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Image: Bethesda Softworks

The members of ZeniMax Workers United-CWA, one of the largest video game unions in the United States, have gone on strike. The action involves workers in ZeniMax offices in Texas and Maryland, who do quality assurance work for games including Fallout and Elder Scrolls. Workers are striking over claims that ZeniMax leadership has failed to address employee issues regarding remote work and outsourcing.
“Today, we are on strike,” ZeniMax Workers United posted on X. “We are not afraid to do what’s necessary to make sure that Microsoft meets us at the bargaining table over key issues like remote work options and outsourcing.”

Today, we are on strike. We are not afraid to do what’s necessary to make sure that Microsoft meets us at the bargaining table over key issues like remote work options and outsourcing.— ZeniMax Workers United – CWA (@ZeniMaxWorkers) November 13, 2024

ZeniMax Workers United is made up of approximately 300 quality assurance testers. When the union was formally recognized in January 2023, it became parent company Microsoft’s first union and, at the time, was the largest video game union in the United States. Just a few months later in March, that title was eclipsed by the 600 members of Activision Quality Assurance United, another union under Microsoft’s corporate umbrella.
Remote work policies seem to be a major sticking point for Microsoft’s video game unions. In the immediate outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, many video game companies instituted flexible work-from-home policies that they’ve recently begun rolling back. In October of this year, Activision Quality Assurance United held a rally outside their offices in Texas, California, and Minnesota to protest Microsoft’s restrictive return-to-office policy that, according to workers, failed to accommodate workers with medical issues or doctor recommendations. The Communications Workers of America (CWA), the organizing committee that supports ZeniMax Workers United along with multiple video game unions in the US, has also filed an unfair labor complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over contracting out work without notifying the union.
There have been several video game-related strikes in the US in recent year. In 2021, workers at Raven Software — a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard before its eventual acquisition by Microsoft — participated in a walkout that turned into a five-week strike after several employee contracts were not renewed. After that strike, workers at Raven Software organized and won one of the first video game unions at a AAA game publisher in the country.
In July of this year, voice actors and motion performers covered under SAG-AFTRA’s interactive media agreement went on strike to protest worker protections regarding AI. While SAG-AFTRA and the video game companies that make up the interactive media agreement bargaining committee have returned to the negotiation table, the strike continues.
ZeniMax Workers United strike will not last as long as SAG-AFTRA’s or Raven Software’s, with workers striking today until 6PM ET. In a statement to The Verge, Microsoft spokesperson Becca Dougherty wrote, “We respect our employees’ rights to express their point of view as they have done today. We will continue to listen and address their concerns at the bargaining table.”

Image: Bethesda Softworks

The members of ZeniMax Workers United-CWA, one of the largest video game unions in the United States, have gone on strike. The action involves workers in ZeniMax offices in Texas and Maryland, who do quality assurance work for games including Fallout and Elder Scrolls. Workers are striking over claims that ZeniMax leadership has failed to address employee issues regarding remote work and outsourcing.

“Today, we are on strike,” ZeniMax Workers United posted on X. “We are not afraid to do what’s necessary to make sure that Microsoft meets us at the bargaining table over key issues like remote work options and outsourcing.”

ZeniMax Workers United is made up of approximately 300 quality assurance testers. When the union was formally recognized in January 2023, it became parent company Microsoft’s first union and, at the time, was the largest video game union in the United States. Just a few months later in March, that title was eclipsed by the 600 members of Activision Quality Assurance United, another union under Microsoft’s corporate umbrella.

Remote work policies seem to be a major sticking point for Microsoft’s video game unions. In the immediate outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, many video game companies instituted flexible work-from-home policies that they’ve recently begun rolling back. In October of this year, Activision Quality Assurance United held a rally outside their offices in Texas, California, and Minnesota to protest Microsoft’s restrictive return-to-office policy that, according to workers, failed to accommodate workers with medical issues or doctor recommendations. The Communications Workers of America (CWA), the organizing committee that supports ZeniMax Workers United along with multiple video game unions in the US, has also filed an unfair labor complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over contracting out work without notifying the union.

There have been several video game-related strikes in the US in recent year. In 2021, workers at Raven Software — a subsidiary of Activision Blizzard before its eventual acquisition by Microsoft — participated in a walkout that turned into a five-week strike after several employee contracts were not renewed. After that strike, workers at Raven Software organized and won one of the first video game unions at a AAA game publisher in the country.

In July of this year, voice actors and motion performers covered under SAG-AFTRA’s interactive media agreement went on strike to protest worker protections regarding AI. While SAG-AFTRA and the video game companies that make up the interactive media agreement bargaining committee have returned to the negotiation table, the strike continues.

ZeniMax Workers United strike will not last as long as SAG-AFTRA’s or Raven Software’s, with workers striking today until 6PM ET. In a statement to The Verge, Microsoft spokesperson Becca Dougherty wrote, “We respect our employees’ rights to express their point of view as they have done today. We will continue to listen and address their concerns at the bargaining table.”

