A bad week for Big Tech
A worse week for the TikTok knitting community.
Keep scrolling for the unofficial roast of JustPearlyThings.
Reddit communities “go dark” in protest over updates affecting third-party apps
In what is possibly the largest coordinated protest in social media’s history, more than 8,000 subreddits set themselves to private this week— effectively taking the community and its content offline.
Users are protesting upcoming changes to Reddit's Application Programming Interface (API), the tool that software developers use to access data and create compatible applications with the platform.
With the new terms upping the price of Reddit’s API access (which had previously been free), the policy changes are expected to deal a fatal blow to third-party apps that currently offer users alternative interfaces to access the platform.
According to Christian Selig, the creator of the widely-used third-party app Apollo, Reddit's proposed API pricing plans would cost approximately $20 million per year — a financially unsustainable price for the company.
Many subreddits on the platform decided to go private for 48 hours starting Monday, June 12th, claiming that these third-party apps improve the user experience.
In light of the looming protest, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman acknowledged user concerns on June 10th but remained steadfast on the policy changes, emphasising that “Reddit needs to be a self-sustaining business, and to do that, we can no longer subsidise commercial entities that require large-scale data use.”
Come Monday, many of Reddit’s most-subscribed communities (like r/funny, r/music, r/EarthPorn) went dark leading to widespread outages across the platform.
“A significant number of subreddits shifting to private caused some expected stability issues, and we’ve been working on resolving the anticipated issue,” Reddit spokesperson, Tim Rathschmidt tells Jay Peters for The Verge.
While the protest was originally scheduled to end on Wednesday, many Reddit communities are choosing to prolong the “blackout,” urging other moderators to keep their subreddits private or restricted indefinitely.
Follow along with the protest via The Verge.
A reckoning arrives for creator economy startups
Reddit’s third-party apps are not the only ones suffering as the internet continues to evolve. A new piece by Kaya Yurieff for The Information explores how many creator startups are facing financial hardship— forced to overhaul their strategy, find buyers or face the unfortunate prospect of permanent closure.
Many of these (now-defunct) startups developed technology products and services, specifically designed to support the creator economy.
Yurieff highlights two examples: Peeq, a live messaging and calling service facilitating direct and live communication between influencers and their fans, and Moetic, a platform where influencers could create their storefronts. Unfortunately, both companies have closed within the past year.
“At least 11 creator startups have been acquired and at least seven have shut down since the beginning of 2022, according to data from The Information’s Creator Economy Database,” writes Yurieff.
Speaking with experts and startup founders, Yurieff notes several factors that have led to the demise of creator economy startups.
While many of these businesses concentrate on important aspects of the creator economy, the majority of them failed to address the key priorities of many influencers.
“Most of these tools didn’t make you famous…and didn’t make [creators] more money. Those are the two principal things that everyone is seeking,” co-founder and partner at talent agency Underscore Talent, Reza Izad tells Yurieff.
That being said, there weren't enough creators who believed that supporting these startups was worth the time, money, and effort. As many of these creators are self-employed and work individually, they are overwhelmed with daily pitches and promises, making them hard to contact and cautious about where to allocate their funds.
“Many creators are not rolling in dough, by some estimates: Only 12% of full-time creators make more than $50,000 per year, while 46% make less than $1,000, according to a 2022 report from Linktree,” Yurieff shares.
Unfortunately, funding for creator economy startups has plummeted since 2021 and the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, many of these startups were left in the lurch, as they had anticipated more time and funding to build their businesses.
Read the full piece via The Information.
Knit-Tok comes for popular creator ‘I’d Knit That’ over plagiarism
Over the past week, the online knitting community has erupted in discourse after the sibling of an artist named Esther accused Kendall Ross of I’d Knit That of copying a recent design.
The drama started in late May when Kendall shared a new white sweater with hot pink text that she designed and knit herself.
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Last week, Esther’s sibling Ros posted a now-deleted video accusing Kendall of copying their sister's design and text— specifically from her series of raglan sweaters featuring song lyrics.
One of Esther’s sweaters from this series, posted on her Instagram in December 2021, featured similar text colour work.
Soon, TikTok users were flooding Kendall’s comment section, calling her design “not original” and demanding she “give credit” to Esther for being inspired by her work. Meanwhile, fiber artists across the internet have come to Kendall’s defence, noting that her work has featured text for years and that this plagiarism claim is incredibly damaging to the community as a whole.
As the backlash mounted, Kendall addressed the situation on her TikTok, maintaining that her sweater was not inspired by Esther’s work.
Esther also addressed the drama this week in a statement on her stories.
“I am in no way claiming ownership over the use of text on knitwear,” she wrote. “What Kendall doesn’t say on TikTok is that she’s been following me for years and has liked multiple images of my text based work. As of yesterday I had 800 followers, Kendall has 100K plus. Try and imagine what it feels like to see someone with so much reach post a jumper that visually is almost identical to your own.”
Following Kendall's response, Esther has deactivated her TikTok, while Ros has restricted comments on their posts.
Read the full story via Centennial World.
Ethan Klein destroys men’s rights influencer JustPearlyThings in new interview
In the latest episode of his weekly live series, Off The Rails, Ethan Klein interviewed Pearl Davis of JustPearlyThings— tearing into her for her misogynistic views and the damaging content she puts out.
Pearl (real name Hannah Davis) is an anti-feminist creator who filled the gap for angry young men when Andrew Tate was thrown in Romanian prison.
Pearl’s channel grew from 800,000 to 1.3 million in the first three months that Tate was in jail. She currently has over 1.5 million subscribers.
She first gained popularity on TikTok by doing interviews on the street, asking people questions about whether a woman’s number of sexual partners is important or if sleeping with a lot of people is worse if they’re a woman or a man. She has since been banned.
Pearl claims her content explores the role of women in society and relationships.
Throughout the interview, Ethan debates Pearl on being anti-feminist, covering topics like the gender pay gap, divorce, domestic violence, women’s right to vote, and the age that women have passed their prime (22 years old, according to 26-year-old Pearl).
Ethan pushed her for stats and citations to back up the wild claims she makes on her platform. Her sources were often videos from other men’s rights YouTubers.
Pearl also claimed that some aspects of slavery were “over-embellished”— a debate that led her to end the call and leave the interview early.
Though Pearl regularly spews this hateful rhetoric to her millions of followers, she came shockingly ill-prepared for the interview.
Many viewers also note she didn’t seem passionate about her beliefs (unlike so many other creators in a similar space), and when pressed by Ethan, she would change her tune.
This has led some to question if Pearl genuinely holds these beliefs, or if this is all just a grift to make as much money as possible in a short amount of time.
Ethan also questioned this at the end of the interview.
This theory aligns with the story told by Pearl’s former best friend, Emily, who says that Pearl did not hold these beliefs in their 22 years of friendship.
Watch the full interview via the H3 Podcast channel.
This week’s infinite scroll podcast dives into the impending demise of Twitch. While this is not necessarily our conclusion or opinion, the internet has erupted with discourse over the past few months about how Twitch is destroying itself from the inside out. We explore Twitch's estimated costs and revenue model, the declining creator and user experiences, and how two of the platform's biggest competitors could make Twitch obsolete in a number of years.
Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube.