Last week, Instagram’s Adam Mosseri testified in a civil trial about social media addiction.

And it turns out his biggest adversary was…Adam Mosseri.

His past posts about social media addiction and teens came up a lot.

The most haunting quote within the testimony: “I think it’s important to differentiate between clinical addiction and between problematic use.”

There’s not even a thin line between those two things. The Venn Diagram is a circle.

But if the charming Adam Mosseri couldn’t knock this out of the park, all eyes will be on the far more gaffe-prone Zuck as he takes the stand this week.

So on this President’s Day, perhaps the third or fourth most patriotic day of the year (Independence, Memorial, Veterans, then President’s? Am I getting that right?), it feels like a good time to talk about the current state of US social media regulation and where other countries are eating our Triple Western Bacon Cheeseburger lunches.

Also in this edition:

🧑🏽‍💼 Creator Platforms Need to Be ‘Team First’ (Thoughts Are My Own)

📗 Spotify’s Books Go Physical-to-Digital

👸🏼 Salish Matter Continues Her Deal Surge

🏦 Beast Buys a Bank

⏸️ Twitch Tests Pause Ads

💪🏼 Jobs from Loaded, Archer Meat Snacks, and ByteDance

🎭 …and a dank meme from yours truly!

Let’s get into it.

TLDR:

Another year, another high profile grilling of social media leaders regarding how countless, countless, countless studies have shown the dangers of their platforms.

And, as Keenan Thompson so perfectly said, we all know “ain’t nothing’s gonna happen.”

So on this President’s Day, let’s look at the big issues, what the US government has done, and how other countries are doing it better.

THE ISSUE: Section 230

The Policy:

The U.S. Communications Decency Act (yes…that’s the real name…) is practically only known for Section 230, which leaves platforms mostly harmless for content posted by users. This has allowed social media platforms to moderate their own platforms in good faith.

The Debate:

The right feels platforms are over-moderating rightwing voices. The left worries that, if repealed, large platforms have the legal resources to survive, while smaller platforms would be crushed and platforms would overmoderate any controversial speech.

How Other Countries Are Doing It Smarter:

The U.S. sees Section 230 as a binary: keep it or repeal it entirely.

The EU passed the Digital Securities Act in 2024 that splits the difference: keeping the platform liability limited except in specific instances like removing illegal content quickly, explaining why platform is taken down, and allowing appeals.

The UK’s Online Safety Act also found a middle ground, focusing on more broad legal obligations like ‘protecting children’ and ‘moderating proactively’.

THE ISSUE: Teen Depression

The Policy:

Back to Section 230 for the most part, but platforms have paid lip service to helping teens through products like Instagram for Teens and loosey-goosey flags for ‘harassment & bullying’ (I can tell you from experience, those flags are seldom addressed in a timely manner or at all).

The Debate:

Section 230 has been a strong defense against many of the claims brought in court, including Negligence, Failure to Warn, Emotional Distress, and Product Liability. But, ultimately, the quiet part that so many in government don’t say outloud: social media platforms are popular with teens, so it’s hard to get political consensus in the US around prioritizing moderating these platforms. Nobody wants to run a campaign on, “I’m Phil Ranta and I’m asking for your vote to take away your ability to communicate with friends and date if you’re in high school.”

How Other Countries Are Doing It Smarter:

The U.K. has actual rules to limit ‘algorithmic rabbit holes’ and give parents supervision controls. France instituted ‘infinite scroll’ limits for teens. And Australia flat-out banned social media for kids under 16. All far beyond the U.S.’s policy of ‘publicly shame Mark Zuckberg on TV every few years’.

THE ISSUE: Helping Creators Survive and Thrive

The Policy:

In the U.S., creators are seen like any other gig worker. They can set up an S-Corp with some tax advantages or just tax as an individual. Setting up a business is expensive and hard. Taxes are expensive and hard. Hiring is confusing, expensive, and hard. Systems like banking and insurance are set up well for full-time W-2 employees but an expensive nightmare for creators.

The Debate:

Creators should be a class of worker with their own protections. Recently, California Representative Ro Khanna introduced The Creator Bill of Rights to frame a conversation around passing creator legislation, but the news environment has been noisy with ICE and Epstein hitting at the same time.

How Other Countries Are Doing It Smarter:

Dubai has a $40 million government fund just for creators. Setting up a business in Estonia is practically free with 0% tax on retained profits. The Bahamas have no federal income tax. Singapore has a perfect mix of strong internet talent, low taxes, and amazing internet infrastructure. Besides ‘the big social platforms/brands/creators are here’, it’s very, very hard to see where the U.S. is leading when it comes to supporting creators.

