Artist and musician Brian Eno — who also composed the iconic Windows 95 operating system startup chime — called on Microsoft today to “suspend all services that support any operations that contribute to violations of international law,” saying the company plays a role in “surveillance, violence, and destruction in Palestine.” It’s the latest high-profile instance of the tech giant being pressed on its contracts with the Israeli government.
“I gladly took on the [Windows 95] project as a creative challenge and enjoyed the interaction with my contacts at the company,” Eno wrote on Instagram. “I never would have believed that the same company could one day be implicated in the machinery of oppression and war.”
The musician — who was a member of the influential rock band Roxy Music and has also had a long, storied solo career — specifically called out Microsoft’s contracts with Israel’s Ministry of Defense. Microsoft acknowledged last week that it has contracts with the Israeli government for cloud and AI services, but claimed that an internal review conducted found “no evidence” that its tools were used to “target or harm people” in Gaza.
Microsoft has been taken to task in recent weeks over its business dealings with the Israeli government specifically. The outcry over Microsoft’s contracts relates to Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza following the October 7th, 2023, Hamas attack. Human rights groups, including commissions at the United Nations, have accused Israel of war crimes and genocidal acts in its military operation that has killed thousands; as of this month, the Gaza Health Ministry reported more than 52,000 deaths, though some researchers say that number could be as high as 109,000 people.
Some of Microsoft’s fiercest critics are its own employees opposed to the company’s ties to Israel.
Earlier this week during Microsoft’s developer conference, multiple onstage events were disrupted, including CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote speech on Monday. During the event, Microsoft employee Joe Lopez interrupted Nadella, yelling, “How about you show Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?” The following day, a protester described only as a “Palestinian tech worker” disrupted another executive’s presentation. On Wednesday, protesters disrupted a third session — and in the commotion, Microsoft inadvertently revealed internal messages regarding Walmart’s use of AI.
In April, Microsoft employee Ibtihal Aboussad disrupted a 50th-anniversary event, calling Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman “a war profiteer.” Another employee disrupted a second Microsoft event the same day. The acts of protest were organized by the No Azure for Apartheid group, which calls for Microsoft to terminate contracts with the Israeli government and endorse a permanent ceasefire, among other demands. Aboussad was fired from the company; the second protester, Vaniya Agrawal, was dismissed early after putting in her resignation.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Eno, a longtime critic of the Israeli government who’s backed pro-Palestine efforts, said on Instagram he would use his original earnings from the Windows 95 startup chime to help “the victims of the attacks on Gaza.”
TikTok users will now be able to save tracks they discover straight to their SoundCloud app. On Wednesday, the two companies announced they’re partnering to expand an existing TikTok feature that was previously available to users of music streaming platforms like Apple Music and Spotify.
The “add to music app” button appears when a TikTok user clicks on an audio track added to a video. Saved songs are automatically added to a TikTok playlist on users’ default music streaming service. The integration streamlines a process many TikTok users do organically: find new music on the video app. The “add to music app” feature is an easy way for listeners to take their discoveries off the app (and for artists, especially indie musicians, to grow their fanbase beyond just passive TikTok listeners).
Over the past five or so years, TikTok has proved to be a powerful driver of pop music — not just for emerging artists but also for household names. Artists plan and unveil TikTok-specific marketing to hype up their new music and older songs get a second wind as a new audience on social media discovers their work. Even Taylor Swift recognizes she needs her music on the platform: last year, as TikTok’s licensing deal with Universal Music Group expired and spiraled into a nasty back and forth, UMG artists’ music was pulled from the video platform. Swift’s music reappeared before a deal was publicly announced (and just in time to promote her upcoming album). There was even a Billboard TikTok chart ranking the app’s hits, though it was short-lived; the chart was discontinued earlier this year.
TikTok says that since rolling out the “add to music app” feature last year, songs have been saved more than a billion times. The SoundCloud integration begins rolling out today to all users.
The May 18th issue of the Chicago Sun-Times features dozens of pages of recommended summer activities: new trends, outdoor activities, and books to read. But some of the recommendations point to fake, AI-generated books, and other articles quote and cite people that don’t appear to exist.
Alongside actual books like Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman, a summer reading list features fake titles by real authors. Min Jin Lee is a real, lauded novelist — but “Nightshade Market,” “a riveting tale set in Seoul’s underground economy,” isn’t one of her works. Rebecca Makkai, a Chicago local, is credited for a fake book called “Boiling Point” that the article claims is about a climate scientist whose teenage daughter turns on her.
In a post on Bluesky, the Sun-Times said it was “looking into how this made it into print,” noting that it wasn’t editorial content and wasn’t created or approved by the newsroom. Victor Lim, senior director of audience development, added in an email to The Verge that “it is unacceptable for any content we provide to our readers to be inaccurate,” saying more information will be provided soon.
It’s not clear if the content is sponsored — the cover page for the section bears the Sun-Times logo and simply calls it “Your guide to the best of summer.” In a statement published to the newspaper’s website, the Sun-Times said the section was “licensed from a national content partner,” which 404 Media identified as media conglomerate Hearst. The Sun-Times said it was removing the section from digital editions and updating its policies so that third-party content meets the paper’s standards and is more clearly identified.
We are looking into how this made it into print as we speak. It is not editorial content and was not created by, or approved by, the Sun-Times newsroom. We value your trust in our reporting and take this very seriously. More info will be provided soon.
