See also: Top YouTube Updates of 2025 and 10 New YouTube Features to Build Your Audience
There has been a continuation of 2024 Creator Trends, with more vertical video and updates to platforms like Substack and Patreon where creators can (supposedly) “own” their audience. And, of course, there is more generative AI in everything.
But in 2025 Creators were affected by political decisions that affect policy and economics, there was pushback against AI-generated content, and “authenticity” is the new watchword.
Next week I’ll be back with the usual creator update news.
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My top creator trends for 2025 (and into 2026)
- More of the old internet shut down
- TikTok almost shut down in the US
- Free video editing tools for everyone
- No more free lunch
- Platforms add features to make it harder to “own your audience”
- Pushback against AI
- People stopped clicking links in Search
- More hateful content and misinformation
- Choose your own adventure
- Authenticity is the trend for 2026
More of the old internet shut down
While none of these shut-downs were a big surprise, it feels like more and more of the old web where people blogged and shared links is disappearing.Netvibes shut down its RSS reader/feed aggregator on June 2. Netvibes launched in 2005.
Mozilla shut down Pocket, the social bookmarking platform that originally launched in 2007 as “Read It Later”.
Typepad, the blogging platform that launched in 2003, shut down in September. It hadn’t allowed new sign-ups since 2020, so it wasn’t a big surprise.
Google stopped redirecting most goo.gl short links. The shortener launched in 2009. There was a reprieve for some links that saw active use, but this still breaks many links on older web pages and in technical papers. The service stopped generating new links for non-Google users in 2019.
As a side note, Google’s drive to add AI features to all of its products and services has meant older products with few recent updates (like Google Scholar, Snapseed, and Blogger) have suddenly gotten new AI features. I’d go so far to say that any Google product without any AI features may be for the chopping block.
TikTok almost shut down in the US
US law required Chinese company ByteDance to transfer ownership of TikTok, CapCut and other apps to a US company by January 19th. US users were blocked from those services, but only until an Executive Order from the incoming Trump Whitehouse on January 20th postponed enforcement for 75 days. TikTok blocked US users for just over a day.No Deal
All that was needed was a deal to transfer TikTok, CapCut and other ByteDance services to a US company, with China’s approval, before the new deadline. That didn’t happen. So the enforcement deadline was extended in April, then in June, and again in September. The latest deadline was December 16.
By mid-December there was supposedly a deal in place. One that would be finalized by January 22, just over a year after the ban was supposed to go into effect.
But in late December, the Chinese government issued a statement that “hopes that relevant parties can reach a solution regarding TikTok that complies with Chinese laws and regulations and achieves a balance of interests.” That certainly doesn’t sound like the deal is finalized. So we shall see.
Video Boom
The uncertainty around TikTok’s fate prompted many platforms to add or redesign their video feeds, including Bluesky, X, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Twitch and YouTube were also welcoming to TikTokers looking to change platforms.
Instagram also launched Edits, a free video editing app that was designed to rival ByteDance’s CapCut.
Free Video Editing Tools for Everyone
In 2025 there were a slew of new video creation and editing apps, ranging from pure generative AI to mostly manual editing with (of course) optional AI tools.Especially notable is that these video tools can all be used for free.
What’s driving this trend? It seems to be a combination of companies needing a way to showcase their generative AI video models, getting people to pay for advanced features, more clips or faster video generation. Also, as noted above, some are clearly designed as an alternative to CapCut.
AI Showcases
These new platforms designed to showcase AI video generation all launched in 2025. They can be limited or slow without a paid account.
Facebook started deleting live stream archives after 30 days and Twitch limited storage of Highlights and Uploads. Flickr stopped letting free accounts download large images.
And that does suggest all those free video editing apps and sites are designed to get you to pay.
Substack, for example, started as a newsletter platform, and has since introduced social features, live streaming, chat, and encourages users to consume the content on the Substack mobile app or site. Even though it still touts itself as a place to “build on your own land”, changing platforms means losing access to those community and discovery tools.
Patreon similarly has gone beyond a platform for Creators to communicate with their patrons. It now also has live streaming and discovery features such as collaborative posts and a Twitter-like “Quips” feed. And you can even publish a newsletter.
