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  • The Secret Reason Delta’s Partnership with YouTube Is Smarter Than You Think

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    In an email to SkyMiles members, Delta just announced a partnership with YouTube that will let passengers stream ad-free videos on flights and unlock a free two-week trial of YouTube Premium simply by logging in with their account. On the surface, it looks like just another in-flight entertainment perk. But the more you think about it, the clearer it becomes that this isn’t about watching cat videos at 35,000 feet—it’s about turning YouTube into Delta’s secret weapon.

    Look, for the most part, the thing you want to do on an airplane is pass the time by checking your brain out while you get to wherever you’re going. Maybe that means taking a nap or reading a book. For some people, it means watching a movie or live TV. For others, it’s endlessly scrolling on their phone until the pilot announces the descent.

    That said, there is probably no better platform for wasting a large amount of time than YouTube. If you’ve ever gone down the rabbit hole of suggested videos, you know how easy it is to lose an hour—or three. YouTube isn’t just the world’s largest video platform, it’s basically the most effective time machine on the internet. Blink once, and your flight is halfway over.

    Now, to be clear, no one buys a plane ticket because you can watch YouTube. That’s not how people choose airlines. You buy a plane ticket because of price, or schedule, or loyalty points. Entertainment is just a bonus. Besides, if you’re on a flight with Delta’s free Wi-Fi, you can already watch YouTube from your phone or laptop.

    So, if that’s true, why would Delta announce a big partnership with YouTube? Why does it matter?

    It turns out, it’s not about watching YouTube. Sure, there’s a curated collection of YouTube content available on the seatback experience. But the real move here is about YouTube Premium. Delta is offering passengers a two-week free trial of YouTube Premium if they sign in with their SkyMiles account. If you’re already a member, you unlock it just by logging in. If you’re not a member, you can become one right there on the plane.

    That’s the real play.

    Think about it: for Delta, whatever it’s paying YouTube to give away free Premium is basically just a customer acquisition cost. It’s a way to get people to sign up for SkyMiles. After all, airlines make more profit on their loyalty programs than on flying planes. Getting people to join SkyMiles isn’t just about keeping them on Delta flights—it’s about getting them into Delta’s entire ecosystem, from credit cards to co-branded offers to upgrades and perks. Every new member is long-term value.

    What better way to get someone to sign up than to offer them the single most universal entertainment perk? Everyone loves YouTube. Almost everyone uses it. And yet, once you experience YouTube Premium, you realize it’s infinitely better.

    I think you could make the case that YouTube Premium is the most no-brainer entertainment subscription there is. If you made me give up one of the services I pay for, I’d cancel all of them before I gave up Premium. Not because YouTube’s content is inherently better than Netflix, Disney+, or Spotify, but because there are no ads.

    That’s it. That’s the whole thing. No ads. Okay, technically, YouTube Premium includes other benefits like YouTube Music, but the no ads thing is the reason it’s worth paying for.

    It changes the experience so dramatically that it’s hard to go back once you’ve tried it. Ads on YouTube are relentless—sometimes three in a row before your video even starts. Once they’re gone, you realize how much brain space you were wasting on interruptions. Premium is less about adding features and more about taking away the one thing that drives people crazy.

    Delta is banking on exactly that. The free trial onboard is a taste test. You’re sitting in your seat, you log into Wi-Fi, you click on YouTube, and suddenly you’re in the ad-free world. If you’ve never tried it before, you’ll wonder why you waited this long. That’s when YouTube—and by extension, Delta—wins.

    Because here’s the thing: once you associate that premium, uninterrupted experience with signing into SkyMiles, you’ve just built a connection in the customer’s mind. Delta isn’t just an airline; it’s the company that gave you better YouTube.

    From Delta’s perspective, the cost of subsidizing YouTube Premium trials is probably negligible compared to the lifetime value of a SkyMiles member. And for YouTube, it’s a distribution play. It’s hard to think of a better way to put YouTube Premium in front of millions of people than during a captive moment at 35,000 feet?

    That’s why this is so smart. Delta figured out how to turn downtime into a loyalty engine. Airlines spend a lot of time trying to differentiate themselves in ways most passengers don’t notice. But the smartest moves are the ones that connect convenience with loyalty in a way that feels obvious. This is one of those moves.

    Delta didn’t invent YouTube. It didn’t invent Premium. But it figured out how to use both to make SkyMiles more valuable, and to make flying Delta feel a little less painful. That’s a win for the airline, a win for YouTube, and—at least for a few hours in the air—a win for passengers.

    The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.

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    Jason Aten

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  • Alphabet will pay $22 million to settle President Trump’s YouTube lawsuit

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    Alphabet President Donald Trump $22 million as part of a settlement in a class action lawsuit brought against the company over the suspension of various YouTube accounts following the January 6 riot at the US capital, as first reported by the . The suit includes other plaintiffs whose YouTube channels were banned that will split an additional $2.5 million in settlement payouts.

    Trump in 2021, alongside lawsuits against Twitter and Facebook over similar suspensions, claiming they infringed on his first amendment rights. Twitter, now known as X since its acquisition and rebrand by Elon Musk, paid President Trump roughly $10 million to settle that suit. Meta also with the president over his suspension from the platform for $25 million earlier this year.

    This settlement comes shortly after Alphabet to the House Judiciary Committee lambasting government pressure to moderate content on its platforms. The company also shared that YouTube would be offering a path to reinstatement for accounts previously banned for COVID-19 or election integrity related misinformation.

    The settlement from Alphabet will be paid to the Trust for the National Mall, a nonprofit partner of the National Park Service, and will be earmarked for construction of the that President Trump is building at The White House. The monies from the Meta settlement were similarly earmarked.

    This summer Paramount, parent company of CBS, brought by the president over claims that the network intended to “confuse, deceive and mislead the public” by editing an interview with Kamala Harris. The media company paid $16 million to settle the president’s suit. Three weeks later the the $8 billion acquisition of Paramount by Skydance.

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    Andre Revilla

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  • YouTube Agrees To Settle Donald Trump Lawsuit For $24.5 Million

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    YouTube agreed to pay $24.5 million to settle a July, 2021 lawsuit by Donald Trump after his account was suspended following the U.S. Capitol riot.

    Trump filed class action suits against tech giants Meta and Twitter as well and the CEOs of all three companies for blocking his social media accounts. YouTube/Google parent Alphabet is the last of the three to settle with the president.

    Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta agreed early this year to pay $25 million to settle, with about $22 million going to Trump’s presidential library and the rest to legal fees and other plaintiffs. X (formerly Twitter) agreed to a $10 million settlement.

    Google executives were eager to keep their settlement smaller than the one paid by rival Meta, said the WSJ citing people familiar with the matter. It said Trump’s share of the settlement — $22 million — will go towards a new ballroom at the White House. Some $2.5 million will go to the other plaintiffs in the case.

    Trump has been raking in cash from legal settlements from tech and media companies. That includes $16 million from Paramount in July during a federal review of the company’s merger with Skydance, and the same amount from Disney in January. He had sued Paramount over an interview with Kamala Harris by CBS’ 60 Minutes, and took Disney and ABC News to court for defamation for comments by anchor George Stephanopoulos.

