Creator Trends in 2025 (and Into 2026)

This week’s newsletter is focused on looking back over the past year.

There has been a continuation of 2024 Creator Trends, with more vertical video and updates to platforms like Substack and Patreon where creators can (supposedly)  “own” their audience. And, of course, there is more generative AI in everything. 

But in 2025 Creators were affected by political decisions that affect policy and economics, there was pushback against AI-generated content, and “authenticity” is the new watchword. 

Next week I’ll be back with the usual creator update news.

While none of these shut-downs were a big surprise, it feels like more and more of the old web where people blogged and shared links is disappearing. 

Netvibes shut down its RSS reader/feed aggregator on June 2. Netvibes launched in 2005.

Mozilla shut down Pocket, the social bookmarking platform that originally launched in 2007 as “Read It Later”.

Typepad, the blogging platform that launched in 2003, shut down in September. It hadn’t allowed new sign-ups since 2020, so it wasn’t a big surprise.

Google stopped redirecting most goo.gl short links. The shortener launched in 2009. There was a reprieve for some links that saw active use, but this still breaks many links on older web pages and in technical papers. The service stopped generating new links for non-Google users in 2019.

As a side note, Google’s drive to add AI features to all of its products and services has meant older products with few recent updates (like Google Scholar, Snapseed, and Blogger) have suddenly gotten new AI features. I’d go so far to say that any Google product without any AI features may be for the chopping block.

US law required Chinese company ByteDance to transfer ownership of TikTok, CapCut and other apps to a US company by January 19th. US users were blocked from those services, but only until an Executive Order from the incoming Trump Whitehouse on January 20th postponed enforcement for 75 days. TikTok blocked US users for just over a day.

No Deal

All that was needed was a deal to transfer TikTok, CapCut and other ByteDance services to a US company, with China’s approval, before the new deadline. That didn’t happen. So the enforcement deadline was extended in April, then in June, and again in September. The latest deadline was December 16. 

By mid-December there was supposedly a deal in place. One that would be finalized by January 22, just over a year after the ban was supposed to go into effect.

But in late December, the Chinese government issued a statement that “hopes that relevant parties can reach a solution regarding TikTok that complies with Chinese laws and regulations and achieves a balance of interests.” That certainly doesn’t sound like the deal is finalized. So we shall see. 

Video Boom

The uncertainty around TikTok’s fate prompted many platforms to add or redesign their video feeds, including Bluesky, X, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Twitch and YouTube were also welcoming to TikTokers looking to change platforms.

Instagram also launched Edits, a free video editing app that was designed to rival ByteDance’s CapCut. 

In 2025 there were a slew of new video creation and editing apps, ranging from pure generative AI to mostly manual editing with (of course) optional AI tools. Especially notable is that these video tools can all be used for free. 

What’s driving this trend? It seems to be a combination of companies needing a way to showcase their generative AI video models, getting people to pay for advanced features, more clips or faster video generation. Also, as noted above, some are clearly designed as an alternative to CapCut. 

AI Showcases

These new platforms designed to showcase AI video generation all launched in 2025. They can be limited or slow without a paid account.

Web based video editing with AI tools

Mobile Video Editing Apps

Nothing is truly free. There were a few changes in 2025 that suggest that platforms are trying to cut costs.

Facebook started deleting live stream archives after 30 days and Twitch limited storage of Highlights and Uploads. Flickr stopped letting free accounts download large images. 

And that does suggest all those free video editing apps and sites are designed to get you to pay.

In 2024 the new wisdom was to own your audience and not rely on algorithmic feeds to distribute your content. That could mean publishing an email newsletter or hosting your own community. But the lines are becoming blurred as platforms roll out new features. 

Substack, for example, started as a newsletter platform, and has since introduced social features, live streaming, chat, and encourages users to consume the content on the Substack mobile app or site. Even though it still touts itself as a place to “build on your own land”, changing platforms means losing access to those community and discovery tools. 