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Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images

The password manager NordPass has once again released its annual list of the world’s most popular passwords — and the lack of creativity is just a little disheartening. For the second year in a row, “123456” has been crowned the most common password.
The same numbers topped the chart five out of the six times NordPass has compiled its lists, only to be usurped by the famed “password” in 2022. But once you get past all the QWERTYs, ABCs, and 123s, we get a little insight into what humanity thinks about when creating the line of text that protects their most personal information.

Image: NordPass

There are those who choose “iloveyou” and those who opt for “fuckyou.” Others have distinct interests, like “pokemon,” “naruto,” “samsung,” and “minecraft.” Many more are just names, like “michelle” or “ashley,” but at least some people make a half-assed attempt at creating a secure “P@ssw0rd” (which still takes less than one second to crack, by the way).
I had a bit of fun looking through the small differences in passwords across different countries, too. The UK’s list, for example, has “liverpool” near the top, while Australia’s has “lizottes” (a restaurant and live music venue that is now apparently called Flamingos Live). Other countries, like Finland and Hungary, have “salasana” and “jelszo” toward the top of their lists — both translate to “password.”
To create its list, NordPass said it used a 2.5TB database of “publicly available sources,” some of which were found on the dark web. Many of these passwords take milliseconds for a hacker to figure out, so if your password is on this list, you should probably change it to something a little more creative than “secret.” Or maybe even try passkeys!
Here are the top 10 most common passwords:

123456
123456789
12345678
password
qwerty123
qwerty1
111111
12345
secret
123123

Cath Virginia / The Verge | Photo from Getty Images

The password manager NordPass has once again released its annual list of the world’s most popular passwords — and the lack of creativity is just a little disheartening. For the second year in a row, “123456” has been crowned the most common password.

The same numbers topped the chart five out of the six times NordPass has compiled its lists, only to be usurped by the famed “password” in 2022. But once you get past all the QWERTYs, ABCs, and 123s, we get a little insight into what humanity thinks about when creating the line of text that protects their most personal information.

Image: NordPass

There are those who choose “iloveyou” and those who opt for “fuckyou.” Others have distinct interests, like “pokemon,” “naruto,” “samsung,” and “minecraft.” Many more are just names, like “michelle” or “ashley,” but at least some people make a half-assed attempt at creating a secure “P@ssw0rd” (which still takes less than one second to crack, by the way).

I had a bit of fun looking through the small differences in passwords across different countries, too. The UK’s list, for example, has “liverpool” near the top, while Australia’s has “lizottes” (a restaurant and live music venue that is now apparently called Flamingos Live). Other countries, like Finland and Hungary, have “salasana” and “jelszo” toward the top of their lists — both translate to “password.”

To create its list, NordPass said it used a 2.5TB database of “publicly available sources,” some of which were found on the dark web. Many of these passwords take milliseconds for a hacker to figure out, so if your password is on this list, you should probably change it to something a little more creative than “secret.” Or maybe even try passkeys!

Here are the top 10 most common passwords:

123456
123456789
12345678
password
qwerty123
qwerty1
111111
12345
secret
123123

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Sony designed its flagship headset to pair perfectly with a PlayStation household. | Image: Sony

It’s inordinately rare to find the PlayStation Pulse Elite on sale, but Black Friday season is always a good opportunity for retailers to break the rules. Sony’s flagship wireless headset is discounted to $129.99 ($20 off) at Walmart right now as part of its early Black Friday sale. Although the discount doesn’t appear massive, that still represents the lowest price we’ve seen so far.

The Pulse Elite launched in late 2023 alongside a slate of other mid-cycle PlayStation 5 accessories, including the $199.99 Pulse Explore earbuds and the once-elusive PlayStation Portal handheld companion.

While many third-party wireless headsets support 3D Audio (PlayStation’s take on simulated spatial audio), Pulse Elite supports what Sony considers the ideal acoustics and tuning to get the most from your games. Sony also uses planar magnetic drivers, which are usually reserved for studio-grade monitors. They’re said to offer a more accurate soundstage with less distortion compared to the dynamic neodymium drivers used in most consumer-oriented headphones and headsets.
Besides its decidedly PlayStation, almost alien design, the headset notably supports Sony’s low latency lossless wireless audio codec. That feature requires the included PlayStation Link dongle, which works with the PS5, PlayStation Portal, Windows PCs, and Macs. It also has Bluetooth, so you can use it with your mobile devices and simultaneously hear from both sources. The retractable voice-isolating boom microphone enables game chat and voice calling in either scenario.
Whether you’re already a PS5 owner or looking to take your first jump into the deep end of the PlayStation pool with the newly released PS5 Pro, it may be worth a shot if you don’t already have a viable headset.

Sony designed its flagship headset to pair perfectly with a PlayStation household. | Image: Sony

It’s inordinately rare to find the PlayStation Pulse Elite on sale, but Black Friday season is always a good opportunity for retailers to break the rules. Sony’s flagship wireless headset is discounted to $129.99 ($20 off) at Walmart right now as part of its early Black Friday sale. Although the discount doesn’t appear massive, that still represents the lowest price we’ve seen so far.

The Pulse Elite launched in late 2023 alongside a slate of other mid-cycle PlayStation 5 accessories, including the $199.99 Pulse Explore earbuds and the once-elusive PlayStation Portal handheld companion.

