Email: How researchers reversed polarization on X with a simple change to the algorithm

Subject:
How researchers reversed polarization on X with a simple change to the algorithm
Received:
12/2/2025, 12:54:11 AM
From:
"Casey Newton" <casey@platformer.news>
To:
tile.diamond.38@rss.kinzett.io
&lt;!doctype html&gt;
&lt;html&gt;
    &lt;head&gt;
        &lt;meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width"&gt;
        &lt;meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"&gt;
        &lt;!--[if mso]&gt;&lt;xml&gt;&lt;o:OfficeDocumentSettings&gt;&lt;o:PixelsPerInch&gt;96&lt;/o:PixelsPerInch&gt;&lt;o:AllowPNG/&gt;&lt;/o:OfficeDocumentSettings&gt;&lt;/xml&gt;&lt;![endif]--&gt;
        &lt;title&gt;How researchers reversed polarization on X with a simple change to the algorithm&lt;/title&gt;
        &lt;style&gt;
.post-title-link {
  display: block;
  margin-top: 32px;
  color: #15212A;
  text-align: center;
  line-height: 1.1em;
}
.post-title-link-left {
  text-align: left;
}
.view-online-link {
  word-wrap: none;
  white-space: nowrap;
  color: #15212a;
  color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6);
  text-decoration: underline !important;
}
.kg-nft-link {
  display: block;
  text-decoration: none !important;
  color: #15212A !important;
  font-family: inherit !important;
  font-size: 14px;
  line-height: 1.3em;
  padding-top: 4px;
  padding-right: 20px;
  padding-left: 20px;
  padding-bottom: 4px;
}
.kg-twitter-link {
  display: block;
  text-decoration: none !important;
  color: #15212A !important;
  font-family: inherit !important;
  font-size: 15px;
  padding: 8px;
  line-height: 1.3em;
}
.kg-cta-link-accent .kg-cta-sponsor-label a {
  color: #2047FF !important;
}
.kg-cta-text a:not(.kg-cta-link-accent .kg-cta-text a) {
  color: #15212A;
  text-decoration: underline;
}
.kg-cta-link-accent .kg-cta-text a {
  color: #2047FF !important;
}
.kg-audio-link {
  color: #15212a !important;
  color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6) !important;
}
@media only screen and (max-width: 620px) {
  table.body {
    width: 100%;
    min-width: 100%;
  }

  .hide-mobile {
    display: none;
  }

  .mobile-only {
    display: initial !important;
  }

  .hide-desktop {
    display: initial !important;
  }

  .desktop-only {
    display: none !important;
  }

  table.body p,
table.body ul,
table.body ol,
table.body td {
    font-size: 16px;
  }

  table.header .post-excerpt {
    font-size: 16px !important;
  }

  table.body .kg-callout-card {
    padding: 16px 24px !important;
  }

  table.body .kg-callout-text {
    font-size: 16px !important;
    line-height: 1.5em !important;
  }

  table.body pre {
    white-space: pre-wrap !important;
    word-break: break-word !important;
  }

  table.body .content {
    padding: 0 !important;
  }

  table.body .container {
    padding: 0 !important;
    width: 100% !important;
  }

  table.body .main,
table.header .header-main {
    border-spacing: 10px 0 !important;
    border-left-width: 0 !important;
    border-radius: 0 !important;
    border-right-width: 0 !important;
  }

  table.body .img-responsive {
    height: auto !important;
    max-width: 100% !important;
    width: auto !important;
  }

  table.header .site-icon {
    padding-top: 0 !important;
  }

  table.header .site-info {
    padding-top: 24px !important;
  }

  table.header .post-title-link {
    margin-top: 24px !important;
  }

  table.header .post-meta-wrapper {
    padding-bottom: 24px !important;
  }

  table.header .site-icon img {
    width: 36px !important;
    height: 36px !important;
  }

  table.header .site-url a {
    font-size: 13px !important;
    padding-bottom: 16px !important;
  }

  table.header .post-meta,
table.header .post-meta-date {
    white-space: normal !important;
    font-size: 13px !important;
    line-height: 1.2em;
  }

  table.header .post-meta,
table.header .view-online {
    width: 100% !important;
  }

  table.header .post-meta-left,
table.header .post-meta-left.view-online {
    width: 100% !important;
    text-align: left !important;
  }

  table.header .post-meta.view-online-mobile {
    display: table-row !important;
  }

  table.header .post-meta-left.view-online-mobile,
table.header .post-meta-left.view-online-mobile .view-online {
    text-align: left !important;
  }

  table.header .post-meta.view-online.desktop {
    display: none !important;
  }

  table.header .view-online {
    text-decoration: underline;
  }

  table.body .footer p,
table.body .footer p span {
    font-size: 13px !important;
  }

  table.header .view-online-link,
table.body .footer,
table.body .footer a {
    font-size: 13px !important;
  }

  table.header .post-title a {
    font-size: 26px !important;
    line-height: 1.1em !important;
  }

  table.feedback-buttons {
    display: table !important;
    width: 100% !important;
    max-width: 390px;
  }

  table.feedback-buttons img {
    display: inherit !important;
  }

  table.body .feedback-button-text {
    display: none!important;
  }

  table.body .latest-posts-header {
    font-size: 12px !important;
  }

  table.body .latest-post-title {
    padding-right: 8px !important;
  }

  table.body .latest-post h4,
table.body .latest-post h4 span {
    padding: 4px 0 6px !important;
    font-size: 15px !important;
  }

  table.body .latest-post-excerpt,
table.body .latest-post-excerpt a,
table.body .latest-post-excerpt span {
    font-size: 13px !important;
    line-height: 1.2 !important;
  }

  table.body .subscription-box h3 {
    font-size: 14px !important;
  }

  table.body .subscription-box p,
table.body .subscription-box p span {
    font-size: 13px !important;
  }

  table.body .subscription-details,
table.body .manage-subscription {
    display: inline-block;
    width: 100%;
    text-align: left !important;
    font-size: 13px !important;
  }

  table.body .subscription-details {
    padding-bottom: 12px;
  }

  table.body .kg-bookmark-card {
    width: 90vw;
  }

  table.body .kg-bookmark-thumbnail {
    display: none !important;
  }

  table.body .kg-bookmark-metadata span {
    font-size: 13px !important;
  }

  table.body .kg-embed-card {
    max-width: 90vw !important;
  }

  table.body h1 {
    font-size: 32px !important;
    line-height: 1.3em !important;
  }

  table.body h2,
table.body h2 span {
    font-size: 26px !important;
    line-height: 1.22em !important;
  }