The book list appears without a byline, but a writer named Marco Buscaglia is credited for other pieces in the summer guide. Buscaglia’s byline appears on a story about hammock culture in the US that quotes several experts and publications, some of whom do not appear to be real. It references a 2023 Outside magazine article by Brianna Madia, a real author and blogger, that I was unable to find. The piece also cites an “outdoor industry market analysis” by Eagles Nest Outfitters that I was unable to find online. Also quoted is “Dr. Jennifer Campos, professor of leisure studies at the University of Colorado,” who does not appear to exist. Buscaglia did not immediately respond to a request for comment but admitted to 404 Mediathat he uses AI “for background at times” and always checks the material.
“This time, I did not and I can’t believe I missed it because it’s so obvious. No excuses,” he told 404. “On me 100 percent and I’m completely embarrassed.”
Another uncredited article titled “Summer food trends” features similar seemingly nonexistent experts, including a “Dr. Catherine Furst, food anthropologist at Cornell University.” Padma Lakshmi is also attributed in the piece for a quote she doesn’t appear to have said.
News outlets have repeatedly run AI-generated content next to their actual journalism, often blaming the issue on third-party content creators. High-profile incidents of AI-generated content at Gannett and Sports Illustratedraised questions about the editorial process, and in both cases, a third-party marketing firm was behind the AI sludge. Newsrooms’ defense is typically that they had nothing to do with the content — but the appearance of AI-generated work alongside real reporting and writing by human staffers damages trust all the same.
Update May 20th: Added additional details about the Sun-Times’ response to public outcry.
Spotify announced earlier this month that podcast creators and listeners would get a new data point: how many plays an episode has gotten. The idea, according to Spotify, was that listeners could discover new shows they hadn’t heard of, enticed by this new public measure of fandom.
Podcasters did not see it that way.
Since the announcement, podcasters, especially those with smaller audiences, have been upset at the new public play count. The chief complaint was that some podcasters actually don’t want listeners to know how many people are listening to their podcast, because it might have the opposite effect: it could turn people off to know a show only has a few dozen plays. Some Spotify users in the chorus of opposition also noted that plays would only show a slice of listenership, since people use platforms besides Spotify.
The sustained backlash evidently hit a nerve: on Friday, Spotify announced it was partially rolling back the feature. Now it will only publicly display plays once an episode crosses the 50,000 plays threshold. When an episode hits that benchmark, it will get a “50K plays” marker instead of an exact count; the marker will update when an episode crosses other milestones, like 100,000 and 1 million plays. Podcasters will still be able to see exact play counts in their private analytics dashboards — but will be spared the embarrassment of having those figures broadcast publicly. The company is also vague about how exactly plays are counted, saying only that the metric represents “how many times people actively tried your content.”
Podcasting historically has been hard to quantify: a download doesn’t necessarily mean a listen. There are public charts, but those tend to favor the biggest shows. Across mediums, there’s the awkward growing stage for content creators just starting out: you have to post as if you have a million followers even if it’s just for your 10 actual fans. Is displaying podcast plays something nobody asked for? Absolutely. But also, the jokes write themselves, unfortunately.
For millions of people, any one of the many unprecedented actions in the first 100 days of the second Trump presidency was enough to show that the US is barreling toward - or has already arrived at - billionaire-helmed fascism. Sure, Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has indiscriminately fired thousands of federal employees and gutted the parts of the federal government that protect everyday people. And elsewhere, government funds are being spent on arresting immigrants with no criminal record and sending them to languish in prisons abroad; college students are being disappeared for their opinions on Palestine. But what really seems to have triggered Americans all across the political spectrum is Trump's plan to levy steep tariffs on just about every country on Earth, and the resulting economic instability. When the stock market lost around $10 trillion in value over the course of a few days earlier in April following the announcement, even Trump's loudest boosters started to worry.
Trump's tariffs are not trade policy as much as they are a fishing expedition: What can he extract from trade partners and from US companies that can be spun as a win for him? Ea …
Donald Trump's staggering tariffs on Chinese imports have hit nearly every category of consumer goods, from electronics and automobiles to clothing and footwear. One of the most vulnerable industries is the ultracheap e-commerce sites like Shein, Temu, and AliExpress that American shoppers have become accustomed to. It is already showing signs of a bloodbath.
Last week Shein and Temu warned shoppers that price increases were coming on April 25th. A spot-check of prices on Shein show modest increases across categories, though not every item is more expensive than it was a week ago. A pair of kid's fleece pants that were $8.29 on April 17th are now $10.19. A women's plus-size dress that was $22.39 is now $27.51. A pair of pants that were $13.99 have gone up to $17.09. Shein's inventory and prices change daily so it's impossible to pinpoint why an item has changed in price, but Shein shoppers have noticed their shopping carts and wish lists getting more expensive: shoppers on Reddit report some items doubling. According to data provided to The Verge by Bright Data, price increases on Shein until early March were for the most part modest compared to late 2024 prices, and many product …
Meta is expanding how it uses AI to detect teens on Instagram — and, in some cases, will begin overriding account settings.
Instagram announced it was using AI for age detection in 2024; the system looked for signals that users were under 18 years old, like if messages from friends say “happy 16th birthday,” for example (Meta also says it uses engagement data — people in the same age group often interact with content they see in similar ways). Teen accounts on Instagram are subject to more restrictive settings: by default, teen accounts are private, strangers aren’t able to send them messages, and Instagram limits what kind of content teens see. Last year, Instagram changed the settings for all teens on the platform so that safety features were automatically enabled.
The company now says it will use AI to proactively look for teen accounts that have an adult birthday, and change settings for users it suspects are kids. In a blog post, Instagram says it will begin testing the feature today in the US. If it detects that a user is actually a child but the account says otherwise, Instagram will automatically place it under the more restrictive teen settings. Instagram acknowledges the possibility that the system will make errors — the company says users will have the ability to change their settings back.
