That’s the unseen force behind every successful brand, movement or idea.
Most people don’t care about you. They’re not listening to you, not wondering what you’re up to, and certainly not taking the time to seek you out. All you have is a small circle, your supporters.
And yet, we spend most of our time treating people like customers, not supporters. We try to turn strangers into people who do business with us, taking the friends and supporters we’ve earned for granted.
Instead, with planning and focus, you can create the conditions where your efforts strike a chord. When your customers become fans, they spread the word. When your story is true, relevant, focused, and sticky, new fans arrive. Not because it matters to you, but because it matters to them.
The second circle is out of your direct control, and it’s tempting to ignore it. But the second circle unlocks the change you seek to make.
Mark Zuckerberg has a problem with your friends: they're the reason you signed up to use his platform, but they stubbornly refuse to organize your socialization to "maximize engagement." Every time you and your friends wrap up a social interaction and log off, Zuckerberg loses revenue.
After all, by definition, you and your friends have a lot of shared context. You probably feel mostly the same way about most things. You probably mostly consume the same kind of media. You probably mostly consume the same kinds of news. You and your friends make each other's lives better in lots of ways, but typically not by surprising one another. On a typical day, no friend of yours is going to absolutely floor you with a novel thought or finding that sparks hours of furious conversation and argumentation.
And speaking of argumentation: you and your friends probably don't argue that much – I mean, sure, you'll have "friendly disagreements" (again, by definition), but if there's a friend who sparks furious, frustrating, irresistible feuds that drag on and on, chances are that person won't be your friend anymore.
Facebook experienced sustained, meteoric growth by letting people connect with their friends, but Zuckerberg quickly came to understand that his path to revenue maximization ran through nonconsensually cramming strangers' posts into your eyeballs, in the hopes that you would lose yourself in long, pointless arguments.
But that, too, hit a limit. Most of us don't like having our limbic systems tormented by strangers. As anyone who is sick to the back teeth of just hearing the word "Trump" can attest, living in a trollocracy is exhausting.
Enter Tiktok. Tiktok found a way to connect you to strangers who don't make you angry. By offering performers money if they produced media that you "engaged" with, Tiktok offloaded the work of convincing you to conduct your online activities in a way that maximized opportunities to show you an ad onto an army of global theater kids who would spend every hour that god sent trying to figure out how to keep you looking at Tiktok.
This was hugely successful – so successful, in fact, that Tiktok was able to cheat, overriding its own algorithmic guesses about which of its billion cable-access television channels you'd stare at the longest with a "heating tool" that lets the company trick some of those theater kids into thinking that Tiktok was actually more suited to them than other platforms:
For zuckermuskian social media bosses, Tiktok became an object of fierce envy. Here was the ultimate Tom Sawyer robo-fence-painter, a self-licking ice-cream cone that motivated people to convince each other to make money for you. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter took a hard pivot away from showing you the things that the people you loved had to say, in favor of showing you short videos of people whose parents didn't give them enough affection in their childhood, desperately shoving lemons up their noses in a bid to win your approval (and a revshare split with the platforms).
It worked. Sorta. Thing is, some of those "content creators" are actually very good, and none of them appreciate being jerked around. They quite rightly see their reason for being on the platforms as improving their own lives, not the bottom line of the platforms' owners and executives. They may be more "engaging" than your friends, but they're also a lot mouthier and feel entitled to a say in how the platform operates.
What's a billionaire solipsist to do? Obviously, the answer is "AI creators." An "AI creator" is like a "creator" in that it works to maximize your engagement with the platform – and thus the number of ads that can be crammed into your face-holes – but, unlike a "creator," it makes no demands upon the platform and exists solely to serve the platform's shareholders and executives. It's the perfect realization of the solipsist fantasy of a world without people:
But there's a problem with this plan: your friends are not a liability for a platform. Your friends are the platforms' single most important asset. Your friends are why the platforms are so "sticky." The platforms don't "hack your dopamine loops" – they just take your friends hostage, and even though you love your friends, they are a monumental pain in the ass, and if you can't even agree on what board-game you're going to play this weekend, how are you going to agree when it's time to leave Facebook, and where to go next?
So long as you love your friends more than you hate Zuckerberg or Musk, you will remain stuck to their platforms. The platform bosses know this, and they inflict pain on you that is titrated to be just below the threshold where you hate the platforms more than you love your friends.
But as much as the platform bosses rely on your love of your friends, they still view your friends as liabilities, thanks to those friends' unreasonable insistence on structuring their relationship with you to maximize their own satisfaction, rather than how much time you spend looking at ads. So the platforms are deliberately disconnecting you from your friends by minimizing the fraction of your feed that is given over to posts from people you follow, and replacing those friends with a succession of ever-more fungible posters: trolls, creators, and chatbots.
The key word here is fungible. A feed composed of things posted by people you have a personal connection to is non-fungible: it cannot be swapped for a feed of things posted by strangers. Your friends fulfill a very specific purpose in your life that strangers – even extremely cool strangers – cannot match.
On the other hand: one feed of algorithmically selected, entertaining amateur dramatics is broadly equivalent to any other feed of algorithmically selected amateur dramatics. That goes double for feeds whose performers are "multi-homing" on more than one platform – whether you see the extremely charming and interesting Vlog Brothers in a Youtube feed, a Tiktok feed or an Insta feed makes no difference (to you – but it matters a lot to the platform bosses). That goes quintuple for feeds composed of AI slop, which is literally the most interchangeable video that modern science is capable of producing.
All of which is to say: the platforms are deliberately feeding their most important commercial assets into a shredder, in a fit of pique over your friends' unwillingness to act like chatbots. Every day and in every way, the platforms are making it easier to leave them for some rival's service, chasing the billionaire solipsist's dream of a world without people:
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.
"The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.
"The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
During a Pentagon worship service on Wednesday (let’s sit a moment with the fact that we now have official Pentagon worship services) and in reference to the rescue mission of a downed pilot in Iran this month, the very devout and God-fearing Pete Hegseth led what he called a military prayer titled “CSAR 25:17.” He claimed it was “meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17” and asked everyone to “pray with me” as he recited what he presented as scripture.
Except it wasn’t. It was almost word-for-word the very fake Bible verse that Samuel L. Jackson’s hitman character recites in Pulp Fiction before executing his targets in cold blood.
Hegseth’s Pentagon Prayer version: “The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men... And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother.”
Jackson’s Hitman Kill version: “The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men... And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers.”
The actual Ezekiel 25:17 is just one line: “And I will execute great vengeance upon them with furious rebukes; and they shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall lay my vengeance upon them.”
Side-by-side video comparison shows just how closely Hegseth’s “prayer” tracks Tarantino’s screenplay, down to the cadence and structure. See for yourself:
Fun fact: Tarantino lifted his own fake verse from a 1973 Japanese martial arts film, substituting “the Lord” for “Chiba the Bodyguard.”
Pope Fiction
Not to be outdone, Trump spent his time fabricating statements about Pope Leo XIV. In repeated press appearances, No. 47 insisted: “The Pope made a statement saying Iran can have [a] nuclear weapon” and “I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon.”
Multiple fact-checkers gave Trump’s claim their most false rating. The Pope has consistently opposed nuclear weapons everywhere, including Iran. In March, Leo explicitly prayed: “May the nuclear threat never again dictate the future of humanity.” The Vatican signed the U.N. Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in 2017.
When pressed for evidence of his claim, Trump’s spokesperson referred reporters back to his original Truth Social post. That’s it. No source, no recording, no statement because none exists. Just the President’s word that the Pope said something he demonstrably never said.
The Pope’s actual response, delivered from Africa: “I have no fear of the Trump administration, or speaking out loudly of the message of the Gospel. That’s what I believe I am called to do.”
Kirk to (Criminal) Enterprise
Then there’s “Baby you’re a firework” Erika Kirk, who pulled out of an appearance at a Turning Point USA rally with Vice President JD Vance, claiming “very serious threats in her direction.” The rally’s spokesperson announced that Kirk had received threats serious enough that organizers briefly considered canceling the event altogether.
But the Secret Service told CBS News there were no credible threats to the event, the venue or to Vance, whom the CIA was there protecting. While Kirk may have received hostile social media messages, they “were not part of any identified or actionable threat stream monitored by federal authorities.”
Apparently the “threats” were not serious enough to keep the Vice President of United States from appearing. Vance, after all, is accustomed to being sent into places where he’s bound to get a weak reception. And to be fair to Kirk, given Vance’s visibly shrinking influence, she understandably views herself as more important than him lately.
An alternative explanation for her no-show? Right-wing conspiracy peddler Candace Owens, who is no one’s favorite person either, accused Kirk of lying to cover up poor ticket sales, tweeting, “Stop. This is exhausting. You pulled out because of bad ticket sales. For the same reason TPFaith had to ‘reschedule’ the Pastor’s Summit and various other events quietly.”
Oh, come on, Candace. Be nice. The place was filled to the rafters for JD:
Black to Reality
The day’s most brazen denial came from Health and Human Services Secretary RFK Jr., who during a congressional hearing flat-out refused to acknowledge his own recorded statements about “reparenting” Black children on ADHD medication.
Rep. Terri Sewell (D-AL) began by quoting the Secretary’s own words back to him:
“Every Black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, SSRIs, benzos, which are known to induce violence, and those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get re-parented”
“I don’t even know what that phrase means, and I doubt that I said it,” Kennedy shot back. “I’m not going to answer something that I didn’t say.”
The House Ways and Means Democrats then posted the actual video from the 19Keys podcast, titling the clip “Video Receipts.” And there was Kennedy saying verbatim what Sewell had quoted.
As Sewell noted, suggesting the federal government should separate Black children from their families carries painful echoes of slavery and Jim Crow. Kennedy’s response was to deny he had ever uttered those words, a denial he has repeated numerous times despite recorded evidence to the contrary.
Maybe the brain worm made him do it?
In a coda to this absurdity, TMZ, which has recently begun hounding members of Congress as part of its regular pop culture reporting, chased down Kennedy after the hearing to ask about a different story entirely: his recently revealed 2001 diary entry describing how he cut the penis off a dead raccoon while his kids waited in the car.
TMZ? More like TMI. Here’s the passage in question:
“I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684 cutting the penis out of a road-killed raccoon, thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be.”
Wait. How weird must the other Kennedy family members be for RFK Jr. to be thinking about how weird they are?
His security team quickly hustled him away from TMZ, and the universe breathed a sigh of relief that it didn’t actually get further details about the raccoon penis.
As the boss of the country’s media and telecom regulators, there’s plenty of corporate malfeasance and corrupt shenanigans Brendan Carr could be targeting on any given day at the country’s biggest media and telecom companies. But because Carr’s never been all that interested in the public interest, he’s once again spending his time trying to hurt a comedian who made fun of our unpopular president.
After an embarrassing failure at his attempt to censor Jimmy Kimmel for criticizing Donald Trump last year, Policyband notes that Carr is cooking up a new inquiry to ensnare Kimmel. This time, Carr is pretending he cares about financial conflict of interests, and is looking to “revisit” long‑standing conflict‑of‑interest rules for broadcasters (and Kimmel):
“A lot of people don’t know this, but there’s conflict‑of‑interest rules that apply to broadcasters, both personal financial, but also personal political,” he said. Carr — who had a blow up with Kimmel last September over the comic’s comments about Charlie Kirk’s assassination — did not mention Kimmel by name. But he really did not need to because of the existence of a conflict of interest complaint pending against the host of Jimmy Kimmel Live! (via an ABC station) at the FCC.”
It’s been abundantly clear that the Trump administration is one giant, lumbering financial conflict of interest, though obviously Carr’s not actually interested in any equal application of financial conflict of interest rules. Instead, he’s leveraging FCC rules to single out Kimmel and a $23,000 payment Kimmel made to Democrat Adam Schiff’s campaign a year before Schiff appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live!
Trump’s friend Larry Ellison has already taken out one late night TV host, Stephen Colbert, who was abruptly fired by CBS. Now Trump continues to try and leverage his lapdog at the FCC to find new and creative ways to make life difficult for any remaining late night hosts, tramping the First Amendment at every and any opportunity.
Carr is the same guy who recently (and illegally) ignored any remaining media consolidation limits to help his friends at right wing TV broadcasters merge, something only scuttled after court intervention. Whether it’s a conflict of interest inquiry, a free speech complaint, or cybersecurity “reforms,” absolutely nothing Carr does is in good faith; something our press struggles to make evident.
The exception has been outlets like Wired, which recently reported that a right wing activism group, the Center for American Rights (CAR), had direct access to Carr, bypassing all standard staff interactions. CAR was integral in helping Carr shape some of his hollow complaints against Kimmel and ABC in relation to his abuse of the antiquated FCC “equal time” rule.
With that bogus censorship effort thwarted, Carr has moved on to creatively crapping all over the First Amendment in equally creative, but likely equally fruitless ways.
Tu Manga Online (TMO) has long been the go-to destination for many Spanish-speaking manga fans.
Through multiple domains, it offered access to manga and manhwa comics free of charge, attracting many millions of visitors.
In 2024, a detailed report from Deepsee flagged Zonatmo.com as a particularly popular domain. Together with the other TMO properties, it was estimated to generate a billion views in November that year.
The same research linked the TMO operation to the Spanish company Nakamas Web SL, which was reportedly responsible for the sites.
This level of openness is unusual for a pirate site. DeepSee.io CEO Rocky Moss projected that the site would be stopped before the end of 2025. That projection was off by a few months, as TMO went offline in early 2026.
TMO’s website started having problems around March 18. This was widely noticed on social media, including a post by Animetrends that has been viewed close to 2.5 million times.
Without an official explanation from the site’s operators, many fans kept hope that it would make a comeback. A notice on the site suggesting it was “under maintenance” added to that impression.
However, after a few days that hope faded, as the main ZonaTMO domain was put on clienthold. This suspension status is typically set by a domain registrar in response to a legal complaint, and effectively renders the domain inaccessible.
The WHOIS data for zonatmo.com also clearly lists Nakamas Web as the company behind the site.
While TMO’s future was looking more and more troubled, the operators remained silent. Information received by TorrentFreak suggested that Korean webtoon platforms were involved, helped by serious anti-piracy forces. That information was officially confirmed today.
Spanish Takedown Following Cross-Border Investigation
The Copyright Overseas Promotion Association (COA), which represents many Korean publishers, including Kakao and Webtoon, announced that it conducted a multi-month investigation into the piracy operation.
COA worked with the commercial anti-piracy outfit IP-House and Spanish law firm Santiago Mediano Abogados, who eventually shared their gathered evidence with the local authorities for follow-up action.
This operation eventually led to an enforcement effort in Almeria, Spain, which resulted in the takedown of a network of interconnected websites, including Visortmo and TuMangaOnline.
While it is now confirmed that Korean rightsholders are behind the Spanish shutdown, not many details are shared. There is no mention of any arrests, for example, and no suspects have been identified either.
The involvement of the company Nakamas Web remains unconfirmed as well, although it’s worth noting that this company is based in Almeria, which was the center of the police operation. A request for comment to the company, whose website is still online, remains unanswered.
Pending Law Enforcement Investigation
Speaking with TorrentFreak, COA confirms that its members had their eyes set on TMO for a long time. While the group confirms the takedown, it can’t share further information at this point as the law enforcement investigation is ongoing.
“Zonatmo (TuMangaOnline, TMO) has long been recognized as a major illegal platform known for distributing unauthorized translations of Korean content in Spanish. Korean rightsholders had been monitoring the platform since its earlier stages, and in response, have pursued concrete legal enforcement actions overseas through COA.”
“At present, several matters remain at the stage of investigation in cooperation with local law enforcement authorities. As such, we are not in a position to disclose specific additional targets at this time,” a COA spokesperson adds.
TMO
For details, COA referred us to IP-House, which we asked about the suspects that were identified, whether any arrests were made, or whether a deal was reached with the operator of TMO. However, IP House declined to answer, citing an active investigation.
IP-House CEO Jan van Voorn commented on the action in broad terms in a press statement.
“This outcome reflects the strength of cross-border collaboration in addressing complex digital piracy to protect creators, consumers, and the integrity of the global content ecosystem,” Van Voorn said.
“We are proud to have supported COA in advancing this investigation and commend the Spanish National Police for their leadership and effectiveness in executing this enforcement action,” he added.
