WhatsApp said earlier this month, that users who refused a new privacy policy would no longer receive calls or notifications, limiting functionality.
But for now, in a confusing rollout, WhatsApp has changed course, and it won’t restrict any functionality to users who don’t accept the policy, which went into effect on May 15, according to The Next Web.
WhatsApp also published an updated statement to its Help Center: “No one will have their accounts deleted or lose functionality of WhatsApp on May 15th because of this update,” it said.
The new privacy policy was originally planned for February, but was delayed by three months after critics claimed the update would allow the app to share more personal data with Facebook, WhatsApp’s parent company. WhatsApp has said the updated terms only apply to messaging business accounts, enabling businesses to link up with Facebook’s platform more easily.
Users migrated to rival encrypted messaging apps, like Signal and Telegram, after Whatsapp first introduced the policy in January. Downloads for Signal were up 4,200% from the previous week after WhatsApp first sent users a notification about the changes.
In January, India reportedly asked WhatsApp to reverse its new policy change. India is WhatsApp’s biggest market, and holds more than 400 million of the app’s 2 billion users.
WhatsApp did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
The BBC is investigating a Palestinian employee who tweeted “#HitlerWasRight” during the 2014 Israel-Gaza war.
Tala Halawa, who began her work as a digital journalist at BBC Monitoring in 2017, wrote a string of anti-Israel and antisemitic posts before her employment at the world’s largest broadcast news organization.
In one tweet from July 2014, Halawa wrote: “#Israel is more #Nazi than #Hitler! Oh, #HitlerWasRight #IDF go to hell. #PrayForGaza.”
In another tweet, shared by pro-Israel media watchdog HonestReporting, Halawa wrote: “#Zionists can’t get enough of our blood.”
The Ramallah-based journalist, whose most recent report for the BBC on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was published last Sunday, deleted her social media accounts in the aftermath of her tweets being unearthed.
A tweet from July 2014 by Tala Halawa that said “Zionists can’t get enough of our blood.”
Halawa also posted controversial content on Facebook, according to HonestReporting, including an August 2014 graphic that called for the relocation of Israel to the United States.
Tala Halawa shared a graphic on Facebook in 2014 that called for Israel to be relocated to the US.
A BBC spokesperson, who confirmed that Halawa is being investigated, clarified that the offending content was from before she was employed by them.
“Whilst these tweets predate the individual’s employment the BBC is taking this extremely seriously and is investigating the matter with urgency,” a BBC spokesperson told Insider. “We are clear there is no place for views like this to exist within the BBC and we deplore racism and antisemitism of any kind.”
The hashtag #HitlerWasRight has been used increasingly in recent weeks, Insider’s Sarah Al-Arshani wrote. The Anti-Defamation League said that between May 7 and May 14, more than 17,000 tweets could be found that used variations of the phrase.
This coincides with a sharp rise in the number of antisemitic incidents since the start of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Insider reported.
Halawa’s investigation also follows the dismissal of Emily Wilder– a journalist who was fired from the Associated Press following tweets which the news agency said violated their social media policy.
Wilder, who is Jewish, said that she was not told which social media posts led to her termination. She has indicated that she believes she was fired because a group of college Republicans identified an old social media post in which she criticized the Israeli government in 2020, Insider’s Yelena Dzhanova reported.
Ready to shutter your side gig, or eliminate your company’s Facebook page? It’s easy to delete your page on the Facebook website, Facebook mobile app, or Facebook Business Manager website.
You can also unpublish your page if you want to make it unviewable to other users until you’re ready to re-publish it.
Here’s everything you need to know about deleting or unpublishing a Facebook page.
How to delete a Facebook page
When you delete a Facebook page, it will remain visible to the public during the 14-day deletion period. If you want it to be invisible to the public, you will need to unpublish it before deleting it.
2. From the Facebook homepage, click Pages in the sidebar menu on the left.
Click “Pages” on the left.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
3. Under Pages you manage, click on the page you want to delete. If a pop-up asks you to connect your page to WhatsApp, just exit out of it.