My newsletter platform, Beehiiv, hasn’t added a social feed, but it has expanded well beyond newsletters. You can now build your own website (or blog) and sell digital products.
It’s getting more difficult to tell them apart. And all these new features could end up as a huge time sink for Creators whose primary platform is YouTube, Instagram or their own blog. And ultimately it does lock people into the platform, even if it isn’t as bad as big social media platforms.
For example, YouTube was heavily criticized when it appeared they were “AI upscaling” Shorts without Creator consent. Their explanation that they were using “traditional machine learning technology” to adjust some videos, rather than generative AI, didn’t make anyone happier. YouTube did finally add a setting to turn off YouTube’s automated visual enhancements, AI and otherwise.
Creators are having to balance their use of AI-powered tools and what’s often perceived as a lack of authenticity or care, while at the same time having their work and likeness copied without credit.
Control the AI in your feed
Platforms are still not great at detecting AI-generated images and videos. AI tools from Google and Adobe watermark their output, but that isn’t always automatically labeled when shared. And despite policies that require labeling of AI content, many people don’t do that.
That said, platforms like TikTok and Pinterest allow users to try to adjust the amount of generative AI content they see in their feed. How well that works is an open question.
Opting your content in (or out) of AI training
These new platforms designed to showcase AI video generation all launched in 2025. They can be limited or slow without a paid account.
- Google Flow: “AI filmmaking tool” using Google’s latest video model (currently Veo 3).This is meant for professional quality movie making. It requires a Google account.
- OpenAI Sora app: A social iOS app, powered by OpenAI’s latest video model (currently Sora 2). Turn yourself into a “character”.
- Meta Vibes: A feed of AI videos generated by Meta AI, available both in the app and web. It’s easy to post your creations to Instagram and Facebook Stories and Reels.
- Bing Video Creator: This is a simple, browser based video clip generator, powered by OpenAI’s Sora video model. It requires a Microsoft account.
- Google Vids: This Google Workspace-integrated web-based video editing platform launched in 2024, but was only made available to free Google Accounts in 2025. Most of the AI tools require a paid AI or Workspace subscription.
- Adobe Firefly Video editor (beta): Browser-based video editor where you can combine AI-generated clips and music with your own footage. You can edit either by timeline or by editing a transcript. Generative AI use is limited, but you can pay for a Firefly subscription or purchase additional credits.
- Adobe Express: The browser-based design platform has new video creation tools, including video generation and generating short clips from longer videos. Generative AI use is limited, but you can pay for a Firefly subscription or purchase additional credits.
- Canva: The browser-based design platform launched Video 2.0 with an updated timeline editor. Most of the AI tools require a Pro or Business account.
- Instagram’s Edits: Free app with regularly-added new features designed to compete with CapCut. It has optional integration with Instagram, but can be used to create a watermark-free video to upload to any platform. Currently totally free for both iOS and Android.
- YouTube Create: Free app that launched in 2023, but was largely neglected until this year. It’s now available in 21 countries for iOS and Android, with templates and AI tools for creating draft videos from your camera roll or generating clips. Free with no watermarks.
- Adobe Premiere: Mobile version of Adobe’s professional video editor. It’s currently free for iPhones (Android users can sign up for future updates).
- Google Photos: The video editor in the Photos mobile app got a major redesign and new AI-powered features. It’s much simpler than Edits, Create or Premiere, but useful if you want to make a quick video from clips and images in your Photos library.
- And if you want to create videos for a specific platform, TikTok Studio, YouTube Shorts editor, and Instagram Reels Camera have all had significant improvements (and AI features, of course).
No Free Lunch
Nothing is truly free. There were a few changes in 2025 that suggest that platforms are trying to cut costs.Facebook started deleting live stream archives after 30 days and Twitch limited storage of Highlights and Uploads. Flickr stopped letting free accounts download large images.
And that does suggest all those free video editing apps and sites are designed to get you to pay.