Part of a Wider Wave
The TMO takedown coincided with one of the most active periods of manga and anime piracy enforcement in history. In March 2026, HiAnime also went offline. The reason for HiAnime’s closure has not been officially confirmed, though it followed sustained pressure from the anti-piracy alliance ACE and a recent callout by the USTR.
Earlier, in January 2026, the manga aggregator Bato.to was shut down following action by Japanese anti-piracy body CODA and pressure from the Korean company Kakao Entertainment, with its operator identified and subject to criminal investigation in China.
According to COA, the TMO takedown is not the last enforcement action that’s planned on their end.
“This action forms part of a broader enforcement initiative led by COA, representing the K-content alliance” COA told TorrentFreak, adding that it “is actively investigating operators of such platforms and preparing coordinated legal actions across multiple jurisdictions.”
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
Several years ago, Rockstar Games suffered an intrusion into its corporate network. During that intrusion, a trove of data, files, and information about the in-development and unfinished Grand Theft Auto 6 game was exfiltrated. Under monetary threat of that data leaking, Rockstar completely lost its mind and went on a DMCA takedown campaign to try to remove any leaked content or footage that was being teased by the hacker in circulation. Readers here will already know that this kind of DMCA whac-a-mole never works and instead served only to Streisand the whole story into wider consciousness, working directly against Rockstar’s purposes in the first place.
Today, Rockstar is under threat of a similar leak. The company has acknowledged that hacking group ShinyHunters gained access to Rockstar information through a third-party data breach, namely that of Anodot, and has threatened to leak all that data if it isn’t paid by Rockstar.
ShinyHunters claim to have breached Rockstar’s outsourced Snowflake cloud storage system by way of a third-party analytics tool, Anodot, which reportedly suffered its own breach recently. With authentication tokens from Anodot, ShinyHunters would not have needed to crack Snowflake’s security directly. They would have just been recognized as an authorized party and let in through the front door, like Agent 47 in a security guard outfit. ShinyHunters claims to have had access to Rockstar’s database for a significant amount of time before it was realized anything was amiss.
“Your Snowflake instances were compromised thanks to Anodot.com. Pay or leak,” ShinyHunters wrote in a post on their site. “This is a final warning to reach out by 14 Apr 2026 before we leak along with several annoying (digital) problems that’ll come your way. Make the right decision, don’t be the next headline.”
Unlike the previous hack and threat of a leak, however, Rockstar appears to be taking a completely different tactic. In addition to once again refusing to pay any ransom, which is absolutely the correct course of action, the company has also basically shrugged its shoulders over this entire situation.
Rockstar quickly responded to Kotaku saying that while “a limited amount of non-material company information was accessed,” the incursion would have “no impact on our organization or our players.”
There’s still no clear idea of what data has been taken, but Rockstar is certainly playing it very cool. ShinyHunters, should it go through with plans to publish the information, will likely post it to its dark web pages from which it’ll eventually filter to the wider public.
Now, I want to be careful to not give Rockstar any undue credit here. As discussed below, the type of data that was gained in this particular breach is far more banal than the previous one, which included actual unfinished game footage, and perhaps it’s that which explains this change in stance.
But I would argue that this is mostly the right course even if that weren’t the case. You can’t bottle up the genie once the leak is out there, so you might as well put your PR hat on and engage with the public in a way that puts the company and the product in the best light, while also acknowledging the thirst for more information on the unreleased game.
This is something we’ve advocated for for years now. It’s a simple as putting out a statement roughly like:
Hey, everyone! We know there might be a leak about our company and the upcoming Grand Theft Auto title coming out soon and we know you’re interested in anything you can get your hands on about the game. We are too! We want you to see the game, but we do prefer you see it in its finished state. But if you can’t wait that long, we understand. Please just also understand that we are something of a victim in all of this. It kind of hurts and is frustrating to have our plans for this release get derailed by this kind of criminal activity, but all we ultimately care about is making sure you know just how awesome the next GTA is going to be!
Good will would abound, the hackers wouldn’t get the payout that wished for, and the company could appear awesome, and, more importantly, human. I very much hope that this response from Rockstar thus far is an indication that that’s where the company is headed with all of this.
In this case, ShinyHunters did eventually release the leaked info, and you can see why Rockstar didn’t care:
Looking at the structure of the data, it does appear to come from automated exports generated by analytics pipelines. The files are compressed CSV outputs, commonly used for batch reporting in cloud data platforms like Snowflake. This supports earlier reporting that the access point was not Rockstar’s core network but a third-party analytics integration, believed to involve Anodot.
Some of the files also reference internal monitoring and testing. For example, dataset names linked to cheat detection models and platform-level revenue mismatches suggest the data includes operational insights used by Rockstar teams to manage gameplay balance and detect abuse. There are also references to Zendesk ticket metrics and customer support reporting, indicating visibility into service operations rather than individual player accounts.
What is not present in the leaked material is just as important. There are no player credentials, account data, or unreleased game assets such as GTA VI content. That aligns with Rockstar’s earlier statement that the breach involved limited company information and did not impact players.
So perhaps Rockstar’s reaction is more explained by the lack of any really problematic content in the leak. But, still, it is a reminder that you don’t have to completely freak out over every leak.
Bet that got your attention! I was talking this past weekend to my older brother John, who likes to read sci-fi and fantasy novels about really competent leaders who are just good at getting things done. He jokingly calls it “competence porn,” but I realized that I was feeling exactly that watching the Artemis II mission from start to finish, glued to it, hungry for exactly this kind of display of expertise.
We’re all starved for it, actually, after just 15 months of this incompetent, dangerous fool and his cronies back in power. To get past their blundering, we need to understand its origins, its risks and what history suggests comes next. The news, it turns out, is good… if we can get through the current crisis.
I write about that hunger for competence, and some glimmers of hope that it’s just around the corner, in The Big Picture today. You should receive it in your inboxes if you’re a subscriber. It’s separate from the writing I do here at The Status Kuo, but it’s a great complement to it. If you’re not yet signed up, you can do so for free or as a voluntary paid supporter here:
I think it’s important to understand that, despite claims to the contrary, age verification is, inherently, a right-wing effort. While it’s currently true that age verification laws are being supported globally by those on the political right and left, they started as very much a right wing effort to suppress disliked speech by claiming it was harmful to children. Even if some of the laws now have bipartisan support, we need to understand its origins.
People will point to the bipartisan nature of many of these current laws to push back on the idea that it’s truly a right wing effort. Australia’s monstrosity of age-gating laws was adopted by the collective efforts of center-left and left-wing political parties part of the ruling government. The Online Safety Act in the United Kingdom was the brainchild of Conservative Party MPs under former Prime Minister Theresa May, but the Labour government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer is now carrying out the policies of the sweeping digital regulatory measures in national law.
But age verification laws, today, originate from right-wing and far-right efforts to restrict access to porn and other content that could be classified as “harmful to minors.” As documented extensively by academics, cybersecurity experts, folks here at Techdirt, and in my owninvestigative journalism, these laws define content as “pornographic” or “harmful to minors” under such broad definitions.
It is also worth noting that out of the 26 U.S. states with age verification laws that explicitly target pornography and adult content on the books, are regarded as “red” states with Republican-controlled state legislatures. Many have a one-party rule in both the legislative and executive branches, such as in Missouri, where I am based. All 26 states that enacted porn age-verification laws as of 2026 voted Republican in the 2024 presidential election, indicating a strong geographic overlap with red states. While I do hold that this doesn’t suggest strong ideological clustering, it shows a strong partisan alignment.
Many of the age verification laws that cover pornography originated in Republican-controlled legislatures, but a few Democratic governors — including the one who signed the first such law in Louisiana — approved them. This reflects bipartisan expansion in some capacity, but this is certainly not a consistent statement of bipartisan effort. Rather, it is partisan pressure patterns. If you consider the bipartisan adoption of age verification laws, this could reflect a familiar pattern of support during the passage of the FOSTA-SESTA statute. Early religious conservative and right-wing efforts to curtail sex trafficking on the internet built up broader support as political pressures mounted on left-wing politicians by organizations like SWERF feminist groups to be early supporters to the law as well (e.g. Richard Blumenthal). While this does not prove that Democratic officials supported such measures because of clear pressure, the political pressure dynamics rely on the framing that age verification laws should be a no-brainer in “protecting kids” across the internet.
The simple reality is that the right wing strongly backs age-verification laws in the United States. It is a major enterprise dominated by social conservatives, MAGA supporters, Christian nationalists, and anti-LGBTQ+ activists, among others. Yes, they have convinced some centrists and progressives to join in, but it’s difficult to ignore where this entire push came from and who supported it initially.
Case in point: Project 2025 and the coalition of organizations tied to the Heritage Foundation-led effort. Much has been written on the Project 2025 and its so-called “proposals” to outlaw online pornography and deprive such speech of First Amendment protections. One of the architects of Project 2025, Russ Vought, was caught on hidden camera explaining how age verification laws could be used as a “backdoor” to adopt the demanded porn prohibitions nationally. Through this lens, the backdoor approach seems to be working, and those on the left wing further advance the efforts by further encompassing entire swaths of the internet that aren’t even remotely classified as pornographic and “adults-only.” The trade group representing many of these age verification companies has openly lobbied alongside many of these groups in favor of age verification laws.
And the efforts are now proving successful, despite the clear implications on freedom of speech, especially for individuals who are a part of the LGBTQ+ community. In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom is openly endorsing an Australia-style social media ban for individuals under the age of 16. Evidence continues to grow that Aussie-style bans can easily be circumvented, proving age gating is still not a “settled” tech. It is not “settled,” despite what proponents of these laws and the companies that develop this technology continue to claim. Congressional proposals like the Kids Online Safety Act were introduced with bipartisan co-sponsorship led by Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. Blackburn, specifically, began courting anti-LGBTQ+ groups to back the Kids Online Safety Act by presenting the proposal as a means to block forms of LGBTQ+ speech—all expression with First Amendment protections.
And once these types of frameworks exist, the history suggests they rarely remain limited to their original targets. Obviously, not every supporter of age verification laws shares the same goals and ideology. But it does mean we should be honest about where these laws came from and who built the playbook that others are now following. Bipartisan support doesn’t erase these glaring origins and how right wing religious groups have laundered this into more progressive spaces by claiming it’s all about protecting children. Is it currently and exclusively right-wing? No. Is it right-wing in nature and origin? Yes. If these policies do carry the DNA of earlier right-wing efforts to regulate sexuality and expression, then we should not be surprised when they expand beyond pornography and into other forms of the lawful speech we all consume. There is a real danger here—not just who supports these laws today, but what they are capable of becoming tomorrow. Bipartisan support may change the optics, but it does not change the reality: this is still, at its core, a right-wing effort. Nothing changes that.
Michael McGrady covers the tech and legal sides of the online porn business.
TL;DR If you are working to grow your book business, scaling with automation might be the key to unlocking your potential. Lulu’s APIs introduce efficiency, customization and a single fulfillment vendor, offering access to a completely bespoke order fulfillment and logistics network for your business.
Starting a business is great, but growing a business is even better.
When you begin to grow your business your ideas are validated, your hard work is rewarded and you’re starting to build and connect with your target audience. This is the time to review some of the day-to-day processes like inventory management, order fulfillment, responding to emails, and maintaining customer data to see what can be moved from manual to automated so you can focus on business growth instead of business operations.
And when you’re ready to do that, you’re ready to start scaling.
Automating Your Business with Lulu
Automation means making running your business easier. Instead of worrying about storing and managing inventory, you can automate the printing of your books when an order comes through. Rather than manually packing and shipping orders, you can use Lulu to automatically dropship orders to your customers. Instead of figuring out the logistics of international order fulfillment, you connect to Lulu’s global print network to automatically route your orders to the printer closest to the destination.
Regardless of what phase you’re in with your business, Lulu can help you automate tasks so you can focus on R&D, marketing, and customer feedback.
But once you’re really ready to scale, it’s time to implement Lulu’s Print APIs.
Scaling Your Business with Lulu
When you scale with Lulu, all the systems you have automated continue to run in the background as you reach new customers and markets. You don’t have to stop and worry if you have inventory or infrastructure to support a growing business. You’ve already set it up to handle exactly this. If this sounds like something you’re interested in for your business, implementing Lulu’s Print API is the best solution for providing you with the agility and customization you need to support a growing business.
Your Free Lulu Account
Create a Lulu Account today to print and publish your book for readers all around the world
Joshua Zinkovsky came to Lulu when he had the idea of turning text messages into beautiful keepsakes. Joshua wanted to create a way for people to hold on to important memories by preserving text conversations that would otherwise end up deleted or forgotten.
Integrating with Lulu’s Print API allowed Joshua to streamline book production while offering the custom designs his products require. He used the seamless integration and automation of our Print API to create My Forever Books.
Joshua’s experience isn’t just a sweet story of making something memorable for his customers. It’s the story of leveraging Lulu’s global logistics network to create a sustainable business. The results speak for themselves—after connecting to Lulu’s Print API, My Forever Books saw a staggering 2,000% profit increase in just four months.
Joshua brought his passion project to life without sacrificing quality, managing inventory, or losing brand control.
Implementing Lulu’s APIs
There are several reasons why Lulu’s APIs make scaling easy. It’s a system specifically created to adapt to your unique product or service. When you’re working with our APIs, everything from the books you make to your workflows can be completely customized through webhooks and your website based on what you’re creating. There’s no need to manually intervene. You can create bespoke products for each customer and bespoke workflows for your business.
And since our APIs work with any platform, you aren’t confined to a specific interface. Instead, you can build your own to fit whatever your business needs are. This level of flexibility allows you to truly create a system that works specifically for you, because it was created by you.
All of this, on top of never having to worry about order production or fulfillment, makes our APIs the best business partner you could ask for. Plus you’ll never have to have an awkward conversation about expense reports.
5 Steps to Get Started
To implement Lulu’s Print API, follow these 5 steps:
Find a developer - We can provide some support, but most of the development work will need to be completed by you or your team.
Review our documentation - All of the technical documentation is available on the Lulu Developer Portal.
Complete the integration - Your developer will build the integration between your system and the Lulu Print API so your orders can be sent to us for fulfillment.
Test in the sandbox environment - We provide a sandbox testing environment so you can verify that your integration is working correctly before sending real orders.
Begin fulfillment! Once testing is complete, you can switch to the live production environment and begin sending orders to Lulu for fulfillment.
For more information, check out the full API Integration Guide or contact our team below.
Your Business, But Better
You’ve worked hard to grow your business, audience and brand. Now let automation and customization take your brand from local to global. Once you’ve implemented our API, be sure to check out our Guide to Scaling Your Business with the Print API for more help on operations and marketing.
With Lulu’s APIs you take advantage of a single fulfillment vendor, allowing you to boost efficiency, tap into limitless customization, and create a global brand.
We’ve got a throwback administration that wants to bring us back to halcyon days of early 1950s America, that preceded Supreme Court-ordered school desegregation. If it could, I’m sure it would go back even further, taking at least another 100 years off the clock.
The Trump administration has no problem with embracing bigotry. That much has been made clear by the guy at the top of the org chart.
While most presidents — no matter how racist — would at least try to present something “statesmanlike” when talking to the public, Trump has delivered his hatred of non-whites in press conferences and social media tweets. He has frequently referred to non-white countries as “shitholes” and their citizens as “low IQ.” He has claimed Latin America and South America are “sending” the US nothing but terrorists, drug dealers, and rapists.
He has also asked publicly why we can’t get more immigrants from predominantly white countries, like Switzerland, Norway, and other countries where blue eyes and blond hair are commonplace. (The answer, of course, is that citizens of those countries actually like the nations they reside in, what with their sensible governments, the prioritization of social safety nets over golden parachutes, and affordable health care. They also prefer their government not be run by criminals and rapists, nor overly forgiving of certain terrorists.)
In hopes of replacing the browner people he’s actively displacing in his War on Migrants, Trump reached out to the supposedly persecuted white people of South Africa, which has only recently made steps towards treating Black people like human beings, rather than possessions or low-level subordinates. Having seen some out-of-context viral video, Trump was convinced white South Africans were being oppressed by Black South Africans, much in the same way he became convinced Haitian refugees were eating people’s pets and/or local water fowl.