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    Jillg366

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  • OpenAI Is Preparing to Launch a Social App for AI-Generated Videos

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    OpenAI is preparing to launch a stand-alone app for its video generation AI model Sora 2, WIRED has learned. The app, which features a vertical video feed with swipe-to-scroll navigation, appears to closely resemble TikTok—except all of the content is AI-generated. There’s a For You–style page powered by a recommendation algorithm. On the right side of the feed, a menu bar gives users the option to like, comment, or remix a video.

    Users can create videoclips up to 10 seconds long using OpenAI’s next-generation video model, according to documents viewed by WIRED. There is no option to upload photos or videos from a user’s camera roll or other apps.

    The Sora 2 App has an identity verification feature that allows users to confirm their likeness. If a user has verified their identity, they can use their likeness in videos. Other users can also tag them and use their likeness in clips. For example, someone could generate a video of themselves riding a roller coaster at a theme park with a friend. Users will get a notification whenever their likeness is used—even if the clip remains in draft form and is never posted, sources say.

    OpenAI launched the app internally last week. So far, it’s received overwhelmingly positive feedback from employees, according to documents viewed by WIRED. Employees have been using the tool so frequently that some managers have joked it could become a drain on productivity.

    OpenAI declined to comment.

    OpenAI appears to be betting that the Sora 2 app will let people interact with AI-generated video in a way that fundamentally changes their experience of the technology—similar to how ChatGPT helped users realize the potential of AI-generated text. Internally, sources say, there’s also a feeling that President Trump’s on-again, off-again deal to sell TikTok’s US operations has given OpenAI a unique opportunity to launch a short-form video app—particularly one without close ties to China.

    OpenAI officially launched Sora in December of last year. Initially, people could only access it via a web page, but it was soon incorporated directly into the ChatGPT app. At the time, the model was among the most state-of-the-art AI video generators, though OpenAI noted it had some limitations. For example, it didn’t seem to fully understand physics and struggled to produce realistic action scenes, especially in longer clips.

    OpenAI’s Sora 2 app will compete with new AI video offerings from tech giants like Meta and Google. Last week, Meta introduced a new feed in its Meta AI app called Vibes, which is dedicated exclusively to creating and sharing short AI-generated videos. Earlier this month, Google announced that it was integrating a custom version of its latest video generation model, Veo 3, into YouTube.

    TikTok, on the other hand, has taken a more cautious approach to AI-generated content. The video app recently redefined its rules around what kind of AI-generated videos it allows on the platform. It now explicitly bans AI-generated content that’s “misleading about matters of public importance or harmful to individuals.”

    Oftentimes, the Sora 2 app refuses to generate videos due to copyright safeguards and other filters, sources say. OpenAI is currently fighting a series of lawsuits over alleged copyright infringements, including a high-profile case brought by The New York Times. The Times case centers on allegations that OpenAI trained its models on the paper’s copyrighted material.

    OpenAI is also facing mounting criticism over child safety issues. On Monday, the company released new parental controls, including the option for parents and teenagers to link their accounts. The company also said that it is working on an age-prediction tool that could automatically route users believed to be under the age of 18 to a more restricted version of ChatGPT that doesn’t allow for romantic interactions, among other things. It is not known what age restrictions might be incorporated into the Sora 2 app.

    This is an edition of the Model Behavior newsletter. Read previous newsletters here.

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    Zoë Schiffer, Louise Matsakis

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  • How a Travel YouTuber Captured Nepal’s Revolution for the World

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    When Harry Jackson pulled his small motorcycle into Kathmandu on September 8, he had no idea the city was exploding in protests. He didn’t even know there was a curfew. People in Nepal, largely driven by Gen Z youth, had taken to the streets, and that day riots broke out when nearly two dozen people were shot and killed by authorities. In the middle of it all was Jackson, a travel vlogger riding from Thailand to the United Kingdom on his bike.

    Within a day, the mass demonstrations that filled the capital would do the seemingly impossible: defy trigger-happy law enforcement, storm the grounds of parliament and set fire to the building, and oust a prime minister. Jackson, who had been documenting his journey for months on YouTube, Instagram, and other social media under the @wehatethecold channel, became one of the main ways people around the world saw what was happening in Nepal as youth-led protests toppled the government.

    Anger had been simmering in Nepal for months, much of it driven by widespread corruption among politicians. Many of those politicians’ children also flaunted their wealth, often on social media. They in turn were called out online by Nepali people, and on September 4, the government banned 26 social media platforms. Protests started, and large demonstrations broke out on September 8, with police using tear gas, rubber bullets, and live ammunition on crowds of largely young demonstrators. That’s when Jackson arrived, filming his way through marches and capturing the sounds of gunshots.

    Video still courtesy of @wehatethecold

    Jackson had been in Nepal earlier in June but returned due to other geopolitical issues. He had planned to be in Kathmandu for a short, easy stop to get his Honda CT125 shipped for the next leg of his journey. He had been in India, trying to cross into Pakistan. But the border was closed, so he headed north to Nepal. After getting a hotel and catching up on events, he decided to tag along with some people and see the protests the next day. He’d been told it wasn’t safe for tourists but said he was willing to roll the dice, especially after having ridden his bike through some unsafe roads for weeks. On September 9 he was out among the protests for several hours, and by midafternoon decided to get back to his hotel to quickly edit the footage and get it published.

    “This footage just has to go online. I was watching it back and reliving the time and thinking, wow, this is insane,” he tells WIRED. “They’re burning parliament, this is huge!”

    Jackson was with crowds as they moved through narrow streets, eventually descending on the large area around the parliament building. The footage Jackson captured that day shows a mix of chaos—including hundreds fleeing gunshots—and mutual aid, with people stopping to hand out water, check in on each other, and help those hurt by tear gas. In the video, Jackson, 28, moves through the protesters, asking what the latest is, following the crowds as they get closer to the seat of power. His video took off, racking up millions of views in just hours, and it has more than 30 million views on YouTube alone.

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    Nicholas Slayton

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  • YouTube Premium adds high-quality audio and 4x playback for iOS, Android and desktop

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    Google is expanding access to YouTube Premium features like faster playback speeds and high-quality audio to more types of devices. Most people subscribe to YouTube Premium to remove ads from YouTube and access to YouTube Music, but Google also includes a variety of “power-user” features that give subscribers more granular control over their viewing or listening experience. Now those features will be available in more places.

    YouTube Premium’s faster playback speeds (in 0.5x increments from 1x to 4x speed) are now available on Android, iOS and the web, after initially only being available in the mobile YouTube app. The ability to have YouTube automatically download Shorts to view offline or watch Shorts in a picture-in-picture window is now also available on both iOS and Android, after originally launching on Android. Google says Premium’s Jump Ahead feature for skipping to “key moments” of a video is now also available on smart TVs and game consoles.

