured a traditional life for me: a stable job, a marriage, and a family. But I wanted something different.

"Samedi, where are you going?" she asked when she heard the news. I shared an outline of my plans but kept the finer details to myself.

In Africa, where I live, stable employment is seen as the cornerstone of success. My decision to freelance was culturally dissonant.

The pressure mounted as relatives mobilized to "help." A cousin offered a position at a leading telco. Family members called with job suggestions, each well-meaning but missing the point; I wasn't looking for another traditional role.

I sought something they couldn't understand: the freedom to build a borderless career.

It wasn't easy to jump into freelance work

No one in my family had taken this path before, so I had no role model. I had to do this mostly on my own.

Freelancing wasn't easy. When I left my job, I had no savings and struggled for months. It was a humbling experience.

A year later, I decided to move countries and needed a soft landing to acclimate to a new culture. That's when I decided to go back to a full-time job. I landed a junior web developer position at a media company. It felt like a fresh start, but the role wasn't what I thought it would be. The demands were relentless — late nights, weekend shifts, and tight deadlines. The long hours drained me, and I became burned out and increasingly frustrated.

Eventually, the job that once seemed like an opportunity had become a burden, and it was time to move on.

When I tendered my resignation, my managing director asked me, "Where are you going?"

It's a simple question in traditional work culture, where careers follow linear paths. But in the gig economy, the answer isn't always neat. I gave a vague response about joining another company, though truthfully, I was stepping back into the unknown to take another shot at freelancing. I'd tasted the freedom of freelancing and wanted to do it again. Thankfully, this time, I had more clients to work with.

I eventually found stability in flexibility

My second shot at freelancing has been much more successful. I've worn many hats: web designer, content marketer, copyeditor, and technical writer. Currently, I work as a content marketer and digital career coach.

This variety is simply the nature of modern tech work. Each role has added to my skill set, allowing me to serve clients across time zones.

While it hasn't been easy, the career I built outside a traditional role has been rewarding and freeing. All the opportunities have helped me grow my skill sets. I've built a stable career in my own way.

Bridging the generational divide will take time

Still, my mom's skepticism comes from a place of care and experience. Her preference for traditional employment is understandable in Africa, where economic stability is precarious. Even though I have made a successful career out of freelance, she and my family are still confused about what I do for a living.

But the nature of work is evolving. When companies downsize or restructure, freelancers with diverse clients can adjust more quickly than those tied to one employer. I feel more stable in my career now more than ever, and I hope my family realizes that one day.

I've now realized that the future is borderless. Younger generations like me are becoming global citizens, working across time zones and cultures in ways our parents never imagined.

The question is no longer, "Where are you going?" but "How far can you reach?"

• Mark Zuckerberg said Meta would loosen some policies in an effort to avoid limiting free speech.
• It'll remove restrictions on topics like gender, meaning users may see more-controversial opinions.
• The policy shift is expected to change how your Facebook, Instagram, and Threads feeds appear.

Don't be surprised if your Instagram or Facebook feed looks different as Mark Zuckerberg's overhaul of Meta's moderation policies rolls out in the coming weeks.

In addition to replacing its third-party fact-checking system with community notes similar to Elon Musk's X, Meta is looking to change things up with a return to promoting political content. Other changes include eliminating restrictions on topics like immigration or gender and shifting enforcement policies on lower-severity violations.

"We're going to get back to our roots and focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms," Zuckerberg said in a video announcing the changes.

So what will Facebook, Instagram, and Threads look like with the changes? Based on Zuckerberg's comments, this is how your feed could appear different.

You'll likely see a wider range of views — including controversial ones

In the next few weeks, you may notice more-controversial content in your feeds.

In an announcement about the changes, Meta said that it "removed millions of pieces of content" daily in December and that "one to two out of every 10" of those may not have violated its policies.

Meta said that to try to reduce instances of accidentally removing content through its automated moderation tools, it would remove restrictions on frequent topics in political conversations and debates including "immigration, gender identity, and gender."

"It's not right that things can be said on TV or the floor of Congress, but not on our platforms," the company said.

What does that mean in practice? An update on Tuesday to Meta's "Hateful Conduct" policy offers more detail.

"We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation," it says, "given political and religious discourse about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usage of words like 'weird.'"

Less-severe violations won't be reviewed unless people report those posts

Meta said it would loosen its guidelines around enforcement of policy violations and raise the bar for content removal.

