On Thursday night, I toggled endlessly between a TikTok Live stream and a shopping app in anticipation of 9:30PM. For 30 minutes, I hunted for an available listing; many expletives were uttered. I exhibited bot behavior and got iced out of the app multiple times. I tapped so many times my thumbs got sore. This is Labubu drop night.
Something that's lost in the Labubu mania is that actually buying one from the source is, in one word, maddening. There are, of course, countless fake options ("Lafufus") that some collectors have come to embrace. But if you want a guaranteed real one, you have to go to the source. Pop Mart, the Chinese toy compa …
TikTok will now let songwriters highlight tracks they’ve written or co-written directly on their profiles. The list of songs will live within the “Music” tab on their profile, similar to the one TikTok already offers for artists on the platform. Users who register as songwriters will also get a “Songwriter” label beneath their account name.
These new features build upon some of TikTok’s existing tools for songwriters, including the “New” tag that appears on newly released music and the ability for users to save a song on a music streaming service. TikTok also rolled out a “BehindTheSong” hub in 2023, where songwriters, artists, and producers can share more about the making of their music, in addition to the more recently launched “Off the Record” series with artists like Shakira, Charli XCX, and Meghan Trainor.
For now, TikTok is launching its new songwriter features in a closed beta with a “limited number” of publisher partners. Songwriters and publishers can sign up for a waitlist to gain access to these features in the future.
State Farm is gearing up for its biggest season yet of Gamerhood, its reality TV-style show on Twitch and YouTube, where gaming creators compete in physical and virtual games that are inspired by insurance mishaps.
Even with the TikTok divest-or-ban law officially in effect since January, the app has only shut down service in the US for one day. Now, The Information reports that an agreement for a sale satisfying the law’s requirements is close and would come with a new, separate version of the app.
Any deal, however, would need approval from the Chinese government, which is also still wrangling with the Trump administration over tariffs.
The outlet reports that the Trump administration says it’s close to working out a sale to a group of “non-Chinese” investors, including Oracle, with current majority owner ByteDance maintaining a minority stake that would satisfy the terms of the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
Earlier today, the Wall Street Journal reported that the General Services Administration says Oracle has reached a new agreement with the federal government that “is the first of its kind that provides the entire government with a discount on cloud infrastructure,” with a 75 percent discount on licensed software.
TikTok’s staff is reportedly working on a new version of the app — dubbed M2, to the current app’s internal M designation — for release in app stores on September 5th. Trump issued a third legally questionable extension of the deadline to ban TikTok from US app stores last month, which is set to expire in mid-September. According to The Information’s unnamed source, under the current timeline, the original TikTok app would leave app stores as the new one launches and then stop working entirely in March 2026.
Grab your grill, your hot dogs, and your sparklers because it's time to celebrate… Summer Games Done Quick 2025. The annual speedrunning charity marathon benefitting Doctors without Borders is back starting July 6th and finishes July 12th. Here's how and most importantly what to watch as you enjoy the reason for the speedrunning season.
Summer Games Done Quick 2025 starts on Sunday July 6th at 1:30 PM ET on Twitch. Games Done Quick's YouTube channel will have VODs up typically within a few short hours after the run completes so don't worry if you miss anything live. There's interesting runs every day during primetime so always check the sc …
Here at this website, my colleagues and I follow our beats closely, from wearable tech and laptops to influencer culture and federal policy. Last year, I asked a bunch of staff at The Verge to pretend to be trend forecasters for a lighthearted collection of what's hot and what's not. Some of the predictions really held up: many would say the US Supreme Court continues to be out, congestion pricing in New York is decidedly in despite attempts to kill it, and cats are, as ever, a bit of both.
Predicting future trends - and having a pulse on what's happening now - is part art, part science, and, if we're being honest, part wish fulfillment. He …
Spotify is adding new personalization features to Discover Weekly, the popular and influential playlist streamed by millions of users. The regularly updated playlist will now have buttons for genres like pop, R&B, and funk at the top, allowing users to tell Spotify what they want more of.
The Discover Weekly playlist is one of the more noteworthy things Spotify has introduced: the company says songs on the playlist have been streamed more than 100 billion times. The weekly mixtape — generated via Spotify algorithms — promised to introduce users to new music that they might enjoy, pulling from listener data. But more recently, there have been complaints that Discover Weekly playlists, meant for finding new music, were spitting out the same songs, and that the platform’s systems weren’t accurately classifying genres. (Spotify told Business Insider in May that it had updated genre accuracy and the Discover Weekly recommendation algorithm.) In addition to the genre options, the Discover Weekly playlist is getting a refreshed look with different cover art.
