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MrBeast has an unusual legal 'expectation' for departing employees

Jimmy Donaldson, a.k.a. MrBeast
Jimmy Donaldson, a.k.a. MrBeast, has an expectation for departing employees that lawyers say goes beyond the norm.

Prodip Guha/Getty Images

  • MrBeast has an unusual expectation for ex-employees: Don't talk about MrBeast on social media — at all.
  • Labor lawyers said the language in a letter outlining obligations for departing employees was uncommonly broad.
  • A MrBeast rep said the language is meant to protect employees and the company from harassment.

MrBeast has an unusual expectation for departing employees: The world's top YouTuber doesn't want them to post about him — even if they're saying nice things.

Employees leaving the company of MrBeast, whose real name is Jimmy Donaldson, receive a letter outlining their obligations, including an "expectation" that they refrain from creating, commenting on, or engaging with social posts involving Donaldson, his company Beast Industries, or any of its employees. Business Insider viewed one such letter and confirmed it was the standard version used by the company.

The letter also states that the employee should not disclose nonpublic information about the company or make false or disparaging statements about it.

Three employment lawyers told Business Insider that the letter had a few uncommon features, pointing particularly to the references to social media.

"It does seem like an unusual burden to not be able to comment on social media," said V. James DeSimone, a California-based attorney. Plus, the letter doesn't offer any severance or other consideration in exchange, he added.

A Beast Industries spokesman said the social media language is intended to protect employees and the company from harassing behavior on social media.

Evan Fray-Witzer, of the firm Ciampa Fray-Witzer — who has experience working with creators — said the language in the MrBeast letter was broader than typical nondisparagement clauses he's seen. That's because it covers all comments, not just negative ones, and also extends to every post that references the company.

"If you were to read this literally, the person couldn't hit the 'like' button on a MrBeast post," Fray-Witzer said. "That's absurd."

Donaldson has been chasing YouTube fame since he was a teen, and the colossus he's built is the result of the tight creative control he exerts. He's known to obsess over his videos and his image and to kill projects he doesn't believe meet his standards.

Russell Berger of Offit Kurman said the language might be understandable in the context of a social media star's company, but thought the letter was unusually formal, long, and cold in tone.

"This is more of a putting-you-on-notice way of doing it," he said. "Mostly when people leave a job, they don't get a reminder of what they can and can't do."

Legal bark or bite?

Fray-Witzer said the company's motivation is understandable: It likely doesn't want former employees undermining its brand or profiting from MrBeast's content.

The 28-year-old creator, who has over 523 million YouTube subscribers, has been rapidly scaling up his company, which was valued at around $5 billion last year. The operation has grown to nearly 800 employees as it has expanded into areas like candy and financial services.

"Where it becomes more questionable and heavy-handed is the extent that it is being used simply to silence former employees from saying anything about MrBeast or the company," Fray-Witzer said of the letter.

The lawyers who spoke with Business Insider said the letter isn't a contract and is likely not enforceable.

DeSimone said, however, that if the employee previously signed an agreement saying they wouldn't comment about Beast Industries on social media, and then did so, the company could potentially have a basis for legal action.

It might be hard to get a judge to enforce the provision, however, and MrBeast would likely "have to prove some sort of damages," Fray-Witzer said.

Even if the language isn't enforceable, it could still have a chilling effect.

"The question for the employee is always, what's worth the juice here?" DeSimone said.

Read the original article on Business Insider
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Instagram is trying to woo YouTube creators with six-figure checks

Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram at Meta Platforms Inc., during the Bloomberg Screentime event in Los Angeles, California, US, on Thursday, Oct. 9, 2025. Screentime gathers the moguls, celebrities, and entrepreneurs defining the next phase of pop culture to discuss and debate the future of Hollywood studios, the boom in sports and live music and the impact of AI on the creative industries. Photographer: Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Adam Mosseri is the head of Instagram at Meta.

Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg via Getty Images

  • Instagram is offering some creators six figures to help make it a long-form video hub.
  • The Meta platform is reviving its IGTV ambitions, allowing horizontal videos of up to 90 minutes.
  • Creators are required to cross-post their long-form YouTube content to Instagram as part of nonexclusive deals.

Instagram wants what YouTube has — and it's willing to pay up to get it.

In an effort to persuade content creators to post long-form video on Instagram, the company is paying a select number of creators hefty sums, according to people familiar with the deals.

Not every deal is equal. The Meta-owned platform has offered select creators $50,000 to post long-form video to its new "Features" product, while others have been offered six-figure deals, some of which have reached $500,000, Business Insider exclusively learned.

"We've been public about the fact that we are funding Features content directly with some creators right now to support them," a Meta spokesperson told Business Insider. "The details of those deals are confidential, but we're excited to see the content going live."

On Monday, Instagram unveiled an overhaul of its video formats. Most importantly, it's resurrecting IGTV — a long-form video product Instagram launched in 2018 and sunset in 2022 — in the form of Features. The horizontal, wide-screen videos will exist within the Instagram app, and can be as long as a feature film: 90 minutes.

Instagram is launching more video tools.
Instagram is expanding its offerings for long-form video content.

Meta

Long-form video isn't exactly what people are used to watching on Instagram. Reels, the platform's answer to TikTok's meteoric rise, has redefined the Instagram experience and is driving time-spent and revenue across Meta's apps.

YouTube, however, reigns king as the internet's destination for sit-down, longer-form videos.

Instagram knows this. The deals do not require exclusivity to Instagram, multiple people familiar with the agreements said; one person familiar with the offers said it's asking creators to post to Instagram any of the long-form content they publish to YouTube that same day.

Reza Izad, partner at Underscore Talent, which reps clients like "Subway Takes'" Kareem Rahma and Noah Beck, called the deals an "exciting opportunity" for creators.

"Every time there's a new feature in these apps that the company's promoting, people will have more opportunity to be seen because there's going to be algorithmic preference to this kind of content," he said. "And unlike short-form, there's not a lot of abundance."

Money, money, money

This isn't the first time Instagram has inked paid deals with creators to lure them to post more on Meta's apps.

Last year, Meta was paying creators thousands of dollars to post short-form videos to Instagram and Facebook in the midst of TikTok's potential ban. The company has tested several bonus programs paying creators for the performance of their Reels on Instagram, though those programs have dwindled.

Back in 2021, when IGTV was still part of Instagram's big video bet, it inked deals with creators, funding long-form episodic shows from creators like TikTok's "Sway Boys" and "Dance Moms" alum Nia Sioux. Briefly, IGTV had its own monetization program, too, which let some creators earn a cut from ad revenue on the format.

While Instagram is paying some creators directly, a big question looms over the creator economy: What about the rest of them?

A major draw of YouTube is its long-standing Partner Program, which pays eligible creators a share of the ad revenue generated by their videos. Even though YouTube has increased its eligibility requirements, the potential to turn a hobby or passion project into a cash-earning career has kept YouTube on top as the go-to video platform for creators.

It's no surprise, then, that when Instagram announced its video overhaul, creators immediately had questions about monetization.

"We understand the economics matter a ton, and are exploring multiple options to help long-form creators get paid," Instagram's top executive, Adam Mosseri, wrote in an X post on Wednesday.


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Instagram is clearly jealous of YouTube — and is introducing a bunch of changes

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - MAY 04: (L-R) Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri attend the 2026 Met Gala celebrating "Costume Art" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 04, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by Kevin Mazur/MG26/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue)
Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Adam Mosseri are betting on long-form.

Kevin Mazur/MG26/Getty Images for The Met Museum/Vogue

  • Instagram is opening its arms to long-form video again.
  • Adam Mosseri, Instagram's top exec, said longer videos will help the app stay "relevant."
  • Instagram is testing tools for creators making episodic content. But will it pay for them?

Instagram's top executive, Adam Mosseri, has a plan to keep the platform "culturally relevant" — by making it more like YouTube.

Meta-owned Instagram unveiled an overhaul of long-form video features on Monday, including a test of horizontal videos called "Features." Taken together, the changes make the app feel a lot more like YouTube.