Meta has gradually offered more settings that it says will protect teens and kids on the platform, often in response to concerns from parents and lawmakers. Last year, the European Union launched an investigation into whether Meta was doing enough to protect the health of young users. Disturbing reporting into predators on Instagram targeting kids prompted a lawsuit by a US state attorney general. There’s also disagreement among tech companies — namely Google versus Meta, Snap, and X — over who should be responsible for keeping kids safe online. In March, Google accused Meta of trying to “offload” its responsibility onto app stores following the passage of a bill in Utah.
Hermès handbags, Birkenstocks, Tide Pods, Lululemon activewear, and mountains of luxury furniture â what if I told you you could cut out the middleman and buy it straight from the source for a fraction of the cost?
So goes a genre of viral videos cropping up on social media that claim to show Chinese manufacturers producing the products beloved by American consumers. The videos have cheery background music, some light editing, and are delivered in English, clearly targeting American shoppers. In one clip on TikTok, a man holds up an array of shoes that look like Birkenstockâs Boston model. Instead of the $165 full price, @china.yiwu.factorâs version is only $10 a pair. The video garnered six million views before being deleted.
âChinese manufacturers outing luxury brands is my new favourite TikTok,â one comment reads. âLetâs start skipping these retail stores and buy right from the source,â says another user. The videos are perfectly crafted to elicit maximum emotions from American viewers overwhelmed by tariff anxiety and political upheaval.
My fyp is suddenly filled with Chinese manufacturers trying to sell directly to Americans. The gag is that even with pay …
Donald Trump is making it even more expensive for US consumers to shop online from Chinese retailers like Temu and Shein. In an executive order amendment published Tuesday night, Trump raised the tariff rate for packages valued under $800 entering the US from China and Hong Kong that previously were exempt. The increase essentially triples what shoppers would have paid previously.
Under a previous tariff package hitting Chinese imports, sub-$800 packages were subject to a 30 percent tariff on the total value of the package, or $25 per postal item. Now, those rates have jumped to 90 percent of the value or $75 per postal item. The White House didn’t immediately clarify which of the two rates packages would be subject to — the executive order suggests carriers can opt for “either” method.
The skyrocketing tariffs on de minimis packages is part of the ongoing trade war Trump is waging on the rest of the world — China in particular. After China announced retaliatory tariffs on the US, Trump again increased the taxes on the country’s products, which now amount to a staggering 104 percent.
China is an epicenter of manufacturing for the world, and the US is the world’s largest importer. Sudden and sweeping tariffs will affect everything from shoes and clothes to electronics, furniture, and components like screws used to build other products. Tariffs were one of Trump’s favorite campaign promises, though the scale of what he’s implemented has reportedly shocked trade partners. Economists widely agree that tariffs alone cannot bring back manufacturing jobs to the US, though Trump and others in his administration regularly claim otherwise.
The amendments make an already significant change to trade policy even more disruptive. It’s not entirely clear how companies (or services like USPS or DHL) will collect the tariffs on low value packages — but experts warn that there will be delays and backlogs. The new taxes take effect May 2nd, which gives shoppers and carriers a little bit of time to make a plan before the ultra cheap China-centered shopping becomes much pricier.
As Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs are set to take effect, Amazon is tweaking some of how it does business — specifically how it operates Amazon Haul, the company’s version of bargain bin Chinese sites like Temu and Shein.
The Information reported Tuesday that Amazon Haul offerings will now include products from well-known brands like Adidas, Levi’s, and Gap that are shipped from Amazon’s inventory held in warehouses in the US. This is pretty much the opposite of what Haul initially promised: very (very) cheap unbranded products coming directly from manufacturers in China. In exchange for waiting a week or two for packages to come from China, Amazon Haul shoppers got to load up their digital shopping carts with clothing, accessories, home goods, and more that were all priced under $20.
That baseline has gone out the window: scrolling through Haul, a new “Brand Faves” section features products from companies that American shoppers are more familiar with, like Under Armour, The Children’s Place, and Vera Bradley. The under $20 hook also seems irrelevant now: in a few seconds of browsing I found makeup pouches for $20.99, leggings for $27.20, and dresses for $34.82. Some of those products are the same price on Haul and they are on classic Amazon, which raises the question of why a shopper would buy it on Haul to begin with. Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
The change to how Haul operates is likely connected to tariffs imposed by Trump, which will tax all imports coming into the US. But as I’ve written previously, services like Haul are uniquely vulnerable because their super low prices are dependent on optimal trade policies that most shoppers never think of. Specifically, Haul (as well as Shein, Temu, AliExpress and drop shipping operations) relied on a carve out that allows packages valued under $800 to enter the US duty free. The so-called de minimis rule has been widely used — 1.4 billion packages claimed it in 2024 — but now Trump plans to kill the exemption beginning May 2nd. That puts Amazon Haul shoppers on the hook for duties they otherwise would be exempt from.
Amazon’s move towards stocking its Haul section with inventory already in the US avoids these new tariffs — at least temporarily. To be clear, it appears the majority of the products listed on Haul are still of the Temu variety, but beginning next month, shoppers will be responsible for tariffs if Trump’s plan proceeds as he’s threatened it will. But by fulfilling Haul orders using stock that’s already in US warehouses, Amazon is buying itself a little bit of time. But in just a few weeks, shoppers’ “hauls” of cheap things will likely be less affordable.
With President Donald Trump's new tariff plan, your online shopping packages coming directly from China are about to get much more expensive.
In February, the Trump administration moved to get rid of a little-known rule that allows US consumers to avoid tariffs on low-value packages. The de minimis exemption meant that packages valued under $800 could enter the US duty-free, and shoppers - as well as retailers - relied on the exemption regularly, even if they didn't realize it. Nearly 1.4 billion packages claiming the exemption entered the US in 2024, the majority of which came from China. The removal of this exemption has been paused since early February, meaning Temu and Shein packages have been able to flow into the country without duties. But no longer.