Click on your page.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
4. In the sidebar menu on the left, scroll down and select Settings at the very bottom of the list.
Click “Settings” on the left.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
5. On the General tab of the Settings page, scroll all the way to the bottom and select Remove Page.
Click “Remove page.”
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
6. Click the blue hyperlink Delete [your page name] and in the pop-up, click Delete Page.
After clicking the hyperlink, click “Delete Page” in the pop-up.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
7. Another pop-up will appear notifying you that your page has “entered deletion mode” and that you can cancel the deletion within 14 days. Click OK.
8. To reactivate your page within the 14-day window, click the General tab at the top of the Page settings menu. A banner will appear at the top of the General tab notifying you that your page is set to be deleted – click CancelDeletion and hit Confirm in the pop-up.
2. In the sidebar menu on the left, click Settings, toward the bottom of the list.
Click “Settings” on the left.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
3. On the Settings page, click More business settings.
Click “More business settings” on the left.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
4. Under Accounts, click Pages.
Click “Pages” on the left.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
5. Click on the Page you want to delete, and select “Remove” in the top-right corner.
Click “Remove” in the top-right.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
6. Facebook will tell you that you’ve got 14 days to cancel the deletion process. If you want to continue with deleting your page, click Delete Page.
7. After 14 days you’ll be asked to confirm that you want to delete your Facebook page. During this time, you can go back to Page Options > Delete Page and select Confirm to stop your page from being deleted. If you want your Facebook page to be invisible during the 14 days, then follow the instructions below to unpublish it.
On the Facebook mobile app:
1. Open the Facebook app on your Android or iOS device.
2. Tap the icon of three horizontal lines in the bottom-right corner and select Pages from the menu.
Tap “Pages” in the settings menu.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
3. Under Pages You Manage, click the page you want to delete.
4. Tap the gear-shaped Settings icon in the top-right corner.
Tap the settings icon.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
5. Tap General at the top of the Settings page and scroll down to the Remove Page section.
6. Tap the blue hyperlink Delete [your page name] and in the pop-up, select Delete Page.
Tap on the delete page hyperlink.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
7. The next screen will notify you that your page has “entered deletion mode” and that you can cancel the deletion within 14 days. Tap OK.
8. To reactivate your page within the 14-day window, go back to the General tab of the Settings menu. Scroll down until you see a banner notifying you that your page is set to be deleted – tap Cancel Deletion and hit Confirm on the next screen.
Click “Cancel Deletion.”
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
How to unpublish a Facebook page
Instead of deleting your page entirely, you can make it invisible to other Facebook users until you’re ready to publish it.
2. In the sidebar menu on the left, click Settings, toward the bottom of the list.
Click “Settings” on the left.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
3. On the Settings page, click More business settings.
Click “More business settings” on the left.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
4. Under Accounts, click Pages.
Click “Pages” on the left.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
5. Click on the page you want to delete and click View Page in the top-right corner.
Go to “View Page.”
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
6. On your page, click Settings on the right side of the menu bar at the top of the page, in between Edit Page Info and Help. Don’t click the gear-shaped settings icon in the very top-right corner as that will take you back to business settings.
Click “Settings” at the top.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
7. On the General tab, click Page visibility, located toward the top of the list.
Click “Page visibility” at the top.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
8. Click the circle button next to Page unpublished and hit Save Changes.
Click “Page unpublished” and then “Save Changes.”
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
9. In the Unpublish Page? pop-up, select a reason for unpublishing and hit Next.
10. Then, click an option under What do you need to finish your Page? and click Unpublish.
On the Facebook mobile app:
1. Open the Facebook app on your Android or iOS device.
2. Tap the icon of three horizontal lines in the bottom-right corner and select Pages from the menu.
Tap “Pages” in the settings menu.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
3. Tap the page you want to unpublish.
4. Hit the gear-shaped Settings icon in the top-right corner of the screen.
Tap the settings icon.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
5. Tap the General tab and scroll down to the Page Visibility section.
6. Select Unpublish under Page Visibility. A blue check mark will appear and your page should now be invisible to the public.
For countless Indians, Twitter has been a way to track down medical supplies for friends and family sick with COVID-19, as a second wave overwhelmed hospitals.
