Reading · ICYMI by Lia Haberman

On my radar: I wasn’t really following the Phia affiliate drama until I read this Thread; Erling Haaland (+22%) and Jude Bellingham (+12.8%) gained the most Instagram followers during the QF & SF of the World Cup according to this report; it’s been a good week for people who hate vegetables; and I’m on board with the rise of beach clubs as luxury pop-up venues.

Instagram rolls back its Meta AI generative image tool after backlash
Meta is testing smart glasses that automatically record 24/7
Threads now allows “Private likes” on posts
TikTok announced a global content partnership with the NBA and WNBA
YouTube’s creative ecosystem contributed over $60 billion to the US GDP and supported more than 540K FT-equivalent jobs, according to a new report
Beehiiv launched programmatic ads for its newsletter writers
An interview with Reddit’s CMO Jim Squires; and his advice for brands trying to hack their way to better AEO search results
8 ways to use Reddit for business
Time released its annual Time 100 list of top creators

Following online (and completely predictable) backlash, Meta is rolling back an AI image tool that let you generate your own images from any public Instagram account.
Adam Mosseri told his AMA followers that Instagram users would have to pay for future in-app AI tools.
Threads announced that Communities can now add flair (emojis) to posts.
Threads now lets you toggle on “Private likes” in settings, where only you and the person who posted will be able to see that you liked their post.
Instagram Edits app announced you can now import your own font into Edits, automatically generate lyrics as captions, and search for video effects.
Meta is expanding AI voice translations on Instagram and Facebook — adding Japanese, Korean, French, German, and Italian.
Meta announced a range of new AI safety protections for teens and parents that lets parents using Instagram supervision tools know if their teen discusses suicide or self-harm.

YouTube provided an update on what it considers “inauthentic content” and how its policies will affect monetization of your videos.
YouTube released its 2025 U.S. YouTube Impact Report, backed by new research from Oxford Economics and YouTube internal data showing that the platform’s creative ecosystem contributed over $60 billion to the US GDP and supported more than 540,000 full-time equivalent jobs.
Google is renaming NotebookLM to Gemini Notebook.
Google announced you’ll now be star in your own AI videos simply by uploading a selfie and a short voice recording to Google Vids.

TikTok announced a new global content partnership with the NBA and WNBA. It’ll give creator access to events and highlights and provides new ad solutions for advertisers. Searches for “NBA” and “WNBA” are up globally, nearly 30% and 15%, respectively, since the start of 2026, according to TikTok.
TikTok shared that it’s testing a new opt-in tool called Likeness Detection with some US creators to surface and flag AI-generated content that uses their likeness without their consent.

LinkedIn published a blog post on how to create more engaging videos.

Spotify announced a new conversational user experience to choose what’s playing, learn about your favorite tunes, revisit your listening history, and more.
Spotify launched a new editorial series, Play x Play. The first episode tackles the question: Is the song of the summer officially dead?

Canva rolled out Canva Code 2.0 vibe coding to the entire Canva community that lets you build experiences like landing pages, learning hubs, web apps or games

X announced it’s boosting the visibility of your posts to your mutuals (people who you follow back).

Beehiiv introduced programmatic ads on its platform that automatically match the right advertiser to every newsletter audience. “Everyone gets access,” co-founder Tyler Denk told me. The only criteria for eligibility is being on a paid plan. “The big vision there is like what YouTube did for video, we want to do for newsletters, and then podcasts.”
Beehiiv’s programmatic announcement was part of a larger roll out of tools meant to give creators access to newsletters, podcasts, websites, paid subscriptions, digital products and more.

[Reddit Community Deli, Cannes Lions 2026]

You might have seen the speculation that Subtack or Meta’s new Forum app are the new Reddit.

But if you look at the data, Reddit seems to be the new — or maybe the same old — Reddit, consistently ranking as one of the internet’s most trusted sources.

That’s led a cat and mouse game of companies trying to spam subreddits in an effort to manipulate ChatGPT and Gemini search results; and Reddit announcing it will use AI to detect and block spam content.

In an ironic twist, even as brands obsess over their reputation and visibility on the platform, Reddit is focusing on a on a different signal: human beings. Two weeks ago, it launched People Are The Best, a new campaign celebrating human connection.

I spoke with Reddit CMO Jim Squires about this disconnect between companies trying to game AEO visibility on Reddit and the platform’s push to preserve what makes it special: real human conversations happening in its communities daily.