Spotify reshaped how people listen to music, prioritizing the playlist over the album or even the artist themselves: playlists became a battleground for labels and artists who wanted exposure. In the last few years, the music platform has taken personalization even further, tailoring selections to the individual user. The company has introduced features like an AI-powered “DJ,” an AI text-to-playlist builder tool, and even a fake AI podcast with fake AI hosts that discuss users’ listening habits. The ability to more closely guide the Discover Weekly offerings signals that hyper-personalization remains a priority — and perhaps that Spotify is aware of some of the user dissatisfaction.
Adobe has a new computational photography camera app for iPhones – and one of its creators, Marc Levoy, helped make the impressive computational photography features that made some of Google’s earlier Pixel cameras shine.
The new app, called Project Indigo, was released last week by Adobe Labs. It’s free and available for the iPhone 12 Pro and Pro Max, iPhone 13 Pro and Pro Max, and all iPhone 14 models and above. (Though Adobe recommends using an iPhone 15 Pro or newer.) It also doesn’t require logging into an Adobe account to use.
“Instead of capturing a single photo, Indigo captures a burst of photos and combines them together to produce a high-quality photo with lower noise and higher dynamic range,” according to the app’s description. Indigo tries to produce a natural, “SLR-like” look for photos, and it also offers a bunch of manual controls like focus, shutter speed, ISO, and white balance.
To really understand what’s going on under the hood of Project Indigo, though, I highly recommend reading a detailed blog post from Levoy, now an Adobe Fellow who joined the company in 2020 to build a “universal camera app,” and Florian Kainz, a senior scientist. The post covers things like why smartphone cameras are good, how its computational photography works, how it creates the natural look for its photos, and some details about its image processing pipeline.
It is here I must confess that I am not a camera expert by any means. But even I found the post pretty interesting and informative. The photos in the post do look great, and Adobe has an album of photos you can browse, too.
In the post, Levoy and Kainz say that Project Indigo will also be a testbed for technologies that might get added to other flagship products, like a button to remove reflections. And down the line, the team plans to build things like an Android version, a portrait mode, and even video recording.
“This is the beginning of a journey for Adobe – towards an integrated mobile camera and editing experience that takes advantage of the latest advances in computational photography and AI,” according to Levoy and Kainz. “Our hope is that Indigo will appeal to casual mobile photographers who want a natural SLR-like look for their photos, including when viewed on large screens; to advanced photographers who want manual control and the highest possible image quality; and to anyone – casual or serious – who enjoys playing with new photographic experiences.”
For the third time, President Donald Trump has extended the deadline for TikTok to spin out from its Chinese parent company or face a US ban. As White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed in a statement Tuesday, Trump signed an executive order on Thursday extending the deadline another 90 days, landing the new deadline in mid-September.
The Trump administration will spend the next 90 days “working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure,” Leavitt said.
The extension, first signed on January 20th, theoretically offers legal cover for TikTok’s US service providers who are subject to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act from the hundreds of billions in penalties they could face for keeping the app online and in US app stores. But that legal cover was already shaky given that Trump’s extensions are not codified into the law, which was passed overwhelmingly by a bipartisan vote in Congress, and upheld as constitutional by the Supreme Court.
As The Verge previously reported, ByteDance and an Oracle-led coalition had nearly hammered out a deal in April, but Trump’s tariffs abruptly blew up the tentative agreement. While trade tensions between the US and China have simmered down, there’s been no recent news about resurrecting that deal or another one. Even when a sale seemed likely, it was unclear whether China would allow ByteDance to sell the valuable algorithm that powers TikTok’s video recommendations.
“The whole thing is a sham if the algorithm doesn’t move from out of Beijing’s hands”
Several lawmakers, including those who’ve criticized a divest-or-ban law for TikTok and ByteDance, have warned that Trump’s repeated extensions are untenable and illegal. After Trump’s last extension in April, Senate Intelligence Committee Vice Chair Mark Warner (D-VA) told The Verge the move was “against the law” and said “the whole thing is a sham if the algorithm doesn’t move from out of Beijing’s hands.”