But when one man appealed for oxygen for his sick grandfather in April, he was arrested and charged with spreading misinformation. Authorities in Uttar Pradesh, where the man lived, claimed there was no shortage, dismissing “rumors and propaganda on social media.”
One head of an NGO in New Delhi, who asked for anonymity for fear of reprisal, told Insider he was called by police and told to shut down a Telegram channel he was running to procure medical supplies for those in need.
Authorities have been going after the platforms themselves too. Earlier this week, police went to Twitter’s offices in Delhi after the company labelled tweets by ministers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling BJP party as “manipulated media.”
BJP member of parliament Dr. Vinay Sahasrabuddhe was among those whose tweets Twitter labelled “manipulated media.” He shared a document claiming it was an opposition party plan to use the COVID situation to embarrass the Government. The opposition claimed it was fake.
Twitter
They are also clamping down on more trivial matters. Last week, the government ordered Facebook and Twitter to remove references to the “Indian variant” of coronavirus – despite the fact the government itself was happy to call another variant “South African.”
Indian authorities’ attempts to censor criticism have become more pronounced in recent months.
At that time, COVID-19 cases were low and ministers encouraged people to resume normal life. But a more severe second wave struck. Earlier in May, the country set a global record for cases recorded in one day – 414,188 – and its seven-day average of daily cases is still more than 200,000, more than double the peak of the first wave in September.
The seven-day average of India’s daily COVID case rate shows the scale of the second wave.
Our World In Data
Ministers have been condemned for not only failing to prepare for second wave, but allowing and even staging mass gatherings. In late April, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook were asked to censor dozens of tweets and posts that criticized such failures.
This week, the standoff is coming to a head. A new law came into force Wednesday that threatens tech companies and their employees with prosecution and potentially imprisonment if they don’t comply with takedown orders within 36 hours.
Twitter issued a statement Thursday condemning “intimidation tactics” against their employees and the new rules’ “potential threat to freedom of expression.”
The statement vowed to continue a “constructive dialogue with the Indian Government” but added: “We plan to advocate for changes to elements of these regulations that inhibit free, open public conversation.”
Platforms like Twitter and Facebook have been refuges for dissent in India. A US State Department report noted in March that Indian government officials were “involved in silencing or intimidating critical media outlets” through physical attacks, pressuring owners, as well as targeting sponsors and “encouraging frivolous lawsuits.”
Raman Jit Singh Chima, the Asia Policy Director at Access Now, a non-profit promoting digital civil rights, said the government’s actions were creating a “chilling impact on free speech.”
He added the repressive action tended to happen “when they think they are under pressure or come under more online criticism.”
Pratik Sinha, who founded one of India’s leading fact-checking platforms, AltNews, said the government had been content to leave social media alone before the farmers’ protests, when it was enjoying praise and India appeared to have avoided a COVID-19 disaster.
An elderly farmers shouts slogans as protesters block a major highway during a protest at the Delhi-Haryana state border in India on December 1, 2020.
Altaf Qadri/AP Photos
But Sinha said: “As soon as the narrative changed, people started using the very medium that has benefitted the ruling party for such a long time to voice their discontent … they don’t want these critical voices to come out.”
“These are clearly diversion tactics that the government is adopting in the middle of a pandemic.”
Samir Jain, policy director at digital rights think-tank the Center for Democracy and Technology, said threats of imprisonment were akin to “hostage provisions.”
He added the new rules would “only empower the government to escalate its attempts to stifle legitimate speech and further imperil the future of online free expression in India.”
Facebook and Google have both issued carefully-worded statements in response to the new rules, in contrast to Twitter’s strongly-worded response.
Google said it would “ensure that we’re combating illegal content in an effective and fair way, and in order to comply with local laws in the jurisdictions that we operate in.”
A Facebook spokesperson told Insider that the company would “comply with the provisions of the IT rules and continue to discuss a few of the issues which need more engagement with the government.”
Senior BJP member of parliament and former party vice-president Dr. Vinay Sahasrabuddhe, whose tweet was among those labelled “manipulated media” by Twitter, told Insider in a statement: “The refusal and reluctance of social media platforms to abide by the rules and regulations made applicable by the government is inexplicable.”