All of this racism is now traceable. It’s in the official numbers, as Alex Ip pointed out on Bluesky. The latest refugee numbers compiled [PDF] by the State Department (and released every month) show there’s a new replacement theory in operation here — one that hopes to fill the US with as many white people as possible.
Between October 1, 2025 and March 31, 2026, 4,499 refugees were admitted to the US. All five pages (10 states each) tell the same story: every single refugee admitted during this six-month period was from South Africa. The only exception? Three Afghan refugees who are now residing in Colorado and who arrived here last November.
Since last November, every refugee has been from South Africa. While it may be presumptive to assume that every South African admitted was white, it’s the kind of assumption that’s safe to make because this administration publicly stated it’s only interested in rescuing white South Africans from largely imagined “racial violence.”
The state-by-state breakdown makes it clear the South Africans who have taken advantage of this refugee status are there because Trump rolled out the white carpet for them. The two states with by far the largest numbers of South African refugees are Texas (551) and Florida (331) — both deeply red states that are fully MAGA cooked. California runs a close third with 316, but that’s because California has always attracted arrivals from foreign countries, much in the same way it has attracted US citizens from all over the nation, with its promises of beaches, warm weather, and plenty of places to work while you wait for your script to be optioned.
The only thing working against the administration is all the efforts it’s made to prevent non-citizens from having any rights, much less an opportunity to vote. I’m sure the White House’s finest legal minds (smash cut to a million monkeys with typewriters and Trump U law degrees) are busy finding a way to speed run the naturalization process, but only for refugees admitted to this country since last November. The other irony is some South Africans who’ve taken advantage of this are now claiming they’d rather go back to living in the country they “fled” from because it seems far less dangerous than remaining in a country run by people who prefer fascism to democracy.
This is about as openly racist as it gets. And yet, it’s just going to end up being more bigoted flotsam that will be pushed aside by the next burst of awfulness by this administration. There will be more where this came from. Sooner or later, some of it will manage to break the surface.
The Ultimate Python and Artificial Intelligence Bundle has 9 courses to help you take your Python and AI knowledge to the next level. You’ll learn about data pre-processing and visualization, artificial neural networks, how to use the Keras framework, and more. It’s on sale for $40.
Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.
We’ve been covering the Trump administration’s escalating campaign against NewsGuard for a while now. It started with the House Oversight Committee’s absurd investigation of the company for the crime of expressing opinions about news reliability. But then there was the FTC’s burdensome fishing expedition and blocking of the merger of two advertising giants — Omnicom and IPG — unless they stopped working with NewsGuard. That one prompted NewsGuard to sue the agency. Now the FTC, joined by a coalition of eight red states, has finished the job, getting the three other “big” ad agencies to agree not to use NewsGuard (or the Global Disinformation Index).
That means every single one of the five major advertising agency holding companies in the United States has now been successfully pressured by the federal government to stop using NewsGuard’s ratings. All of them. Entirely because NewsGuard expressed opinions about conservative news outlets that some powerful people found inconvenient.
I seem to recall some fairly dramatic freakouts from supposed ‘free speech absolutists’ about government pressure on media organizations constituting a massive First Amendment crisis. Strange that none of those people are speaking up about this. Many seem downright supportive.
I also seem to recall that in NRA v. Vullo, just two years ago, the Supreme Court said that government employees are not allowed to threaten companies not to do business with others because of disfavored opinions. The MAGA crowd celebrated that ruling. And now they’re doing the exact same thing that Vullo was accused of, except even more directly.
The United States government has successfully prevented a private journalism organization from doing business with the entire major advertising industry. All because NewsGuard expressed opinions about the reliability of news sources, and some of those opinions hurt the feelings of conservative media outlets — most notably Newsmax.
The FTC is leaning hard on an extraordinarily stretched interpretation of antitrust law to pull this off. The FTC’s complaint alleges that the three remaining major ad agencies — WPP, Publicis, and Dentsu — colluded through trade associations to establish common “brand safety” standards, and that this collusion constituted an illegal restraint of trade under the Sherman Act. Since they’d already gotten the other two, Omnicom and IPG, to agree to stop using NewsGuard as a condition of their merger approval, the full set is covered.
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, who promised when he took the job to “end politically motivated investigations” (he meant Lina Khan’s, not his own), offered some truly rich language in the press release:
“The ad agencies’ brand-safety conspiracy turned competition in the market for ad-buying services on its head,” said Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson. “The antitrust laws guarantee participation in a market free from conduct, such as economic boycotts, that distort the fundamental competitive pressures that promote lower prices, higher quality products and increased innovation.
“As we explain in our complaint, the brand-safety agreement limited competition in the market for ad-buying services and deprived advertisers of the benefits of differentiated brand-safety standards that could be tailored to their unique advertising inventory,” he continued. “This unlawful collusion not only damaged our marketplace, but also distorted the marketplace of ideas by discriminating against speech and ideas that fell below the unlawfully agreed-upon floor. The proposed order remedies the dangers inherent to collusive practices and restores competition to the digital news ecosystem.”
The ‘marketplace of ideas’ — that’s a fun phrase to invoke while using government regulatory power to prevent private companies from subscribing to a journalism ratings service because you don’t like what the ratings say. Ferguson is claiming to restore the marketplace of ideas by directly removing a participant from it.
Strip away the out-of-context, ominous-sounding internal email quotes, and the complaint describes something far less scandalous than the FTC wants you to believe.
The advertising industry, through trade associations (the 4As’ Advertiser Protection Bureau and the World Federation of Advertisers’ GARM initiative), developed common standards for what kinds of content advertisers might not want their brands associated with. This is a practice that has existed in advertising forever — brands don’t want their logos next to terrorist recruitment content, pornography, or content promoting illegal activity. That’s what “brand safety” means. The industry then expanded those standards over time to include categories like “misinformation” — and, in doing so, some individual agencies chose to use NewsGuard’s ratings, among other tools, to help implement those standards.
The complaint makes this sound terrifying through selective quoting. The most dramatic bit is this, from GARM, cautioning participants about discussing their coordination publicly:
The first rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club.
That’s a colorful quote! But it’s also a joke. Fairly obviously. What it describes — trade associations encouraging discretion about internal industry discussions — is routine. What matters is whether the underlying conduct is actually anticompetitive in a way the Sherman Act cares about. And that’s where the complaint falls apart. This was about setting brand safety standards. Not about preventing competition.
In a real antitrust case involving a cartel, you’d see competitors agreeing to fix prices, divide markets, or restrict output to inflate profits at consumers’ expense. What the FTC describes here is companies subscribing to the same third-party ratings service and incorporating it into their own, independent brand safety strategies. That’s like saying five banks are running an illegal conspiracy because they all use FICO scores and independently decided not to lend to borrowers with scores below 600. Common inputs don’t equal coordinated outputs. The FTC’s own complaint includes evidence of the agencies competing on brand safety — a Publicis executive explicitly strategized about creating a better brand safety guide than WPP’s, and recommended distributing it only internally to maintain competitive advantage:
She further recommended, with emphasis, “only distribut[ing] this internally and for clients,” not putting it “publically on our website as GroupM [WPP] did.”
That’s competition. That’s exactly what a market without collusion looks like. Companies see what their rivals are doing, and try to do it better.
The complaint acknowledges that the Interactive Advertising Bureau itself recognized that “Advertising quality is in the eye of the beholder” and recommended “a nuanced approach rather than blocking entire content categories or keywords.” The agencies were, in fact, trying to develop exactly such nuanced approaches — and the evidence the FTC presents shows them debating and disagreeing about how to handle “misinformation” as a category. One agency executive described the topic as “complicated and important” and suggested tabling it. Others had “a ton of back and forth discussion” and were “close, but not 100% there.” This is just what happens when industry participants work through a difficult issue. It can look an awful lot like what the FTC calls conspiracy if you strip away enough context and squint hard enough.
The real tell, however, is the remedy. If the FTC genuinely believed the problem was anticompetitive coordination between ad agencies, the remedy would be straightforward — “stop coordinating and compete independently on brand safety standards.” Make your own decisions. Develop your own tools. Compete.
That’s not what the consent decree says. Instead, the order will “ensure that each of the biggest U.S. advertising agencies are prevented from engaging in agreements that would set common brand safety standards or restrict advertising based on biased and politically motivated criteria.” And in the Omnicom/IPG merger conditions, the language was even more explicit: The merged company was prohibited from using any service that “reflects viewpoints as to the veracity of news reporting and adherence to journalistic standards or ethics.”
That is entirely about punishing companies that ranked conservative news sources as untrustworthy. It’s about punishing speech.
The government is prohibiting private companies from using services that express viewpoints about the veracity of news reporting. That’s a content-based restriction on speech, imposed through regulatory coercion, targeting specific viewpoints the government disfavors. In any other context, the people pushing this would call it censorship — because that’s exactly what it is.
And we know this remedy was specifically tailored to target NewsGuard because Newsmax told us so. As we covered when NewsGuard filed its lawsuit against the FTC, when the original Omnicom/IPG merger conditions didn’t quite capture NewsGuard, Newsmax swooped in to fix that. As detailed in the lawsuit:
Newsmax was not subtle about its aim. Its fourteen-page letter mentioned NewsGuard more than a dozen times. Newsmax echoed Chairman Ferguson’s repeated statements that NewsGuard’s reviews and ratings of news sources based on journalistic standards were “biased” because some conservative-leaning websites and publications scored poorly.
Not content to rely on the official FTC comment process, Newsmax took to the internet to lobby Chairman Ferguson, members of Congress, and the President. In posts on X directed to Chairman Ferguson, Newsmax asserted the FTC’s proposed order was inadequate because it “makes no mention of ‘censorship’ or ‘targeting conservatives’ and ‘[f]ully allows Omnicom to use left-wing NewsGuard.”
The FTC, in its own press release, stated that it revised the order “in response to public comments,” though the only significant revision that matched a public comment was that one from Newsmax about NewsGuard. They didn’t revise the order in response to the First Amendment scholars and free speech organizations who submitted comments pointing out the obvious constitutional problems. Only in response to Newsmax whining about NewsGuard calling out their failures in journalistic behavior.
The government regulatory agency changed its order at the direction of a media company that was mad about its review score. And now has applied the same framework across the entire industry.
This whole pattern — the origin story of this campaign — deserves emphasis because it exposes the mechanism. NewsGuard, founded by Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz (the former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, which makes the “woke leftist” framing particularly absurd), rates news sources based on disclosed journalistic criteria. Even if you disagree with NewsGuard’s criteria, it’s still just… their opinion. Their speech. Some conservative outlets scored poorly. Those outlets complained to sympathetic politicians. Those politicians launched investigations. The FTC chair, who had already publicly stated he intended to use the FTC’s “tremendous array of investigative tools” and “coercive power” to make companies “Do what we say,” sent NewsGuard a sweeping subpoena for essentially every document the company had ever produced — including reporters’ notes and sources — while refusing to even tell NewsGuard what law it allegedly violated. Then the FTC used its merger review authority to ban NewsGuard’s biggest potential customers from doing business with it. And now, with this latest action, the ban extends to every major ad agency in the country.
As NewsGuard’s lawsuit put it:
By accusing NewsGuard of providing “biased” evaluations of news sites, Chairman Ferguson has inverted the relationship between the government and the First Amendment. NewsGuard is a private business that offers assessments of the quality of news sites based on disclosed journalistic criteria. As a matter of law, NewsGuard cannot be a censor. But by asserting FTC control over the market for NewsGuard’s services, Chairman Ferguson has embraced the censor’s role.
This claim that critical speech of favored individuals or organizations is “censorship” is at the heart of the modern GOP’s entire approach to “free speech.” Private companies expressing opinions they don’t like? Censorship. The government using regulatory power to punish private companies for expressing those opinions? Restoring the marketplace of ideas. Up is down. Speech is censorship. Censorship is freedom.
And just to put a final bow on the cynicism here: this complaint was filed in the Northern District of Texas, Fort Worth Division. If that court sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the favored venue for conservative forum-shopping, home to Judge Reed O’Connor, who has been the go-to jurist for everything from challenges to the ACA to Elon Musk’s SLAPP suit against Media Matters. The FTC almost certainly chose this seemingly random venue because they know exactly what kind of judicial scrutiny they’ll face, which is to say: none worth worrying about.
The Commission vote on this action was 1-0-1. Because, remember, Donald Trump illegally fired the two Democratic FTC members and has made no real move to replace them. All that’s left is Chairman Ferguson and the also problematic Mark Meador, who recused himself from this vote. In other words, this “vote” was simply Ferguson agreeing with himself, approving what amounts to a government-imposed blacklist of a journalism company, backed by the attorneys general of eight states, all for the offense of expressing opinions about news quality that some powerful people found inconvenient.
For the record: I’ve been somewhat critical of NewsGuard’s methodology in the past. To me, their rating system has real limitations, and I think people should take any individual rating with appropriate skepticism. In response to me saying that, some at the company have expressed their own displeasure about my criticism of their methodology. But that’s kind of the whole point. My criticism of NewsGuard is more speech. NewsGuard’s ratings are more speech. Advertisers choosing whether or not to use those ratings are exercising their own rights. Every layer of this is speech and association, all the way down. The one layer that has no business being here is the federal government deciding which speech-about-speech private companies are allowed to subscribe to.
The party that spent years screaming about the “censorship industrial complex” — a supposed conspiracy between government and private entities to suppress disfavored speech — just built an actual censorship apparatus targeting a journalism organization. They used a tortured antitrust theory as the weapon, out-of-context trade association emails as the pretext, and a hand-picked court as the rubber stamp.
And they did it all while claiming to defend free speech.
Over the past several years, the Tor Project has been working to expand its mobile privacy offerings, including the development of TorVPN and its supporting components. This work is aimed at making Tor-based protections more accessible while maintaining strong security guarantees.
As part of this effort, in June 2025, Cure53 conducted a penetration test and source code audit of TorVPN for Android.
The assessment covered both the Android application and the underlying Onionmasq networking layer responsible for DNS resolution and traffic handling.
Audit findings
The audit covered two primary areas:
TorVPN for Android: the mobile application responsible for routing device traffic through the Tor network
Onionmasq / Tunnel Interface for Arti: the Ruse-based networking tunnel layer handling low-level network traffic forwarding, including TCP/UDP parsing, DNS resolution, and routing to the Tor network through Arti.
Key findings
The audit found that Tor’s core integration remains robust, with no fundamental issues in tunnel establishment or routing. Most findings instead cluster around two areas: incomplete input validation and weaknesses in DNS handling that could enable denial-of-service conditions in certain rare conditions.
Additional issues included cryptographic hardening suggestions (such as certificate pinning and randomness), and typical mobile security concerns like plaintext configuration storage and lack of root detection.
Next steps
All findings are being tracked and addressed as part of ongoing security work. This audit helps prioritize improvements around validation, resource management, and the use of established libraries for security-critical functionality.
I cut my teeth as a telecom reporter, so I spent a lot of time writing about how broadband monopolies and cable TV giants rip off consumers with sleazy, misleading fees. I also spent a lot of that time writing about how lobbying and regulatory capture have ensured that big companies see no meaningful penalties should they falsely advertise one price, then sock you with a bunch of spurious surcharges.
The Trump administration (and its courts) has taken an absolute hatchet to U.S. consumer protection on regulatory autonomy, ensuring that the problem of predatory fees is much worse across every sector you interface with. So it was funny to see Wall Street Journal reporters recently openly wondering why there are so many shitty fees all of a sudden (non-paywalled alternative):
“An extra 3% for paying with a credit card. A 5% involuntary contribution to a restaurant’s employee wellness fund. $25 a month in addition to rent for trash collection.
Consumers already weary of rising inflation are now contending with a new crop of costs that are hidden in plain sight. New fees or surcharges are popping up everywhere as companies search for ways to recoup their own rising costs while blaming outside pressures.”
The WSJ reporters and editors decided to cover soaring sleazy fees, but at no point in the article do they mention (even in passing) that Trump has dismantled most of the (already fleeting) efforts to rein in such predation. Or that the Trump Supreme Court has issued numerous rulings effectively making it almost impossible for regulators to fine corporations or hold them accountable for bad behavior.
The article mentions that the Trump FTC did grudgingly implement the Biden-era plan to ban junk fees, but they don’t think it’s worth mentioning that the Trump administration refuses to enforce it:
“The Federal Trade Commission banned drip pricing in short-term lodging and live-event ticketing in 2025, citing research showing that consumers were manipulated by low initial prices even when the full cost was eventually disclosed.”
