Mattel's movie tie-in dolls for "Wicked" are being recalled due to the greatest typo ever made. Bluesky adds 700,000 users in one week as Americans flee Twitter, and a new contender might be on track to surpass MrBeast as the most-subscribed YouTuber of all time.

Plus: I'm now obsessed with finding the Reddit sleuths who solved one of the oldest musical mysteries on the Internet.

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There was no Internet when Yaya Han first discovered manga and anime in the early '90s. Born in China, she fell in love with this media (which was mostly imported from Japan) at a young age. But when her family unexpectedly moved to Europe, she became an outsider overnight - culturally and linguistically. That is, until she discovered a German anime magazine and started submitting her artwork. That's where she found thousands of obsessed fans just like her.

But it wasn't until she attended a U.S. anime convention in 1999 that her mind was blown by the power of cosplay - super fans who sewed elaborate costumes and dressed up as their favorite characters. Yaya's focus immediately shifted from drawing to fabrics, and she never looked back.

Today, her stunning costumes from anime and video games are adored by millions online, and she appears regularly as a speaker and contest judge at fan conventions around the world. She's partnered with global brands to release cosplay fabrics, sewing patterns, and even her own sewing machine.

Yaya joins Matt to share her inspiring immigrant story, why online fandom is so powerful, her creative process, building her business in the early days of social media, the difference between re-creation and inspiration, how anime (literally) saved her life, and how she deals with online haters. She also takes the trivia challenge about some cinematic costume history!

Follow Yaya: https://www.instagram.com/yayahan/

Check out her website: https://www.yayahan.com/

And buy her book! https://www.amazon.com/Yaya-Hans-World-Cosplay-Costume/dp/1454932651/

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Before becoming Patreon's Head of Online Community, Hayley Rosenblum was no stranger to fan funding. She had worked closely with musicians in their pivot away from record labels, and toward the Internet - where fandom reigns supreme.

These days, she helps creators large and small by listening to their needs and communicating pain points back to the Patreon mothership. Many artist conversations have changed the platform, often in subtle and unexpected ways. But even when her work seems "invisible," she takes great pride in empowering creators to do what they do best: make more amazing stuff for the people who love it.

This week, Hayley and Matt chat about her sage advice for starting a Patreon, the surprising ways educators use the platform, the "death of the follower," why she sometimes feels like an Internet "piñata," and that time Neil Young convinced her dad that she's pretty cool.

If you're a Patreon creator, join their official Discord community! https://discord.com/invite/patreon

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Two very interesting announcements from the Adobe Max conference connect directly back to last week's conversation about digital rights attribution. The company is launching their AI image and video generation model called "Firefly," which has only been trained on licensed and public domain imagery. So: If tools like this could be vetted, would artists and regulators be comfortable with them?

Links from this week's discussion:

https://arstechnica.com/ai/2024/10/adobe-unveils-ai-video-generator-trained-on-licensed-content/

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/16/24271338/adobe-sneaks-project-know-how-content-credentials

https://www.theverge.com/c/24238422/podcast-etymology-term-history-tech-vergecast

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Nearly every meme, YouTube video, and yes, even this very podcast, contains copyrighted work that may or may not be ... "officially" obtained. With millions of hours of audio and video uploaded to the Web every day, how can we possibly protect the intellectual property rights of creators?

In short, we can't. BUT, laws and court cases dating back to the '90s have dramatically changed our perceptions of what intellectual property can be in an age where remix culture is the lifeblood of the Internet.

This week on INFLUENCE, Duke University law professor Jennifer Jenkins joins Matt to unpack the differences between copyright, trademark, patents, fair use, and why Creative Commons and the public domain are so vital for online creativity.

We also dig in on the ContentID algorithms that "police" copyright on large social platforms, and what the hell to do about generative AI that synthesizes new content from billions of copyrighted works.

Learn more about Jennifer's work here: https://law.duke.edu/fac/jenkins

And subscribe to her Public Domain Day blog! https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/publicdomainday/2024/

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When "Thorsten A. Integrity" created a trivia challenge for his co-workers in 1997, he never dreamed it would become the Internet's most exclusive knowledge battleground. The proprietor of LearnedLeague (whose *actual* name is Shayne Bushfield) built a thoughtful trivia tournament on defense mechanics and the honor system. And when it finally got online, his core group remained small for more than a decade.

But as friends referred friends, the circle of vetted, honest players grew. And in the age where you can Google or ChatGPT nearly any answer, honor remains a cornerstone of the League's values.

Today, tens of thousands of players (including some [REDACTED] celebrities!) compete in seasonal, head-to-head challenges, where knowing your opponent's track record is a huge part of the strategy. The community is so dedicated and insular that it has broken off into smaller sub-tournaments during the off-season. But you actually can't join LearnedLeargue ... unless someone on the inside invites you.

What ran as a passion project for Shayne has turned into his full time job. He joins Matt to discuss the humble origins of the League, what makes for a great trivia question, the punishment for cheaters (spoiler: It's death), the value of knowledge in the age of the Internet, and why he has no reason to promote the League to new players.

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Jamie Baldanza has always been an animal lover. When the ad agency art director started posting her photos of local New Jersey horses online, the world took notice.

Then, on a trip out to the American West, she brought back more than just stunning pics for the 'Gram. A life-changing passion for documenting and protecting wild horses took root.

Since then, she's built a large online community of horse enthusiasts and conservation advocates who work to raise awareness around the plight of wild horses, whose existence is constantly threatened by land development in the region.