“Law of the land is supreme and nobody can disregard India’s constitution,” he added.
“Besides, the opaqueness of their algorithms and lack of transparency in their decision making makes their case of taking a unilateral decision of flagging some Tweets totally undemocratic.
“India is a robust and institutionalized democracy and the Government cannot allow any company to take us for granted.”
AltNews’s Sinha said the government could not continue to suppress its failures over the pandemic.
“People are grieving. There’s anger,” he added. “You can’t just suppress anger, it’s bound to come out.”
Twitter has listed a new subscription service on Apple’s App Store called “Twitter Blue.” It costs $3 a month and lets you customize colors in the app, “undo send” on your tweets, and organize tweets in folders so they’re easy to find later on.
Under In-App Purchases on the iOS App Store, Twitter Blue is listed with a price of $2.99, or £2.49. The service doesn’t appear to be enabled for Twitter users just yet.
Screenshot of Twitter Blue subscription in the In-App Payments on iOS
Twitter
Technology blogger Jane Manchun Wong has access to Twitter Blue, and she tweeted on Thursday that the subscription service allowed users to customize colors and app icons.
Wong said in a separate tweet that Twitter Blue comes with an “undo” button, which gives you five seconds to stop a tweet from sending.
According to screenshots of Twitter Blue, which Wong tweeted, Twitter Blue has a “Reader Mode” feature. With this, users can “keep up with threads by turning them into easy-to-read text.”
Twitter Blue also has a “Collections” tab where users can save and organize tweets in folders so they are easier to find later, according to Wong’s screenshots.
Twitter declined to comment with any further details on the new subscription service, or when it would officially be available.
Earlier this month, the social-media giant began letting users send and receive money through a “Tip Jar.”
A specific exemption included in a new law signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis continues to draw fire from critics including the Internet Association, an industry group representing 40 of the world’s leading internet companies.
The legislation, SB 7072, was signed by DeSantis on Monday and bills itself as a way to hold tech companies accountable and protect individuals’ ability to post, share, and access content on social media.
The law forces social-media companies to host all candidates for political office in the state, regardless of what they say, or face fines of up to $250,000 per day. In addition, private Florida citizens who feel they have been unfairly treated by the big tech companies will be able to sue the platforms for up to $100,000.
“Many in our state have experienced censorship and other tyrannical behavior firsthand in Cuba and Venezuela,” DeSantis said in a statement. “If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable.”
But there’s a massive loophole written into the law that exempts companies that own theme parks in the state.
“Social media,” as defined by the bill, “does not include any information service, system, Internet search engine, or access software provider operated by a company that owns and operates a theme park or entertainment complex.”
In other words, the new law won’t apply to Disney, which operates Disney World in Florida, and Comcast, which operates Universal Studios. And other companies like Facebook and Twitter could avoid liability simply by opening – or simply buying – an amusement park in Florida.
Indeed, one Democratic lawmaker asked that very question in the debate over the bill back in April.
“If Facebook buys a theme park, does that prevent us from being able to regulate what happens on Facebook?” asked Rep. Andrew Learned, according to NBC Miami.
“If they bought a theme park and named it Zuckerland and he met the definition of a theme park under Florida statute, then yes,” Republican Rep. Blaise Ingoglia replied.
According to the statute, Zuckerland would need to have at least “25 contiguous acres” and serve at least 1 million visitors per year to be legally allowed to ignore the content rules on Facebook.
The bill also requires social-media companies to inform users of what types of content are allowed on their platforms – like the terms of service and acceptable use policies that users already must agree to in order to access their accounts.
Companies would be further required to give notice when changing their policies, like those emails users already get that say “We’re updating our policies.”
If a news story is clearly untrue, but just so happens to come from a news outlet, social platforms would be prohibited from taking steps to make sure the fake news doesn’t go viral, The Wall Street Journal reported.
“We the people are standing up to tech totalitarianism with the signing of Florida’s Big Tech Bill,” DeSantis said on Twitter.