Newsletter platforms add features that make it harder to “own your audience”
In 2024 the common wisdom was to own your audience and not rely on algorithmic feeds to distribute your content. That could mean publishing an email newsletter or hosting your own community. But the lines are becoming blurred as platforms roll out new features.Substack, for example, started as a newsletter platform, and has since introduced social features, live streaming, chat, and encourages users to consume the content on the Substack mobile app or site. Even though it still touts itself as a place to “build on your own land”, changing platforms means losing access to those community and discovery tools.
Patreon similarly has gone beyond a platform for Creators to communicate with their patrons. It now also has live streaming and discovery features such as collaborative posts and a Twitter-like “Quips” feed. And you can even publish a newsletter.
My newsletter platform, Beehiiv, hasn’t added a social feed, but it has expanded well beyond newsletters. You can now build your own website (or blog) and sell digital products.
It’s getting more difficult to tell them apart. And all these new features could end up as a huge time sink for Creators whose primary platform is YouTube, Instagram or their own blog. And ultimately it does lock people into the platform, even if it isn’t as bad as big social media platforms.
Pushback against AI
There is a rising tension between Creators, viewers and readers, and the companies that make generative AI tools. People feel that social media, YouTube, are becoming overrun with “AI slop”, while some of those same platforms offer AI tools that easily create such content.For example, YouTube was heavily criticized when it appeared they were “AI upscaling” Shorts without Creator consent. Their explanation that they were using “traditional machine learning technology” to adjust some videos, rather than generative AI, didn’t make anyone happier. YouTube did finally add a setting to turn off YouTube’s automated visual enhancements, AI and otherwise.
Creators are having to balance their use of AI-powered tools and what’s often perceived as a lack of authenticity or care, while at the same time having their work and likeness copied without credit.
Control the AI in your feed
Platforms are still not great at detecting AI-generated images and videos. AI tools from Google and Adobe watermark their output, but that isn’t always automatically labeled when shared. And despite policies that require labeling of AI content, many people don’t do that.
That said, platforms like TikTok and Pinterest allow users to try to adjust the amount of generative AI content they see in their feed. How well that works is an open question.
Opting your content in (or out) of AI training
Do you want AI bots to scan your content, so
it appears in AI Search results? Or do you want to prevent your work
from being used for training? How about billing AI companies for use? Companies have been working on ways of managing how your content is used by AI scraper bots.
- Adobe’s Content Credentials lets Creators add attribution as metadata to their digital work. You can use it to indicate if you allow your content to be used for generative AI training.
- YouTube also has a setting that lets you opt your videos into third party AI training. Of course you can’t opt out of having Google train their AI with your videos.
- The RSL Collective offers a license for publishers to use on their site to try to collect royalties from AI companies training their models with that content.
- Creative Commons CC Signals similarly is a licensing scheme for data and content use by AI systems. They are working with the RSL Collective.
- Cloudflare lets users add an “AI Labyrinth" to lock up bots through irrelevant resources to prevent them from crawling a site without permission. They are also testing a “pay per crawl” feature that directs AI crawlers to pay publishers for access.
- SEO gurus suggest adding a llm.txt file or “chunking” content on your website rank well in LLM-powered searches. You almost certainly don’t need to do either of those.
Fighting Impersonation
Generative AI makes it much easier for bad actors to create deepfakes of
real people. Platforms like
Spotify
and
YouTube
are updating impersonation policies, and giving creators tools to detect
and block misuse of their voice or likeness.
The problem? People don’t click the links in AI summaries, resulting in the dreaded Alligator Graph in Google Search Console. Impressions from Search are going up, while clicks are going down, resulting in a graph that looks like open alligator jaws.
For my site, that started in early April, which correlates pretty closely with the expansion of AI powered Search results.
People Stopped Clicking Links in Search
In March 2025 Google Search expanded AI Overviews and launched AI Mode, which runs multiple related searches simultaneously, then compiles them into an answer. Both AI Overviews and AI Mode are now available globally.The problem? People don’t click the links in AI summaries, resulting in the dreaded Alligator Graph in Google Search Console. Impressions from Search are going up, while clicks are going down, resulting in a graph that looks like open alligator jaws.