"We want to be the most culturally relevant platform," Mosseri said in an interview with content creators and founders of Press Publish, Colin Rosenblum and Samir Chaudry. "To do that, we just need to show up where people are."

The context: YouTube has become a major hit on TV screens, and there's a growing appetite for Instagram-native shows with recurring episodes.

"Subway Takes," hosted by Kareem Rahma, is a prime example of Instagram's strengths and limits. The show started in 2023 as a short-form interview series and, as it grew, expanded with longer-form cuts on YouTube and the streaming platform Tubi. Instagram, however, is where Rahma's show still has its largest audience of 2.4 million followers.

Instagram doesn't want people to go to YouTube or Tubi to see longer versions of shows like "Subway Takes." That's leaving ad revenue and user engagement on the table. Its new tools are designed to entice creators and viewers to stay on its platform.

Here are Instagram's latest video tools and how creators can use them:

  • "Features" keep viewers within the Instagram ecosystem. Instead of leaving Instagram to watch the extended version of an interview or episode, it'll be relatively seamless to stay on Instagram and watch that longer-form content. Instagram's "Features" can be as long as 90 minutes, although the new format is, for now, only available to a limited number of creators in the US and Brazil.
  • Instagram is feeding more content to its TV apps. Instagram is also pushing its "Instagram for TV" app further. The app will feature various video content on TV services like Samsung, Amazon Fire TV, Google TV, and now Apple TV. People can now watch a feed of content their friends are also liking or resharing on TV.
  • Instagram-native shows can label their episodes more clearly with "Series." Within the main Instagram feed, Instagram is testing a way for shows on the app to seamlessly connect episodic content. Eligible creators can add videos to a Series, and a label appears over the content indicating that there are additional episodes. People can then watch those episodes in order from the start. This test is expanding to more countries through the end of the year.
  • Clips can directly drive engagement back to the original video. Instead of clipping content and praying that the audience will go the extra mile of clicking on an account and finding the original, longer-form video, Instagram is letting creators link up to 8 clips to one long video.
Instagram is launching more video tools.
Instagram is expanding its offerings for long-form video content.

Meta

This isn't Instagram's first time dabbling in long-form content.

In 2018, it launched IGTV, a long-form video format and stand-alone app. In 2020, Instagram rolled out a program that let creators earn money from those videos on IGTV. Four years after launching, the company sunset the IGTV app and shifted its video efforts to Reels.

There are a few key elements missing from Instagram's big leap (back) into long-form video.

You can't watch the video while continuing to scroll through Instagram, or multitask by opening other apps while keeping the Instagram content in a picture-in-picture pop-up. There also aren't automated transcripts and subtitles yet. A spokesperson for Meta told Business Insider that there are plans for these features.

Will creators get a slice of the ad revenue pie?

For creators, one key question and pain point looms: Will Meta share the honeypot?

Mosseri told Rosenblum and Chaudry that Instagram is thinking about ways to test pre-roll and mid-roll ads that could lead to a revenue split. However, he said previous attempts by Instagram to build a creator monetization system comparable to YouTube's Partner Program didn't prove beneficial for the platform.

"We spend more money than we make back by a long shot," Mosseri said of Instagram's previous efforts at broad revenue-sharing programs.

Mosseri said that in its previous iterations of content monetization, creators typically didn't produce more content than they already did for free, and the content they did create tended to be lower quality.

Still, Instagram will need to "figure it out" as it tries to crack longer-form content, Mosseri said.

"I don't think of platform payments or performance-based incentives or bonuses as a revenue driver," Mosseri added. "I'd be psyched to scale them up for any of these formats — as long as we're breaking even."