Another law in Texas, Senate Bill 12, echoes much of the language from the Florida legislation, calling for “protection from censorship or discriminatory enforcement of content regulations.”
Florida’s SB 7072 is “more about politics than prevention, as the bill arbitrarily exempts major mass media corporations as long as they are also in the theme park business,” said the Internet Association’s senior vice president of state government affairs, Robert Callahan, in a statement on Monday.
In addition, both the Florida and Texas rules apply only to platforms with more than 100 million users. Parler, a favorite app of conservatives, has just a fraction of that, and a Texas lawmaker’s proposal to have the law apply to platforms with 25 million users was defeated.
“This type of legislation would make children and other vulnerable communities less safe by making it harder for us to remove content like pornography, hate speech, bullying, self-harm images and sexualized photos of minors,” said Facebook’s Global Head of Safety Antigone Davis, in a statement to the Austin Business Journal.
Florida’s measure goes into effect on July 1, 2021.
Maybe you’re tired of your uncle’s constant political posts. Maybe you’ve seen enough videos of your high school classmate’s cat.
Is it time to unfriend them? While that’s always an option, if you want a more permanent solution, you can block them. When you block someone, it’ll mute all their posts and prevent them from direct messaging you.
And if you ever want to unblock them, you can do so easily without alerting them. Unblocking someone will even re-add them to your Friends list if you were friends before the block.
Here’s how to block or unblock someone on Facebook.
How to block someone on Facebook
This can be done on either the Facebook website or mobile app.
1. Log into your Facebook account and locate the person you want to block, either by searching for their name or by clicking their name on your timeline.
2. Near the top right of their profile page, click the three horizontal dots.
Click the three-dot icon.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Business Insider
3. In the drop-down menu that appears, click “Block.”
Select “Block” from the list of options.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Business Insider
5. In the window that pops up, click “Confirm,” and then click “Okay.”
You’re done – they’re blocked. They won’t see what you post, you won’t see what they post, they’re no longer listed as a friend on your page, and they can’t send you messages.
But what if blocking them was a mistake made in the heat of the moment? If so, you can easily unblock them.
How to unblock someone on Facebook
Unlike blocking, these instructions will differ depending on whether you’re using the website or mobile app.
Unblocking via the Facebook website
1. From anywhere on Facebook, find and click the downward pointing arrow in the top-right corner of the page.
2. In the drop-down menu, click “Settings & privacy” and then click “Settings.”
After clicking “Settings & privacy” in the dropdown menu under the arrow icon, click “Settings.”
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Business Insider
3. In the column on the left side of the screen, click “Blocking.”
Go to the “Blocking” page.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Business Insider
4. On the next page, see which users you have blocked and, if you want to bring one back into the fold, click “Unblock” beside their name.
In the “Block users” section, click “Unblock” beside the relevant person.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Business Insider
5. Click “Confirm” in the pop-up window that appears.
Click “Confirm” to finish unblocking them.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Business Insider
Unblocking via the Facebook mobile app
1. Open the app and tap the three stacked lines in the bottom-right corner.
2. In the Menu page that appears, scroll down to tap “Settings & Privacy,” and then “Settings.”
Open your Facebook settings.
William Antonelli/Insider
3. On the Settings page, scroll down and tap “Blocking.”
Open your account’s “Blocking” menu.
William Antonelli/Insider
4. You’ll be shown a full list of everyone you have blocked. Tap “Unblock” next to anyone’s name, and then confirm by tapping “Unblock” again.
You can unblock anyone on this list with two quick taps.
Zhang Yiming, cofounder of the Chinese internet giant ByteDance, which owns TikTok, is stepping down as CEO, Reuters reported Wednesday.
“The truth is, I lack some of the skills that make an ideal manager. I’m more interested in analyzing organizational and market principles, and leveraging these theories to further reduce management work, rather than actually managing people,” Yiming wrote in a memo to employees, according to Reuters.
“Similarly, I’m not very social, preferring solitary activities like being online, reading, listening to music, and contemplating what may be possible,” he added.
Yiming said ByteDance cofounder and HR chief Rubo Liang will transition into the CEO role over the next six months, Reuters reported.
