Spend an hour talking to 37signals CEO Jason Fried, and youll find yourself drawn into his fixation on three frustrating facts about productivity tools today:
They’re boring.
They’re complicated.
They’re overpacked with overhyped AI features that fail to do what they promise and end up providing little in the way of practical value.
Those same realities are the reason Fried decided to launch Fizzya new app that aims to reinvent organization software by undoing everything that’s happened to it over the past several years.
Challenging current standards is nothing new to 37signals, of course. Fried and his fellow face-of-the-company David Heinemeier Hansson have made a name for themselves as gadflies who aren’t afraid to take on conventional wisdom and criticize both Big Tech tendencies and general workplace politics across any and all mediums.
Their software, too, has often hinted at a decidedly rebellious streak that suggests the way we’ve been trained to do things is ripe for rethinkingsomething that’s apparent both with the company’s venerable project management product Basecamp and with its more recent email service Hey, which emphasizes privacy and control to give Gmail a run for its money.
Take a peek at the Fizzy homepage, and you’ll instantly see a sense of that same sort of us-against-them mentality in this newest projectwith pointed jabs at the current states of Trello, Jira, Asana, and even GitHub Issues.
On the surface, interestingly enough, Fizzy actually seems a lot like Trellothe kanban-style cards-and-boards app that’s been through pivot after pivot and, in many views beyond just 37signals’ own assertions, gotten so bogged down in superfluous features that it’s lost sight of why people once loved it.
Fizzy, then, is “a return to the fundamentals,” Fried says”with some changes.” And, fitting with the at-times contrarian philosophy of 37signals, the entire project started on a whim.
Fizzy’s bubbled-up beginnings
Two years ago, Fried and his team were sitting around at a company meetup and talking about bugsthe buzzing, leg-biting variety, not the virtual ones we sometimes see in software.
“Someone said something about bugs hitting a windshield,” Fried recalls. “And I said, ‘Waitthat’s interesting.'”
Fried had been wanting to create a simple app for tracking software bugs for ages, but he’d never quite landed on the right approach or angle to make it unique. The visual of literal insects splatting onto a windshield struck him as the metaphor he’d been missing.
“The [computer] screen would be a windshield, with the splatters all over itand the splatters would be like bugs,” he explains. “Bigger splats would be like bigger issues, and smaller splats would be smaller issues.”
This led to the creation of an internal tool called, fittingly enough, Splat. Eventually, the bugs-on-a-windshield concept evolved into bubbles representing different bugsbubbles that, notably, looked fizzyand from there, the interface became a simpler and less cartoony series of boards and cards.
And then, another light bulb went off in Fried’s busy brain.
Basecamp has had a feature in it called Card Tables for a while nowessentially a form of Trello-like kanban boards for organizing info within the service. The same sort of setup exists as a feature or an optional view in lots of other productivity suites, too, ranging from Notion to ClickUp, Asana, Any.do, and beyond.
But Fried suddenly realized that with Trello’s seemingly endless identity crisis, no simple, stand-alone option for easy kanban-style organization existed as a de facto default anymore. And while that sort of interface worked well as one feature within a broader service like Basecampas well as an element in Jira, Asana, and the other productivity tools Fizzys web marketing calls out as having grown stale and sluggishthere was also a demand for it to be its own isolated entity, without an entire ecosystem of features around it.
“I’ve always been fanatically obsessed with ‘what’s the simplest good version of this idea,'” Fried says. “We didn’t build this to compete with anybody. . . . We build things that we want to exist.”
And thus, Fizzy was borna freemium and open source app that’s “Kanban as it should be,” as its homepage declares, and not (ahem) “as it has been.”
The Fizzy kanban experience
When you first sign into Fizzy and start a new board, you’re greeted with three default columns: “Not Now,” “Maybe,” and “Done.” And, interestingly, only one of those columns is open and fully visible at a time.
Every Fizzy board begins with the same three columns, two of which are collapsed at any given time.
You can always add more columns beyond those, of course, but that opening trio is intended to serve as a simple starting point and way to remain focusedwith an approach that Fried believes will work for a surprising number of organizational needs.
That’s the main Fizzy framework. Within any column in any board, then, you can create a card and fill it in with any manner of text, lists, or images. You might create cards to track bugs, for instance, following Fizzy’s original vision. Or you might use cards to represent work tasks, household chores, customer feedbackalmost anything imaginable.
A Fizzy card is a flexible canvas for practically any kind of information.
From there, you can easily move cards between columns or even to different boards to represent their status at any given moment. You can add steps, leave comments, and assign cards to collaborators as well as place tags on cards to group related items together. And you can pin cards, too, to put them in an easily visible stack in the lower-left corner of the screena possibility I’ve found myself especially enamored with as I’ve explored Fizzy and figured out how it might work for me.
Another particularly fun and helpful touch is Fizzy’s feature for labeling a card as urgent: You just click a ticket icon in the card’s corner, and that turns it into a “Golden Ticket”which causes the card to both appear golden in color and move to the top of its column.
One struggle I’ve absolutely experienced with Trello and other organizational apps is what I think of as “the graveyard problem,” or the tendency to start seeing these systems as dumping grounds for info that you never end up revisiting. Fizzy helps you avoid that dump-and-jump mentality by automatically moving any card you create into the “Not Now” column if there’s no activity on it after 30 daysthough you can opt to change that timing on an account-wide basis or specifically for any individual board.
“The idea [is] that you cannot just keep adding things that you’re never going to do,” Fried says. “These things are ephemeral. You don’t get to just have something on a list forever.”
Fizzy doesn’t want you to keep cards around forever, and it actively works to help you avoid it.
That’s all well and good, and it helps Fizzy feel like a fresher version of a familiar environment. What’s most striking about using the app, though, is its simplicityfor better or, sometimes, for worseand, alongside that, its unabashed boldness in what it wants to be.
The pros and cons of simplicity
More than anything, what I noticed within seconds of trying Fizzy was the absence of overwhelming menus, buried options, and integrations I never asked for. At the same time, I was struck by the presence of a distinctive design and sense of whimsy that’s largely faded from the greater software universe.
That feeling is palpable in everything from Fizzy’s large, playful fonts to the splashes of color throughout its interfaceall subtle-seeming touches on paper but noticeable contrasts in practice, coming from the largely gray-on-gray world that’s become commonplace in what Fried considers the “Notionization” of software design.
“Software’s become boringcorporate,” he says. “It’s lost a lot of personality over the years. We wanted to bring some of that back in.”
Design aside, the relatively small number of feature-oriented bells and whistles acts as both an asset and a liability for Fizzy, especially now in its early form. As someone who spends hours a week inside Trello, not having Fizzy feel slow and bloated and larded up with awkwardly tacked-on options really is refreshing. But at the same time, for me, there are certain elements missing that make Fizzy difficult to fully embrace.
To wit: At this point, I use Trello primarly for organizing my writingand that means I’m constantly saving stuff I see on the web for later revisiting. I rely heavily on both an unofficial Trello browser extension and the official Trello mobile app for being able to beam anything I see on any device I’m using into a specific Trello spot with a single swift click on my computer or a couple quick taps on my phone. It’s integral to my workflow.