    In terms of the music side of the house, the big change has to do with audio quality. When you’re watching a music video, Google says you’ll now be able to select “High” from the audio settings and listen at a 256kbps bitrate. This change applies to “Art Tracks” as well, which are videos of songs available on the wider YouTube platform that don’t have an official music video. The “High” quality option was originally only available in the YouTube Music app, but now Google says you can access it across the Android and iOS version of both YouTube Music and YouTube.

    None of these updates change what the main benefit of a $13.99-per-month YouTube Premium subscription is, of course, but for the price, it’s good Google is trying to unify the experience across devices.

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    Ian Carlos Campbell

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  • YouTube Music is testing AI hosts that present relevant stories, trivia and commentary

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    YouTube just announced YouTube Labs, a “new way for users to take our cutting edge AI experiments for a test drive.” This looks like a YouTube-centric version of the , which is another place for folks to test out experimental AI tools.

    There’s already something new to play with here. YouTube Labs is testing AI hosts for its Music app. These hosts are designed to deepen a listening experience by providing “relevant stories, fan trivia and fun commentary about your favorite music.” This is just the latest music-streaming platform to introduce AI hosts, as Spotify earlier this year.

    YouTube Labs is only available for Premium members. Sign-ups , but just for a “limited number of US-based participants.” We don’t have any data as to how many people will get accepted to join the AI tomfoolery.

    Regular YouTube users have probably noticed the these past several months. It’s becoming a . While the prospect of virtual music hosts is rather innocuous, it will likely lead to even more AI being forced on the platform.

    YouTube recently added a boatload of , including the ability to turn spoken dialogue into a slop-filled song. It’s also to AI and is testing of Google’s famous AI overviews.

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    Lawrence Bonk

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  • YouTube Is Going to Regret This

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    Earlier this week, YouTube gave an inch to the Online Right by announcing a plan to offer a chance at reinstatement to users who were previously banned from the platform for spreading misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election. Today, the Online Right took a mile by hammering YouTube for almost immediately terminating new accounts created by the previously banned Alex Jones and Nick Fuentes.

    Jones, a conspiracy theorist who still owes the families of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting $1.3 billion after claiming it was a hoax, and Fuentes, a Christian nationalist and white supremacist who has denied the validity of the Holocaust, both reportedly created new accounts on YouTube after Republican Representative Jim Jordan released a letter from parent company Alphabet stating that the platform will “provide an opportunity for all creators to rejoin the platform” if they were removed for violating content policies that are no longer in effect. Both figures quickly had their new accounts terminated. That caused a fervor in the Online Right, who probably don’t even actually need Jones or Fuentes to appear on YouTube but do want to force the company to continue to engage in the humiliation ritual that it invited upon itself.

    YouTube previously said that the reinstatement process would be part of a “limited pilot project” that has not been launched yet. It reiterated that on Thursday, stating, “We’ve seen some previously terminated creators try to start new channels. To clarify, our pilot program on terminations is not yet open.” It even tried to respond to the Jones and Fuentes cases directly, replying to a viral post about the terminations to say “We terminated these channels as it’s still against our rules for previously terminated users to start new channels – the pilot program for terminations (that many folks referenced this week) isn’t available yet and will be a limited pilot program to start.”

    Unfortunately, that’s just not how the game is played with right-wing influencers. Vivek Ramaswamy grabbed hold of a tweet about the ban and called it un-American to “muzzle the peaceful expression of opinions.” Tim Pool posted about Alex Jones getting banned and snitch-tagged the House Judiciary Committee’s handle, suggesting he wants the government to force YouTube to allow Jones back onto the platform. Gizmodo reached out to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan’s office for comment, but did not receive a response at the time of publication.

    YouTube confirmed to Gizmodo that the new accounts of Jones and Fuentes were terminated, explaining, “It is against our Community Guidelines for previously terminated users to use, possess, or create any other YouTube channels.” Creators also aren’t supposed to allow terminated users to bypass their ban, but Patrick Bet David’s interview with Nick Fuentes uploaded on Tuesday remains live and has received more than 2.2 million views at the time of publication.

    YouTube told Gizmodo it plans on opening a pathway “for some terminated creators to start a new channel,” but indicated, “This will not be available to all creators, it will be a limited pilot.” Terminated users who are not a part of the pilot program will remain ineligible to create a new channel.

    The company clarified that its pilot will focus on users who were terminated for “repeated violations of COVID-19 and election integrity policies that are no longer in effect,” as it indicated in its letter to the House Judiciary Committee. (Rep. Jordan posted on X that YouTube would “offer ALL creators previously kicked off YouTube due to political speech violations to return to the platform,” but it seems that may be a bit of an overstatement.) YouTube did note that an additional subset of creators will also be eligible for reinstatement through the pilot, but did not provide details about who would qualify.

    Let’s be real: This will inevitably continue for YouTube. When a user doesn’t get invited to the pilot program, they’re going to hear from the Online Right. When they choose not to reinstate a creator for whatever reason, they’re going to hear from the Online Right. When a reinstated creator has a video taken down because it violates current content policies, they’re going to hear from the Online Right. The company has opened the floodgates now, and the Right will make a point of holding the company to a promise that it technically didn’t make, as “an opportunity” to rejoin the platform is not the same as a guarantee, nor is it an invitation to ignore the rules.

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    AJ Dellinger

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  • The New Patronage: A.I., Algorithms and the Economics of Creativity

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    Generative A.I. is cheapening media production while platforms recode payouts, power and provenance. Unsplash+

    The cost of making high-quality media is collapsing. The cost of getting anyone to care about it is not. As generative A.I. turns production into a near-commodity, cultural power is shifting from studios and galleries to the platforms that allocate attention and the algorithms that determine who gets paid. The new patrons are not moguls with checkbooks; they are recommendation systems tuned for engagement and brand safety.

    Production is cheap; distribution is scarce

    Video models now draft storyboards, generate shots and remix audio at consumer scale. Yet the money still follows distribution, not tools. On YouTube, the rules of the YouTube Partner Program, set and revised unilaterally, determine whether a creator receives 55 percent of watch-page ad revenue for long-form content and 45 percent for Shorts. Those headline rates are stable, but the platform’s enforcement posture has shifted: as of July 15, YouTube began tightening monetization against “inauthentic” or mass-produced A.I. content, a clarification aimed at the surge of spammy, low-effort videos. The message is clear: use A.I. to enhance originality, not to flood the feed. 

    The enforcement problem is real. “Cheapfake” celebrity clips—static images, synthetic narration and rage-bait scripts—have racked up views while confusing audiences. YouTube has removed channels and now requires disclosure labels for realistic synthetic media, but detection and policing remain uneven at scale. 

    Platforms are recoding payouts and power

    Spotify’s 2024 royalty overhaul illustrates how platform rule-sets become policy for the creative middle class. Tracks now require at least 1,000 streams in 12 months to pay out; functional “noise” content is throttled; and labels face fees for detected artificial streaming. The goal is to redirect the pool away from bot farms and sub-cent trickles. The effect is a re-concentration of earnings at the head of the curve and a higher bar for the long tail. When platforms change the taps, whole genres feel the drought or the deluge. 