Even before the second extension, Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), and Cory Booker (D-NJ), who oppose a ban of TikTok, wrote Trump that it would be “unacceptable and unworkable for your Administration to continue ignoring the requirements in the law.” They warned, “any further extensions of the TikTok deadline will require Oracle, Apple, Google, and other companies to continue risking ruinous legal liability, a difficult decision to justify in perpetuity.”
That’s because TikTok service providers in the US can be fined for facilitating access to the app after the ban deadline, and Trump’s extensions fall outside of the mechanisms allowed for in the law. So far, however, these companies appear to be relying on assurances from the administration that they won’t be sued for keeping TikTok online, although it reportedly took a letter from the US attorney general herself to assuage Apple and Google’s concerns.
A court could evaluate whether Trump’s actions are legal, but only if somebody sues to stop the extension — and so far, nobody has. Earlier this month, though, a Google shareholder filed a lawsuit against the company for allegedly failing to share internal records about its decision to flout the law under the Justice Department’s assurances. The same shareholder had already filed suit against the DOJ for allegedly failing to share information about its decision not to enforce the law against Apple and Google.
While members of Trump’s party generally haven’t gone so far as to call his extensions illegal, a dozen House Republicans said in a statement in April that “any resolution must ensure that U.S. law is followed, and that the Chinese Communist Party does not have access to American user data or the ability to manipulate the content consumed by Americans.” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told reporters that month that Trump “ought to enforce the statute and ban TikTok. This middle way, I don’t think is viable.”
But it’s not clear what would prevent Trump from approving indefinite extensions or a deal that doesn’t meet the letter of the law. As Hawley acknowledged while speaking to reporters in April, “Congress, we don’t have an enforcement arm of our own.”
Update June 19th, 12:00 PM: Post has been updated to note Trump signed the order extending the deadline.
Disney Plus will become the new home of CoComelon outside of YouTube starting in 2027, according to Bloomberg. All eight seasons will move over from Netflix, which has hosted the absurdly popular kids show since 2020.
CoComelon, essentially a series of mind-numbingly plotless, CG-animated vignettes set to karaoke-quality nursery rhymes, is a giant in the world of programming for children, having accounted for 601 million Netflix views in 2023. According to Bloomberg, it was the second most-streamed show on the platform last year.
Despite its popularity, Bloomberg reports that CoComelon views fell by “almost 60% over the last couple of years,” and that compared to all of streaming, it went from the fifth most-watched show in 2023 to not even breaking the top 10 last year. Still, it’s probably going to be a good deal for Disney, which will reportedly pay “tens of millions” a year for it. After all, 2027 is also the year that the first CoComelon movie hits theaters.
Artist and musician Brian Eno — who also composed the iconic Windows 95 operating system startup chime — called on Microsoft today to “suspend all services that support any operations that contribute to violations of international law,” saying the company plays a role in “surveillance, violence, and destruction in Palestine.” It’s the latest high-profile instance of the tech giant being pressed on its contracts with the Israeli government.
“I gladly took on the [Windows 95] project as a creative challenge and enjoyed the interaction with my contacts at the company,” Eno wrote on Instagram. “I never would have believed that the same company could one day be implicated in the machinery of oppression and war.”
The musician — who was a member of the influential rock band Roxy Music and has also had a long, storied solo career — specifically called out Microsoft’s contracts with Israel’s Ministry of Defense. Microsoft acknowledged last week that it has contracts with the Israeli government for cloud and AI services, but claimed that an internal review conducted found “no evidence” that its tools were used to “target or harm people” in Gaza.
Microsoft has been taken to task in recent weeks over its business dealings with the Israeli government specifically. The outcry over Microsoft’s contracts relates to Israel’s ongoing bombardment of Gaza following the October 7th, 2023, Hamas attack. Human rights groups, including commissions at the United Nations, have accused Israel of war crimes and genocidal acts in its military operation that has killed thousands; as of this month, the Gaza Health Ministry reported more than 52,000 deaths, though some researchers say that number could be as high as 109,000 people.
Some of Microsoft’s fiercest critics are its own employees opposed to the company’s ties to Israel.
Earlier this week during Microsoft’s developer conference, multiple onstage events were disrupted, including CEO Satya Nadella’s keynote speech on Monday. During the event, Microsoft employee Joe Lopez interrupted Nadella, yelling, “How about you show Israeli war crimes are powered by Azure?” The following day, a protester described only as a “Palestinian tech worker” disrupted another executive’s presentation. On Wednesday, protesters disrupted a third session — and in the commotion, Microsoft inadvertently revealed internal messages regarding Walmart’s use of AI.
