Mia Sato is a reporter at The Verge covering tech companies, platforms, and users. Since joining The Verge in 2021, she’s reported on the war in Ukraine and the spread of propaganda on TikTok; Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter; and how tech platforms and digital publishers are using artificial intelligence tools. Sato has written about tech platforms and communities since 2019. Before joining Vox Media she was a reporter at MIT Technology Review, where she covered the intersection of technology and the coronavirus pandemic. Prior to that she served as the audience engagement editor at The Markup. As a freelance reporter, she’s written about the subversive Hmong radio shows hosted on conference call software, online knitting activism, and the teens running businesses in Instagram comment sections. Her work has appeared in outlets like The New Republic, The Appeal, and Chicago Magazine. She is based in Brooklyn. Got a tip? Contact her at mia@theverge.com or on Signal at miasato.11.
A market asking, “Any of the Cornell 7 charged with a felony sex crime?” racked up more than $450,000 in trading volume before it was removed by Polymarket, Front Office Sports reports. The prediction market defended the market, saying in part that it brought “objective, data-driven insight into how a matter like this is moving through the legal system.”
A “reasonable esthetic standard” will be applied to advertising on the platform, Musk said in a post, though he didn’t elaborate. He has a contentious history with the advertisers who keep the lights on: Shortly after Musk took control of Twitter, major ad groups recommended that clients pause campaigns on the platform, citing brand safety concerns. Musk later told them to “go fuck [themselves]” in the midst of an advertiser boycott in 2023.
AI photos and videos of celebrities are racking up millions of views on social media.
Delivery apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats have changed how diners eat and how restaurants operate. AI could force a new kind of reckoning for the industry.
Users will soon be able to shop from other retailers without leaving TikTok, as well as use an AI chatbot to find and purchase products.
TikTok is often associated with short form video, but it has also reshaped the online shopping landscape. As I wrote last year, scrolling has become synonymous with shopping, and perhaps more than any other platform, TikTok has figured out how to bridge the gap.
Soon, YouTubers will be able to A/B test multiple cuts of the same video to see which hook, script, or edit performs best with their audiences. The company told me the different versions will only be shown to a very small segment of people — but as Marques Brownlee explains, it could get weird. Will people argue in comments while watching two different videos? What happens to timestamps? And who’s the feature really for?