    TikTok’s détente with Universal Music in May 2024 underscored the same power dynamic in short-form video. After months of public sparring over royalties and A.I. clones, a new licensing deal restored UMG’s catalogue to the app, alongside language about improved remuneration and protections against generative knock-offs. When distribution is the choke point, even the largest rights-holders must negotiate on platform terms.

    Data deals: the new studio lots

    If attention is one axis of the new patronage, training data is the other. The most lucrative cultural contracts of the past year were not output commissions but input licences. OpenAI’s run of publisher agreements, including the Associated Press (archives), Axel Springer, the Financial Times and a multi-year global deal with News Corp, reportedly worth more than $250 million, signals a market price for premium corpora. A.I. labs are paying for access, and the beneficiaries are large, well-structured repositories of rights, not individual creators. 

    The legal battles surrounding image training demonstrate the unsettled state of the rules. Getty Images narrowed its U.K. lawsuit against Stability A.I. in June, dropping core copyright claims while pressing trademark-style arguments about reproduced watermarks. The pivot reflects the complexity of proving training-stage infringement across borders, as well as the industry’s search for more predictable routes to compensation.

    Regulation is standardizing transparency and shifting risk

    Rules are arriving, and they read like operating manuals for platformized culture. The E.U.’s A.I. Act phases in obligations for general-purpose models, with guidance for “systemic-risk” providers by 2025 and a Code of Practice outlining requirements for transparency, copyright diligence and safety. In effect, document training, assessing model risks, publishing technical summaries and preparing for audits are all tasks that privilege firms and partners with a strong compliance presence. 

    In the U.S., the Copyright Office’s multipart A.I. study is moving from theory to guidance. Part 2 (January 2025) addresses whether and when A.I.-assisted outputs can be copyrighted, while the pre-publication of Part 3 (May 2025) examines training and how to reconcile text-and-data mining with compensation. The studio system, once established, created creative norms through collective bargaining; now, regulators and A.I. vendors are co-authoring the manual.

    Unions are also imposing guardrails. The WGA’s 2023 deal barred studios from treating A.I.-generated material as “source material” and protected writers from being required to use A.I.; SAG-AFTRA’s agreements introduced consent and compensation for digital replicas, with similar provisions in music. These are not abstractions; they are hard-coded constraints on how platforms and producers can deploy synthetic labour.

    Provenance becomes product

    As synthetic media scales, provenance is turning into both a feature and a bargaining chip. TikTok has begun automatically labelling A.I. assets imported from tools that support C2PA Content Credentials. YouTube now requires creators to disclose realistic synthetic edits. Meanwhile, device makers are integrating C2PA into the capture pipeline, with Google’s Pixel 10 embedding credentials in its camera output. OpenAI, for its part, adds C2PA metadata to DALL-E images. Attribution is becoming clickable. 

    The provenance layer will not solve misinformation alone. Metadata can be stripped, and enforcement lags, but it rewires incentives. Platforms can boost authentic, labelled media in feeds, penalize evasions and share “credibility signals” with advertisers. That is algorithmic patronage by another name.

    What shifts next

    Studios and galleries will increasingly resemble platforms. Owning release windows is no longer enough. Expect investments in first-party audiences, data clean rooms and rights bundles that can be licensed to model providers. The historic advantage, taste and talent pipelines must be coupled with distribution levers and data assets. Deals will include not just streaming residuals but “model-weight” royalties and retraining rights, mirroring the structure of today’s publisher licences.

    Creators will face algorithmic wage setting. Eligibility thresholds (1,000 Spotify streams), demonetization triggers (unoriginal Shorts), disclosure requirements (synthetic media labels) and fraud detection fees are becoming the effective tax code of digital culture. The prudent strategy is to diversify revenue streams, ads, direct fan funding and commerce, and to instrument provenance by default to stay on the right side of both algorithms and regulators.

    Policy, too, will reward those who can comply. The E.U. framework, the U.S. copyright study, and union clauses collectively nudge the market toward licensed inputs, documented outputs and consent-based replication. Those advantages include larger catalogues and well-capitalized intermediaries. For independent creators, collective licensing pools and guild-run registries may offfer the path to negotiating power.

    The arts has seen patronage shift before, from courts to salons to art galleries and museums. This time, the median patron is a ranking function. Where culture is made matters less than where it is surfaced, metered and paid. Those who understand the incentives embedded in platform policy, and can prove provenance at the speed of the feed, will capture the surplus. Everyone else will be producing to spec for someone else’s algorithm.

    The New Patronage: A.I., Algorithms and the Economics of Creativity

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    Gonçalo Perdigão

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  • What Is YouTube Premium Lite—and Should You Subscribe to It?

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    YouTube doesn’t charge a cent for hosting all of your uploaded videos, showing them to the wider world, or letting you spend all day streaming content made by others. What it does do is show you a whole lot of advertising in an attempt to make back some of its data storage costs—which, based on the flood of ads we all have to endure, are presumably astronomical.

    By subscribing to YouTube Premium and now YouTube Premium Lite, you can remove those ads for good, across all your devices. As the cheaper option, the Lite package may seem like the best deal, and it will be for some.

    Here’s how much you have to pay for YouTube Premium Lite, and what you get in return.

    YouTube Premium Lite: Costs and Features

    You’ll still see ads on music videos with YouTube Premium Lite.Courtesy of David Nield

    If you’re prepared to add yet another digital subscription to your monthly outgoings, YouTube Premium Lite will set you back $8 a month. There’s no way to pay annually to get a discount overall, and there’s no family plan where you can spread the benefits to other people—two options you do have with the full version of YouTube Premium.

    YouTube Premium Lite has one feature: It removes the ads on most YouTube videos, wherever you’re watching them (from your phone to your TV). You’ll still see ads on music videos, on YouTube Shorts, and when you search for videos on YouTube—but all ad types on other content will disappear.

    Your subscription will be linked to your Google account, so it works wherever you’re signed in, and it includes YouTube Kids content as well. As it’s a monthly subscription, you can cancel at any time, and then subscribe again at any time. You can also upgrade at any time to the full YouTube Premium, of which we’ll learn more in a moment.

    YouTube Premium Lite: Should You Subscribe?

    The plan removes ads on most videos across all your devices.

    The plan removes ads on most videos across all your devices.Courtesy of David Nield

    A lot of us are now juggling multiple digital subscriptions for everything from cloud storage to AI chatbots, and it’s understandable if you’re not keen on the thought of adding extra expense on top, especially for an app and platform that you can already access free of charge.

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    David Nield

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  • Google Admits COVID Censorship, Offers To Restore Banned Accounts – KXL

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    WASHINGTON, DC – Google is offering YouTube account holders who were permanently banned for political speech an ability to be reinstated. The tech giant detailed its shift in a document provided to the House Judiciary Committee, and company officials admitted that Google once faced pressure from the Biden administration to remove content about COVID-19.

    According to Google, YouTube “values conservative voices on its platform” and the company noted that creators “have extensive reach and play an important role in civic discourse.”