Patreon similarly has gone beyond a platform for Creators to communicate with their patrons. It now also has live streaming and discovery features such as collaborative posts and a Twitter-like “Quips” feed. And you can even publish a newsletter.

My newsletter platform, Beehiiv, hasn’t added a social feed, but it has expanded well beyond newsletters. You can now build your own website (or blog) and sell digital products. 

It’s getting more difficult to tell them apart. And all these new features could end up as a huge time sink for Creators whose primary platform is YouTube, Instagram or their own blog. And ultimately it does lock people into the platform, even if it isn’t as bad as big social media platforms.

There is a rising tension between Creators, viewers and readers, and the companies that make generative AI tools. People feel that social media, YouTube, are becoming overrun with “AI slop”, while some of those same platforms offer AI tools that easily create such content.

For example, YouTube was heavily criticized when it appeared they were “AI upscaling” Shorts without Creator consent. Their explanation that they were using “traditional machine learning technology” to adjust some videos, rather than generative AI, didn’t make anyone happier. YouTube did finally add a setting to turn off YouTube’s automated visual enhancements, AI and otherwise.

Creators are having to balance their use of AI-powered tools and what’s often perceived as a lack of authenticity or care, while at the same time having their work and likeness copied without credit.

Control the AI in your feed

Platforms are still not great at detecting AI-generated images and videos. AI tools from Google and Adobe watermark their output, but that isn’t always automatically labeled when shared. And despite policies that require labeling of AI content, many people don’t do that. 

That said, platforms like TikTok and Pinterest allow users to try to adjust the amount of generative AI content they see in their feed. How well that works is an open question.

Opting your content in (or out) of AI training

Do you want AI bots to scan your content, so it appears in AI Search results? Or do you want to prevent your work from being used for training? How about billing AI companies for use? Companies have been working on ways of managing how your content is used by AI scraper bots.

Fighting Impersonation

Generative AI makes it much easier for bad actors to create deepfakes of real people. Platforms like Spotify and YouTube are updating impersonation policies, and giving creators tools to detect and block misuse of their voice or likeness.

In March 2025 Google Search expanded AI Overviews and launched AI Mode, which runs multiple related searches simultaneously, then compiles them into an answer. Both AI Overviews and AI Mode are now available globally.

The problem? People don’t click the links in AI summaries, resulting in the dreaded Alligator Graph in Google Search Console. Impressions from Search are going up, while clicks are going down, resulting in a graph that looks like open alligator jaws. 

For my site, that started in early April, which correlates pretty closely with the expansion of AI powered Search results.

This is concerning, to say the least. The implicit value exchange used to be that Google would crawl your website, and in exchange your site would appear in the Search results, which would bring traffic to your site. But now, Google crawls your site, summarizes the information there, and no longer sends traffic.

For their part, Google says the traffic they now send is “higher quality”, although that is a small comfort with so few total clicks.

And they recently started to highlight links better in the search results, including adding a link description and making links more visible.

It isn’t clear if this will prevent the demise of informational sites that no longer get visitors.

Meta kicked off 2025 with a major policy announcement. They updated their Hateful Content policy to allow more insulting and hateful content around homosexuality, transgender rights and immigration. 

Meta also got rid of their “biased” fact-checkers, and replaced them with Community Notes on Facebook, Instagram and Threads. The notes only appear if people with different points of view agree.

This was framed as promoting free expression, but was clearly a response to changes in the political climate in the US. No other platform made quite such a drastic policy change, but there were other changes. 

Over the course of the year Meta has proudly been focusing on “high severity violations and illegal activity” (with fewer content removals). It’s not clear that enforcement significantly changed on any of the other platforms. 

People don’t trust algorithmic feeds.

Are you your real self when you are online? As we’ve seen in 2025, people are pushing back against generative AI content, they distrust “algorithms”, and are looking for authenticity.

How that will manifest in 2026 is unclear. 

It will be interesting to see what the new year brings!

Thanks for reading! 🌼