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The internet wouldn’t be the same without the Like button, the thumbs-up icon that Facebook and other online services turned into digital catnip. Like it or not, the button has served as a creative catalyst, a dopamine delivery system, and an emotional battering ram. It also became an international tourist attraction after Facebook plastered the symbol on a giant sign that stood outside its Silicon Valley headquarters until the company rebranded itself as Meta Platforms in 2021. A new book, Like: The Button That Changed The World, delves into the convoluted story behind a symbol that’s become both the manna and bane of a digitally driven society. It’s a tale that traces back to gladiator battles for survival during the Roman empire before fast-forwarding to the early 21st century when technology trailblazers such as Yelp cofounder Russ Simmons, Twitter cofounder Biz Stone, PayPal cofounder Max Levchin, YouTube cofounder Steve Chen, and Gmail inventor Paul Buchheit were experimenting with different ways using the currency of recognition to prod people to post compelling content online for free. As part of that noodling, a Yelp employee named Bob Goodson sat down on May 18, 2005, and drew a crude sketch of thumbs-up and thumbs-down gesture as a way for people to express their opinions about restaurant reviews posted on the site. Yelp passed on adopting Goodson’s suggested symbol and, instead, adopted the “useful,” “funny,” and “cool” buttons conceived by Simmons. But the discovery of that old sketch inspired Goodson to team up with Martin Reeves to explore how the Like button came to be in their new book. “It’s something simple and also elegant because the Like button says, ‘I like you, I like your content. And I am like you. I like you because I am like you, I am part of your tribe,’ ” Reeves said during an interview with the Associated Press. “But it’s very hard to answer the simple question, ‘Well, who invented the Like button?'” The social wellspring behind a social symbol Although Facebook is the main reason the Like button became so ubiquitous, the company didn’t invent it and almost discarded it as drivel. It took Facebook nearly two years to overcome the staunch resistance by CEO Mark Zuckerberg before finally introducing the symbol on its service on February 9, 2009—five years after the social network’s creation in a Harvard University dorm room. As happens with many innovations, the Like button was born out of necessity but it wasn’t the brainchild of a single person. The concept percolated for more than a decade in a Silicon Valley before Facebook finally embraced it. “Innovation is often social and Silicon Valley was the right place for all this happen because it has a culture of meet-ups, although it’s less so now,” Reeves said. “Everyone was getting together to talk about what they were working on at that time and it turned out a lot of them were working on the same stuff.” The effort to create a simple mechanism to digitally express approval or dismay sprouted from a wellspring of online services such as Yelp and YouTube whose success would hinge on their ability to post commentary or video that would help make their sites even more popular without forcing them to spend a lot of money for content. That effort required a feedback loop that wouldn’t require a lot of hoops to navigate. Hollywood’s role in the Like button’s saga And when Goodson was noodling around with his thumbs-up and thumbs-down gesture, it didn’t come out of a vacuum. Those techniques of signaling approval and disapproval had been ushered into the 21st century zeitgeist by the Academy Award-winning movie, “Gladiator,” where Emperor Commodus—portrayed by actor Joaquin Phoenix—used the gestures to either spare or slay combatants in the arena. But the positive feelings conjured by a thumbs up date even further back in popular culture, thanks to the 1950s-era character Fonzie played by Henry Winkler in the top-rated 1970s TV series, “Happy Days.” The gesture later became a way of expressing delight with a program via a remote control button for the digital video recorders made by TiVO during the early 2000s. Around the same time, Hot or Not—a site that solicited feedback on the looks of people who shared photos of themselves—began playing around with ideas that helped inspire the Like button, based on the book’s research. Others that contributed to the pool of helpful ideas included the pioneering news service Digg, the blogging platform Xanga, YouTube and another early video site, Vimeo. The button’s big breakthrough But Facebook unquestionably turned the Like button into a universally understood symbol, while also profiting the most from its entrance into the mainstream. And it almost didn’t happen. By 2007, Facebook engineers had been tinkering with a Like button, but Zuckerberg opposed it because he feared the social network was already getting too cluttered and, Reeves said, “is he didn’t actually want to do something that would be seen as trivial, that would cheapen the service.” But FriendFeed, a rival social network created by Buchheit and now OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor, had no such qualms, and unveiled its own Like button in October 2007. But the button wasn’t successful enough to keep the lights on at FriendFeed, and the service ended up being acquired by Facebook. By the time that deal was completed, Facebook had already introduced a Like button—only after Zuckerberg rebuffed the original idea of calling it an Awesome button “because nothing is more awesome than awesome,” according to the book’s research. Once Zuckerberg relented, Facebook quickly saw that the Like button not only helped keep its audience engaged on its social network but also made it easier to divine people’s individual interests and gather the insights required to sell the targeted advertising that accounted for most of Meta Platform’s $165 billion in revenue last year. The button’s success encouraged Facebook to take things even further by allowing other digital services to ingrain it into their feedback loops and then, in 2016, added six more types of emotions—”love,” “care,” “haha,” “wow,” “sad,” and “angry.” Facebook hasn’t publicly disclosed how many responses it has accumulated from the Like button and its other related options, but Levchin told the book’s authors that he believes the company has probably logged trillions of them. “What content is liked by humans…is probably one of the singularly most valuable things on the internet,” Levchin said in the book. The Like button also has created an epidemic of emotional problems, especially among adolescents, who feel forlorn if their posts are ignored and narcissists whose egos feast on the positive feedback. Reeves views those issues as part of the unintentional consequences that inevitably happen because “if you can’t even predict the beneficial effects of a technological innovation how could you possibly forecast the side effects and the interventions?” Even so, Reeves believes the Like button and the forces that coalesced to create it tapped into something uniquely human. “We thought serendipity of the innovation was part of the point,” Reeves said. “And I don’t think we can get bored with liking or having our capacity to compliment taken away so easily because it’s the product of 100,000 years of evolution.” —Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writer View the full article

Disney isn't bringing a lot of new content to its streaming platform in June, but there a few original and exclusive titles on the lineup. Season five of Disney Channel's animated comedy series Phineas and Ferb (June 6) will premiere with 10 episodes, returning for the first time since 2015. The show follows two stepbrothers trying to fill their time during the 104 days of summer vacation. Disney+ Original Ironheart will launch with a three-episode premiere at 6 p.m. PT on June 24. The Marvel Television miniseries is set after the events of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever and tells the origin story of Ironheart—MIT student and inventor Riri Williams (played by Dominique Thorne). Also premiering on the platform this month are documentaries Sally (June 17), about the first American woman astronaut, and Ocean with David Attenborough (June 8) as well as Disney's Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical (June 20). Finally, female-led sports show Vibe Check will land exclusively on Disney+ sometime during the month. Here's everything coming to Disney+ in June. Movies and complete series/seasons coming to Disney Plus in June 2025Arriving in JuneUnderdogs (Season 1) Vibe Check Arriving June 4Pupstruction (S2, 6 episodes) Arriving June 6Phineas and Ferb (Season 5) Arriving June 8Ocean with David Attenborough Arriving June 17SALLY Arriving June 20Frozen: The Hit Broadway Musical Arriving June 24Ironheart Hulu + ESPN content coming to Disney+ in June 2025As in previous months, Disney+ subscribers will also have access to select content from Hulu and ESPN. This includes live events like Day 1 of all PGA TOUR LIVE events, Day 1 of Wimbledon, and the Dallas Wings vs. Seattle Storm WNBA match-up. Here's a sampling of what else is coming to Disney+: Snowfall 9-1-1: Lone Star Station 19 Class of ‘09 Cruel Summer Death and Other Details High Fidelity Alien: Resurrection A Real Pain Predators Prom Dates ESPNFC Pardon the Interruption The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny Full Court Press Vince's Places P.K.'s Places 30 for 30 View the full article

Switch, PS5, and XBox might be the biggest names in video games, but David Lee and a group of entrepreneurial alums from companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Meta are carving out a niche market with Nex, a new alternative. The company’s Nex Playground device has sold more than 200,000 units. Instead of buying individual games, families buy a subscription-based collection of 40-plus titles. Like the old Nintendo Wii, Nex focuses on family-friendly, movement-based games. The Nex device plugs into TVs for motion-controlled experiences. Instead of controllers, the device uses a built-in camera that enables you to play games by moving your hands and feet. With national retail expansion underway across 5,000 stores, Nex positions itself as a simpler alternative to pricier, fancier, thumb-based video games. Fast Company spoke with Lee, the founding CEO, about how Nex competes against industry giants and how the company develops distinct hardware and games. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. How do you position Nex in relation to Nintendo and Xbox? We all have a focus on core customers. Nintendo went back to what they were doing—handheld gaming and Mario—their biggest franchises. Xbox users are gamers, people who got an Xbox to play games like Halo. When Microsoft was under pressure from PS4’s lower price, they unbundled Kinect and collapsed that system to compete. We come into this space without any of those existing customers. We decided from the ground up to serve motion gaming. The design of our device, the pricing, how we use one camera to track multiple people, moving sensors into software and AI—it’s all about keeping it affordable with a subscription service that takes care of the whole family. Why did you build a dedicated device after starting with mobile apps? Before we built Nex Playground, we were building motion games on phones. What we discovered is that when we create dedicated hardware instead, we have a much deeper relationship with customers. When there’s a device where the only thing it does is bring the family together to play active games, it shows big potential. When you use your TV for a motion-game experience, you pay much more attention to it than you would to a game on your phone. The experience is a lot better, and customers love it more. How are families using Nex in ways you didn’t expect? When we started searching for customers and building our Facebook community, which now has over 20,000 people, we discovered new use cases. We found that when kids come back from school, we have a half-hour where they just play. On weekends, they play when friends come over. We’ve also found that when kids are at school, parents want fitness experiences for themselves. Even grandparents derive benefits when they have something to do with their body. We’re defining what role we play for different people in the family, delivering benefits at different times of day, different days of the week, even different seasons of the year. In summer when kids are off school, we can occupy them and get them moving and learning. What’s your approach to developing games in a saturated market? We’re focusing on safety, privacy, and security first since we’re serving families. We have our first-party teams building games, but we also work with ten studio deals already, with seven games launched. We bring in partners whose games we like, and we share revenue with them. We want to keep our model simple—we have our subscription model and want to supply and delight users all year. We don’t want to open the system to many games that might be low quality. We’re curating a set of content and working with developers who are passionate about creating great things. Our business model is simple, honest, and sustainable—no ads, no in-app purchases. The moment you open to third parties, they think about different ways to make money. For families, we don’t want to overwhelm them—we just want to serve them really well. How do you keep up with hardware competition? We think about our hardware in a similar way to how Amazon thinks about the Kindle or Apple thinks about the iPad. Every year, we want to do something better to create perfect experiences. For example, we improved the remote control from 2023 to 2024. We learned that the joystick was a little hard for young kids to use—I saw my daughter struggling to press it—so we made it simpler. We’re always looking at what problems people face and how to improve. The hardware cycle is yearly, and we might be able to do something new each year. But we’re not thinking about something dramatically different—we have a pretty good long trajectory ahead. A lot of improvements actually come through software. With the same hardware, you get access to new technology we develop as detection technologies get better. We don’t want to force customers to buy new hardware to play something new. We think about compatibility and how not to fully obsolete customers. This is a device that can serve your family for years to come. Given how much attention is paid to Nintendo’s new Switch, how are people discovering Nex? According to our surveys, roughly 40% of customers hear about us from friends and families. The next-largest segment, about 20%, comes from our online ads. Another 13% first see us in retail stores. Currently, we’re in 700 Target stores, 100 Walmart locations, and 200 Best Buy stores. This year, we have a national retail expansion to over 5,000 stores. Amazon is also now recognizing us as a new gaming system category—if you look at Amazon video games, they put Nex Playground right next to PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch as top-level tabs, even though we’re way smaller than any of them. What’s your long-term vision for Nex? We want to keep kids active, bring families together, and even help keep elderly people active so they can stay independent. We want to tie your family together locally and remotely. We’re happy seeing more grandparents buying Nex for their grandkids and then saying “I want one too.” View the full article

