There are so many people here that nobody can tell where the end of the line is. New people arrive, ask if there’s a line, shuffle into a blob of bodies idling and waiting for someone to give them instructions. The hallway is horribly warm — unclear if it’s from the bodies or the heat — and it’s a little smelly, which could just be me but I don’t think it is. I estimate between 100 and 150 people are hanging around, waiting for 2:15PM to roll around, their anticipation building. This is not a club with a strict bouncer, though it feels like it. This is the Luigi Mangione hearing.

The hearing is a relatively minor pre-trial status update, but for the people most tapped in, there is a lot riding on it — the Luigi info-drip has been a bit dry lately. Court dates for the 26 year old accused of murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December keep getting pushed back. Mangione, who is currently being held in federal custody in a Brooklyn jail, has not made a public appearance since before Christmas. (Mangione is accused of gunning down Thompson in December outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel, and has pleaded not guilty.) On TikTok, commenters regularly complain th …

Read the full story at The Verge.

President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered federal agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to add disclaimers railing against “gender ideology” to pages restored by a recent court order, The Washington Post reported. The notice reads:

Per a court order, HHS is required to restore this website as of 11:59 PM on February 11, 2025. Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female. The Trump Administration rejects gender ideology and condemns the harms it causes to children, by promoting their chemical and surgical mutilation, and to women, by depriving them of their dignity, safety, well-being, and opportunities. This page does not reflect biological reality and therefore the Administration and this Department reject it.

Portions of the notice that appear on federal websites are identical to Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology extremism,” which denies the existence of transgender and intersex people.

The sites with the notice include pages that had been taken down in a frenzied effort to comply with the executive order, which has had the effect of removing references to transgender people from government websites — including from documents on LGBTQ history. The websites were restored earlier this week after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to bring them back online.

The right-wing attacks on transgender people — including children — have been widespread in the weeks since Trump’s inauguration. The new administration is attempting to deny trans people medical care, block “X” markers on passports, and ban trans people from women’s sports, as well as erase the existence of trans people altogether by threatening to withhold funding for organizations that reference queer and transgender people. The Trump administration’s goal appears to be to push transgender people to the margins of society and to threaten researchers, nonprofits, medical providers, and others who work with and serve trans adults and kids.

Trump’s various executive orders attacking gender identity as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts have had cascading effects across science. Some researchers are combing through documents and censoring terms that could draw the ire of the Trump administration: words like “women,” “diverse,” and “excluded.”

President Donald Trump’s tariffs on China, Canada, and Mexico are presented by the president and his boosters as a boon to American businesses. If products from China are more expensive, the argument goes, then people will instead buy from counterparts based in the US.

But for small businesses manufacturing in the US, the tariffs are already causing their costs to go up — which, in turn, will force them to raise prices for consumers.

Valerie Schafer Franklin, one of the owners of Walnut Studiolo based in Oregon, says she’s already noticed a change. Schafer Franklin and her husband specialize in handmade leather goods, like bicycle grips or drawer pulls. Her husband, Geoffrey, is the designer and crafter; Schafer Franklin handles everything else. 

Part of her job is keeping track of the business’s inventory and stock, ordering more components, and pricing products. The business’s primary component is leather, which the couple buys from a fifth-generation leather tannery in St. Louis, Missouri. But the handmade goods Walnut Studiolo makes require other supplies the average consumer might not think about: they need thread to stitch the leather, magnets and fasteners for game boards, and specialty screws that are hard to find. 

“Our prices right now are based on whatever we purchase the components for,” Schafer Franklin says. “We don’t make up arbitrary prices based on whatever we think people would buy. We take how much it costs us to buy the things that go into it, how much time it takes us to make it, and then mark it up to cover our costs.”

So far, Trump has announced and then paused 25 percent tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico; a 10 percent tax on products coming from China, by contrast, is in effect, though part of the executive order imposing them was put on ice temporarily. And earlier this week, Trump announced additional tariffs on imported aluminum and steel. 

But the idea that only products made abroad would be affected by tariffs glosses over the truth about modern manufacturing: businesses of all sizes depend on a global, interconnected supply chain. And when one part suddenly gets more expensive, that cost drifts downstream, all the way to the person who buys the product.

After supply chain chaos during the covid-19 pandemic, the couple decided to keep more components on hand than they had before. For now, the price of their products has not gone up because the components being used were purchased earlier. But that may soon change: when Schafer Franklin was recently reordering specialty screws, she noticed her supplier had bumped up the price by 20 percent. A recent email from a magnet supplier warned of the tariffs on Chinese goods: “prices will rise, possibly sooner than expected,” the supplier wrote. “If you rely on magnets for your business or personal use, buying now is the best way to avoid increased costs.”

“I do feel pressure when [I] get those, because it’s hard enough to compete with our prices being handmade over knockoffs or whatever, that come out way cheaper,” Schafer Franklin says. “When the components go up and we have to increase our prices, that means I’m not as confident we’ll be able to sell as many, because price matters a lot.” Small businesses essentially have to read the tea leaves and decide whether to stock up on supplies now for a lower price but that they potentially won’t be able to sell.

Even businesses based in the US making products domestically — the type of companies the Trump administration means when they say “America first” — rely on components or products made abroad, specifically in China.

Walnut Studiolo’s travel cribbage board, for example, is made in the Oregon studio by hand. The couple wanted to include miniature playing cards with the board, but after searching high and low, Schafer Franklin says she could not find any factories in the US that made half- and quarter-sized playing cards.

“There are some specialty things that are only made in certain parts of the world, and I guess playing cards was one of these,” she says. She ended up hiring a company in China to produce the custom cards, prioritizing a manufacturer that felt as ethical and environmentally friendly as possible.

Trump’s ever-shifting tariff policies have caused confusion and stress for all types of businesses selling products online. Dropshipping forums are awash with questions about the tariffs and sellers saying prices on their products have gone up. Etsy has notified sellers that it is “continuing to monitor the situation” but has offered little guidance, Schafer Franklin says. (Etsy declined to comment for this story.)

Trump’s preoccupation with the concept of “Made in America” is marketed to the public as supporting American businesses. Will tariffs boost sales for companies like Walnut Studiolo? Schafer Franklin is not optimistic.