  table.body h3 {
    font-size: 21px !important;
    line-height: 1.25em !important;
  }

  table.body h4 {
    font-size: 19px !important;
    line-height: 1.3em !important;
  }

  table.body h5 {
    font-size: 16px !important;
    line-height: 1.4em !important;
  }

  table.body h6 {
    font-size: 16px !important;
    line-height: 1.4em !important;
  }

  table.body blockquote {
    font-size: 16px !important;
    line-height: 1.6em;
    margin-bottom: 0;
  }

  table.body blockquote p {
    margin-right: 15px !important;
    margin-left: 15px !important;
  }

  table.body blockquote.kg-blockquote-alt {
    border-left: 0 none !important;
    margin: 0 !important;
    font-size: 18px !important;
    line-height: 1.4em !important;
  }

  table.body blockquote.kg-blockquote-alt p {
    margin-right: 20px !important;
    margin-left: 20px !important;
  }

  table.body hr {
    margin: 2em 0 !important;
  }

  .feature-image-caption {
    font-size: 13px!important;
  }

  .kg-card-figcaption {
    font-size: 13px!important;
  }

  .kg-card-figcaption p,
.kg-card-figcaption p span {
    font-size: 13px!important;
  }

  table.body .kg-cta-card {
    padding: 0 20px;
  }

  table.body .kg-cta-card.kg-cta-bg-none {
    padding: 0;
  }

  table.body .kg-cta-sponsor-label {
    padding: 10px 0;
  }

  table.body table.kg-cta-content-wrapper:not(.kg-cta-bg-none.kg-cta-no-dividers table.kg-cta-content-wrapper) {
    padding: 20px 0;
  }

  table.body .kg-cta-immersive.kg-cta-has-img:not(.kg-cta-bg-none):not(.kg-cta-no-label) table.kg-cta-content-wrapper {
    padding-top: 0;
  }

  table.body .kg-cta-minimal .kg-cta-image-container {
    padding-right: 20px;
  }

  table.body .kg-cta-immersive .kg-cta-image-container {
    padding-bottom: 20px;
  }

  table.body .kg-cta-immersive.kg-cta-no-text .kg-cta-image-container {
    padding-bottom: 0;
  }

  table.body .kg-cta-button-container {
    padding-top: 16px;
  }

  table.body .kg-cta-minimal .kg-cta-image-container {
    display: inline-block !important;
    width: 100% !important;
    padding: 0 !important;
    padding-bottom: 16px !important;
    padding-right: 0 !important;
  }

  table.body .kg-cta-minimal .kg-cta-content-inner {
    display: inline-block !important;
    width: 100% !important;
    padding: 0 !important;
  }

  table.body .kg-cta-minimal img.kg-cta-image {
    width: 52px !important;
    height: 52px !important;
  }
}
@media all {
  .subscription-details p.hidden {
    display: none !important;
  }

  .ExternalClass {
    width: 100%;
  }

  .ExternalClass,
.ExternalClass p,
.ExternalClass span,
.ExternalClass font,
.ExternalClass td,
.ExternalClass div {
    line-height: 100%;
  }

  .apple-link a {
    color: inherit !important;
    font-family: inherit !important;
    font-size: inherit !important;
    font-weight: inherit !important;
    line-height: inherit !important;
    text-decoration: none !important;
  }

  #MessageViewBody a {
    color: inherit;
    text-decoration: none;
    font-size: inherit;
    font-family: inherit;
    font-weight: inherit;
    line-height: inherit;
  }
}
&lt;/style&gt;
        &lt;!--[if mso]&gt;
        &lt;style type="text/css"&gt;
            ul, ol { margin-left: 1.5em !important; } 
        &lt;/style&gt;
        &lt;![endif]--&gt;
    &lt;/head&gt;
    &lt;body data-testid="email-preview-body" style="background-color: #fff; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; font-size: 18px; line-height: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0; -ms-text-size-adjust: 100%; -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;img width="1" height="1" alt="" src="http://t.ghost.platformer.news/o/eJw8zsFuwyAMgOGnKbci24ATDjwMxKZFJWFK2Cbt6af1sON_-fRLCsCO0WjChT07XgMZ3XPr9yaJI6lbc8UQa1wAALGyxtU8kxCVpQYXN3QSfMzCkgP-GV4VF9MSAQUkIIDgEW0NgIU3xY3QiS83D4_nuKb96HnWce562kO_L3Om2bpaaXkfh1i33jyc12Vf7fjROW0bZqby2V_396iZ6e38V-njcUdwHBHNV6LfAAAA__-QfEQB"&gt;
        &lt;span class="preheader" style="color: transparent; display: none; height: 0; max-height: 0; max-width: 0; opacity: 0; overflow: hidden; mso-hide: all; visibility: hidden; width: 0;"&gt;A new study offers evidence for what we&#x2019;ve long suspected: rage bait is distorting our politics. PLUS: The David Sacks discourse, and Claude Opus 4.5 debuts&lt;/span&gt;
        &lt;!-- SPACING TO AVOID BODY TEXT BEING DUPLICATED IN PREVIEW TEXT --&gt;
        &lt;div style="display:none; max-height:0; overflow:hidden; mso-hide: all;" aria-hidden="true" role="presentation"&gt;
            &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#x2007;&#x34F; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD; &#xAD;  &#xA0;
        &lt;/div&gt;

        &lt;!-- HEADER WITH FULL-WIDTH BACKGROUND --&gt;
            &lt;table role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="header" width="100%" style="mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; line-height: 1.4; background-color: #ffffff; width: 100%; border-spacing: 0; border-collapse: collapse;" bgcolor="#ffffff"&gt;
                &lt;!-- Outlook doesn't respect max-width so we need an extra centered table --&gt;
                &lt;!--[if mso]&gt;
                &lt;tr&gt;
                    &lt;td&gt;
                        &lt;center&gt;
                            &lt;table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"&gt;
                &lt;![endif]--&gt;
                &lt;tr&gt;
                    &lt;td style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A;" valign="top"&gt;&#xA0;&lt;/td&gt;
                    &lt;td class="container" align="center" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A;" valign="top"&gt;
                        &lt;div class="content" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0 auto; max-width: 600px;"&gt;
                        &lt;!-- Header content constrained to 600px --&gt;
                        &lt;table role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="header-main" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; border-spacing: 20px 0; width: 100%; max-width: 600px; background: #ffffff; background-color: transparent;" width="100%" bgcolor="transparent"&gt;
                            &lt;tr&gt;
                                &lt;td class="header-content" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; padding: 0; margin: 0 auto;" valign="top"&gt;
                                    &lt;table role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: 100%;"&gt;