Fizzy, as of this moment, exists only as a progressive web appsomething you install from your browser, without any platform-native form. And for the most part, that approach works admirably. But when it comes to a use case like mine, where I need a native presence that makes link-saving easy, it’s a limitation that would keep me from being able to leap to Fizzy today.
Weighing out cases like that and deciding what’s worth adding versus when it’s more important to prioritize the product’s purity is high on Fried’s mind, particularly as someone who’s watched so many other apps get weighted down, overly complicated, and increasingly unpleasant to use over time.
“Software slides downhillthat’s how it evolves, unfortunately,” he says. “What was once good is now complicated. It’s now harder than it used to be and unnecessarily so, for most cases.”
Fried readily concedes that there are always instances where someone needs something more in a piece of software. For what it’s worth, he says his team would like to make mobile apps for Fizzy eventually. (37signals offers a full complement of native versions of Basecamp and Hey.) And he seemed intrigued by my browser extension use case as well.
But by failing to maintain a strong vision for what a product should and shouldn’t beand what specific needs it should and, equally important, shouldn’t servean app can try to be everything for everyone and end up being nothing of consequence for anyone.
“What ends up happening is . . . almost everyone lose[s] the charm in the beauty of the simple thing, argues Fried.
AI, source code, and beyond
One feature I’ve found myself pleased not to find in Fizzy is any manner of AIas in, the large-language-model-powered generative-AI fiddliness that’s being crammed into every nook and cranny of so many other services and serving as the entire raison d’tre for countless new tools.
Fried says his team experimented with bringing AI into Fizzy in a few different forms but ultimately determined it wasn’t useful enoughand good enough, for nowto release.
“When it exists, people tend to lean on it in a way where it’s considered to be the be-all, end-all truth,” he says. “In our testing, it was not that at all. It was a bit of a mirage.”
One early experiment involved a system that’d let you ask your account questions in natural language and receive summarized info about your data. Given how new the product was, though, 37signals found it was often failing to provide any meaningful insightsand decided not to present an opportunity for users to ask questions that the service couldn’t effectively answer.
Another AI experiment offered a weekly newsletter-style overview of all the activity across your Fizzy boards, with five headlines of things that happened in the previous week. Fried says it was fine, but he found that reading it didn’t make him feel any more informedso the feature didn’t really need to exist, unless it was there solely for buzzword bragging.
“I don’t want to put software out in the world that’s checking a box if it’s not really doing its job,” he says.
To be clear, Fried doesn’t see his present stance on AI within Fizzy to be any sort of dogma. If and when the technology serves a clear and effective goal with genuine practical benefit, he says, he’ll consider it. But until then, he sees no reason to indulge an industry obsession and add to the hype only to leave folks disappointed when they actually experience it.
Another area where Fizzy is breaking the productivity app mold is in 37signals’ decision to share the softwares source code, with the option for anyone to host it themselves and use itheck, even customize and modify itfor free. The only limitation, according to 37signals, is not being able to run it as a hosted commercial service for other users, a right the company reserves for itself.
If you use the app in its more standard 37signals-hosted setup, you can create up to 1,000 cards across 1GB of storage without having to paya threshold Fried expects will be more than enough for most people to embrace the service for years before having to shell out a dime. Once you cross the 1,000-card threshold, it costs $20 per month for unlimited cards and up to 5GB of storage, with additional space available for an extra fee.
Fried says there’s no sweeping strategic vision behind this or any grand plan for Fizzy to act as a gateway toward Basecamp or other 37signals products. It’s just an app he and his team wanted to see exist and so decided to create, as its own stand-alone thing, for anyone else who might benefit from using it.
“This is not going to be our breadwinner,” he says. “We’re at the point in our careers . . . [where] we can do stuff we just want to try to do because we think it’s the right thing.”
Fried even goes as far as to say that if current 37signals customers find they can accomplish everything they need with Fizzy and no longer require the much more ambitious Basecamp subscription, he considers that a company win. In fact, he says that’s happened numerous times alreadyand in each instance, he’s done nothing but celebrate it.
“If you don’t need [Basecamp], now we have something else for you,” he says.
More than anything, Fried’s hope is that Fizzy can not only serve its direct users but also serve the tech industry by setting an example ofand maybe even creating expectations forhow satisfying software can be when it deliberately tries to be different and doesn’t just blindly mimic trends.
“Our products don’t look like anybody else’s,” he says. “They don’t work like anybody else’s. And I’d like to see more companies do that versus just follow the established patterns.”
As wealth inequality widens and billionaires become increasingly enmeshed with politics, the public is growing more and more disillusioned with the ultra-wealthy, and the role they play in society.
Its not just those with low or median incomes who feel that way. A majority of millionaires now say that extreme wealth is a threat to democracy; that the ultra-rich buy political influence; and that political leaders should do more to tackle extreme wealth, like increasing taxes.
Thats according to a new poll from Patriotic Millionaires, a collection of high-net-worth individuals who advocate for more progressive taxes in order to close the wealth gap. The poll surveyed 3,900 people from G20 countries who have more than $1 million in assets, excluding their homes. The G20 is a group of 19 of the worlds largest economies plus the European Union that meets to coordinate on global economic stability, trade, and financial policy.Sixty two percent of millionaires polled say that extreme wealth is a threat to democracyan increase from the 54% who thought so in last years poll. More than three quarters say that ultra-wealthy individuals buy political influence.
Extreme wealth hurts media, social progress, and ordinary people
The polls findings come as billionaires and political leaders convene at the World Economic Forum in Davos to address the worlds major issues. But what if the ultra-wealthy themselves are at the center of those problems?
Thats the consensus of poll respondents: 74% say the extremely wealthy leverage the law in their own favor, and 69% say the influence of the superrich over politicians prevents action to address inequality.
A majority also agreed that the concentration of extreme wealth is harmful to a fair and factual media; sets back social progress; prevents ordinary people from having a decent standard of living; and even keeps people from making deeper societal connections.
A report this week from Oxfam backs those claims. The level of billionaire wealth is higher than at any time in history, Oxfam says, with the 12 richest billionaires holding more wealth than the poorest half of humanitywhich includes more than four billion people.
Economically unequal countries are up to seven times more likely to experience democratic erosion than more equal countries, that report found. Oxfam also estimates that billionaires are over 4,000 times more likely to hold political office than ordinary people, an example of political inequality.
It should be obvious to anyone, no matter how wealthy, that extreme wealth inequality is destabilizing democracies, economies, and societies around the world. You dont need a crystal ball, Claire Trottier, chair of the Board of Patriotic Millionaires Canada, said in a statement released with the Patriotic Millionaires poll.
Billionaires and politics
The growing role of billionaires in politics is more than just perception: It is a fact.
In 2000, the countrys wealthiest 100 people donated about a quarter of 1% of the total cost of federal elections, according to the Washington Post; by 2024, they covered 7.5%, even as elections got more expensive.