Commuters in the New York City and New Jersey area are in for what is likely to be a weekend of increased congestion and more limited transit options after the engineers who run the New Jersey Transit rail system voted to go on strike. That strike is now in effect and could continue throughout the weekend—and potentially even longer. Here’s what you need to know about the NJ Transit strike. What’s happened? On Thursday, the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) announced that its members who run the trains in the New Jersey Transit Corporation, better known as NJ Transit, were officially on strike. The strike came after the BLET and NJ Transit failed to reach a deal on a new contract for the approximately 450 engineers and trainees who run the railway and are represented by the union. The main issue centers around a disagreement on wage increases for the workers. News of the strike is no doubt a disappointment to the 100,000 NYC and NJ commuters who use the line daily, especially after both sides were reportedly “close” to a deal. Talks between both sides went on for 15 hours on Thursday and ended shortly before 10 p.m., reports CNN. The strike then officially began at 12:01 a.m., today, Friday, May 16. It is the first time union members working for New Jersey Transit have gone on strike in 42 years. The last time NJ Transit workers took to the picket lines was in 1983. What do the striking rail workers want? The BLET’s union members are striking because no acceptable deal was reached on wage increases for its members. In a notice announcing the strike, BLET says that its NJ Transit members have not received a raise for five years. The union also notes that NJ Transit engineers “make at least $10 less per hour” than the engineers for other passenger railroads that share the same train platforms as the ones used by NJ Transit. “NJ Transit has a half-billion dollars for a swanky new headquarters and $53 million for decorating the interior of that unnecessary building,” BLET National President Mark Wallace said in a prepared statement. “They gave away $20 million in revenue during a fare holiday last year. They have money for penthouse views and pet projects, just not for their front-line workers. Enough is enough. We will stay out until our members receive the fair pay that they deserve.” In addition to the strike now in effect, from 4 a.m. this morning BLET members began picketing at multiple locations, including NJ Transit’s Newark headquarters, New York’s Penn Station, and the Atlantic City Rail Terminal in Atlantic City. The union says that “despite the transit agency having the funds for a raise,” NJ Transit managers walked out of talks before 10 p.m. on Thursday. What does NJ Transit say? NJ Transit, for its part, has posted a fact sheet about the strike, which lays out six claims and what the transit agency says are the “facts” about the claims. NJ Transit says that it offered BLET members a “competitive wage and benefits package that all 14 other rail labor unions accepted in 2021.” It also says that under its offer, NJ Transit locomotive engineers would have seen their average total earnings rise from $135,000 per year now to $172,856 as of July 1, 2027. The transit agency says these wages are “competitive within the region” and higher than the wages Philadelphia’s SEPTA workers receive. It concedes that the wages are lower than those received by MTA (Metro-North Railroad and Long Island Rail Road) workers in New York, but it adds, “It isn’t reasonable to live and work in New Jersey, but demand to be paid like you live and work in New York.” How long could the strike last? That is impossible to tell at this point. In theory, NJ Transit and BLET could agree to return to the negotiating table at any time—although that’s unlikely to happen today. However, on Thursday, NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri said that both sides are currently scheduled to start negotiating again on Sunday. But just because negotiations are scheduled—or even begin—doesn’t mean the strike will be called off anytime soon. Indeed, if BLET would call off the strike, it may lessen the pressure on NJ Transit to meet their demands. CNN notes that when Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA) workers went on strike in the 1980s, the strike lasted for 108 days. A strike of Metro-North workers lasted 42 days, and a strike of Long Island Railroad workers lasted 11 days. What should I do if I plan to use NJ Transit today? You should rethink your travel plans. NJ Transit has posted a notice warning of the “complete suspension” of services on its rail lines. The agency says it “strongly encourages all those who can work from home to do so and limit traveling on the NJ TRANSIT system to essential purposes only.” However, if you do need to commute, the agency says that it is “adding very limited capacity” to existing New York commuter routes on its bus services. The agency also says that from May 19, its regional Park & Ride service “will operate on a first come, first served basis.” Commuters who need to use NJ transit during the strike are strongely encouraged to check out the agency’s rail strike information page here. What if I’m seeing the Shakira or Beyoncé concerts? From this weekend, there are also two large music events planned in the area that NJ Transit normally serves. The first is the Shakira concert at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, which begins at 7:30 p.m. tonight, May 16. Then, Beyoncé is scheduled to perform at the same stadium for five nights between May 22 and May 29. MetLife Stadium has posted some travel options for concertgoers who are seeing the Shakira show tonight. The stadium points out that there will be no NJ Transit bus or rail service to the stadium tonight. It says that those coming to the concert from New York City may be able to use the Coach USA bus service, which it says will be “limited.” The venue also asks people who plan to arrive by car to please carpool and arrive early to help ease congestion. Will Congress step in? When it comes to transportation strikes, Congress does have the authority to act and compel workers to accept a deal and return to their jobs, notes CNN. The last time Congress did this was in December 2022 when it voted to force workers from the country’s four major freight railroads to accept a deal. However, CNN points out that Congress likely felt more compelled to step in at that time because the strike affected most of the country. The NJ Transit strike is a local affair, which means Congress may be more reluctant to interfere. View the full article