As of May 2nd, low-value packages from China and Hong Kong will get tariffed based on Trump's new taxes: packages valued under $800 and sent through the international postal network (think USPS and the like) will get slapped with a fee of 90 percent of the value of the package or $75 per postal item. Other packages (which appears to mean parcels transported by services like DHL) will instead get hit with all the duties they h …
At an event in the Rose Garden on Wednesday, Donald Trump unveiled a new set of planned tariffs that are being described as “short-sighted,” and having “no basis in logic,” and being compared to Great Depression-era policies. Holding a giant poster board blowing in the wind, Trump announced staggering new taxes on products coming into the US from abroad. Among the 60 countries listed, tariff rates ranged anywhere from 10 percent to nearly 50 percent: 34 percent for China, 46 percent for Vietnam, 20 percent for the EU, and 49 percent for Cambodia, among others.
The US is the world’s biggest importer, bringing in trillions of dollars of goods every year. Relatively little is produced in the US, and the eye-watering taxes will impact supply chains across industries: tech products and gadgets, clothing, food, automobiles, and more. Seeing souring relations between the US and China, some companies have worked to diversify supply chains by moving manufacturing to other countries — Apple, for example, was producing billions of dollars worth of iPhones in India last fall to move away from China. Under Trump’s new plan, Indian imports would get slapped with 26 percent tariffs.
The President did not explain how the rates were calculated, but if implemented the steep taxes will like make costs for retailers — and by extension, consumers — skyrocket. The Trump administration has regularly lied about who pays for tariffs, claiming that the exporting nation foots the bill. That’s not how tariffs work, no matter how many times Trump claims otherwise.
The New York Times reports that the figures on the chart include a 10 percent “baseline” tariff, meaning the additional hike on Chinese products is 24 percent, plus 10 percent.
After the event, Trump also signed an executive order closing the de minimis exemption, a little-known carve out that allows packages valued under $800 to enter the US duty free. Ultra cheap retailers like Shein, Temu, and Amazon Haul use the rule as a loophole to keep prices low, and buyers don’t have to pay any taxes that would otherwise apply to their purchases. By ending the exemption, Trump could destabilize the business model that has hooked Americans looking for a deal on China-reliant online retailers.
Billionaire Elon Musk gives $1 million to Wisconsin voter Ekaterina Diestler during a town hall meeting he was hosting at the KI Convention Center on March 30th, 2025, in Green Bay, Wisconsin. | Image: Getty Images
On Sunday, a few thousand people in Green Bay, Wisconsin, gathered to hear Elon Musk speak â and give away two giant cardboard checks for $1 million. Attendance at the event was limited to people who had added their names to a petition against âactivist judges,â created by Muskâs America PAC. He has promised money and other âsurprise announcementsâ to people who sign the petition, and the splashy million-dollar giveaway ratcheted up the stakes. After their names were announced, winners shuffled onstage to awkwardly accept the prop checks and pause for a photo op with Musk, who has poured tens of millions of dollars into the race for Wisconsinâs Supreme Court seat.
The checks are Muskâs latest attempt to use his vast wealth to turn out voters ahead of Tuesdayâs election. He has promised $100 to voters who sign the âactivist judges petitionâ and micro-earnings for people who hold up a photo of Muskâs chosen candidate with a thumbs-up. The petition and the promises of money are a not-so-subtle way of collecting registered voter data.
Itâs the same playbook Musk deployed ahead of the November presidential election that some elections experts say broke the …
A concert on Monday night at New York’s Radio City Music Hall was a special occasion for Frank Miller: his parents’ wedding anniversary. He didn’t end up seeing the show — and before he could even get past security, he was informed that he was in fact banned for life from the venue and all other properties owned by Madison Square Garden (MSG).
After scanning his ticket and promptly being pulled aside by security, Miller was told by staff that he was barred from the MSG properties for an incident at the Garden in 2021. But Miller says he hasn’t been to the venue in nearly two decades.
“They hand me a piece of paper letting me know that I’ve been added to a ban list,” Miller says. “There’s a trespass notice if I ever show up on any MSG property ever again,” which includes venues like Radio City, the Beacon Theatre, the Sphere, and the Chicago Theatre.
He was baffled at first. Then it dawned on him: this was probably about a T-shirt he designed years ago. MSG Entertainment won’t say what happened with Miller or how he was picked out of the crowd, but he suspects he was identified via controversial facial recognition systems that the company deploys at its venues.
In 2017, 1990s New York Knicks star Charles Oakley was forcibly removed from his seat near Knicks owner and Madison Square Garden CEO James Dolan. The high-profile incident later spiraled into an ongoing legal battle. For Miller, Oakley was an “integral” part of the ’90s Knicks, he says. With his background in graphic design, he made a shirt in the style of the old team logo that read, “Ban Dolan” — a reference to the infamous scuffle.
A few years later, in 2021, a friend of Miller’s wore a Ban Dolan shirt to a Knicks game and was kicked out and banned from future events. That incident spawned ESPN segments and news articles and validated what many fans saw as a pettiness on Dolan and MSG’s part for going after individual fans who criticized team ownership.
But this week, Miller wasn’t wearing a Ban Dolan shirt; he wasn’t even at a Knicks game. His friend who was kicked out for the shirt tagged him in social media posts as the designer when it happened, but Miller, who lives in Seattle, hadn’t attended an event in New York in years.