That means about 1 in every 13 dollars spent in 2024s national elections was donated by a handful of the countrys richest people, the outlet wrote. This week alone, Elon Musk donated $10 million to a pro-Trump candidate running in the Kentucky senators race.
Even millionaires want to see this influence reigned in. According to the Patriotic Millionaires poll, a vast majority82%of respondents say that there should be a limit to how much money politicians and political parties can receive from individuals.
Sixty five percent of respondents also said they were in favor of an increased tax on the very wealthy in order to reduce inequality, fund public services, and address the cost of living crisis.
An open letter to leaders at Davos to tax the rich
The Patriotic Millionaires poll also comes as nearly 400 millionaires and billionaires have signed an open letter calling on world leaders at Davos to tax the super rich.
When even millionaires, like us, recognise that extreme wealth has cost everyone else everything else, there can be no doubt that society is dangerously teetering off the edge of a precipice, the letter reads.
You already have a simple and effective solution, supported by millionaires and the public alike, it continues. Stop squandering the time we havetax the super rich.
That letter was an effort by Patriotic Millionaires, Millionaires for Humanity, and Oxfam International, and has been signed by prominent names including Mark Ruffalo, Abigail Disney, Brian Cox, and Brian Eno.
Ruffalo in particular has been vocal about criticising Trump and the actions of his administration, including the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agents in Minneapolis.
But Donald Trump and the unique threat that he poses to American democracy did not come about overnight, Ruffalo said in a statement. Extreme wealth inequality enabled his every step, and is the root cause of the trend towards authoritarianism were witnessing in the U.S. and around the world.
If leaders at Davos are serious about the threat to democracy and the rule of law, he continued, they must get serious about combatting extreme wealth concentration. That includes taxing wealthy people like me too.
Below, Chris Bailey shares five key insights from his new book, Intentional: How to Finish What You Start.
Chris is an author and lecturer who explores the science behind living a more productive and intentional life. He has written hundreds of articles on the subject and garnered coverage in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, GQ, and Harvard Business Review, among many other outlets.
Whats the big idea?
Most of us struggle with follow-through, not because we lack discipline, but because we dont understand whats driving us and accommodate that which holds us back. When you clarify your core values, lower the friction to getting started, and align small intentions with bigger goals, action becomes more natural and meaningful.
Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Chris himselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App.
1. Know your 12 values.
To be honest, whenever Ive heard the term values in the past, I kind of tuned it out, especially with personal values. What would always come to mind for me were those cheesy corporate exercises where some management consultant comes in and lays down a list in front of you with a hundred values on it, and they say, Pick the 10 that mean the most to you. Most of those are not rooted in science. Theyre not rooted in the psychology of values. But in researching this book, I found that there is real science to be found on the topic of values.
There exists science on values that has not only been proven in research but also validated cross-culturally in more than 80 countries across thousands of studies with hundreds of thousands of participants. The latest research shows that there are 12 fundamental human values that we all share in varying amounts.
To give you a lay of the land, there are essentially two fundamental motivations we all havetwo axes upon which our motivations fit within. In any moment, were either focused on enriching ourselves or enriching others. Thats the first axis. And the second one is were either motivated to conserve things as they are or we want to change or improve the way that things are. All 12 values fit within these fundamental motivations.
Values are, in this way, motivations in and of themselves. As I list them, reflect on which connect most with you. Some might even repel you, and that can be informative as well.
Here are the top 12 values:
Self-direction cultivating your own thoughts, ideas, and actions.
Stimulation seeking novelty.
Hedonism pursuing (usually sensory) pleasure.
Achievement striving for success through demonstrating competence.
Power prestige and control over resources or people.
Face preserving your image and avoiding humiliation.
Security valuing personal and societal safety and stability.
Tradition respect and commitment to customs.
Conformity fitting in with rules, obligations, and expectations of others.
Humility recognizing your insignificance in the grand scheme.
Universalism understanding and protecting the welfare of all people and nature.
Benevolence being a devoted and reliable member of the groups you occupy.
We are all a different combination of these values. Reflecting on this can let you connect with your motivational core.
2. Shrink your resistance level to getting something done.
The science of intention is quite beautiful and powerful, but it shows as well that there are reasons that we procrastinate on the things that we intend to do. Just as there are 12 values, there are essentially six main things that lead us to procrastinate tasks.
We often procrastinate a task if it is at least one of the following:
Boring
Frustrating
Unpleasant
Far off in the future
Unstructured
Meaningless
The reason for procrastination is usually some combination of these. These reasons are not connected with our 12 values.
When something is unstructured and also a bit frustrating and unpleasant, there are a lot of different tactics that we can deploy. One of my favorites is shrinking our resistance level. This comes up often with meditation, but it can work for writing, working out, or finally cleaning up that ugly closet in your basement. What you do is essentially feel out your resistance level to doing that thing. You might think, Hey, do I want to meditate for 40 minutes today? No, no, no, no, no. No way. No way do I want to meditate for 40 minutes. Okay. What about 30? No. Okay. What about 25? No. 20 to 15? I can probably do 15.
In this way, you accommodate the resistance level you have toward doing something. There will still be a little bit of resistance, but you gain control. You reconnect with that value of self-direction, which is a very common value overall. You just get a grip over the intentions that you set and begin to shape.
3. Build self-reflective capacity.
Buddhist monks observe intentionality but from the direction of the causes and effects that happen within our own minds. After a Buddhist Dharma talk, I asked one of the monks, Where does intention come from? He listed off a lot of sources that were mapped on top of the research.
It comes from our biology, right? We set an intention to go to the bathroom on a road trip. It comes from social environments, right? We adopt the intentions of others through phenomenon like social contagion. It comes from conditioning by family and culture, and intentions come from our desire to avoid pain and find happiness. Intention also comes from the lessons we have learned, which shape how we think about and view the world. But the final source that he mentioned was not in the research and it was our self-reflective capacity.
Self-reflective capacity is our ability to look within ourselves and reflect on what we would want to do differently and where we truly wish to go. Its where our deepest intentions come from because we can ask questions of our inner world. I have a challenge for you: stop reading for a moment, and set an intention for what you will do next after finishing this Book Bite.
Its where our deepest intentions come from because we can ask questions of our inner world.
What do you want to do? What do you want to listen to? What do you want to engage with? Who do you want to talk to? An intention will arise when you ask a question of your inner world. What do I want to do next? What do I truly want to get out of doing this current thing? It can come from a question like that, but it can coe from journaling too. These intentions can come from going on long walks and just letting the mind wander. It can come from meditation, which leads us to become more intentional and connect with this self-reflective capacity.
It turns out there is actually a lot of research behind this self-reflective capacity, but this frame for looking inward is sometimes where our deepest intentions come from. When you find these intentions, when they arise in your mind, you can go back to the 12 values and think, Oh, this actually does align with what I want to do most or what I value most in my life. Its wild how that naturally happens.