Yiming, a 38-year-old software engineer who cofounded ByteDance in 2021, has since built a net worth of around $36 billion, Forbes estimates. Despite being one of the wealthiest people in China as ranked by the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Zhang is extremely private and little is known about his personal life.
Even the website for the streetwear brand and creative agency, where you’ll see much of the merch mentioned above is sold out, is a play on the gossip website TMZ, filled with satirical articles and ads.
“Sometimes we’re not even sure if it’s going to connect with people all the time,” said Nick “Stove” Santiago, one of the brand’s millennial cofounders. “We’re trying and having a good time with it. And it works.”
A Pizzaslime Tweet pillow.
Courtesy of Pizzaslime
Work it does. Pizzaslime has gained traction among Gen Z and DJs alike, appearing on influencers Emma Chamberlain and Addison Rae and on Diplo and Skrillex. While Pizzaslime found cult fandom in its early days, cofounder Matthew Hwang said it exploded during the pandemic thanks to the rise of TikTok, where Pizzaslime has 1 million followers.
The merchandise line, founded in 2013, has acted as both a sly observer and ironic commenter on political, economic, and cultural moments that have gone viral. By offering an implicit critique on media consumption and internet and celebrity obsession, the merch itself tends to go viral.
In 2020 alone, the clothing side of Pizzaslime raked in $2 million in sales, peaking in April, according to screen shots verified by Insider (they declined to share total business revenue overall). That’s a lot of stonk for a brand with only two employees: the 33-year-old Stove and 34-year-old Hwang.
The pandemic has only thrown up more memes for Pizzaslime fodder. “When all the WallStreetBets stuff was happening, it was energetic,” Stove said. “Me and Matt were waking up at six in the morning to text each other about stocks. Like we were in it, you know, it’s real and authentic to us. And that was the [thing] we thought would be funny to make.”
Pizzaslime is known for turning memes into fashion.
Courtesy of Pizzaslime
The result: a typically Pizzaslimish graphic tee featuring a mashup of things easily identifiable by the young and internet-savvy: the logos of Reddit, WallStreetBets, and Gamestop; a fat pile of money; a stock board; and Elon Musk’s famous tweet, “Gamestonk!!”
Pizzaslime’s success has propelled them to new ventures: the launch of a record label with Diplo last spring, their New York Fashion Week debut in February, and an expansion into film television. At the center of it all is the internet.
The art of meme fashion
Stove and Hwang met as coworkers, doing marketing and creative direction at a music management company, but not all their merch ideas fit the artists they were working with. So they decided to make T-shirts for themselves, wearing them backstage at concerts or events, and the entertainment crowd gravitated toward their designs.
As they tell it, the Kardashians were wearing Pizzaslime’s Gucci-Versace-Louis Vuitton mash-up at a Kanye West concert. “Kris Jenner just turns around, and is like, ‘I love that shirt,'” Hwang said. “So I was like, ‘Oh, OK. Let us contact you.'”
These organic moments of “being in the right place at the right time,” as Santiago describes it, put Pizzaslime on track to being the internet-savvy brand it is today. They count the Gucci-Versace shirt as their first big streetwear hit. Since then, their merch has flown off the site, from their Crocs collab that repurposed the shoes into crossbody bags for $300 to their “Stop looking at my” line, famously worn by Billie Eilish.
Pizzaslime’s Crocs collab.
Courtesy of Pizzaslime
Pizzaslime has tapped into the emerging trend of meme fashion before the powerhouses caught on, with major players from Balenciaga to Maison Margiela now in the space, Morgane Le Caer, content lead at global fashion shopping platform Lyst, told Insider.
“Virality has become one of the key factors in determining the success of fashion products,” she said. “What matters to younger consumers is what captures their attention and has the ability to spread like wildfire across social networks – and this is exactly why meme fashion is so popular.”
Santiago was hesitant to use a buzzword like “authenticity” but acknowledged he couldn’t find a better term. “There’s a real rawness and authenticity to what we do,” he said. “We aren’t afraid to make a statement or post something and lose 1,000 followers.” He added that this caught on with Gen Z because it relates to authenticity more than his own generation, which he finds a bit more susceptible to marketing.