Read the original article on Business Insider
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30 dias, 30 denúncias de publicidade não identificada por influencers

A DECO INFORMA… DECO alerta para feeds de redes sociais inundados de conteúdos comerciais não identificados como publicidade pelos influencers. Como a DECO já havia denunciado há pouco mais de um ano, apesar do marketing de influência dominar o ambiente digital e estar cada vez mais profissionalizado, é reduzido o número de influencers que identifica […]

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How a 24-year-old turned advice from the rich and successful into a $37 million business

School of Hard Knocks founders Jack Dumoulin, James Dumoulin, and Josh Smith.
School of Hard Knocks founders, from left, Jack Dumoulin, James Dumoulin, and Josh Smith, want to be the "Barstool Sports of business."

School of Hard Knocks

  • James Dumoulin has turned street interviews with moguls into a business on track for $37 million in revenue this year.
  • School of Hard Knocks uses staged drama to hook viewers and sells consulting services and memberships.
  • Dumoulin and his partners aim to expand and become the "Barstool Sports of business content."

As James Dumoulin approaches a private equity investor in Lagos, Nigeria, there's an ominous moment when a bodyguard holding a rifle puts his hand up and demands the content creator stop.

"I have a channel with 24 million followers," the School of Hard Knocks cofounder responds, and then asks if he can interview the investor, Adesuwa Rhodes, for one minute about how she got rich.

Rhodes steps forward, dressed in a vibrantly patterned suit, and begins answering Dumoulin's questions, explaining how she broke into the business, the importance of persistence, and her faith in God.

The video's formula — mixing a high-drama street interview with advice from the wealthy and successful — has been distilled down to a science by 24-year-old Dumoulin, and helped him create a company that's on track to do $37 million in revenue this year, profitably, according to copies of financial documents he provided to Business Insider. The initial set-up is also, as Dumoulin readily explains, partly scripted.

"They're screaming at me, and it looks like a war is about to break out, and then I get her to calm them down," he said of how he blocked out the Rhodes scene. "And she gave some incredible sound bites and advice."

Street interviews, which have their predecessors on radio and TV, have been reborn as one of social media's hottest formats. Standout stars of the genre include Kareem Rahma of "Subway Takes," who gets opinions on hot topics from strangers, and TikToker Caleb Simpson, who asks people what they pay in rent and tours their apartments. As the format has grown increasingly lucrative, it's also become more orchestrated. Rahma and Simpson have both leaned into celebrity appearances, for example.

In Dumoulin's case, the upfront drama of the street encounter is contrived, a way to draw the viewer in and hook them so they'll listen to the interview, which is where he says the valuable information actually resides. He asks his subjects how they made their money, what their leadership principles are, and for advice for future entrepreneurs. The conceit is that they're lessons not taught in school.

"People love tension," Dumoulin said. "They want to see that conflict, they want to see what's going to happen, and then the payoff is a great interview on the back half. That's why I think our videos do really, really well."

Dumoulin's success in the creator economy — where the term "authenticity" is employed like a sacred totem — raises a host of questions about what it means to be "real," and how much it truly matters if you're entertaining and informing your audience. Any questions of authenticity haven't seemed to hamper the growth of School of Hard Knocks, though, which has nearly 11 million Instagram followers and over 7 million on TikTok, plus several million more on YouTube and other platforms.

Dumoulin said he'd consider a video a failure if it got under a million views.

The 'Barstool Sports of business content'

The videos serve as the center of an operation — run by Dumoulin, his brother Jack, 26, and their childhood friend Josh Smith, 28 — that contains a slew of businesses. The partners say they expect their media revenue to double over the next six months.

"One of the long-term visions of the School of Hard Knocks is to create the Barstool Sports of business content," James Dumoulin said.

School of Hard Knocks team pose with Tom Cruise
The team poses with Tom Cruise, one of several celebrities they've interviewed.

School of Hard Knocks

The brand has done long-term sponsorships with companies including Shopify, ZipRecruiter, and Alibaba, but advertising isn't the most lucrative part of the business. The core moneymaker is School of Content, which provides social media consulting to small businesses.

The other two contributors are Hard Knocks Agency, a short-form video production and social media management agency for business owners, and School of Mentors, a membership community for aspiring entrepreneurs. Members pay $19 or $49 a month for live calls, workshops, and training with founders and operators.