They also don’t think it’s worth mentioning that the worst offenders of this kind of stuff, like Ticketmaster, were recently let off the hook by the Trump FTC via a piddly settlement (that left states, which had partnered with the FTC legally, high and dry). They’ve chosen to cover consumer protection, but not really. Not with any sort of interest in full, contextual reality.
While this particular instance is the Wall Street Journal, you’ll notice this same habit across most of corporate media. They’re dedicated to an alternate reality where Trump isn’t historically corrupt, and the regulators you’ve historically trusted to be at least semi-present to police the worst offenses are still dutifully on the beat protecting the public interest.
It’s of course a reflection of ownership bias seeping into editorial (most media owners are affluent Conservatives or Libertarians who like tax cuts, rubber stamped merger approvals, and mindless deregulation). But it’s also a form of weird normalization bias, where the reporters assume that because regulators have always been there (with natural partisan ebb and flow) they’ll always be there.
But they’re not there anymore. The damage will likely be deadly and permanent, impacting far more than just shitty, sneaky fees. And the press is doing a terrible job informing the public of that fact.
This is particularly amusing because the Wall Street Journal’s own reporting recently highlighted how even the semi-consistent folks within MAGA who sometimes supported things like functional antitrust reform have been easily ousted by lobbyists, but the reporters exploring “why are we getting ripped off more than ever by predatory corporations” aren’t willing to make the obvious connection.
That’s the appeal of it, of course. There isn’t a definitive study. There can’t be.
Even if we created a forty-year-long, double-blind twin study, there’d be room for someone to ask “what about?…”
It doesn’t matter that the peer-reviewed and consistent results we have are clear to those who read them with an open mind.
The attraction of simple stories about complex phenomena is that we get to make them up and imbue them with whatever reassurance, solace or threat we choose. Human beings didn’t evolve to be rational decision makers. We’re creators and consumers of stories, seeking status and affiliation, and prioritizing short-term feelings over long-term evidence.
It’s nice when a story that’s precious to us is reinforced by evidence, but it’s rarely essential. Belief isn’t dependent on facts, that’s why we call it belief instead of facts.
It’s helpful to wonder who benefits from sharing a particular story with us, and what it costs us to believe it.
Lest anyone accuse me of bargaining in bad faith here, let me start with this admission: I don't think AI is intelligent; nor do I think that the current (admittedly impressive) statistical techniques will lead to intelligence. I think worrying about what we'll do if AI becomes intelligent is at best a distraction and at worst a cynical marketing ploy:
Now, that said: among some of the "AI doomers," I recognize kindred spirits. I, too, worry about technologies controlled by corporations that have grown so powerful that they defy regulation. I worry about how those technologies are used against us, and about how the corporations that make them are fusing with authoritarian states to create a totalitarian nightmare. I worry that technology is used to spy on and immiserate workers.
I just don't think we need AI to do those things. I think we should already be worried about those things.
Last week, I had a version of this discussion in front of several hundred people at the Bronfman Lecture in Montreal, where I appeared with Astra Taylor and Yoshua Bengio (co-winner of the Turing Prize for his work creating the "deep learning" techniques powering today's AI surge), on a panel moderated by CBC Ideas host Nahlah Ayed:
It's safe to say that Bengio and I mostly disagree about AI. He's running an initiative called "Lawzero," whose goal is to create an international AI consortium that produces AI as a "digital public good" that is designed to be open, auditable, transparent and safe:
Bengio said he'd started Lawzero because he was convinced that AI was going to get a lot more powerful, and, in the absence of some public-spirited version of AI, we would be subject to all kinds of manipulation and surveillance, and that the resulting chaos would present a civilizational risk.
Now, as I've stated (and as I said onstage) I am not worried about any of this. I am worried about AI, though. I'm worried a fast-talking AI salesman will convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can't do your job (the salesman will be pushing on an open door, since if there's one thing bosses hate, it's paying workers).
I'm worried that the seven companies that comprise 35% of the S&P 500 are headed for bankruptcy, as soon as someone makes them stop passing around the same $100b IOU while pretending it's in all their bank accounts at once. I'm worried that when that happens, the chatbots that badly do the jobs of the people who were fired because of the AI salesman will go away, and nothing and no one will do those jobs. I'm worried that the chaos caused by vaporizing a third of the stock market will lead to austerity and thence to fascism:
I worry that the workers who did those jobs will be scattered to the four winds, retrained or "discouraged" or retired, and that the priceless process knowledge they developed over generations will be wiped out and we will have to rebuild it amidst the economic and political chaos of the burst AI bubble:
But Bengio disagrees. He's very smart, and very accomplished, and he's very certain that AI is about to become "superhuman" and do horrible things to us if we don't get a handle on it. Several times at our events, he insisted that the existence of this possibility made it wildly irresponsible not to take measures to mitigate this risk.
Though I didn't say so at the time, this struck me as an AI-inflected version of Pascal's wager:
A rational person should adopt a lifestyle consistent with the existence of God and should strive to believe in God… if God does not exist, the believer incurs only finite losses, potentially sacrificing certain pleasures and luxuries; if God does exist, the believer stands to gain immeasurably, as represented for example by an eternity in Heaven in Abrahamic tradition, while simultaneously avoiding boundless losses associated with an eternity in Hell.
Smarter people than me have been poking holes in Pascal's wager for more than 350 years. But when it comes to this modern Pascal's AI Wager, I have my own objection: how do you know when you've lost?
As of this moment, the human race has lit more than $1.4t on fire to immanentize this eschaton, and it remains stubbornly disimmanentized. How much more do we need to spend before we're certain that god isn't lurking in the word-guessing program? Sam Altman says it'll take another $2-3t – call it six months' worth of all US federal spending. If we do that and we still haven't met god, are we done? Can we call it a day?
Not according to Elon Musk. Musk says we need to deconstruct the solar system and build a Dyson sphere out of all the planets to completely encase the sun, so we can harvest every photon it emits to power our word-guessing programs:
So let's say we do that and we still haven't met god – are we done? I don't see why we would be. After all, Musk's contention isn't that our sun emits one eschaton's worth of immanentizing particles. Musk just thinks that we need a lot of these sunbeams to coax god into our plane of existence. If one sun won't do it, perhaps two? Or two hundred? Or two thousand? Once we've committed the entire human species to this god-bothering project to the extent of putting two kilosuns into harness, wouldn't we be nuts to stop there? What if god is lurking in the two thousand and first sun? Making god out of algorithms is like spelling "banana" – easy to start, hard to stop.
But as Bengio and I got into it together on stage at the Montreal Centre, it occurred to me that maybe there was some common ground between us. After all, when someone starts talking about "humane technology" that respects our privacy and works for people rather than their bosses, my ears grow points. Throw in the phrase "international digital public goods" and you've got my undivided attention.
Because there's a sense in which Bengio and I are worried about exactly the same thing. I'm terrified that our planet has been colonized by artificial lifeforms that we constructed, but which have slipped our control. I'm terrified that these lifeforms corrupt our knowledge-creation process, making it impossible for us to know what's true and what isn't. I'm terrified that these lifeforms have conquered our apparatus of state – our legislatures, agencies and courts – and so that these public bodies work against the public and for our colonizing alien overlords.
The difference is, the artificial lifeforms that worry me aren't hypothetical – they're here today, amongst us, endangering the very survival of our species. These artificial lifeforms are called "limited liability corporations" and they are a concrete, imminent risk to the human race:
What's more, challenging these artificial lifeforms will require us to build massive, "international, digital public goods": a post-American internet of free/open, auditable, transparent, enshittification-resistant platforms and firmware for every purpose and device currently in service:
And even after we've built that massive, international, digital public good, we'll still face the challenge of migrating all of our systems and loved ones out of the enshitternet of defective, spying, controlling American tech exports:
Every moment that we remain stuck in the enshitternet is a moment of existential risk. At the click of a mouse, Trump could order John Deere to switch off all the tractors in your country:
He doesn't need tanks to steal Greenland. He can just shut off Denmark's access to American platforms like Office365, iOS and Android and brick the whole damned country. It would be another Strait of Hormuz, but instead of oil and fertilizer, he'd control the flow of Lego, Ozempic and deliciously strong black licorice:
These aren't risks that could develop in the future. They're the risks we're confronted with today and frankly, they're fucking terrifying.
So here's my side-bet on Pascal's Wager. If you think we need to build "international digital public goods" to head off the future risk of a colonizing, remorseless, malevolent artificial lifeform, then let us agree that the prototype for that project is the "international digital public goods" we need right now to usher in the post-American internet and save ourselves from the colonizing, remorseless, malevolent artificial lifeforms that have already got their blood-funnels jammed down our throats.
Once we defeat those alien invaders, we may find that all the people who are trying to summon the evil god have lost the wherewithal to do so, and your crisis will have been averted. But if that's not the case and the evil god still looms on our horizon, then I will make it my business to help you mobilize the legions of skilled international digital public goods producers who are still flush from their victory over the limited liability corporation, and together, we will fight the evil god you swear is in our future.
"Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com.
"Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com
Currently writing: "The Post-American Internet," a sequel to "Enshittification," about the better world the rest of us get to have now that Trump has torched America. Third draft completed. Submitted to editor.
"The Reverse Centaur's Guide to AI," a short book for Farrar, Straus and Giroux about being an effective AI critic. LEGAL REVIEW AND COPYEDIT COMPLETE.
"The Post-American Internet," a short book about internet policy in the age of Trumpism. PLANNING.
A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING
This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net.
Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution.
"When life gives you SARS, you make sarsaparilla" -Joey "Accordion Guy" DeVilla
READ CAREFULLY: By reading this, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer.
Pirate streaming apps and unauthorized IPTV services have continued to gain popularity worldwide.
This is also the case in Chile, where there’s no shortage of options. This includes brands such as MagisTV, FlujoTV, and, XuperTV, which are popular throughout many countries in the region.
These services are a thorn in the side of rightsholders, including the American Hollywood giant Warner Bros. Entertainment, which filed a formal complaint. This effort paid off in February, when Chile’s Department of Telecommunications issued a dynamic blocking order, requiring ISPs to block domains linked to these pirate brands.
Warner Bros. Raises the Stakes
While the blocking action sorted some effect, the IPTV problem remained. This prompted Warner Bros. to raise the stakes by filing a criminal complaint against a company named Streaming Chile SpA that allegedly sells copyright-infringing IPTV subscriptions.
Chilean newspaper La Tercera reports that Warner Bros. accuses the company and its representatives, the 56-year-old Marta Leyton and her son Joaquín Ávila (25) of copyright infringement and computer fraud.
The complaint mentions that IPTV services are widely adopted. While some of these streaming services operate legally, many operate without permission of rightsholders.
“Alongside the growth of a legal IPTV service industry, an illegal industry of unauthorized IPTV service providers has grown alarmingly. These providers offer their clients pay television services via the internet, providing them with access to various content (channels),” the complaint alleges.
Warner Bros. is represented by attorney Daniel Steinmetz, who noted that illegal IPTV services often rebroadcast legal streams without permission from rightsholder, bypassing copyright protections.
Several Linked IPTV Services
TorrentFreak has not seen a copy of the complaint, and the available reporting does not identify any associated URLs. However, the website streaming-chile.net notes in the its footer that it is owned by Streaming Chile SpA, which fits the picture.
streaming-chile.net
The website in question mentions that the operation serves more than 35,000 customers worldwide. The same company, which also offers reseller services, is linked to other streaming platforms such as mejoriptv.net, maxtv.cl, and plandetv.cl.
Our customers say…
As seen above, these IPTV services are also mentioned in the “our customers say” section on the main website. The Trustpilot page has less favorable reviews.
Part of a Broader Crackdown
Warner Bros. referral is part of a broader regional push against IPTV piracy. In February, for example, an Argentine court expanded the crackdown on pirate IPTV services by blocking more than 70 domains while ordering Google to disable sideloaded Android apps.
In Chile, the criminal referral against Streaming Chile SpA stands out because it targets a company and its representative by name, under criminal law rather than a civil procedure.
The Warner Bros. complaint is also the first known Chilean case to invoke the Ley de Delitos Económicos (Economic Crimes Law). Enacted in 2023, the law allows courts to order confiscation of all profits derived from criminal conduct. In addition, it imposes fines that scale with the defendant’s income, well beyond the penalties available under standard copyright law alone.
For now, the criminal complaint is at an early investigative stage. No arrests have been reported, and, as far as we can see, the IPTV services that we could link to the company remain online.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
We’ve talked for many years about Nintendo’s shotgun approach to IP enforcement, as well as its heavy-handed ToS enforcement policies that can include bricking customer consoles and/or banning their accounts if they do something Nintendo doesn’t like, even if it’s not strictly illegal. This has all set up an ecosystem where being a Nintendo fan and customer can feel like a dangerous prospect, where navigating a capricious company is supposed to be half the fun.
But when that same ecosystem is setup in a way that is wide open to abuse, the fun really begins. That appears to be what is happening right now as Nintendo is removing hundreds of Mario Maker 2 levels made by fans.
The common denominator for these level deletions appears to be the inclusion of a hashtag for “TeamShell,” which is a Discord server dedicated to sharing codes for levels made within the game. Notices about the removal from Nintendo indicate that they were deleted for including “advertising”, which is against Nintendo’s terms of service.
There is no indication that any money is changing hands here. Calling a hashtag to denote that a level was made with a specific Discord server in mind “advertising” is stretching the definition to the point of absurdity. On top of all of this, many of these levels are years old, causing the community to wonder why in the world this was suddenly happening now.
Then someone found this on another Discord server dedicated to the Mario Maker games.
So, who is LMT?
Turns out, the YouTube account linked to LMT’s Discord profile bears the pseudonym of someone called MT94. As explained in a post on AtWiki, MT94 was, at one point, the second-highest-rated Super Mario Maker player in the world.
Turns out that MT94 cheated their way to that ranking, and they achieved this by using three separate Nintendo Switch consoles. By consistently challenging their own accounts to co-op battles in the game, they managed to boost themselves up the rankings. After the community found out and reported them, MT94’s accounts were banned.
Now, I’ve seen some content out there indicating it was TeamShell that had a hand in exposing MT94’s alleged cheating, but nothing solid enough that I consider firm ground. But it’s clear that there is some kind of vendetta at work here. And, while most of you probably view the deletion of some Mario Maker levels as a tame story at most, it is having very real consequences due to how Nintendo conducts it business.
The truly sad thing is that Super Mario Maker users are also reporting that their Nintendo Switch accounts are being suspended as well, as there seems to be a sort of automatic system in place that suspends a Nintendo Switch account if it’s been associated with a certain number of reports.
Nintendo has a choice. It can remain heavy-handed in this manner when it comes to account suspensions for takedowns, but then it needs to actually investigate claims like this to ensure they aren’t falling for abusive takedown requests. Or it can ease up on the severity of its actions and allow for a counternotice system, or another manner for those falsely accused to avoid consequences.
What it should not be allowed to do is continue to let its own customers suffer severe consequences merely because the system it set up is so wide open for this kind of gleeful abuse.
We all know by now that Trump attacked Pope Leo XIV on Easter Sunday, posted an AI image of himself as Jesus, and spent the week watching Catholic bishops, cardinals, and lay leaders—including conservatives who voted for him—express their dismay in the some of the bluntest terms to date.
But what will this cost Trump and his party at the ballot box? Will Catholics choose religious principles over MAGA politics? And if we do see Catholic support for Trump erode, where specifically could this affect the electoral math?
How worried should Republicans be about losing the Catholics heading into the November midterms?
It turns out that the answers are not only more concrete but more damaging than the GOP would like to admit publicly.
By January of this year, weeks before Operation Epic Fury, and months before Trump’s Easter meltdown, Catholic support for Trump was already eroding. Pew Research data showed his approval among white Catholics had slipped seven points from the start of his second term. Among Hispanic Catholics, the drop was even steeper, falling eight points.
Two months can change a great deal. A Fox poll conducted in late March pushed his overall Catholic approval below 50 percent for the first time, with a lopsided 40 percent saying they strongly disapprove, a critical signal of how deeply dissatisfaction now runs.
John White, professor emeritus of politics at The Catholic University of America, put it bluntly: Trump’s 2024 coalition is “now in tatters, and Catholics are no exception.”