4. Get to know the intention stack.
There is a shape to the intentions in our life. Every intention we set is different. Some differ in where they come from, as discussed in the previous insight. Some differ in how long they arewe have an intention to get a promotion in our career, but also an intention to take a morning run. They differ in how strong they arethe strength of an intention is how much we desire doing it. They vary in how deep they are, which is how connected they are with our values, but they can also be nested within one another.
We all have these things that were intending to do, these grand goals that we want to achieve, but we dont always make them happen. Why dont we make those happen? Because goals are an intention. An intention is just a plan that were going to do something. There are smaller and larger intentions relative to the goals in our life. Smaller intentions might include our plans for following through on a goal. Even smaller still are the intentions we have at this moment, like finishing reading this Book Bite.
You can work your way up in terms of how long the intentions in our life take place. We have the present intentionsthe things that were doing today. We have broader plans, then you work your way up to goals, which are the broader stories of change that were making in our life. And broader than that are our priorities in life, like our health, fitness, and relationships. Above our priorities are (our ultimate intentions) our values. Theyre what were ultimately after in life.
An intention is just a plan that were going to do something.
Lets say you have a goal right now, like the next intention youre going to do after this Book Bite: dial into a conference call. But many intentions take place over a longer period of time than this. Maybe dialing into a conference call fits with your plan of developing relationships with three new partners in your business, which might fit into your business goal of finding an expansion partner, which might fit into your priority to expand into a new market, which might fit into your ultimate value of accomplishment through work and benevolence through helping others grow, too.
5. Anticipate obstacles.
Desire and aversion fluctuate over the timeline of goal attainment, across the various goals that we have. But research shows that from the outset of your next goal, one of the best things that you can do in your head is something called mental contrasting. Essentially, you ask yourself, what obstacles are going to get in the way of me achieving this goal?
If you want to work out more, do you have travel coming up? If you want to write a book, are you going to find it difficult to find the time? So maybe you need to wake up earlier. What obstacles will get in the way of you being intentional about the goals that you set?
Enjoy our full library of Book Bitesread by the authors!in the Next Big Idea App.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Its simple to accidentally become entranced by an endless loop of videos on Instagram or TikTok. But sometimes, that mindless scroll is interrupted by a reminder that what you thought was a 10-minute break spent on your phone was closer to 30 minutes.
Olivia Yokubonis, armed with a kind voice and scientific research, often pops up in feeds on social platforms, gently reminding viewers that they might not remember the video they saw two videos before she appeared on the screen.
Yokubonis is a content creator who goes by the name Olivia Unplugged online, making videos to combat overuse or mindless use of social media. For the most part, people who view her videos welcome the disruption from the endless loop of content, treating it as a wake-up call to get off their phones. Other times, they are snarky.
People will comment and theyll be like, Oh, (its) ironic that youre posting. And Im like, Where else am I supposed to find you, Kyle? Outside? Youre not outside. You are here, sitting here, she said. For us to actually be seen, we have to be where people are.
Yokubonis content responds to the feeling many people have: that they spend too much time on social media or apps.
Most people have no clue how much time they spend on social media, said Ofir Turel, a professor of information systems management at the University of Melbourne who has been studying social media use for years. Through his research, Turel found that when he presented people with their screen time information, they were practically in a state of shock and many people voluntarily reduced their usage afterwards.
Yokubonis is part of a growing group of content creators who make videos encouraging viewers to close out the app theyre on. Some are aggressive in their approach, some more tame; some only occasionally post about social media overuse, and some, like Yokubonis, devote their accounts to it.
She works for Opal, a screen time app designed to help users reclaim their focus, she said, but those who engage with her content might not have any idea she is working for the company. Brand logos, constant plugs to download the app and other signs of branding are almost entirely absent from her page. People love hearing from people, she said. Millions of views on her videos point to that being true.
Its a fine line and a balance of finding a way to be able to cut through that noise but also not adding to the noise, she added.
Ian A. Anderson, a postdoctoral scholar at California Institute of Technology, said he finds this kind of content interesting, but is curious whether it’s disruptive enough to prompt action. He also said he wonders whether those with the strongest scrolling habits are thoughtless about the way (they’re) intaking information.
If they’re paying full attention, I feel like it could be an effective disruption, but I also think there is a degree to which, if you are really a habitual scroller, maybe you arent fully engaging with it, he said. I can think of all sorts of different variables that could change the effectiveness, but it does sound like an interesting way to intervene from the inside.
With billions of active users across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms, talk of cutting down on screen time is perennial, as is the idea of addiction to social platforms. But theres tremendous disagreement over whether social media addiction actually exists.
Is social media addiction real?
Researchers, psychologists and other experts agree some people spend too much time on social media, but the agreement tends to stop there. Some researchers question whether addiction is the appropriate term to describe heavy use of social media, arguing that a person must be experiencing identifiable symptoms, like strong, sometimes uncontrollable urges and withdrawal, to qualify as addiction. Others, like Turel, acknowledge the term seems to resonate with more people and is often used colloquially.
Anderson said he recognized the prevalence of casual mentions of being addicted to phones and was curious to see if that talk was benign.
A recent study of his suggests the debate extends further than academic discourse. In a representative sample of active Instagram users, Anderson found that people often overestimate whether they are addicted to the app. On a self-report scale, 18% of participants agreed that they were at least somewhat addicted to Instagram and 5% indicated substantial agreement, but only 2% of participants were deemed at risk of addiction based on their symptoms. Believing you are addicted also impacts how you address that issue, Anderson said.
If you perceive yourself as more addicted, it actually hurts your ability to control your use or your perception of that ability and makes you kind of blame yourself more for overuse, Anderson said. There are these negative consequences to addiction perception.
Cutting down on screen time
For those looking to curb their social media habits, Anderson suggests making small, meaningful, changes to stop from opening your social media app of choice. Moving the apps place on your phone or turning off notifications are light touch interventions, but more involved options, like not bringing your phone into the bedroom or other places where you often use it could also help.
Plenty of intervention methods have been offered to consumers in the form of products or services. But those interventions require self-awareness and a desire to cut down on use. Content creators who infiltrate social media feeds with information about the psychology behind why people scroll for hours a day can plant those early seeds.
Cat Goetze, who goes by CatGPT online, makes non-pretentious, non-patronizing content about artificial intelligence, building off her experience in the tech industry. But shes also been on a lengthy road to cut down her own screen time. She often makes videos about why the platforms are so compelling and why we tend to spend longer than we anticipate on them.
Theres a whole infrastructure theres an army of nerds whose only job is to get you to increase your time spent on that platform, she said. Theres a whole machine thats trying to get you to be that way and its not your fault and youre not going to win this just (through) willpower.
Goetze also founded the business Physical Phones, which makes Bluetooth landline phones that connect to smartphones, encouraging people to spend less time on their devices. The inside of the packaging reads offline is the new luxury.
She was able to build the business at an accelerated pace thanks to her social media audience. But the early success of Physical Phones also demonstrates the demand for solutions to high screen time, she said.