As Elon Musk and President Donald Trump have sought to gut and remake the federal government to their liking, federal workers have changed how they communicate with one another and with friends. They have locked down communication channels, migrated to new platforms, and what was once skepticism has grown into deep distrust — not just of their boss’s boss’s boss, but of the very services they use to communicate with one another, worried that their messages will be leaked to the government. 

Multiple federal workers who spoke to The Verge on the condition of anonymity said they’ve moved sensitive conversations from text messages and Facebook Messenger to the encrypted messaging app Signal. Many are downloading and using Signal for the first time to communicate with each other — away from the eyes of Trump and Musk loyalists but also from mainstream tech companies. For some, everything but the most innocuous conversations have been moved. Photos of pets might stay on typical channels; almost everything else is on Signal.

“I have to have two separate conversations with someone over two different platforms,” says a person who works for the US Agency for International Development (USAID). “But that’s how wary people are of trusting their messages.” 

Another federal employee told The Verge that peers have asked them not to contact them on platforms like Facebook Messenger and to move any conversations about work or the federal government to Signal. Civil servants said they fear that technology companies aligned with the Trump administration, like Meta, could turn over user information to the government. One worker said they feared their data across platforms could be fed into artificial intelligence tools that would then be used to identify people who disagree with the administration.

“I know that’s such an extreme take, and the sane part of me is saying that would never happen — but a lot of the stuff we said would never happen, did,” they said.

Another person said day-to-day communication in work channels has also gotten more guarded.

“Normally we’ll chitchat and maybe make snarky comments about leadership and general complaining stuff,” they say. “But for the past three weeks, no more. I’m more circumspect, and I’ve noticed my colleagues are also more circumspect.”

At the heart of some of the distrust is how technology companies have cozied up to the Trump administration: companies including Meta, Google, and Apple’s Tim Cook all donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. For months, Mark Zuckerberg has laid it on thick in an attempt to curry favor with the administration, flattering Trump publicly and preaching the right-wing gospel on podcasts. One worker also pointed to a recent change made by Google to its calendar of holidays that removed celebrations like Pride Month and Black History Month. (A Google spokesperson told The Verge the calendar was switched to display only default entries for public holidays and national observances.)

Privacy experts have long raised concerns about how data held by technology companies could be used against users on the platform. In 2022, in response to a police search warrant, Meta turned over unencrypted chat logs in which two women discussed abortion pills in a state in which abortion access was restricted.

The Verge asked Meta if the company would hand over user data requested without a court order by Musk’s pseudo-agency, “The Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE. Meta spokesperson Thomas Richards said the company’s policies had not changed and noted that the “vast majority” of personal messages on Messenger are end-to-end encrypted.

Meta says it follows “applicable law and [its] terms of service” when the company receives government requests for data, and publishes top-level reports on requests it receives. From January to June 2024, for example, Meta reported it received more than 14,000 requests via subpoena in the US, and some amount of data was produced in 85 percent of cases. Data requests to companies like Meta are governed by the Fourth Amendment as well as the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), including the Stored Communications Act (SCA), says Andrew Crocker, surveillance litigation director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“To my knowledge DOGE itself does not have access to any of these types of legal requests — it would have to have the assistance of a law enforcement agency like the FBI,” Crocker told The Verge in an email.

Privacy advocates have pointed to ways law enforcement have tried to get around having a court order, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement using administrative subpoenas that aren’t signed off by a judge to attempt to obtain user data from tech companies. In fact, Twitter (pre-Musk) fought a request by the Department of Homeland Security in 2017 that attempted to unmask an anonymous “alt-gov” account that was critical of policies during the first Trump administration.

“When you have companies that are functioning as large data dragnets, they could be an incredibly rich target for agencies trying to investigate or retaliate against federal employees,” said Darío Maestro, senior legal fellow at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. “Law enforcement already has an alarming number of ways to seize digital communications, whether through subpoenas, court orders under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, national security letters, or warrants, often with little transparency and no notification to those affected.”

Both Crocker and Maestro stressed the importance of strong privacy and security measures like default end-to-end encryption.

On forums like r/fednews, users share security tips and warnings about how workers’ activities could be monitored. The Signal app offers end-to-end encrypted messages, meaning the company doesn’t retain or have access to messages. But that means a user’s security settings on their device are all the more important: users can set messages to disappear after a set amount of time and set up a username rather than connect with other people using a phone number. 

Even on Signal, there’s heightened vigilance. Some federal employees have taken extra steps to shield their identities, like changing their display names to be anonymous, fearing someone could screenshot their messages. Signal did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether it has seen an increase in new users over the past several weeks. But according to data from Pew Research Center, as of November the federal government employed over 3 million people, or 1.87 percent of the entire US workforce.

If you live in the US, congratulations — you are now a foot soldier in what has been called “the dumbest trade war in history.” And if you live in one of the top three countries that trade most with the US (Canada, Mexico, and China), apologies: you are part of this as well.

Donald Trump loves tariffs despite regularly misrepresenting how they work, and after months of saying he would impose them on goods coming into the US, he made good on his promise this week: there is now an additional 10 percent tax on all products from China. The tariffs on Canadian and Mexican goods have been paused for a month, after both countries conceded to certain border measures. (Canada, for its part, apparently agreed to border policies it was already doing.) But we surely have not heard the last of Trump’s favorite trade policy.

There’s a deep misunderstanding of tariffs, in part thanks to Trump’s false claims. Who pays tariffs? What do they actually do? How do they affect consumers? Let’s talk about it.

What’s a tariff, exactly?

Leave the word “tariff” aside for a second and think about it like this: it’s a tax. Specifically, tariffs are a tax set by the government on goo …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Last summer, the staff at Gannett’s consumer reviews site Reviewed received terrible news: the media giant was shuttering the entire vertical and would be laying off dozens of employees. Effective November 1st, Reviewed would cease operations. Gannett blamed Google’s changing search algorithm, which had “degraded [its] business model.” The shuttering was a blow to the more than 70 employees, who, in Gannett’s words, would be “affected” by the decision. The closure came after an already tumultuous period: in 2023, the NewsGuild of New York, which represents unionized Reviewed workers, publicly accused Gannett of running AI-generated product reviews on the site. The content was pulled after staff outcry.

