Good morning. And welcome to the 10,000 new subscribers who have joined us over the last week. Each newsletter, you can expect three new stories from around the creator world. Plus, we share job listings, newsworthy links, events, and more. 

P.S. The winner of the MacBook Air is Christian F.! We just sent you an email with next steps. Thanks to all who participated.

— Hannah Doyle & Nate Graber-Lipperman

Can Creators Get Out the Vote?

As the 2024 US presidential election heats up, creators are partnering with political action committees (PACs) to share messaging campaigns aimed at potential voters—and some are even forming their own PACs outright.

First up: The PACs Priorities USA and Somos Votantes are working with four lifestyle YouTube creators including Daniela Legarda and Christian Maldonado to encourage Latin Americans to vote and advocate for causes they care about.

• The groups partnered with these creators in part because they don’t often share political videos.

• The PACs told Axios they want to reach audiences who are less likely to vote…but trust the opinions of their favorite creators.

• For example, Legarda talked about abortion rights while cooking a traditional Latin American recipe, patacones, in a YouTube Short.

Next up: Send the Vote, a new PAC cofounded by John Shahidi, the president of prank creator group Nelk. The PAC is raising $20 million to spend on voter registration drives aimed at Nelk’s young male fans.

• Nelk announced the effort last week in a podcast with Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance, including a link to an online tool for checking voter registration status.

• The group will host parties over the next several months—where only registered voters can get in.

Zoom out: From the White House hosting its first Creator Economy Conference to Vice President Kamala Harris featuring trending sounds in her campaign’s viral TikToks to former President Donald Trump appearing in videos alongside popular golf creators and gaming streamers, creators are increasingly making an impact on this years’ election.

Instagram Goes All in on Reach

The days of likes and follows are dead...at least by Instagram’s metrics. 

Earlier this week, the platform announced that views will now be the primary performance metric across all content including photos, carousels, Stories, and Reels. It’s part of Instagram’s broader effort to consistently reward reach across all types of content.

What that means: 

• Reel “plays” will be rebranded to “views.”

• In Insights, “accounts reached,” “accounts engaged,” “interactions,” and “watch time” will move to a different location.

• View numbers will now include repeat views.

What creators are saying:

• “I think overall the Instagram update is good since it consolidates the amount of info to [metrics] I’m already used to,” cinematographer Simon Sanjur told us. 

• “I think this move will influence creators and brands to consider content that’s going to be distributed both in the DMs and out of the app, perhaps as a way to compete with TikTok,” creator and social media manager Cristina Rose said.

• “I feel like the goal post keeps shifting for creators on Instagram and it’s a lot to keep up with,” Tami Oladipo, content writer at Buffer, told us. “It feels like the way they’re emphasizing wanting to track how content shared in these private spaces is for them and not for us. But I’ll give them time to cook and [hope] this works out for the benefit of creators.”

TikTok Leans into TV and Movie Discovery

TikTok is partnering with Hollywood studios like Warner Bros. for a new in-app feature called Spotlight. 

The details: A Spotlight link will appear on qualifying creator videos related to a film or series and lead to an IMDb-like page with cast descriptions, story summaries, related creator videos, and links to streaming and tickets.

Big picture: TikTok has become a hub for bootleg videos of TV shows and movies in recent years. While some studios have issued copyright strikes to remove rip-offs of their content, others like Paramount have leaned into it—the company put the entirety of Mean Girls on TikTok for one day (and reportedly received upwards of 7 million views).

🔥 Press Worthy

• Noel Miller provides an update on TMG Studios’ next steps.

• We’re going to VidSummit with Spotter to help launch their new AI tool for creators — Spotter Studio. You can win a ticket to VidSummit (and a Nomatic backpack) by signing up here.

• Gen Z culture writer Casey Lewis is starting a podcast.

• YouTube creators are suing Open AI for training its models on their content.

• Gary Vee kicks off VeeCon in LA today with creators including Khaby Lame and Bobbi Althoff.

• MrBeast sends a memo to employees that outlines internal changes, including hiring a chief human resources officer.

📚️ Thank You For Pressing Publish

The content we’re looking forward to reading, watching, and listening to this weekend.

• Read: The Ringer declares the winners and losers of “Brat Summer.”

• Watch: Why do no countries want to host the Olympics? Search Party investigates.

• Listen: What do aliens and ChatGPT have in common? This American Life explores how humans make sense of encounters with non-human intelligence.

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