    More about:


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    Tim Lantz

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  • YouTube may reinstate channels banned for spreading covid and election misinformation

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    Channels once banned by YouTube for spreading false information regarding the COVID-19 pandemic or the 2020 election may soon have the opportunity to get their channels back, in a decision transparently courting “conservative voices.”

    Alphabet, the parent company of Google and YouTube, has via counsel to the in which it alleges the company was pressured by the Biden administration to take down misinformation on YouTube related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate the company’s existing policies at the time. It now describes the Biden administration’s actions as “unacceptable and wrong.”

    It also informed the committee that YouTube would be offering a path to reinstatement for creators whose channels were banned for repeatedly violating community guidelines on election-integrity-related content, as well as for COVID-19-related content. The guidelines under which those bans were carried out were removed by the company in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Details on exactly what the path for reinstatement looks like were not shared.

    “The COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented time in which online platforms had to reach decisions about how best to balance freedom of expression with responsibility,” the letter reads. “Senior Biden administration officials, including White House officials, conducted repeated and sustained outreach to Alphabet and pressed the company regarding user generated content related to the COVID-19 pandemic that did not violate its policies.”

    Alphabet goes on to denounce any government attempts to “dictate how the Company moderates content,” and says it will always “fight against those efforts on First Amendment grounds.”

    Notable YouTube channels banned for either COVID-19 or election-integrity-related content include , Co-Deputy Director of the FBI and the channel for , an organization previously linked with Secretary of HHS RFK Jr. “YouTube values conservative voices on its platform and recognizes that these creators have extensive reach and play an important role in civic discourse,” the company wrote. In its letter, Alphabet also expresses concern that the European Union’s could have a chilling effect on freedom of expression.

    The letter was sent in response to subpoenas as part of the House Judiciary Committee’s ongoing investigations into alleged government-directed content moderation. The committee recently on “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation,” among others.

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    Andre Revilla

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  • The NFL Goes MrBeast Mode

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    The first international game of the National Football League season, a Friday-night tilt between the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers in São Paulo, is celebrated on the ground by the usual pomp and circumstance.

    There are photo booths and merch tents catering to local fans, samba dancers in feathered head-pieces entertaining American die-hards traveling across the equator, and a press conference where Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes has to backtrack after calling association football (that is, the kind that is still most popular in Brazil, and the rest of the word) “soccer.” But fans tuning in at home are greeted by a different, somewhat more disturbing spectacle: news that YouTuber, prolific content creator, and protein-infused milk impresario Jimmy “MrBeast” Donaldson has purchased the NFL.

    In a pregame preview airing on YouTube–which, for the first time ever, is broadcasting a regular-season NFL game globally, and for free–the platform’s most valuable creator appears opposite league commissioner Roger Goodell, in a purportedly comical “sketch” about MrBeast’s takeover of the league, which sees him assigning popular content creators to team rosters. A postgame stunt sees Donaldson awarding one hardcore fan a ticket to Super Bowl LX, and firing another out of a human cannon. Not everyone welcomes the NFL’s new zillennial overlord. “MrBeast on my television invading my beautiful sport,” one fan posts on X. A friend (a lifelong football fan in his mid-40s) who texts me during the game says the whole production, “Looks insanely gen z.”

    Influencers haleyybaylee and Deestroying at YouTube’s first live NFL broadcast.

    Photograph: Eli Tawil; YouTube TV

    Which is of course the point. The September 5 YouTube-exclusive São Paulo game (the platform covered my travel expenses to attend), dovetails two of the NFL’s key priorities, spreading football both internationally and intergenerationally. “I completely understand that not all fans and audiences are going to welcome change,” Donaldson writes in a statement to WIRED. “Our hope is that over time they’ll recognize we are approaching everything we do with admiration and respect and want to be able to share something that’s as unique and special as the NFL with our fans.”

    If the NFL fails to establish American football abroad, both with Gen Z—whose sports fandom, studies have shown, ranks the lowest among generational cohorts—and with international audiences unaccustomed to the distinctly American pastime, it won’t be for lack of trying. Since 2005, the league has been hosting regular-season games abroad. First was Mexico. Then London. Then Germany. Then Brazil. This season will see additional international games in Berlin, Madrid, and Dublin. The penetration into the South American market seems at once incredibly bold and completely sensible. Sensible, because players and fans alike don’t have to struggle against the pesky realities of time zones. And bold because, perhaps even more so than the UK or continental Europe, South America has its own distinct, passionate football culture that has nothing to do with its brawnier North American cousin.

    The NFL’s 2025 Brazilian operation offers a good matchup for further testing the viability of the South American market. Due to their long, somewhat challenging, history in Southern California, the Chargers boast a substantial Latino fan base, who call them Los Bolts. And the Chiefs (despite being dismantled humiliatingly in last season’s Super Bowl) remain a global brand. The Chiefs have also benefited from the A-list celebrity of some of their players, specifically Mahomes, and tight end Travis Kelce, whose recent engagement to pop star Taylor Swift makes him de facto one of the most famous human beings on the planet. As James Brighton, a Chargers fan and California native who traveled to Brazil for the matchup, grumbles to me before the game, “Mahomes is easily marketable … Kelce and Taylor Swift is the romance the world wants to see, I guess. They’re the face of the NFL right now.” The league is counting on it. But for the NFL’s second Brazil game, they aren’t taking any chances.

    “There is no better platform than YouTube,” says veteran broadcaster Rich Eisen, his head literally framed by a YouTube logo as he lounges in the YouTube-branded green room deep in the concrete bowels of São Paulo’s Neo Química Arena in the idle hours before he ascends to the broadcast booth to provide play-by-play commentary. “There is no more powerful distributor to reach people of all ages, and to feed an insatiable desire of people to take in content.”

    Eisen speaks from experience. At 56, he may be a generation or three removed from the Gen Z–dominated domain of professional content creation. Nevertheless, he has been able to parlay his success as a journalist and longtime Sportscenter and NFL Network anchor into an arguably ever larger audience, streaming his Emmy-nominated, three-hour daily sports-talk program The Rich Eisen Show on YouTube, among other platforms. “The world has changed and you’ve got to be part of it,” he tells WIRED. “I mean, the commissioner of the NFL didn’t do a video about the Brazil game with me. And I’ve been his employee for 23 years! He did it with MrBeast.”

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    John Semley

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  • Updates to Studio, YouTube Live, new gen AI tools, and everything else announced at Made on YouTube | TechCrunch

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    At its annual Made on YouTube event this week, YouTube unveiled tons of new updates, features, and tools geared toward creators, including updates to YouTube Live, new ways to monetize, and more.

    Studio updates include “likeness” detection and lip-synced dubs, and the company is offering new AI tools for podcasters to help promote their shows.

    Here’s everything announced at Made on YouTube.

    A new Studio

    YouTube CEO Neal Mohan at Made on YouTube 2025Image Credits:YouTube

    The company showed off new and updated tools to Studio, which creators use to manage their channels and track analytics. Updates include an inspiration tab, title A/B testing features, auto dubbing, and more.