Jack Dumoulin said the subscribers to its Mentors community are people who want to connect with successful entrepreneurs and learn from them, while the agency's clients are established businesspeople who want to build their personal or company brands.

"Founder-led brands are becoming a really, really big thing, where we're seeing more and more founders become the face of brands, their product, their service, or their company," Jack Dumoulin said.

Monica Khan, CEO of Creator Revolution, which helps creators build businesses and advises companies on influencer strategy, said she sees strong demand from execs and founders for help building personal brands, and business-to-business (B2B) creators are stepping up.

School of Hard Knocks took a smart approach by building a media brand first by interviewing entrepreneurs, then turning that credibility into a service, Khan said.

"We're going to see a lot more of that," she added.

The School of Hard Knocks cofounders have also invested in real estate, including a portion of an apartment complex in San Antonio and commercial properties.

The founders went through several pivots

The Dumoulin brothers grew up in a military family in Northern Virginia and became friends with Smith while serving in the same Boy Scouts troop. All went on to become Eagle Scouts.

James Dumoulin attributes some of their success to the mentoring they got from the military dads who ran the troop. He recalled the especially long conferences they'd have with scout leaders evaluating them for advancement to the next rank, and the scoutmaster who used to say, "There's never enough time to do it right, but there's always enough time to do it again."

"That resonated with us," he said.

Mark Cuban speaks into a handheld microphone during a stage discussion against a dark backdrop.
Mark Cuban gave School of Hard Knocks its first big break.

Shafkat Anowar/The Dallas Morning News via Getty Images

The three reconnected in Austin in 2020. Josh Smith had gotten into digital marketing, and Jack Dumoulin, who had won a trophy in a worldwide Microsoft Excel competition, had become a junior analyst at Buc-ee's. James Dumoulin was in college, making TikTok videos. They combined their skills to make online content.

School of Hard Knocks was by no means an overnight success. They experimented with several approaches, including giving their own business advice. People didn't care about a 20-year-old kid's perspective on business, James Dumoulin said.

"Ultimately, we were like, 'What if we tried doing interviews?'" he said. "'What if we were the ones that were able to go seek advice from the most successful people?'"

They started approaching people cold on the street, asking them for interviews, and more often than not, getting blown off.

"It was just constant rejection after rejection," James Dumoulin said. "You'd probably have to go to 100 people before you get anybody to even look at you in the eye."

Their big break came in 2022 when they intercepted Mark Cuban outside the South by Southwest festival and asked for an interview. The gregarious entrepreneur obliged.

"That one interview was so powerful for us, because I leveraged it in so many other interviews," James Dumoulin said.

Eventually, PR agents were calling them to have their clients be featured on the channel.

The videos are carefully planned

School of Hard Knocks videos have a spontaneous feel that belies the meticulous planning behind them.

They start with a cold open, often creating tension by involving a security guard or other bystanders. For an interview with Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, James Dumoulin roped in a few employees from a store on Rodeo Drive where he met Siminoff and asked them to stand in a group, chatting. Dumoulin asked the group who the richest of them was. As briefed, they pointed to Siminoff, who said he was an inventor who made "something on your front door."

James Dumoulin reshoots the opening several times until he's satisfied with the result. The rest of the interview is shot in one take. He approaches his subjects with hearty enthusiasm and said he does minimal research on them, to preserve a certain amount of natural surprise in his reactions. All told, he takes five to seven hours to edit videos that are between a minute and a half and two minutes long.

"He's got unbelievable guests," said Josh Suggs, founder of StreetTalk, an ad agency built around impromptu street interviews. "He has real A-list celebrities. So I think people naturally want to hear what an A-list celebrity is going to say. At the same time, he asks a question people want to hear: How much money do you make? It's very scroll-stopping questions."

Some subjects — like Shaq and Tom Cruise — are household names. Most are not. James Dumoulin said the best-performing videos are unknown moguls because they create a curiosity gap.