Those are the top three issues on my mind, but I could easily write a novel on the other places where the U.S. is lacking: cryptocurrency legislation, deepfake legislation, AI regulations, health insurance, how income instability is addressed, general cost of living, and algorithm transparency.

But, for now, all I can do is beg: c’mon team, let’s do better.

When you’re building a start up, one of the first exercises you go through is defining your customer.

What’s their gender? Their age? How much do they make? What do they like to do? How will your product become an indispensable part of their lives?

And in almost every deck for almost every creator sponsorship, analytics, optimization, or AI-so-and-so for creators, they’re defining their customer as creators.

That’s simply flat-out wrong.

The fact that they believe that shows they have done zero research into the actual lives of creators.

Because if you’re trying to offer value to a longtail creator, most of these platforms won’t move the needle enough for either you or them.

A sponsorship deal for a creator with 200 followers is UGC-size, so why even bother authenticating a channel?

And if you’re addressing a creator of any size, most platform operations are done by an assistant, a manager, or a friend, and nearly 100% of new platform evaluation is done by some sort of representative.

When I say this to platforms, they often respond: “Well, we already have 50,000 authenticated users!”

Great! What’s the response rate when you reach out to them? What are your daily or monthly active users? Do you ‘have them’ or did you at one time ‘have them’?

Because I guarantee, if they don’t have someone far less busy leaning in, you’re invisible.

So how should platforms address this?

The entire onboarding and usage experience should be considered from the point of view of a non-creator: multiple profiles with one login, fewer times when a creator should be bothered (never have YouTube auth be your login!), and simple ways to export value off of the platform for sharing.

If you’re an influencer marketing platform built for creators and a non-creator helper can’t login to review, share, then accept creators on their behalf, you’re blocking out a huge subset of your market.

Doing $100m per year without this? Awesome. That means you could be doing $500m.

Creators are kids vlogging from their bedroom anymore.

Stop treating them like they are.

They are support teams from sales to optimization to biz dev to legal, even if that’s their brother, their mom, and their Uncle Tony.

So build for your real customer.

What creators, brands, governments, and platforms are making waves this week in the name of fortune, fame, and fun?

📗 Spotify launched Page Match, where you can take a picture of the book you’re reading, and the audiobook version will start exactly where you left off. For someone like me, who has learned to read books in 3-minute snippets between times my kids ask for something, this is the biggest news of the year.

👸🏼 Salish Matter, the 15-year-old social media phenom who has been beating MrBeast on Famous Birthdays for years, has officially announced a multi-project deal with Netflix and a toy deal with Moose Toys, to add to the huge launch of her skincare line Sincerely Yours. Yeah, but when I was 15, I could beat Super Mario 64 in one sleepover.

🏦 MrBeast has officially bought the online banking company Step, confirming rumors from earlier this year that he will be stepping into the fintech world. And if that means I can double my 401k by keeping my hand on a Ford Bronco for 72 straight hours, I’m in!

⏸️ Pause ads are coming to Twitch, giving ad buyers a way to advertise without disrupting live streams, wherein there’s never a good place to cut to an ad. Details are scarce on whether creators will participate in monetization, but if they do, get ready to give your users great reasons to hit the pause button!

Creator Program Manager, Loaded

Loaded has been a longtime leader in game streamer management, and now with their Open World division, they’re starting to push hard into influencer marketing. This role will allow any gamer nerd who loves creators to interface with top streamers and awesome endemic and non-endemic gaming brands, and to work with proprietary programs and tech.

Social Media & Influencer Manager, Archer Meat Snacks

If you haven’t been paying attention to the meat stick market lately, it’s time to double back. Jacks Links isn’t the only game in town anymore. There’s PaleoValley, Chomps, and, of course, Archer. For meat-forward social media fans, this will be a great way to ride the protein wave to a market that loves irreverent posting.

Content & Creator Partnership Manager (Food Vertical) - Lemon8, ByteDance

Yes, this is the same ByteDance that owns TikTok. But if you haven’t heard of Lemon8, you should check it out. It’s kind of like gamified Instagram meets Pinterest. Although it hasn’t become explosively popular in the U.S. yet, it’s always somewhere in the top social media apps charts, and this can help you ride the wave with a very well funded company.