For my site, that started in early April, which correlates pretty closely with the expansion of AI powered Search results.
This is concerning, to say the least. The implicit value exchange
used to be that Google would crawl your website, and in exchange
your site would appear in the Search results, which would bring
traffic to your site. But now, Google crawls your site, summarizes
the information there, and no longer sends traffic.
For their part, Google says the traffic they now send is “higher quality”, although that is a small comfort with so few total clicks.
And they recently started to highlight links better in the search results, including adding a link description and making links more visible.
It isn’t clear if this will prevent the demise of informational sites that no longer get visitors.
For their part, Google says the traffic they now send is “higher quality”, although that is a small comfort with so few total clicks.
And they recently started to highlight links better in the search results, including adding a link description and making links more visible.
It isn’t clear if this will prevent the demise of informational sites that no longer get visitors.
More Hateful Content and Misinformation
Meta kicked off 2025 with a major policy announcement. They updated their Hateful Content policy to allow more insulting and hateful content around homosexuality, transgender rights and immigration.
Meta also got rid of their “biased” fact-checkers, and replaced
them with Community Notes on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. The
notes only appear if people with different points of view
agree.
This was framed as promoting free expression, but was clearly a
response to changes in the political climate in the US.
No other platform made quite such a drastic policy change, but there were other changes.
How that will manifest in 2026 is unclear.
It will be interesting to see what the new year brings!
No other platform made quite such a drastic policy change, but there were other changes.
- YouTube removed “gender identity” from the protected group attributes in their Hate Speech policy. But they did leave “sex, gender and sexual orientation”, and it’s not clear if this was a significant policy change (YouTube says it was not).
- LinkedIn removed “misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals” as an example of prohibited content, and removed “race or gender identity” as examples of inherent traits for which negative comments are considered harassment. They claimed this didn’t reflect an actual policy change.
- TikTok updated their terms, and it was noted that their description of why they moderate content was changed from keeping the platform “safe, trustworthy, and vibrant” to “safe, fun, and creative place for everyone.” -- apparently no longer trustworthy. They also introduced Footnotes, their own version of the community notes tool.
Choose Your Own Adventure
People don’t trust algorithmic feeds.- Platforms are realizing that people belong to a diversity of communities and interest groups, and that the most popular content is pretty much the lowest common denominator. YouTube’s Trending tab was removed in July for that reason, and Reddit is “moving away” from r/popular and the claim that it is the “Front Page of the Internet”.
- Adjust the topics you want to see in your Instagram Reels feed, customize frequency of popular topics in the TikTok For You feed, plus YouTube is testing “Your Custom Feed”.
- You can add publications as Preferred Sources for Google Search Top Stories.
- You can follow Creators and Publishers in your Google Search “Discover” feed.
- Focus on recommendations from friends, with private collaborative video feeds on Instagram and TikTok. YouTube is also testing video sharing in DMs.
Authenticity in 2026
Are you your real self when you are online? As we’ve seen in 2025, people are pushing back against generative AI content, they distrust “algorithms”, and are looking for authenticity.How that will manifest in 2026 is unclear.
- It may lead to less polished-looking content.
- Identity verification
- X started showing what country accounts are based in (revealing a number of fake accounts).
- LinkedIn added free identity verification.
- Reddit is testing identity verification, especially for journalists and public figures. It’s not clear how that will work with the vast majority of users with pseudonymous profiles.
- Age verification is becoming a legal requirement, mostly to prevent young teens from creating accounts or seeing age-restricted material. But it means that under-18s will find it harder to masquerade as adults.
- We may see more use of generative AI tools in truly creative ways, with disclosure.
It will be interesting to see what the new year brings!
Your own newsletter illustrates the challenges when new features blur different platforms. There are links from the newsletter to this blog post and also to the duplicated content on the Beehiiv platform.
ReplyDeleteYou've disabled comments there, which saves me from wondering where you want your readers to engage in that way. But it also leaves some readers in a place that has no way to do that!
I am sure that many will welcome these new features, but I choose to disable the web publishing aspect for my Beehiiv emails. That way, I am just sending out a newsletter that links to my blog.