Key Takeaways Influencer Earnings: The richest Instagram influencers can earn between six to seven figures per sponsored post, showcasing the financial potential of influencer marketing. Engagement Importance: High engagement rates are crucial; they lead to better visibility and more lucrative sponsorships, benefiting both influencers and brands. Diverse Influencer Types: The landscape includes both celebrity and non-celebrity influencers, each offering unique opportunities for targeted marketing strategies. Strategic Brand Partnerships: Successful collaborations align with influencer audiences, enhancing authenticity and driving brand awareness through sponsored content and product placements. Content Creation: Effective influencers utilize engaging storytelling through formats like Instagram Stories and videos to resonate with their followers more than traditional advertising. Data-Driven Insights: Using social media analytics to track engagement and follower growth helps in refining strategies and maximizing the return on investment for influencer collaborations. Instagram has transformed from a simple photo-sharing app into a powerful platform where influencers reign supreme. With millions of followers and lucrative brand partnerships, some individuals have turned their online presence into a goldmine. You might be surprised to learn just how much these influencers earn, often raking in six or even seven figures for a single post. In this article, we’ll dive into the world of the richest Instagram influencers, exploring who they are and what makes their content so compelling. From fashion moguls to fitness gurus, these trendsetters not only shape the industry but also redefine what it means to be successful in the digital age. Get ready to discover the names and figures behind the glitz and glamour of Instagram’s elite. Overview of Richest Instagram Influencers Instagram influencers leverage their platforms to generate substantial income, making influencer marketing a powerful strategy for small businesses. Influencers often earn from six to seven figures per post, highlighting their influence across various industries. Their content creation focuses on engaging storytelling, connecting with audiences through visually appealing posts, videos, and Instagram Stories. These top influencers shape social media trends and enhance brand awareness through strategic brand partnerships. By successfully employing effective hashtags and leveraging social media analytics, they maintain high engagement rates, vital for effective social media campaigns. Their ability to foster community management and customer interaction creates an authentic connection with followers, which small businesses can emulate to grow their own online presence. Incorporating influencer partnerships into your social media marketing strategy can improve organic reach and boost social media engagement. By collaborating with the right influencers, you can enhance brand consistency, optimize content sharing, and utilize their audience targeting skills, thereby achieving a higher return on investment (ROI) for your campaigns. Stay attentive to social media tools that can monitor the effectiveness of these influencer collaborations. Track progress through social media analytics to ensure alignment with your brand voice and narrative. By understanding the landscape of the richest Instagram influencers, you can position your small business to not only navigate but thrive in the competitive world of social media. Top Earners in the Industry The richest Instagram influencers leverage their massive social media followings to generate significant income through partnerships and endorsements. Their success showcases the potential of influencer marketing for small businesses. Celebrity Influencers Celebrity influencers dominate the Instagram landscape. They maintain high engagement rates and millions of followers, making them valuable for brand partnerships. For instance, Cristiano Ronaldo attracts 651 million followers and earns between $2.5 million to $3 million per sponsored post. Utilize his brand power and visibility when strategizing your social media marketing. Kylie Jenner, with 394 million followers, generates nearly $2.3 million to $2.386 million per post. Her brands, Kylie Cosmetics and Kylie Skin, tap into beauty and fashion markets, demonstrating effective content creation and community management. Selena Gomez, boasting 421 million followers, earns about $2.5 million through paid partnerships. Her engagement rate is notable, with strategies that enhance brand awareness and storytelling through Rare Beauty. Celebrity influencers not only cultivate personal brands but also shape social media trends. You can learn from their multi-platform strategies to enhance your own online presence. Non-Celebrity Influencers Non-celebrity influencers also make significant income, often through niche markets. They typically engage with smaller, dedicated audiences, making them suitable for targeted campaigns. Examples include micro-influencers who focus on specific topics, from fitness to cooking. Fitness Influencers often share workout routines and meal plans, promoting wellness brands. They connect personally with their followers, driving customer interaction and engagement rates. Travel Influencers utilize stunning visuals and storytelling, collaborating with tourism boards and travel agencies. Their content showcases experiences, attracting social media followers who value authenticity and adventure. Non-celebrity influencers can enhance your social media strategy. Consider integrating their methods into your campaigns to build organic growth and brand consistency. Leveraging user-generated content and focused hashtags can further boost your organic reach across platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Factors Influencing Their Wealth Several elements contribute to the wealth of the richest Instagram influencers. These factors play a crucial role in maximizing their earnings and effectiveness on the platform. Engagement Rates Engagement rate significantly impacts influencer income. Higher engagement rates lead to better visibility and more lucrative sponsorships. Influencers with active followers generate more interactions through likes, comments, and shares on their posts. Small businesses benefit from partnering with influencers who maintain high engagement metrics. Such partnerships enhance brand awareness and attract new social media followers, driving organic growth for your brand. Brand Partnerships Brand partnerships are vital for influencers’ financial success. Successful collaborations often yield substantial revenue through sponsored content, product placements, and social media campaigns. Influencers carefully choose brands that align with their audience and maintain brand consistency. When you engage with influencers for marketing, ensure they embody your brand voice and values. This alignment fosters authenticity, appealing to their followers and enhancing customer interaction with your offerings. Utilizing influencer partnerships strategically can boost your small business’s online presence and improve social media ROI. Impact on Marketing Trends Richest Instagram influencers dramatically reshape marketing trends through their extensive reach and high engagement rates. These influencers create compelling content that resonates with their audiences, effectively driving brand awareness and fostering customer interaction. When you partner with such influencers, you tap into their ability to enhance your small business’s social media presence and boost organic reach. Influencer marketing poses significant advantages for social media campaigns. As you strategize, consider the impact these influencers have on consumer behavior. Their recommendations often lead to increased sales, as followers trust their endorsements. This trust translates to higher engagement rates, making your paid ads more effective when paired with influencer partnerships. Moreover, influencers excel in content creation, utilizing formats like Instagram stories and video content to captivate audiences. This style creates a dynamic environment that resonates more than traditional advertising methods. By harnessing their storytelling abilities and aligning with their brand voice, you create authentic connections with potential customers. Utilizing social media analytics helps in assessing the success of influencer partnerships. Metrics like engagement rates and follower growth provide insight into what works. Adjust your social media strategy based on data, and leverage tools that track performance across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. Tailoring your content calendar to incorporate influencer collaborations ensures consistent messaging and maximizes the impact of your marketing efforts. Working with the richest Instagram influencers creates valuable opportunities to elevate your small business’s brand awareness and drive meaningful connections with your audience. As you explore these partnerships, keep an eye on the latest social media trends to maintain a competitive edge in the ever-evolving landscape of social media marketing. Conclusion The landscape of Instagram influencers is ever-evolving and filled with opportunities for brands and businesses. By understanding the dynamics of the richest influencers you can leverage their reach and engagement to enhance your marketing strategies. Whether you choose to collaborate with celebrity influencers or tap into the authenticity of non-celebrity influencers, the potential for growth is immense. These influencers not only drive trends but also foster genuine connections with their audiences. Embracing influencer partnerships can significantly elevate your brand’s visibility and credibility in the crowded social media space. Stay informed about the latest trends and adapt your approach to make the most of this powerful marketing tool. Frequently Asked Questions What is the main focus of the article on Instagram influencers? The article explores the evolution of Instagram from a simple photo-sharing app to a platform driven by influencers earning significant income, detailing who the richest influencers are and how they impact various industries. How do influencers make money on Instagram? Influencers generate income primarily through sponsored posts, brand partnerships, and product placements, often earning six or seven figures for a single post due to their extensive reach and high engagement rates. Who are some of the richest Instagram influencers mentioned? The article highlights celebrity influencers like Cristiano Ronaldo, Kylie Jenner, and Selena Gomez, who lead in followers and earnings, demonstrating their brand power on the platform. What is the difference between celebrity and non-celebrity influencers? Celebrity influencers have millions of followers and high earnings per post, while non-celebrity influencers, such as micro-influencers, engage smaller, niche audiences, making them ideal for targeted marketing campaigns. How do engagement rates influence influencer earnings? Higher engagement rates increase visibility and lead to more lucrative sponsorship opportunities, helping both influencers and partnering businesses to achieve better marketing outcomes. Why is influencer marketing beneficial for small businesses? Partnering with influencers helps small businesses enhance brand awareness and foster genuine connections with their audience, leading to increased sales and improved returns on social media investments. What content formats do influencers use to engage audiences effectively? Influencers often utilize captivating formats like Instagram stories, video content, and visually appealing posts to gather audience attention and create a dynamic online presence. How can businesses leverage social media analytics in influencer partnerships? Utilizing social media analytics allows businesses to measure the success of influencer collaborations, adjust their marketing strategies, and maximize their engagement and ROI in influencer-driven campaigns. Image Via Envato This article, "Unveiling the Richest Instagram Influencers and Their Impact on Modern Marketing" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Key Takeaways Influencer Earnings: The richest Instagram influencers can earn between six to seven figures per sponsored post, showcasing the financial potential of influencer marketing. Engagement Importance: High engagement rates are crucial; they lead to better visibility and more lucrative sponsorships, benefiting both influencers and brands. Diverse Influencer Types: The landscape includes both celebrity and non-celebrity influencers, each offering unique opportunities for targeted marketing strategies. Strategic Brand Partnerships: Successful collaborations align with influencer audiences, enhancing authenticity and driving brand awareness through sponsored content and product placements. Content Creation: Effective influencers utilize engaging storytelling through formats like Instagram Stories and videos to resonate with their followers more than traditional advertising. Data-Driven Insights: Using social media analytics to track engagement and follower growth helps in refining strategies and maximizing the return on investment for influencer collaborations. Instagram has transformed from a simple photo-sharing app into a powerful platform where influencers reign supreme. With millions of followers and lucrative brand partnerships, some individuals have turned their online presence into a goldmine. You might be surprised to learn just how much these influencers earn, often raking in six or even seven figures for a single post. In this article, we’ll dive into the world of the richest Instagram influencers, exploring who they are and what makes their content so compelling. From fashion moguls to fitness gurus, these trendsetters not only shape the industry but also redefine what it means to be successful in the digital age. Get ready to discover the names and figures behind the glitz and glamour of Instagram’s elite. Overview of Richest Instagram Influencers Instagram influencers leverage their platforms to generate substantial income, making influencer marketing a powerful strategy for small businesses. Influencers often earn from six to seven figures per post, highlighting their influence across various industries. Their content creation focuses on engaging storytelling, connecting with audiences through visually appealing posts, videos, and Instagram Stories. These top influencers shape social media trends and enhance brand awareness through strategic brand partnerships. By successfully employing effective hashtags and leveraging social media analytics, they maintain high engagement rates, vital for effective social media campaigns. Their ability to foster community management and customer interaction creates an authentic connection with followers, which small businesses can emulate to grow their own online presence. Incorporating influencer partnerships into your social media marketing strategy can improve organic reach and boost social media engagement. By collaborating with the right influencers, you can enhance brand consistency, optimize content sharing, and utilize their audience targeting skills, thereby achieving a higher return on investment (ROI) for your campaigns. Stay attentive to social media tools that can monitor the effectiveness of these influencer collaborations. Track progress through social media analytics to ensure alignment with your brand voice and narrative. By understanding the landscape of the richest Instagram influencers, you can position your small business to not only navigate but thrive in the competitive world of social media. Top Earners in the Industry The richest Instagram influencers leverage their massive social media followings to generate significant income through partnerships and endorsements. Their success showcases the potential of influencer marketing for small businesses. Celebrity Influencers Celebrity influencers dominate the Instagram landscape. They maintain high engagement rates and millions of followers, making them valuable for brand partnerships. For instance, Cristiano Ronaldo attracts 651 million followers and earns between $2.5 million to $3 million per sponsored post. Utilize his brand power and visibility when strategizing your social media marketing. Kylie Jenner, with 394 million followers, generates nearly $2.3 million to $2.386 million per post. Her brands, Kylie Cosmetics and Kylie Skin, tap into beauty and fashion markets, demonstrating effective content creation and community management. Selena Gomez, boasting 421 million followers, earns about $2.5 million through paid partnerships. Her engagement rate is notable, with strategies that enhance brand awareness and storytelling through Rare Beauty. Celebrity influencers not only cultivate personal brands but also shape social media trends. You can learn from their multi-platform strategies to enhance your own online presence. Non-Celebrity Influencers Non-celebrity influencers also make significant income, often through niche markets. They typically engage with smaller, dedicated audiences, making them suitable for targeted campaigns. Examples include micro-influencers who focus on specific topics, from fitness to cooking. Fitness Influencers often share workout routines and meal plans, promoting wellness brands. They connect personally with their followers, driving customer interaction and engagement rates. Travel Influencers utilize stunning visuals and storytelling, collaborating with tourism boards and travel agencies. Their content showcases experiences, attracting social media followers who value authenticity and adventure. Non-celebrity influencers can enhance your social media strategy. Consider integrating their methods into your campaigns to build organic growth and brand consistency. Leveraging user-generated content and focused hashtags can further boost your organic reach across platforms like Instagram and TikTok. Factors Influencing Their Wealth Several elements contribute to the wealth of the richest Instagram influencers. These factors play a crucial role in maximizing their earnings and effectiveness on the platform. Engagement Rates Engagement rate significantly impacts influencer income. Higher engagement rates lead to better visibility and more lucrative sponsorships. Influencers with active followers generate more interactions through likes, comments, and shares on their posts. Small businesses benefit from partnering with influencers who maintain high engagement metrics. Such partnerships enhance brand awareness and attract new social media followers, driving organic growth for your brand. Brand Partnerships Brand partnerships are vital for influencers’ financial success. Successful collaborations often yield substantial revenue through sponsored content, product placements, and social media campaigns. Influencers carefully choose brands that align with their audience and maintain brand consistency. When you engage with influencers for marketing, ensure they embody your brand voice and values. This alignment fosters authenticity, appealing to their followers and enhancing customer interaction with your offerings. Utilizing influencer partnerships strategically can boost your small business’s online presence and improve social media ROI. Impact on Marketing Trends Richest Instagram influencers dramatically reshape marketing trends through their extensive reach and high engagement rates. These influencers create compelling content that resonates with their audiences, effectively driving brand awareness and fostering customer interaction. When you partner with such influencers, you tap into their ability to enhance your small business’s social media presence and boost organic reach. Influencer marketing poses significant advantages for social media campaigns. As you strategize, consider the impact these influencers have on consumer behavior. Their recommendations often lead to increased sales, as followers trust their endorsements. This trust translates to higher engagement rates, making your paid ads more effective when paired with influencer partnerships. Moreover, influencers excel in content creation, utilizing formats like Instagram stories and video content to captivate audiences. This style creates a dynamic environment that resonates more than traditional advertising methods. By harnessing their storytelling abilities and aligning with their brand voice, you create authentic connections with potential customers. Utilizing social media analytics helps in assessing the success of influencer partnerships. Metrics like engagement rates and follower growth provide insight into what works. Adjust your social media strategy based on data, and leverage tools that track performance across platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. Tailoring your content calendar to incorporate influencer collaborations ensures consistent messaging and maximizes the impact of your marketing efforts. Working with the richest Instagram influencers creates valuable opportunities to elevate your small business’s brand awareness and drive meaningful connections with your audience. As you explore these partnerships, keep an eye on the latest social media trends to maintain a competitive edge in the ever-evolving landscape of social media marketing. Conclusion The landscape of Instagram influencers is ever-evolving and filled with opportunities for brands and businesses. By understanding the dynamics of the richest influencers you can leverage their reach and engagement to enhance your marketing strategies. Whether you choose to collaborate with celebrity influencers or tap into the authenticity of non-celebrity influencers, the potential for growth is immense. These influencers not only drive trends but also foster genuine connections with their audiences. Embracing influencer partnerships can significantly elevate your brand’s visibility and credibility in the crowded social media space. Stay informed about the latest trends and adapt your approach to make the most of this powerful marketing tool. Frequently Asked Questions What is the main focus of the article on Instagram influencers? The article explores the evolution of Instagram from a simple photo-sharing app to a platform driven by influencers earning significant income, detailing who the richest influencers are and how they impact various industries. How do influencers make money on Instagram? Influencers generate income primarily through sponsored posts, brand partnerships, and product placements, often earning six or seven figures for a single post due to their extensive reach and high engagement rates. Who are some of the richest Instagram influencers mentioned? The article highlights celebrity influencers like Cristiano Ronaldo, Kylie Jenner, and Selena Gomez, who lead in followers and earnings, demonstrating their brand power on the platform. What is the difference between celebrity and non-celebrity influencers? Celebrity influencers have millions of followers and high earnings per post, while non-celebrity influencers, such as micro-influencers, engage smaller, niche audiences, making them ideal for targeted marketing campaigns. How do engagement rates influence influencer earnings? Higher engagement rates increase visibility and lead to more lucrative sponsorship opportunities, helping both influencers and partnering businesses to achieve better marketing outcomes. Why is influencer marketing beneficial for small businesses? Partnering with influencers helps small businesses enhance brand awareness and foster genuine connections with their audience, leading to increased sales and improved returns on social media investments. What content formats do influencers use to engage audiences effectively? Influencers often utilize captivating formats like Instagram stories, video content, and visually appealing posts to gather audience attention and create a dynamic online presence. How can businesses leverage social media analytics in influencer partnerships? Utilizing social media analytics allows businesses to measure the success of influencer collaborations, adjust their marketing strategies, and maximize their engagement and ROI in influencer-driven campaigns. Image Via Envato This article, "Unveiling the Richest Instagram Influencers and Their Impact on Modern Marketing" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Welcome to “Cookbook of the Week.” This is a series where I highlight cookbooks that are unique, easy to use, or just special to me. While finding a particular recipe online serves a quick purpose, flipping through a truly excellent cookbook has a magic all its own. Baking bread isn't for everyone, and I get it: Spending hours (or days) making one “simple” staple item that you could easily purchase at the store for a few dollars is arguably absurd. I fully accept that I may never be able to bring folks who feel this way over to the other side, and that’s fine. But what about the home cooks who are intrigued, rather than bothered, by the idea of bread baking? Despite generations-worth of recipes and tips, yeast-raised loaves are notoriously finicky, and nothing will defeat your spirit quite like tossing your third dense and doughy sourdough attempt into the compost bin. That’s why I chose to spotlight Bread Baking for Beginners this week. This cookbook creates a safe space where you can build the confidence and know-how you'll need for your illustrious future as a bread baker. A bit about the bookAs you can tell from the title, Bread Baking for Beginners has clear intentions. Author Bonnie Ohara has been the owner and baker of Alchemy Bread since 2014, and her experience of slingin' dough comes through on every page. She has a kind and teacherly way of instructing you on bread baking in this cookbook, and frankly, it’s a breath of fresh air in contrast to the aloof, know-it-all approach you’ll find all over the internet. This cookbook has a somewhat curriculum-style progression, but without ever feeling like a textbook. It’s actually quite approachable: Starting with terminology and equipment, and then moving from simple no-knead breads over to kneaded breads, and proceeding to enriched breads and sourdough starters, Ohara teaches you how to walk before you run. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann A great cookbook for the wannabe bread-headBeing a beginner at something is a vulnerable state. A messed up loaf of bread is akin to rejection, and a lot of people can’t handle that feeling. That’s why it’s important to have a good teacher. Throughout the pages of Bread Baking for Beginners, Ohara is there to cheer you on, and I fully believe that kind of supportive encouragement is what can keep a new baker coming back to the kitchen after a failed loaf or two. Ohara’s encouragement is never exaggerated or disingenuous. She has her own way of letting you know that perfection isn’t the goal. A little wiggle to your ficelle? It’s character! Your dough hasn’t risen enough? Don’t worry, it’s totally normal to adjust the proofing time on the fly. Every recipe is easy to start, with a short headnote and even shorter ingredient list, and the instructions are always clear. I appreciate that each recipe includes how to shape and how to check for proofing, because that can look and feel different depending on the type of bread you’re making. And what’s a lesson without a Q&A session? Common problems and helpful FAQs sections appear throughout. You’ll get likely answers for why your dough was too dense and why it exploded out of the bottom instead of the score mark. She'll offer suggestions on what to do if your loaf is seemingly ruined. Of course this is helpful for next time, but it also normalizes the act of messing up: It's all a part of learning. But unlike in math class, you can snack on your mistakes. The bread I made this weekI don’t normally go for no-knead breads, but I think they are the most welcoming recipes for new bread bakers. Clearly Ohara agrees, because they’re in the first chapter. From her offerings, I made the Master Recipe for No-Knead Breads. As may be expected, it is a classic four-ingredient lean bread. You can’t get simpler than flour, water, salt, and yeast. I’m not new to bread baking (you can peep my sourdough boule recipe here), so I was a little surprised to see all-purpose flour used. Bread flour is usually the go-to for its higher gluten content, which leads to better structure and increased elasticity. Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann I flipped to the front to check out the author’s thoughts on the ingredient choice and she makes it clear that not only has she had success with regular all-purpose flour, but that it’s more accessible for most home cooks. I respect this choice. If a person can be successful with fewer obstacles, then they can make the switch on their own if and when they choose. However, a kitchen scale is also required (all of the measurements are in grams with no volume option), so there is still some expectation you'll acquire the right tools before getting started. (Personally, I'd switch to bread flour for this type of recipe.) Her no-knead bread is as simple as promised. I weighed my ingredients and mashed them all up with a wooden spoon as thoroughly as I could without it qualifying as kneading. As long as you aren't using expired yeast, I can’t see this bread failing to come to life. Ohara is very clear about ambient temperatures and reminds you of the ideal conditions for the best rise. Even with that advice, and a decade of bread baking under my belt, I managed to overproof my no-knead dough, but I’m not mad about it. The loaf came out light and evenly aerated. It strikes me as a good sandwich bread. And it's Bread Baking 101 that it takes a few trials to learn the personality of a new bread recipe. I’ll try it again soon enough. How to buy itI normally grab the hardcover for cookbooks, but I actually went with the softcover this week. It’s a great price, and since it’s more of a learning cookbook than a display piece, I figure I won’t feel as bad if the pages get flour, oil, or water marks on them. If you haven’t been lately, take a walk to your nearest bookstore and see if you can find it on the shelves. Bread Baking for Beginners: The Essential Guide to Baking Kneaded Breads, No-Knead Breads, and Enriched Breads $9.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $19.99 Save $10.00 Shop Now Shop Now $9.99 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg $19.99 Save $10.00 View the full article