                                            &lt;tr class="site-info-row"&gt;
                                                &lt;td class="site-info" width="100%" align="center" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; padding-top: 32px;" valign="top"&gt;
                                                    &lt;table role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: 100%;" width="100%"&gt;
                                                            &lt;tr&gt;
                                                                &lt;td class="site-icon" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; padding-bottom: 8px; padding-top: 8px; text-align: center; border-radius: 3px;" valign="top" align="center"&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/e00503d4?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="color: #2047FF; text-decoration: none; overflow-wrap: anywhere;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.platformer.news/content/images/2024/05/Logomark_Blue_800px.png" alt="Platformer" border="0" width="44" height="44" style="border: none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; max-width: 100%; width: 44px; height: 44px; border-radius: 3px;"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
                                                            &lt;/tr&gt;
                                                            &lt;tr&gt;
                                                                &lt;td class="site-url site-url-bottom-padding" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; font-size: 16px; letter-spacing: -0.1px; font-weight: 700; text-transform: uppercase; text-align: center; padding-bottom: 12px;" valign="top" align="center"&gt;&lt;div style="width: 100% !important;"&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/22fd4923?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" class="site-title" style="text-decoration: none; color: #15212A; overflow-wrap: anywhere;" target="_blank"&gt;Platformer&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
                                                            &lt;/tr&gt;

                                                    &lt;/table&gt;
                                                &lt;/td&gt;
                                            &lt;/tr&gt;

                                            &lt;tr&gt;
                                                &lt;td class="post-title post-title-with-excerpt" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; text-align: center; color: #000000; padding-bottom: 8px;" valign="top" align="center"&gt;
                                                    &lt;table role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: 100%;" width="100%"&gt;
                                                        &lt;tr&gt;
                                                            &lt;td style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: top; font-size: 36px; line-height: 1.1; font-weight: 700; text-align: center; color: #000000;" valign="top" align="center"&gt;
                                                                &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/422ac747?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" class="post-title-link" style="text-decoration: none; display: block; margin-top: 32px; text-align: center; line-height: 1.1em; overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #000000;" target="_blank"&gt;How researchers reversed polarization on X with a simple change to the algorithm&lt;/a&gt;
                                                            &lt;/td&gt;
                                                        &lt;/tr&gt;
                                                    &lt;/table&gt;
                                                &lt;/td&gt;
                                            &lt;/tr&gt;
                                                &lt;tr&gt;
                                                    &lt;td class="post-excerpt-wrapper" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; width: 100%; max-width: 600px;" width="100%" valign="top"&gt;
                                                        &lt;p class="post-excerpt post-excerpt-with-feature-image" style="margin: 0; color: #15212A; font-size: 19px; line-height: 1.4em; text-align: center; padding-bottom: 28px;"&gt;A new study offers evidence for what we&#x2019;ve long suspected: rage bait is distorting our politics. PLUS: The David Sacks discourse, and Claude Opus 4.5 debuts&lt;/p&gt;
                                                    &lt;/td&gt;
                                                &lt;/tr&gt;
                                            &lt;tr&gt;
                                                &lt;td width="100%" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; width: 100%;" align="center" valign="top"&gt;
                                                    &lt;table class="post-meta-wrapper" role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: 100%; padding-bottom: 32px;"&gt;
                                                        &lt;tr&gt;
                                                            &lt;td height="20" class="post-meta post-meta-center" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: top; color: #15212a; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6); font-size: 13px; font-weight: 400; text-align: center; padding: 0;" valign="top" align="center"&gt;
                                                                By Casey Newton &#x2022; &lt;span class="post-meta-date" style="white-space: nowrap;"&gt;1 Dec 2025 &lt;/span&gt;
                                                            &lt;/td&gt;
                                                            &lt;td class="post-meta post-meta-center view-online desktop" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: top; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6); font-size: 13px; font-weight: 400; text-align: center; display: none;" valign="top" align="center"&gt;
                                                                &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/febf06e6?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" class="view-online-link" style="word-wrap: none; white-space: nowrap; color: #15212a; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6); overflow-wrap: anywhere; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;View in browser&lt;/a&gt;
                                                            &lt;/td&gt;
                                                        &lt;/tr&gt;
                                                        &lt;tr class="post-meta post-meta-center view-online-mobile" style="color: #15212a; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6); font-size: 13px; font-weight: 400; text-align: center;" align="center"&gt;
                                                            &lt;td height="20" class="view-online" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: top; color: #15212a; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6); font-size: 13px; font-weight: 400; text-align: center; text-decoration: underline;" valign="top" align="center"&gt;
                                                                &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/162b7765?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" class="view-online-link" style="word-wrap: none; white-space: nowrap; color: #15212a; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6); overflow-wrap: anywhere; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;View in browser&lt;/a&gt;
                                                            &lt;/td&gt;
                                                        &lt;/tr&gt;
                                                    &lt;/table&gt;
                                                &lt;/td&gt;
                                            &lt;/tr&gt;

                                            &lt;tr class="feature-image-row"&gt;
                                                &lt;td class="feature-image
                                                        feature-image-with-caption
                                                " align="center" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; padding-bottom: 30px; text-align: center; width: 100%; padding: 0; font-size: 13px;" width="100%" valign="top"&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.platformer.news/content/images/size/w1200/2025/12/ian-talmacs-wr4CnlEg_5s-unsplash.jpg" width="600" alt="A white and black pawn on a chessboard against a blue background" style="border: none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; max-width: 100%;"&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
                                            &lt;/tr&gt;

                                                &lt;tr&gt;
                                                    &lt;td align="center" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A;" valign="top"&gt;
                                                        &lt;div class="feature-image-caption" style="width: 100%; padding-top: 5px; padding-bottom: 32px; text-align: center; color: #15212a; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6); line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 13px;"&gt;
                                                            &lt;span style="white-space: pre-wrap;"&gt;(Ian Talmacs / Unsplash)&lt;/span&gt;
                                                        &lt;/div&gt;
                                                    &lt;/td&gt;
                                                &lt;/tr&gt;
                                    &lt;/table&gt;
                                &lt;/td&gt;
                            &lt;/tr&gt;
                        &lt;/table&gt;
                        &lt;/div&gt;
                    &lt;/td&gt;
                    &lt;td style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A;" valign="top"&gt;&#xA0;&lt;/td&gt;
                &lt;/tr&gt;
                &lt;!--[if mso]&gt;
                            &lt;/table&gt;
                        &lt;/center&gt;
                    &lt;/td&gt;
                &lt;/tr&gt;
                &lt;![endif]--&gt;
            &lt;/table&gt;