Social media will always play a part in our lives. I dont necessarily think thats a bad thing. If we can get the average sceen time down from, if its 10 hours for a person to one hour, or from three hours to 30 minutes, that is going to be a net positive benefit for that individual and for society, Goetze said. That being said, Id love to be the person that theyre watching for those 30 minutes.
Kaitlyn Huamani, AP technology writer
The state of Indiana is no stranger to underdog stories. Hoosiers and Rudy, two of the most iconic underdog sports films ever made, both take place in the state, and both are based on true stories.
Hoosier nation now has a trilogy.
Indiana University’s football team had been a Big Ten doormat for as long as the conference had existed. Then, athletic director Scott Dolson hired Curt Cignetti as head coach, and Cignetti embarked on the greatest turnaround story in modern college sports. In just his second season, he led the Hoosiers to their first-ever national championship, defeating the University of Miami Hurricanes, 27-21, on Monday night, and completing a perfect season that nobody saw coming. Well, except for Cignetti himself.
It took more than just one person, but Cignetti was the catalyst that eventually catapulted IU to the top of the sport. Here’s a look at some key numbers from an unforgettable Hoosiers season.
16-0
Indiana became the first major college football team to go 16-0 in a single season since Yale in 1894. The caveat being that those Bulldogs didnt play all 16 games against other colleges, mixing in a few games against athletic clubs.
$93 million
Cignetti has signed three different contracts with Indiana: his initial contract in November 2023, an extension worth $8 million per year in November 2024, and then a behemoth extension worth nearly $93 million over eight years in October 2025.
3
Through that last contract, Cignetti is entitled to a good-faith market review and renegotiation that makes him no less than the third-highest-paid Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) coach should the Hoosiers make it to the College Football Playoff semifinal. Thanks to Coach Lane Kiffins contract at LSU, Cignetti will be due for another raise shortly.
5
Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza became just the fifth quarterback in the last 75 years to win the Heisman Trophy while leading his team to an undefeated national championship. He joins Joe Burrow (LSU, 2019), Jameis Winston (Florida State, 2013), Cam Newton (Auburn, 2010), and Matt Leinart (USC, 2004) in that club. Mendoza is currently –8000 to join Burrow, Winston, and Newton as first overall NFL Draft picks as well.
12
Mendozas 12-yard touchdown run on 4th down and five with just under ten minutes to play is the most memorable play from the game. The Hoosiers dialed up a designed quarterback run, and the Miami native made a juke move to gain the first down, then powered through multiple would-be tacklers to dive over the goal line for the score.
715
Entering the 2025 season, Indianas 715 all-time losses were the most by any program in major college football. Conference foe Northwestern lost its 716th game against USC on November 7th, taking the dubious honor from the Hoosiers.
2.5x
Indianas football budget rose more than 2.5x from 2021 to 2024, when the budget was last reported at just over $61 million. That figure likely climbed even more from 2024 to 2025, with the Hoosiers going all in on Cignetti. The 2024 mark was the first time since at least 2005 that IU has exceeded the median Big Ten football budget.
24
Indiana University is not a stranger to winning national championships, football notwithstanding. The Hoosiers have won 24 NCAA team championships between six different sports, including five in mens basketball. The last NCAA Championship that IU won was mens soccer in 2012, when it defeated Georgetown.
.798
Curt Cignettis winning percentage as a head college football coach ranks among the most impressive in the country. Between Division II Indiana University of Pennsylvania, FCS Elon, James Madison (in both FCS and FBS), and now, Indiana, hes won 146 of his 183 games. Nick Saban widely regarded as the greatest college football coach ever won just a shade over 80% of his games. Its not the highest mark of all time (Mount Union legend Vince Kehres won over 92% of his games, coaching Division III) or even in his own conference (Ohio States Ryan Day has won 87% of his games) but considering the circumstances, he keeps pretty special company.
He wins. Google him.
+10,000
Per Sportsoddshistory.com, Indiana was +10,000 to win the national championship in the preseason. No other national champion dating back to the start of the database (2001) had preseason odds longer than +5000. The Hoosiers had the same odds as Florida State, which went 5-7, Nebraska, which went 7-6, and USC, which went 9-4.
$10.90
The amount Cignetti spends every day on his Chipotle Burrito Bowl for his lunch in the office. Chicken, beans, rice, and a side of guac.
Netflix exceeded Wall Street’s revenue estimates for its holiday quarter, as it crossed 325 million subscribers, the company said on Tuesday.
Revenue came in at $12.1 billion for October through Decembertopping forecasts of $11.97 billion for the quarter, according to analysts surveyed by LSEG.
Nielsen reported that Netflix’s monthly viewership rose 10% in December, thanks largely to the final season of hit sci-fi series “Stranger Things,” which generated 15 billion viewing minutes. Netflix also streamed two National Football League games on Christmas Day and released a third film in the “Knives Out” murder mystery series.
Investors remain focused on Netflix’s $82.7 billion pursuit of Warner Bros Discovery’s studio and other entertainment assets, as it seeks to fend off a hostile bid from Paramount Skydance.
Netflix amended its merger agreement to an all-cash offer for the film and television studios, its extensive content library, and major entertainment franchises, including “Game of Thrones,” “Harry Potter,” and DC Comics’ superheroes like Batman and Superman.
“Our revised all-cash agreement will enable an expedited timeline to a stockholder vote and provide greater financial certainty,” Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos said in a statement accompanying Tuesday’s amended bid.
In its note to investors, Netflix said the Warner Bros acquisition will provide it with an even broader and higher-quality selection of movies and shows for its subscribers, while it will be able to offer more personalized, flexible subscription offers with the addition of HBO Max.
The company said it obtained commitments for a $59 billion bridge loan on December 4 to support the Warner acquisition. On Monday, it increased the bridge loan commitment by $8.2 billion to support its all-cash $27.75 per share offer.
In financial results, Netflix reported adjusted per-share earnings of 56 cents for the fourth quarter ended in December, slightly above estimates of 55 cents per share.
Netflix forecasts continued growth in 2026, with revenue of $50.7 billion to $51.7 billion. Ad revenue is expected to roughly double, Netflix said.
Dawn Chmielewski and Lisa Richwine, Reuters
Below, Chris Duffy shares five key insights from his new book, Humor Me: How Laughing More Can Make You Present, Creative, Connected, and Happy.
Chris is a comedian, television writer, and the host of TEDs award-winning How to Be a Better Human podcast. Chris wrote for both seasons of Wyatt Cenacs Problem Areas on HBO, executive-produced by John Oliver. He is both a former fifth-grade teacher and a former fifth-grade student.
Whats the big idea?
Humor isnt just about being funny. When we notice, share, and even save the small absurdities of everyday life, laughter can make us more relatable, more curious, and better able to connect, think, and work together.
Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Chris himselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea App.
1. People like you more if youre a little bit of a mess.
Many of us spend so much energy and stress trying to get things to be perfect. I know I do. Ive wasted countless hours trying to hide my flaws from other people, especially strangers. But it turns out that not only is that a battle Im never going to win, but its counterproductive.