Pew’s senior researcher Gregory A. Smith told OSV News, a Catholic news and information service, that the change had taken place “over the course of the year, rather than recently or rapidly.” In other words, this was not a reaction to a single bad week. Immigration enforcement, tariffs, cost of living, the steady drumbeat of norm-breaking—all of it had been steadily building.
But unhappiness over the Iran war, with its consequences at the pump, now appears to have further accelerated the trend. And Trump’s Easter Sunday attacks on the Pope may have broken something that was already badly cracked.
To be clear, Catholic erosion is part of a broader pattern. Pew’s January 2026 survey found approval down across virtually every religious group — evangelicals, mainline Protestants, and Catholics alike.
But unlike evangelicals, Catholics are a genuine swing bloc—still Republican-leaning but with real room to move, unlike groups firmly in the Democratic column. And they are concentrated in precisely the suburban battleground districts and states where even a three- to five-point shift could prove decisive.
We can now add a specific and ongoing institutional pressure that no other group faces: a public spat between a warmongering president and an American pope with sky-high approval ratings among Catholic Republicans.
Pope Leo ain’t no Pope Francis
To be clear, Trump has attacked popes before, which may explain his willingness to take on Pope Leo. He and Pope Francis clashed for years. But Trump’s attacks on Leo carry far more political risk.
To understand why, we need to rewind to Francis’s papacy. Conservative American Catholics had their own grievances with the Vatican during this time. Francis was Argentine, identified as theologically liberal, and had tangled with Republican bishops over climate, LGBTQ+ inclusion and immigration for more than a decade. By the end of his papacy, Gallup found only 42 percent of American conservatives viewed Pope Francis favorably. For Trump, that meant attacking Francis came with limited political cost because much of the MAGA Catholic base had already cooled on him.
Pope Leo is a different proposition. Last September, Pew Research surveyed American Catholics and found 84 percent held a favorable view of the new pope. Among Catholic Republicans specifically, that number was also 84 percent, far higher than the 69 percent who still viewed Pope Francis favorably in his final months. Leo enters this fight with Trump with a reserve of goodwill among conservative Catholics that Francis simply did not have.
When Leo was elected last May, a significant segment of Catholic Republicans hoped he would take the Church in a different direction than Francis had led it. Pew found that 18 percent of Catholic Republicans believed Leo would be different from Francis and saw that as a good thing. That may sound small, but it’s still more than double the share of Catholic Democrats who felt the same way.
But that wasn’t to be. Leo has been just as outspoken as Francis on immigration and war, and in some ways more direct. He is simply harder to dismiss, because he is one of their own, and Trump 2.0 on immigration and war is significantly to the right of Trump 1.0.
Professor White captures what makes this psychologically distinct from the Francis years. Pope Leo’s “strong and blunt statements about the war,” White told EWTN News, formerly the Catholic News Agency, create “a higher level of cognitive dissonance among Catholics who support Trump but are hearing the words of the pope.” For some, he said, that dissonance will shift opinions. Maybe not for all, but for a good number.
David Gibson, director of Fordham University’s Center on Religion and Culture, framed the stakes even more starkly. While many Catholics have been standing by Trump and criticizing their own bishops for speaking out, eventually they will be faced with “choosing a Catholic-baiting president over their own pope.” That could sit uneasily for many, particularly those already unhappy with the job Trump is doing and the way he is actively insulting Pope Leo.
Gibson observed, “American presidents and American Catholics have disagreed with popes in the past. But this is disrespect. Disrespect is way different than disagreement, and that’s the danger for Trump here.”
Where the Catholic vote really counts
Catholics make up roughly one in five voters nationally. But that national figure obscures their true electoral weight. Catholics are a true swing voting group and are heavily concentrated in the battlegrounds that will decide 2026.
New York and New Jersey, two states where nearly a third of all residents are Catholic, account for six competitive House seats between them. In New York, Cook Political Report rates Rep. Mike Lawler’s Hudson Valley seat (NY-17) a true toss-up, having moved from “lean Republican” in November 2025. Meanwhile, three Democratic incumbents (Reps. Laura Gillen (NY-4), Tom Suozzi (NY-3) and Josh Riley (NY-19)) hold seats rated “lean Democratic,” leading both parties to play offense in the state.
In New Jersey, Cook Political rates Rep. Tom Kean Jr.’s NJ-7 race a toss-up (also having moved from “lean Republican” in November 2025) and is a top Democratic target. Meanwhile, NJ-9, held by freshman Democrat Rep. Nellie Pou, remains a top Republican target and is both on the DCCC’s initial Frontline list and the NRCC’s initial target list for the 2026 cycle.
That’s six seats in play, in just two blue states, where Catholic voters make up an outsized share of the electorate and where even a modest shift in that bloc could hand Democrats the House majority.
Zoom out and the picture grows even clearer. A Newsweek analysis mapped Catholic population data against competitive race ratings across the full 2026 battlefield and found the overlap striking. Pennsylvania (21.8 percent Catholic) has three vulnerable Republican-held seats and Wisconsin (21 percent Catholic) has one of the most competitive districts in the country. In the Senate, Michigan, Maine, Ohio, Georgia, and North Carolina all have tight races where the Catholic vote could prove decisive.
Among the demographic fault lines within Catholic voting, none may matter more in suburban swing districts than gender. An EWTN/RealClear poll conducted last November, when Trump still held majority Catholic support, already showed 62 percent of male Catholic voters viewing him favorably compared with only 45 percent of female Catholic voters. Catholic women are more likely to live in the suburban districts that flip House seats, more likely to cite the Church’s social teaching on care for the vulnerable as a political priority, and, as the same poll showed, less likely than men to rank deportations as a top priority.
No subsequent poll has broken down Catholic approval of Trump by gender, but the overall Catholic approval numbers have dropped sharply since that November 2025 poll, and broader polling consistently shows women moving away from Trump faster than men. The Catholic gender gap—already baked in before Iran and the pope fight—has likely widened.
There is also the Hispanic Catholic dimension. PRRI data from February showed Hispanic Catholic favorability toward Trump at just 25 percent, down from a high of 37 percent in September 2024. That collapse—driven by immigration enforcement, economic anxiety, and now an ugly war the Church has explicitly condemned—has direct implications for competitive districts in Texas, New Jersey and New York, where Latino Catholics comprise a significant share of the electorate.
Deeper than one bad weekend
There is growing friction between Trump’s governing agenda and basic Catholic social teaching. And it cuts across nearly every major policy area, not just the Iran war.
On April 12, three of the most senior Catholic cardinals in the United States — Cardinal Robert McElroy of Washington, Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago, and Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark—sat down together on 60 Minutes to address the war and immigration enforcement, in a rare joint interview. Their joint appearance was itself a statement; the last time the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a special unified message criticizing a sitting president’s policy was more than a decade ago.
Cardinal McElroy framed the Church’s “just war” argument in terms that left little room for interpretation. “The Catholic faith teaches us there are certain prerequisites for a just war,” he said. “You can’t go for a variety of different aims. You have to have a focused aim, which is to restore justice and restore peace. That’s it.” He acknowledged Iran’s government as “an abominable regime” that “should be removed” — and then said plainly that “this is a war of choice that we went into.” In a separate homily, McElroy said each of the administration’s policy failures in Iran “is equally a moral failure which under Catholic ‘just war’ principles renders both the initiation of this war and any continuation of it morally illegitimate.”
Cardinal Cupich took aim at something more specific: the White House’s social media presentation of the war, which has included videos splicing together clips from Top Gun, Braveheart, and video games like Grand Theft Auto with actual combat footage. “We’re dehumanizing the victims of war,” Cupich told 60 Minutes, “by turning the suffering of people and the killing of children and our own soldiers into entertainment.” He called it “sickening.” The congregation at his Washington peace Mass responded with several minutes of applause.
On immigration, the tensions are just as stark. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a rare unified rebuke last November denouncing the administration’s “indiscriminate mass deportation of people.” That statement was approved by more than 95 percent of voting bishops. Pope Leo then urged Americans to heed the bishops’ message. Cardinal Tobin of Newark, also on 60 Minutes, called ICE a “lawless organization” when agents “have to hide their identities to terrify people” and violate constitutional guarantees.
Then there is the economic disconnect. When EWTN and RealClear polled Catholic voters last November and asked which Trump campaign promise mattered most, 40 percent said reducing inflation, by far outpacing every other issue. Only 15 percent named deportations. Catholics voted for economic relief, but it’s not at all what they got. As affordability grows ever more out of reach, driven in part by the war of choice the Church has now condemned, these economic voters may angrily vote their pocketbooks in 2026, just as many did in 2024.
Pope over president?
Kathleen Sprows Cummings, a professor of American Studies and History at Notre Dame, offered the long view on Trump’s fight with the pontiff: “Emperors, monarchs, and despots have long threatened popes in an effort to force them to bend to their will,” she said. “In an American context, however, Trump’s invective does represent a historic reversal.”
And David Gibson’s question raised earlier—will Catholics choose the pope or the president?—now looms large, especially going into the fall campaign. In 2024, Trump won Catholic voters by 12 points. That margin is now underwater in national polling, and the dioceses that matter most to the midterm map are in the states where the Senate and House majorities will be decided.
The November answer remains uncertain. But the question has never been more open.
War does not only reshape borders. It also reshapes what can be seen, said, and remembered.
When governments invoke “misinformation” during wartime, they often mean something simpler: speech they do not control. Since the escalation of conflict between the United States, Israel, Iran, and related spillover attacks in the Gulf, several governments have intensified efforts to silence dissent and restrict the flow of information.
Journalism under pressure
For journalists, the space to operate—already constrained in much of the Gulf—is narrowing further. Across the region, several countries (including the UAE, Qatar, and Jordan) have restricted access to conflict areas, warned of legal consequences for publishing footage, and drawn red lines around wartime reporting. These measures weaken independent coverage, elevate official narratives, and make it harder for the public to get an accurate account of events on the ground.
Reporters Without Borders has documented an intensifying crackdown on journalists across Gulf countries and Jordan, including restrictions on reporting, legal threats, and heightened risks for those who deviate from official narratives. This aligns with the broader warning from the UN that repression of civic space and freedom of expression has significantly deepened across the region during the war.
Criminalizing speech, one post at a time
For ordinary internet users, the restrictions are just as severe. Since February, hundreds of people have reportedly been arrested across the region for social media activity linked to the war. In many Gulf states, the legal infrastructure enabling this is already well-established: expansive cybercrime and media laws criminalize vaguely defined offenses such as “spreading rumors,” “undermining public order,” or “insulting the state”. In wartime, these provisions become catch-all tools: flexible enough to apply to nearly any form of dissent.
In Bahrain, authorities have reportedly cracked down on people who protested or shared footage of the conflict online. The Gulf Centre for Human Rights has reported 168 arrests in the country tied to protests and online expression, with defendants potentially facing serious prison terms if convicted.
In the UAE, authorities have arrestednearly 400 people for recording events related to the conflict and for circulating information they described as misleading or fabricated. Police have claimed this material could stir public anxiety and spread rumors, and state-linked reporting has described the crackdown as part of a broader effort to defend the country from digital misinformation.
Saudi Arabia has also intensified restrictions, issuing a statement on March 2 banning the sharing of rumors or videos of unknown origin, and issuing a campaign discouraging residents from taking or posting photos. The campaign included a hashtag that reads “photography serves the enemy.” Journalists have been prevented from documenting the aftermath of airstrikes on the country. Kuwait, Qatar, and Jordan have adopted similar restrictions on wartime imagery and reporting.
Qatar’s Interior Ministry has arrested more than 300 people for filming, circulating, or publishing what the ministry deemed to be misleading information. Taken together, these measures show how quickly wartime speech is being folded into existing legal systems designed to punish dissent.
The regional playbook
What’s striking is how consistent these measures are across different countries. As we recently wrote, governments across the broader region have enacted sweeping cybercrime and media laws over the past fifteen years, which they are now putting to use. Across different countries, the same tools are being used: existing laws, fresh bans on sharing wartime imagery, and tighter restrictions on journalists and reporting. The vocabulary changes slightly from place to place, but the logic is the same: national security, public order, rumors, and social stability are justifications for control.
This is not just a series of isolated incidents. It is a regional playbook for silencing critics and narrowing the public record. Gulf states have long relied on censorship and surveillance; the war has simply made those methods easier to justify and harder to challenge.
From “digital hopes” to digital control
As we’ve documented in our ongoing blog series, digital platforms were once seen—at least in part—as spaces that could expand public discourse in the region. But as we’ve also argued, those early “digital hopes” have given way to systems of regulation and control.
The current crackdown is a continuation of that trajectory, not a temporary departure from it. States are not just reacting to the war; they are leveraging it to consolidate long-standing ambitions to dominate the digital public sphere.
It may be tempting to see these measures as temporary, but emergency powers—like the one enacted in Egypt following the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat that lasted for more than three decades—have a way of sticking around. Legal precedents that are set during wartime often become normalized—or reinvoked during times of crisis, as occurred in 2015, when France brought back a 1955 law related to the Algerian War of Independence amidst the Paris attacks.
And the stakes are high. As we’ve seen in Syria and Ukraine, regulations and platform policies can cause wartime human rights documentation to disappear. When journalists are constrained and eyewitness footage is criminalized, accountability is weakened. And when arrests become widespread, people learn to self-censor.
Protecting freedom of expression in times of conflict is a requirement for accountability, not a concession to disorder. When people can document, report, and share information freely, it becomes harder for abuses to be hidden behind official narratives. Even in wartime, the public interest is best served by defending the space to tell the truth, not by silencing speech.
While the Trump administration’s extremely aggressive, thoroughly bigoted attempts to eliminate as many non-white people from this country as possible have resulted in some periodic push back from law enforcement officials, we can never forget that federal law enforcement officers are still just law enforcement officers. And, more often than not, they’ll always have the support of their brothers in blue, even though most federal officers prefer camo and face masks these days.
Law enforcement is self-selecting. The people who feel drawn to law enforcement are generally the last people you would want to become law enforcement officers. It’s rarely about being given the chance to serve, protect, and be an active part of your community. It’s almost always about having a badge, a gun, and accountability that’s inversely proportional to the amount of power you immediately obtain.
So, it comes as no surprise that cops who shouldn’t have any skin in the anti-ICE game are stepping up to punish people for daring to criticize the actions of those federal officers. And there’s probably a bit of backlash involved here as well, as this following report details the actions of California law enforcement officers who (one assumes) aren’t thrilled the state’s residents have managed to reclaim much of the power that has always been owed to the people.
Despite the administration’s on/off surges in “blue” states, the furor over ICE and its actions hasn’t died down, not even in California, where the administration rolled out its martial law beta test. At first, it was easy to pretend people protesting ICE were “woke radicals” or “antifa” or “paid organizers” or “lazy trans everywhere college students” or whatever. But it just kept going and expanding, clearly demonstrating a significant portion of the population wasn’t on board with roving kidnapping squads and murders of activists by jumpy recruits recently introduced to the wholly domestic War on Migrants.
Now that it’s everyone rather than just the usual left-wing agitprop cliches federal and local officers expected to confront during protests, cops in California are deciding it’s time to start arresting everyone.
The Clovis Police Department on Tuesday referred Alfred Aldrete, 41, for one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor for his role in a February high school student walkout.
“During the investigation, Aldrete was identified as being present during the walkout and allegedly involved in directing student activity and entering the roadway, which impacted traffic flow,” Clovis police said in a press release. “Investigators also identified Aldrete as being present during a separate student gathering in Clovis on Feb. 5 that occurred outside of school hours.”
Yep, that’s what the Clovis PD actually did: it equated an adult ensuring students made it to their planned protest safely with the sort of horrors — harboring runaways, providing drugs and alcohol to minors, etc. — people usually associate with the crime of “contributing to the delinquency of a minor.” Those would be the sorts of crimes actually prosecuted by county prosecutors under this statute.
This stat may explain why the Clovis PD thought it should explore the fringes of this statute for the sole purpose of punishing someone for speech they (and they people they serve, apparently) don’t care for:
[C]lovis, population 128,000, where Donald Trump won every precinct in the 2024 presidential election — some with more than 70% of the vote.
That tracks. Fortunately, it doesn’t track as far as the District Attorney’s office:
A representative for Fresno County District Attorney Lisa Smittcamp in a written statement said prosecutors would not file charges against Aldrete.