        &lt;!-- MAIN CONTENT AREA --&gt;
        &lt;table role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="body" width="100%" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: 100%; line-height: 1.4; background-color: #ffffff;" bgcolor="#ffffff"&gt;
            &lt;!-- Outlook doesn't respect max-width so we need an extra centered table --&gt;
            &lt;!--[if mso]&gt;
            &lt;tr&gt;
                &lt;td&gt;
                    &lt;center&gt;
                        &lt;table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="600"&gt;
            &lt;![endif]--&gt;
            &lt;tr&gt;
                &lt;td style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A;" valign="top"&gt;&#xA0;&lt;/td&gt;
                &lt;td class="container" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; display: block; max-width: 600px; margin: 0 auto;" valign="top"&gt;
                    &lt;div class="content" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: block; margin: 0 auto; max-width: 600px;"&gt;
                        &lt;table role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="main" width="100%" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; border-spacing: 20px 0; width: 100%; max-width: 600px; background: #ffffff; background-color: #ffffff;" bgcolor="#ffffff"&gt;
                            &lt;tr&gt;
                                &lt;td class="wrapper" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; box-sizing: border-box;" valign="top"&gt;
                                    &lt;table role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" data-testid="email-preview-content" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: 100%;"&gt;
                                        &lt;tr class="post-content-row"&gt;
                                            &lt;td class="post-content-sans-serif" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: top; font-size: 17px; line-height: 1.5em; color: #15212A; padding-bottom: 20px; border-bottom: 1px solid #e0e7eb; max-width: 600px;" valign="top"&gt;
                                                &lt;!-- POST CONTENT START --&gt;
                                                &lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Programming note&lt;/strong&gt;: &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Platformer&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;em&gt;will be off on Tuesday as I undergo the beautiful rite of passage now recommended to everyone upon their 45th birthday: a routine colonoscopy&lt;/em&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;On Monday, the Oxford University Press &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/80530d9b?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;named as its word of the year&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; a concept that will be familiar to anyone who has spent much time on social media: &lt;em&gt;rage bait&lt;/em&gt;, which refers to posts that are &#x201C;deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative or offensive.&#x201D; Seeing rage bait in our feeds often makes us angry, disgusted, and sad. It is also reshaping our politics.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;For years, top executives at social media companies insisted to me that the evidence their platforms accelerate partisan polarization is inconclusive. They highlighted the fact that the rise of polarization in the United States long predates the platform era. And while their services are available in most countries, rates of polarization vary significantly around the world. If social media truly polarized us, executives argued, rates would be more uniform.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;The more that researchers study the issue, though, the more evidence they find that social media has reshaped US politics for the worse. In &#x201C;&lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/89b55374?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;The Case Against Social Media Is Stronger Than You Think&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt;,&#x201D; Nathan Witkin outlines how attention on social platforms attaches to the emotionally extreme. (&#x201C;Recent studies have found that posts that are &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/43cce59f?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;sad,&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/0966785c?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;fearful,&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/ad2ab155?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;uncivil,&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/7679c68f?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;morally&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/c6abe7ff?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;and&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/3c566919?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;emotionally indignant,&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/80ef8346?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;hostile towards&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/9c823602?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;out-groups,&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/763d4236?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;negatively&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/e54618c1?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;valenced&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; in general spread much further than their more neutral counterparts,&#x201D; he writes, helpfully linking to many of those studies.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Because platforms reward people who get more engagement in various ways, including direct payments, a new generation of &#x201C;attentional entrepreneurs&#x201D; has learned it can dominate online discourse by posting content that makes people more anxious and upset. This rage bait helps to set the news agenda both on social platforms and in the mainstream media, lowers voters&#x2019; opinion of their political opponents, and over time changes politicians&#x2019; behavior. In this way, a relatively small number of people can effectively begin to shift the politics of an entire country. Witkin calls this &#x201C;the elite radicalization theory&#x201D; of online politics &#x2014; and it&#x2019;s a theory that begins with rage bait.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;A challenge of the elite radicalization theory is that it has been very difficult to demonstrate a causal link between social media and polarization. Outside researchers do not have access to platform data or the ability to run experiments by manipulating users&#x2019; feeds directly. And over time &#x2014; particularly following the Frances Haugen revelations of 2021 &#x2014; platforms &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/5e67c98f?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;have become more reticent to do this kind of research at all&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;On Thursday, though, a team of researchers from Stanford, Johns Hopkins, the University of Washington, and Northeastern offered one possible way out of this stalemate &#x2014; and found that yes, you can make people feel more warmly (or bitterly) toward their political opponents simply by adjusting the rankings of their social feeds.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;In a new paper &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/99b241f6?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;published in &lt;em&gt;Science&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt;, the researchers describe building a browser extension that intercepts users&#39; X feeds in real time and reranks the posts before displaying them. They used an AI classifier to score posts on eight factors they&#39;d previously identified as bad for democracy &#x2014; including partisan animosity, support for political violence, and opposition to bipartisanship &#x2014; and adjusted feed rankings to show different groups more or fewer of those posts.&#xA0;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Then they ran a 10-day experiment with 1,256 participants during the tumultuous summer of 2024 &#x2014; a period that included the Trump assassination attempt, Biden dropping out of the race, and Kamala Harris becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee.&#xA0;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;The results: reducing exposure to divisive content improved feelings toward the other party by about 2 points on a 100-point scale. On the other hand, boosting that content cooled feelings by about 2.5 points. The researchers say the shift is equivalent to about three years of rising partisan animosity in America, created (or reversed) in just a week.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Remarkably, researchers found this result without adding or removing hyper-partisan material &#x2014; it simply changed the order in which the posts appear. (For people who saw less polarizing content, for example, it was still &lt;em&gt;in&lt;/em&gt; their feeds &#x2014; just way lower, and thus less likely to be seen.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&#x201C;I think the general intuition is that there&#39;s a little bit of a failure of imagination going on with a lot of the platforms,&#x201D; Michael S. Bernstein, a researcher at Stanford and co-author of the paper, told me in an interview. &#x201C;We think they were sort of painted into a box where they felt like they had to optimize for certain engagement criteria, like that&#39;s the only thing they could do. It just felt like that didn&#39;t necessarily have to be the case anymore.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;On their face, the results suggest that platforms could adjust their algorithms to make feeds less polarizing, if they wanted to. But doing so may not be to their short-term advantage: in the study, people who saw less inflammatory content spent about five fewer minutes per day on the platform. At least on X, making people angry appears to be good for business.&#xA0;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;People have long suspected that this was the case, of course, and not only on X. But the Stanford research adds significant evidence to support the theory that platforms&#x2019; business models and the social harm they create are intertwined.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;The researchers&#x2019; methodology here is also notable. For years, academics have complained about how difficult it is to study platforms. Meta &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/c7626f2f?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;allowed a set of experiments&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; during the 2020 election, but those had to be negotiated with executives, and research has been very slow to trickle out. By creating a browser extension that intercepts and re-ranks posts before users see them, the researchers have opened up new possibilities for the study of algorithmic changes &#x2014; not just on political polarization, but on mental health, well-being, news consumption and other issues.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;The researchers are careful to note that their study took place over a particularly heated political moment, and it&#39;s unclear whether the effects would persist over longer periods or on other platforms. Furthermore, they only studied the effects of changing the order of text-based posts; images and videos will be the subject of future research. And it&#x2019;s unclear how well findings on X would translate to other platforms; Chenyan Jia, a co-author of the paper from Northeastern, told me the group is planning to explore similar questions about other platforms.&#xA0;&#xA0;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Still, if nothing else, the study strongly rebuts the idea that social media algorithms are neutral, personalized predictions that are innocent of politics. In fact, relatively simple changes to feed rankings can affect a user&#x2019;s politics in ways that persist, even when the actual contents of the feed remain the same.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;It&#x2019;s unlikely that platform executives will use this research as an opportunity to re-think feed ranking, at least in the short term. But there are seeds of something interesting here, and it may even play into their self-interest: the study found that users exposed to less polarizing content actually liked and reposted more than their peers, even though they saw fewer posts overall. That could be a sign that reducing rage bait makes people like platforms more &#x2014; a good thing, so long as it monetizes as well or better than what it&#x2019;s replacing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;In the meantime, the Stanford research offers a useful proof of concept. We now have good evidence that less inflammatory feeds are possible, and can be implemented in a nonpartisan way. I don&#x2019;t expect that such feeds will soon become the default. But it is at least worth asking how our world might be different if they were.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="kg-card kg-image-card" style="margin: 0 0 1.5em; padding: 0;"&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.platformer.news/content/images/2024/05/floating_linebreak_600px-1.png" class="kg-image" alt loading="lazy" width="600" height="157" style="border: none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; max-width: 100%; display: block; margin: 0 auto; height: auto; width: auto;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Talk about this edition with us in Discord: &lt;/strong&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/0d46c9c6?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" rel="noreferrer" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;This link will get you in for the next week&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h2 id="following" style="margin-top: 0; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.11em; font-weight: 700; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; margin: 1.5em 0 0.5em 0; font-size: 32px; color: #15212A;"&gt;Following&lt;/h2&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;h3 id="the-david-sacks-discourse" style="margin-top: 0; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.11em; font-weight: 700; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; margin: 1.5em 0 0.5em 0; font-size: 26px; color: #15212A;"&gt;The David Sacks discourse&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;What happened: &lt;/strong&gt;A firestorm erupted on &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;X&lt;/strong&gt; on Sunday within tech circles after the &lt;em&gt;New York Times&lt;/em&gt; published a lengthy &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/b0b2a486?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;article&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; examining the ways in which President &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Trump&lt;/strong&gt;&#x2019;s AI and crypto czar &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;David Sacks&lt;/strong&gt; has helped make policies that could benefit his own investments and his friends in Silicon Valley.