The company said its automated systems had "resulted in too many mistakes and too much content being censored" and demoted content thought to violate its guidelines.

Meta said that moving forward it would focus on addressing "illegal and high-severity violations," including those related to terrorism, child sexual exploitation, and drugs.

It said that for "less severe policy violations" it would rely on users to report the content before it considers taking action. Meta said that it would also eliminate most demotions and that it would require a "much higher degree of confidence" and consensus from multiple reviewers to remove content.

You'll see more political content

Following what it described as feedback from people who didn't want to see political content in their feeds, Facebook announced changes in 2021 designed to reduce how much of that content users saw, including content about elections or social issues.

In Tuesday's announcement, the company described that approach as "pretty blunt" and said it would start recommending political content again on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. It said it would take a "more personalized approach" by ranking and showing content based on users' interactions with other content, such as liking a post.

"We are also going to recommend more political content based on these personalized signals and are expanding the options people have to control how much of this content they see," it said.

In 2022, Meta said political content made up about 3% of posts on Facebook. So the change doesn't necessarily mean your feed will be flooded with political news and content — but it may be an increase from what you've seen in recent years.

You won't see fact-check notes anymore — instead, you'll sometimes see community notes

Part of the shift focuses on reversing moderation changes that the Meta executive Joel Kaplan said resulted in "harmless content" being removed and people "wrongly locked up in 'Facebook jail.'"

Meta said it would end its third-party fact-checking program, implemented in 2016, and launch a community-notes program allowing contributors to add context to content.

Meta said it would no longer demote fact-checked content or include full-screen warnings that users have to click through before viewing a post. It said they'd instead see "a much less obtrusive label" indicating they can see additional content.

A Meta spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment from Business Insider.

• I wasn't prepared for how lonely motherhood can be.
• I started using "pebbling" to stay connected throughout the day with other moms.
• We send each other reels or TikTok videos, and I forget that I'm alone at home.

If there's one aspect of parenthood I don't think I ever saw coming, it's the loneliness. After all, wasn't I embarking on a journey millions of people had traversed before me? If anything, shouldn't I be overwhelmed by others walking the same path and experiencing the same experiences?

But instead of being surrounded by like-minded people overcoming similar challenges, the long road of parenthood often felt shockingly deserted. The promised "village" failed to appear when I needed it most, and living away from all of my relatives meant even family support was limited.

Even when I made other "mom friends," finding time to connect and support each other became increasingly difficult amid the tall task of simply making it through the day.

Then, one simple thing changed how I felt during those lonely days.

I started 'pebbling' with other moms

It's an unfortunate truth that isolation and loneliness seem to have become hallmarks of modern parenthood. While our ancestors boasted the benefits of the community that it apparently requires to raise a child, parents today too often find themselves struggling in a vacuum, unsure if it's just them but nearly certain they're probably doing it wrong.

As a result, most of us can agree that this isn't the parenthood nature intended. So, it should come as no surprise that a simple solution can be borrowed from the natural world: pebbling.

If you haven't heard of it, "pebbling" is a term in psychology that describes the act of sharing small tokens of affection with someone to build a connection. Inspired by the mating behaviors of birds like penguins, who bestow their love interests with small items like rocks and other trinkets. As for the actual "pebble," a tangible gift is in no way required, and most modern examples are usually digital, such as short-form videos, online quotes, and other social media memes.

We share videos and memes

A fellow mother and close friend of mine and I started pebbling each other with reels and TikToks encapsulating some of the more maddening aspects of life and motherhood, firing off a handful of links throughout the day designed to make each other laugh or simply feel validated that it wasn't just us.

Within just a few weeks, I noticed a decisive shift in my feelings throughout the day. When I experienced a particularly challenging day with my kids, all it would take was a ping from my phone and a link from my friend to instantly lift my mood and provide some much-needed perspective on whatever I was dealing with.

It didn't minimize or distract from what I was going through, and it didn't force any toxic positivity — it just reminded me that despite literally being in my house with no one to witness my struggles, I was not alone.

It's quick but thoughtful

Pebbling works for a number of reasons. For one, it's quick. Instead of struggling to find a matching gap in our schedules and then making plans for our families so we can escape for an hour over a meal out we probably shouldn't be spending money on right now, connections can happen in a matter of seconds with zero planning or cost ― while we simultaneously wrangle a fussy baby, fold a mountain of laundry, or get dinner on the table.