“It’s hard to define what Pizzaslime is,” he said. “For some people, it’s sort of like a barrier of entry they find confusing. At the same time, it’s given us the ability to build all these verticals and do everything and try everything.”
But that’s not to say Pizzaslime lacks strategy. “We’re not just sort of like throwing darts to the wall,” Santiago said. “The strategy really comes in with like, OK, now, how do we present the idea? How do we get this out there?”
The power of being undefined
Pizzaslime’s greatest strength is its lack of definition.
The verticalization allows them to move in all sorts of spaces differently. The work, Santiago said, is figuring out how all of these verticals intertwine to fit into the Pizzaslime ecosystem.
“We don’t have to think like a traditional clothing brand because we also act as an agency and we’re developing TV shows,” he said. “It’s just all feeding each other and having a division for that, so what we’re really doing is building our Willy Wonka factory.”
While the internet informs and inspires its creative decisions, it also helps them figure out what sort of strategies and mechanisms they want to try with clients like Crocs or Paramount Pictures for their marketing arm. Santiago likened it to a proof of concept – trying things with their own brand, only to apply those discoveries to the agency side.
Pizzaslime made their New York Fashion Week debut in February in the form of an animated virtual presentation.
Courtesy of Pizzaslime
Building out these verticals has put Hwang and Santiago at full speed. When asked for some of Pizzaslime’s key turning points over the years, they took pause.
“We’re going like a billion miles per hour because we’re doing so many different things at the same time,” Santiago said. “These are interesting reflection points where like, ‘Oh, right now I feel like I’m slowing down and processing this.’ It’s hard to pinpoint those moments because I’m always onto the next thing right away.'”
That they are. They’re currently working on a TV project that Santiago described as an “internetty” version of “American Idol,” all while collaborating with Amazon on a new animated TV series called “Fairfax.” And the first song of their record label, they said, just crossed 75 million streams on Spotify.
They plan to start plugging more into the label, looking at how they can tie music to products and build trends through products and sounds on social media, such as incorporate music from their record label into their TV show or collaborating with artists to put merch on Instagram. “If we’re working with a client and they want to make a TikTok campaign, we have the record label and the ability to make that TikTok song also a real song released through our record label,” Santiago said.
While they’ve been approached by venture capitalists, they said they’re taking the time to find the right strategic partners that would help scale up Pizzaslime.
“We want to jump into spaces and places that don’t have strong internet voices or tones like we do,” Santiago said, adding that he wouldn’t be surprised if you can find Pizzaslime skincare at some point. “We want to do some pretty unexpected stuff.”
Many social-media apps have a “dark mode” these days, allowing users to change the color of their app’s interface to darker tones instead of bright ones, which can feel easier on the eyes and sometimes save battery life.
For a long time, Snapchat was one of the few major social media apps without a dark mode. But since last year, they’ve been rolling out dark mode to more and more iPhone users. Most iPhone users will be able to use Snapchat’s dark mode now – unfortunately, it’s still missing for Android users.
Here’s how to check if Snapchat’s dark mode is available on your iPhone, and how to enable it.
How to enable Snapchat dark mode on iPhone
1. Open the Snapchat app on your device and log in if you’re prompted to do so.
2. In the upper-left corner of your screen, tap on your profile picture.
Tap your profile avatar in the top-right corner.
Grace Eliza Goodwin/Insider
3. In the upper-right corner of your profile page, tap on the “Settings” icon that looks like a gear.
Tap the gear icon.
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4. In the “My Account” section of the Settings menu, scroll down until you see an option called “App Appearance.” If you can’t find “App Appearance” listed, it means you can’t use dark mode yet.
Tap “App Appearance.”
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5. In the “App Appearance” menu, tap “Always Dark” to enable Snapchat’s dark mode. You can also choose “Match System” to have the app sync with your iPhone’s settings, so if your iPhone changes between light and dark automatically throughout the day, Snapchat will too.
Select “Always Dark” or “Match System” to have the app mirror to your system settings.