    What caught our attention is the “likeness”-detection feature, which was announced last year and made available to a few creators; it’s now in open beta. People will be able to detect, manage, and flag for removal any unauthorized videos using their facial likeness.

    An AI-powered Ask Studio can guide users and answer questions about their account, and creators will be able to collaborate with up to five other people on one video, which is available to the audiences of all the participating video makers.

    YouTube Live

    Image Credits:YouTube

    YouTube gave Live, its livestreaming platform, some updates as well, like letting creators play minigames to entertain viewers, broadcasting simultaneously in both horizontal and vertical formats, providing AI-powered highlights, reacting to live events, using a new ad format, and more.

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    The AI-powered highlights automatically select the best moments from a livestream to turn them into shareable Shorts, and a new ad format — called “side-by-side” — runs adjacent to the main content, similar to a split-screen display, rather than interrupting the stream.

    YouTube is bringing a custom version of Veo 3, Google’s text-to-video generative AI model, to Shorts, as well as a new remixing tool, an “Edit with AI” feature, and more.

    With Veo 3 Fast, as the custom version is called, creators can apply motion from a video to an image, add different styles to their videos, and insert objects into the video with a simple text prompt. Creators can also transform the dialogue from eligible videos into catchy soundtracks for other Shorts using Google’s AI music model, Lyria 2.

    YouTube Music

    YouTube Music got some updates as well, designed to deepen engagement between creators and their fans.

    These include a countdown timer for new releases and a chance to offer fans “thank you” videos, and the company is testing a pilot program for U.S. listeners that will allow them to access exclusive merchandise drops from artists.

    Image Credits:YouTube Music

    AI for podcasters

    Video podcast creators in the U.S. will be able to create clips more easily with AI suggestions, according to YouTube. And a new feature rolling out next year will offer a way to turn audio podcasts into video podcasts

    New monetization features

    YouTube is giving creators new ways to monetize, with brand deals and through the YouTube Shopping program, which lets creators earn money by featuring and tagging products in their content. YouTube will also now allow creators to swap out brand sponsorships in long-form videos.

    Creators can also take advantage of auto timestamps for product tags, auto tagging for eligible items mentioned in videos, and a new brand link feature for Shorts. An AI-powered system will help identify the optimal moment a product is mentioned and automatically display the product tag at that time.

    Shorts creators will soon be able to add a link to a brand’s site specifically for brand deals, and YouTube will proactively suggest creators who may be a good fit for brands in its creator partnerships hub.

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    Karyne Levy

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  • YouTube Thinks AI Is Its Next Big Bang

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    Google figured out early on that video would be a great addition to its search business, so in 2005 it launched Google Video. Focused on making deals with the entertainment industry for second-rate content, and overly cautious on what users could upload, it flopped. Meanwhile, a tiny startup run by a handful of employees working above a San Mateo, California, pizzeria was exploding, simply by letting anyone upload their goofy videos and not worrying too much about who held copyrights to the clips. In 2006, Google snapped up that year-old company, figuring it would sort out the IP stuff later. (It did.) Though the $1.65 billion purchase price for YouTube was about a billion dollars more than its valuation, it was one of the greatest bargains ever. YouTube is now arguably the most successful video property in the world. It’s an industry leader in music and podcasting, and more than half of its viewing time is now on living room screens. It has paid out over $100 billion to creators since 2021. One estimate from MoffettNathanson analysts cited by Variety is that if it were a separate company, it might be worth $550 billion.

    Now the service is taking what might be its biggest leap yet, embracing a new paradigm that could change its essence. I’m talking, of course, about AI. Since YouTube is still a wholly owned subsidiary of AI-obsessed Google, it’s not surprising that its anniversary product announcements this week touted AI features that will let creators use AI to enhance or produce videos. After all, Google Deepmind’s Veo 3 technology was YouTube’s for the taking. Ready or not, the video camera ultimately will be replaced by the prompt. This means a rethinking of YouTube’s superpower: authenticity.

    YouTube’s Big Bang

    I had that shift in mind when I recently interviewed YouTube CEO Neal Mohan at his office at YouTube’s San Bruno, California, headquarters. Mohan took over as CEO in 2023 when his boss, Susan Wojcicki, left her post due to a fatal cancer. But first we chat a bit about the company’s history. Mohan reminds me that his own connection with the service began even before he joined Google in 2008, after his ad company DoubleClick merged with the search giant. He was struck by how the YouTube founders were first with a revelation that, he says, remains the core of the service. “It was not just that people were interested in sharing short clips about themselves and that it was done without a gatekeeper,” he says, “but that people were interested in watching them. That was the big bang inflection point. Our mission is to give everyone a voice and show them the world.”

    Critics of Google’s power often argue that not only the public but also YouTube itself might benefit from a split from the mother company. Just think what the world’s biggest video company could do if it were truly independent. Mohan, a self-admitted Google loyalist, disagrees. “I don’t believe YouTube would be where it is if it weren’t part of Google,” he says. He says that being part of a giant company allowed YouTube to make long-term bets on things like streaming and podcasting. When I ask whether YouTube might be even more innovative on its own, he reminds me that YouTube has been sufficiently innovative to challenge legacy media in things like live sports while fending off challenges from competitors focusing on the creator economy.

    YouTube has an advantage in breadth that Tiktok and Reels can’t dream of … “everything from a 15-second short to a 15-minute traditional long-form YouTube video to a 15-hour livestream and everything in between,” Mohan crows.

    It’s currently pressing another advantage: Google’s AI technology. The announcements this week range from fun features like putting you or your friends’ bodies into videos showing astonishing acrobatic feats or allowing podcasters to make instant television shows from their audio conversations by having AI create visuals that resonate with the content of the chatter. Mohan says that, in a sense, AI is just the latest enhancement of the service. “When YouTube was born 20 years ago it was about using technology for more people to have their voice heard,” he says. “With AI, it’s the same core principle—how do we use technology to democratize creation?”

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    Steven Levy

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  • Get Ready to See More AI on YouTube

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    More AI slop may be headed to YouTube. 

    The video-sharing platform is jumping on the AI bandwagon with a new batch of AI-powered tools for content creators. The company announced on Tuesday that users will now be able to use AI to more easily edit videos, generate short clips, and even protect their likeness from other AI tools.

    The updates come as YouTube and its parent company, Google, race to catch up with other AI companies like OpenAI. Last month, Google updated its AI image model, unofficially dubbed nano-banana, to better compete with ChatGPT’s image generator, which went viral with Studio Ghibli-style images. Image generators have become one of the most widely used AI applications for everyday users, and now YouTube is hoping to prove that anyone can use AI to make videos, too. 

    Veo 3 comes to YouTube Shorts

    YouTube partnered with Google DeepMind to bring a custom version of their video-generation model, Veo 3, to Shorts—the company’s TikTok and Instagram Reels-like feed of quick, scrollable videos.

    This version, called Veo 3 Fast, makes it simple for users to whip up clips on their phones, all for free. It runs faster with a lower latency of 480p and can generate videos with sound.

    To try it now, users can hit the create button on the YouTube app and then tap the sparkle icon in the top right of the screen to access Veo 3 and the other AI tools.