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Cory Joseph has been blind since birth. So he’s among the people Apple aims to serve with an addition to its App Store called “Accessibility Nutrition Labels,” one of a raft of features the company announced earlier this week to mark Global Accessibility Awareness Day. Once the labels go live later this year, each app’s listing will detail the accessibility features it supports, such as the VoiceOver screen reader, voice input, options to adjust text size and screen contrast, and captioned audio. These enabling technologies can be the difference between an app being essential and unusable: “Having this level of transparency from the App Store is huge,” says Joseph. He isn’t just one of the users who will benefit from that information, though. As a principal accessibility solutions architect at CVS Health, Joseph is in the business of making sure software works for everybody. Given his employer’s scale—it’s the world’s second-largest healthcare company by revenue and reaches 100 million people a day—it’s a job with the potential for deep real-world impact. When using CVS’s apps, “everyone’s trying to find the best care, and we want to make sure that’s barrier-free for everyone,” explains Joseph. The 6-year-old team he’s on has been responsible for achievements that go well beyond taking advantage of the core accessibility features offered by Apple and other platform providers. In 2020, for instance, the company introduced a CVS Pharmacy app feature called Spoken Rx—“a baby of mine,” Joseph says. Special radio-frequency identification (RFID) labels on prescription containers enable it to read aloud vital information such as dosage instructions. CVS Health has also made some of its investments in accessibility freely available to other developers by open-sourcing them, including iOS and Android code, an automated system for testing website usability, and tools for annotating web designs in Figma. As a field, accessibility has come a long way since Apple first dedicated a team to it, initially known as the Office of Special Education. Over 40 years, the company has built a wealth of functionality into its products to facilitate their use by people with disabilities, including the technologies that make the iPhone useful even if you can’t see its touchscreen interface. Some of its recent advances, such as on-device generation of custom synthetic voices, would have been unimaginable just a few years ago. This week’s announcements even include support for brain-computer interfaces. By contrast, there’s nothing gee-whizzy about the Accessibility Nutrition Labels themselves. They just summarize the features that a given app has enabled. But by doing that in such a straightforward, prominent way, they’ll not only aid millions of users but also give some glory to the software makers who take accessible design seriously. Rather than be embarrassed by listings that make their lack of effort obvious, developers who don’t yet have much to brag about might finally get with the program. Joseph hopes that the labels’ associations are only positive. “It’s easy to think about this sort of thing as a badge of shame, and I think that’s not the right way to think about this,” he told me. “This is an opportunity for independent developers, large organizations, and everyone in between to highlight the good work they do.” Even though Joseph works for a company that has dedicated significant mindshare and money to that good work, he’s up front about the obstacles to rapid progress that large companies face, even when they have all the right intentions. “I would be lying if I said that there aren’t challenges,” he told me. “We’re a gigantic organization. There are challenges in every gigantic organization. Of course, we balance all of our work and plan everything out as best as we can, and we deliver the most successful experience that we can across our applications.” The good news, he adds, is that CVS Health-size resources aren’t necessary to make software accessible. “Realistically, it’s easier for smaller developers,” he says. “They can move more quickly, they can update their code faster, and they can adapt to and take in their user feedback in real time and make those changes by engaging directly. For independent and smaller developers, this shouldn’t be a burden.” I find that take heartening. And if Joseph is right that app creators don’t have to be humongous to get inclusive design right, Accessibility Nutrition Labels will soon prove it. You’ve been reading Plugged In, Fast Company’s weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you—or if you’re reading it on FastCompany.com—you can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company Donald The President says he’s our ‘crypto president,’ but he’s tanking its best shot at adoption The president’s deep involvement in the crypto industry is raising red flags in Washington, leading to the collapse of a key stablecoin bill. Read More → AI is printing the rocket engine that could beat SpaceX at its own game Leap 71 is developing AI to build rocket engines faster and cheaper than ever before. Read More → Couples are saying ‘I do’ in ‘Minecraft’ as virtual weddings become more popular More couples are tying the knot in digital worlds, saving money and celebrating love in the places they met online. Read More → Apple teams up with a brain-computer startup to turn thoughts into device control The tech giant is working with Synchron to develop neural interfaces that let users control Apple devices with their brains. Read More → Meta is building a new data center in Louisiana—and this Senate committee wants to know why it’s being powered by gas (exclusive) The local utility says Meta’s AI data center requires three new natural gas plants. The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is asking how this fits with Meta’s climate goals. Read More → These 5 free AI-powered Chrome extensions make Gmail so much better Significantly improve your Gmail experience without breaking the bank. Read More→ View the full article

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It has been an odd few weeks for generative AI systems, with ChatGPT suddenly turning sycophantic, and Grok, xAI’s chatbot, becoming obsessed with South Africa. Fast Company spoke to Steven Adler, a former research scientist for OpenAI who until November 2024 led safety-related research and programs for first-time product launches and more-speculative long-term AI systems about both—and what he thinks might have gone wrong. The interview has been edited for length and clarity. What do you make of these two incidents in recent weeks—ChatGPT’s sudden sycophancy and Grok’s South Africa obsession—of AI models going haywire? The high-level thing I make of it is that AI companies are still really struggling with getting AI systems to behave how they want, and that there is a wide gap between the ways that people try to go about this today—whether it’s to give a really precise instruction in the system prompt or feed a model training data or fine-tuning data that you think surely demonstrate the behavior you want there—and reliably getting models to do the things you want and to not do the things you want to avoid. Can they ever get to that point of certainty? I’m not sure. There are some methods that I feel optimistic about—if companies took their time and were not under pressure to really speed through testing. One idea is this paradigm called control, as opposed to alignment. So the idea being, even if your AI “wants” different things than you want, or has different goals than you want, maybe you can recognize that somehow and just stop it from taking certain actions or saying or doing certain things. But that paradigm is not widely adopted at the moment, and so at the moment, I’m pretty pessimistic. What’s stopping it being adopted? Companies are competing on a bunch of dimensions, including user experience, and people want responses faster. There’s the gratifying thing of seeing the AI start to compose its response right away. There’s some real user cost of safety mitigations that go against that. Another aspect is, I’ve written a piece about why it’s so important for AI companies to be really careful about the ways that their leading AI systems are used within the company. If you have engineers using the latest GPT model to write code to improve the company’s security, if a model turns out to be misaligned and wants to break out of the company or do some other thing that undermines security, it now has pretty direct access. So part of the issue today is AI companies, even though they’re using AI in all these sensitive ways, haven’t invested in actually monitoring and understanding how their own employees are using these AI systems, because it adds more friction to their researchers being able to use them for other productive uses. I guess we’ve seen a lower-stakes version of that with Anthropic [where a data scientist working for the company used AI to support their evidence in a court case, which included a hallucinatory reference to an academic article]. I obviously don’t know the specifics. It’s surprising to me that an AI expert would submit testimony or evidence that included hallucinated court cases without having checked it. It isn’t surprising to me that an AI system would hallucinate things like that. These problems are definitely far from solved, which I think points to a reason that it’s important to check them very carefully. You wrote a multi-thousand-word piece on ChatGPT’s sycophancy and what happened. What did happen? I would separate what went wrong initially versus what I found in terms of what still is going wrong. Initially, it seems that OpenAI started using new signals for what direction to push its AI into—or broadly, when users had given the chatbot a thumbs-up, they used this data to make the chatbot behave more in that direction, and it was penalized for thumb-down. And it happens to be that some people really like flattery. In small doses, that’s fine enough. But in aggregate this produced an initial chatbot that was really inclined to blow smoke. The issue with how it became deployed is that OpenAI’s governance around what passes, what evaluations it runs, is not good enough. And in this case, even though they had a goal for their models to not be sycophantic—this is written in the company’s foremost documentation about how their models should behave—they did not actually have any tests for this. What I then found is that even this version that is fixed still behaves in all sorts of weird, unexpected ways. Sometimes it still has these behavioral issues. This is what’s been called sycophancy. Other times it’s now extremely contrarian. It’s gone the other way. What I make of this is it’s really hard to predict what an AI system is going to do. And so for me, the lesson is how important it is to do careful, thorough empirical testing. And what about the Grok incident? The type of thing I would want to understand to assess that is what sources of user feedback Grok collects, and how, if at all, those are used as part of the training process. And in particular, in the case of the South African white-genocide-type statements, are these being put forth by users and the model is agreeing with them? Or to what extent is the model blurting them out on its own, without having been touched? It seems these small changes can escalate and amplify. I think the problems today are real and important. I do think they are going to get even harder as AI starts to get used in more and more important domains. So, you know, it’s troubling. If you read the accounts of people having their delusions reinforced by this version of ChatGPT, those are real people. This can be actually quite harmful for them. And ChatGPT is widely used by a lot of people. View the full article