In April, Microsoft employee Ibtihal Aboussad disrupted a 50th-anniversary event, calling Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman “a war profiteer.” Another employee disrupted a second Microsoft event the same day. The acts of protest were organized by the No Azure for Apartheid group, which calls for Microsoft to terminate contracts with the Israeli government and endorse a permanent ceasefire, among other demands. Aboussad was fired from the company; the second protester, Vaniya Agrawal, was dismissed early after putting in her resignation.
Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Eno, a longtime critic of the Israeli government who’s backed pro-Palestine efforts, said on Instagram he would use his original earnings from the Windows 95 startup chime to help “the victims of the attacks on Gaza.”
The music-sharing platform SoundCloud quietly updated its terms of use in February last year, adding language that lets it train AI models on its users’ content, as TechCrunch reported. And while the company says it hasn’t used user-created content for model training, it doesn’t rule out the possibility that it will in the future.
Marni Greenberg, SVP and head of communications at SoundCloud, provided the following in a statement emailed to The Verge.
SoundCloud has never used artist content to train AI models, nor do we develop AI tools or allow third parties to scrape or use SoundCloud content from our platform for AI training purposes. In fact, we implemented technical safeguards, including a “no AI” tag on our site to explicitly prohibit unauthorized use.
Greenberg went on to say that SoundCloud’s terms of service update “was intended to clarify how content may interact with AI technologies within SoundCloud’s own platform.” She said the company uses AI for things like personalized recommendations and fraud detection, and suggests its plans for future uses of AI on its platform fall along similar lines.
When we asked about letting users opt out of having their music used for generative AI development, here’s what Greenberg had to say:
The TOS explicitly prohibits the use of licensed content, such as music from major labels, for training any AI models, including generative AI. For other types of content uploaded to SoundCloud, the TOS allows for the possibility of AI-related use.
Importantly, no such use has taken place to date, and SoundCloud will introduce robust internal permissioning controls to govern any potential future use. Should we ever consider using user content to train generative AI models, we would introduce clear opt-out mechanisms in advance—at a minimum—and remain committed to transparency with our creator community.
SoundCloud seems to claim the right to train on people's uploaded music in their terms. I think they have major questions to answer over this.
I checked the wayback machine – it seems to have been added to their terms on 12th Feb 2024. I'm a SoundCloud user and I can't see any… pic.twitter.com/NIk7TP7K3C
Hopefully SoundCloud will go to greater lengths to tell users about those opt-out mechanisms than it appears to have done for last year’s AI-related terms of use update. Tech ethicist Ed Newton-Rex, who spotted the changes reported by TechCrunch, posted that they “can’t see any emails” alerting them that the terms had been altered. I’ve contributed to SoundCloud, too, and also didn’t find any emails about the changes when I checked. SoundCloud’s terms say it will provide “prominent notice” about significant alterations to its terms, but doesn’t guarantee you’ll see that in an email.
Here’s SoundCloud’s original full statement, as provided to to The Verge by Greenberg:
SoundCloud has always been and will remain artist-first. Our focus is on empowering artists with control, clarity, and meaningful opportunities to grow. We believe AI, when developed responsibly, can expand creative potential—especially when guided by principles of consent, attribution, and fair compensation.
SoundCloud has never used artist content to train AI models, nor do we develop AI tools or allow third parties to scrape or use SoundCloud content from our platform for AI training purposes. In fact, we implemented technical safeguards, including a “no AI” tag on our site to explicitly prohibit unauthorized use.
The February 2024 update to our Terms of Service was intended to clarify how content may interact with AI technologies within SoundCloud’s own platform. Use cases include personalized recommendations, content organization, fraud detection, and improvements to content identification with the help of AI Technologies.
Any future application of AI at SoundCloud will be designed to support human artists, enhancing the tools, capabilities, reach and opportunities available to them on our platform. Examples include improving music recommendations, generating playlists, organizing content, and detecting fraudulent activity. These efforts are aligned with existing licensing agreements and ethical standards. Tools like Musiio are strictly used to power artist discovery and content organization, not to train generative AI models.
We understand the concerns raised and remain committed to open dialogue. Artists will continue to have control over their work, and we’ll keep our community informed every step of the way as we explore innovation and apply AI technologies responsibly, especially as legal and commercial frameworks continue to evolve.