Hooray for prosecutorial discretion, but in the non-pejorative sense! It’s an unexpected twist that only makes this further twist even more inexplicable:
Within a day of the walkout, Clovis police said they were considering charges against up to six adults under Section 272 of the California Penal Code, which is most often used to prevent chronic truancy. The Los Angeles Police Department has also said it’s considering charges against people who joined immigration-related protests under the same penal code section.
At the beginning of Trump’s first martial law-esque surge, the LAPD (and the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department) were opposed to the insertion of National Guard units and other federal officers into the mix. Stating that they were capable of handling whatever minimal “violent protests” they had actually encountered, law enforcement officials made it clear that this federal interloping would only make a manageable problem unmanageable.
More than a year later, the LAPD has flipped the script from blue to red, declaring it’s willing to charge students for truancy (along with the adults who assist them) for participating in walkout that, at best, lasts a few hours. It’s not like these kids are quitting school to pursue a career in protesting. And it’s not like these adults are harming kids by helping them engage fully with their First Amendment rights.
It’s one thing to be the main characters in a pro-Trump town. It’s quite another to be part of the second-largest police force in the United States and decide it’s worth your time, money, and attention to punish people for peacefully protesting. Fuck right off, LAPD. And take the Clovis PD with you.
In this episode, Matt & Lauren share strategies for how to find, research, and hire the best possible freelancers to help you bring your book to life. Whether you need help with editing, formatting, designing, or marketing, these guidelines can help you assemble your dream team for long-term publishing success!
We talk through steps like:
Understanding different types of freelancers
The three best places to start your search (and research)
Narrowing your pool of applicants to a shortlist of top candidates
Matt: Welcome to Publish & Prosper. Episode number 115. Are we not saying numbers anymore?
Lauren: No, we're not.
Matt: We’re not.
Lauren: But, I’m –
Matt: I just did.
Lauren: I'm glad that you did.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: I mean, this one's locked in solidly as episode 115.
Matt: So it's 115.
Lauren: So it's okay.
Matt: Yeah. Alright.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: 115 episodes.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: That's why I wanted to say it, really.
Lauren: Isn't that kind of crazy?
Matt: I keep forget how many we've done.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: And so yeah, sometimes when I look at the number on the outline you give me, I'm just like. Wow.
Lauren: I know.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: I know. it does – it does get me a little bit.
Matt: Are our follower counts going up or down?
Lauren: Well they're not going down.
Matt: Okay.
Lauren: So.
Matt: I would just think after 115 episodes of listening to us that they would be going down.
Lauren: Do you unfollow podcasts?
Matt: Me?
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: I have ones that I stopped listening to, but like, not that I, like, rage quit –
Matt: But if I stop listening to them, I actually unfollow them too.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Interesting.
Matt: I wouldn't consider that rage quitting. I just I mean, I think part of it is the marketer in me. I feel bad if I don't unfollow them because I feel like I'm inflating their metrics.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Isn't that weird?
Lauren: Yes, I get that.
Matt: But I also just don't wanna – like, if I stopped listening to them. It's just, it means the content no longer struck a chord with me –
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: – or strikes a chord with me. And that means I also don't really want to see it bubbling up in my Spotify feed. So I unfollow.
Lauren: See, I think that's... I, I completely understand that perspective, and I think that I, for the same reason, do the opposite. Where like like my favorite podcast I haven't listened to in... I probably, I probably have like six, maybe even nine months of episodes built up. Because I just, I spend so much time editing my own podcast that I don't have a lot of time to listen to podcasts anymore. And this is a fun one, not a one that's going to be related to work in any way. But I don't want them to, like, lose engagement from me. I don't – like, I still want to support them, I just I'm really backlogged on episodes. So I'm still subscribed, I still follow, I still pay for their Patreon, I like, I pay them monthly for content that I haven't listened to in months. I open every one of their emails that come – like, I still engage with all their stuff. I just haven't listened in a while. And I will eventually. There will be like a, a week or two where I binge all of the episodes that I've missed and catch back up again. But in the meantime, I don't want them to, like, lose out on my engagement.
Matt: But see, that's different.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: I mean you, you have made the choice to say, I need to get caught up. Like, you haven't decided there's not value there. You just –
Lauren: That’s true.
Matt: You've gotten behind. That's different than saying, you know, I used to listen to this podcast all the time and for whatever reason, you're not feeling like it's bringing enough value compared to the other stuff you listen to. And all of our time is valuable. So, you know, when you stop listening to something because the value is not there anymore. I think that's different than just saying ugh, I got super behind on my favorite podcast. I will catch up. In the meantime, I want to keep supporting them and making sure that, yeah, that's totally different. So but I could see I would do the same thing and have on some occasions.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Probably not nine months behind like you are, but.
Lauren: I'm so behind.
Matt: I also don't listen to as much –
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: – podcast content as you do so.
Lauren: Well, I –
Matt: I don’t mean that in a bad way. I just –
Lauren: No, that's reasonable. And also to be realistic. This is – That particular podcast, podcast, it’s Podcast: the Ride, it’s a theme park podcast.
Matt: I don't think anybody surprised by that.
Lauren: No, they shouldn't be. they put out two episodes a week, and they're usually between an hour and a half to two hours, two and a half hours. So that's a, that's a considerable –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – chunk of time to dedicate to listen. Which, I love. I love their longer form episodes. I like, really enjoy that in content, in case you can't tell from the kind of episodes that we put out regularly. But it's not always feasible for me to be like, oh, I have a two and a half hour chunk of spare time right now.
Matt: Yeah, I wonder what that would look like if we tried to cut ours in half time-wise.
Lauren: Ha.
Matt: No? Alright.
Lauren: We can try.
Matt: For everybody listening, I tried. She, she vetoed it.
Lauren: We can try. I don't think we're very good at it, but we can try.
[4:38] – Episode Topic Intro
Matt: Alright. Today, on episode 115.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: We are going to be talking about how to find and contract freelancers to help you publish a good book.
Lauren: Yes we are.
Matt: Yeah. So building a potential team of freelancers, or even just one or two. I think it's no secret we're big fans of working with other people to make sure you put out good content. But it's not always so easy to locate and contract or hire good freelancers. So that's what we're gonna talk about.
Lauren: Yeah. Just a couple of establishing statements right up front while we're talking about this before we get started.
Matt: We already got started.
Lauren: Well, technically we've been yapping for, like, 20 minutes already.
Matt: I know, I'm sure everybody can tell by the look on my face.
Lauren: We are definitely not going to be recommending specific freelancers or something like that throughout this episode. It's a valid question. It is something that we get asked a lot. Like –
Matt: Yes.
Lauren: Do you have an editor that you would recommend? Do you have a cover designer that you would recommend? And it feels a little bit like a cop out answer, but the reality is no. Because it's so varied based on what type of book you're, you're putting out. What genre, product, goal, like everything – like, you know, there are so many different types of specialists out there. It’s very, very unlikely that any one single person at Lulu is going to be able to recommend the perfect fit freelancer for what your project or your brand is looking for.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So.
Matt: For those reasons and many more.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yes. But I will link in the show notes, a landing page on Lulu's website that is some of our trusted and vetted partners and services that we recommend. But instead of this episode being something that we're going to sit here and recommend specific people or that we're going to convince you why you need a freelancer. We're assuming the premise here is that you're already aware of the fact that you need some additional help with your content.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So we're not really going to talk about the why or the who, but rather how. How to go about researching people, finding like, the right fit for you, what to look for, what red flags you might want to avoid, maybe. And, and things like that.
Matt: Yeah, I think that's well-put. Yeah. I mean, if anybody assumed we were going to come on and give them specific recommendations then I'm sorry we hurt your feelings, but. I'll give you recommendations. With caveats. But I'm not going to do it on microphone, no.
Lauren: Fair.
Matt: So yeah, I mean, some of us at Lulu will give you recommendations, you know, face to face. And after we can have a conversation about, like you said, what what are those, components of, of your content that would help us, you know, maybe guide you in the right direction. But to be fair, a lot of people at Lulu don't work with freelancers.
Matt: They wouldn't know what to tell you.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: That’s not the business we're actually in. So. But we do often have contact with freelancers, editors, designers, people like that. We do work heavily in the space of, you know, that area of publishing. There are many times where we have to have conversations with, with freelancers or designers or layout specialists or things like that. So this episode is to, to tell you, like you said, the how and the why and the where and – that's the important stuff, really.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: I mean, word of mouth is great and we'll get into that. But, do you need a freelancer? Most of the time the answer’s gonna be yes. What's the difference between specialists and generalists? Are they, you know, are they a copy editor or are they more of like, a developmental editor that specializes in paranormal romance or, you know, things like that? Where do you find them? How do you research and vet freelancers? Like, seems like that would be easy, but it's not. And then what are the things that once you've chosen a few, what do you ask them? You know, what are some of the things that you should look for? So what are some of those red flags that you mentioned that you should be looking for? And what's the process of actually hiring one? What do they charge? Things like that.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: All the important stuff.
Lauren: All the important stuff.
[9:05] – What to Know Before You Start
Matt: So we often talk about, you know, do you need editors, proofreaders, someone to help with layout and formatting, cover design, illustrations, all those things? In general, I think we always err on the side of yes, you should. In most circumstances. It is usually deeply tied to the goals of your book, what kind of book it is, things like that, but. Almost always you should. Now, can you do all this on your own? Sure. And people do. Sometimes it works out for them. More often than not, there's some element of their book that is lacking because they did everything themselves. And, and sometimes that affects your sales and sometimes it doesn't. But, there's a bit of a gamble there if you don't seek some professional help with your book.
Lauren: Yeah. I think there's a lot of like, just because you can do it on your own doesn't mean you should –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – necessarily. I think that a lot of people... I mean, even some people that we know that have plenty of experience – like graphic designers. Just because you have a decade of experience as a graphic designer does not mean that you can design a book cover. Those are –
Matt: A hundred percent.
Lauren: Those are kind of different things.
Matt: They're very different.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Well, let's rephrase that. If you're a graphic designer that specializes in mostly digital, you know, let's say marketing. You're, you're used to creating assets to be used online for the purposes of marketing, or things like that. That's wildly different than creating a book cover that's going to sell books.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: There's a lot of different components of a book cover that you need to be aware of. That will immediately affect the sales cycle of that book. You know, it's not as simple as just developing a really cool image, finding the perfect placement, and moving on.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: You know? So.
Lauren: Yeah. So, you know, it's just it's one of those things that yes, you can do it by yourself. And that is one of the cool things about self-publishing. But I would definitely go through and just ask yourself, just because you can, does that mean you want to? Do you have the time to spare on it? Do you have the budget to spare on buying back that time by paying someone else to do it for you –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – instead? And what do you want the end result to look like? I think it's really important. Like, if you don't care, if you're like oh, I'm just, I'm making a notebook for myself that no one else is ever going to see or use or whatever.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: Like – yeah, whatever. Design your own, have fun. You'll learn how to use some tools while you're doing it, in the meantime. But if you're hoping to use this book as a lead magnet that's going to get you in the door with businesses and executives at at major businesses where they're going to be hiring you for speaking sessions... You want that book to look like it was designed by a professional.
Matt: Yeah. So freelancer marketplaces are really popular right now. There's a ton of freelancers within those marketplaces. It's very easy to get overwhelmed and and kind of just choose the first couple you see that maybe have between a 4.5 and 5 star rating or whatever. Or maybe they've got a couple of keywords in their description that jumps out at you or, you know, things like that. But you really do have to step back and think about this process. If you are going to make the intentional decision to, to hire a freelancer for any facet of your book, whether it's cover design, any form of editing or layout, or all of the above, take your time. Don't get overwhelmed. Don’t just settle for the first few that look like they have some pretty good reviews. It can get overwhelming very easy. So start with one skill set at a time. If you've decided you're going to hire an editor, start there. Right? It's also chronologically the –
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: – the most immediate help you would need with your manuscript, so. And spend some time researching. If I was going to go to a marketplace, I would pick no less than ten to fifteen to start with.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: And then start whittling my way down, but. Just – Yeah. Have patience. It's very easy to go down a rabbit hole, try not to. And I don't really know any other delicate way to say this, but these marketplaces have become overrun with a lot of... I won't say bad actors, but people who have decided that this is an area where they can make some quick bucks. They oftentimes will employ AI tools to, to do the work. Or at least do a big chunk of it. So you really do need to do your research when you're using a marketplace. And that's not to say that you're not going to find really good freelance help in marketplaces, because you absolutely will. But it's also really easy to, at least at first glance, not really know who's who and what's what, and really be somewhat, you know, kind of taken in by just looking at a five star, you know, review or profile.
Lauren: I think it's really important to think about this as a long term investment. And not just in the sense that it's a long term investment in your book, in your product. But it's also, this is a part of your brand. This is something – you know, there are a lot of authors and entrepreneurs and creators that they work with the same editor for their entire career.
Matt: It's true.
Lauren: This is a, this – it has the potential to be a long term relationship. So you're not just –
Matt: It’s like finding a doctor or a tattoo artist.
Lauren: Yeah. Well, I would say a tattoo artist for sure, but I was going to say this is a job interview. Treat this as a job interview.
Matt: Sure.
Lauren: This is not – you're not hiring a, like, one time, I need somebody to come in and re-tile the bathroom once and only once. You're hiring somebody who is going to be rebuilding your house with you for the next ten to twenty years.
Matt: Maybe.
Lauren: Maybe.
Matt: If you're lucky.
Lauren: Maybe. But also, like, if you do that work now, you don't have to do it later.
Matt: That's right.
Lauren: So.
Matt: Yeah.
[15:05] – Different Types of Freelancers
Lauren: I also want to just point out one thing that Matt said in there. You said something about, you know, take it kind of one at a time with the roles, and I totally agree with that. But on the high level, take it one at a time. So, I was having a conversation with somebody recently, and they were talking about looking for an editor, and they needed to find a, they needed to find a freelance editor. And they were saying, well, you know, I know I need a developmental editor, and a copywriter or a copy editor, and I need a proofreader, and I need a line editor. And I was like, alright, hold on. Because, you don’t – first of all, you don't need to hire four different people. And second of all, there's a lot of overlap between those.
Matt: Yeah, a couple of those are almost the same thing, by the way.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: These days, but –
Lauren: Right.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So yes, you you need to hire an editor. But, you know, understand the different types of editing. And maybe you can find somebody who specializes in more than one of those at a time. Maybe you'll find somebody who is a developmental editor that also does copy editing, or works with somebody else who is a copyeditor.
Matt: I think you will more often than not, yeah.
Lauren: Yes. So, you know, to absolutely break down the approach as like, I need to find an editor and then I need to find a designer. But within those categories, it's okay to consider stacking those skills, or looking for – same with a designer. If you can find somebody that does cover design and interior formatting...
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Great. Bundle those things together.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: That's totally reasonable. But you know, just, just kind of take that approach one bucket at a time. But that doesn't necessarily mean that you need to hire a different individual person for every single role that you can think of or that you've ever heard of.
Matt: Yeah, I would agree with that. Like when I think about an editor or hired an editor, I am looking for one that can do multiple types of editing.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: I'm not – Yeah, I'm not trying to break that up into four different types of editors. My copy editor was also my proofreader. And quite frankly, for developmental editing, a little cheat code: I just used all of my beta readers. So I was fortunate that I had some really knowledgeable, intelligent, you know, and thoughtful people that were beta readers for me. And I just used that as my developmental editing. Right or wrong, it doesn't, you know, whatever. But, yeah, my copy editor was also my proofreader. And, you know, she also probably did a few other things, maybe developmentally, to be honest with you. But yeah, when I say that, I agree with you. I think that if you can find one that can do multiple, which is a lot more often the case now. Not only is that beneficial for you, because now they're very much accustomed to your, your content, your manuscript, and they're going to have that lens to be able to look through and understand. But, like you said, you can, you have that opportunity to build that relationship. So I agree.
Lauren: Absolutely.
Matt: So along those lines, I mentioned specialists and generalists a little earlier. You know, What would you consider a specialist versus a generalist? And why would I look for one versus the other?
Lauren: Specialists I think kind of in two different ways. We've already said like the different types of editors. So you could be a specialist in that way where you're a developmental editor versus a copy editor. But also within those specific niches, some types of specialists – A developmental editor for a romance novel might not be the best choice for you on your nonfiction how to marketing guide. Maybe. You never know. I could probably edit both of those, but There's only one of me in the world.
