The internet has been transformed by social media, and the many platforms are now critical to how we communicate online. The Verge keeps a close eye on everything that’s happening in the social media landscape, covering key players like Meta, X, and TikTok, reporting on new features, following cultural moments, and breaking down the policies that shape how the platforms work.
Snap announced today that its subscriber count grew 71 percent year-over-year in Q4 2025. Its subscription offerings, including Snapchat Plus, Lens Plus, Snapchat Premium, and Memories storage plans, are projected to earn $1 billion in annual revenue. Snapchat creators will also soon be able to offer creator subscriptions to other users.
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.
Just after we entered the courtroom, we learned that a juror has been hospitalized. The parties decided to postpone today’s testimony from former Meta employees to see if the juror can return. Regardless, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to testify tomorrow — either before the original juror, or an alternate.
Starting on February 23rd, Snapchat’s 946 million daily active users will be able to subscribe to specific creators in exchange for ad-free viewing of that creator’s stories, priority replies, and access to exclusive content, similar to subscriptions on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Facebook. It’s launching first with a limited group of creators, including Skai Jackson and Jeremiah Brown, as reported by TechCrunch.
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.
Google, Reddit, Discord, and Meta have received “hundreds” of subpoenas from the DHS in recent months, according to a report from The New York Times. The agency is reportedly asking the platforms for the names, email addresses, phone numbers, and other information associated with accounts that “track or criticize” ICE.
[The New York Times]
Kamala Harris’ campaign account, @KamalaHQ, has rebranded as a digital rapid response operation.
The Tech Transparency Project identified several Iranian government agencies and officials enjoying the perks of X Premium accounts. Normally, Premium requires a paid subscription, which could violate US sanctions. Suspiciously, when Wired flagged some of those accounts to X, they were stripped of their blue checkmarks:
X did not respond to a request for comment, but within hours of WIRED flagging several X accounts belonging to Iranian officials, their blue checkmarks were removed. The rest of the accounts identified by TTP but not shared with X continue to display a blue checkmark.
Plus: DC thinks Bezos is a bastard; Newsmax goes to war with Nexstar; and more in this week’s Regulator.
The new mandate is one of several changes to India’s 2021 IT rules announced on Tuesday, TechCrunch reports. The updates also include requirements for “synthetic audio and visual content” to be labeled and traceable, and a ban on “deceptive impersonations, non-consensual intimate imagery, and material linked to serious crimes.”
Cross-platform social web tool Bridgy Fed can already send you notifications about DMs it can’t bridge back across platforms, and starting today, Bridgy Fed lets respond to those DMs right inside Bridgy Fed.
The removals — which follow the Trump administration’s previous data purging efforts — target all posts prior to the president returning to office in January 2025, with a goal to “limit confusion on US government policy,” A spokesperson told NPR that the department’s X accounts “are one of our most powerful tools for advancing the America First goals.”
I like to think you can usually tell the difference between a Verge headline and an Onion one, but these days the lines are getting blurry.
endlessben:
I think you hit “Publish to The Verge” instead of “Publish to The Onion.” It’s ok, it happens.
Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.
Why you can’t label your way into consensus reality amid the AI deepfake apocalypse.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez announced plans for the ban on Tuesday, vowing to protect children “from the digital wild west,” the New York Times reports. The policy would bar users under 16 from social media platforms, mirroring Australia’s ban, and would require platforms to have “effective age-verification systems.”
[The New York Times]
The app began restricting access to users under 16 in compliance with Australia’s Social Media Minimum Age law. Though Snapchat says it will continue complying with the regulation, it argues that app store-level age verification is a better solution, helping to “ensure that young people encounter appropriate protections no matter where they go online.”
After suffering multiple issues last month, X is down again to kick off February. Downdetector and NetBlocks both confirmed the outage. Users are reporting that the most recent posts they’re able to see are from an hour ago.
Sorry to Zuck-dunk two days in a row, but it’s fair to say that when the Meta CEO predicts AI is the next big thing in social media, you should take it with a grain of salt.
Guillermo Esteves:
I definitely trust the visionary that brought us the Metaverse to tell me this is the future of social media.
Get the day’s best comment and more in my free newsletter, The Verge Daily.
A political comms professional breaks down Trump’s meme media strategy.
It follows Snap in reaching an agreement to resolve the first of several cases slated to go to trial this year about social media’s alleged harm to users, an attorney for the 19-year-old plaintiff confirmed. That leaves Meta and YouTube as defendants in the case going to jury selection today.
Despite claims floating around social media, the truth is a bit more complicated, not least by the fact that TikTok in the US is still largely down, about a day and a half after its data center power outage problems started.
While tweets from random users, the governor of California, and PopBase claimed TikTok US DMs now censor “Epstein,” testing it from our end showed that its messaging feature bans many innocuous single-word messages, like “test.” Using the convicted sex offender’s name in a sentence, however, goes through unbanned.
Similar to starter packs on Bluesky, Threads, and Mastodon, X’s take on the feature will provide you with lists of accounts to follow based on what they post about, such as sports, video games, food, and more. Starter packs will roll out to all users in “the coming weeks.”
It’s been a long, confusing, and at times tiresome saga, but according to Semafor, the Chinese and U.S. governments have given the green light for ByteDance to sell TikTok’s American arm. The target closing date set back in December was today, January 22nd, 2026.