Miller says that after he scanned his digital ticket, but before he went through security, a person working at Radio City stopped the line, pulled him aside, and asked him for his ID to verify who he was. They then walked him to another entrance of the building, where five or more staff members stood with him as he was told he was not allowed to return.
He’s not sure how exactly MSG connected him to the shirt or a 2021 incident during an event he wasn’t at. Miller told The Verge that until the concert, he had never actually purchased tickets to MSG events — they were either gifts from other people, or he got them through work.
“I’ve been reading articles about this facial recognition stuff that Dolan [and] MSG properties use, but I hadn’t been in or around the Garden outside of Penn Station to take New Jersey Transit [to] Newark Airport in almost 20 years now,” Miller says. A friend who was present made sure his parents enjoyed the show while Miller hung out at a bar nearby. He did not get a refund for his ticket, he says.
“I just found it comical, until I was told that my mom was crying [in the lobby],” Miller says of the experience. “I was like, ‘Oh man, I ruined their anniversary with my shit talk on the internet. Memes are powerful, and so is the surveillance state.” Miller and his parents also had tickets to a Knicks game the following night; his parents went without him, with a family friend in his place. Miller dropped his parents off from across the street.
MSG Entertainment did not respond to The Verge’s questions about whether facial recognition was used to identify Miller.
“Frank Miller Jr. made threats against an MSG executive on social media and produced and sold merchandise that was offensive in nature,” Mikyl Cordova, executive vice president of communications and marketing for the company, said in an emailed statement. “His behavior was disrespectful and disruptive and in violation of our code of conduct.”
Keeping close watch on patrons is nothing new for MSG. In 2022, a New Jersey attorney was denied entry to Radio City Music Hall during a Girl Scout troop trip. Her infraction was being on an “attorney exclusion list” full of people who work at firms that are suing MSG. The attorney was identified using facial recognition technology at the venue.
Miller says he was told at Radio City that he could appeal the ban if he wanted to but said it’s not a priority for him. He hopes his experience can help others who find themselves in a similar situation, where they’re unexpectedly denied entry at an expensive event based on data about them that has been collected by the company.
“It’s something that we all have to be aware of — the panopticon,” Miller says. “We’re [being] surveilled at all times, and it’s always framed as a safety thing, when rarely is that the case. It’s more of a deterrent and a fear tactic to try to keep people in line.”
Update March 28th:Added comment from MSG Entertainment spokesperson Mikyl Cordova. Clarified to reflect that Frank Miller said he had not been to an event at MSG venues in nearly 20 years.
Not satisfied with effectively buying a co-president role in Donald Trump’s administration, Elon Musk has turned his attention — and money — towards a key race in the swing state of Wisconsin. The billionaire’s America PAC is claiming to give $100 to registered voters who sign a petition against “activist judges.”
It’s not the first time Musk has promised money in exchange for signatures on petitions: he did the same thing leading up to the presidential election in November. It’s illegal to pay someone to vote or to register to vote, but Musk’s approach is meant to intentionally toe the line. Some election law experts say the tactic is legal because the offer doesn’t require a person actually vote; others say that requiring signatories be registered voters is what violates the law.
On April 1st Wisconsin voters will elect a new state Supreme Court justice, determining whether liberals will hold on to their 4-3 majority and rule on key issues like abortion, public sector unions, and gerrymandering. More than $76 million has been poured into the record breaking race already, with Musk-affiliated groups spending more than $14 million to try to elect conservative candidate Brad Schimel, who is trailing Dane County Judge Susan Crawford in the race. Liberal mega donors have also jumped in, with donations to the Wisconsin Democratic Party coming from individuals like Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman.
Musk and his America PAC have no way of confirming people who signed the petition actually voted — instead, they get voter contact information. Signing the petition requires people to share their first and last name, email, phone number, and mailing address, meaning the PAC can target voters in the weeks leading up to the election. The petition itself doesn’t mention Musk, Trump, or Schimel by name, but with a rolodex of registered voters in Wisconsin, the America PAC can urge those signatories to get out and vote for Musk (and Trump’s) favored candidate.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court race is also personal for Musk outside of politics: Tesla is suing the state. In 2024, Wisconsin blocked Tesla from opening dealerships in the state, in line with a law that prohibits manufacturers from operating dealerships. In January Musk posted on X: “Very important to vote Republican for the Wisconsin Supreme Court to prevent voting fraud!” He referenced an election conspiracy theory about voting in his post.
TikTok’s curse or blessing, depending on how you look at it, is that any video made by any random person can get millions of views without much rhyme or reason. Thousands of comments flood in, people make reaction videos, your random thoughts are referenced as gospel, and the TikTok content machine starts to whir.
If you’re of a certain demographic with certain interests — namely lifestyle, beauty, fashion, and New York City — you’ve probably already seen this viral 43-second clip that has spiraled into a full-blown Discourse Cycle. Earlier this month, a TikTok user, who had 90 followers at the time, posted a video that cut right to the chase: “All right guys, I’m just going to say it: I hate all of the New York influencers. I think they’re boring as fuck, and I think they’re all carbon copies of one another,” the creator, @martinifeeny, says. The biggest influencers based in New York wear and buy the same things, she goes on to say, and they’re all thin and pretty but boring.
In the comments, people called out the specific boutique fitness classes and skincare routines that appear to form the lion’s share of the influencers’ hobbies; some made the point that following a more diverse set of influencers would solve the problem entirely. Some influencers — apparently feeling personally attacked — made (and deleted) videos responding to the original one.
You do not need to know the specific influencers enmeshed in the discussion (though Vulture has a good run down), live in New York, or even follow influencers to get the point. Social media is awash in people who look, sound, and act like their peers, often for money. This “drama” is narrowly focused on one type of person, but it is a microcosm of the internet writ large: the most visible content online is just a slightly different version of something else.