One of my favorite studies had study subjects rate potential job candidates (who were secretly in on the experiment). When asked to rate high-performing candidates and average candidates, study participants preferred the high performers. No surprise there. But the highest-rated candidates of all were the high performers who had also just spilled coffee all over themselves before walking in the door. In other words, we want you to be able to do your job, but we dont mind if youre kind of a mess. In fact, we prefer it! Youre relatable.
Now, Im not suggesting that you dump scalding hot coffee on yourself before your next high-stakes interview. But I am suggesting that being willing to openly acknowledge and laugh at your flaws and imperfections wont undermine your success, it will enhance it. Nobody likes a perfect goody two-shoes; everyone loves a person whos a bit of a mess but trying their best.
2. Looking for laughs can lead to big, serious ideas.
Millions of people are alive today because of the discovery of penicillin. But when Alexander Fleming walked into the lab and saw penicillin for the first time, he didnt shout Eureka! Instead, he walked up to a dirty petri dish that had been left out overnight and said, Thats funny, before taking a culture of the mold.
The idea of seeing something odd and funny and then investigating it has led to many breakthroughs. In fact, every year, hundreds of the worlds most brilliant thinkers converge in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the Ig Nobel Prizes. If youre not already familiar with the Ig Nobels, theyre a lot like the Nobel Prizes. But instead of recognizing the most world-changing achievements in physics, chemistry, and peace, the Ig Nobels recognize the most hilarious discoveries of the year. Their slogan is Research that makes people laugh, then think.
The idea of seeing something odd and funny and then investigating it has led to many breakthroughs.
The winners are people who have published papers on things like constipated scorpions or what happens if you use a crash test dummy thats shaped like a moose. An international team won the Ig Nobel Prize in Literature for studying the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many, many, many, many times. Or Georgia Tech scientists were awarded the Ig Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering a universal urination duration. Using fluid dynamics, they demonstrated that all mammals weighing over three kilograms take about twenty-one seconds to completely empty a full bladder.
So why would actual Nobel Laureates and celebrated geniuses from around the world make time in their busy schedules to attend an event like this? For one, its fun. I attended the 2024 Ig Nobels, and it was hilarious and an absolute blast. But the Ig Nobels attract such a distinguished crowd for another reason as well! These people are smart enough to know that when it comes to big ideas, a laugh is never just a laugh. Following your sense of humor makes you pay more attention and be intellectually open to new, surprising insights and observations.
3. You dont have to be the center of attention to have a great sense of humor.
I am a glutton for attention. I love talking to strangers, and I have built my career around happily getting up in front of crowds to share my thoughts. Im a tried-and-true extrovert.
My wife, Mollie, on the other hand, is an introvert who would much rather be curled up at home with a good book than chatting with a neighbor on the bus.
But heres the thing: Mollie has an incredible sense of humor! People often make the mistake of thinking that a sense of humor means youre at a party, in the middle of a large group, loudly telling a joke. In fact, it could just as easily be that you are on a walk alone when you notice an extremely chubby squirrel going to town on an acorn. The point is that youre bringing laughter into your daily life and enjoying the delightful absurdity of the world that you might otherwise have missed.
People often make the mistake of thinking that a sense of humor means youre at a party, in the middle of a large group, loudly telling a joke.
And if youre curious, Mollie really did see that jumbo squirrel having the time of its life. Even just hearing her report secondhand later in the day, I was clutching my sides too at that little squirrel feast.
4. If you want a group to work well together, try being like Abraham Lincoln.
When Abraham Lincoln assembled his famous team of rivals, he had a cabinet full of brilliant statesmen. There was only one problem: They mostly hated each other, and they didnt particularly like him. So how did Honest Abe turn the group of rival politicians into a team?
Lincolns answer was, in part, to laugh with them. To create a group identity with inside jokes, folksy anecdotes, and shared humor. Everyone who knew Lincoln knew he had no shortage of jokes. One contemporary said Lincolns jokes were as plenty as blackberries. And if theres one thing we know about blackberries, its that there are lots of them.
Modern portrayals of Lincoln tend to paint him as a serious and tragic figure, for understandable reasons. But much of Lincolns skill as a politician and leader was his ability to connect with people by getting them laughing. Benjamin P. Thomas, a Lincoln scholar, wrote that Lincoln was ready with an instant witticism or retort under almost any circumstances.
One excellent example of Lincolns humor is a joke he made about himself being ugly. During the Lincoln-Douglas debates, when he was accused of being two-faced, Lincoln responded, Honestly, if I were two-faced, would I be showing you this one? A very solid self-burn!
Bob Mankoff, the former cartoon editor for The New Yorker, has long been interested in Lincolns humor. In an essay, he wrote that Lincoln was much more about laughingwith than laughing at. And when laughing at, it was often himself he was mocking.
Much of Lincolns skill as a politician and leader was his ability to connect with people by getting them laughing.
That Lincoln-style congeniality and empathy can help disarm detractors and create a more comfortable space for positive group dynamics to form. There are evolutionary reasons to suspect that this may be one of the earliest and most important functions of humor. Animal behavior experts have long observed that chimpanzees and other primates engage in an equivalent of human laughter. After laughing together, primates are often more relaxed and less aggressive. If it works for chimps, it might work for your colleagues at the office, too!
5. You can stockpile laughter in a file folder.
If youre anything like me, you can instantly recall humiliating and embarrassing moments from decades ago. I will often be in the shower minding my own business when all of a sudden I have a vivid recollection of something horrifying, like the time I had a phone conversation with my crush in high school and it ended with her saying I dont think I have a crush on you anymore because you talk too much. Or when I was in one of my first ever big deal meetings with a TV executive, I told her I hated reality TV and then turned around to see a giant poster for the show Jersey Shore with her name listed as one of the producers.
Its no challenge for me to give a vivid play-by-play of any one of thousands of cringeworthy interactions. But ask me to give you an equivalent retelling of the funniest jokes and best laughs Ive had, and it takes a lot more effort. We tend to forget the laughs and retain the skin-crawling mortification.
But you can change that! Every time you find something that makes you laugh uncontrollably, write it down or find a way to experience it again. Maybe its a list on your computer of the online videos that make you cry tears of laughter, a jar full of Post-it notes with inside jokes from your marriage, or an album of the most hilariously bad photos youve ever taken of your kids or your friends. The form it takes isnt particularly important, but your ability to re-access a good laugh when you need it is.
Every time you find something that makes you laugh uncontrollably, write it down or find a way to experience it again.
When I interviewed the care team at a Hong Kong nursing home about the wildly successful humor program they had implemented, they told me that residents in the program had needed less pain medicine, felt more connected, and experienced an increase in life satisfaction. One of the biggest parts of their program was simply keeping a folder of writing, cartoons, images, and jokes that made them laugh and then sharing it with others. Thats a prescription that any of us can try, and theres no copay.
Enjoy our full library of Book Bitesread by the authors!in the Next Big Idea App.
This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
Anthropic is undoubtedly having a moment right now. First came Claude Code, an AI-powered coding tool for developers, in early 2025, which quickly gained a cult following among that community. “You spent your holidays with your family? That’s nice I spent my holidays with Claude Code,” recently posted one tech-policy expert. But most people aren’t developers, let alone know their way around a command-line interface.