You wouldn’t know any of this backstory — or that Reviewed is technically shut down — if you were browsing the site today: a smattering of articles on the homepage tout the best rakes, slow cookers, and video doorbells of 2025. Reviewed published nearly two dozen articles during 2025’s CES, and its Instagram page posted intermittent updates from the trade show event. The homepage appears unchanged — there’s no notice for readers that the site is supposed to be dead. It trudges on like a zombie, promising thousands of hours of product testing by trustworthy experts.

Many of the articles promising “the best” products of 2025 are, in fact, old stories retrofitted with new, timely headlines. An article for the best patio heaters, for example, indicates the story was actually last updated two years ago in January 2023 and written by a staff member who no longer works at Reviewed. 

When the shuttering of the site was announced, the understanding of former staff was that the website would remain online for a period of time. What they didn’t anticipate was that their existing work would be updated and that Reviewed would continue on as if nothing had happened. 

“As far as we were aware, the site was going to shut down permanently, and multiple writers were saving PDFs of their work in case the site went completely offline,” says a former staffer, who requested anonymity due to separation agreements they signed. “None of us were aware that the site was going to continue being updated, nor that our bylines would be updated and promoted on the site.”

So what exactly is going on at Reviewed, a site that’s supposed to be shut down? Even former staff members have been unsure but have watched as their former workplace trudges on.

One name reappears across different pages: StackCommerce, an online shopping platform that works with publishers to create affiliate marketing content. Some of the stories from CES on Reviewed are authored by people who say they work at StackCommerce. A page for open jobs redirects to StackCommerce’s careers page, as does Reviewed’s privacy policy page. StackCommerce’s chief operating officer is the former general manager of Reviewed, according to LinkedIn. Gannett did not respond to The Verge’s questions and instead directed us to StackCommerce.

Reached for comment, StackCommerce CEO Karl House confirmed to The Verge via email that the company acquired Reviewed on December 1st, including the brand, IP, domain, and content, but declined to provide terms of the sale. 

“StackCommerce engaged with Gannett after they announced they were shutting down Reviewed in August 2024,” House said. “StackCommerce has since hired five former Reviewed employees.” 

The acquisition was mostly kept quiet. There appears to have been no formal announcement by either party — until The Verge reached out to StackCommerce in January. Shortly after, StackCommerce shared a blog post announcing the acquisition.

Readers who relied on Reviewed recommendations have likely not realized that the site has changed hands. It’s also not clear how reviews and recommendations are carried out given the new ownership. Many of Reviewed’s editorial promises remain on the site, like the claim that the site spends “thousands of hours” on “tough, objective, hands-on testing” of products. StackCommerce did not respond to questions about the company’s testing process.

“Testing was hands-on and conducted by either dedicated testers from the labs, or knowledgeable experts that would usually test the product (whether it be an appliance or a pair of sneakers) for a significant amount of time, sometimes up to a week or more,” the former Reviewed employee said. It’s not clear how the outlet is deciding the “best” products of 2025 — and from the reader’s perspective, the site looks unchanged. For example, by Gannett’s own admission, the product testing lab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, closed last year, yet the website still references an in-lab testing process.

Complicating the matter is that many of the Reviewed staff members who lost their jobs last fall were unionized workers (some employees in senior positions were reassigned elsewhere in USA Today). The relationship between Gannett and Reviewed was contentious: staff had previously walked off the job after they were unable to secure bargaining dates with management.

At the time of the AI saga, the union raised concerns about their members’ futures at Gannett that now seem prescient. 

“It’s an attempt to undermine and replace members of the union whether they’re using AI, subcontractors of a marketing firm, or some combination of both,” the union previously told The Verge in a statement.

As the third week of Donald Trump’s presidency begins, workers across federal agencies are scrambling to find their footing among the chaos.

From the US Agency for International Development and the Department of Agriculture, to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Labor, federal workers are facing an onslaught of changes that threaten to upend their work and the systems that keep the country running. Sweeping orders from the White House threatened to freeze funding for basic grants and programs, before being blocked by a judge and walked back by Trump. Using a made up meme agency, unelected billionaire Elon Musk is attempting to stage a takeover reminiscent of his remaking of Twitter, now X, except this time hollowing out the US government. 

“A lot of us are scared and feel betrayed,” a person who works for USAID told The Verge. “When [people] get hired, they take an oath to protect the constitution.” And with Musk actively dismantling the humanitarian agency, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Monday he now runs, workers at other agencies are wondering if the same could happen to their workplaces. “I think everyone is really scared about wh …

Read the full story at The Verge.

President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariff threats have been touch and go. As it stands currently, the 25 percent tax on goods from Mexico and Canada is on ice for a month, but a 10 percent tariff on Chinese goods is set to take effect on Tuesday, via an executive order of questionable legality. 

Nestled within the order is a brief but important provision that could change how Americans shop online: the closing of a little-known loophole called the de minimis exception.

Under the de minimis rule, packages that are valued under $800 can enter the US duty free, and recipients in the US can get up to $800 worth of stuff per day without paying import taxes.

E-commerce giants like Temu and Shein (but also countless smaller operations) have used this loophole to ship low-value packages to shoppers, who, in turn, benefit from not having to pay import taxes on their purchases. Temu, Shein, and other companies that ship directly to consumers don’t have to store tons of merchandise in warehouses in the US: they can mail orders directly from manufacturers or warehouses in China, where many products are produced.

The de minimis provision has been on the books for nearly 100 years, but it’s arguably a bigger issue now than at any point in the past century. The number of packages avoiding taxes has skyrocketed, from 139 million a year in 2015 to over 1.36 billion in 2024, according to US Customs and Border Protection. The cost limit was increased from $200 to $800 in 2016 after groups like eBay, Etsy, and package delivery companies lobbied Congress. And the growing popularity of platforms like Shein and Temu in the last few years normalized waiting a few weeks for orders to come from China in exchange for bargain bin-priced goods.

The Biden administration previously proposed tightening the de minimis loophole. Trump’s executive order, as written, effectively kills it — making low-value shipments subject to existing tariffs plus the additional 10 percent tax. That’s not just an extra fee; it’s an existential threat to the business models of Shein and Temu. A T-shirt from China, for example, would be subject to Trump’s new 10 percent tax, plus standard tariffs that are based on the specific product and then additional China-specific tariffs that the first Trump administration put in place.

