It’s Wednesday and according to CEO Evan Spiegel, Snap Specs aren’t AI glasses—they’re “a see-through computer." (In the shape and style of glasses.)

THE BIZ

The badge: A new badge will tell advertisers which Twitch creators are “certified” for brand partnerships on the popular streaming platform. The Creator Certification, as the new credential is known, was unveiled at the 2026 TwitchCon Europe gathering in Rotterdam, and offers perks that are not available to other Partners and Affiliates.

To cash in on those benefits, creators must complete a certification program. Those lessons are presented in the form of a new Creator Camp course and cover “Sponsorships 101” best practices before moving on to share some tips for “Creating Brand Suitable Content.” The course, which takes about 15 minutes to finish, can be found within Twitch’s Sponsorship Portal.

Streamers who complete the course are rewarded with a profile badge that displays their certified status, plus 12 hours of early access to Open Invite campaigns and training that will help them maximize long-term sponsorship opportunities.

The context: The certification program’s arrival coincides with the launch of several exciting sponsorship opportunities on Twitch. A Minecraft Tiny Takeover, for instance, broke new ground by opening sponsored campaigns to Affiliate-level partners. And in the world of esports, Riot Games is hosting summertime streaming events for games like 2XKO, Valorant, and League of Legends.

Creators who complete their certification courses will be best equipped to take advantage of those opportunities.

GLOBAL UPDATES

The ban: U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has announced a bold piece of legislation that will bar children under 16 from most major social platforms.

Ten platforms—TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, YouTube, Snapchat, Threads, Twitch, Kick, and Reddit—are expected to be covered by the incoming ban. Starmer indicated that regulations could pass as soon as Christmas, with enforcement set to start in 2027.

The objections: Australia set the tone for the rest of the world when it passed a law barring under-18s from major platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Despite widespread criticisms of that ban, other countries soon indicated that they planned to follow Australia’s lead. The U.K. is the latest to add its name to that list, and Starmer said it will go “further than any country in the world” to protect young citizens from online harm.

That measure is unlikely to garner a warm reception. A Livity report conducted in the U.K. found that 95% of local teens believe that watching videos helps them with their schoolwork. Now, they could lose access to that resource.

Representatives for companies like YouTube and Meta have also been quick to claim that the planned U.K. regulations would not make kids feel safer. YouTube’s rep, for instance, said that “blanket bans push kids out of curated, supervised, beneficial experiences and towards anonymous, less safe services.”

Encrypted messaging services like WhatsApp and Signal will be excluded from the U.K. ban, so teens will still have a few apps available for safe interactions. If the U.K. truly hopes to make a positive impact, however, it will need to figure out how to stop kids from sidestepping enforcement with VPNs—preferably before the ban goes into effect.

STUDY SAYS

The report: According to Kapwing, “TikTok has a slop problem.” That was the main takeaway of the video editing service’s latest report, which found that new TikTok accounts receive a high volume of AI-generated recommendations.

To conduct its study, Kapwing built a list of popular categories and manually analyzed tags within those categories. Any AI slop videos with those tags were noted. Then, Kapwing registered new TikTok accounts and recorded the number of slop videos served on the For You Page.

The results were troubling. 59% of the TikToks served to new accounts were categorized as AI slop, and the frequency of those recommendations appeared to increase deeper into the For You Page. For the tag #CartoonKids, a whopping 97% of videos were categorized as AI slop. For kids’ videos in general, 57% of the studied videos qualified as AI slop.

The context: Given these findings, TikTok could soon face the same child safety watchdogs that went after YouTube and its library of AI slop.

It’s hard to argue that you’re cracking down on slop when you also invest heavily in generative AI, but Google’s video platform has nevertheless taken steps to reduce the volume of AI slop on its platform. That solution has involved crackdowns on slop channels and tools that let users limit their exposure to low-effort, AI-generated content.

Kapwing noted those efforts in a previous report. Now, its latest release claims that TikTok accounts get three times as many AI recs as YouTube accounts do—meaning it’s time for TikTok to take its turn in the AI hot seat.

WATCH THIS 👀

The TV teacher: From Tom Holland to Katseye, Season 3 of Celebrity Substitute is shaping up to be a star-studded affair. And who better to take over the classroom than Quinta Brunson?

The Emmy-winning producer and actress tapped into the psyche of her beloved Abbott Elementary character, Janine Teagues, to teach actual second graders the ins and outs of TV writing. By the end of Brunson’s lesson, her pupils end up in a real writer’s room, where they “pitch ideas, debate storylines, and work together to create an original episode from scratch.”

Check out Brunson’s full Celebrity Substitute appearance here.

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Today's newsletter is from: Emily Burton, Drew Baldwin, Sam Gutelle, and Josh Cohen.