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When Nicholas Bloom, the William Eberle Professor of Economics at Stanford University in California, started studying working from home in 2004, “it was hard to get anyone engaged,” he says. Even in 2018, “no one had any interest whatsoever.” In 2025, that’s hard to fathom. Between the pandemic and technological advancements, WFH has become a norm among white collar workers. Not only has it normalized; it’s also destigmatized. The act that used to generate memes of Homer Simpson on the couch, prodding a distant computer with a stick has gained “positive connotations,” says Bloom. Working from home is seen as a privilege. It’s also here to stay. For their latest study, “Working from Home in 2025,” Bloom and his collaborators analyzed responses from 16,000 college graduates across 40 countries and discovered that WFH levels appear to have stabilized as of 2025, but its embrace hasn’t been universal. WFH rates vary by location: highest in English speaking regions—the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand—the rate dips a little across continental Europe, then dips a lot across Africa and Central and South Americas. WFH is least prevalent in Asia. To be clear, when Bloom says WFH, he’s mostly talking about those on hybrid work schedules. “Sixty percent of people work fully in-person, 30% are hybrid, and 10% are fully remote,” he says of those countries where the policy has stuck. Hybrid typically means Tuesday through Thursdays in the office—a schedule Blooms values at “about 8% more pay…because it saves two to three hours a week of commuting [and] enables people to live further away” from their offices, often to where real estate is cheaper. Companies also benefit from hybrid policies, Bloom’s study found, since fewer employees tend to quit. With all these advantages, you’d think bosses would have embraced WFH worldwide. “Why on earth does, say, Japan have a third the work from home rates of the U.S.?” Bloom says. After looking at factors including development (Japan is about as developed as the U.S.), population density, industrial structure, and connectivity (no big differences there), it left Bloom and fellow researchers with one notable variable. “The big factor is cultural,” he says, “and it’s around individualism.” In conversation with Fast Company, which has been edited for length and clarity, Bloom elaborated on how individualism drives working from home, how much the pandemic really increased at-home work rates, and why people still tend to think we’re returning to the office even though the data says otherwise. Fast Company: What inspired you to look globally for your latest study? Nicholas Bloom: If you look at the data, there was clearly a return to office movement from summer 2020 onwards after the lockdown in the U.S. But from Spring 2023 onwards, the return to office seems to slow down. People seem surprised by that. They’re like, “Isn’t the media full of stories of Zoom canceling [WFH], Amazon canceling [WFH]?” Yes, there are a bunch of high-profile firms canceling or reducing work from home. Turns out there are just as many on the other side, because their leases expire. If you’re Goliath National Bank and your lease expires, it’s a perfect opportunity to reduce days in the office and save a chunk of money. What we’ve seen over the last couple of years in the U.S. is like a war, and it’s been fought to a standstill. That sparked the big question for us: What on earth does this look like globally? We last collected global data in 2023, so I really didn’t know. It turns out, globally, work from home has also stalled out. There has been no change since 2023. Globally, we’re in a new norm. Folks saying “when we return to the office” at this point are dreaming. This is the future. One of your findings I found particularly interesting was that WFH rates are higher in individualistic societies than in collectivist ones. Can you unpack that? In individualistic societies, managers typically aren’t micromanaging their employees. The U.S. setup is: A manager tells an employee what to do and gives them strong incentives, like performance evaluations and bonuses. In Japan, there’s much more micromanaging, because there’s much less hiring, firing, and bonuses. Managers want to see employees there. In Japan, you can’t leave the office until the boss has left. This long-hours culture exists for everyone. When the boss leaves, their junior leaves, then their junior leaves, etcetera. That is very problematic for work from home. If you talk to folks working for American firms in Japan, they’re typically on a hybrid setup. If they work for Japanese firms in Japan, often doing the same job, they’re required to come into the office every day. Culture seems to have a huge explanation for this difference across countries. To what extent do you think this comes down to bosses trusting their workers, or not? It is kind of trust, although in the U.S., it’s “trust but verify.” Bosses don’t just trust workers—they trust them, but then they monitor. Should companies without a WFH policy reconsider? The big selling point is that it’s profitable. In my paper in Nature in June 2024, we did a massive, randomized control trial at a big company called Trip.com. They’re a publicly listed company worth about $40 billion. They randomized whether you got to work from home two days a week or come in all five days—the former if your birthday fell on an odd day, the latter if it fell on an even day. For 24 months, we tracked 1,600 employees working in finance, marketing, computer engineering—professionals with college degrees. There was no effect on performance. However, quit rates fell by 35% for people allowed to work from home two days a week. For Trip.com, every person that quits costs about $50,000. If someone quits, you have to advertise, re-interview, re-recruit, get them up to speed, and take managers off activity to train them. By reducing quit rates by 35% with no effect on productivity, that’s increasing business profits by like $20 million a year. That is ultimately why work from home has stuck. On the flipside, an Economist article that mentions your study cited JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon’s worry that the “young generation is being damaged” by increased working from home. To what extent do you agree or disagree with that statement, and why? I advise my Stanford undergrads, particularly in their first five years of work, that it’s a good idea to go into the office four days a week, because Jamie Dimon is exactly right. It is easier to mentor, learn, and build connections in person. Typically, when I poll students, that’s what they want—they want to socialize, be mentored, and they don’t have a lot of space at home. As people get to their 30s and 40s, they’ve moved up that learning curve, but they still benefit from coming in, maybe three even two days a week. Another interesting data point from your study was the similar WFH rates for men and women across regions. What do you think accounts for that? They want to. You see a slightly higher preference for women to work from home. The main decider in the U.S. is: Do you have kids? A man with children under the age of 12 has a higher preference to work from home than a woman without kids, for example. Having a disability is also a huge driver, but gender doesn’t matter that much. What you see in countries like India is gender matters a lot more, because for women, there’s assault risk and massive sexism in the workplace. In lower income countries, the gender gap grows. What was the most surprising takeaway from your study? Working from home has stabilized globally. I did an online presentation for Australia last week, and people there are under the same view as in the U.S., that big companies were banning it. We just don’t see that in any data set. Fact and opinion are about as divergent as people’s views on crime—they always think crime is rising. On average, it’s tending to decline. Everyone thinks work from home is ending, but you don’t see it globally. View the full article

As a lifelong pop culture aficionado, I have a tendency to connect my favorite media to whatever I’m currently doing. When I purchased a secondhand easy chair a few weeks ago, my husband and I spent a sweaty 30 minutes struggling to get it up the stairs. With the chair still wedged at an impossible angle, we paused to catch our breath and I said, “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” Similarly, anytime I use up the last of the milk or take the last cookie from a package, my brain always bellows “FINISH HIM!” But the pop culture in my head is more than just a running commentary on mundane moments. My favorite entertainment has also been an excellent teacher. In particular, the pop culture of my childhood taught me a number of financial lessons that I’ve never forgotten—including instruction on how to be an investor. Here are the timeless investing lessons I learned from 1980s pop culture. Lemonade Stand: the risk of playing it safe While the majority of my fellow late Gen Xers have deep and visceral memories of dying of dysentery on the Oregon Trail, my early childhood gaming trauma stemmed from the lesser-known Apple II game Lemonade Stand. This simple game teaches the basics of business planning by simulating a child’s lemonade stand. The player receives a weather report for the day and has to decide what to spend on lemonade ingredients and advertising as well as determine the price for each glass of lemonade. As a frugal and business-minded 7-year-old, I invested heavily in lemons and sugar when the game predicted a hot summer day on my first turn. I also set a reasonable per-glass lemonade price, knowing that it was folly to overcharge my customers. Though it seemed unnecessary on such a beautiful, 8-bit sunny day, I also splurged on a single advertising poster. Once my preparations were complete, I leaned back in my chair, ready for profits to rain down on me. To my shock, I only had two customers all day. I didn’t even make back the money I spent on cups. Pop culture lesson: know where to invest To little Emily, it made sense to spend money on ingredients, since you can’t sell lemonade without them. But I balked at the expense of advertising, which seemed unnecessary compared to lemons and sugar. I couldn’t predict or measure advertising’s return on investment, so I assumed it was a waste of money. (Unfortunately, I continued to make this mistake into adulthood. When I first started freelancing, I only owned a desktop computer. Investing in a laptop seemed like an unnecessary expense with no potential upside for my fledgling writing career—except that I traveled at least once a month and had to move heaven and earth to either work ahead or find a computer at my destination every single time.) The shock of losing my Lemonade Stand money taught me that playing it safe can’t protect you from loss. There is a risk to investing—whether you’re investing in advertising, a new laptop, or in the stock market—but there’s also a risk to playing it safe. You could lose your business because no one knows about it, lose your time (and your mind) because you don’t have the equipment you need, or your uninvested money could lose buying power over time because of inflation. There is no such thing as a risk-free financial decision, and playing Lemonade Stand in second grade taught me that better than anything else. The Westing Game: invest independently Ellen Raskin may as well have written her 1978 Newbery Medal winning book The Westing Game specifically to appeal to me. The novel begins after Westing Paper Products tycoon Sam Westing is found dead. Westing’s lawyer invites his 16 heirs—who all happen to be the only tenants of the newly constructed Sunset Towers—to the reading of the will. Once there, the heirs are paired off and given $10,000 and an envelope of mysterious clues written on paper towel scraps. They are invited to figure out who has taken Sam Westing’s life, and the winner will receive his $200 million estate. As much as that set up is more than enough to get my attention, it was the character of Turtle Wexler that really established this book as one of the pop culture giants of my childhood. This 13-year-old budding entrepreneur and investing genius captured my heart by being smart, funny, and financially confident beyond her years. Turtle and her partner, a 60-year-old dressmaker named Flora Baumbach, receive the incomprehensible clues SEA, MOUNTAIN, AM, and O, which the teen girl believes to be stock symbols. Since Westing was known to be a business wizard, Turtle thinks the stocks indicated by the clues must be clear winners. The pair invests the $10,000 in the clue stocks and in Westing Paper Products (stock symbol WPP). The clue stocks don’t perform as well as Turtle had hoped. Her daily perusal of The Wall Street Journal indicates that the Westing Paper Products stock is likely to go up, so she dumps the clue stocks and puts all their money in WPP. By the end of the game several weeks later, Turtle and Flora’s $10,000 stake has grown to $11,587.50. Pop culture lesson: lean into your knowledge Turtle taught me the importance of investing based on my own knowledge, expertise, and instincts, rather than following someone else’s lead. She starts her investing journey with the knowledge that Westing was a remarkably astute investor. She assumes the clue stocks must have been handpicked by Westing. But when the clue stocks don’t do well, she pulls her money from them and invests in something she has direct understanding of, rather than doubling down on her assumption that Westing must have known better. She changes her investing tactics once she has new information. Turtle also shrugs off Flora repeatedly asking if she is sure about her investing choices. She doesn’t let the concerns of her 60-year-old partner sway her, because she knows Flora doesn’t understand the stock market as well as she does, even though she is much older. All together, Turtle’s example made it clear to me that successful investing requires knowledge and a willingness to trust yourself. It’s helped me avoid following the crowd into decisions that don’t fit my investing strategies. Trading Places: anatomy of an investing scheme I loved the 1983 film Trading Places for Eddie Murphy’s brilliant comedic timing, but I was even more fascinated by the movie’s portrayal of revenge via short sale. It took me several rewatches to fully understand how the investing scheme resulted in financial doom for the film’s villains, the Duke brothers. To exact their retribution, Murphy’s character Valentine and Dan Aykroyd’s Winthorpe show up to the New York Commodities Exchange ready to trade. Their goal: sell as many orange juice concentrate futures as they can before the U.S. Department of Agriculture report on the nation’s orange crop. Meanwhile, the Dukes are buying as many OJ concentrate futures as they can before the report, essentially trying to corner the market. Between the heroes feverishly selling and the Dukes feverishly buying, OJ future prices skyrocket until the moment trading pauses for the crop report—which reveals the orange harvest will be strong. In the aftermath of the announcement, the Dukes are stuck with all the futures they purchased at inflated prices. To fulfill the margin call, they must pay $394 million. At the same time, Valentine and Winthorpe busily purchase futures from everyone but the Dukes at a greatly reduced price. This allows them to fulfill the orders they sold before the report dropped—and make a ridonculous profit. This scene fascinated me as a kid, but it also confused me. I knew that successful investing was about buying low and selling high. But I couldn’t understand how the characters could sell high then buy low. How could you sell something before you bought it? Pop culture lesson: stock sales aren’t always linear After many years of catching the movie on TBS reruns, I finally grasped that stock and commodities sales don’t have to follow a linear progression of cause then effect. It’s possible to buy low after selling high, provided you plan your investment strategy carefully. That’s because you don’t have to own something you sell. You can borrow a stock (or an OJ future, for that matter) for a fee. As long as you return it or an identical asset before the margin call, you can sell the borrowed asset even though you don’t own it. This is what Valentine and Winthorpe did to ruin the Dukes. They took their pooled money to pay the borrow fees of the futures, sold those futures at inflated prices before the crop report, then bought back the futures at the rock-bottom price afterwards so they could return the borrowed assets. While short sales like the one in Trading Places are unlikely to ever be part of my own investment strategy, understanding the fluid nature of ownership in stock and commodities trading has made me a better investor. It broke me out of the rigid cause-and-effect thinking that limited my investing creativity. Learning through story Despite being a lifelong money nerd, stories are my first love. So it’s no wonder the most enduring lessons I learned about finance come from the pop culture I loved as a child. Playing Lemonade Stand in my elementary school computer lab disrupted the story I’d told myself that it was possible to make a profit without risking an investment. Reading The Westing Game gave me the story of a confident financial heroine to remember when I’m tempted to follow the crowd. And Trading Places folded a satisfying revenge story into a creative investing scheme, which helped me feel smart and savvy when I finally wrapped my head around the details. View the full article