While many third-party wireless headsets support 3D Audio (PlayStation’s take on simulated spatial audio), Pulse Elite supports what Sony considers the ideal acoustics and tuning to get the most from your games. Sony also uses planar magnetic drivers, which are usually reserved for studio-grade monitors. They’re said to offer a more accurate soundstage with less distortion compared to the dynamic neodymium drivers used in most consumer-oriented headphones and headsets.

Besides its decidedly PlayStation, almost alien design, the headset notably supports Sony’s low latency lossless wireless audio codec. That feature requires the included PlayStation Link dongle, which works with the PS5, PlayStation Portal, Windows PCs, and Macs. It also has Bluetooth, so you can use it with your mobile devices and simultaneously hear from both sources. The retractable voice-isolating boom microphone enables game chat and voice calling in either scenario.

Whether you’re already a PS5 owner or looking to take your first jump into the deep end of the PlayStation pool with the newly released PS5 Pro, it may be worth a shot if you don’t already have a viable headset.

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Image: Apple

The first season of Silo ended on a truly great cliffhanger. The Apple TV Plus series, an adaptation of Hugh Howey’s trilogy of postapocalyptic novels, tells the story of the remnants of humanity, who live deep underground in silos designed to protect them from a poisoned planet. Season 1 had the feeling of a small-town mystery, as mechanic-turned-sheriff Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) stumbled upon a secret that completely upended her worldview. Her quest to uncover that mystery ultimately led her outside of the silo’s protective walls, which is right where the season ended. Silo’s second season picks up in the aftermath and ramps things up by both raising the stakes and raising a big heap of new mysteries to obsess over.
This piece contains spoilers, including details of Silo’s season 1 finale.
First, a little reminder about how we got here. The show is set at some point in the future, and the silo is home to a carefully controlled population of 10,000 residents, who follow a strict set of rules ostensibly designed to keep them safe from the grim landscape outside. That landscape is ever-present on huge displays inside the silo, and certain residents are punished by being forced to go outside, while everyone else watches as they walk out into the scorched world and, a few moments later, inevitably collapse.

But after reluctantly being thrust into the role of sheriff, Juliette learned that the outside might not be so dangerous after all. A complex series of events leads to Juliette herself leaving. But she doesn’t collapse — and her steps over the hill into a vast expanse set the silo aflame.
Season 2 picks up right in the moment when she takes those steps, and it creates two parallel threads. On one side, there’s Juliette, who learns that her home is just one of many silos. Eventually, she makes her way to a seemingly abandoned one not far from her own. The path there is littered with dead bodies; she steps over corpses and crunches a few skulls on the journey. The new silo is seemingly empty, and much of it is flooded, though somehow the power is still working. After investigating and meeting the sole survivor (played by Steve Zahn, a wonderful new addition to the cast), she quickly learns that this silo died because of a violent uprising. And what started it? Someone going outside and surviving. So despite all of the initial effort to get to this new place, she sets to work heading right back.

Image: Apple

It shouldn’t be too surprising, then, that things aren’t going well at home. Tensions are rising as the mayor Bernard (Tim Robbins) uses every trick at his disposal in an attempt to quell a rebellion from the lower levels. Meanwhile, Juliette’s friends — spurred on by her bold steps outside — become rightfully convinced that they’re being lied to about the reality of their world. There are violent clashes on the massive spiral stairs that connect all of the silo’s levels and all kinds of clandestine meetings between different factions. The tight confines of the silo make many of these moments feel claustrophobic and intense.
What becomes clear pretty quickly is that the silos aren’t just arks meant to save humanity from a postapocalyptic wasteland. They’re also exceedingly complex psychological experiments. And those two things go hand in hand; every strange or unexpected thing that happens in the silo, it seems, is actually part of an intricate, manipulative plan to keep the population in check and avoid a deadly disaster.
That became obvious toward the end of the first season, and the complexity ramps up here. There are multiple layers of deceit and mystery, which are compounded by the fact that nobody in the silo actually knows the full picture. They’re just doing the best they can with the information they have. Even seemingly small revelations — like the quality of a certain kind of tape — can have major implications.
For season 2’s first half (I’ve watched five of the 10 episodes so far), this makes for a compelling watch that steadily expands on what made Silo so great initially. It simply expands the scale. And as the mysteries shift and grow, so, too, does the tension.
Silo’s second season starts streaming on Apple TV Plus on November 15th.

Image: Apple

The first season of Silo ended on a truly great cliffhanger. The Apple TV Plus series, an adaptation of Hugh Howey’s trilogy of postapocalyptic novels, tells the story of the remnants of humanity, who live deep underground in silos designed to protect them from a poisoned planet. Season 1 had the feeling of a small-town mystery, as mechanic-turned-sheriff Juliette (Rebecca Ferguson) stumbled upon a secret that completely upended her worldview. Her quest to uncover that mystery ultimately led her outside of the silo’s protective walls, which is right where the season ended. Silo’s second season picks up in the aftermath and ramps things up by both raising the stakes and raising a big heap of new mysteries to obsess over.

This piece contains spoilers, including details of Silo’s season 1 finale.