Despite its quickness, though, the thought behind pebbling is anything but shallow. Whenever we send a link, it says, "I saw this and thought of you." Or, "This seemed like something you would like, and I like making you happy." Or, "This reminded me of that thing you mentioned that one time that I remember because I care about the things you say." Or, "I'm struggling with this and sharing it with you makes it feel a little less heavy."

This leads to another benefit of pebbling: it can help you open up about something you're not sure how to talk about yet. It can be a quiet cry for help or crack the door on a vulnerable topic you don't know how to discuss but need to share with someone. (Also known as sending a TikTok with the caption, "LOL so me right now.")

But, of course, pebbles aren't always about the heavy stuff. Sometimes, it's a funny animal or baby video, a clever time-saving cleaning hack, or Kelly Clarkson crushing her latest cover song. Sometimes, the point of the pebble is simply to share a moment of joy with someone who likes the same things you do.

It doesn't solve the actual problem

The thing about pebbling is that it doesn't solve the problem. We are still drowning under waves of invisible labor, still struggling to connect with our partners over issues unique to our personal trauma and experience, and still feeling overwhelmed with the state of the world and our place in it.

The difference is that now, instead of facing these issues alone, someone is making eye contact with us and letting us know we're not alone in it.

My friends and I might not always be able to make time for in-person connections, but pebbling allows us to send out tiny lifelines throughout the day, reminding each other that she is seen and appreciated by someone who really gets it.

Not bad for a little pebble.

• Instagram has shut down a program that paid creators for ads placed on their profiles.
• Meta began testing the program in 2022.
• Instagram has launched several creator-monetization tests since 2020 — and some haven't survived.

Instagram has ended a program that allowed creators to earn money from ads placed between content on their profiles, the company confirmed to Business Insider.

The Meta-owned platform began testing the program with US creators in 2022 and expanded it in 2024 to eligible profiles in Canada, South Korea, Japan, and Australia.

Meta will continue to place ads in between content on nonteen public Instagram profiles. Businesses will still be able to prevent their ads from running on specific profiles.

According to court documents filed in 2024, Instagram has generated billions in ad revenue for Meta. In 2022, when the platform began testing the ads-in-profile program, it generated $16.5 billion, the same court filing said.

This isn't the first creator-monetization program that Meta has tested and shuttered.

Other programs you may remember include:

• IGTV (Instagram's now defunct YouTube competitor) shared ad revenue with creators from 2020 to 2022.
• Instagram briefly had a native affiliate program between 2021 and 2022 that allowed creators to earn revenue from shopping tags on their posts.

The Instagram Reels Bonus, which paid creators a sum of money based on how their reels performed, was paused in 2023. It was reintroduced in 2024 as a series of limited-time bonuses.

• Meta is ending US fact-checking partnerships and shifting to crowdsourced moderation tools.
• The International Fact-Checking Network called an emergency meeting after the announcement.
• Meta's decision affects the financial sustainability of fact-checking organizations.

The International Fact-Checking Network has convened an emergency meeting of its members following Meta's announcement on Tuesday that it will end its third-party fact-checking partnerships in the US and replace them with a crowdsourced moderation tool similar to X's community notes.

In an exclusive interview with Business Insider, the IFCN's director, Angie Holan, confirmed that the meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, was organized in direct response to Meta's decision.

"We hold these meetings monthly, but we called this one specifically because of today's news," she said.

The meeting is expected to draw between 80 and 100 attendees from the IFCN's network of fact-checkers, which spans 170 organizations worldwide. Not all the expected attendees are Meta fact-checking partners, though many of them have a stake in the program's future and its global implications.

The IFCN has long played a crucial role in Meta's fact-checking ecosystem by accrediting organizations for Meta's third-party program, which began in 2016 after the US presidential election that year.

Certification from the IFCN signaled that a fact-checking organization met rigorous editorial and transparency standards. Meta's partnerships with these certified organizations became a cornerstone of its efforts to combat misinformation, focusing on flagging false claims, contextualizing misinformation, and curbing its spread.

'People are upset'

Holan described the mood among fact-checkers as somber and frustrated.

"This program has been a major part of the global fact-checking community's work for years," she said. "People are upset because they saw themselves as partners in good standing with Meta, doing important work to make the platform more accurate and reliable."

She noted that fact-checkers were not responsible for removing posts, only for labeling misleading content and limiting its virality.

"It was never about censorship but about adding context to prevent false claims from going viral," Holan said.