Matt: Thank God.
Lauren: But no, I think that is something that, like, you have to find the right fit not just for the role that you need. So not just for the type of work that you need done, but also for the work that you're producing.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So you need to find somebody – in, in certain areas of this, you're going to want to find somebody who specializes in this specific industry or genre or topic or whatever it is that that makes sense to you. You're not going to find a lot of success with a developmental editor that has exclusively done mystery novels for their entire career, and you are coming in with a medical how to textbook. You just –
Matt: That could also be interesting.
Lauren: It could be interesting.
Matt: But you’re right.
Lauren: But... Medical mystery book, could be great. But that wouldn't be my first choice, if I was recommending how you would go about finding somebody for your medical text, I would not recommend working with a fiction developmental editor as your, as your first choice option there. So. Specialists versus generalists, I think there are situations where kind of anybody could suit the role, and it's more a matter of what their skill level is than what their past experience has been. I think a copy editor could probably copy edit most pieces of writing, regardless of what the content or genre is. I think somebody that does interior book formatting, maybe the, the distinctions between something that's a very like, chart and image heavy –
Matt: A textbook, or academic –
Lauren: Yeah, like.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: You know, that might be a little bit different than something that's more novel, but –
Matt: Should be.
Lauren: But a novel versus business book... The formatting is more or less the same. The design choices might be slightly different, but it's still kind of the same. Justified margins.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Header or footer, page numbers.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: All that kind of stuff. So, you know, you can be a little bit more general when you're looking for somebody in that sense and keep the specializations for things like developmental editing and cover design.
Matt: That makes sense. Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Okay. So we've talked about sort of at a high level, the kinds of freelancers and the, the categories and whether or not you really should have one. Which we said we wouldn't, but.
Lauren: But.
Matt: We can’t not talk about that.
Lauren: We can't not. And, and like I said, we've done at least two episodes where we've gone much deeper in depth on those topics. So if you want to go listen to those –
Matt: We have.
Lauren: – they will be linked in the show notes.
[21:34] – Where to Find Freelancers
Matt: So where do we find freelancers?
Lauren: That's a great question.
Matt: The first one is – and you touched on this at the top of the show – word of mouth.
Lauren: Yes. You touched on this.
Matt: Well we both did.
Lauren: We did.
Matt: We said, while we're not going to give you specific freelancers on this episode, which would be word of mouth.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: If you come find me at a show or an event, I'll give you some recommendations. And I think that's, you know, like anything, word of mouth is almost always the best way to find someone that you need.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: You know? You mentioned getting tile done in, like, getting my bathroom re-tiled. Like, unfortunately, I didn't have any good word of mouth recommendations from friends or family. But, you know, there have been other times where I was doing something, another home-related or whatever. Where yeah, of course I'd much rather have word of mouth. Like, did you use this person? Was the experience good? What was the cost factor? Like, you know, the quality, all those things. So word of mouth is always best. And, you know, I think most authors, especially ones that are repeat, they probably have some sort of small to large network of other authors that they, you know, interact with. Like, put the word out there. Ask somebody. If you have a trusted, you know, network on one of the social media channels that you – just put it out there. Hey, I'm looking to hire a freelance copy editor. Does anybody have any good recommendations before I start diving into the forums and marketplaces? And I think that, you know, again, like everything else in this world, if you can get a good word of mouth recommendation, I mean, to me, that's the most trustworthy source of information. Friends and family or peers that have, that have used these people. It's, it's less research and vetting you kind of have to do, like you've got it from the mouth of a trusted person. Like yeah, I use this person for this service and they did a great job. The price was extremely fair. You know, they were timely, accurate, detail – whatever it is. So it's less work on your part to go out there and research and then interview this person, you know, super thoroughly and ask for ten samples of work and all that stuff. The problem is that there are times where you might put the word out there. You get a bunch of recommendations back. And sometimes maybe you're not actually getting the best recommendations. Because somebody might just want to be helpful and throw something out there. So if you can keep it targeted to, to very closely trusted individuals, that's often better for word of mouth. But nonetheless, you know, I think that's always the best place to start.
Lauren: I agree, if you're in the market for a freelancer of any kind, absolutely the first place that you should start is any kind of community group that you are in. Whether it's authors, writers, in your industry specifically. If you know anybody in your industry that has also published a book. Even if they have traditionally published a book, because there are plenty of people that work in traditional publishing that freelance.
Matt: Yes.
Lauren: In addition. So if you have a friend that traditionally published a book, maybe their editor also does freelance work on the side. You never know.
Matt: Or their book coach. So, you know, book coaches aren't something that are widely talked about. But I've, you know, run into a few in my ten plus years working in publishing. And, you know, book coaches are always a really good, at least the ones I've met, source of recommendations. Because they, they work closely with, you know, freelance editors and, and designers, and even, you know, publishers and printers and things like – You know, book coaches and book consultants are often highly connected to, to all different types of players in the industry, so. They're also a great source for word of mouth referrals.
Lauren: Agents also.
Matt: Sure, yeah.
Lauren: Book agents. That's part of their job, is to be in the know about different types of people that they could potentially pair their clients with.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: The second place that you can look to find freelancers, if the referral system isn't working out for you or you're not having any luck there, or even you just want to do some research on your own for a little while first. We've also talked about this already. It's marketplaces.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So there are a lot of online marketplaces. Some that are like already just really, really broad, kind of one stop shop for different types of freelancers, something like Fiverr or Upwork or Freelancer.com. Those are all, you know, they're not really going to specialize specifically in book production. But if there's a freelancer to be found out there –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – you'll probably find at least one of them on Fiverr.
Matt: Yeah, some of them do actually, like Fiverr. I haven't looked on Upwork lately, or Freelancer.com, or there's even, you know, a couple more out there. But, I do know that Fiverr has like, they've now categorized. So if you're specifically looking for freelancers in the world of book publishing, I think is the category they have. You can click into book publishing. And then it does sort of break them out and categorize them by – It's still overwhelming.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: There's still a ton in there, and you still need to be very careful about who you're, you know, reviewing and hiring. And in terms of, you know, the work being completed, who's actually doing the work, things like that. But yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. And there there are definitely some pros and cons involved with that because yes, it can be very overwhelming. It can be, you know, you're going to definitely have to do a little bit more manual research to, to vet whoever it is that you're considering to try to seek out some sample work or try to get an understanding, maybe testimonials, reviews, honest feedback from people, things like that. Are they legit? Can you, can you tell that they're actually –
Matt: Right.
Lauren: – somebody that you want to work with?
Matt: Is it a real person or is that their sort of AI persona avatar?
Lauren: Right. Right. But I do think that most of these trusted marketplaces do also have a system built in, like a safeguard kind of built in. Where if you chose poorly and this person does not deliver the work that you've paid for, or something like that, you have a recourse for being able to, to go and be like, hey, I had a contract with this person and they didn't, they didn't produce what they were supposed to, can you pursue this –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – on my behalf? As opposed to if you go on Facebook Marketplace and you find a freelancer on there... Facebook is not holding that person accountable if they decide to ghost you with your money.
Matt: That’s right. Yeah. And then, you know again, one of the the advantages of using a marketplace is the review system.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: So again, like other things we do in life, reviews can be a dicey situation. Like, I often actually don't trust them on most platforms, especially these days. They are mostly AI bots, which has been proven, especially on places like Amazon or whatever. However, it is getting very easy to spot fake reviews versus good ones. You know, you always want to sort by the most recent, but make sure you are reading through a pretty solid handful of those reviews and looking for very, you know, specific things. If there's a theme that's lining up in the negative reviews that kind of makes itself sort of prevalent. Like that's, that's a flag for sure. And those, more often than not, obviously are not bot reviews.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: They're, they're actual human reviews. So. But yeah, you have the reviews there to, to, to hopefully help you not make a bad decision. But I do think you're right. I think most of the ones that I've seen, there is some sort of a after the delivery fact sort of recourse around like, hey, this wasn't what was talked about, this wasn't what was negotiated. And this is not what I'm happy with. So, yeah.
Lauren: I also think that there's... because I agree that the negative reviews are almost more informative and authentic these days.
Matt: Sometimes comical.
Lauren: That too. But I always, when it's something that is subjective like this, I think that you can find... Sometimes just because somebody has negative reviews doesn't mean that they're not a good fit for you.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: And so if you read through the – this is the – So, this is not subjective. But one of the things that I see all the time when I'm looking at reviews for when I'm ordering clothing online, and I'll see things all the time that are like, two star review, because this dress was really cute, but it was way too long on me. And I'm like, all right, five foot two girly over here. The dress was too long on you. I'm 5’10”.
Matt: You’re not 5’10” –
Lauren: – a dress being too long –
Matt: – by the way.
Lauren: Oh, sure. Like whatever you say. But like a dress being too long on me is a good fit. Like, I need it to be that long. So you're giving it a two star review because it was too long. I'm actively seeking out these dresses that are being described as too long.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So, you know, the same, the same can be applied to something like this.
Matt: Well, this is part of why I don't like reviews in general, though.
Lauren: That's fair.
Matt: You know, if they're not created by bots, I'd say the other 50% take half of those and strike them immediately because they are things like that. Or like my favorite Mexican restaurant. Like.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: There's reviews in there that are terrible because they thought the tacos were priced too high. Like, really? Like you're mad because the taco was $1.75 and at your local truck, they're $1.50. Like, you didn't need to write a review for that, my guy. Like, eff off.
Lauren: Was your $1.75 taco really good?
Matt: But –
Lauren: That's what I want to know.
Matt: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and like you said, dress is great, but it was too long. Like, just be careful. When you're reading the reviews actually read them. Look for patterns, look for themes in the reviews. And again, look to see are these just general, like, reviews about, you know, something that doesn't really matter for you and your book? Or are there legitimate concerns that people are raising. It sounds like humans wrote it. And this is somebody you clearly want to steer clear of – move on. There's, there's enough freelancers on these marketplaces where if you even have a shadow of a doubt. Like it's a murder trial case and you're part of the jury, if you've got a shadow of the doubt, move on.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: There's enough of them on there. You don't have to be that nit picky.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: So.
Lauren: It's also a great way for you to fact check referrals.
Matt: Yeah, that’s true.
Lauren: So if someone, if you get a bunch of people that, that are trying to be helpful and they have good intentions and they've never actually worked with this editor, but a friend of a friend –
Matt: Oh, yeah.
Lauren: – has a friend who is a freelance editor, and they pass a –
Matt: My friend's brother's fiance's –
Lauren: Yup.
Matt: – sister's boyfriend, who she went to prom with but then left her. He recommended this particular – Yeah.
Lauren: And I've heard they're great. And then, you know, okay, cool.
Matt: That's not even a referral.
Lauren: Thanks, if you say so. And then you can go search them out on some of these marketplaces and see if you can find more information on them there before you reach out.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Or make the decision not to.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And then the last – not the last place, because there's a variety, but the last one we're going to cover right now –
Matt: The three major ones.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Yeah. This is the third.
Lauren: Yes. It's going to be dedicated organizations and communities. Which is not – I'm not confusing that with when I say referrals, or when we're talking about referrals, and we're saying go to your author community or go to your industry community or your Circle group for –
Matt: Right, yeah.
Lauren: –whatever. We're talking about, like, actually dedicated to these types of freelancers.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: So Editorial Freelancers Association is something that we have referenced repeatedly throughout episodes.
Matt: And every year they put out a really nice PDF of like, what are industry standard pricing for all the different services.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: It's an extremely helpful organization. And again, they they often publish a lot of great resources that will help you choose an amazing editor for your work. So honestly, that's probably where you should start anyways.
Lauren: Yes, I agree.
Matt: If nothing else, they'll give you a lot of great information that will help you guide – or navigate yourself, sorry – through things like choosing the right editor. So that's always a great place to start.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Yes. Absolutely, highly recommend. I think the Nonfiction Authors Association also has like, not a database necessarily, but like, that's a great resource for you to go find referrals for freelancers that other members of that organization have worked with.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So I think these are really great organizations and communities to check out when you are looking for freelancers of any kind.
[34:28] – How to Research Potential Freelancers
Matt: When you are looking for freelancers, and let's say you're in the marketplace situation, or even if you got a few good referrals, but you still want to do a little bit of research. How do you research and choose the right freelancer? What are the things that you should ask? What are the red flags you should look for? You know, you mentioned earlier, which I think was the right way to categorize this. This really is like a job interview. I wouldn't stretch it out as long.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: The freelancer’ll probably take a pass on you, but you should absolutely interview them. There are things that you should know to ask and things to look for, right?
Lauren: Yeah, I mean, I think you should start kind of at the top with, with... if we're going to call it a job interview, you're going to start by putting together a pool of applicants. So, you know, you want to start by saying, okay, I need – this, this vast sea of different types of freelancers out there. I need to really narrow it down to a long list. And I need to start going out –
Lauren: This is where you go into your communities and say hey, anybody have any referrals? Anybody worked with somebody before? Also, anybody have any that you're like, avoid this person at all costs? That's, that's equally valuable in –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – in referral situations.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Like, hey, this person looks really great on the surface, but there's some red flags that you're not going to see until you're already under contract with them. So, you know, start asking around. If you don't have people to ask, but you're still using some books as comp titles, check the acknowledgments. Check the copyright pages and stuff like that, and see if you can tell from within the book itself who worked on that book.
Matt: So that's actually what I think the pro tip here is for –
Lauren: Yeah?
Matt: – this section. In our outline, Lauren has a pro tip here. I don't think that's the pro tip. I think what you just said is actually the pro tip.
Lauren: Okay.
Matt: And that can be applied to a lot of things –
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: – in your publishing journey. And I don't think that's talked about enough. And I always forget about that. I'm glad that you brought that up though. Like, I can't tell you how many times I finish a great book. Like everything about it is great. It was well-written, like, well designed, well laid out, the cover’s great, like, you know, it’s just a great book. Like, from start to finish. Almost everybody who touched that book is listed in there somewhere.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: They're either in the front listed, as, you know, the editor. They this person did cover design. This person was the illustrator. Or more often than not, they're thanked in the back, in the acknowledgments – front or back, whichever – by the author themselves. Even if you're looking for an agent, boo, and you're not self-publishing, that's fine. More often than not, an author thanks their agent in the acknowledgments or something. So a great book is also a really good source of finding your next editor or designer or agent or whoever that might be.
Lauren: Yes. And it’s –
Matt: So comp titles, like you said –
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: – I think that's great idea for a lot of things. So I'm glad you brought that up. That's the pro tip.
Lauren: Okay, I will I will accept that. But yes, I think that is a really, really often overlooked. I started reading the acknowledgment sections of books when I started working in the publishing industry, because I liked seeing my friends’ names in there. And, and then I started to – in the same way that we've talked about branding in other cases, where we've talked about like, you know, after a while you realize that a lot of the books that you read come from the same imprint. And now when I'm looking on bookstore shelves, if I see that imprint logo on the spine –
Matt: Right.
Lauren: – of a book, I'm more compelled to pick that book up, even if I've never –
Matt: You trust that imprint.
Lauren: – heard of it, because I trust that imprint.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Same kind of thing. I'm now surprised, although less so as I've noticed this pattern, when I'm reading the acknowledgments in the back of the books, and I realize how many books that I love have the same agent, or the same editor. Or have thanked the same group of – or they're like, connected, these authors are connected in some way, because they're all in a writing cohort together, or something like that. And there's a lot of – if there's, if you're trying to figure out your cover design and you pull twenty book covers that you really like... I bet there's some overlap in the cover designers.
Matt: Yeah. I never paid attention to the acknowledgments sections until I had to write one.
Lauren: Yeah?
Matt: And so then I went back to a lot of my favorite books, nonfiction and fiction, and started looking at the acknowledgments sections. And I was like, who are they thanking? Like, do I need to do this? Like, how thorough should it be? Like, is anybody gonna be upset if they're not included? And then that's like I said, that I realized, holy cow. Like, there's a lot of people being listed in here that I never would have thought would have been listed. And this could be a great source for somebody who is looking for these types of resources, so.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up. I always forget about that. But I think that's such a great idea.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Now again, this this should be done with books that you really enjoy that you think are well done. You don't want to go in the acknowledgments and and find out who the editor was for a book that was just marginal, like.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: You know. It's not solely that editors fault, but, you know, again, find find a bunch of comp titles, or books that you really like, or comp titles in your category that sold really well. Might not have been a book you read or that you liked. But again, comp titles is that it's just that it's in your category, it's in your genre. If it did really well again, go see who's thanked in there, go see who the editor was, who the cover designer was. Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely a great, great kind of untapped resource.