    The new additions are already live in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with more regions coming soon.

    Additionally, YouTube plans to roll out more Veo features on Shorts in the coming months. These options will allow users to animate photos and videos, apply visual styles, and add objects to videos.

    AI can now take the first pass at editing

    YouTube is also testing out a new tool called Edit with AI, which transforms raw camera-roll clips into a ready-to-go first draft by selecting the best moments, adding music and transitions, and can even add a voiceover in English or Hindi.

    YouTube is currently testing Edit with AI on Shorts and in the YouTube Create app, with plans to bring it to select markets in the coming weeks.

    Protecting Users’ Faces from AI

    Finally, even with all the shiny new AI toys, YouTube acknowledged it has to try to mitigate the new risks that come with them, too.

    So, the company is expanding a likeness-detection tool to all YouTube Partner Program creators in an open beta. The feature flags videos that rip off a user’s facial likeness and allows them to request that the unauthorized videos be taken down.

    Think of it as Content ID—YouTube’s copyright-flagging system—reimagined for the AI era, when anyone’s face can be deepfaked in seconds.

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    Bruce Gil

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  • Where the “Woke” Debate Burns Hottest: In Incredibly Long YouTube Essays on the Likes of RFK Jr. and Ms. Rachel

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    Lindsay Ellis, a California-based filmmaker and mother of two, has been making videos for YouTube since 2007. But even she was surprised by the response to her most recent release on the platform. In her 142-minute video “The Unforgivable Sin of Ms. Rachel,” Ellis explains how the children’s entertainer figures into debates about “woke” children’s media before pivoting to conversations about genocide, the war in Gaza, and the roots of antisemitism. The video ends by saying that charitable donations can make a difference in situations that otherwise seem intractable, and provides a link to the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund. As of September 12, the video has over 2 million views and has raised more than $750,000 for the charity.

    In a call one week after she posted the Ms. Rachel video, Ellis tells Vanity Fair that she put extra care into it. “If you are releasing something to YouTube, you are making a pact with the algorithm,” she says. “If someone already got to the topic, you had better have a good take. You had better have something new and refreshing, or people are going to be so annoying about it.”

    Ellis’s approach is more Ken Burns than Mr. Beast—a style that’s increasingly successful on a website once associated mostly with short, disposable clips. Though video essays, which intercut narration and footage—both self-recorded and stock—with occasional textual references, have had a home on YouTube since the site’s early years, they’re having a moment right now thanks to a generation of creators who have leveled up both their technical skills and their marketing abilities.

    Ellis’s opus on Ms. Rachel is only one of several slickly produced video essays that have racked up millions of viewers this summer, feature-length YouTube videos that feel more like documentaries than the prank wars or makeup tutorials of yore. On March 24, ContraPoints—a Peabody Award–winning channel with 1.9 million subscribers that counts Ezra Klein, Jameela Jamil, and Chris Hayes as fans—released “Conspiracy,” an almost three-hour deep dive into Jeffrey Epstein, Alex Jones, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that’s been watched 4.1 million times and counting. In August, Elephant Graveyard, an anonymous creator who makes videos about comedy, released a 90-minute video about Joe Rogan’s influence on the medium, both in Austin and globally, as part three of a bigger series on the famous podcaster. In typical YouTube fashion, its title captures the argument well: “How Comedy Was Destroyed by an Anti-Reality Doomsday Cult.” The trilogy has attracted almost 9 million views.

    Clearly, these videos are responsive to news headlines—but they analyze issues in a different way than news channels or topical comedians like Josh Johnson, whose viral stand-up sets launched him into a hosting role on The Daily Show this July. Video essayists rely on a balance of deep research and on-the-fly adjustments, taking a long view of what is driving the news cycle and continuing to tweak their videos until the very last minute—which adds an urgency that might not come through via scripted narration alone. Ellis said she improvised her latest video’s emotional conclusion soon before she posted it to YouTube. “I don’t know if you could tell, but my hair is dirty. That’s why it’s pulled back,” she says. “I filmed it basically the day before the video went up—like fuck it, conclusion.”

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    Erin Vanderhoof

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  • How a Warner Bros.-Paramount Merger Could Make or Break Hollywood

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    David Ellison is positioning himself as Hollywood’s newest power broker, with his family preparing a bid that could put Paramount and Warner Bros. under one roof. Jason Mendez/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures

    For years, whispers have percolated around a potential merger or acquisition between Warner Bros. and Paramount (now under Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Skydance, respectively). The tenor of these conversations just rose an octave thanks to reports of the Ellison family preparing for a formal bid. Will this be legacy studios’ best and last chance of creating a real rival to Netflix and YouTube? Or is it simply another experiment that stock-conscious executives hatched? Either way, such a deal would face enormous financial and creative challenges while also holding the potential to transform Hollywood. 

    Growing a content library for the sake of volume without any consideration for audience fit is like trying to explain the third act of Tenet to your grandmother—it’s just not going to make sense. But on paper, a combined entity would be armed to the teeth with top-notch brands and talents.

    A WBD-Paramount merger would trigger an intellectual property field day with DC, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, Dune, Lord of the Rings, The Conjuring, Top Gun, Mission: Impossible, Transformers, Sonic, A Quiet Place and Star Trek under the same corporate parent. Cartoon Network, which the current WBD leadership downsized, might live once more alongside Nickelodeon as an irresistible one-two punch in kids media (or get sold off). Imagine no longer fretting about your overall TV slate because proven hitmakers Chuck Lorre, Taylor Sheridan and Bill Lawrence all work in-house on existing deals. 

    “The real test would be creative and product-market fit,” Steve Morris, founder and CEO of digital marketing agency New Media, told Observer.

    Theatrical stakes

    As of this writing, Warner Bros. accounts for 28 percent of the domestic box office market share while Paramount sits at 6.6 percent. This varies year-to-year, though. Since 2021, Paramount has enjoyed fewer tentpole peaks (Top Gun: Maverick notwithstanding) but delivered steadier conversion of awareness to theatrical intent on a film-by-film basis by opening week, according to Greenlight Analytics, where I work as Director of Insights & Content Strategy. WB’s slate has proven streakier in pre-release tracking, but its impressive highs in awareness, interest and theatrical intent tend to best Paramount’s. 

    Warner Bros. targets 12 to 14 theatrical releases annually, while Paramount wants to ramp up to 15 to 20 per year. A merger will almost assuredly reduce total output. 20th Century Fox released an average of 14 annual movies theatrically between 2015 and 2019. That number has dropped to around four under The Walt Disney Company’s ownership. Reducing the number of legacy movie studios again at a time when Big Tech grows stronger in entertainment by the day might cause a full-blown panic throughout the industry. 

    Consolidation of this magnitude usually leads to greater franchise dependency, squeezing out mid-budget and indie fare in the process. In turn, this results in less consistent volume for movie theaters (already a problem), less leverage for talent at the negotiating table, and a race toward the middle in terms of creative programming. Not fun. 