So last week, Anthropic launched Claude Cowork, which the company calls “Claude Code for the rest of your work.” Available now as a research preview on Anthropics $100-per-month Max plan, Cowork is the best example of what “vibe coding“an AI-powered approach where people use natural language prompts to bring their software ideas to lifecan do. Designed for non-developers, its a desktop app that aims to help regular workers with all kinds of tasks, like organizing files or crunching data.
Case in point: Anthropic’s new working agent was largely built by Claude itself, in just a week and a half. The memes write themselves.
“Claude, here is a picture of my bank account. claude, make that number go up to $1 billion. make no mistakes,” one X user prompted.
“Claude here is my life. all of it. down to the last detail. make me happy. beautiful. successful. make no mistakes,” another posted.
“Claude, here are my notes where I keep all of my passwords. here are my bank account details and phone number for 2fa. run my life and make money, wrote another. Make no mistakes.
While Claude might not be able to satisfy those demands (yet), AI is undoubtedly turning the workforce on its head. Research shows that 85% of employees globally are saving one to seven hours a week with AI. Yet, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that we could be “sleepwalking into a white-collar bloodbath,” with AI wiping out huge swathes of entry-level jobs in just one update.
Software engineers in particular, have found themselves directly in the impact zone.
Yea Im a full-stack engineer, one X user posted. Their stack: Claude, Terminal, and Cursor. But they arent alone. “Bankers, lawyers, and consultants looking at everyone else joining them in the unemployment line after the Claude Cowork release,” quipped another.
In fact, no one is marked safe. “I’m assembling a team,” wrote one X user alongside an image of a company leadership team with Claude in every C-suite role. A follow-up post read “just got kicked out of my own company.”
“Got told I was ‘slowing everyone down.'” Despite the discourse, data currently shows that theres little evidence for actual AI-caused displacement in the job market. For now, well at least have the popcorn ready for the memes that just wont quit.
Eighteen months ago, it was plausible that artificial intelligence might take a different path than social media. Back then, AIs development hadnt consolidated under a small number of big tech firms. Nor had it capitalized on consumer attention, surveilling users, and delivering ads.
Unfortunately, the AI industry is now taking a page from the social media playbook and has set its sights on monetizing consumer attention. When OpenAI launched its ChatGPT Search feature in late 2024 and its browser, ChatGPT Atlas, in October 2025, it kicked off a race to capture online behavioral data to power advertising. Its part of a yearslong turnabout by OpenAI, whose CEO Sam Altman once called the combination of ads and AI unsettling and now promises that ads can be deployed in AI apps while preserving trust. The rampant speculation among OpenAI users who believe they see paid placements in ChatGPT responses suggests they are not convinced.
In 2024, AI search company Perplexity started experimenting with ads in its offerings. A few months after that, Microsoft introduced ads to its Copilot AI. Googles AI Mode for search now increasingly features ads, as does Amazons Rufus chatbot.
As a security expert and data scientist, we see these examples as harbingers of a future where AI companies profit from manipulating their users behavior for the benefit of their advertisers and investors. Its also a reminder that time to steer the direction of AI development away from private exploitation and toward public benefit is quickly running out.
The functionality of ChatGPT Search and its Atlas browser is not really new. Meta, commercial AI competitor Perplexity, and even ChatGPT itself have had similar AI search features for years, and both Google and Microsoft beat OpenAI to the punch by integrating AI with their browsers. But OpenAIs business positioning signals a shift.
We believe the ChatGPT Search and Atlas announcements are worrisome because there is really only one way to make money on search: the advertising model pioneered ruthlessly by Google.
Advertising model
Ruled a monopolist in U.S. federal court, Google has earned more than US$1.6 trillion in advertising revenue since 2001. You may think of Google as a web search company, or a streaming video company (YouTube), or an email company (Gmail), or a mobile phone company (Android, Pixel), or maybe even an AI company (Gemini). But those products are ancillary to Googles bottom line. The advertising segment typically accounts for 80% to 90% of its total revenue. Everything else is there to collect users data and direct users attention to its advertising revenue stream.
After two decades in this monopoly position, Googles search product is much more tuned to the companys needs than those of its users. When Google Search first arrived decades ago, it was revelatory in its ability to instantly find useful information across the still-nascent web. In 2025, its search result pages are dominated by low-quality and often AI-generated content, spam sites that exist solely to drive traffic to Amazon salesa tactic known as affiliate marketingand paid ad placements, which at times are indistinguishable from organic results.
Plenty of advertisers and observers seem to think AI-powered advertising is the future of the ad business.
Big Techs AI advertising plans are shaking up the industry.
Highly persuasive
Paid advertising in AI search, and AI models generally, could look very different from traditional web search. It has the potential to influence your thinking, spending patterns, and even personal beliefs in much more subtle ways. Because AI can engage in active dialogue, addressing your specific questions, concerns, and ideas rather than just filtering static content, its potential for influence is much greater. Its like the difference between reading a textbook and having a conversation with its author.
Imagine youre conversing with your AI agent about an upcoming vacation. Did it recommend a particular airline or hotel chain because they really are best for you, or does the company get a kickback for every mention? If you ask abou a political issue, does the model bias its answer based on which political party has paid the company a fee, or based on the bias of the models corporate owners?
There is mounting evidence that AI models are at least as effective as people at persuading users to do things. A December 2023 meta-analysis of 121 randomized trials reported that AI models are as good as humans at shifting peoples perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors. A more recent meta-analysis of eight studies similarly concluded there was no significant overall difference in persuasive performance between (large language models) and humans.
This influence may go well beyond shaping what products you buy or who you vote for. As with the field of search engine optimization, the incentive for humans to perform for AI models might shape the way people write and communicate with each other. How we express ourselves online is likely to be increasingly directed to win the attention of AIs and earn placement in the responses they return to users.
A different way forward
Much of this is discouraging, but there is much that can be done to change it.
First, its important to recognize that todays AI is fundamentally untrustworthy, for the same reasons that search engines and social media platforms are.
The problem is not the technology itself; fast ways to find information and communicate with friends and family can be wonderful capabilities. The problem is the priorities of the corporations who own these platforms and for whose benefit they are operated. Recognize that you dont have control over what data is fed to the AI, who it is shared with and how it is used. Its important to keep that in mind when you connect devices and services to AI platforms, ask them questions, or consider buying or doing the things they suggest.
There is also a lot that people can demand of governments to restrain harmful corporate uses of AI. In the U.S., Congress could enshrine consumers rights to control their own personal data, as the EU already has. It could also create a data protection enforcement agency, as essentially every other developed nation has.
Governments worldwide could invest in Public AImodels built by public agencies offered universally for public benefit and transparently under public oversight. They could also restrict how corporations can collude to exploit people using AI, for example, by barring advertisements for dangerous products such as cigarettes and requiring disclosure of paid endorsements.