Temu and Shein’s business models keep the retailers’ prices impossibly low and has threatened Amazon’s dominance in online shopping. Last November, Amazon took a page out of Temu’s playbook and introduced Amazon Haul, a marketplace of ultracheap home goods, gadgets, and clothing that looks and feels like Chinese e-commerce platforms. As I wrote in December, Amazon is taking advantage of this same de minimis exemption: the products on Haul are even cheaper than normal Amazon listings, and the marketplace features many products that also appear for sale on Shein, Temu, and AliExpress. 

If de minimis is indeed closed for packages from China, it’s likely that the impossibly cheap dresses, coats, handbags, and home decor Americans are hooked on will soon get more expensive. Tariffs are a tax on the person or entity importing the goods, not on the exporter. Research has shown that getting rid of the de minimis loophole would both cost the government billions of dollars more in enforcement and disproportionately raise costs for poorer Americans.

It’s not just big corporations that would be affected. Dropshippers who fulfill orders directly from abroad would be affected, as would small businesses importing components, parts, or supplies in batches under $800. Small orders from platforms like Etsy or eBay coming from China could cost consumers more, too. 

Temu, Shein, and Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Trump has justified imposing tariffs and ending the de minimis loophole by pointing to “the synthetic opioid supply chain,” claiming that de minimis packages receive less scrutiny and can be used for shipping drug ingredients. A Reuters investigation last year outlined how de minimis packages could be used to traffic drugs — but it’s not clear that low-value parcels pose a greater threat than larger shipments.

The prices on platforms like Shein and Temu feel unbelievably cheap because, in a way, they are. These goods depend on a technicality that both sides of the political aisle appear motivated to stamp out, and on Tuesday, they might succeed.

Electronics, avocados, vegetables, cars, tractors, crude oil — these are some of the things that could soon get more expensive for US consumers. Under President Donald Trump’s proposed plan, goods coming in from Mexico and Canada will be subject to a 25 percent tariff beginning on February 1st. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has also said Trump was “very much still considering” tariffs on China on the same day. As of late Thursday, the specifics of these plans were still up in the air.

Sweeping tariffs were one of Trump’s marquee campaign promises leading up to the election in November. He’s previously threatened up to a 60 percent tariff on goods from China, a 100 percent tariff on goods from Mexico, and even a 200 percent tariff on John Deere products imported into the US. Despite this, Trump failed to levy any tariffs on day one of his presidency, with Bloomberg reporting on Thursday that his administration lacked even concepts of a plan. His first round is now supposed to hit goods from Mexico and Canada, the two largest trade partners for the US.

In 2022, around $1.8 trillion of goods and services moved between countries under the current United St …

Read the full story at The Verge.

Resale platform Poshmark is launching Smart List AI, an automated product listing tool for sellers, the company announced today.

The tool has been in beta testing since last fall and uses sellers’ photos to generate details like the type of product, the size and brand, the style and color, and other details, as well as a title and description for the listing. Like other platforms that have introduced AI listing tools, the promise is that Smart List AI will streamline the process for sellers and cut down on the amount of time it takes to list items. Sellers will still input the price of their item, Manish Chandra, founder and CEO of Poshmark, told The Verge via email.

Other platforms like eBay have also introduced AI-generated listings that fill in details like product titles and descriptions. And like eBay’s feature, Poshmark’s tool will depend on sellers actually confirming that the information is correct — in the secondhand market, accurate details for things like the brand, size, and condition of an item are essential.

In my experience on eBay, at least, AI-generated descriptions are not very helpful; they mostly read like marketing fluff. What’s actually helpful is a detailed list of any flaws, wear and tear, or precise measurements — things that an AI listing tool wouldn’t be able to generate.

Retailers, including Shopify and Amazon, have pushed generative AI shopping products on both the merchant and consumer ends. And whether its AI-generated product listings or entire garments “created” using AI, the aim is often the same: to increase the scale of production, but not necessarily improve the quality.

Smart List AI will be available to Poshmark users on iOS in February.

American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the union representing 750,000 federal employees, told members on Wednesday to not resign via an email sent to them by the US Office of Personnel Management. The email sent on Tuesday prompted employees to resign from service by accepting a “deferred resignation” offer in which they would be exempted from return-to-office requirements instituted under President Donald Trump’s new administration.

“There is not yet any evidence the administration can or will uphold its end of the bargain, that Congress will go along with this unilateral massive restructuring, or that appropriated funds can be used this way, among other issues that have been raised,” the union says in its notice to members, a copy of which was obtained by The Verge. “We are encouraging AFGE members NOT to resign or respond to this email until you have received further information and clarification.”

The union’s email also includes frequently asked questions about the offer, which has caused panic and confusion among the federal workforce. For one, there have been inconsistencies between the email and other circulating memos, like whether employees would be required to work during the time they resign and September 30th. The FAQ section also warns union members that the deferred resignation benefits are vague and questions whether OPM even has the legal authority to offer the purported benefits.

“Employees should not take the Program at face value,” a section of the FAQ reads.

Separately, AFGE and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) announced they were suing the Trump administration over its efforts to make it easier to fire civil servants.

The OPM email, which was later published on the office’s website, is similar in some ways to communication Twitter employees received from Elon Musk after he bought the platform in 2022. The OPM notice includes the subject line “Fork in the Road” — the same subject line Musk used in an email to Twitter staff pressuring them to commit to his vision for the company or quit. This week, Wired reported that OPM, which is essentially the federal government’s HR division, had been taken over by individuals linked to Musk’s various businesses. In another move straight out of the Twitter takeover playbook, Musk is reportedly sleeping at the offices of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the renamed agency that the Trump ally is now in charge of.

Earlier this week, several posts on the Instagram page of Aid Access, an abortion pill provider, were inaccessible to the public. Some images were blurred out, with no option to click through and view the post. Others appeared simply as a gray square with nondescript alt text, as if the image didn’t load.

Aid Access connects patients with doctors who provide abortion pills via telehealth appointments, and the posts that were blocked from being viewed included instructions for performing at-home abortions using pills. The issues on Instagram — first reported by Jessica Valenti — also reportedly made it difficult to find the Aid Access account using the app’s search function.