First, a little reminder about how we got here. The show is set at some point in the future, and the silo is home to a carefully controlled population of 10,000 residents, who follow a strict set of rules ostensibly designed to keep them safe from the grim landscape outside. That landscape is ever-present on huge displays inside the silo, and certain residents are punished by being forced to go outside, while everyone else watches as they walk out into the scorched world and, a few moments later, inevitably collapse.

But after reluctantly being thrust into the role of sheriff, Juliette learned that the outside might not be so dangerous after all. A complex series of events leads to Juliette herself leaving. But she doesn’t collapse — and her steps over the hill into a vast expanse set the silo aflame.

Season 2 picks up right in the moment when she takes those steps, and it creates two parallel threads. On one side, there’s Juliette, who learns that her home is just one of many silos. Eventually, she makes her way to a seemingly abandoned one not far from her own. The path there is littered with dead bodies; she steps over corpses and crunches a few skulls on the journey. The new silo is seemingly empty, and much of it is flooded, though somehow the power is still working. After investigating and meeting the sole survivor (played by Steve Zahn, a wonderful new addition to the cast), she quickly learns that this silo died because of a violent uprising. And what started it? Someone going outside and surviving. So despite all of the initial effort to get to this new place, she sets to work heading right back.

It shouldn’t be too surprising, then, that things aren’t going well at home. Tensions are rising as the mayor Bernard (Tim Robbins) uses every trick at his disposal in an attempt to quell a rebellion from the lower levels. Meanwhile, Juliette’s friends — spurred on by her bold steps outside — become rightfully convinced that they’re being lied to about the reality of their world. There are violent clashes on the massive spiral stairs that connect all of the silo’s levels and all kinds of clandestine meetings between different factions. The tight confines of the silo make many of these moments feel claustrophobic and intense.

What becomes clear pretty quickly is that the silos aren’t just arks meant to save humanity from a postapocalyptic wasteland. They’re also exceedingly complex psychological experiments. And those two things go hand in hand; every strange or unexpected thing that happens in the silo, it seems, is actually part of an intricate, manipulative plan to keep the population in check and avoid a deadly disaster.

That became obvious toward the end of the first season, and the complexity ramps up here. There are multiple layers of deceit and mystery, which are compounded by the fact that nobody in the silo actually knows the full picture. They’re just doing the best they can with the information they have. Even seemingly small revelations — like the quality of a certain kind of tape — can have major implications.

For season 2’s first half (I’ve watched five of the 10 episodes so far), this makes for a compelling watch that steadily expands on what made Silo so great initially. It simply expands the scale. And as the mysteries shift and grow, so, too, does the tension.

Silo’s second season starts streaming on Apple TV Plus on November 15th.

Read More 

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

The Tesla Cybertruck was recalled for the sixth time this year — and the fix won’t involve an easy software update.
Tesla voluntarily issued a recall for approximately 2,431 Cybertrucks manufactured between November 6, 2023 and July 30, 2024. The issue is related to something called the metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors, or MOSFET, in which the inverter has the potential to stop creating torque, resulting in a loss of propulsion for the truck.
A loss of propulsion
There isn’t any warning prior to the loss of propulsion, but a visual alert will appear on the center touchscreen instructing the driver to pull the truck over to the side of the road. Tesla is sending notices out to affected Cybertruck owners and plans to start replacing the drive inverters with ones with functioning MOSFET after December 9th, according to the recall notice. Tesla said it’s aware of five warranty claims related to the issue, but no collisions or injuries.
Since its release late last year, the Cybertruck has become an instantly iconic vehicle, a symbol of the broader culture war, a surprisingly sales winner for Tesla (though that may not last long), and an ongoing headache thanks to its many defects.
The truck has been recalled for a slow-to-appear rear camera display, faulty windshield wipers, loose trim, jammed accelerator pedal, and undersized font on its warning lights.
More broadly, Tesla is under numerous investigations, most of which center on its driver assist technologies, Autopilot and Full Self-Driving. The most recent investigation focuses on Tesla vehicles using FSD crashing because of reduced visibility.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

The Tesla Cybertruck was recalled for the sixth time this year — and the fix won’t involve an easy software update.

Tesla voluntarily issued a recall for approximately 2,431 Cybertrucks manufactured between November 6, 2023 and July 30, 2024. The issue is related to something called the metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors, or MOSFET, in which the inverter has the potential to stop creating torque, resulting in a loss of propulsion for the truck.

There isn’t any warning prior to the loss of propulsion, but a visual alert will appear on the center touchscreen instructing the driver to pull the truck over to the side of the road. Tesla is sending notices out to affected Cybertruck owners and plans to start replacing the drive inverters with ones with functioning MOSFET after December 9th, according to the recall notice. Tesla said it’s aware of five warranty claims related to the issue, but no collisions or injuries.

Since its release late last year, the Cybertruck has become an instantly iconic vehicle, a symbol of the broader culture war, a surprisingly sales winner for Tesla (though that may not last long), and an ongoing headache thanks to its many defects.

The truck has been recalled for a slow-to-appear rear camera display, faulty windshield wipers, loose trim, jammed accelerator pedal, and undersized font on its warning lights.

