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Drowning Man. In just a few days, 70,000+ burners will descend upon Black Rock City for this year’s Burning Man festival. But first, they’ll have to figure out how to get in. Thanks to all the recent rainfall from Tropical Storm Hilary, the playa is currently flooded — delaying prep time and early access to campers. The good news? At least you’ll have more time to think of a decent Paddock name before arriving.
In other news… TikTok may give up power to avoid ban, LinkedIn is now cool, and Netflix launches new IP-based games.
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SOCIAL MEDIA
Answering to America // illustration by Kate Walker
The US government vs. TikTok was all about control
The Future. To avoid an outright ban or a sale to an American company, the US government has proposed that ByteDance agree to stringent rules on how TikTok can operate in the States and what elements of the company the government can oversee. The draft of the deal is thorough and extensive. While TikTok may have grounds to push back, recent revelations of ByteDance execs spying on journalists and tracking American users’ movements may make compromise hard to come by.
Algorithm allegiance
Forbes breaks down what a potential deal between ByteDance and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) would look like.
CFIUS asked TikTok’s US arm to allow surprise examinations of its facilities, servers, and records, require US approval to change its terms of service, independently pay for security audits, and even temporarily turn off the platform in the US.
It would also allow a number of third-party monitors in everything from cybersecurity to source code, while barring ByteDance execs from being involved in security-related decisions (it would instead be carried out by a secret committee).
Experts say the deal, which is a draft from 2022, is the most extensive one they’ve seen from CFIUS and would give the US government far more control over TikTok’s US operations than that of domestic platforms like Facebook or X… despite most of TikTok’s US data already being housed on Oracle servers, per a previous deal.
But with a bipartisan push to reign in the Chinese company’s access to the data of and influence over 150 million Americans who spend an average of 90 minutes on the platform per day, there may be little pushback on those proposed powers.
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SOCIAL MEDIA
Professional social club // Illustration by Kate Walker
LinkedIn became cool by being stable
The Future. In today’s unpredictable social media landscape, LinkedIn has become a model of success by simply staying the course. Amazingly, the platform is more popular than it’s ever been, fueled by young users migrating their social media know-how to networking for employment. But LinkedIn’s transformation into a place where users want to hang out may be a microcosm of how American culture has become comfortable mixing the personal with the professional — laying the foundation for a hopefully more civil online discourse.
Polished platform
After 20 years, LinkedIn has found itself to be the cool kid on the home screen.
Users shared 41% more content on the site this spring than the same time in 2021, partly due to new tools for creating newsletters, podcasts, videos, and audio chat rooms.
Its focus on “knowledge-based content” has made it a hub for finding news from legit sources — just as Facebook and X try to de-platform news.
Its business model of selling professional subscriptions rewards consistency, with the uptick in popularity surging revenue to a five-year high of $15 billion.
But on a deeper level, millennials’ and Gen Zers’ gravitation to the social network could be because instability in the job market has led to users opting to craft professional profiles that exist beyond any one particular job, especially if they plan to one day switch industries. It’s all about those skills, connections, and references.
And with the rise of LinkedInfluencers (some very famous ones), we may all be incentivized to even try our hand at “broetry.”
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Mornings are the best
Coffee. Birds singing. A moment of silence before your boss Slacks you. The Hustle. What isn’t there to like about the mornings?
Wondering WTF The Hustle is? It’s your new morning read. It covers the best tech, startup, and business news stories in just five minutes. And you know what that means? It means they don’t bother getting all fluffy with stuff. They just get to the point. (Thank goodness.)
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GAMING
Courtesy of Netflix
Netflix wants to gamify its audience
The Future. Netflix’s newest gaming experiment, Netflix Stories, is allowing subscribers to become playable characters in their favorite shows. The new series may be trying to solidify the streamer’s gaming strategy around popular IP to boost interactivity on the platform, as it’s attempted with Black Mirror: Bandersnatch and the (ill-fated) Love is Blind reunion livestream. For Netflix, it may all be about getting subscribers in the habit of checking out programming beyond TV and movies — opening up new avenues for advertising revenue and subscription growth.
Your story
Netflix Stories is turning some of the streamer’s most popular shows into RPGs.
The first title in the collection, debuting September 19th, is Netflix Stories: Love is Blind — a mobile game that allows players to create characters who can interact with avatars of contestants from the show.
Netflix also has games planned for narrative shows like Money Heist and Virgin River, which will all live in a separate Netflix gaming app.
While most of Netflix’s gaming ambitions exist outside of the mother platform, it all feels like a test to see if it’s worthy of inclusion. Going the popular IP route seems to be Netflix’s best bet considering the only game that appears to have taken off with users is a chess game based on The Queen’s Gambit (no surprise considering how the show boosted chess worldwide).
If Netflix’s experiments pay off, we may soon see Netflix binges end with “Do you want to play?” instead of “Are you still watching?”
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Highlights
The best curated daily stories from around the web
Media, Music, & Entertainment
In a bid to appease UK regulators on its acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft has signaled it’s willing to sell Activision’s cloud-gaming rights to rival Ubisoft, ensuring titles like Call of Duty won’t become an Xbox Cloud Gaming exclusive for at least fifteen years. Read more → insider
While actors negotiating luxury perks in their employment contracts is a tale as old as time, a cadre of top UK talent is campaigning on ending the inclusion of ones that significantly harm the environment, such as private jet travel or exclusive trailers. Read more → theguardian
Fresh out of prison, scammer extraordinaire Billy McFarland is back on the streets hawking tickets to Fyre Festival II. Read more → rollingstone
Fashion & E-Commerce
Travis Scott’s Cactus Plant Flea Market is collabing with premium LA supermarket Erewhon on a $22 smoothie, with a portion of sales going toward Maui relief efforts. Read more → highsnobiety
Nike is bringing some old-school red, white, and blue Air Jordans out of retirement as the retro sneaker market heats up. Read more → complex
With Netflix’s DVD business coming to an end, the streamer is letting the remaining subscribers keep whatever discs they still have in their possession. Read more → theverge
Tech, Web3, & AI
In another wild update, X plans to eliminate headlines or any text on shared news articles. Read more → fortune
NYT has officially blocked OpenAI’s GPTBot web crawler from ingesting its content to train the company’s AI. Read more → theverge
a16z has invested $200 million into Genesis Therapeutics — a biotech startup that uses AI to find novel medications. Read more → wsj
Creator Economy
TikTok is opening up its search results page to advertisers. Read more → techcrunch
The BBC is partnering with TikTok to discover rising broadcaster talent in the UK. Read more → deadline
Roblox was hit with a class-action lawsuit from parents who allege the company has knowingly done nothing about third-party platforms that allow kids to gamble with the platform’s in-game currency. Read more → tubefilter
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Copy edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.