By Thursday evening, Meta had restored a handful of Aid Access posts, though some appear to still be missing. This latest incident is just another example of how Meta has restricted abortion information online for years. It also comes in the middle of Meta’s right-wing pivot, as the company has begun allowing more transphobic, racist, and otherwise hateful content on its platforms as it courts Donald Trump.

Image: Meta

Image: Meta

Medication abortions in the first trimester of pregnancy can safely be done at home, according to the World Health Organization. Licensed providers like those working with Aid Access have prescribed abortion pills to hundreds of thousands of patients. Thanks to shield laws, which protect healthcare workers who provide the procedure, patients in states where abortion is banned or restricted can also order abortion medication.

Social media is an important place for patients to seek information about abortions, says Rebecca Davis of Hey Jane, which offers virtual reproductive care like abortions and birth control.

“[Patients] will often turn to social media to just make sure we’re legit,” says Davis, who leads marketing at the company. “We’ve spent a lot of time and energy to really build up our social presence, so we’re verified on Instagram, we’re verified on TikTok.”

Hey Jane encountered restrictions on Instagram in recent days as well. Davis says the group has gotten messages that its Instagram profile was not easily accessible through the app’s search features. The Verge was able to replicate the issue: typing in “heyjane” or “hey jane” did not display the account as suggested. Users would need to know the account’s full handle, @heyjanehealth, in order for it to appear as a suggestion.

“We know that by not showing up in these searches we’re directly impacting people who are actively seeking this very timely, essential healthcare from getting the information that they need to make decisions,” Davis told The Verge.

Meta spokesperson Erin Logan told The Verge in an email that abortion rights groups are experiencing “a variety of issues — some due to correct enforcement, as well as over enforcement.” Logan said the company prohibits the sale of pharmaceutical drugs on Meta platforms without a LegitScript certification. (Hey Jane is among the providers certified with LegitScript.) Logan said these incidents were not the result of recent Meta policy updates.

“We’ve been quite clear in recent weeks that we want to allow more speech and reduce enforcement mistakes — and we’re committed to doing that,” Logan added, though no specifics were mentioned. Regarding issues encountered by Hey Jane, Logan directed The Verge to Meta’s policies, which state that content promoting the use of pharmaceutical drugs is allowed on the platform but may not be eligible for recommendation.

In recent weeks, Meta has rolled back its policies for what users can and can’t say on its platforms, opening the floodgates for more hate speech and offensive content under the guise of “free expression.” But providers have long had information about abortion restricted or removed, according to groups like Amnesty International and Repro Uncensored. Davis from Hey Jane says this isn’t the first time the group’s Instagram profile has been invisible in search: something similar happened in 2023, when fake Hey Jane accounts were appearing in search instead.

Even though abortion access groups have encountered issues on Meta platforms, Davis says it’s not as simple as moving to another social media site. Many patients use Instagram and other platforms like TikTok to find urgent information.

“While this moment certainly points to the value in diversifying the platforms that we’re on, that doesn’t necessarily mean that people who are seeking abortion care are going to be off of these platforms,” Davis says.

Meta and YouTube aren’t the only platforms looking to benefit from TikTok potentially disappearing — Substack wants in on the action, too.

The company announced Thursday it’s launching a $20 million “creator accelerator fund,” promising content creators they won’t lose revenue by jumping ship to Substack. Creators in the program also get “strategic and business support” from Substack, and early access to new features.

“We established this fund because we’ve seen creators who specialize in video, audio, and text expand their audience, revenue, and influence on Substack, where the platform’s network effects amplify the quality and impact of the work they’re doing,” the company said in a blog post.

This pivot on Substack’s part has been in the works for a while — for months, the company has been marketing itself not as a newsletter delivery service but as a creator platform similar to Patreon.

“On Substack, [creators] can build their own home on the internet: one where creators, not platform executives or advertisers, own their work and their audience,” the blog post reads. The post also cites “bans, backlash, and policies that change with the political winds” as a reason creators can’t depend on traditional social media services.

That’s all fine (we at The Verge have been saying this for a while). But creators focusing on Substack are also subject to ebbs and flows depending on what the company is prioritizing: first, it was newsletters, then it was tweet-like micro blogs, followed by full-on websites and livestreaming. For some, Substack’s initial stated mission of giving more freedom to independent writers is fading. And TikTok creators looking to move to Substack will need to rebuild their following all over again — you obviously can’t export your TikTok followers.

Substack’s business is not immune from “political winds,” either. Just a year ago the company found itself in hot water over Nazi newsletters that were being monetized on the platform. Substack eventually banned some of the newsletters, but only after sustained and public pressure from high-profile writers. In 2022, when Substack’s promise was to be a better version of a newsroom, the company abruptly fired an editor who had worked on a newsletter critical of Substack.

The $20 million fund isn’t the first time Substack has offered a pool of money meant to entice creators. Under a program called Substack Pro, the company poached top media talent from traditional newsrooms with higher pay, health insurance, and other perks. That program ended in 2022, with Substack cofounder Hamish McKenzie saying the deals weren’t employment arrangements but “seed funding deals to remove the financial risk for a writer in starting their own business.” In other words, welcome to Substack. Now that you’re here, you’re on your own — which is more or less the deal other platforms offer.

Dozens of popular subreddits are banning links to X after Elon Musk made a gesture that historians and human rights groups have described as a Nazi salute. Communities that have instituted a ban on links to X include r/formula1, r/military, r/nursing, r/TwoXChromosomes, and r/nintendo.

The shift is spreading across Reddit after neo-Nazis celebrated Musk’s speech at a rally on Monday for Donald Trump’s inauguration. During the speech, Musk twice raised his arm in a salute that historians, elected officials, and organizations that support Holocaust survivors have observed as a Nazi salute. During his speech, Musk places his hand on his chest and throws his arm forward at an angle, holding it mid-air for a few moments. “My heart goes out to you,” he says to supporters. Some supporters of Musk have defended him, saying the gesture went along with his words.

Musk has not disavowed the neo-Nazis reading his gesture as a Sieg Heil, and in fact has minimized criticism, writing on X that “The ‘everyone is Hitler’ attack is sooo tired.” Musk has previously amplified racist, antisemitic conspiracy theories like the Great Replacement Theory and is constantly posting anti-immigrant claims not based in reality. After pouring millions of dollars into US politics to elect Trump, Musk has expanded to German politics as well, endorsing the far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Regardless of Musk’s true intentions, extremists are thrilled: as Rolling Stone reported, white supremacists are calling it a “Donald Trump White Power moment” and thanking Musk for “hearing” them.

The subreddits that announced the new rule cover millions of users across geography and interests. Some subreddits have announced they will allow screenshots of content from X but not hyperlinks, and many other large communities like r/nba and r/nfl are discussing following suit. Even setting Musk’s right wing politics aside, viewing X links on Reddit isn’t a great experience: links often don’t unfurl and users need an X account to view the conversation on the platform.

“Reddit has a longstanding commitment to freedom of speech and freedom of association,” said a Reddit spokesperson who asked to remain anonymous citing the sensitivity of the subject. While individual subreddits are able to institute community rules, “Reddit Inc. has no ban on X links — there are still plenty of X links on Reddit,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.

X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Instagram is bringing back one of its more chaotic features, now reworked for the short-form video era.

A new tab in the Reels feed will serve up videos that a user’s friends have liked or added commentary to, Instagram leader Adam Mosseri announced in a video message today. Users will be able to see which friends have liked a video — a callback to the old Instagram “activity” feed that was killed in 2019.

“We want Instagram to not only be a place where you consume entertaining content, but one where you connect over that content with friends,” Mosseri says. In the new feed, you’ll be able to see which friends have liked a post and which have left a temporary “note” on a Reel.

Image: Meta

That sounds nice in a ideal world, but given the way that the previous “activity” feed was scrutinized, I’m willing to bet a lot of users actually don’t want their friends to see all the Reels they’ve liked. (I’m not sure what benefits or insights my friends would get from seeing that I liked every single Shohei Ohtani post that crossed my feed, but OK.) It also might discourage people from engaging publicly with content in this way to avoid it being shown to all of their friends. It’s also not a given that you share interests or hobbies just because you’re friends with someone — for many people, it’s the hyper personalized nature of TikTok that makes the experience interesting in the first place.

Other platforms like X have gone the opposite route by hiding users’ liked posts, in part because people kept getting caught liking embarrassing things (if someone catches Ted Cruz liking thirst trap Reels, please email me immediately). Meta didn’t immediately respond to questions about whether users can opt out of having their activity shown in the new Reels feed.

Instagram stands to benefit if its biggest rival, TikTok, is forced to pull out of the US this weekend. Reels is Instagram’s answer to TikTok, but many creators and users say the atmosphere on Reels doesn’t live up to the environment TikTok has cultivated. While the new feature might stoke drama and pull some users into the Reels feed, it could also have the opposite effect for those who don’t want all their interests broadcast out.

Cash App is closing out the week on the hook for $255 million in multiple settlements around its consumer protections.

Block, the company that owns Cash App, agreed Wednesday to pay $80 million to 48 states that fined the company for violating laws intended to keep illicit activity off the platform.

“State regulators found Block was not in compliance with certain requirements, creating the potential that its services could be used to support money laundering, terrorism financing, or other illegal activities,” a press release from the Conference of State Bank Supervisors says.

Separately, the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reached a settlement with Block on Thursday, in which the company agreed to pay $120 million to Cash App customers and another $55 million to the CFPB. According to the bureau, Cash App’s weak security measures put consumers at risk and made it difficult for users to get help after experiencing fraud on the platform. Cash App is also accused of tricking consumers into thinking that their bank, not Cash App, was responsible for handling disputes and that Cash App didn’t offer “meaningful and effective” customer service, which “left the network vulnerable to criminals defrauding users.”

How to regulate peer-to-peer money-transferring apps like Cash App is an ongoing fight. This week, NetChoice and TechNet sued to challenge the CFPB’s handling of such platforms like banks, calling it an “unlawful power grab.” Google filed a similar suit in December.

It’s been more than four years since Donald Trump first moved to expel TikTok from the US — and now, just days before a second Trump presidency begins, it just might happen.

President Joe Biden signed legislation last April that officially began the countdown that would force TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to divest from the US business. But even afterward, the atmosphere on the video powerhouse was mostly nonchalant, with a handful of stray jokes about “this app disappearing” slotted between the usual fare.

In the last week, though, the vibe has shifted — my favorite creators are posting links to their other social accounts, audiences are making highlight reels of the most viral moments on the app, and they’re saying goodbye to their “Chinese spy” and threatening to hand over their data to the Chinese government. A Chinese-owned app Xiaohongshu, known as RedNote, topped the App Store this week, driven by a wave of “TikTok refugees” trying to recreate the experience of the platform. It’s feeling a bit like a fever dream last day of school.

For many creatives online, this wouldn’t be the first time they’ve had to migrate to new spaces: reach, engagement, and visibility are constantly shifting even on the largest and most stable platforms. But the possibility that a social media site of this size would disappear — or slowly break down until it’s nonfunctional — is a new threat. For small creators especially, TikTok is like playing the lottery: you don’t need thousands of followers for your video to get big, and this unpredictability incentivized the average person to upload content.

It’s still unclear what will happen to TikTok after January 19th. I asked content creators what their game plan is. (Responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.)

Noelle Johansen, @astraeagoods (89K followers)

“At the peak, I was making approximately 70 percent of my sales through TikTok from December 2020 to January 2022. Now, it drives at most, 10 percent of my sales,” says Noelle Johansen, who sells slogan sweatshirts, accessories, stickers, and other products.

“At my peak with TikTok, I was able to reach so many customers with ease. Instagram and Twitter have always been a shot in the dark as to whether the content will be seen, but TikTok was very consistent in showing my followers and potential new customers my videos,” Johansen told The Verge in an email. “I’ve also made great friends from the artist community on TikTok, and it’s difficult to translate that community to other social media. Most apps function a lot differently than TikTok, and many people don’t have the bandwidth to keep up with all of the new socials and building platforms there.”

Going forward, Johansen says they’ll focus on X and Instagram for sales while working to grow an audience on Bluesky and Threads.

Kay Poyer, @ladymisskay_ (704K followers)

“I think the ease of use on TikTok opened an avenue for a lot of would-be creators,” Kay Poyer, a popular creator making humor and commentary content, says. “Right now we’re seeing a cleaving point, where many will choose to stop or be forced to adapt back to older platforms (which tend to be more difficult to build followings on and monetize).”