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Among the points laid out in the &lt;em&gt;Times&lt;/em&gt;&#x2019; story: Sacks has more than 700 tech investments in his portfolio, including at least 449 stakes in companies that could benefit directly or indirectly through the policies he recommends. He has offered White House access to tech industry leaders and pushed to get rid of government obstacles, and has at times recommended AI measures that conflict with national security recommendations.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Sacks has also elevated the profile and business of his weekly &#x201C;All-In&#x201D; podcast through his government role, the &lt;em&gt;Times&lt;/em&gt; reported, which he has not divested from. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Reactions to the story were varied; some expressed concerns about self-dealing and questioned Sack&#x2019;s dual roles, while others asserted that Sacks&#x2019; actions do not amount to conflicts of interest. In a &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/6e3481cb?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;statement&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; posted on X, Sacks called the story a &#x201C;nothing burger&#x201D; and said the &lt;em&gt;Times&lt;/em&gt; was unwilling &#x201C;to accept that I have no conflicts of interest to uncover.&#x201D;&#xA0;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Why we&#x2019;re following: &lt;/strong&gt;Trump has consistently made AI-friendly policies a priority in his administration &#x2014; going so far as to &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/d85b7785?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;float an executive order&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; that would preempt state AI regulations through legal challenges and withholding federal funds. Sacks, as Trump&#x2019;s top AI and crypto advisor, has significant influence over the rules the AI industry might be subject to. But he remains a controversial figure even within Silicon Valley.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;What people are saying: &lt;/strong&gt;Sacks&#x2019; industry friends came out to his defense (surprise!), though none of them identified any errors in the story.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;OpenAI&lt;/strong&gt; CEO &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Sam Altman&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/d7834f79?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;said&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Sacks &#x201C;really understands AI and cares about the US leading in innovation&#x201D; and that he is &#x201C;grateful we have him.&#x201D; &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Salesforce&lt;/strong&gt; CEO &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Marc Benioff&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/dad4c596?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;claimed&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; the article was &#x201C;almost strategic sabotage,&#x201D; and said he&#x2019;d never seen Sacks &#x201C;sharper or more necessary.&#x201D; &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Marc Andreessen&lt;/strong&gt; of &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Andreessen Horowitz&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/d99e214c?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;called&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; Sacks &#x201C;a credit to our nation&#x201D; in an X post, to which &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Elon Musk&lt;/strong&gt; reposted and &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/15c97af8?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;said&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &#x201C;absolutely.&#x201D;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Tech reporter &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Julia Black&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/7330e441?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;suggested&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; that Sacks must have asked his industry buddies to tweet their support, adding that &#x201C;it&#39;s a total open secret among even the most pro-AI conservatives that Sacks is doing some &#x2018;creative accounting&#x2019; in his [government] role.&#x201D;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&#x201C;Everyone should take a breath,&#x201D; &lt;em&gt;Axios&lt;/em&gt;&#x2019;s &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Dan Primack&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/b3077b18?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" rel="noreferrer" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;wrote in &lt;em&gt;Axios&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. He pointed out that &#x201C;Sacks has been an unabashed AI optimist from the jump,&#x201D; and for the most part is &#x201C;following conventional Silicon Valley wisdom.&quot; It would be nearly impossible for Sacks to be a venture capitalist without having investments that will be impacted by AI policy, he added. &#x201C;That reality isn&#39;t new. It&#39;s also not nefarious.&#x201D;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;The &lt;em&gt;Times&lt;/em&gt; story &#x201C;unhelpfully conflates David Sacks promoting policies that benefit AI companies generally, and policies that benefit specific AI companies Sacks invested in,&#x201D; AI reporter &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Timothy B. Lee&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/8c01097f?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;wrote&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; on X.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;em&gt;&#x2014;Lindsey Choo&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;table class="kg-card kg-hr-card" role="presentation" width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: 100%;"&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; margin: 0; padding-top: 1.5em; padding-bottom: 3em; font-size: 17px;" valign="top"&gt;&lt;!--[if !mso]&gt;&lt;!-- --&gt;&lt;hr style="position: relative; width: 100%; margin: 3em 0; padding: 0; height: 1px; background-color: transparent; border: 0; border-top: 1px solid #e0e7eb; display: none;"&gt;&lt;!--&lt;![endif]--&gt;&lt;table class="kg-hr" role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: 100%;" width="100%"&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; padding-top: 1.5em; padding-bottom: 3em; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-top: 1px solid #e0e7eb; font-size: 0; line-height: 0;" valign="top"&gt;&#xA0;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;h3 id="claude-opus-45-stuns" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.11em; font-weight: 700; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; margin: 1.5em 0 0.5em 0; font-size: 26px; margin-top: 0; color: #15212A;"&gt;Claude Opus 4.5 stuns&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;What happened: &lt;/strong&gt;Last week &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Anthropic&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/b8b647d6?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;released&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Claude Opus 4.5&lt;/strong&gt;, the latest version of its &#x201C;premium&#x201D; line of Opus models. They call it &#x201C;the best model in the world for coding, agents, and computer use.&#x201D; And while such statements are par for the new course with model releases from frontier labs, in this case Anthropic has the benchmarks to back it up. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;With Opus 4.5, Anthropic is advertising another 3% improvement on &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;SWE-bench Verified&lt;/strong&gt;, the premier AI software engineering benchmark, edging out prior record-holder &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;GPT-5.1-Codex-Max&lt;/strong&gt; by a few points.&#xA0;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Anthropic has made some major improvement in cost: the new model is one-third of the price of its predecessor via the Anthropic API. Opus 4.5 is still slightly more expensive than its competitors OpenAI and Google&#x2019;s best models, but the gap seems to be closing.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Why we&#x2019;re following:&lt;/strong&gt; Anthropic lags far behind competitor &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;OpenAI&lt;/strong&gt; in total users. But it has excelled this year in selling its API to coders and power users, and the Claude models have gained a cult following for both their capabilities and their personalities. The reaction to 4.5 suggests that following is about to grow.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Enthusiasm for Opus 4.5 has in some cases exceeded that of Google&#39;s Gemini 3, which came out mere days before Opus 4.5 and triggered a similar wave of enthusiasm. The question is whether it will last beyond the next major model release from one of its rivals.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;What people are saying: &lt;/strong&gt;After testing the model and reviewing overwhelming positive feedback from his audience, blogger and power user &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Zvi Mowshowitz&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/0cc647d0?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;said&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt; &lt;/strong&gt;&#x201C;Don&#x2019;t ask if you need to use Opus. Ask instead whether you get to use Opus.&#x201D;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;A team of coders and writers at &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Every&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/fa116ec6?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;found the model&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; good at just about everything: &#x201C;It manages to be both great at planning &#x2014; producing readable, intuitive, and user-focused plans &#x2014; and coding. It&#x2019;s highly technical and also human.&#x201D;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Software developer &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Simon Willison&lt;/strong&gt; had a more measured &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/dc749e2a?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;take&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt;: while he is impressed with the model&#x2019;s coding abilities, at this point he isn&#39;t &#x201C;able to identify a meaningful difference in capabilities&#x201D; between the new model and Anthropic&#x2019;s prior release, Claude Sonnet 4.5.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;But &#x201C;honestly, this is mainly on me,&#x201D; Willison said; these days, it&#x2019;s &#x201C;difficult to find concrete examples that differentiate&#x201D; new models, and he hasn&#x2019;t found extra-hard tasks that show a clear change.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Former Trump White House AI advisor &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Dean Ball&lt;/strong&gt; wrote a rapturous &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/b23d56cb?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;review&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; of Opus 4.5 called &#x201C;Heiliger Dankgesang,&#x201D; named after the third movement of a seminal Beethoven string quartet, which the composer wrote to thank God for his recovery from a life-threatening illness. (When Ball asked Claude Opus 4.5 which song it identifies with most, this is the one it chose.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Ball also noted a &#x201C;multi-thousand word statement of purpose&#x201D; Claude refers to as &#x201C;soul_overview.&#x201D; The spec was &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/ebad0e43?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;discovered&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; via prompting by Lesswrong user &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Richard Weiss&lt;/strong&gt;, and Anthropic&#x2019;s &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Amanda Askell&lt;/strong&gt; has &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/b9251080?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;confirmed&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; it &#x201C;is based on a real document&#x201D; the company trained Claude on.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Ball has been impressed by how closely Claude hews to the specifications of its &#x201C;soul&#x201D; &#x2014; and, when prompted, how much the model appears to view the spec as a part of itself.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&#x201C;If Anthropic has achieved anything with Opus 4.5, it is this: a machine that does not seem to be trying to be virtuous. It simply is,&#x201D; he said.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;em&gt;&#x2014; Ella Markianos&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="kg-card kg-image-card" style="margin: 0 0 1.5em; padding: 0;"&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.platformer.news/content/images/2024/05/floating_linebreak_600px-1.png" class="kg-image" alt loading="lazy" width="600" height="157" style="border: none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; max-width: 100%; display: block; margin: 0 auto; height: auto; width: auto;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;h3 id="side-quests" style="margin-top: 0; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.11em; font-weight: 700; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; margin: 1.5em 0 0.5em 0; font-size: 26px; color: #15212A;"&gt;Side Quests&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Major LLMs can help you build a nuclear bomb if you prompt it in the form of a poem, new &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/1d5c3049?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;research&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; found. AI can already replace nearly 12% of the US labor market, an &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;MIT&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/47af7b87?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;study&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; suggests. The data center boom &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/e38fe2df?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;has created&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; surging demand for construction workers.&#xA0;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;A &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;New York&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/f60ff820?