On weekdays, you could easily walk right past Knockdown Center, housed on an industrial stretch of road in Maspeth, Queens. The only thing that sets it apart from the neighboring auto body shops and wholesale warehouses is a rust-colored fence and a beat-up marquee that looks like it’s announcing a church rummage sale. But when Knockdown Center opens its gates at night and on summer weekends when its outdoor stage is set, the crowds of clubgoers streaming through its gate and pouring out of taxis, rideshares, and city buses is impossible to miss. The three-acre venue can accommodate up to 3,200 people inside and another 1,200 in its outdoor space, called the Ruins. This year has been especially busy. The nine-year-old Knockdown Center is hosting the fourth installment of its three-day Wire Festival from May 16 through 18, bringing together 55 artists for more than 50 hours of music across four stages indoors and outside. It will be the biggest iteration of the event yet and comes on the heels the venue’s recent hosting of the first U.S. installment of the C2C Festival, a 24-year-old dance and experimental music event held in Italy. Electronic music is booming, and everyone from tiny clubs to mega-festivals wants a piece of the action. At Coachella this year, 39% of the artists on the bill were electronic acts—nearly double the representation of indie-rock artists and almost four times the proportion of pop and hip-hop/rap acts each. At the 20,000-seat Sphere in Las Vegas, DJ Anyma sold out eight shows for a residency that began New Year’s Eve 2024, then added four more dates to accommodate demand. Later this year, storied Dutch EDM festival Tomorrowland will bring Unity (a joint effort with promoter Insomniac) to Sphere for a 12-date run, a length that doubled after the initial slate of shows sold out. @weirdhours Knockdown Center is proof that not every venue has to be on the same scale as Sphere to thrive in the electronic world. In 2024, it hosted 470,000 guests, says Tyler Myers, cofounder and executive director, adding that the venue has been profitable since 2019. After the standstill of live events in 2020 and 2021, Knockdown’s ticket sales grew 144% between 2022 and 2024. The venue has sold many of those tickets on a steady roster of global electronic artists. Operating a club in New York is not for the faint of heart: The rewards are high, but so are the risks. (Many are closing, and the nearby Brooklyn Mirage is struggling to open after ambitious renovations.) But by filling its lineup with a mix of recognizable acts and budding DJs and bands from around the world, Knockdown Center is pulling in steady audiences and a building a loyal community. “We’ve always been the right size for the business we’re doing,” Myers says. “We’ve worked really hard to get ourselves into a position where riskiness is less risky.” @weirdhours From Doors to DJs Opened in 1903 as a glass factory, the space became the home of the Manhattan Door Factory some three decades later. (In the 1950s, Manhattan Door owner Michael Sklar invented the knockdown-style door frame that gives the venue its name.) Myers and his two cofounders, working with owner David Sklar, took over the 50,000-square-foot space in 2016, renovating it into an events space. It’s since become a showcase for an ascendent electronic music scene that’s less akin to the over-the-top spectacle of the longstanding American EDM festival Electric Daisy Carnival—and more like the no-frills approach of Berlin’s legendarily cavernous techno club Berghain. “I had worked for a large entertainment company before this, and we’d always been looking for venues [this size] in New York City—and over the course of five years we never found one,” says Myers. “So with this space, it was like, holy shit this is unusual—and wouldn’t it be nice if we could figure out a sustainable way to support people who were taking risks with this kind of space.” @weirdhours After early efforts to showcase dance performances, theater, art installations, and murals, Myers and fellow organizers saw an opportunity to pair the venue’s scope with an ambitious music scene. “Some of the natural things we picked up early on were things that aspired to a sort of Detroit nostalgia for warehouse parties,” he says, adding that DIY festivals focused on electronic music were cropping up around the same time. In particular, he highlights Dripping and Sustain-Releaase—annual events that take place in the woods outside of New York—as upstarts that have grown by centering music and inspired Knockdown Center’s approach. “A lot of the innovation—a lot of the punk rock attitude in New York and globally—is in electronic music right now,” he says. “Our program is a reflection of [that] world.” @weirdhours An International Outlook Over the course of nine years, the venue has had its share of notable headliners—LCD Soundsystem played a 12-night residency in December; Fatboy Slim is set to reprise a 14-hour day-to-night set at the outdoor Ruins stage at the end of May. But a big part of Knockdown Center’s appeal has been built on its ability to bring a wide range of international acts to its stages. That’s been helped by events like Wire Festival. By design, the festival has included a growing number of international artists. Téa Abashidze, cofounder of Wire, says different collectives are invited to curate the festival’s second stage each year. “It’s about creating spaces where different communities can meet, share experiences, and start building new collaborations and ideas,” she says. This year, the stage is curated by Amsterdam’s queer techno organizers Spielraum and Berlin’s queer-focused art collective Pornceptual (don’t worry, that link is mostly SFW). Beyond Wire, Abashidze has played a key role in bringing international artists to Knockdown Center year-round. In 2019, she cofounded Basement, Knockdown Center’s underground, European-style nightclub that can hold up to 600 people. The space’s steady mix of local and international talent has been popular enough that Basement opened a second room in 2022, allowing for two performances to happen simultaneously. Wire Festival was initially an offshoot of the Basement project and its global vision. But when that vision involves crossing international borders, things can get complicated for artists given the expense and time required to get the proper visas—something fans don’t realize impacts their ability to see the artists they want to. “[Attendees] can be frustrated that they’re not getting access to events with some of the younger talent that’s coming up in Europe,” Myers says. “And are simply unaware that to do so legally is substantially expensive, time intensive, and risky.” @weirdhours The visa headache In April, British avant-garde artist FKA Twigs canceled her tour—which included two sold-out dates at Knockdown Center—due to visa issues. Though it was due to her team not submitting her documents with enough time for the application to clear, the episode underscored the way a complex process can keep even well-known artists from playing global shows. Myers wants Knockdown Center to be a resource for the artists who don’t have teams to assist in going international. “We continue to look for less resource-intensive ways that people could get a shorter visa or some other kind of visa to come play legally in the United States with less risk.” Myers says. “President The President’s policies and platform menace the artists we book from abroad, just as they do the artists we book at home, just as they do to the community we serve, and the employees we count on. But the process itself hasn’t suddenly become worse. It’s a big problem, but not a new problem.” Last summer, to make the process of getting a visa more straightforward, Wire and Basement partnered with online music and community site Resident Advisor—to launch Artist Visa Guide, a site that helps demystify what’s required to obtain an O-1 artist visa. @weirdhours To give smaller international artists exposure—and to help them offset the cost of a visa—Knockdown Center’s events that feature eclectic bills, even acts that might be unfamiliar to the venue’s audience. Since 2021, Jeff Klingman, Knockdown Center’s lead talent buyer, has curated Outline, a series of single-day festivals that bring together slates of performers from different genres and with different reach. “Broad programs like C2C and Outline are a nice way to showcase artists who need to go through that expensive visa process but aren’t necessarily going to sell 3,000 tickets on their own,” Klingman says. “But you need a broader framework to allow it—and that’s not going to happen at a bigger festival where you want your opening act to have 50K Instagram [followers] minimum.” @weirdhours Klingman has programmed 15 Outline events so far. The most recent installment, held in April, was headlined by established American post-rock band Explosions in the Sky, who shared the bill with Icelandic electronica act Múm, Guatemalan cellist and vocalist Mabe Fratti, Philadelphia shoegazers They Are Gutting a Body of Water, Danish electronic artist Upsammy, and Mexico City experimental band Diles Que No Me Maten. “Putting together the artists combinations that we do has become a beacon to the international community.” Klingman says. “It allows us to take modest chances in the spirit of art that we really believe in.” View the full article

Since President Donald The President took office, one of his fondest pastimes has been firing off randomly capitalized social media posts lambasting various laws as—and this is a technical term—too woke to be legal. Among his targets last week was the Digital Equity Act, which he deemed “RACIST,” “ILLEGAL,” and “totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL.” He wrapped by promising to (attempt to) end the program immediately. “No more woke handouts based on race!” he wrote. Other than the name of the Digital Equity Act, basically everything about The President’s post is wrong. Overall, the vast majority of Americans use the internet—96% of adults, according to Pew Research Center data. Yet there remains a persistent “digital divide” in this country, which breaks down on lines that will be unsurprising to anyone with a passing familiarity with its history. As recently as 2019, for example, only 71% of people who didn’t graduate from high school said they used the internet, and less than half—46%—subscribed to home broadband. In 2021, 85% of households making less than $25,000—nearly 23 million households—had a computing device (desktop, smartphone, or tablet) at home, compared to over 99% of households earning $150,000 or more, per U.S. Census Bureau data. Among those households making less than $25,000 a year, 16% had internet access only through a smartphone, compared to just 5% of households at the other end of the income spectrum. The Digital Equity Act, introduced in 2019 by Washington state senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, and passed as part of President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure law two years later, aims to narrow these gaps, if not close them altogether. The law established a trio of grant programs that allow states, Tribes, and other organizations to apply for money they can use to get people online and provide them with the tools necessary to make safe, effective use of the web. (The ability to log on is not especially useful if, for example, you are unfamiliar with the hamfisted phishing scams that will start landing in your Gmail inbox two minutes after you create it.) By passing the DEA, Congress acknowledged the simple fact that it is more or less impossible to find jobs, do homework, obtain healthcare, apply to college, pay taxes, and otherwise fully participate in modern society with limited and/or unstable internet access. The law set aside a total of $2.75 billion over five years for its purposes, which, in the context of the federal budget, is roughly analogous to a thimbleful of Evian poured into the infinity pool on a megayacht. Why, then, is The President so incensed about the Digital Equity Act? Regrettably, the answer is as stupid as it is cynical: It has the word “equity” right there in the title, and he and his fellow Republicans are constitutionally incapable of understanding the term outside of the context of the right-wing culture wars they are obsessed with fighting at every turn. His preoccupation with ferreting out “racial handouts” via clumsy CTRL+F search is now so all-consuming that he is trying to cut government spending that has nothing to do with race, and that would meaningfully improve the lives of millions of voters, many of whom cast their ballots for him six months ago. Some DEA funding recipients have already received notices purporting to cancel their grants. But as is the case with all of The President’s unilateral threats to revoke duly enacted federal laws, “ending” the DEA is not as simple as the president doing a post on a social media network he controls. Federal judges have spent the last several months blocking many of his illegal attempts to withhold congressionally appropriated funding from those who are entitled to it. Here, too, any would-be recipient of DEA funds who takes the administration to court should have a decent chance of prevailing. But the mere fact that The President is attacking the DEA—a modest, targeted, flexible attempt to extend an essential service to people who do not yet have it—demonstrates just how uninterested he is in doing anything resembling the basic work of governing. In a press release, Senator Murray described The President’s attempts to withhold “resources meant to help red and blue communities…[to] close the digital divide” as “absolutely insane.” A good rule of thumb in politics is that when a 74-year-old Democratic senator is angry enough to use phrases like “absolutely insane” in their official communications, the characterization is probably accurate and more than appropriate. The text of the DEA acknowledges that the digital divide, like many problems in this country, affects members of racial and ethnic minority groups, and frames digital equity as “a matter of social and economic justice.” But the law does not define the concept solely (or even primarily) in terms of race, as The President asserts. Instead, it emphasizes that the law is intended to cover lower-income people, veterans, people with disabilities, and people living in rural areas, among other demographic groups whose members face systemic barriers to getting on the internet. It is not different from any number of federal programs that identify the intended beneficiaries with specificity; doing so is, one might say, efficient. To the extent that the DEA touches on race, it does so only in the sense that, as is the case with every multibillion-dollar grant program Congress creates, some number of people whom the money helps will, in fact, not be white. The Digital Equity Act should be the sort of policy that conservatives, who treat any invocation of diversity as a form of illegal discrimination, nevertheless enthusiastically support: The law doesn’t aim to provide some greater, privileged level of internet access to anyone, but only to establish a baseline level of internet access for everyone. Already, deep-red states like Alabama, Indiana, Arkansas, and Iowa have completed their digital equity plans, which repeatedly affirm the urgent need for federal intervention, especially in rural areas. Alabama’s plan, for example, notes that 14.3% of its residents who do not have broadband at home say the service still isn’t available where they live—nearly twice the national figure. Other states are even further along in the process. During the last few weeks of the Biden administration, the Department of Commerce approved a total of $85 million in funding for initiatives to educate users about the basics of cybersecurity and digital privacy in North Carolina; to make internet access more affordable in Kansas; and to provide web devices and skills training in Mississippi. In 2024, these states voted for The President by 3, 16, and 23 points, respectively. Republicans who supported the DEA in 2021 had no problem with its basic premise. For example, at the time, Ohio Senator Rob Portman emphasized the impact of limited web access on “overlooked and underserved communities,” and touted the potential for “comprehensive digital equity plans” and “digital inclusion projects” to close these “access gaps”—a quote that might get him run out of the party on a rail if the White House finds out about it. Four years later, GOP lawmakers are happily seizing on the The President administration’s ongoing anti-integration crusade to rail against the DEA for its state-sanctioned anti-white bigotry. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, for example, hailed The President for ending the DEA’s “impermissible discrimination,” which he described as part of the “Biden-Harris administration’s woke spending spree.” For him, preserving the availability of $55 million in federal funding allocated to his state is less important than complimenting his party’s leader in public. Conservatives often criticize diversity, equity, and inclusion principles by focusing on ostensibly zero-sum resources: well-paying jobs, prestigious college admissions offers, and so on. But this framework makes absolutely no sense in the context of the DEA, which does not “deny” anything to anyone on the more online side of the digital divide. A wealthy suburban family with four laptops, four smartphones, and a tablet or two does not need more resources to use the internet; the provision of government-subsidized mobile hotspots for rural middle school students won’t affect the ability of white-collar employees living in major cities to get online and do their work. Calling the DEA “discriminatory” because it benefits people without internet access is like a person with 20/20 vision complaining because their optometrist didn’t write them a new glasses prescription: Sure, technically, you aren’t getting something that others are getting, but that’s only because you can see perfectly well already. In a functioning democracy, the Digital Equity Act would be obscure because it is uncontroversial—the product of a bipartisan consensus that making the internet available to everyone is a simple, efficient, and inexpensive method of ensuring greater equality of opportunity. If The President gets his way, people who remain marginalized by their limited internet access will remain that way for the foreseeable future, all because a reactionary octogenarian encountered statutory language that he didn’t understand, and that made him upset. View the full article