More broadly, Tesla is under numerous investigations, most of which center on its driver assist technologies, Autopilot and Full Self-Driving. The most recent investigation focuses on Tesla vehicles using FSD crashing because of reduced visibility.

Read More 

Image: Apple

Apple Arcade is getting a dose of Final Fantasy. Apple just announced the next batch of games coming to its subscription service, and Square Enix’s long-running RPG series is the highlight. First up is the 3D remake of Final Fantasy IV, which will be launching on December 9th, alongside its direct sequel The After Years. Then, the original Final Fantasy and Trials of Mana (another Square Enix RPG) will hit the service on January 9th.
Those are the most notable offerings, but all told Apple revealed 15 titles coming to Arcade in the coming weeks. Other highlights include Skate City: New York (January 9th), Pac-Man 256 (December 5th), and a pair of Apple Vision Pro games in Little Cities: Diorama (December 5th) and Gears & Goo (January 9th).
With the notable exception of the time-sucking Balatro, it’s been a relatively quiet period of late for Apple Arcade releases, which makes the addition of Final Fantasy very welcome. The games are also launching just as Arcade’s current big RPG — the adorable Fantasian from Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi — is expanding to consoles and PC on December 5th.

Image: Apple

Apple Arcade is getting a dose of Final Fantasy. Apple just announced the next batch of games coming to its subscription service, and Square Enix’s long-running RPG series is the highlight. First up is the 3D remake of Final Fantasy IV, which will be launching on December 9th, alongside its direct sequel The After Years. Then, the original Final Fantasy and Trials of Mana (another Square Enix RPG) will hit the service on January 9th.

Those are the most notable offerings, but all told Apple revealed 15 titles coming to Arcade in the coming weeks. Other highlights include Skate City: New York (January 9th), Pac-Man 256 (December 5th), and a pair of Apple Vision Pro games in Little Cities: Diorama (December 5th) and Gears & Goo (January 9th).

With the notable exception of the time-sucking Balatro, it’s been a relatively quiet period of late for Apple Arcade releases, which makes the addition of Final Fantasy very welcome. The games are also launching just as Arcade’s current big RPG — the adorable Fantasian from Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi — is expanding to consoles and PC on December 5th.

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Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In the last couple of months, some people have started watching YouTube on their phones to find something a little different: an endless, TikTok-like feed of videos underneath. These weren’t Shorts, but full-length videos, the ones YouTube tends to refer to as “longform.” If you swiped up, instead of returning you to the homepage, another video would start playing. Swipe again: another video.
So far, this is just a small test of a possible feature, the kind YouTube runs all the time. This one has been live since August and is one of several ongoing tests of new ways for users to find content on YouTube. “If you’re a viewer in the experiment,” a forum post describing the test says, “these new discovery experiences could include a mix of video formats including long-form videos where you’d usually see Shorts (example: the Shorts Feed) or new feeds of long-form videos.” When I asked Google about the test, the company referred me to that forum post. “We’re running an experiment with a small group of Android users that allow them to swipe up to discover more videos when watching in either portrait or fullscreen landscape mode,” YouTube spokesperson Allison Toh said in a statement.

The YouTube product team is fucking the gestures in the Android app one after another. Who the fuck wants to scroll on a long form video? It was more useful to minimize/maximize videos.As if fucking the in-app PiP wasn’t satisfying enough to whoever is getting off this. pic.twitter.com/1jY0XFbiMW— Tushar Mehta (@thetymonbay) November 11, 2024