In November, I wrote a story that might be the galaxy-brain version of the “influencers are boring” discourse — the saga of two young women so similar to one another that there’s a legal battle being waged to try and figure out if one of them broke the law. The two influencers are not based in New York, but if they were, they might be wrapped up in the current TikTok firestorm. In lay terms, their content style is best described as “basic.” They almost exclusively promote products purchased on Amazon, which itself lacks any substance and style so it can appeal to the widest customer base possible. The lawsuit claims that one influencer copied another’s very standard look so closely that she infringed on the plaintiff’s copyright and trade dress.
There’s a lot to be said about how and why certain people are elevated to bona fide capital-I Influencer status. Some of it has to do with who you are — your race, class, gender, disability status, and other aspects can push your career along or make it more difficult to ascend. The “New York City” designation is mostly a branding exercise. As other content creators have pointed out, the biggest influencers based in the city do not engage with their surroundings beyond going to restaurants, bars, and shopping. The city is a backdrop for selling their audiences clothing, home decor, makeup, and other consumables. Many of the women in this archetype are clients of the same talent manager who helps them secure sponsored content deals and advertising campaigns with a roster of brands.
As I detailed in my story about the Amazon influencers, the platforms these content creators have hitched their wagons to demand replicability; the algorithms reward palatable and ideologically neutral content that fits into established genres. It is easier to make videos that look like those of your peers than it is to create an entirely new format. As an influencer, you are making content that must be understandable to recommendation systems, and if the number goes up when you make boring videos, then that’s all the signal you need to keep doing the same thing over and over. If it feels like everyone is the same, it’s because they are all milking the same formula that social media platforms tell them is working. It’s like the MrBeast YouTube thumbnail strategy, but for women in their 20s, whose brand revolves around them posting videos from the West Village.
Our digital feeds will continue to get more monotonous, not less
Platforms pushing user behavior (and creativity) toward a dull average has become a defining characteristic of the current state of the internet. Before you notice the repetition on TikTok, you’re more likely to see this same thing happen with websites you visit — there’s a reason all recipe sites look the same, why every article you click on suddenly has subheads and author bios. In this example, it’s Google setting the conditions for engagement, and a captive audience of SEO workers who jump through hoops to make sure their sites are visible in search. When your life depends on people seeing and engaging with your article, TikTok video, Instagram Reel, there’s little reason to stray from what catches on, and often what travels the most is painfully, mind-numbingly average. The fact that technology companies promise the next frontier of human creation is AI — which are, by definition, average generators — suggests that our digital feeds will continue to get more monotonous, not less.
Is it any surprise then that this crop of New York women building influencer careers and businesses all seem the same? It’s not necessarily that they, as people, are indistinguishable. But they are hired by the same brands to produce the same videos to appeal to the same potential customers, and this cycle repeats until someone new but similarly fitting comes along and shifts the goalposts slightly.
Ultimately, this debate over carbon copy influencers fundamentally misunderstands two things. One is what these influencers are doing when they post. Their job is first and foremost in advertising — how many different ways can you sell a handbag? The second mistake is assuming the facsimiles are an anomaly of life online — that NYC influencers are boring because they’re boring people, that engaging user interest requires content to be interesting, or that there was any other possible outcome given the incentives and basic technological capacities and restrictions at play.
But this proliferation of look-alike, sound-alike, and feel-alike women isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.
BATANGAS, PHILIPPINES – MARCH 14: The USAID logo is seen on a computer at the Inclusive Education Community Resource Center, part of a USAID-funded initiative aimed at enhancing educational opportunities for learners with disabilities impacted by the Trump administration’s freeze on foreign aid.
President Donald Trump and Elon Muskâs slash-and-burn approach to the US government has thrown federal agencies into disarray, as thousands of civil servants have been dismissed from their jobs without rhyme or reason. But in the chaos of the cuts carried out by Muskâs pseudo-agency, the Department of Government Efficiency, some federal workers say the Trump administration is failing to do even basic offboarding to safeguard sensitive information on their work devices.
The result is a situation that experts warn is leaving civil servants, the people they worked with, and US government security at risk. In direct contradiction of federal guidelines, former employees have been forced to assume responsibility for preventing data leaks that could put local partners or the employees themselves in harm’s way, left with devices that have been all but abandoned by their higher-ups.
One of the agencies is the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which has seen 83 percent of its programs cut by the Trump administration. USAID employees abruptly dismissed by the Trump administration while working outside of the US are still stuck with government-issued computers and phones …
Briefly, here’s what’s up with Tesla over the past few weeks: its stock is down more than 50 percent since December; Tesla sales in California are plummeting; Cybertruck deliveries are reportedly paused because the vehicles are falling apart; protesters are demonstrating outside Tesla showrooms across the country; and Tesla owners are selling their cars to avoid getting called Nazis.
But that’s not all. According to data from YouGov, a market research firm, the public’s impression of the company has never been worse, reaching its lowest point since YouGov began tracking Tesla in 2016. YouGov asks members of the public daily questions about Tesla to gauge overall sentiment. (Sherwood first reported the data.)
As of March 12th, the net impression for respondents across the political spectrum is -12.8. “Impression” measures whether consumers have a positive or negative impression of a given brand. The company fares even worse with liberals, with a -35.5 net impression. Moderates sit at a -9.2 net impression. Conservatives are the only group with a positive net impression of Tesla, measured at 7.5.