He doesn't press his guests on controversial topics. Convicted felon "Wolf of Wall Street" Jordan Belfort and streamer Adin Ross, who has hosted far-right creator Nick Fuentes and self-described misogynist influencer Andrew Tate on his stream, get the same treatment as everyone else.

A platform reality check

The cofounders said that when their content started to take off, around 2022, they got a reality check about dependence on platforms.

They said their content was making about $30,000 a month, mostly from Facebook, when they were unexpectedly demonetized by the platform for what James Dumoulin said was an "unoriginal content violation." (They've since been reinstated.) Their monthly revenue dropped to $5,000. They said it was a wake-up call that they had to find other, more predictable sources of income. They started their first offshoot, the Hard Knocks Agency, in 2023.

"Sometimes you're not in control, because you don't own the platform," James Dumoulin said. "It made us realize, 'We've got to create a media company.'"

The School of Hard Knocks founders are also aware of the risk they run of being dependent on a single person. That's why they're adding new brands like Hard Knocks Business and Hard Knocks Women, with Hard Knocks Sports to come. The goal is to get to eight channels by the end of the year.

"If it is all really relying on one person, if something happens to that person, the whole company's kind of screwed," James Dumoulin said. "And so I think that's why it is very, very important to have that distribution beyond just one channel."

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Top influencer marketers describe 3 big challenges facing the industry

E.l.f. Beauty hosted an influencer activation at Coachella.
E.l.f. Beauty hosted an influencer activation at Coachella.

VALERIE MACON / AFP via Getty Images

  • Influencer marketing can be messy and unpredictable.
  • We asked top creator marketers about the main challenges they face when running campaigns.
  • Marketers said choosing talent, approving content, and forecasting reach create the most headaches.

Influencer marketing has ballooned into a $12 billion industry in the US. And yet, running campaigns can still feel unpredictable.

Business Insider asked more than a dozen executives at top brands like Poppi, E.l.f. Beauty, and the National Football League what challenges they face when working with creators. Three common pain points emerged.

First, it's tough to find relevant talent amid a growing pool of content creators. It can also be tricky to agree on content copy when balancing a brand's messaging goals with the creator's own voice. Lastly, campaign performance can be erratic as social-media algorithms become more personalized and harder to crack.

Buying influencer ads, unlike TV spots or display ads, requires a human touch. It's tough to automate (despite some attempts to do so). Forty-five percent of brands said they relied on manual processes like spreadsheets, emails, and DMs to run creator campaigns, according to a June survey of 209 executives conducted by Northwestern University and LTK.

"We're dealing with people, and making content is their time and their business, and it's hard," said Lindsay Burstein, senior director of integrated social and communications at Keurig Dr Pepper. "We're always looking for ways to do it faster and in a way that feels more real-time so that we're keeping up with the pace and the culture of the internet. But also knowing that these are people. They have lives. They have other commitments."

Read on for more details on the common pain points that emerged from our conversations with marketing executives at 14 brands. These execs were recently featured in Business Insider's 2026 list of innovative influencer marketers.

1. It's hard to find the right creators for your brand when there are so many

  • "The landscape of the influencer, creator, and affiliate model is changing every single day, and new people are coming in and identifying as an influencer," said Patrick O'Keefe, chief integrated marketing officer at E.l.f. Beauty. "I would love a model or a plan or a program that would capture all the new people coming into this space in real time."
  • "We've just seen this space get so much more saturated than it ever has before," said Kiara Kempski, vice president of global consumer marketing at The Knot Worldwide. "The game of scale is totally changing."

2. Breaking through the noise

  • "The feed is so loud right now," said Anna Doré, Rothy's vice president of brand and communications. "In this AI-driven algorithm world where we're all being served the same content on the feed, we, more than ever, are going to be looking to great tastemakers."
  • "There is a ton of content that's just content for content's sake that's out there," said Ian Trombetta, the National Football League's senior vice president of global social, creator, and content marketing. "The creative bar is going up in order for us to drive that organic reach and engagement."
  • Ninety to 95% of the content that we see in our own feeds is not from accounts we follow, Keurig Dr Pepper's Lindsay Burstein said. "Followership matters a little, but not nearly as much as I think it once did because the algorithms just don't favor it the way that we used to."