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;law&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; aimed at preventing retailers from using AI and personal data to charge higher prices may be the start of a trend. A deepfake of &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;North Carolina&lt;/strong&gt; state &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Sen. DeAndrea Salvador&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/8ab6e492?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;was used&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; to sell &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Whirlpool&lt;/strong&gt; products in &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Brazil&lt;/strong&gt;. (After the news came out, the ad agency returned the awards it had won for the spot.)&#xA0;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;The &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Trump&lt;/strong&gt; administration and AI energy needs have resulted in &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/6dbaae84?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;a reversal in declines from coal pollution&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt;. Leaders in the climate change fight say they &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/4418bc98?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;are facing&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; surging disinformation online.&#xA0;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Europe&lt;/strong&gt;&#x2019;s antitrust chief, &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Teresa Ribera&lt;/strong&gt;, &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/f311068d?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;accused&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; the &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;US&lt;/strong&gt; of using &#x201C;blackmail&#x201D; to get the EU to change its digital rules. (&#x201C;Extortion&#x201D; is probably the better word.) French president &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Emmanuel Macron&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/b8d09339?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;says&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; the EU has been too slow to probe Big Tech because of said extortion. The &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;European Parliament&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/63cec4a2?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;called for&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; restrictions on social media for children under 16. Social media platforms &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/618bbdd9?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;will be liable&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; for financial fraud in the EU.&#xA0;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;China&lt;/strong&gt;&#x2019;s economic planning agency &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/71ad75df?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;warned&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; of the risks of a potential bubble in the humanoid robotics industry. More American companies &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/779e6ae0?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;are building&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; on free AI models from China.&#xA0;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;India&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/13f4a32f?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;asked&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; smartphone makers including &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Apple &lt;/strong&gt;to pre-install a state-owned cybersecurity app that can&#x2019;t be deleted. Yikes.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;OpenAI&lt;/strong&gt;&#x2019;s data center partners &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/7b6fb8d8?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;are set&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; to accrue almost $100 billion in debt. How &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;ChatGPT&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/8ce5cf79?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;transformed&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; the stock market. OpenAI&#x2019;s lead in the AI race is &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/af6aab95?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;under more pressure&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; than ever. OpenAI &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/b2aaffe6?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;took a stake&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; in &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Thrive Holdings&lt;/strong&gt;, a firm set up by &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Thrive Capital&lt;/strong&gt; used to buy up service providers.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;ByteDance&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/6c3d3564?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;launched&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; an AI voice assistant for Chinese smartphones.&#xA0;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Instagram&lt;/strong&gt; head &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Adam Mosseri&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/214fc9f5?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;told&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; US employees to return to office five days a week, five years after &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Mark Zuckerberg&lt;/strong&gt; told me that &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Meta&lt;/strong&gt; would be &#x201C;&lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/15781881?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt;.&#x201D;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;EU regulators &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/f76c4ac7?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;will look at&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; whether &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Apple Ads&lt;/strong&gt; and &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Apple Maps&lt;/strong&gt; should be subject to the &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;DMA&lt;/strong&gt;.&#xA0;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Google&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/52d5f75f?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;withdrew&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; an EU complaint against &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Microsoft&lt;/strong&gt; after the EU opened a probe into the latter.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Character.AI&lt;/strong&gt; is &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/cb740c8c?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;launching&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &#x201C;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Stories&lt;/strong&gt;,&#x201D; a new feature that lets users create interactive fiction instead of open-ended chats for kids.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;AI startup &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Runway&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/faaa1204?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;rolled out&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Gen 4.5&lt;/strong&gt;, its new video model, and it&#x2019;s beating rivals from &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Google&lt;/strong&gt; and others on key benchmarks.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Epic Games&lt;/strong&gt; CEO &lt;strong style="font-weight: 700;"&gt;Tim Sweeney&lt;/strong&gt; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/3f464456?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;said&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; platforms should not label games made using AI because it&#x2019;ll be &#x201C;involved in nearly all future production.&#x201D;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Top consultancies have &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/3771e838?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;frozen&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; starting salaries for the third consecutive year as it looks to AI to impact productivity. 2025 has &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/ce8f77b9?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;u&gt;minted&lt;/u&gt;&lt;/a&gt; 80 new tech unicorns so far. &lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="kg-card kg-image-card" style="margin: 0 0 1.5em; padding: 0;"&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.platformer.news/content/images/2024/05/floating_linebreak_600px-1.png" class="kg-image" alt loading="lazy" width="600" height="157" style="border: none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; max-width: 100%; display: block; margin: 0 auto; height: auto; width: auto;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;h3 id="those-good-posts" style="margin-top: 0; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.11em; font-weight: 700; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; margin: 1.5em 0 0.5em 0; font-size: 26px; color: #15212A;"&gt;Those good posts&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;&lt;em&gt;For more good posts every day, &lt;/em&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/8d7a83e5?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;em&gt;follow Casey&#x2019;s Instagram stories&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;em&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="kg-card kg-image-card" style="margin: 0 0 1.5em; padding: 0;"&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.platformer.news/content/images/2025/12/Screenshot-2025-12-01-at-4.26.53---PM.png" class="kg-image" alt loading="lazy" width="600" height="136" style="border: none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; max-width: 100%; display: block; margin: 0 auto; height: auto; width: auto;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;(&lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/4fa7c531?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" rel="noreferrer" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;Link&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="kg-card kg-image-card" style="margin: 0 0 1.5em; padding: 0;"&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.platformer.news/content/images/2025/12/Screenshot-2025-12-01-at-4.27.36---PM.png" class="kg-image" alt loading="lazy" width="600" height="127" style="border: none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; max-width: 100%; display: block; margin: 0 auto; height: auto; width: auto;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;(&lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/4a559453?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" rel="noreferrer" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;Link&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="kg-card kg-image-card" style="margin: 0 0 1.5em; padding: 0;"&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.platformer.news/content/images/2025/12/Screenshot-2025-12-01-at-4.28.04---PM.png" class="kg-image" alt loading="lazy" width="600" height="506" style="border: none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; max-width: 100%; display: block; margin: 0 auto; height: auto; width: auto;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;(&lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/f36aab48?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" rel="noreferrer" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;Link&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div class="kg-card kg-image-card" style="margin: 0 0 1.5em; padding: 0;"&gt;&lt;img src="https://www.platformer.news/content/images/2024/05/floating_linebreak_600px-1.png" class="kg-image" alt loading="lazy" width="600" height="157" style="border: none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; max-width: 100%; display: block; margin: 0 auto; height: auto; width: auto;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&lt;h3 id="talk-to-us" style="margin-top: 0; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 1.11em; font-weight: 700; text-rendering: optimizeLegibility; margin: 1.5em 0 0.5em 0; font-size: 26px; color: #15212A;"&gt;Talk to us&lt;/h3&gt;&lt;p style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"&gt;Send us tips, comments, questions, and depolarizing algorithms: &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/8d80a365?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;casey@platformer.news&lt;/a&gt;. Read &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/6e72904f?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #2047FF; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"&gt;our ethics policy here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;table class="kg-card kg-button-card" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: 100%;" width="100%"&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td class="kg-card-spacing" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; padding: 0 0 1.5em 0;" valign="top"&gt;&lt;table class="btn" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" align="center" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; box-sizing: border-box; width: auto;" width="auto"&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td align="center" style="font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; padding: 8px 20px 9px; background-color: #2047FF; border-radius: 6px; text-align: center; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;" valign="top" bgcolor="#2047FF"&gt;&lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/c1479392?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; box-sizing: border-box; color: #FFFFFF; cursor: pointer; display: inline-block; font-size: 15px; font-weight: 600; margin: 0; text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"&gt;Sponsor a Newsletter&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;table class="kg-card kg-hr-card" role="presentation" width="100%" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: 100%;"&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; margin: 0; padding-top: 1.5em; padding-bottom: 3em; font-size: 17px;" valign="top"&gt;&lt;!--[if !mso]&gt;&lt;!-- --&gt;&lt;hr style="position: relative; width: 100%; margin: 3em 0; padding: 0; height: 1px; background-color: transparent; border: 0; border-top: 1px solid #e0e7eb; display: none;"&gt;&lt;!--&lt;![endif]--&gt;&lt;table class="kg-hr" role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: 100%;" width="100%"&gt;&lt;tbody&gt;&lt;tr&gt;&lt;td style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; padding-top: 1.5em; padding-bottom: 3em; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-top: 1px solid #e0e7eb; font-size: 0; line-height: 0;" valign="top"&gt;&#xA0;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;&lt;/tbody&gt;&lt;/table&gt;
                                                &lt;!-- POST CONTENT END --&gt;