Matt: I agree.
Lauren: Yeah. But you can also, you know, as you're narrowing down that list – cause that is something that is manual work, which is fair. A lot of the resources that are like, market based – oh my goodness – marketplace or platform-based probably have some parameters that you can narrow down the search fields. And I would not apply all of them at once, but I would start with your top priorities.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So, you know, if you have like an absolute maximum budget, you cannot go – like, hard limit cannot go over this. That should be the first field you narrow down.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Filter out anyone that's that's going to charge more than that. And then you kind of go through there and narrow it down a little further.
Matt: If so, I will tell you – I'm sorry – in a marketplace situation, what I will tell you about marketplaces is that what I've seen the trend lately, is they'll give a range sometimes in their little profile or their ad. Like, oh, hey, you know, professional, developmental editor, worked on thgsdjhgjsdhg. My price range is between $24 and $3500. That's like... Uh, okay. So it's really hard to narrow down, sometimes, starting with price.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: So sometimes what you need to do is get a list of the things you want to ask these freelancers, with price being at the top of the list as one of the hard stops that you might have, or one of the hard lines to draw. But these days it's getting a little more complicated. Because a lot of them, not only are they not putting out like a, a fairly straightforward per word or per page price that they charge. Oftentimes, you know, especially for developmental editing, you're getting just this crazy wild range. And so it's really hard to say, like, you know, well yeah, if the range of $25 to $3000, technically you're in my budget.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: Like. So.
Lauren: Right. Yes. And we'll we'll touch on this more in a little bit actually. But yes, there are some details that are going to be variable in there. And this is why we're saying you want a larger pool of candidates.
Matt: To begin with, yes.
Lauren: To begin with, because some of them might, on the surface, seem like a good fit. And then when you find out more information, you realize that they're not going to be the right fit for you. Not necessarily because they're a bad fit, but just maybe, maybe they're not going to fit your budget needs. Or maybe they're a perfect fit, but you have a hard deadline that you absolutely need the book done by this date, and they are currently unable to get this done –
Matt: That's right.
Lauren: – in that time. So you want to start with a longer list, and then you're going to want to narrow that down a little.
[42:32] – Narrowing Down to Your Top Candidates
Lauren: So in order to narrow it down, you're going to want to like I just said, review some of their details, some of their specifications. Are they going to be able to do it within the timeline that you need it? Are they going to be able to do it within the budget that you need it? Are they going to be able to do what you're actually asking them to do? Like if it's, you know, if if you're looking for a graphic designer and you forgot to specify that you need a cover designer for a book, is this something that they can do? Or are they exclusively like digital graphic designer?
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: These are –
Matt: Or just any type of designer –
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: – that doesn't specialize in book covers, yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah.
Matt: You know?
Lauren: So.
Matt: They might be an amazing designer when it comes to designing... like, I don't know, like band posters for concerts that are at like 50,000 seat stadiums and you just love their work, but they've never done a book cover before.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: I'm not saying don't use them, but what we are saying is put them at the bottom of the list. Designing a book cover is not, it's not easy. It's not straightforward. And if they've never done it before... then again, there's a lot of little nuances, and things that need to be taken into account to design a cover that's going to really sell a book.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: And let's be real, covers sell books.
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So once you've kind of narrowed that, that down a little more, you’ve filtered down that list, now – now you can actually go through and really vet these options that you have left. And this is where it's going to take a little bit of effort, a little bit of research. But it's worth it. This is, this is an investment, again. But you're going to want to go review any, like, referenced published works that they've talked about. If they said, oh, here's a list of other book covers that I've done, go take a look at them. Go check. Don't take their word for it. Go take a look at those books. Do the covers look good? Do they look like something that you would want your book to look like? Cover designers, even an experienced cover designer, they have a style. They have like, this is what we do. If you're somebody who's really, really anti people on the cover, and the cover designer that you're talking to has only ever done books with people on the cover... why, why, why are you talking to them?
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: You know? That's – even if they say they can do it without people on the cover. There are other designers out there.
Matt: That's right.
Lauren: So, you know, go take a look at that. Review any testimonials and reviews that they've provided. But also take it a step further and go search them on social media. Don't search for their profiles on social media. Search for other people talking about them. Has anyone talked because in the in this industry, people that love their freelancers will talk about them. Matt has talked about who his editor was for his book.
Matt: Shout out Kate.
Lauren: And will shout her out whenever he has the opportunity to do so, because that was a good working relationship. If you go find somebody that you think is a good, is a good fit for you and you search them on social and you see twenty posts of people singing their praises, that are like unpaid, I'm just excited to talk about how great my editor was on my book... Great.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Sign with that person immediately. Let's go. Let's get it under contract.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So you're definitely going to want to do that. And if they came referred to you, ask that, ask that person questions. If the – if somebody reached out to you and was like, hey, I heard you were looking for an editor, here's mine. She was great. Really loved her. Great. Awesome. Cool. Now that you've confirmed she's a good fit for you, go back to that person that originally referred them and asked the specific details. Did they deliver what was expected? Did they deliver it on time? Did they get it right the first time, or was it something that you had to go back and forth constantly and be like, I need this, I need this, I need this? What was their communication style in general? Did they only text you or do you have an email chain back and forth? Like, how does this work? Like –
Matt: Did you have to wait five days in between each response?
Lauren: Yeah. Yes. And you know, maybe the most important question of all, would you work with them again?
Matt: Yeah. I mean, the assumption is that they would if they're referring them to you. But these are all great questions.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: I agree. And some of which, you know, again, can be found in other places, but. If you're, if you're lucky enough to get some word of mouth referrals, some from people who are very trusted and they seem very excited about this, this particular person, that's, that's the best. But these are still questions you should ask.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: You know, assuming that everything was great is probably not the best thing to do.
Lauren: Even just to know in advance. Like the question about how much back and forth did you have?
Matt: Yes.
Lauren: That's something I think a lot of people don't realize this, if they don't have experience with this. A lot of freelancers will have built into their package, like, you only get X number of revisions.
Matt: Revisions, yeah.
Lauren: So like for a cover designer, you might have a cover designer that says you only get three revisions max. And whatever the third draft is, is the final, whether you like it or not.
Matt: Or extra drafts cost this extra amount of money.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Extra revisions, sorry.
Lauren: Yes. Which is why two of the questions that I would say right off the bat, when you're, when you're talking to a potential freelancer is: what's included in the package, and what additional expenses will I potentially accrue throughout this process?
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So if it is, you get three revisions included in the package and then any additional after that are $150 per revision, that's something you're going to want to know. Especially if you're going to if you have a set budget.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: That's something that you want to know in advance.
Matt: Or if it's an editing situation, you know, if your word count changes up or down based on, you know, editing and other things, like does that affect the price? Right? If the developmental editor suggests a bunch of things that inflate your word count by 1,000 words, 3,000 words, 5,000 words... You know, is there an extra cost now because you went from a 80,000 word job, that was quoted as an 80,000 word job, to a 85,000 word job, or –
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: So you have to be aware of all those things just to – ask the right questions, yeah.
Lauren: Which is – that's another question, and Matt alluded to this earlier, when he was talking about the range that you'll see in, in what it's going to cost to hire somebody. How are you setting your prices? Are you setting it – are you charging by the hour? Are you charging by the word count? Are you charging by page count? Are you charging by total number of revisions that we do? You know, like unlimited number of revisions, but at the end, I'm going to charge you based on how many times we went back and forth and did a pass through of this work? That, that could be a big difference between two rounds of revisions and six rounds of revisions.
Matt: Which, by the way –
Lauren: You know?
Matt: A pro tip: if they charge by the hour, ask them how many pages do they typically do in an hour?
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: And then go back to the EFA organization and look at their sort of ranges for what, you know, an hourly wage would be, and how many pages should be included in that.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: I'm always a little bit leery of hourly.
Lauren: Me too.
Matt: But I don't know that that's fair. But I do know that if somebody charges hourly for editing or design, mostly for editing, they should be able to tell you the average amount of pages that are that are edited in an hour's time. Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. And absolutely you're going to want to ask for details like contracts. Is there a contract in place? Do you have a formal contract? Please sign a formal contract. Just to make sure everything is in line –
Matt: I'm just gonna say right now.
Lauren: Yeah?
Matt: Don't hire anybody without a contract –
Lauren: Thank you.
Matt: – or an agreement. Like.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: A contract is not often used anymore these days. Oftentimes it's an agreement, is – But do not, do not, hire anybody without some sort of an agreement or contract where deliverables are laid out, price is laid out, and timeline is estimated or laid out. Just don't do it.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: I don't care who it is.
Lauren: In writing.
Matt: Yeah, of course. One hundred percent.
Lauren: I'm sorry to say this, but you have to be able to have those receipts where you can go back to somebody and say, hey, here is a timestamped, dated email from you –
Matt: That’s right.
Lauren: – where you promised me you were going to deliver this content, this amount, in full, by this date, and I don't have it. So absolutely, a hundred percent agree with that. And then for, for some of these different things, especially when it comes to graphic design, if you're doing any kind of cover design or even like marketing collateral or something like that, you might want to ask some questions about licensing and ownership and AI usage to make sure that you have the rights to the final product.
Matt: More than AI, stock imagery, but AI –
Lauren: Yes. That was the other one, yes.
Matt: I mean, AI is a whole nother thing, right? Like, you know.
Lauren: Yeah, because we're still figuring that out.
Matt: You may not want them to use AI at all. You may not know if they are or not. But stock imagery is a whole nother thing.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Like, that can get you in a lot of trouble. If they're not clearing those images, or they're not using the appropriate paid versions, or whatever that might be. So.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Which is also why it's important to have somebody that has experience. That's the difference between a specialist and a generalist.
Matt: Sure.
Lauren: Somebody that specializes in designing book covers already knows these things.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And they’re – hopefully, if they're a good designer and a good person – they are not going to provide you with content that you can't use.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So that's where that kind of stuff matters.
Matt: Yeah.
[52:16] – Miscellaneous Tips and Reminders
Lauren: Just real quick, because I think we've, we've touched on some of these already, but red flags. For all the questions that you're going to ask, for all the things that you want to pay attention to, there are a lot of different things that it's going to depend on what your end goal is, whether or not this this person is a good fit for you, but there are going to be some red flags right away. Obviously, if their portfolio doesn't match your genre, your expectations, your needs, your style – don't work with that person. That's, that's just realistic. If you want them to be contributing to your brand, you want to make sure it matches your branding.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But also you want to make sure that they are not going to be overpromising on things that they absolutely could not realistically guarantee in any way. If you're getting somebody who's saying, I guarantee you that you'll hit a bestseller list. Or I guarantee you that I will be able to secure a network TV interview for you and your book – there's no way they can guarantee that. They absolutely cannot.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So, red flag for sure. Matt already said don't, don't work with somebody who doesn't want to agree to a contract or a written agreement of some kind. If someone is cagey about committing to firm deadlines or deliverables...
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: That's, that's not a good thing.
Matt: Just move on.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: Immediately.
Lauren: Yep. You need those things locked in. If they're vague about their pricing, if they won't, if they won't answer your questions about, you know, how do you set your pricing? Can you give me an estimate for what the final cost of this is going to be?
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: That's – move on. Just keep going. And also I know these things get expensive. But if somebody is coming in at considerably cheaper than the standard market rate... I would, in fact, look that gift horse in the mouth. Like I, I would not –
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: – that's, that's not a good thing.
Matt: No.
Lauren: That's not competitive pricing. That's, that's usually a...
Matt: That’s –
Lauren: Yellow flag at minimum.
Matt: – one hundred percent, your work is getting farmed out to somebody who is just generating AI slop. Period. So, one hundred percent. Do not take something that is considerably cheaper, no matter how tempting it is. Yeah.
Lauren: Yes. Again –
Matt: And no matter often we or anybody else says that, somebody will do it. Somebody will hear that from us and be like, whatever. That's okay. You get what you pay for. So. Some slightly less alarming things, but still yellow flags, potentially. Limited portfolios, limited past experience. It's not always a bad thing. I think you said earlier on, you know, if you're looking at two different cover designers or designers. One’s, you know, a ten plus year veteran designer, does really cool work, but hasn't really done any book covers or any other genres, versus an artist you're looking at who's maybe, you know, a three to five year veteran, fairly new, but has cranked out a bunch of really good looking book covers. I'd probably go with that newer one. So, you know, again, no past experience. Okay, that's one thing. Limited past experience? You really need to take it into context what they've done compared to somebody else. But limited portfolios, again, you need to dig a little deeper into that. It's not necessarily a red flag, but it is a yellow flag. Like slow down a second. Let's take a look and see what they've actually done. Who'd they do it for? You know, how long does it take them to do that? All those other questions that we asked. And then, you know, we talked about this too. Mixed reviews or testimonials. Again, there's such a thing as subjective versus objective. You need to dig into those reviews, if this is somebody you're interested in working in. Were they just upset because the dress was too long and they're short person, or because the taco was $0.25 more than their favorite truck? Or did they have a legitimate complaint that every time they emailed this designer or editor, it took them five days to respond. Every time they responded, they were very vague. The deliverables were late. Like, those are legitimate concerns.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: So. Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. You know, yeah. Yellow flags. They're not hard and fast, immediately cut this person off your list. But fact check.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Gut check. Just take a pause.
Matt: Slow down.
Lauren: And review that a little bit.
Matt: Yup.
Lauren: Yeah. Obviously this is something we could get as in-depth as possible on this and, and never run out of topic, because there's so many different facets and elements to it. But there – as we've said throughout this episode – there are a ton of different resources that are available for different types of freelancers –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – different types of research. But I still think at the end of the day, the number one most valuable resource that you have available to you is the community that is within your industry. Whether it's your other authors in your genre, or other speakers that are in your business cohort, or people in your mastermind group, or whatever it is, start there. Those are your most invaluable resources and sources of referrals. And hey, maybe, maybe best case scenario, one of them says, hey, I'll do it for you if you do a book swap with me. And, and we'll beta read each other's manuscripts.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: That’s – yeah.
Matt: And don't forget Lauren's pro tip about comp titles. You know, checking the acknowledgments section, checking the copyright pages for who the editor and the designer were. Those are always great sources too.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Just remember none of this is a one size fits all solution.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: So if you use these sort of markers to, to guide yourself along the way, I think you'll end up with, with some people that you're happy with. And... Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. Build your team. At the end of the day, this is a part of your branding. This is a part of your... building your business, your team of people.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Find the right fit for you. Find the right person to fill this job role. And you might find a really, really incredible long term partner.
Matt: Yeah, if you're lucky.
Lauren: If you're lucky.
[58:30] – Episode Wrap Up
Lauren: Think we did it?
Matt: Probably.
Lauren: Alright.
Matt: What do your bracelets say?
Lauren: What do they say? Live fast. Park pass. Die fun.
Matt: That's a repeat.
Lauren: That is a repeat.
Matt: But I like it.
Lauren: They're all repeats. All This and Heaven. And... I Can Do It With A Broken Heart.
Matt: Alright.
Lauren: And on that note.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Thanks for listening. Thanks for tuning in. Please leave us a comment or review on whatever channel of choice you like to listen to us on. Like and subscribe, if you haven't already. Let us know if you have any questions or comments or concerns. You can always email us at podcast@lulu.com. And tune back in for another new episode next week.
Matt: Yup.
Lauren: Until then, thanks for listening.
Matt: Later.
Your Free Lulu Account
Create a Lulu Account today to print and publish your book for readers all around the world
Geekey is an innovative, compact multi-tool like nothing seen before. It’s truly a work of art with engineering that combines everyday common tools into one sleek little punch that delivers endless capability. Geekey features many common tools that have been used for decades and proven essential for everyday fixes. It’s on sale for $23.
Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.
Tu Manga Online (TMO) has long been the go-to destination for many Spanish-speaking manga fans. 
Pirate streaming apps and unauthorized IPTV services have continued to gain popularity worldwide. 