Most user tests don’t go anywhere, and I would bet this one doesn’t either. But the fact that it exists at all says a lot about where the platform might be headed. YouTube is trying hard to juice discovery, to make it easier for people to find new and interesting stuff to watch — and to help new creators grow their audiences on a crowded platform — which already has led to new features like Hype and TV-centric things like seasons. But it’s possible that none of those features would fundamentally change YouTube in the way that endless scrolling would change YouTube.
Think about the difference when you open YouTube versus when you open TikTok. On YouTube, you see a screen full of titles and thumbnails. Some of them are likely from channels you subscribe to; others are things YouTube thinks you might like or videos you started but haven’t finished. Your job is to pick one and press play. On TikTok, though, something is already playing. If you like it, do nothing. If you don’t, swipe up and something else starts.
The magic of the TikTok approach — the reason everyone is so desperately trying to copy it — is that it is almost perfectly efficient. The overarching theory of TikTok is that showing you anything is better than showing you nothing, and because the videos are so short and scrolling is so easy, the penalty for TikTok showing you something you don’t like is quite low. You vote with your scrolls, and the algorithm learns.
The overarching theory of TikTok is that showing you anything is better than showing you nothing
YouTube is comparatively a mess. Creators have to try and grow their subscriber counts, which is both an important community-building tool and a powerful message to the YouTube algorithm that people like what you’re making. But most people don’t find videos by going to channels or even by opening up the Subscriptions section of the app. That’s all increasingly buried. Now, people mostly find videos on the homepage, in the recommendations sidebar, and in search results.
That’s why, for years, creators have talked about how important thumbnails are. Jimmy Donaldson, MrBeast himself, the most popular name on YouTube and the person you’d think would least need to game the algorithms, once called his obsession with thumbnails “an addiction” and said his team makes hundreds of options for each video. (He also ran a test and discovered that closing your mouth in thumbnails made more people click on them — and suddenly closed-mouth thumbnails were everywhere.) Cleo Abram recently described working with multiple thumbnail designers, making slide decks of her favorite thumbs, and having to develop the “confidence” to not oversell with a thumbnail and just let the video do the work. There’s a whole genre of content and a whole business created around making more clickable thumbnails, and many creators say they plan their thumbnail before they plan their video.
You can see why it would be compelling for YouTube to get rid of all that. It’s the same line of thinking that has led the company to use generative AI to help creators make backgrounds, respond to comments, and even come up with video ideas. What if, YouTube is asking, creators didn’t have to obsess over all the stuff around their videos and could just focus on making great videos? Everybody wins!
All those changes have one thing in common: they take control away from creators and hand it to The Algorithm
But all those changes, and especially this latest endless scrolling test, have one thing in common: they take control away from creators and hand it to The Algorithm. YouTube creators and viewers already have to play lots of algorithm games, of course, but the current state of YouTube at least gives you moves. You can write your own titles and develop a unique thumbnail style. Managing YouTube is a lot of work, yes, but it also gives you lots of chances to put both your content and your channel in front of the audience. And if they watch one video, you have lots of ways to get them to watch more. An endless feed removes all of that in favor of whatever’s next in the scroll.
Inside each new generative AI feature and automatically playing video is the tacit assumption that, actually, what’s best for everyone is just to do whatever YouTube wants. That assumption has been baked into TikTok for years, which is why everyone made dance challenges and then pivoted to hawking stuff from the TikTok Shop. YouTube has always been bigger, more varied, more fun. This one tweak could break that for good.
Already, you hear creators talk about struggling to balance making videos they want to make — that their audience wants — and videos they know will please the algorithm and thus get more views. In an endlessly scrolling YouTube, there’s no balance. It’s just pleasing the algorithm. And as we’ve seen plenty of times over the years, whether it’s political radicalization and conspiracy theories or just platform-dominating genres like prank videos and Depp / Heard trial coverage, the algorithm’s job is not to incentivize great videos. It’s just to get you to watch.
Maybe that’s where YouTube is inevitably headed. Maybe it’s already there, as viewers increasingly rely less on following creators and channels and more on watching whatever shows up on the homepage. But it would be a shame to see YouTube, still the most creator-friendly platform and the place where many creators feel they can actually build a community and a business, deprecate the rest of the platform in favor of an autoplaying feed. At that point, it would just be TikTok with longer videos — though, in a world of endless scrolling, I bet they’d get shorter and punchier and have more music. And probably try to sell you things. The TikTok-ification of YouTube would be complete, and that would be a huge bummer.

Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge

In the last couple of months, some people have started watching YouTube on their phones to find something a little different: an endless, TikTok-like feed of videos underneath. These weren’t Shorts, but full-length videos, the ones YouTube tends to refer to as “longform.” If you swiped up, instead of returning you to the homepage, another video would start playing. Swipe again: another video.

So far, this is just a small test of a possible feature, the kind YouTube runs all the time. This one has been live since August and is one of several ongoing tests of new ways for users to find content on YouTube. “If you’re a viewer in the experiment,” a forum post describing the test says, “these new discovery experiences could include a mix of video formats including long-form videos where you’d usually see Shorts (example: the Shorts Feed) or new feeds of long-form videos.” When I asked Google about the test, the company referred me to that forum post. “We’re running an experiment with a small group of Android users that allow them to swipe up to discover more videos when watching in either portrait or fullscreen landscape mode,” YouTube spokesperson Allison Toh said in a statement.

Most user tests don’t go anywhere, and I would bet this one doesn’t either. But the fact that it exists at all says a lot about where the platform might be headed. YouTube is trying hard to juice discovery, to make it easier for people to find new and interesting stuff to watch — and to help new creators grow their audiences on a crowded platform — which already has led to new features like Hype and TV-centric things like seasons. But it’s possible that none of those features would fundamentally change YouTube in the way that endless scrolling would change YouTube.

Think about the difference when you open YouTube versus when you open TikTok. On YouTube, you see a screen full of titles and thumbnails. Some of them are likely from channels you subscribe to; others are things YouTube thinks you might like or videos you started but haven’t finished. Your job is to pick one and press play. On TikTok, though, something is already playing. If you like it, do nothing. If you don’t, swipe up and something else starts.

The magic of the TikTok approach — the reason everyone is so desperately trying to copy it — is that it is almost perfectly efficient. The overarching theory of TikTok is that showing you anything is better than showing you nothing, and because the videos are so short and scrolling is so easy, the penalty for TikTok showing you something you don’t like is quite low. You vote with your scrolls, and the algorithm learns.

YouTube is comparatively a mess. Creators have to try and grow their subscriber counts, which is both an important community-building tool and a powerful message to the YouTube algorithm that people like what you’re making. But most people don’t find videos by going to channels or even by opening up the Subscriptions section of the app. That’s all increasingly buried. Now, people mostly find videos on the homepage, in the recommendations sidebar, and in search results.

