Welcome back to Lately, The Globe’s weekly tech newsletter. If you have feedback or just want to say hello to a real-life human, send me an e-mail.
In this week’s issue:
🚀 Bluesky skyrockets
💸 How much do influencers in Canada really make?
😎 Smart glasses for Amazon delivery drivers
🤓 A throwback watch for mathletes
SOCIAL MEDIA
A mass migration to Bluesky
Bluesky's user base skyrockets.Mario Tama/Getty Images
Ever since Elon Musk bought Twitter in late 2022, and soon renamed it X, the vibes have been off. Verified blue check accounts, a status that originally required vetting to ensure a user’s identity, were stripped away from those who refused to pay a fee. The users willing to fork out then began dominating the platform. Musk fired Twitter’s content moderation team, giving these accounts the opportunity to openly spew misinformation and hateful commentary. Advertisers fled, bots proliferated and X became Musk’s personal megaphone for disseminating his views on COVID, immigration and identity politics.
Users had been slowly leaving the platform since the Musk takeover, but his close relationship with Donald Trump appears to be the final straw for many. In the week since Trump’s election, there’s been a mass exodus from X, with many seeking refuge on the platform Bluesky. (If you’re curious what other tech billionaires have been doing postelection, Mark Zuckerberg just released an acoustic cover of Get Low with T-Pain as an anniversary gift to his wife, Priscilla. So there’s that.)
More than one million users joined Bluesky, bringing the total number of users to more than 15 million, and becoming the top free app in the iOS App Store. Bluesky, which was created in 2019 by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey and remained invite-only until February, looks a lot like X with Following and Discover feeds, character limits on posts and DMs. For the two years after the Musk takeover, there’s been a power struggle between Meta’s Threads, Mastodon and Bluesky to become the “next Twitter.” It looks like Bluesky is on track to officially clinch the title.
INFLUENCERS
On a good month, influencer Rachel Passarelli can make $30,000 a month.Jennifer Roberts/The Globe and Mail
How much do influencers actually make? It might depend on the weather
The influencer industry globally is worth more than US$250-billion, and according to Goldman Sachs estimates, could balloon to a staggering US$500-billion by 2027. But how much do creators themselves really make? In a recent Globe article, reporter Mariya Postelnyak spoke with Canadian influencers about their finances and found that their incomes can be subject to the whims of changing algorithms, viral trends or even the weather. Cloudy skies? That means spending extra hours of extra editing photos and videos.
Canadian beauty influencer Rachel Passarelli says she can reel in up to $30,000 in a good month and between $10,000 and $12,000 in a slower one, while food influencer Robin Radomski makes anywhere from $2,400 to $12,400. “I work way more than I’ve ever worked at like a full-time desk job,” said 29-year-old influencer Marina Santarossa. “It’s really fun but I think people don’t realize that it takes up so much energy.” Read the full article.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Canada launches AI safety institute
As AI becomes more advanced, experts have raised concerns over potential risks: biased decision-making, misinformation, bad actors using the technology to develop bioweapons, and even existential threats to humanity. This week the federal government launched the Canadian Artificial Intelligence Safety Institute (CAISI) to study the risks posed by powerful AI models. The work will be done in collaboration with the country’s three AI research institutes – Mila in Montreal, Amii (Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute) in Edmonton and the Vector Institute in Toronto. Next week CAISI will join an international delegation of other AI safety centres in San Francisco.
SMART GLASSES
Amazon developing smart glasses for delivery drivers
Amazon is developing smart glasses for its delivery drivers that would provide turn-by-turn directions, navigation within buildings, and flag obstacles, such as gates or aggressive dogs. Taking the most optimal routes could shave seconds off each delivery, according to sources with knowledge of the project who spoke to Reuters. The technology is still very much in development, the sources said, as Amazon has had trouble building a battery that can last a full eight-hour shift and is light enough to wear all day. Meanwhile in Canada, an entrepreneur who founded the country’s most-hyped and heavily-funded smart glasses company has now pivoted to heat pumps.
What else we’re reading this week:
I’m out of shape. Will an AI trainer improve my fitness? (WIRED)
Not even Spotify is safe from AI slop (The Verge)
Location sharing is making us miserable. It’s time to say ‘no.’ (The Washington Post)
Adult Money
WATCHES
It's 1972 again.Supplied
Casio Mini calculator watch, $35.95
The year is 1972. Richard Nixon is re-elected, Carole King’s Tapestry wins Album of the Year at the Grammys, and Casio releases the world’s first personal calculator. Now a new line of retro watches from Casio pays homage to the original number cruncher with a full keypad so you can add, subtract, multiple and divide up to eight digits.
Culture radar
VIDEO GAMES
PWHL teams to be added to new NHL 25 video game
I’m not much of a gamer. For the past few years, the only games I’ve been interested in are Wordle and farming-simulations with romantic side quests (Stardew Valley forever). But this week, EA Sports’ new NHL 25 game caught my eye because it will include the six teams from the Professional Women’s Hockey League for the first time: the Boston Fleet, Minnesota Frost, Montréal Victoire, New York Sirens, Ottawa Charge and Toronto Sceptres. Sports video games have been slow to add women’s teams, but in the past couple of years there have been similar additions to basketball, soccer, racing and baseball titles. If you’d prefer to watch Sarah Nurse play with the Toronto Sceptres, rather than only playing as her in NHL 25, the PWHL season starts Nov. 30.