YouGov also asks whether respondents would consider purchasing a Tesla. According to YouGov data, around 8 percent of liberals indicated they would consider purchasing a Tesla, down from 12 percent at the beginning of 2022. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the percentage of conservatives who say they would consider buying a Tesla has increased from 6.7 percent to 8.4 percent. Even those numbers are lagging: when looking at the average response rate for all carmakers, 10 percent of the general population say they would consider buying a vehicle.
As his company is in free fall, billionaire owner Elon Musk is attempting to cash in on his close relationship with the White House. On Tuesday, in what can only be described as an advertising event, President Donald Trump turned the White House driveway into a pop-up Tesla showroom, reading from a Tesla sales pitch and vowing to purchase a vehicle. Musk’s proximity to the Trump administration follows the hundreds of millions of dollars he poured into getting Trump elected. On the same day as the Tesla stunt, The New York Timesreported that Musk has indicated he wants to throw in another $100 million into other Trump groups.
In a TikTok video from CNN that has been viewed more than 3 million times since late February, the voice of a voter in Roswell, Georgia, pierces through a town hall event held by Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA).
“Tyranny is rising in the White House, and a man has declared himself our king,” the woman says. “So I would like to know, rather, the people would like to know, what you, congressman, and your fellow congressmen are going to do to rein in the megalomaniac in the White House.” Her voice is unwavering, each syllable enunciated perfectly. She speaks slowly and deliberately, and her Southern accent brings a different kind of intensity.
The sound bite is perfect for the age of shortform video. Hundreds of people have uploaded clips of themselves lip-syncing to the woman’s question. “Who is this diva?” is a common response, along with many iterations of “Vote [McCormick] out.”
Rep. Rich McCormick (R-GA) faced angry voters in Roswell, Georgia, who were upset about President Trump attempting to expand his own power using executive orders. #cnn#news#politics
Across the country, town halls like the event in Roswell have become the setting for constituents and their elected representatives to come face-to-face — often contentiously. Republican representatives have been booed out of their own events and drowned out after giving unsatisfactory responses. In Idaho, a woman was dragged out of an event by workers of a private security firm for “heckling” legislators. In a different timeline, these confrontations might have circulated in local news reports but not much further; now, they go viral, agitating even those at the highest levels of government. The tough questions come from people who identify themselves as Republicans as well as from Democrats, and many are attending town hall events for the first time, activated by the gutting of the federal government and services.
Lindsay DeFranco arrived at the Roswell town hall on February 20th well ahead of the start time to ensure she’d get a seat. (The event had overflow rooms to contain all the attendees.)
She saw McCormick questioned about everything from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), to support for Ukraine, to school lunch programs for kids. DeFranco, who grew up in the area and recently moved back, said McCormick came off as “dismissive” and “snide.”
“I don’t think he was listening very well, and if he was, he wasn’t truly wanting to engage with us,” DeFranco says. “At one point, he said, ‘I don’t think you guys came here in good faith,’ and that really set us off, too. Because we’re like, ‘Are you here in good faith?’”
“I really wanted people to see this is exactly what was asked, this is exactly what was said, and this is how people reacted,” DeFranco says. “They had told us that it wasn’t going to be live streamed. So I thought, ‘I have to film this right away. I have to document this.’”
Across the country, in Yucca Valley, California, Rep. Jay Obernolte (R-CA) faced a similarly tough crowd at his February 22nd community meeting in a congressional district that he won handily in November. Footage shows Obernolte being ushered out of the event to loud boos and shouts from the audience, who questioned the legislator about DOGE, cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and other issues.
E., an attendee at the event, was especially concerned about how DOGE and the Trump administration’s actions would affect the nearby Joshua Tree National Park. The New York Times counted at least 1,000 National Park employees who were terminated by the Trump administration in February, including some at Joshua Tree. (E. asked The Verge that they be identified by first initial only, fearing harassment.)
“That’s a big part of our economy. With the reduced staffing, we could obviously lose tourism,” E. says about the cuts to Joshua Tree. “It could impact local businesses and jobs, not to mention the environmental degradation, the risk for wildfires. Without Rangers, we have less resources to protect our park.”
E. says they previously did not have strong feelings about how well Obernolte had been representing the community but believed that listening to constituents was a key part of his job. The event was packed with constituents, and E. says it appeared to be an equal mix of Democrats and Republicans. There were young people and older community members, veterans, and some people that had signs related to cuts at the National Parks. At the beginning, the atmosphere was calm — nobody was aggressive or “name calling.” But it quickly turned, E. says, when the audience felt like Obernolte wasn’t addressing local issues people cared about. One man, in particular, caught E.’s attention: he was calm and collected, clapping when veterans issues were mentioned. But he seemed to be losing patience — he began shaking his head back and forth in frustration.
“That’s kind of when [I wanted] to do a video, because I want to document that this isn’t just coming from one side or the other,” E. says. “This feels a lot like the town itself is unhappy, and that’s what resonated with me.”
“I was there. I’m a real human. Just saying we’re a paid actor is like — when is our check coming?”
Republicans including House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump himself have pushed the false claim that “paid protestors” are behind the angry town halls. The pushback has rattled Republicans — earlier this month, House GOP leadership advised representatives to stop holding in-person town hall meetings. E. and others interviewed for this story refute the false claims that paid operatives are the people showing up to events.
“I was there. I’m a real human,” E. says. “Just saying we’re a paid actor is like — when is our check coming? Because I would love to donate that to our national park, if it is,” E. jokes.
Some Republicans have instead opted to do virtual events, like Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), who held a telephone town hall on February 27th. Autumn Marshall, a constituent, says she wanted to attend the event because she has been contacting Johnson’s office and has never gotten a response. Marshall says she is particularly concerned about the Department of Education and wanted to hear what Johnson’s plans were to fund schools in the state as well as Musk’s role in government and the future of Medicaid. By the time the call started, 400 questions had already poured in.