IYCMI: I’m sure you had insights that informed the new People Are the Best campaign but I find it fascinating that you managed to time it to the exact conversation we are all having right now about balancing AI with human creativity?

Jim Squires: AI is everywhere, perfectly curated feeds are everywhere, and so the conversation is shifting in that direction. It’s this counter trend: people are wanting more human connection and wanting real opinions on things.

Reddit is the most human place, and that’s really what people are craving.

And there are these massive categories like soccer, World Cup, beauty, and what we’re highlighting is that if you’re not Reddit before, during, after the big game or the big show, you’re just missing out on this incredible connection with other people.

ICYMI Everybody’s trying to figure out how to crack Reddit. So, this is a two-part question: One, what is your advice for brands who want to learn how to optimize their AEO visibility? And then, to follow up on that, what is your advice for brands that are trying to hack the system?

Jim Squires: First, my advice is to listen. We offer free insights for businesses to get a sense of: What are people saying about you?; What are they saying about your competitors?; What are they saying about the category?

Reddit is the greatest focus group that’s ever existed.

The other easy way to get going: People expect to see advertising. It’s when you start moving into their communities where it gets more tricky. So, I always advise, listen and start running campaigns, because we can get your creative and your message into the most relevant conversations in a way that they will be open to that message.

And then as you get really advanced, you may want to start entering into some of these conversations. But I advise brands to be citizens of these communities, not billboards, because people will sniff it out and it will have a counter effect.

We’re less focused on, ‘How do you game the LLMs?’ And there’s a practical matter, too. Even the model owners don’t know what’s going to come out of the model until it does. So to try to chase that is not the most productive way to approach it, which is why we don’t prioritize it.

ICYMI Between the social listening campaigns, the advertising and then that third category of community, are there any brands that come to mind?

Jim Squires: Have you seen the Backrooms movie? It just came out a couple of weeks ago. It has a really young director and was done with a really low budget.

The Backrooms community developed the concept years ago, and people have been talking about it, and working through it, and then this young director turned it into a movie. And it’s been a massive hit.

Now you’ve got this influx of new fans who just saw the movie with the old fans that created the movie... This whole discovering IP and developing IP in the entertainment industry has become a big, big thing.

ICYMI What is a backroom?

Jim Squires: This worker discovers that there’s a whole other world. You open the door and it’s a back room that goes on forever. It’s this maze and it creates all kinds of craziness.

In the entertainment space, Sydney Sweeney is doing a movie from an idea that someone wrote on Reddit. They were like, “Oh, we really like that, we want to turn that into a movie.” And so they’re developing it. It goes back to what I was saying, Reddit is the greatest focus group that’s ever existed.

ICYMI: Dove famously used Reddit criticism for an award-winning campaign. Do you see any other brands mining Reddit for similar criticism?

Jim Squires: No Reception Club is a small business on the platform. They ran ads and were getting negative comments on their bags and the price. They got in there and talked about, “The reason it’s at this price point is because we have a lifetime warranty. This is how we source the materials...” And they turned the whole conversation around just by being transparent and explaining why it is the way it is.

Fidelity launched an official subreddit: r/fidelityinvestments is a community hub where people can engage with each other and get answers about the company’s services

Major League Baseball has an active presence on Reddit. Sports fans use r/mlb to share news, post highlight clips, and chat about games

After facing price criticism, No Reception Club jumped into the comments on one of its ads to explain the cost of materials and lifetime warranty.

A sous chef promised to chop chives on Reddit everyday until he perfected his technique. Philadelphia cream cheese created an ad around the trend and later gifted the chef a set of knives.

Dove tapped Reddit for unfiltered consumer opinions — including the unflattering ones — to produce an award-winning campaign.

United Airlines uses Reddit to surface human stories, like a lost Pokémon card collection that sparked a global employee effort to replace it.

Warner Bros won the rights to a short story written by a high school English teacher. It’s now being developed as a movie with Sydney Sweeney attached to star and produce.

A24 distributed a “surprise horror hit” called Backrooms. The concept was originally developed on Reddit through a r/backrooms community that created lore based on dreary office spaces.

Brands quietly exploit the right to alter influencer content with AI - Bloomberg Law
Time released its annual Time 100 list of creators across 5 categories (titans, entertainers, leaders, phenoms and catalysts) - Time
Disney is using a glitzy L.A. premiere to court creators with Hollywood ambitions - TubeFilter

ICYMI: Reddit’s Priority Is People, Not Brands Trying to Hack the Platform

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