A last-minute heads-up

An employee at PolitiFact, one of the first news organizations to partner with Meta on its Third-Party Fact-Checking Program in December 2016, said the company received virtually no warning from Meta before the program was killed.

"The PolitiFact team found out this morning at the same time as everyone else," the employee told BI.

An IFCN employee who was granted anonymity told BI that the organization itself got a heads-up only "late yesterday" via email that something was coming. It asked for a 6 a.m. call — about an hour before Meta's blog post written by its new Republican policy head, Joel Kaplan, went live.

"I had a feeling it was bad news," this employee said.

Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

Financial fallout for fact-checkers

Meta's decision could have serious financial consequences for fact-checking organizations, especially those that relied heavily on funding from the platform.

According to a 2023 report published by the IFCN, income from Meta's Third-Party Fact-Checking Program and grants remain fact-checkers' predominant revenue streams.

"Fact-checking isn't going away, and many robust organizations existed before Meta's program and will continue after it," Holan said. "But some fact-checking initiatives were created because of Meta's support, and those will be vulnerable."

She also underscored the broader challenges facing the industry, saying that fact-checking organizations share the same financial pressures as newsrooms. "This is bad news for the financial sustainability of fact-checking journalism," she said.

Skepticism toward community notes

Meta plans to replace its partnerships with community notes, a crowd-based system modeled after X's approach.

Holan expressed doubt that this model could serve as an effective substitute for expert-led fact-checking.

"Community notes on X have only worked in cases where there's bipartisan agreement — and how often does that happen?" she said. "When two political sides disagree, there's no independent way to flag something as false."

It's not yet clear how Meta's implementation of community notes will work.

'We'll be here after' Meta's program

Despite the uncertainty, Holan remains steadfast in the IFCN's mission.

"The IFCN was here before Meta's program, and we'll be here after it," she said. "We may look different in size and scope, but we'll continue promoting the highest standards in fact-checking and connecting organizations that want to collaborate worldwide."

Holan said Wednesday's meeting would focus on supporting IFCN members as they navigate this transition.

"We're here to help them figure out the best way forward," she said.

If you're a current or former Meta employee, contact this reporter from a nonwork device securely on Signal at +1-408-905-9124 or email him at [email protected].

Dangerous conditions left thousands stranded and many more without power as Winter Storm Blair dropped record-breaking snowfall over parts of the US. Hard freezes are expected to reach as far south as Florida.

• After years of writing about financially independent individuals, I've picked up on commonalities.
• One is that they have multiple revenue streams — at least one of which is from their own business.
• In 2025, I'm starting my own side business to see if the wealth-building strategy works for me.

My job involves interviewing people who are good with money — self-made millionaires, early retirees, and "super savers" who keep the majority of their income — and asking them to share their wealth-building strategies.

After nearly a decade of talking to these money-savvy individuals and absorbing their knowledge, I've implemented a lot of what they advise: I automate my savings and investments, live within my means, track my expenses and net worth, and take advantage of an HSA.

I have a lot of the personal finance basics down, but in the spirit of a new year and always trying to improve, I've decided to think bigger for 2025 and tackle one particular wealth-building strategy I've written about but never dared to try: starting a business.

One observation from talking to financially independent individuals is that they don't rely on a single source of income. They have at least two and, oftentimes, multiple revenue streams. Even the super savers tell me that there's a cap on how much you can save. But how much you can earn, they point out, is limitless.

Another commonality is that one of their revenue streams comes from their own business.

I've spoken to Amazon and Etsy sellers who have built e-commerce empires, content creators who drive passive income from courses and affiliate links, and a millennial who went from broke to seven figures by building websites and flipping domains.

Starting an e-commerce business

The business model that most intrigued me — and seemed doable on a budget — was e-commerce. Essentially, selling a product on platforms like Amazon.

I learned through interviews that there are three main ways to make money on Amazon.

There's arbitrage, which is the most basic, low-cost way to start selling on Amazon. This is when you source products from different marketplaces to sell. To be profitable, you must buy the product for less than it sells on Amazon. After reselling, you keep the difference.

The next tier is wholesaling. This is when you buy products in bulk and resell them on Amazon. Like arbitrage, you aren't making your own product — you're simply reselling an existing product — but you're spending more money upfront on inventory.

Finally, there's the private label route. E-comm experts have explained to me that starting a private label brand is the most time-consuming and costly but has the most upside. It requires actually creating a product and brand.