Her work has culminated in the documentary film @WildLandsWildHorses which beautifully articulates the biology and ancestry of wild horses, and the conflict between ranchers, the U.S. government, and wildlife. The film is available on YouTube.

Jamie (known online as @ThisMustangLife) sits down with Matt to discuss the family dynamics of wild herds, the epic challenge of tracking and photographing stallions, the terrible fate of horses rounded up for removal, why well-meaning horse advocates often go overboard on the Internet, and what it's like to build trust and companionship with these sentient creatures.

Watch "Wild Lands Wild Horses" in its entirety on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Lftvyrj4PY

Follow Jamie on Instagram and TikTok:

https://www.instagram.com/thismustanglife

https://www.tiktok.com/@thismustanglife?lang=en

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YouTube recently announced two new features.

"Veo" will allow users to create AI-generated clips and backgrounds for Shorts. And "Hype" is a new way for fans to support small and medium-sized channels.

The former seems like a bad but inevitable feature that will flood YouTube with synthetic, low-effort content. But the latter could be a major leap forward in audience-first content discovery.

Hype gives all users 3 votes every week. When cast for small creators, they earn points (and potentially revenue) that puts them in a global leaderboard. It's a non-algorithmic, human-powered way to surface the platform's best content, and divert some of the attention economy away from YouTube's 1% of large creators who dominate the home page and suggested videos.

Plus: The FTC notices that social media business models are horrible, and the MrBeast lawsuits have begun.

Links referenced in this episode:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/19/24249073/ftc-data-retention-privacy-report-facebook-meta-youtube-reddit

https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/18/youtube-shorts-to-integrate-veo-google-ai-video-model/

https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/18/24247995/youtube-hype-creators

https://variety.com/2024/digital/news/mrbeast-amazon-sued-beast-games-contestants-class-action-1236148181/

https://newsletter.tubefilter.com/p/roblox-youtube-add-yours-shopify

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Matt Hobbs was a working musician and the "house band" for an improv theater in Atlanta. Then the pandemic hit in 2020. With live performance on hold and life getting boring, he looked for musical inspiration at home. Luckily, his two adorable chihuahuas, Lenny and Mar-Pup, delivered.

On a whim, he began writing short and ridiculous songs from the dogs' perspective and posting them on Instagram. The creative exercise got laughs from family, friends, and a small community of pet owners looking for fun at a dark time. In an effort to improve his skills, he wrote hundreds of these "Puppy Songs" while waiting to get back on stage.

Then, TikTok happened. Puppy Songs exploded across the Internet, and Matt realized he was onto something. Some of his biggest hits, like "Cheese Tax," "Air Jail," and "Where the Heck Is Mom?" have been streamed nearly 100 million times across platforms.

This week, Matt Hobbs joins Matt Silverman (2 Matts!) to talk about the craft of songwriting, what inspires him to make new videos, how social media is changing music, and turning Internet virality into a sustainable music career.

PLUS: Ancient puppy trivia and an EXCLUSIVE announcement about Hobbs' upcoming project.

Follow Puppy Songs:

https://www.youtube.com/@UCp5Ytwj_TkbbfztidjFtXrw

https://www.instagram.com/PuppySongs/

https://www.tiktok.com/@puppysongs

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The Internet Archive, a non-profit repository for BILLIONS of pieces of media, has been lending digital books from its library since 2011 without a hitch. But in March 2020, they made one crucial mistake that now poses an existential threat to the online "Library of Alexandria."

This week, The Internet Archive lost its appeal in a lawsuit brought by the 4 major publishing conglomerates. And while the publishers are *technically* right in their copyright infringement complaint, the consequences of the suit could be catastrophic for the Archive.

Plus: Your responses to the blind gamers episode, and get ready for some Puppy Songs!

Links referenced in this episode:

What is Happening to the Internet Archive? (All Things Lost): https://youtu.be/bp2aowF0jUw

The Internet Archive Loses Its Appeal of a Major Copyright Case: https://www.wired.com/story/internet-archive-loses-hachette-books-case-appeal/

For more on the Internet Archive, check out our 2G1P episode with Jason Scott: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-internet-archive-wayback-machine-and-discmaster/id1285444706?i=1000589825934

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SightlessKombat is a video game streamer and reviewer, who also consults on some of the industry's biggest titles: "God of War," "Sea of Thieves," "Horizon: Forbidden West," and more. Yet he has never seen a single pixel.

That's because he was born blind — completely without vision. But he was drawn to video games from a young age because ... well, they're awesome.

So, how does he actually *play* them? The answer is, it depends. Game and Internet accessibility has come a long way since the '80s and '90s. But many in the blind community still rely on volunteers to mod screen readers into games. The process is tireless, collaborative, and very community driven.

This week on INFLUENCE, Matt sits down with 3(!) guests to talk about video game accessibility. Aure is a German programmer who recently released a screen reading mod for the wildly popular deck-building poker-like "Balatro," allowing blind players to enjoy the game for the first time. SightlessKombat is the aforementioned streamer, game reviewer, and Accessible Gaming Officer at the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) in the UK. And Ohylli is a legally blind accessibility advocate (and "Balatro" enthusiast!) based in Finland.

They discuss the amazing tools that make wildly complex games like "Factorio" and "Stardew Valley" accessible to blind players, how 3D action games like "Sea of Thieves" and "Star Wars: Outlaws" are played without sight, and why studios that make games more accessible can reap unexpected profits.

Follow Aure's modding work: https://github.com/Aurelius7309

Subscribe to SightlessKombat: https://linktr.ee/sightlesskombat

Follow Ohylli: https://x.com/ohylli

Special thanks to u/matrheine on Reddit

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