Like most humans, I generally prefer to surround myself with people who like, value, and respect me. You know, it’s quite a nice and simple way to boost my self-esteem. And yet, after studying human behavior for many years, I am fully aware that the tendency to indulge in this self-enhancing habit is intellectually debilitating: while it feels nice to hang out with people who appreciate you, it is also a way to develop blind spots and ignore opportunities to get better, improve, and develop new skills and ideas. Montaigne warned of this in his Essays, cautioning against surrounding oneself with flattering mirrors that reflect only our vanity, not our flaws. Shakespeare dramatizes this danger repeatedly—think of King Lear, who banishes the only daughter who speaks honestly, choosing instead the empty praise of those who tell him what he wants to hear. In The Iliad, Achilles withdraws from battle in part because his ego isn’t sufficiently stroked, with devastating consequences. And Orwell, in 1984, shows us a world where intellectual isolation—being surrounded by only one narrative—becomes the ultimate mechanism of control. Growing Divided Beyond the personal level, this habit fuels tribalism and polarization: when we curate our social and intellectual circles to exclude dissent or difference, we don’t just grow more complacent—we grow more divided. What begins as a harmless preference for affirmation becomes a breeding ground for intellectual stagnation and collective delusion. Conversely, increasing the time you spend with people who don’t like or value you, particularly when they think different from you, may sound like a masochistic activity, but it can reveal important gaps between the person you are and who you would like to be. Indeed, even when people underestimate you, they can be an important source of negative or critical feedback that alerts you to the possibility that you may actually not be as good as you think—and especially not as good as your inner circle thinks. This is an essential ingredient of self-awareness: coming to terms with your limitations, knowing what you don’t know, and accepting the fact that other people may not see you as positively as you see yourself, or as your close friends and fans do. But first, let’s understand the likely reasons other people may underestimate you: 1) It is a way to protect their own self-esteem Bringing other people down is the most common way to feel good about yourself (pathetic, I know—but very human). This phenomenon is often referred to as the Crab Barrel Syndrome, the psychological process where individuals attempt to hinder the progress of others perceived as competitors. When people feel threatened, envious, or insecure, they often cope by diminishing the value of others. It’s less effortful than self-improvement and more immediately gratifying. So, when someone underestimates you, it may say more about their fragile ego than your actual potential. In other words, their low opinion of your talents might just be a defense mechanism they’re using to avoid facing their own inadequacies—a mix of jealousy, insecure narcissism, and self-pity that is expressed as a derogatory view of you. In Joseph Mankiewicz’s All About Eve, the aging stage actress Margo Channing becomes increasingly threatened by the seemingly innocent and adoring Eve Harrington, a young fan who slowly infiltrates her life and career. Margo’s initial condescension gives way to paranoia and defensiveness, while Eve’s ascent is lubricated by subtle manipulation and strategic modesty. Here, the envy runs in both directions—Eve envies Margo’s fame and legacy; Margo resents Eve’s youth and promise. Each woman underestimates the other as a means of preserving her own sense of value, which makes the film a masterclass in how admiration curdles into rivalry when identity feels fragile. 2) You may actually be a high performer—but surrounded by other high performers If you’re consistently underestimated despite strong output, consider the context. Being in an environment full of exceptional people—like elite academic programs, competitive companies, or high-performing teams—can distort perceptions. Just watch Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash, where gifted jazz drummer Andrew Neiman is pushed to his limits at a prestigious music conservatory. In that hypercompetitive setting, even brilliance isn’t enough—every success is met with silence or scorn, because greatness is simply expected. When excellence becomes the baseline, even impressive contributions may be overlooked. Meanwhile, others who are objectively less capable may shine simply because they operate in low-stakes environments where mediocrity passes for brilliance, and enjoy being a big fish in a small pond. So being underestimated may be a function of your high-performing context, not your low ability. 3) You may not be as good as you think Self-enhancement bias is real. Research shows that most people overestimate their abilities, especially in ambiguous domains. Even if you’re talented, that doesn’t guarantee you’re making your value visible. Are you communicating clearly, aligning your work with others’ goals, or just expecting people to “get it”? Being underestimated might be your cue to refine how you showcase your strengths—clarify your contributions, seek feedback, and build a brand that matches your actual impact. (And yes, that means leaving the Dunning-Kruger zone.) So, what are the best strategies for winning your critics over? 1) Focus on them, not you Dale Carnegie 101: take a genuine interest in others. The irony is that people who underestimate you often care more about being seen than about seeing you. So, just play the game: ask them about their work, their opinions, their ideas—convincingly faking appreciation for them. Make them feel important. To be sure, flattery works best when it’s believable, which means you need to pay attention, listen, and reflect their values back to them. Call it effective impression management, strategic empathy, or just good politics: contrary to popular belief, it’s one of the key ingredients of career success. 2) Quantify your achievements People are less likely to ignore results when they’re staring at hard numbers. Share outcomes, metrics, and results that demonstrate your impact. Be specific: revenue increased, error rates decreased, engagement improved. You don’t have to brag—just document. Some people may still dismiss the data because they favor charisma over competence, but those aren’t the people you should be trying to impress anyway. Let the results speak, and if they don’t listen, speak louder with your results. 3) Change your behavior Maybe they’re right. Or at least not entirely wrong. Being underestimated can be a gift disguised as insult: a wake-up call that motivates you to adapt, grow, and become harder to ignore. If you’ve been coasting, this is your cue to sprint. If you’ve been misaligned, recalibrate. The good news is that people revise their judgments when they see genuine effort and improvement. There’s nothing more satisfying than disproving someone’s low expectations—especially when you do it without gloating (at least not outwardly). A final consideration: at times, the most effective way to win over the people who underestimate you may require you to care less about whether you actually win them over—especially if your goal is merely to inflate your ego. Focus instead on learning from them. Just as failure is a better teacher than success, critics and adversaries often teach us more than friends and fans. Nietzsche, for instance, argued that we owe our greatest growth to resistance and struggle, not comfort: “What does not kill me makes me stronger” is not just a gym slogan, but a blueprint for character development. Similarly, in The Republic, Plato has Socrates sharpen his thinking through constant dialectical combat with hostile interlocutors—because truth, like steel, is forged through friction. Even in literature, consider Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: it is precisely through misunderstanding, misjudgment, and critical feedback that Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy evolve into better versions of themselves. In the end, you cannot expect everybody to appreciate your talents—but those who don’t may be more valuable than your supporters. Their underestimation can sting, yes, but it also serves as a psychological spur to refine, improve, and prove—not just to them, but to yourself—what you’re truly capable of becoming. View the full article

Branded is a weekly column devoted to the intersection of marketing, business, design, and culture. With economic uncertainty, inflation, and high interest rates lingering, consumers who can’t decide whether to spend now or hold off until later are increasingly doing some of each. And that’s good news for the “buy now, pay later” business. Buy now, pay later (BNPL) options—including those facilitated by major BNPL services like Klarna, Afterpay, and Affirm—have been growing increasingly commonplace. According to an April survey from LendingTree, for example, 25% of BNPL users have spent the loans on groceries, up from 14% last year. And the services are becoming more widely known through linkups with familiar brands. Klarna—which filed IPO paperwork in March but reportedly put those plans on hold when the markets swooned last month—recently announced a partnership with DoorDash to enable customers to pay for deliveries in installments. And Affirm has a new deal with Costco that will give approved customers monthly payment options. Interest in BNPL is likely to grow as tariffs cause prices to rise (Walmart, for instance, just warned of price hikes). This builds on a steady rise of BNPL spending that goes back several years. This past holiday season, such spending hit an all-time high of $18.2 billion, up nearly 10% over the prior year, according to data from Adobe, which listed popular categories such as electronics, apparel, and video games. Research from EMarketer found that the “per user spend” on BNPL services topped $1,000 in 2024, and forecast the category will make up 1.4% of all retail sales this year. BNPL firms position their steady move into everyday spending categories as a matter of convenience and household budgeting flexibility. The loans are generally interest-free to consumers, with the services charging merchants a small percentage (ranging from an estimated 1.5% to 7%) of the total transaction. The merchant benefits from increased sales from consumers who presumably feel more open to spending if they can spread out the impact, and avoid adding to credit card debt. Of course there’s a flip side to that. Critics argue that the services exploit consumer psychology, underscoring the instant gratification of buying something new at just a fraction of the total price now—a temptation that overwhelms the reality of continuing to pay it off for months. While BNPL offerings are fundamentally similar to old-school layaway plans and the like, they’re much easier to qualify for, and often pop up as seamless options on e-commerce sites. Moreover, the services make money from late fees if an overextended consumer falls behind. Roughly 41% of BNPL users copped to paying late in the past year, compared to 34% a year ago. Most were only a week or so late, and many of the laggards were in higher-income categories, but that’s a notable trend at a time when total consumer debt stands at a record $18.2 trillion. Either way, the expanding popularity of BNPL options for quotidian purposes like takeout and groceries is seen by many as a bad economic indicator: Surely an increased interest in alternative payment schemes to fund pizza night sounds like a sign of a skittish consumer. And while the use of BNPL options has been growing for some time, it has done so at a somewhat slower pace in the relatively positive economy of the past few years; by comparison, adoption spiked during and in the aftermath of the pandemic downturn. And there’s no question that services like Affirm and Klarna are becoming an increasingly routine part of the consumer-spending landscape. Recent fears of tariff-fueled inflation, shortages in some retail and grocery categories, and perhaps even a recession actually make the idea of buying now—before things get even worse—sound particularly appealing, and rational. Ultimately, both assessments of BNPL can be true at the same time: It’s a convenient and potentially sensible option, and a worrisome trend. Discussing his firm’s latest data, Matt Schulz, LendingTree’s chief consumer finance analyst, told CNBC that the popularity of BNPL reflects economic headwinds and uncertainty that has lots of consumers “struggling” and looking for ways to extend their budgets. “For an awful lot of people, that’s going to mean leaning on buy now, pay later loans,” he said, “for better or for worse.” View the full article

In recent years, brands have changed their entire marketing approach in order to attract the new breed of so-called eco-conscious consumers. This is unsurprising considering the mountain of research showing the majority of people saying they care about sustainability when it comes to their purchasing decisions. But the notion of an eco-conscious mass consumer who is willing to sacrifice their own personal comfort for the planet is largely a myth. This is because, while people might “say” they support sustainable practices, their actions tell a different story. Our own research reveals that almost six in 10 (57%) American consumers say sustainability shouldn’t come at the expense of their personal experience. It’s easy to read a stat like that and feel annoyed at people’s selfishness. At the same time, we’ve probably all been in a situation where, despite our best intentions, we realize too late that once again we’ve forgotten our reusable shopping bags at the grocery store. Or tried farmer-owned, regeneratively produced coffee beans only to go back to our old brand because it just doesn’t taste as good. Subconscious decision-making So why this disconnect? People tend to shop in a “hot state”—task-focused, time-pressured, hungry, distracted—rather than in a logical, deliberative mindset. In these moments, the subconscious mind drives decision-making, and high-minded intentions often fall by the wayside. Tasks that impede instant gratification, like cleaning up or sorting waste for recycling, are perceived as chores and routinely avoided without consciously realizing it. That’s why a halo of sustainability isn’t going to convince consumers to accept an inferior experience. It’s not that people don’t care about the environment, it’s that they’re human, and their subconscious priorities often override their conscious values. Brands that boast about their eco credentials often come off as authoritarian or preachy. Meanwhile, the rise in greenwashing has fueled deep-seated consumer scepticism over eco claims. A performance-based approach It can be much more effective for brands to talk up the superior performance or enhanced user experience of a product before getting to the sustainability aspect of it. And, for a topic as complex and divisive as the environment, sometimes the best approach is not to shout about sustainability at all. Ford took this approach with its “Frunk” campaign, which shows EV owners popping their hoods and putting the added space normally taken up by a combustion engine to imaginative new uses, from a pop-up kitchen to a tattoo shop. Meanwhile, the iconic anti-littering campaign “Don’t Mess with Texas” plays on state pride rather than guilt. User-unfriendly Sustainability efforts also fall short because services aimed at getting people to recycle or be more sustainable are not user-friendly. In fact, many systems are unknowingly designed to elicit the opposite effect. For example, in many food outlets and retail spaces, the recycling bin is next to the rubbish bin. Both involve throwing items into a black hole, never to be seen again, and so the semiotics unintentionally cue waste, anonymous disposal, and ultimately, the death of the product. Our study found 72% of consumers believe they’re responsible for clearing and sorting their rubbish in cafes and quick-service restaurants, like McDonald’s or Starbucks, but only 29% of them actually do so. Avoiding Rebellion Neuroscience shows that we subconsciously rebel when we feel forced to do something, so retailers should focus on making us actually want to take action. This is why the gamification of coin-spinning machines collecting charitable donations works so well. Kids love them for the fun factor; the philanthropy part is incidental. Retailers and quick service restaurants should swap “black hole” rubbish chutes for playful and rewarding alternatives that encourage people to recycle. To trigger behavior change, small nudges like these are much more effective than lofty messaging in marketing campaigns. There has also been a shift toward eco-led design, with branding and packaging featuring earthy, neutral colors and worthy messaging. But this pared-back, functional design takes a lot of the joy out of the experience and turns people off subconsciously. The vegan “meat” category is a great example, with a number of the biggest brands opting for dull, utilitarian packaging and earnest messaging that prioritizes ethics over appetite—making the products feel more like a compromise than a craveable choice. Effortless and indulgent Almost three-quarters (72%) of those surveyed said they love innovative brands that invest in product development and deliver pride and excitement. The question brands should ask is not just “how can we make this sustainable?” but “how would Silicon Valley design this?” Sustainable solutions should feel effortless and even indulgent—think eco-hedonism, not eco-consciousness. Brands need to stop passing the burden of sustainability to the consumer. If you can create a product or experience that is pleasurable, joyful, and rewarding, but also happens to be good for the planet, you will be able to sell sustainability to even the most selfish of consumers. View the full article