I went with the latter and technically started the company in 2024 when a friend and I designed a pickleball paddle and ordered inventory from a manufacturer in Asia. My goal in 2025 is to sell the 500 paddles that are on their way from China to my apartment in LA, build a brand I'm proud of, evaluate whether selling a product online is a suitable side hustle for me and my strengths, and write about every step of the process.

I don't expect building a side business to be easy. And everything I've done so far has cost more and taken more time than anticipated.

Most of the financially independent entrepreneurs I've spoken to started with a side hustle — and, in some cases, simply a side project or hobby that cost them money, let alone brought any in. They put their heads down from 9-to-5, worked for an employer to cover their bills, and then reserved 5-to-9 for building businesses.

Carving out time and energy to work on a side project that might not generate sales while simultaneously working a full-time job isn't for the faint of heart. These self-made entrepreneurs put in a lot of hours for an unknown outcome.

NeuroGum cofounder Kent Yoshimura, who worked at a music studio and as a muralist while building a caffeinated gum and mint company, admitted to pulling "an all-nighter once a week" in the early days of his startup.

Jatz Naran said he built his Amazon business between the hours of 6-and-10, after his day job would wrap up. "Forget work-life balance," he told me. At the end of the day, "you have to sacrifice one thing for another."

What's intriguing about starting a business is that you're in the driver's seat. The success or failure of the company is up to you. How much you and the company earn is up to you.

I'm reminded of something real-estate entrepreneur Dion McNeeley told me during an interview: Think beyond your day job.

His revenue streams at the time included his day job running a commercial truck driving school, long-term rental income from his portfolio of 16 properties, and a side hustle as an expert witness, which is someone who is called to testify during a trial because of their specific knowledge. He provided expert testimony for cases involving truck driving accidents.

"I make way more money spending two hours a month on real estate and one to two hours a month providing expert testimony than I make running a truck driving school," said McNeeley, who has since retired from his day job. "The mistake a lot of people make is selling their lives one hour at a time and not realizing that you make a lot more money when you get paid on the value you produce."

• Donald Trump said that Mark Zuckerberg may have taken notice of his threats.
• The president-elect previously threatened to jail the Meta CEO for life.
• Zuckerberg announced Tuesday that his company will no longer partner with third-party fact-checkers.

President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday praised Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for changing how it moderates political content on its three major social media platforms.

Trump, who previously threatened Zuckerberg with life in prison, said his comments might have led to the announcement.

"Probably," Trump said when asked if Zuckerberg is "directly responding to the threats you've made to him in the past."

Zuckerberg and Trump once had a frosty relationship, but both sides appear to be warming up.

"Honestly, I think they have come a long way, Meta, Facebook" Trump told reporters during a wide-ranging news conference.

Zuckerberg made the major shift on Tuesday, announcing that his company will no longer partner with third-party fact-checkers and will relax moderation policies on topics like gender and immigration.

"We've reached a point where it's just too many mistakes and too much censorship," Zuckerberg said in a video posted on Facebook. "The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point toward once again prioritizing speech. So we are going to get back to our roots, focus on reducing mistakes, simplifying our policies, and restoring free expression on our platforms."

Joel Kaplan, recently promoted to lead Meta's global policy team, outlined the announcement during an interview on "Fox and Friends," Fox News' morning show that Trump has long watched.

"There is a real opportunity here, with President Trump coming into office, with his commitment to free expression, for us to get back to those values," Kaplan said.

Trump said he saw Kaplan's comments and called the former Bush White House official "very impressive."

Zuckerberg recently dined at Trump's Mar-a-Lago club, part of a larger wave of tech CEOs hoping to reset relations with the incoming administration. Meta is also donating $1 million to Trump's inauguration.

Zuckerberg and Trump haven't always gotten along.

Trump's first administration and several states teamed up in 2020 on a major antitrust lawsuit against Facebook. In 2021, Trump, then-a former president, sued Facebook and other platforms for banning him in the wake of the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. Trump and his allies have also been highly critical of Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan's charitable giving ahead of the 2020 election to help local election officials deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

"We are watching him closely," Trump wrote in his book earlier this year in a section about Zuckerberg," and if he does anything illegal this time he will spend the rest of his life in prison — as will others who cheat in the 2024 Presidential Election."

Before the presidential election, Zuckerberg announced he would not make any donations to election officials again, and he called Trump a "badass" after the president-elect survived an assassination attempt in July.

A representative for Meta didn't immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.