Every technology company seeks to differentiate itself from competitors, particularly in an era when yesterdays groundbreaking AI quickly becomes a commodity that will run on any kids phone. One differentiator is in building a trustworthy service. It remains to be seen whether companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic can sustain profitable businesses on the back of subscription AI services like the premium editions of ChatGPT, Plus, and Pro, and Claude Pro. If they are going to continue convincing consumers and businesses to pay for these premium services, they will need to build trust.
That will require making real commitments to consumers on transparency, privacy, reliability, and security that are followed through consistently and verifiably.
And while no one knows what the future business models for AI will be, we can be certain that consumers do not want to be exploited by AI, secretly or otherwise.
Bruce Schneier is an adjunct lecturer in public policy at Harvard Kennedy School.
Nathan Sanders is an affiliate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
On January 20, Netflix is bringing back the popular talent competition Star Search, with a twist: For the first time in its history, Netflix will let its audience decide the outcome of a show with live voting. However, unlike how shows have done this in the past, audiences wont have to send text messages or call a special number to make their votes count. Instead, viewers will vote with their TVs remote control, or right within the Netflix app if they watch the show on their phones.
Netflix hopes that this level of simplicity will help to make live programs like Star Search a lot more exciting, and offer its audience a chance to experience shared watercooler moments that tend to be missing from todays world of hyper-personalized streaming. You can influence the outcome [together with] everyone at the same time, says Netflix member product VP Elmar Nubbemeyer. Youre part of the Zeitgeist at that moment.
To bring real-time voting to Star Search, Netflix relied on work it previously did for interactive narrative shows. It also snuck voting tests into David Changs Netflix show, and showed focus groups segments from two fake shows it cooked up for testing purposes. The company even built internal tools that will help it to repurpose live voting and polling for other live events and shows in the future.
We are planning more of these types of moments, says Netflix product designer Navin Iyengar. Star Search is really the big unveiling of it.
From ‘Bandersnatch’ to Star Search
When Star Search debuts Tuesday evening, viewers will have two distinct opportunities to make their voices heard. Once a singer or comedian is done with their performance, a graphic will pop up on screen, encouraging each viewer to give it a rating ranging from one to five stars. We knew early on that giving a star rating as an interaction was really important, says Iyengar. Its core to the Star Search IP.
Later on, theyll also get the chance to choose their personal champion of the night out of four choices presented next to each other on screen. Each voting graphic will remain on screen for about 60 seconds, and the shows hostAnthony Anderson, best known for the ABC sitcom Blackishwill respond to the incoming vote tally in real time.
Chrissy Teigen, Jelly Roll, Sarah Michelle Gellar, and Anthony Anderson [Photo: Matt Sayles/Netflix 2025]
Its the first time Netflix has done real-time voting like this, but the company has been experimenting with getting viewers more actively involved for almost a decade. In 2017, the streaming service released its first interactive TV shows, which prompted viewers to choose their own adventure through branched narratives. In one scene of “Bandersnatch,” an interactive episode of the dystopian sci-fi show Black Mirror, the viewer has to decide whether the main character should take his medication by pressing left or right buttons on their remote control, with different choices leading to vastly varying outcomes.
Even in those early days, Netflix engineers and designers already thought about ways to bring the same kind of interactivity to live content. We always felt that interactive experiences should go live, because members could actually interact in the moment and impact the story as it’s happening in real time instead of filming all the different potential outcomes, recalls Iyengar.
Netflix eventually discontinued branched narrative shows because they did not take off with consumers, but the company kept pursuing the idea to marry live content with interactivity. And when Star Search came along, it quickly became clear that this was a perfect opportunity to bring back some of that interactive tech first built for titles like Bandersnatch, and use it to improve the way audience participation is usually done.
Talent shows like American Idol used to rely heavily on phone calls to register votes, but nowadays use a mix of online and text message voting. Shows often allow participants to vote multiple times, leading to massive vote counts, which often dwarf the number of voters.
It’s a surprisingly low share of viewers who actually reach out and vote, Iyengar says, adding that industry estimates put that number somewhere between five and ten percent. Voting has always been difficult for these shows, he adds.
Netflix employees believed that the tech first built for Bandersnatch, which allowed viewers to send feedback with their TV remote, would already go a long way towards making it easier to participate. But they quickly realized that great tech alone wasnt enough.
Keeping voting fair, even for Star Search
Netflix began testing prototypes for live voting with focus groups nearly a year ago. To do so, the company repurposed two existing titlesa dating show and a talent competition. We basically made fake shows, Iyengar says. We edited them down to make them feel live and make it feel like your vote was really important.
Then, it put select viewers into a lab designed to look like a living room, with a double-sided mirror to observe how they reacted. We put our prototypes on a TV, Iyengar says. We had a TV remote that could control it. People were sitting on a couch, and we would actually just leave them alone.
Netflix researchers just told test participants that they get to take a peek at a prototype, without explaining that the show would allow them to vote. People really got it, Iyengar recalls. Almost everyone, without prompting from us, would pick up the remote in these moments, and interact.
In fact, people didnt just get itthey got hooked. We found that they got really invested in the stakes of the show, even though it was fake, Iyengar says. They wanted to know what their vote was going to do. Did the person I voted for win? Show me the math for how you actually calculated the vote. People just took the idea of voting and fairness seriously.
Netflix built its voting tech to only allow one vote per Netflix profile. But those early tests showed that fairness was as much about the way different options were presented, and that long held beliefs about UI design could introduce perceived biases.
One example: Designers like Iyengar like to direct the eye to simplify smart TV interfaces. When you open up the Netflix app on your TV, youll find that one title is always pre-selected, which helps to understand what to do if you want to navigate to the title right next to it, or perhap one in a row below. On TV, you should always have something in focus, he says. Otherwise people don’t understand where the focus state is.
When Iyengars team built the interface people will use to award stars to Star Search performers, they initially followed that same principle, and highlighted the third star to direct the eye. Test audiences immediately pushed back. People did not like that we were filling up the stars for them, he says. They were like: why are you voting for me?
Voting on tuna sandwiches and sports competitions?
In addition to the interface, Netflix also built a dedicated tool called Pollster that allows producers to integrate voting into their shows, then trigger each round in real time. To test Pollster and the backend tech for voting ahead of this weeks Star Search premiere, the streamer snuck a few test votes into Diner Time Live, a live cooking show hosted by celebrity chef David Chang.
Diner Time Live is not a competition, so testing star ratings didnt really make sense. David Changs team nonetheless embraced the idea, and let the shows audience rate different kinds of sandwiches. It wasn’t something high stakes, Iyengar says. Audience participation was nonetheless high. I’m really glad we did it, he says. We learned a lot.
The streamer is now ready to put those lessons learned to the test with the premiere of Star Search on Tuesday and already has plans to bring it to additional live entertainment formats in the future. We have many other ideas where we could apply this technology, Nubbemeyer says. One of the things were [considering] is polling. Netflix may, for instance, use its voting tech to ask viewers of a sports event to decide who the most impactful player is.
All these things could enrich the entertainment experience by making it more participatory, Nubbemeyer says.
