TOGETHER WITH

It’s Thursday and as tech giants roll out new age verification tech, they’re facing a scarier threat than government regulations: kids with fake mustaches.

EVENT CIRCUIT

The shakeup: VidCon Anaheim has a new title sponsor, and for the first time, it’s not a social video platform. Instead, POP.STORE—a creator monetization platform that operates under the umbrella of the CommentSold Group—has signed on as the title sponsor for the 2026 edition of VidCon’s flagship event.

That deal makes POP.STORE the third title sponsor in VidCon Anaheim history. YouTube has held that distinction ten times (including in 2025, when it took over VidCon’s top line to celebrate its 20th birthday), while TikTok briefly stepped in during the early 2020s.

Compared to those two heavyweights, POP.STORE is a relative unknown. In a statement, VidCon VP Sarah Toretti positioned the AI-powered platform’s sponsorship as a nod to the ongoing growth and diversification of creator businesses.

The reveal: POP.STORE’s opening day keynote address at VidCon 2026 will double as the public unveiling of ECHO-ME, an agentic AI commerce platform that launched quietly earlier this year.

POP.STORE CEO Gautam Goswami will present a demo, and longtime creator economy insider Jon Youshaei will moderate the session. Goswami hyped up his company’s platform in a recent statement, claiming that “with an agentic AI team like ECHO-ME, a creator with 5,000 followers can now operate like one with a full team behind them.”

If you’re curious about what Goswami’s vision looks like, you can secure your seat at the June 25 session by snagging a Creator or Pro Pass to Vidcon.

Last month, POSSIBLE drew thousands of marketing industry leaders from 50+ countries to Miami for three days of exclusive insights and networking. 

Executives from Meta, YouTube, Crocs, Snap, MrBeast, e.l.f., and other global brands were joined by the world’s top creators—including Issa Rae, Dhar Mann, Kat Stickler, and actor Terry Crews.

Here’s a quick look at the conversations that defined POSSIBLE 2026:

POSSIBLE 2026 might be a wrap, but the event series is just getting started. As Global President & Co-Founder Christian Muche revealed, POSSIBLE is coming to Lisbon in October 2027, and will return to Miami Beach April 5-7, 2027.

HEADLINES IN BRIEF 📰

PLATFORM POTPOURRI

The trend: Thanks to a recent rule update, Twitch streams can now mog each other to their hearts’ content.

If you’re not yet familiar with “mogging,” the term derives from the phrase “alpha male of the group” and can refer to any show of dominance. The rise of looksmaxxing influencers like Clavicular has pushed the mogging phenomenon into the mainstream; now, Twitch’s “just chatting” community is getting in on the fun via an app called Omoggle.

The platform—which is a play on the bygone video chat service Omegle—puts two individuals in a side-by-side video chat and then scans both participants’ faces to determine which is closer to the beauty standard chased by looksmaxxing creators. Thanks in large part to Twitch stars like JasonTheWeen, Omoggle’s leaderboard is now filled with thousands of players.

The update: Until recently, however, Twitch’s Community Guidelines would’ve smothered the burgeoning “Omoggle meta” thanks to a rule that disallowed “randomized video chat services.” That portion of the platform’s Community Guidelines has now been amended so that streamers are free to Omoggle away.

This isn’t the first time Twitch has rewritten its rules to support emerging streamer metas. A 2023 “topless meta” tested the limits of Twitch’s rulebook, which was briefly amended to allow “artistic nudity.” That change was rolled back when streamers pushed the new policy too far, but Twitch eventually found a workable middle ground by letting users choose what they want to see.

Mogging could prove to be a similarly complicated issue for Twitch to traverse. On TikTok, the #SkinnyTok hashtag has drawn widespread scrutiny from regulators. Looksmaxxing is now facing related criticisms for its pseudoscientific approach to beauty—a problem Twitch might soon have to take into account.

TALKING POLITICS

The study: The 2024 U.S. presidential election cycle is often referred to as the influencer election. Now, a recent study published in the journal Nature shows how the polarization of viewers’ social media feeds may have impacted that cultural flashpoint.

Researchers set up 323 “sock puppet” accounts on TikTok to measure the political polarization of the For You Page. Those accounts were split up, with some trending toward left-wing recommendations while others moved toward the right. All told, the sock puppets received over 280,000 recommendations across 27 weeks during the 2024 U.S. presidential election cycle.

It has long been understood that the political leanings of social media users have a profound effect on the type of algorithmic recommendations they receive, oftentimes creating digital echo chambers.

The Nature study, however, showed that siloed social media feeds aren’t as straightforward as they might seem. Republican accounts were 11.5% more likely than Democrat accounts to receive recommendations that aligned with their political beliefs. It follows, then, that left-leaning accounts were 7.5% more likely to see content that crossed party lines—including content that criticized the Democrat party.

While Democratic accounts are sometimes served content that can be defined as anti-Democrat, Republican accounts rarely see anti-Republican content. And in a survey attached to the study, Republican respondents were more likely to use words like “positive,” “optimistic,” and “agreeable” when describing the content they see on the FYP.

The big picture: The uneven nature of algorithmic recommendations presents a challenge for Democratic political strategists. After Republicans dominated digital discourse in 2024 by linking President Trump to creator culture, Democrats have made it clear they intend to copy that strategy in 2026.

If left-wing feeds are more likely to be self-critical than right-wing feeds, however, firms like AND Media may need to begin addressing Democratic viewers’ frustrations with their own party.

WATCH THIS 👀

The docuseries: Les Mills (aka the international fitness company founded by Phillip Mills) offers in-person and online classes hosted by over 100,000 expert instructors from all around the world. Now, the best and brightest of those fitness instructors are being featured in a six-episode YouTube docuseries made by Les Mills and Auckland-based studio Tomorrowland.

Together with The Now Agency (which was co-founded in July 2025 by Managing Partner Gabe Feldman and Reign Maker Group co-founder/CEO Jonathan Chanti), Les Mills is publishing one episode of RISE: Search for the Ultimate Trainers every week on its official YouTube channel. Check out a trailer for the series here.

FYI: Reign Maker Group is a Tubefilter partner.

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