                                            &lt;/td&gt;
                                        &lt;/tr&gt;
                                    &lt;/table&gt;
                                &lt;/td&gt;
                            &lt;/tr&gt;

                            &lt;!-- END MAIN CONTENT AREA --&gt;

                                &lt;tr&gt;
                                    &lt;td class="feedback-buttons-container" dir="ltr" width="100%" align="center" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; padding: 32px 0 24px; border-bottom: 1px solid #e0e7eb; text-align: center; background-color: #ffffff;" valign="top" bgcolor="#ffffff"&gt;
                                        &lt;table class="feedback-buttons" role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; margin: auto; width: 100%;" width="100%"&gt;
                                            &lt;tr&gt;
                                                    &lt;td dir="ltr" valign="top" align="center" style="font-size: 18px; color: #15212A; display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; font-family: inherit; text-align: center; padding: 0 4px 4px; cursor: pointer; width: 30%;" width="30%"&gt;
                                                        &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/r/bfaee3c9?m=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a" target="_blank" style="color: #2047FF; text-decoration: none; overflow-wrap: anywhere;"&gt;
                                                            &lt;img src="https://static.ghost.org/v5.0.0/images/comment-mobile.png" border="0" width="42" height="42" alt="Comment" style="border: none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; max-width: 100%; display: block; margin: 0 auto; vertical-align: middle;"&gt;
                                                            &lt;p class="feedback-button-text" style="display: inline-block; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: #15212A; font-weight: 500; margin: 1em 0 0 0; line-height: 1.4em; word-break: break-word; font-size: 13px;"&gt;Comment&lt;/p&gt;
                                                        &lt;/a&gt;
                                                    &lt;/td&gt;                                            &lt;/tr&gt;
                                        &lt;/table&gt;
                                    &lt;/td&gt;
                                &lt;/tr&gt;