That’s why, for years, creators have talked about how important thumbnails are. Jimmy Donaldson, MrBeast himself, the most popular name on YouTube and the person you’d think would least need to game the algorithms, once called his obsession with thumbnails “an addiction” and said his team makes hundreds of options for each video. (He also ran a test and discovered that closing your mouth in thumbnails made more people click on them — and suddenly closed-mouth thumbnails were everywhere.) Cleo Abram recently described working with multiple thumbnail designers, making slide decks of her favorite thumbs, and having to develop the “confidence” to not oversell with a thumbnail and just let the video do the work. There’s a whole genre of content and a whole business created around making more clickable thumbnails, and many creators say they plan their thumbnail before they plan their video.

You can see why it would be compelling for YouTube to get rid of all that. It’s the same line of thinking that has led the company to use generative AI to help creators make backgrounds, respond to comments, and even come up with video ideas. What if, YouTube is asking, creators didn’t have to obsess over all the stuff around their videos and could just focus on making great videos? Everybody wins!

But all those changes, and especially this latest endless scrolling test, have one thing in common: they take control away from creators and hand it to The Algorithm. YouTube creators and viewers already have to play lots of algorithm games, of course, but the current state of YouTube at least gives you moves. You can write your own titles and develop a unique thumbnail style. Managing YouTube is a lot of work, yes, but it also gives you lots of chances to put both your content and your channel in front of the audience. And if they watch one video, you have lots of ways to get them to watch more. An endless feed removes all of that in favor of whatever’s next in the scroll.

Inside each new generative AI feature and automatically playing video is the tacit assumption that, actually, what’s best for everyone is just to do whatever YouTube wants. That assumption has been baked into TikTok for years, which is why everyone made dance challenges and then pivoted to hawking stuff from the TikTok Shop. YouTube has always been bigger, more varied, more fun. This one tweak could break that for good.

Already, you hear creators talk about struggling to balance making videos they want to make — that their audience wants — and videos they know will please the algorithm and thus get more views. In an endlessly scrolling YouTube, there’s no balance. It’s just pleasing the algorithm. And as we’ve seen plenty of times over the years, whether it’s political radicalization and conspiracy theories or just platform-dominating genres like prank videos and Depp / Heard trial coverage, the algorithm’s job is not to incentivize great videos. It’s just to get you to watch.

Maybe that’s where YouTube is inevitably headed. Maybe it’s already there, as viewers increasingly rely less on following creators and channels and more on watching whatever shows up on the homepage. But it would be a shame to see YouTube, still the most creator-friendly platform and the place where many creators feel they can actually build a community and a business, deprecate the rest of the platform in favor of an autoplaying feed. At that point, it would just be TikTok with longer videos — though, in a world of endless scrolling, I bet they’d get shorter and punchier and have more music. And probably try to sell you things. The TikTok-ification of YouTube would be complete, and that would be a huge bummer.

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Illustration: The Verge

As Google continues to navigate its relationship with publishers, regulators, and news readers, the company is starting a pretty drastic test: it will remove news articles from European Union-based publishers from Search.
While the “test” is supposed to determine how it will impact traffic and the overall search experience, it won’t show up for everyone. Google will only remove EU news articles from search results, Google News, and Discover for one percent of users in Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain.
Google says it’s running the “time-limited” test because EU regulators and publishers “have asked for additional data about the effect of news content in Search.” The company says it will continue to show results from websites and news publishers located outside the EU, and it will resume showing results from EU news publishers once the test ends.
This may be just a small experiment, but it almost feels like a warning. By the end of the test, EU news publishers will see exactly how much traffic they’d be missing out on without Google. The experiment might also give Google some insight into how much its users actually care about news. That’s something Facebook has explored as well — which ultimately led it to remove the “News” tab and stop paying publishers entirely.
Over the years, Google has fought fiercely against regulations that would force the company to compensate publishers for their content. In the EU, Google is on the hook to comply with the European Copyright Directive, which has resulted in the search giant licensing content from hundreds of publishers in the region. Earlier this year, France ordered Google to pay $272 million after it found that the company violated an agreement over compensation for news publishers.
Google most recently removed links to California news outlets in response to the state’s Journalism Preservation Act. Google also threatened to remove links to local news outlets in Canada and nearly pulled its search engine from Australia over similar legislation. If this small test in the EU is a sign of things to come, Google may be preparing even more drastic measures in the future.

Illustration: The Verge

As Google continues to navigate its relationship with publishers, regulators, and news readers, the company is starting a pretty drastic test: it will remove news articles from European Union-based publishers from Search.

While the “test” is supposed to determine how it will impact traffic and the overall search experience, it won’t show up for everyone. Google will only remove EU news articles from search results, Google News, and Discover for one percent of users in Belgium, Croatia, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain.

Google says it’s running the “time-limited” test because EU regulators and publishers “have asked for additional data about the effect of news content in Search.” The company says it will continue to show results from websites and news publishers located outside the EU, and it will resume showing results from EU news publishers once the test ends.