On Running has hit 2025 at full speed, reporting Q1 earnings on Tuesday that saw the company grow sales by 43% year-over-year. It’s a reflection of the overall growth trajectory the Zurich-based athletic lifestyle brand has been on since it launched in 2010. With a healthy direct-to-consumer business, growing retail footprint (with 53 stores around the world), and cutting edge product innovation, On has built its brand around its product quality and sleek, simple design. But cofounder and executive cochairman Caspar Coppetti says that despite the healthy numbers, the brand still has plenty of room to grow, and it’s using its own unique combination of culture and athletics to do it. “Our global brand awareness last year was only 20%, while Nike is at 95%,” says Coppetti. “We’re not trying to be the next Brand X or Brand Y. We’re writing our own script, and that script is: We want to be the most premium brand in sports, really elevating the whole brand experience.” Zendaya Premium culture Every athletic shoe company has its own approach to building out its audience. Nike has recently rejuvenated its swagger aimed at competitive athletes; Adidas has leaned on big names like Patrick Mahomes, Jude Bellingham, and Anthony Edwards; and Hoka is going all-in on runners. On, meanwhile, has built its brand around a unique combination of innovative design and elevated fashion sense. Elmo “That’s something we’ve always had in the brand,” says Coppetti says. It began with its foundational cushioning technology, Cloudtech, an engineered solution to absorb impact that looked distinct from any other sneaker. That was combined with a Swiss design ethos that’s very reductionist and clean. “Our products always look different and also quite fashionable,” says Coppetti. “And when performance and fashion collide, that’s when magic happens.” This year, the brand took that magic in some compelling directions. While some athletic brands have steered toward competition and the athlete mentality, On’s brand work went in a different, pretty damn quirky direction. In February, On dropped a Super Bowl ad featuring Roger Federer and Sesame Street’s Elmo debating the brand’s logo. Subsequent spots in the “Soft Wins” campaign had Elmo talking about running for fun as opposed to competitive fire. Then in April, the brand launched a trailer for a fake sci-fi movie starring Zendaya (who signed as a brand ambassador last year) to hype its new lifestyle bodysuit. With a new FKA Twigs partnership inked earlier this year, On has squarely positioned itself as the workout gear of choice for people who care about art and style. In its Q1 earnings report, On credited its Zendaya partnership as one of the driving forces of the brand’s impressive momentum. “These kinds of things have the potential to go viral,” says Coppetti. “Consumers are also not seeing us as just another brand shoving advertising in their face, but seeing that it’s actually kind of cute and clever, and that resonates.” Looking ahead to the rest of 2025, the brand is looking to open 25 more stores around the world, and continue to hype it’s Lightspray shoe technology, and its expanding apparel line. Coppetti says that the challenge is to make sure people see On as a head-to-toe brand, as opposed to just sneakers. “Now we’re expanding our market share from the feet up.” View the full article

Look closely at your mobile phone or tablet. Touch-screen technology, speech recognition, digital sound recording and the internet were all developed using funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation. No matter where you live, NSF-supported research has also made your life safer. Engineering studies have reduced earthquake damage and fatalities through better building design. Improved hurricane and tornado forecasts reflect NSF investment in environmental monitoring and computer modeling of weather. NSF-supported resilience studies reduce risks and losses from wildfires. Using NSF funding, scientists have done research that amazes, entertains and enthralls. They have drilled through mile-thick ice sheets to understand the past, visited the wreck of the Titanic and captured images of deep space. NSF investments have made America and American science great. At least 268 Nobel laureates received NSF grants during their careers. The foundation has partnered with agencies across the government since it was created, including those dealing with national security and space exploration. The Federal Reserve estimates that government-supported research from the NSF and other agencies has had a return on investment of 150% to 300% since 1950, meaning for every dollar U.S. taxpayers invested, they got back between $1.50 and $3. However, that funding is now at risk. Since January, layoffs, leadership resignations, and a massive proposed reorganization have threatened the integrity and mission of the National Science Foundation. Hundreds of research grants have been terminated. The administration’s proposed federal budget for fiscal year 2026 would cut NSF’s funding by 55%, an unprecedented reduction that would end federal support for science research across a wide range of discipines. At my own geology lab, I have seen NSF grants catalyze research and the work of dozens of students who have collected data that’s now used to reduce risks from earthquakes, floods, landslides, erosion, sea-level rise, and melting glaciers. I have also served on advisory committees and review panels for the NSF over the past 30 years and have seen the value the foundation produces for the American people. American science’s greatness stemmed from war In the 1940s, with the advent of nuclear weapons, the space race and the intensification of the Cold War, American science and engineering expertise became increasingly critical for national defense. At the time, most basic and applied research was done by the military. Vannevar Bush, an electrical engineer who oversaw military research efforts during World War II, including development of the atomic bomb, had a different idea. He articulated an expansive scientific vision for the United States in “Science: The Endless Frontier.” The report was a blueprint for an American research juggernaut grounded in the expertise of university faculty, staff and graduate students. On May 10, 1950, after five years of debate and compromise, President Harry Truman signed legislation creating the National Science Foundation and putting Bush’s vision to work. Since then, the foundation has become the leading funder of basic research in the United States. NSF’s mandate, then as now, was to support basic research and spread funding for science across all 50 states. Expanding America’s scientific workforce was and remains integral to American prosperity. By 1952, the foundation was awarding merit fellowships to graduate and postdoctoral scientists from every state. There were compromises. Control of NSF rested with presidential appointees, disappointing Bush. He wanted scientists in charge to avoid political interference with the foundation’s research agenda. NSF funding matters to everyone, everywhere Today, American tax dollars supporting science go to every state in the union. The states with the most NSF grants awarded between 2011 and 2024 include several that voted Republican in the 2024 election—Texas, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania—and several that voted Democratic, including Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, and Colorado. More than 1,800 public and private institutions, scattered across all 50 states, receive NSF funding. The grants pay the salaries of staff, faculty and students, boosting local employment and supporting college towns and cities. For states with major research universities, those grants add up to hundreds of millions of dollars each year. Even states with few universities each see tens of millions of dollars for research. As NSF grant recipients purchase lab supplies and services, those dollars support regional and national economies. When NSF budgets are cut and grants are terminated or never awarded, the harm trickles down and communities suffer. Initial NSF funding cuts are already rippling across the country, affecting both national and local economies in red, blue, and purple states alike. An analysis of a February 2025 proposal that would cut about $5.5 billion from National Institutes of Health grants estimated the ripple effect through college towns and supply chains would cost $6.1 billion in GDP, or total national productivity, and over 46,000 jobs. An uncertain future for American science America’s scientific research and training enterprise has enjoyed bipartisan support for decades. Yet, as NSF celebrates its 75th birthday, the future of American science is in doubt. Funding is increasingly uncertain, and politics is driving decisions, as Bush feared 80 years ago. A list of grants terminated by the The President administration, collected both from government websites and scientists themselves, shows that by early May 2025, NSF had stopped funding more than 1,400 existing grants, totaling more than a billion dollars of support for research, research training, and education. Most terminated grants focused on education—the core of science, technology and engineering workforce development critical for supplying highly skilled workers to American companies. For example, NSF provided 1,000 fewer graduate student fellowships in 2025 than in the decade before—a 50% drop in support for America’s best science students. American scientists are responding to NSF’s downsizing in diverse ways. Some are pushing back by challenging grant terminations. Others are preparing to leave science or academia. Some are likely to move abroad, taking offers from other nations to recruit American experts. Science organizations and six prior heads of the NSF are calling on Congress to step up and maintain funding for science research and workforce development. If these losses continue, the next generation of American scientists will be fewer in number and less well prepared to address the needs of a population facing the threat of more extreme weather, future pandemics, and the limits to growth imposed by finite natural resources and other planetary limits. Investing in science and engineering is an investment in America. Diminishing NSF and the science it supports will hurt the American economy and the lives of all Americans. Paul Bierman is a professor of natural resources and environmental science at the University of Vermont. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

There’s a good chance that your drinking water contains forever chemicals. PFAS, the type of chemicals used in products like some nonstick pans and waterproof jackets, is present in water systems for nearly half of Americans. But the The President administration now wants to roll back Biden-era rules that would have cleaned up certain types of the chemicals. There’s a catch: an “anti-backsliding” provision in the Safe Drinking Water Act says that any new standard for drinking water safety can’t be less protective than the old standard. “The provision is really simple,” says Dave Owen, a professor at the University of California College of the Law in San Francisco. “The only way they could get around it is to say we have discovered new evidence that clarifies that revising the standard will do nothing to reduce protection of public health. And I’d be shocked if they have evidence that would substantiate that claim.” In 2024, the Biden-era EPA issued a rule with new limits for six types of PFAS (or “per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances”), which have been linked to cancer and developmental problems. Under the rule, public water utilities have to monitor water for the six compounds, notify the public of unsafe levels, and treat the water. The rule gave them until 2027 to comply, though it allowed for an extension of an extra two years because of the expense of setting up new treatment systems. This week, the EPA announced that it would rescind the rule for four of the PFAS types on the list (known as PFHxS, PFNA, HFPO-DA or GenX, and PFBS). For two others—PFOA and PFOS—it would delay the requirement for utilities to comply. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin claimed that the agency didn’t necessarily want to weaken the limits for the four chemical compounds, just “reconsider” the rule. (To try to make a change, they’ll also have to go through a long rulemaking process—they can’t simply get rid of the rule automatically.) But water utilities and the chemical industry have been fighting to get rid of the limits, and said the administration’s announcement was a step in the right direction. If the EPA does eventually attempt to loosen the limits, environmental groups could sue under the anti-backsliding provision. There’s clear evidence that the compounds aren’t safe for people’s health. “There are literally hundreds of studies that show that these chemicals are dangerous,” says Erik Olson, senior strategic director for health at NRDC. “The evidence is very strong. That’s why EPA issued those regulations.” In the case of the other two compounds, Olson says the EPA can’t legally extend the deadline for utilities to comply. The Safe Drinking Water Act allows for a maximum of five years for utilities to meet new requirements, and that’s already in place. An EPA spokesperson said that the agency would “follow the legal process laid out in the Safe Drinking Water Act.” But even though the rules are still in place, and the administration shouldn’t be able to roll them back, the current situation means that utilities are likely to delay progress. (The administration has also made it clear that it’s willing to disregard laws.) “It creates a lot of confusion when you’re a water utility,” Olson says. “Utilities get five years to comply because they have to have contracts. They have to get funded. They have to do all this stuff in order to build a treatment plant. And if a utility senses, oh, I may not have to do this, are they going to invest in a new water treatment plant to protect their customers? Or are they going to wait and see and hope that EPA isn’t going to enforce some of these rules?” There’s also a risk, he says, that utilities might invest in treatment systems that only work for PFOA and PFOS, the two older types of “long-chain” PFAS. Those chemicals have mostly been phased out and replaced by newer types of PFAS. Some treatments for PFOA don’t work for newer types of the chemicals. That’s another fundamental problem with the regulation in the first place: There are thousands of different varieties. As certain types get regulated, the industry replaces them with others that often are just as risky. The chemicals should be regulated as a class, rather than by specific type, Olson says. “Big manufacturers in the U.S. agreed to phase out their manufacturer [PFOA and PFOS] many years ago,” he says. “But what they did is they just had ‘regrettable substitutions,’ as we call them. Other new ones popped up, like Gen X . . . It’s a classic [situation] where a chemical company stops making one thing and just jumps to the next.” Water utilities are fighting the rules because of cost. But funding exists for cleanup, including $9 billion in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and $12.5 billion in a settlement with chemical manufacturers last year. “There’s $21-plus billion that’s sitting there,” Olson says. Under Biden, the EPA had estimated that PFAS treatment would cost utilities around $1.5 billion a year, though other estimates range up to $3.8 billion a year. “If the utilities want to go ahead and start building this treatment technology, they should be asking for that money, rather than dragging their feet,” he says. “If you think about it, what is a water utility’s job? They have one job. And that is to supply adequate, safe water to consumers. And they’re just fighting, kicking, and screaming, against doing that.” View the full article