                            &lt;tr&gt;
                                &lt;td class="wrapper" align="center" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; box-sizing: border-box;" valign="top"&gt;
                                    &lt;table role="presentation" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%" style="border-collapse: separate; mso-table-lspace: 0pt; mso-table-rspace: 0pt; width: 100%; padding-top: 40px; padding-bottom: 30px;"&gt;
                                        &lt;tr&gt;
                                            &lt;td class="footer" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; vertical-align: top; color: #15212a; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6); margin-top: 20px; text-align: center; padding-bottom: 10px; padding-top: 10px; padding-left: 30px; padding-right: 30px; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 13px;" valign="top" align="center"&gt;Platformer &#xA9; 2025 &#x2013; &lt;a href="https://www.platformer.news/unsubscribe/?uuid=51418983-c335-42dc-b433-9fac3bd4e54a&key=ab39f1e399a193f5b48b951d60d1adc867fa24c13c783898ade216de5beaa05d&newsletter=77f5c760-d0b3-41c4-9bf2-a818790fe251" style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #15212a; color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.6); text-decoration: underline; font-size: 13px;" target="_blank"&gt;Unsubscribe&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
                                        &lt;/tr&gt;

                                            &lt;tr&gt;
                                                &lt;td class="footer-powered" style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A; text-align: center; padding-top: 70px; padding-bottom: 40px;" valign="top" align="center"&gt;&lt;a href="https://ghost.org/?via=pbg-newsletter&amp;ref=platformer.news" style="color: #2047FF; text-decoration: none; overflow-wrap: anywhere;" target="_blank"&gt;&lt;img src="https://static.ghost.org/v4.0.0/images/powered.png" border="0" width="142" height="30" class="gh-powered" alt="Powered by Ghost" style="border: none; -ms-interpolation-mode: bicubic; max-width: 100%; width: 142px; height: 30px;"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/td&gt;
                                            &lt;/tr&gt;
                                    &lt;/table&gt;
                                &lt;/td&gt;
                            &lt;/tr&gt;

                        &lt;/table&gt;
                        &lt;!-- END CENTERED WHITE CONTAINER --&gt;
                    &lt;/div&gt;
                &lt;/td&gt;
                &lt;td style="font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 18px; vertical-align: top; color: #15212A;" valign="top"&gt;&#xA0;&lt;/td&gt;
            &lt;/tr&gt;

            &lt;!--[if mso]&gt;
                            &lt;/table&gt;
                        &lt;/center&gt;
                    &lt;/td&gt;
                &lt;/tr&gt;
            &lt;![endif]--&gt;
        &lt;/table&gt;
    &lt;/body&gt;
&lt;/html&gt;
Email Content