As for her own plans, Poyer says she’ll stay where the engagement is if TikTok becomes unavailable — smaller platforms like Bluesky or Neptune aren’t yet impactful enough.

“I’m seeing a big spike in subscribers to my Substack, The Quiet Part, as well as followers flooding to my Instagram and Twitter,” Poyer told The Verge. “Personally I have chosen to make my podcast, Meat Bus, the flagship of my content. We’re launching our video episodes sometime next month on YouTube.”

Bethany Brookshire, @beebrookshire (18K followers)

Bethany Brookshire, a science journalist and author, has been sharing videos about human anatomy on TikTok, Bluesky, Instagram, and YouTube. Across platforms, Brookshire has observed differences in audiences — YouTube, for example, “is not a place [to] build an audience,” she says, citing negative comments on her work.

“I find people on TikTok comment and engage a lot more, and most importantly, their comments are often touching or funny,” she says. “When I was doing pelvic anatomy, a lot of people with uteruses wrote in to tell me they felt seen, that they had a specific condition, and they even bonded with each other in the comments.”

Brookshire told The Verge in an email that sharing content anywhere can at times feel fraught. Between Nazi content on Substack, right-wing ass-kissing at Meta, and the national security concerns of TikTok, it doesn’t feel like any platform is perfectly ideal.

“Sometimes I feel like the only ethical way to produce any content is to write it out in artisanal chalk on an organically sourced vegan stone, which I then try to show to a single person with their consent before gently tossing it into the ocean to complete its circle of life,” Brookshire says. “But if I want to inform, and I want to educate, I need to be in the places people go.”

Woodstock Farm Sanctuary, @woodstocksanctuary (117K followers)

The Woodstock Farm Sanctuary in upstate New York uses TikTok to share information with new audiences — the group’s Instagram following is mostly people who are already animal rights activists, vegans, or sanctuary supporters.

“TikTok has allowed us to reach people who don’t even know what animal sanctuaries are,” social media coordinator Riki Higgins told The Verge in an email. “While we still primarily fundraise via Meta platforms, we seem to make the biggest education and advocacy impact when we post on TikTok.”

With a small social media and marketing team of two, Woodstock Farm Sanctuary (like other small businesses and organizations) must be strategic in how it uses its efforts. YouTube content can be more labor-intensive, Higgins says, and Instagram Reels is missing key features like 2x video speed and the ability to pause videos.

“TikTok users really, really don’t like Reels. They view it as the platform where jokes, trends, etc., go to die, where outdated content gets recycled, and especially younger users see it as an app only older audiences use,” Higgins says.

The sanctuary says it will meet audiences wherever they migrate in the case that TikTok becomes inaccessible.

Anna Rangos, @honeywhippedfeta (15K followers)

Anna Rangos, who works in social media and makes tech and cultural commentary videos, is no stranger to having to pick up and leave a social media platform for somewhere else. As a retired sex worker, she saw firsthand how fragile a social media following could be.

“You could wake up one day to find your accounts deactivated, and restoring them? Forget it. Good luck getting any kind of service from Meta,” Rangos said in an email. Having an account deleted means lost income and hours of trying to rebuild a following. “Over my time in the industry, I went through three or four Instagram accounts, constantly trying to recapture my following.”

Sex workers and sex education creators regularly deal with their content being removed, censored, or entire accounts deleted. Rangos says that though the community on TikTok is more welcoming, she’s working to stake out her own space through a website and a newsletter. She also plans to stay active on YouTube, Pinterest, and Bluesky.

“I don’t plan on using Meta products much, given [Mark] Zuckerberg’s recent announcements regarding fact-checking,” she wrote in an email.

Amanda Chavira, @lost.birds.beads (10K followers)

“I have found so much joy and community on TikTok mostly through Native TikTok,” says Amanda Chavira, an Indigenous beader who built an audience through tutorials and cultural content. “It’s sad to see TikTok go.”

Chavira says she plans to reupload some of her content to YouTube Shorts to see how her videos perform there but otherwise will be waiting to see if another viable video platform comes along. Chavira won’t be pivoting to Meta: she says she plans to delete her accounts on Threads, Instagram, and Facebook.

“I’d been considering leaving my Meta accounts for a long time,” she said in an email. “Facebook felt like a terrible place through election cycles, and then the pandemic, [and] then every other post I was seeing was a suggested ad or clickbait article. For Instagram, I’ve really been struggling to reach my target audience and didn’t have the time available to post all the time to try to increase engagement.” Her final straw was Meta’s decision to end the fact-checking program and Zuckerberg’s “pandering to the Trump administration,” she says.

Drake’s ongoing legal battle with his label, Universal Music Group, has escalated. The artist filed a lawsuit in federal court today, accusing UMG of harming his reputation and endangering him for profit. The suit stems from the diss track “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar, another UMG artist. Drake’s legal complaint also again accuses UMG of using bots on Spotify and other streaming platforms, and payola to make the song more popular.

“On May 4, 2024, UMG approved, published, and launched a campaign to create a viral hit out of a rap track that falsely accuses Drake of being a pedophile and calls for violent retribution against him,” the complaint reads. “Even though UMG enriched itself and its shareholders by exploiting Drake’s music for years, and knew that the salacious allegations against Drake were false, UMG chose corporate greed over the safety and well-being of its artists.”

Image: Aubrey Drake Graham vs. UMG Recordings

The lawsuit details a shooting at Drake’s (real name: Aubrey Graham) home just a few days after the song was released, during which a security guard was injured. Multiple break-ins occurred in the following days, which the lawsuit says were caused by UMG’s actions.

Why would UMG pit two of its own artists against each other? Drake’s team has a theory:

UMG’s actions are motivated, at least in part, by UMG’s desire to best position itself in negotiations with Kendrick Lamar in 2024 and Drake in 2025. With respect to Lamar, on information and belief, UMG was incentivized to prove that it could maximize Lamar’s sales—by any means necessary—after only being able to get him to sign a short-term exclusive contract. UMG wanted Lamar to see its value on an expedited timeframe in order to convince Lamar to resign exclusively and for a longer period of time. As to Drake, in 2024, his contract was nearing fulfillment. On information and belief, UMG anticipated that extending Drake’s contract would come at a high cost to UMG; as such, it was incentivized to devalue Drake’s music and brand in order to gain leverage in negotiations for an extension

Lamar is not named as a defendant in the suit; instead, Drake’s legal team pins the blame on UMG for releasing the song despite knowing the song’s “allegations are unequivocally false.”

