2 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Creators

YouTube, Instagram, SoundCloud, and other online platforms are changing the way people create and consume media. The Verge’s Creators section covers the people using these platforms, what they’re making, and how those platforms are changing (for better and worse) in response to the vloggers, influencers, podcasters, photographers, musicians, educators, designers, and more who are using them.

The Verge’s Creators section also looks at the way creators are able to turn their projects into careers — from Patreons and merch sales, to ads and Kickstarters — and the ways they’re forced to adapt to changing circumstances as platforms crack down on bad actors and respond to pressure from users and advertisers. New platforms are constantly emerging, and existing ones are ever-changing — what creators have to do to succeed is always going to look different from one year to the next.

How a prize-winning cartoonist brings hand-drawn comics to the web

Amy Kurzweil, the illustrator behind The Verge’s ‘Notes from a Burmese Prison,’ talks about how her ambitious collaboration with Danny Fenster came together.

Kristen Radtke
Mia Sato
Mia Sato
The AP is partnering with Kalshi.

The outlet will provide Kalshi with elections-related data — namely, vote counts and race calls — that will be available on the predictions market platform. The AP licenses its elections data to many sources (including other news outlets). What’s notable is that Kalshi and other predictions markets are increasingly blurring the line between actual news and a thing a guy online decided to put money on.

I suspect a bunch of Kalshi users are about to learn about the percentage of votes counted the hard way.

How MLB can make baseball relevant on a fast-changing internet

The old sport is going all-in on chasing virality.

Mia Sato
Andrew Liszewski
Andrew Liszewski
This omni-directional bike balances on just one big red ball.

A year ago James Bruton demonstrated a custom self-balancing bike that rolled around on a pair of big red inflatable balls. For 2026 he’s both simplified the bike by reducing it to just a single ball, while also further complicating the build by creating his own custom omni-wheels for more precision and control.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Twitch is taking a more nuanced approach to suspensions.

Instead of a suspension completely stopping you from accessing any part of Twitch, which has historically been the case, users will now only lose access to specific features for minor infractions. To start, there will be streaming suspensions and chatting suspensions.

Does Big Tech actually care about fighting AI slop?

It’s harder to clean up a mess you’re still actively making.

Jess Weatherbed
Hank Green will gladly take billionaire money for education videos
Play

The former Complexly owner lets loose on YouTube, AI, and why he turned his educational company into a nonprofit.

Nilay Patel
Sheena Vasani
Sheena Vasani
eBay’s buying Depop from Etsy to win over Gen Z.

The roughly $1.2 billion deal, expected to close in the second quarter of 2026, gives eBay a social, creator-driven secondhand fashion marketplace popular with Gen Z and younger millennials. The platform feels more like scrolling Instagram outfits than browsing listings, which could help modernize eBay’s image.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
YouTube was broken, but now it’s back.

A partial YouTube outage knocked out access to Google’s video service on Tuesday night.

The outage appears to have started just before 8PM ET, but at least on the homepage, it appears to be resolved now. A note on YouTube’s support page says it went down due to problems with the recommendations system. “The issue with our recommendations system has been resolved and all of our platforms (YouTube.com, the YouTube app, YouTube Music, Kids, and TV) are back to normal!

Update: The service is back online.

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Gaze upon this party-sized PC speaker.

This project from Florida-based artist Gwak needs to make that horrid beep/buzzing noise when the phone rings for authenticity, but the yellowing and half-peeled sticker is -chef’s kiss-.

A Star is born

One night in the audience of Netflix’s most ambitious live show yet.

David Pierce
Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
Actually, few TikTok USA users defected.

A new Sensor Tower report suggests the USDS takeover managed to retain most of its users despite a bumpy start and concerns with the new owners:

The average number of TikTok’s daily active users in the US remains around 95% of its usership compared to the week of Jan. 19-25.

Can Democrats post their way to midterm victories?

Kamala Harris’ campaign account, @KamalaHQ, has rebranded as a digital rapid response operation.

Mia Sato
Every little thing she does is magic

Meet Mary, the stop-motion 3D witch from Portsmith

Cath Virginia
Jay Peters
Jay Peters
Twitch is testing pause screen ads.

The platform isn’t the first service to try them.

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Mr. Beast and Rainbolt pop up with Super Bowl ad contests.

Redfin is doing a geoguessing-themed game of skill to give away a million-dollar house in its app, based on clues found in its Super Bowl ad, and Rainbolt is part of the promo — but he’s not allowed to help, based on the rules here.

Meanwhile, Salesforce’s Mr. Beast ad promises a million-dollar giveaway based on the clues in its 30-second ad.

Reality is losing the deepfake war
Play

Why you can’t label your way into consensus reality amid the AI deepfake apocalypse.

Nilay Patel
Thomas Ricker
Thomas Ricker
TikTok USA is back.

We can confirm that basic features in the US do seem to work reliably now on the new Trump-friendly entity’s servers, even if the algorithm still seems a little wonky at times. Per TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC:

We have successfully restored TikTok back to normal after a significant outage caused by winter weather took down a primary US data center site operated by Oracle. The winter storm led to a power outage which caused network and storage issues at the site and impacted tens of thousands of servers that help keep TikTok running in the US.

Great, but how many of ya’ll have abandoned the platform?