TikTok

Jon Stewart’s presence on The Daily Show already feels very familiar (and very good), but the way people consume their video entertainment has shifted dramatically since he left the anchor’s chair in 2015.

I’ve mused before on the correct number of posters and influencers vs lurkers required on text-based social networks — but refrained from commentary on video. (I don’t watch much.) Anyway this survey data suggests my theory applies there too: most people don’t post. That means posters are weird outliers who should be studied in a lab.

Users in more than 160 new countries will be able to add music they find on TikTok to their streaming platform of choice, TikTok announced today. The “add to music app” feature launched in the US in November, integrating platforms like Spotify and Apple Music with the video app.

In what Reuters says is the second formal proceedings under the Digital Services Act, EU regulators are looking into whether TikTok has broken rules about safeguarding children and advertising transparency. If found guilty, TikTok could be fined up to 6 percent of its global turnover.

Here’s something you can do with that dozen or so obsolete Ubiquiti access points you’ve got shoved in your junk drawer.

Slide decks: good, useful, necessary in business! Also a scourge against humanity that may exist only for the purpose of bringing unending misery to those who are forced to make them all the time.

Available in english for both free and premium Adobe Express users, the AI-powered TikTok Creative Assistant add-on can write scripts and provide insights into what topics and hashtags are trending on the video-sharing platform, alongside design templates and editing features like the free TikTok video creator.

The longer the TikTok / UMG battle drags on, the more I think UMG’s leverage increases. Talked about it on Today, Explained with my pal Sean Rameswaram — and Cory Doctorow also joined this episode, so it’s a fun one.

That’s according to a new report in The Information, which says the company is opening the studios in “several locations in cities including LA,” which it may or may not charge creators to use for promoting products.

The company has started hiding details on how popular hashtags are... after researchers and journalists kept using them as a measure of how widely controversial and harmful topics had spread on the platform.

The next time you scroll through Shorts, you might spot a preview for a live video that you can tap into and watch. You can also continue scrolling to find other livestreams. The setup is similar to TikTok, which already lets you scroll through a feed of live, mobile-friendly videos.

Painter Steven Novak made what he calls a “portal painting” — a concave painting meticulously made to be a little like sticking your head inside of a 360-degree (or, I suppose, 180-degree, in this case) picture and looking around.

At one point during this episode, as we discuss our Vision Pro review — and the reaction we’ve seen from around the web — Nilay begins to debate how he’s scored every Apple product ever. It’s that kind of Vergecast, y’all. And then, as TikTok loses a key music partner and foists shopping on users everywhere, we wonder: is it time to call the top on TikTok?

What started as a kid’s dancing app has changed significantly in recent years. At a Senate hearing on child safety happening now, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew said the average user on the platform is well into adulthood.

At least it will be once X, formerly Twitter, hires 100 employees into its new trust and safety team to moderate its roughly 500M global monthly users.

The corporate home to Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish, and Drake is preparing to stop licensing its music to TikTok, due to disagreements over issues like artist compensation and AI, Variety reports.

The company is building livestreaming studios in cities including Los Angeles, according to The Information. Influencers will then stream and sell products to their followers from the TikTok studios.

At some point, we should probably question whether TikTok is still actually a short form video platform. As TechCrunch reports, TikTok is now testing 30 minute-long videos with some users — which is more like a YouTube video essay than a TikTok clip.

Around 60 workers in Los Angeles, New York, Austin, and places outside the US were laid off at TikTok, according to a report from NPR. The layoffs mainly affect workers on TikTok’s sales and advertising teams and follow a string of job cuts from other tech companies this year, including Google, Amazon, Unity, and Discord.

But there’s something satisfying about this TikTok account’s low-tech videos using popsicle sticks, some thick wire, some cardboard, and a power drill to simulate engine sounds.