James Hale

• Top 5 Branded Videos of the Week: MrBeast and the Mouse
• What happens when a content creator sponsors a NCAA team–and becomes its official media partner? Cullen Honohan is ready to find out.

  Honohan, who has a million followers on TikTok, 462K on Instagram, and 372K on YouTube, will embed with the team and serve as its official media partner. He'll create on-the-court and behind-the-scenes content, documenting the Colonials' rise as "the next Cinderella story in college basketball," he tells Tubefilter.

  
• Creators rely on brand deals, but worry about the “tension” between sponsors and viewers–and just 15% say they fully trust sponsored content from other creators

  Creators feel they have to get brand deals to survive making content long-term, but they're facing stagnant compensation from brands (21% said "low pay or undervaluation of creator content" was another big barrier to entry) and "tension" from viewers over endorsements. And, because of their personal experiences, a significant portion of them are leery of sponsored content from other creators.

  
• Spotify is cracking down on AI slop, but prompters can still post their generated music if they build a personal brand around it

  "Listeners have been clear in telling us that they don’t like seeing an artist profile that seems human, only to find out that the persona is AI-generated," it said. "The [AI Persona] badge signals to listeners that an artist’s identity may be AI-generated and does not represent a real person."

  
• OnlyFans investor says it will “never use AI in any capacity to disrupt creators”
• “If it was opt-in, nobody would opt in”: Twitch auto-enrolls all streamers in having their content scraped for Amazon LLM training
• Are creator AI disclosures going to be a thing?
• Thanks to ReelShort and Arizona State University, you can now go to college for microdramas
• Top 5 Branded Videos of the Week: Best buyin’
• 40% of LinkedIn posts are AI slop. It’s adding a button for users to flag them…and a separate tool for people to have AI “proofread” their posts.
• MySpace’s owners want to bring it back. But does it belong in 2026?
• So, theoretically, how much does it cost to buy fake views, followers, comments, likes, and shares right now?