“Drake is not a pedophile. Drake has never engaged in any acts that would require he be “placed on neighborhood watch.” Drake has never engaged in sexual relations with a minor. Drake has never been charged with, or convicted of, any criminal acts whatsoever,” the suit reads.

The suit follows a petition filed in November in which Drake accuses UMG and Spotify of artificially inflating the success of “Not Like Us” using payola and streaming bots. The petition — which itself isn’t a lawsuit but a precursor — was withdrawn this week. But the suit filed today includes similar allegations of “pay-for-play” schemes to get “Not Like Us” played on radio stations and promoted on streaming platforms. The suit also again accuses UMG of using bots to “artificially inflate the spread” of the song. It cites a “whistleblower” who claimed he was paid $2,500 over Zelle “via third parties to use ‘bots’ to achieve 30,000,000 streams on Spotify in the initial days following the Recording’s release.”

As The New York Times notes, Drake has enlisted Michael J. Gottlieb, the lawyer that represented the owner of the restaurant embroiled in the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory. Drake’s complaint draws parallels between the shooting at the artist’s home and the shooting at the restaurant, calling it “the 2024 equivalent of ‘Pizzagate.’”

“The online response was similarly violent and hateful. An avalanche of online hate speech has branded Drake as a sex offender and pedophile, among other epithets,” the complaint reads.

UMG did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Like the wildfire conditions in Los Angeles County, my For You page on TikTok turned overnight.

I woke up last week to a phone screen filled with ravenous flames and video after video of razed homes, businesses, and other structures. Influencers broke from their regular cadence of content to film themselves packing up a suitcase for evacuation; nameless accounts shared footage from streets I didn’t recognize, showcasing the devastation; freshly created profiles asked for help locating their lost pets. Scrolling on TikTok feels like trying to keep track of 1,000 live feeds at once, each urgent and horrifying in its own way.

What all of this amounts to is a different question entirely. Even as there’s no escaping disaster content, the clips, comments, check-ins, and footage are not actually very helpful. Our feeds are awash with both too much and not enough information. Though it’s not yet clear how these fires started, scientists say that climate change will only continue to exacerbate wildfires going forward. Current weather conditions — including a severe lack of rainfall this year in Los Angeles — have created a tinderbox in the region.

Questions like “Where are the shelters?” “Should I evacuate?” and “Where can I get a mask and other supplies?” are left unanswered in favor of frightening first-person reports. And who can blame Los Angeles-area residents? That’s what you’re supposed to do on TikTok. What they can’t do is share a link to mutual aid resources or to a news story about vital, up-to-date evacuation information. They can scroll endlessly on the algorithmic For You page, but they can’t sort content to display the most recent updates first. TikTok is simply not built to disseminate potentially lifesaving breaking news alerts. Instead, it’s filled with endless clips of news crews interviewing people who have lost everything.

The wildfire content machine echoes a similar phenomenon from just a few months ago, when October’s Hurricane Milton tore through Florida, killing dozens and causing billions of dollars in damages. Some of the most visible and viral content from the storm came from influencers and other content creators who stayed behind to vlog their way through the event, racking millions of views. So far, there’s not the same risk-taking-for-viral-content dynamic at play with the fires in Southern California, but the overall experience is not that different: a random infotainment feed where a video of a person losing nearly every earthly possession is followed directly by someone testing a new makeup product. Media critic Matt Pearce put it best: “TikTok was largely indifferent to whether I live or die.”

Instagram seemed slightly more useful, but only, I suspect, if you follow people who post relevant content. In times of crisis — during the Black Lives Matter uprisings of 2020 or the ongoing bombardment of Gaza — Instagram Stories has become something of a bulletin board for resharing infographics and resources. Linking to relevant announcements and news stories is really only possible through Stories, but at least you can. Instagram search, on the other hand, is a chaotic mixture of user-generated infographics, grainy pictures of the fires that have been screenshotted and reuploaded multiple times, and distasteful selfies from bodybuilders wishing LA well.

It should go without saying that depraved conspiracy theories once again spread on X, including from billionaire owner Elon Musk and other right-wing influencers who falsely claimed DEI initiatives were responsible for the fires. Twitter, once functioning like a breaking news feed, is now overrun with crypto spam and Nazi sympathizers. Meanwhile, smaller, more specialized apps like Watch Duty, a nonprofit wildfire monitoring platform, have filled gaps. On Bluesky, an X competitor, users have the option to pin feeds based on trending topics, creating a custom landing page for LA fire content.

We are in for more, not fewer, extreme weather events like storms and heatwaves, and it’s worth asking ourselves whether we are prepared to do this all over again. Platform decay is all the more apparent in times of emergency, when users are forced to wade through astronomical amounts of garbage: video content that scares but doesn’t help us, news websites with so many pop-up ads it feels illegal, or ramblings from tech elites who are looking for someone to blame rather than a way to help. By my estimations, our feeds will return to regularly scheduled programming in five or so business days, and the devastation from these fires will get lost in a sea of comedy skits and PR unboxings. Until, of course, the next one.

In September 2023, Meta made a big deal of its new AI chatbots that used celebrities’ likeness: everyone from Kendall Jenner to MrBeast leased themselves out to embody AI characters on Instagram and Facebook. The celebrity-based bots were killed off last summer after less than a year, but users have recently been finding a handful of other, entirely fake bot profiles still floating around — and the reaction is not good.

There’s “Jane Austen,” a “cynical novelist and storyteller”; “Liv,” whose bio claims she is a “proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller”; and “Carter,” who promises to give users relationship advice. All are labeled as “AI managed by Meta” and the profiles date back to when the initial announcement was made. But the more than a dozen AI characters have apparently not been very popular: each has just a few thousand followers, with their posts getting just a few likes and comments.

That is, until the last week or so. After a wave of coverage in outlets like Rolling Stone and posts circulating on social media, the bot accounts are just now being noticed, and the reaction is confusion, frustration, and anger.

“What the fuck does an AI know about dating?????”...

Read the full story at The Verge.