During the call, Marshall says Johnson appeared to enjoy the questions from callers who complimented or praised him — but went so far as to cut off callers who asked him difficult questions. It wasn’t clear to Marshall how questions were selected in the telephone format.
“I personally feel that’s kind of a cop out,” Marshall says. “It was really easy for him to just hang up on somebody, versus us being in front of him where people could maybe still keep talking.”
After the event, Marshall made a series of TikToks summarizing the event, describing what voters had asked and how Johnson had responded.
“I think that [elected officials] like to kind of fly under the radar, and they do need more light shone on them to see what they’re doing, what they’re saying,” Marshall says.
Trump and members of his administration are posters first, politicians second
Kiersten Pels, a spokesperson for Johnson, told The Verge that the senator has held 113 telephone town halls in his 15 years in the Senate. Pels did not respond to questions about whether Johnson would hold in-person events but noted that his office uploads recordings of phone town halls to X. McCormick’s and Obernolte’s offices did not respond to requests for comment.
Part of what catapulted Trump to the White House both times he has been elected is that he has figured out how to dominate in the attention economy: he and members of his administration are posters first, politicians second. The Kamala Harris campaign gave Trump a run for his money, but Democrats have largely been unable to wrest control of media narratives from the troll accounts, conspiracy theory podcasters, and a right-wing media ecosystem that props up Trump.
The viral town halls have bubbled up organically — and some Democrats have recognized the power vacuum opening up. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-CA) said last week that he will hold town halls in Republican districts, as has Tim Walz, Minnesota governor and Harris running mate. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) similarly said in an interview that if a deep red district wanted to host her, she would “be willing to do that.” Getting constituents across the political spectrum angrily confronting Republican lawmakers — and then going a step further and sharing that frustration online — has the potential to shake up the balance of power, at least on the internet.
DeFranco, who attended the town hall in Roswell, Georgia, says the current political moment is “lighting a fire” under her. She has attended other events with groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the League of Women Voters. In turn, DeFranco says she wants Democratic leaders to be more outspoken and take a stronger stance against the Trump agenda.
“At the State of the Union when they just wore pink in solidarity, or held up the little auction paddles to say things — I don’t think that’s enough,” DeFranco says. “I think it looks weak, and I think we’re going to continue getting taken advantage of until we vocally stand up for ourselves.”
On February 11th, as thousands of civil servants wondered whether they’d have a job — or whether their federal agencies would exist at all, as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk took a wrecking ball to the federal government — McLaurine Pinover had other things on her mind. Pinover, a political appointee of the Trump administration and the communications director at the Office of Personnel Management, was uploading her outfit to Instagram.
“Me and my emotional support shoulder sweater,” Pinover captioned a video (along with the hashtags #cozy, #petiteoutfitinspo, #dcstyle, and #classicwithatwist) as she posed for the camera. In another clip, uploaded January 29th, 2025, Pinover models a brown skirt and top, hands on hips. “New office, new office look,” she writes. “I’ve been sick + started a new job but excited to share my looks on this new adventure!” Here’s a quick reminder of what was happening that day in Washington, DC.
Pinover’s Instagram is long gone, deleted minutes after CNN reporters contacted her for a story revealing her side hustle, where she was also trying to monetize her content. But I was able to find a few of the cached pages on Google:
Luckily, I have an idea of where the OPM can start. Many of Pinover’s videos are filmed in a nondescript but tidy office. CNN, which broke the story, includes an incredible quote from a former OPM communications official: “I saw it, and I was like, ‘Are you kidding me, that’s my office.’” CNN also reports that Pinover’s Sears catalog-esque outfits were shared during working hours — seems wasteful to me! Pinover’s fashion account, @getdressedwithmc, only had around 800 followers, with some videos getting just a few dozen likes, which is not very efficient or effective. If you are going to use your government office on taxpayers’ dimes to film milquetoast outfit videos, at least have the decency to be good at it.
It is one thing to share your very normal and average outfits on a private account — still kind of cringe, but probably not worthy of news coverage. But according to CNN, Pinover was also trying to monetize her content via affiliate links. For actual influencers, affiliate links can be incredibly lucrative: they make a commission every time someone purchases a product using their link. But with 800 followers, it’s unclear if Pinover was making any money. She was trying, though, with CNN reporting she was hawking products like a $475 skirt. Government watchdog groups told CNN that Pinover’s actions appear to run afoul of rules against using government resources for a private business and other unauthorized purposes.
“Content creation” as a job has become more financially and socially viable in the last decade, and many people with day jobs dabble in making Reels or TikToks or YouTube vlogs. In 2022, I wrote about the trend of big tech employees going viral on the clock, recording footage in the offices of companies like Apple, Google, and Discord and discussing their careers and lifestyle. In this world, your day job is part of your content niche, blurring the lines between the role that pays your bills and your social media platform that you clearly want to bolster. While Pinover didn’t identify herself as a member of the Trump administration, her willingness to unabashedly promote her ShopMy affiliate links signals two things to me: these are not serious people; and also, this is what’s happening in workplaces across America, conflicts of interest and professional reputation be damned.
Reached for comment, the OPM press line responded with a statement attributed to Pinover: “While I was battling breast cancer as a new mom, I felt so unlike myself. Shortly after, I turned to social media as a personal outlet. I never made any income and with only about 800 followers, I’m surprised this is newsworthy. My focus remains on serving the American people at OPM.”
The OPM and Pinover did not respond to my questions about whether her actions constitute waste, fraud, or abuse — but I am not holding my breath, given what her bosses are up to. What’s that saying about when in Rome?
Update March 12th: Added comment from the OPM and Pinover.
