Good morning. Two games into the MLB’s World Series, the Toronto Blue Jays and LA Dodgers are 1-1. If the Dodgers win, it would be their second consecutive World Series title (and ninth total).

Either way, someone in blue will be celebrating.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

“I think the first priority for anybody posting content on Instagram is to get people off of Instagram,” education creator and Manychat user Gannon Meyer told us. 

Moving users off-platform is the premise of Manychat, an automated chat tool for Instagram creators. It’s like Zendesk, LinkDM, or Revio—but hyper focused on lead acquisition. If creators have a product—be it a course, newsletter, or guide—Manychat helps them convert Instagram followers to emails for audience ownership and sales. 

How Manychat works: Creators direct followers to comment a certain word on their posts, then those followers get an automated DM with a link or download. 

Two new features include share and follow DMs, which let creators send automatic DMs to people who just followed or shared their content. Meyer said 10% of his new followers in the last month have already converted to emails with the feature.

“Every email I get [using Manychat] costs me three cents over the lifetime of that subscriber, and it’s worth about $3. It was like a 100x return,” Meyer said. “It made me wonder like, ‘why is no one else talking about this?’”

It’s the end of an era for some gaming creators. Last week, a group of creators announced they're leaving gaming company EA’s Creator Network following its record-setting $55 billion sale to an investor consortium.

Quick context: The Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, Affinity Partners (owned by Jared Kushner), and private equity firm Silver Lake acquired EA last month in the largest leveraged buyout in history. The deal will make EA, which develops games including The Sims and Madden, a private company.

In protest, gaming creators James Turner, Jesse ”Plumbella” McNamara, and Kayla “lilsimsie” Sims are forgoing access to EA games, events, affiliate codes, and opportunities to work alongside development teams. 

The reasoning? They’re worried that the investors’ interest in AI and right-leaning political connections will impact game quality. 

What creators are saying →

Big picture: Many creators who make The Sims content have been included in game development over the years, working closely with developers to launch expansion packs. This group's decision to scale back their involvement with EA and their content about its properties illustrates the growing creator trend of mobilizing in pushback against publishers. The question now: Will EA and its new ownership feel the pressure?

Sponsored videos on YouTube have grown 54% year-over-year, according to a new report from Gospel Stats, a data company from creator news outlet Tubefilter.

The report tracked 65,759 sponsored videos in the first half of 2025, which generated 19.1 billion total views.  

Here are more highlights from the report →