3. Agreeing on content that works for both a brand and a creator's audience

  • Some brands "are a little bit too prescriptive and don't allow the creators to do what it is that they really are good at, which is understanding their audience and how to create great content and formats that work for their audience," the NFL's Trombetta said.
  • "Overbriefed" projects are "not the business that we want to be in," said Sophia Sesto, Poppi's vice president of culture. "We want to take these opportunities and work with the talent to make something special" and "lean into their personalities and let them carry the brand forward with us."
  • "For a long time, the industry treated creators as ad placements," said Samim Sadrzadeh, director of creator content and partnerships at Disney. "We think that significantly undersells the value they actually bring."
  • "We start from a pretty simple place, which is creators know their audiences better than we ever will," said Stacy Martinet, Adobe's chief content and creative officer. "The most effective approach has been to treat creators as creative partners, first and foremost."
Read the original article on Business Insider

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Maxx yourself, squeeze yourself dry: The unhealthy obsession with optimizing everything

There was a time when moderation was a virtue and the middle ground, wisdom. Hyperbole was no more than a literary or rhetorical device. But not anymore. We live at the extremes. Raising everything to its highest possible level is the zeitgeist fate has handed us, and it comes with a suffix that colonizes the internet: maxxing. A highly versatile suffix: placed after the right word it means that, whatever you do, you are giving it your all.

Seguir leyendo

© CASSIDY ARAIZA ( New York Times / Europa Press / CONTACTO )

The influencer Clavicular in Arizona, last February.
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This, Too, Shall Pass

Linni Kral has always been preoccupied with her bowels, but as a food writer, it hasn’t usually been that end she’s focused on in her writing. Now, as the internet explodes with “scat chat,” Kral is ready to investigate whether obsessing over our bowel movements has any merit. The result is a giggle fest—though you’ll need the stomach for some serious poo talk.

One day, it seems, the internet woke up and chose BMs, and suddenly the hottest girl you know is posting about scat. Now you have to go out of your way to not eat fiber—prebiotic supplements are in our soda, our candy bars, our cold foam. The beverage case is dominated by the likes of Olipop and Poppi and Culture Pop, all offering varying degrees of digestive assistance. The other day, I saw a smoothie blend in the freezer aisle called “Fiber Supremacy,” and earlier this year, Frito-Lay launched a fiber-packed version of both SunChips and Smartfood popcorn. Kraft is making a purgative macaroni and cheese that boasts six grams of fiber per serving (or 15 grams if you eat the whole box—which is, let’s be honest, how most people consume Easy Mac). Outside the retail space, home cooks are finding ways to fit chia and flax into not just their breakfasts but their meat loaf. They’re pureeing beans into sauces and veggies into puddings and cakes. Literal doctors are posting their #fibermaxxing menus to TikTok. And while this may sound like just another wave on the ocean of content we surf daily, it gets…weirder.

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The Anti-Sunscreen Movement Is Coming for You

For Men’s Health, Brian Underwood investigates the flood of sunscreen misinformation on Instagram and TikTok, where influencers push inaccurate data about chemical UV filters, play chemist and promote their own DIY formulas, or even encourage no sun protection at all. Underwood sorts fact from fear, talking with dermatologists, chemists, and professionals who are working to reshape the messaging around sun exposure and sunscreen.

Environmental concerns may have also shown up in your feed, with suggestions that these same filters are poisoning our oceans, giving rise to a whole category of sunscreens labeled “reef safe”—a meaningless marketing term that’s not regulated by the FDA (the same goes for products labeled “natural” or “organic”). Dr. Nelson’s point about “low-relevance models” is something to consider here too: The research demonstrating that oxybenzone, octinoxate, and other active ingredients may lead to reef bleaching was done in a lab setting where coral was exposed to levels of these chemicals significantly higher than has been found in the natural environment. It conveniently left out the fact that inorganic filters like zinc oxide (the one typically used in “reef safe” formulas) would have the same effect in similar doses.

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