Pinterest is using AI to try and help you find the fashion accessories you’re looking for, even if you can’t describe them in your own words. The company is using a “Visual Language Model” to generate descriptive words of styles and the overall “vibes” of image Pins on its site, and will let you click into them to discover and refine your personal taste.
The new tool breaks down and decodes images to make it easier to search for specific details in outfits across the site, in turn making it easier for you to shop. So, if you like a skirt someone is wearing in a Pin on the site, you can view the image to see a description of the color palette, fit, aesthetic, and more. You can then refine the style by asking to change the colors and fabric — or even the occasion — so you can find a version that fits in elsewhere, like in a work environment.
The new visual search features are launching for women’s fashion content first and are available starting today in the US, Canada, and the UK. Pinterest plans to launch the feature to other categories and countries “over time.”
Literary journals might have a stuffy reputation. But since its conception in 1998 by author Dave Eggers, McSweeney's Quarterly has been anything but, opting instead to be an endlessly mutating delivery system for writing and art. It has been a hardcover book, a paperback, a newspaper. Once it was a bundle of mail; another time, a deck of playing cards. Imagination and capriciousness have defined McSweeney's for nearly three decades.
The latest issue, edited by Rita Bullwinkel and guest-edited by two celebrated writers - cartoonist Thi Bui and novelist Vu Tran - attempts to capture the messy and disparate nature of the Vietnamese diaspora with a package that is, by design, messy and disparate. The 78th issue of McSweeney's, "The Make-Believers,"arrives in a cigar box with painted illustrations by Bui containing several unique booklets of stories, essays, and illustrations that try to pin down the elusive trappings of Vietnamese identity.
Curious about the tremendous effort of putting together such a unique package, The Verge spoke with Bui, Tran, and art director Sunra Thompson about how "The Make-Believers" came together. It turned out that although it might sound like this is …
Kickstarter is launching a new “Tariff Manager” tool that will allow creators to apply a surcharge to projects after their campaign has ended, as spotted earlier by 404 Media. The tool is supposed to help creators deal with “rising costs” and import fees as a result of President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs.
If a creator’s project is affected by tariffs, they can submit a request through Kickstarter and then apply per-item surcharges to backers with US shipping addresses. Kickstarter will include the extra fee in a separate line on a backer’s payment page. The platform says the tool is “weeks away” from rolling out.
“We understand that asking backers to pay an additional fee — especially after a campaign has ended — can be sensitive,” Kickstarter writes. Backers who decide not to pay the fee will have to reach out to creators directly to come up with a solution, such as adjusting their pledge or getting a refund, according to Kickstarter.
Larger campaigns have addressed the tariffs head-on, like the one for Peak Design’s Roller Pro Carry-On, which says it has “made the decision to not add any additional tariff charges to your pledges.” But this campaign has received more than $13 million in pledges, and smaller projects might not be able to cover import fees with pledges alone. Several Kickstarter board game projects, such as ones led by Curt Covert and Gap Closer Games, have already warned backers that tariffs could result in delays or higher prices, as reported by Fast Company.
Instagram Edits, Meta’s newly released video creation app, had a bigger debut than its direct competitor, ByteDance’s CapCut, once did. The new app, which today helps users craft videos for Instagram reels, stories, and other social posts, was downloaded an estimated 702,900 times on iOS devices during its first two days on the market. That’s […]
In December 2024, actor and fashion icon Julia Fox stepped out on the street with a flip-phone buckle strapped across her chest, wires on her nails, and an old Discman-turned-compact mirror hanging from her wrist.
Fox didnât start the retro-tech fashion trend. Celebrities and internet fashionistas were already wearing iPod Shuffle Minis as hair clips and wired headphones as necklaces. But Fox did make waves online, showing off the Y2K-inspired collaboration from French Canadian artist Gab Bois and refurbished electronics marketplace Back Market â and plugging the Right to Repair movement â on her Instagram.
Much of this fashion channels nostalgia over the nascent days of the digital age â both aesthetically and philosophically. Bois previously designed fine jewelry using sim cards, a camcorder clutch, and a Nintendo DS Lite makeup palette.
â[Tech] was clunkier, slower, but also more tactile and charming,â Bois says. âThere was this sense of optimism, too. Everything felt like a glimpse into the future.â
Younger millennials and Gen Z latching on â largely online â seem to be yearning for those simpler times. Digicams from mid-aughts have already made a …
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