    Small-screen realities

    WBD and Paramount collectively accounted for just over 13 percent of total U.S. TV usage (broadcast, cable, streaming) in July, trailing only YouTube, according to Nielsen’s Media Distributor Gauge. If we examine combined streaming catalog demand shares, which account for all original and licensed films/TV series on-platform, in the U.S. across 2024, we get a No. 1 ranking at 23.4 percent, according to Parrot Analytics. Even accounting for overlap across both services, the combined customers of WBD (122.3 million worldwide streaming subscribers between HBO Max and Discovery+) and Paramount+ (79 million) would pack a punch.

    But WBD thought volume alone would close the gap with Netflix when it smushed together Max and Discovery+. Look at how that turned out. And while select content across Warners and Paramount commands high demand, a potential combo platter wouldn’t necessarily move the engagement needle immediately. 

    Unlocking the full value of the combined content catalog would require a complete overhaul of the streaming user interface and experience, an endeavor that’s as costly as it is timely. In the 2020s, with subscription fatigue already gnawing at quarterly earnings and FAST growing faster than SVOD, would both leadership and shareholders really have the patience for such an undertaking? 

    Talent and brand tensions

    As kid-in-a-candy-store exciting as it would be for content executives to have so much franchise power and top-tier talent at their disposal, the logistical nightmare of balancing so many high-profile spinning plates boggles the mind. The Ellisons may have deep pockets, but funding always remains finite in Hollywood. Leadership would need to decide how to split the pie between, say, competing talent deals such as Tom Cruise and Timothee Chalamet (WBD) versus Will Smith and the Duffer Brothers (Paramount). How would you like to be the executive tasked with explaining to the talent why one slice is smaller than the other? 

    No matter which way you cut it, certain talents and brands would inevitably feel shortchanged compared to others. In a town built on egos, you might as well strike a match next to a powder keg. It’s a good problem to have, but the abundance of choice doesn’t guarantee strong strategy and execution. 

    Speaking generally about media mergers, Comscore Senior Media Analyst Paul Dergarabedian zeroed in on the brand issue. “Do they get diluted, spun off, marginalized, or are they exploited well to get the best results? That’s got to be part of the equation,” he told Observer. 

    Regulatory and financial hurdles

    The list of reasons why any such deal can’t or won’t happen runs equally long as why it will. The DOJ and FTC emphasize even greater scrutiny on major M&A these days. Governing bodies would almost assuredly require divestitures, especially if a deal happened before WBD officially split off its cable assets. Some percentage of linear networks on both sides would have to go. It’s hard to see CNN existing alongside CBS News, for example. Even after jettisoning TV channels, both companies would still suffer from over-exposure to the rapidly declining linear TV business. Good luck trying to explain those numbers to angry shareholders. 

    WBD’s streaming division profits in part because it includes linear HBO revenues. Meanwhile, Paramount’s streaming business still wasn’t consistently profitable at the time of the sale to Skydance. On top of all that, both companies are saddled with considerable debt at the moment. It’s highly possible that any potential deal is more trouble than it’s worth. 

    Any combination of Paramount and Warner Bros. would yield a content slate exploding with blockbuster firepower. The new company (I’m going to start saying WarnerMount from now on) would snatch the franchise crown straight from Mickey Mouse’s head as it fed its streaming and theatrical furnace a steady diet of dynamite. But creative, regulatory, technological and financial challenges rightfully threaten to cloud the starry eyes of ambitious CEOs. (I’d love to see what the Skydance team can do with Paramount on its own). 

    Mergers and acquisitions have not proven to be the silver bullet Hollywood hoped they would be over the last 20 years. Would Warners and Paramount be any different? Perhaps. But more often than not, this tactic has been more exposing than helpful.

    How a Warner Bros.-Paramount Merger Could Make or Break Hollywood

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    Brandon Katz

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  • Charlie Kirk Was Shot and Killed in a Post-Content-Moderation World

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    Another TikTok video Degeling shared with WIRED showed a slow-motion, close-up angle of the bullet hitting Kirk’s neck. The tone of the video was conspiratorial: The user who uploaded it added spooky music and a digitally narrated voice, asking, “What is the black thing on his shirt and why did it move like this before he got shot?” As of Thursday morning, the video was still online. It had been up for eight hours and had more than 900 comments (with many saying the “black thing” was a microphone).

    As of Thursday morning, on Instagram, a search for “Charlie Kirk shot” surfaced a close-up video of the incident as the first result. The video autoplays as a thumbnail, without warning. At the time of writing, the video had 15.3 million views.

    Not only are the Kirk shooting videos spreading rapidly, but some are in clear violation of the platforms’ social media policies. For example, TikTok’s terms of use state that the company does not allow “gory, gruesome, disturbing, or extremely violent content.”

    On other platforms, the Kirk video falls into a gray area. Meta’s overarching policy is to age-restrict certain content, require warning labels, and remove some graphic depictions of violence.

    A spokesperson for Meta said that, per the company’s Violent and Graphic Content policies, it’s applying a “Mark as Sensitive” warning label to footage of the Kirk shooting, and are age-gating it to users 18 and older. The spokesperson also said that the company has 15,000 people reviewing content for Meta—though it did not say whether these are employees or contractors—and that it does not allow videos that glorify, represent, or support the incident or perpetrator.

    Meta also states in its online Transparency Center that it does not allow content of “terrorist attacks, hate events, multiple-victim violence or attempted multiple-victim violence, serial murders, or hate crimes perpetrator-generated content relating to such attacks; or third-party imagery depicting the moment of such attacks on visible victims.” Still, the widely circulated footage of Kirk being shot, for now, is allowable. It will get a warning label and be age-gated, but not removed from Meta platforms unless determined to be in clear violation of the “glorified content” policy.

    X tells users that they “may share graphic media if it is properly labeled, not prominently displayed and is not excessively gory or depicting sexual violence.” The platform notes that content that is “explicitly threatening, inciting, glorifying, or expressing desire for violence” is not allowed.

    Mahadevan, from the Poynter Institute, says that he saw the Kirk shooting video without his consent multiple times on X on Wednesday, likening it to a version of “4Chan turned into a mainstream social media platform.” (He also says he opened up Facebook on Thursday morning and immediately saw a video of Kirk being shot.)

    X did not reply to requests for comment or questions about whether the Kirk video was considered “excessively gory” by X’s standards.

    But X appears to have another content moderation problem: A few hours after Kirk was pronounced dead, the AI chatbot Grok, which runs on X, insisted that Kirk was “fine and active as ever.” X did not reply to further questions from WIRED about Grok’s misinformation about the Kirk shooting.

    TikTok did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment. Bluesky has said it’s suspending accounts that encourage violence and taking down close-up videos of the event.

    For now, the videos of Charlie Kirk’s shooting continue to spread online.

    “This is all psychologically damaging to our society in ways we don’t understand yet,” Mahadevan said. “We’re seeing posts on X of people saying, ‘Congratulations, you’ve radicalized me.’ And part of that is because they’re seeing the video of Kirk being killed. They’re not just reading about it. They’re actually seeing it.”

    Additional reporting by Kylie Robison.

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    Lauren Goode

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