This may be just a small experiment, but it almost feels like a warning. By the end of the test, EU news publishers will see exactly how much traffic they’d be missing out on without Google. The experiment might also give Google some insight into how much its users actually care about news. That’s something Facebook has explored as well — which ultimately led it to remove the “News” tab and stop paying publishers entirely.

Over the years, Google has fought fiercely against regulations that would force the company to compensate publishers for their content. In the EU, Google is on the hook to comply with the European Copyright Directive, which has resulted in the search giant licensing content from hundreds of publishers in the region. Earlier this year, France ordered Google to pay $272 million after it found that the company violated an agreement over compensation for news publishers.

Google most recently removed links to California news outlets in response to the state’s Journalism Preservation Act. Google also threatened to remove links to local news outlets in Canada and nearly pulled its search engine from Australia over similar legislation. If this small test in the EU is a sign of things to come, Google may be preparing even more drastic measures in the future.

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Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Short-form posting platform Bluesky crossed the 15 million user mark today amid a recent surge of user signups in the wake of the US presidential election. That’s according to a stat-tracking site put together by Bluesky developer Jaz, using the Bluesky API.
The platform, which rests on the decentralized AT Protocol, added about a million new users in the last week. Bluesky COO Rose Wang recently told The Verge that the “majority” of new users flocking to the platform have been from the US. The Bluesky app is currently at number one in the iOS app store, followed by Threads, ChatGPT, and the Google app.

Screenshot: iOS App Store
Bluesky is the number one free iOS app this morning.

Meta’s Threads is still outpacing Bluesky, having recently hit 275 million monthly users and growing at a rate of over a million signups per day. But Bluesky offers a very different experience. Both are ad-free (for now), but whereas Threads uses a single Meta-made algorithmic feed, Bluesky offers user-created algorithmic feeds in addition to its “Discover” and “Popular With Friends” ones.
New features that Bluesky has recently rolled out include video posting, pinned posts and custom fonts, and a slew of “anti-toxicity” features that let you do things like detach your posts when someone else quotes them.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Short-form posting platform Bluesky crossed the 15 million user mark today amid a recent surge of user signups in the wake of the US presidential election. That’s according to a stat-tracking site put together by Bluesky developer Jaz, using the Bluesky API.

The platform, which rests on the decentralized AT Protocol, added about a million new users in the last week. Bluesky COO Rose Wang recently told The Verge that the “majority” of new users flocking to the platform have been from the US. The Bluesky app is currently at number one in the iOS app store, followed by Threads, ChatGPT, and the Google app.

Meta’s Threads is still outpacing Bluesky, having recently hit 275 million monthly users and growing at a rate of over a million signups per day. But Bluesky offers a very different experience. Both are ad-free (for now), but whereas Threads uses a single Meta-made algorithmic feed, Bluesky offers user-created algorithmic feeds in addition to its “Discover” and “Popular With Friends” ones.

New features that Bluesky has recently rolled out include video posting, pinned posts and custom fonts, and a slew of “anti-toxicity” features that let you do things like detach your posts when someone else quotes them.

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Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Subscriptions are the main way creators on Patreon make money, as they must build an audience willing to shell out a few dollars a month to access their writing, podcasts, or videos. The company announced today that creators and their fans can now give away gift memberships, which could be a powerful way for creators to grow their subscriber base.
Patreon said earlier this year it was working on a gifting subscription feature similar to what already existed on other subscription-powered platforms like Substack (which, incidentally, has been pushing deeper into the creator space beyond newsletters). Gifting is also a core part of Twitch’s streaming platform, where fans and streamers often give away subscriptions based on specific goals or as a part of events.
Patreon creators make money through subscriptions and paid exclusive content, though the platform also has a free content tier option for creators who want open access to their work.
Fans can gift memberships of whatever tier and duration they choose: for example, the cheapest subscription tier locked in at the one-year rate. For creators who want to give a new fan a freebie, they can set the complimentary membership to last anywhere from one month to a year. In addition to free trials, creators will also be able to send discounts and sales to fans and fine-tune who’s eligible — they could offer a half-off rate only to members on the free tier to encourage them to become paying members, for example.

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Subscriptions are the main way creators on Patreon make money, as they must build an audience willing to shell out a few dollars a month to access their writing, podcasts, or videos. The company announced today that creators and their fans can now give away gift memberships, which could be a powerful way for creators to grow their subscriber base.

Patreon said earlier this year it was working on a gifting subscription feature similar to what already existed on other subscription-powered platforms like Substack (which, incidentally, has been pushing deeper into the creator space beyond newsletters). Gifting is also a core part of Twitch’s streaming platform, where fans and streamers often give away subscriptions based on specific goals or as a part of events.

Patreon creators make money through subscriptions and paid exclusive content, though the platform also has a free content tier option for creators who want open access to their work.

Fans can gift memberships of whatever tier and duration they choose: for example, the cheapest subscription tier locked in at the one-year rate. For creators who want to give a new fan a freebie, they can set the complimentary membership to last anywhere from one month to a year. In addition to free trials, creators will also be able to send discounts and sales to fans and fine-tune who’s eligible — they could offer a half-off rate only to members on the free tier to encourage them to become paying members, for example.

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