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The current king of social media is the short-form video platform TikTok. It’s where trends are forged, news is broken, and opinions spread. Owned by China’s ByteDance, the app has an estimated 1.99 billion users33% fewer than Facebooks three billionand yet Meta is desperately trying to mimic TikToks features in its apps (particularly Instagram). But despite its popularity, TikTok has been under siege in 2025. It is facing the threat of a U.S. ban, which would jeopardize the livelihoods of millions of Americans who rely on the app to earn a living. And even if it survives, by transferring its assets to U.S.-owned interests, TikToks U.S. algorithm could change under new owners, which could make their content less discoverable. A growing number of concerned TikTok users are starting to take precautions, gravitating toward a small but expanding short-form video platform called Skylight. Heres why. What is Skylight? Skylight Social, better known as Skylight, is a baby in the social media world. It didnt exist until earlier this year, after TikTok was briefly taken offline in the United States ahead of the government ban. The platform, which is currently accessible through dedicated Skylight iOS and Android apps, went live in April. It is the brainchild of a two-person team, CEO Tori White and CTO Reed Harmeyer. But it also has a big-name backer behind it: Mark Cuban. While on the surface, Skylight looks a lot like TikTok, with a scrollable feed of full-screen short-form videos you can like and comment on, it also has a significant difference. Skylight is built on the Authenticated Transfer Protocol, or AT Protocol for short. This is the same protocol that X competitor Bluesky is built upon. That upstart social media network now has more than 39 million users. The advantage of the AT Protocol versus TikToks protocol (and the protocols of other social media companies like Meta) is that the AT Protocol is decentralized. This means that the platforms that use the AT Protocol dont hold power over the content you create; it is not tied to one companys servers. If the AT Protocol platform youre using shuts down or just no longer works for your needs, you can take all of your content and followers to another platform. As TechCrunch reported in April, in the face of a TikTok ban early this year, Cuban put out the call for someone to develop a TikTok competitor based on the AT Protocol. Harmeyer and White, the latter of whom had a following on TikTok and was worried about losing her community if the app were banned, decided to answer it. The two big benefits Skylight has over TikTok Skylight has two primary advantages over TikTok. Since its based on the AT Protocol, Skylight is a decentralized social media platform. That means your content and followers arent locked into the platform. Youre free to move all your videos and community to another AT Protocol short-form video app any time you want. This decentralization also makes Skylight fairly ban-proof. Any government can pretty easily block any social media network it desires because all major social media platforms are closed, centralized networks. But since decentralized platforms arent tied to any one app, even if an app itself is banned, a creator can simply take all their content, including likes, followers, and comments, to another platform and continue posting as usual. Indeed, the main marketing pitch Skylight uses on its website is touting the platform as unbannable, which, due to the flexibility of the decentralized AT Protocol, is a reasonable claim to make. But Skylight has another benefit. In August, the platform was updated with human-curated feeds. This differs from the algorithmically curated feeds used by major social media networks. Algorithmic curation is notoriously opaque, and, as DigiDay has noted, when it comes to TikTok, many existing users fear that its proposed new U.S. owners may change the existing algorithm to be friendlier to videos that align with their goals or ideology. Last month, CNN reported that TikTok’s new U.S. owners will include a consortium that will be comprised of Oracle, Andreessen Horowitz, and Silver Lake, and that this consortium will be operated by a majority-U.S. board, including a member appointed by the Trump administration. With Skylights focus on human-curated feeds that users can choose to follow, the platform aims to help users feel assured that no algorithmic favoritism or censorship is occurring behind its digital walls. What is it like using Skylight? In an age where just a few trillion-dollar social media giants have control over not just our content, but the algorithms controlling who sees it, and where governments seem more willing than ever to ban platforms that millions of users rely on as their digital town squares, a short-form video platform like Skylight is sorely needed. But whats it like actually using the app? On a basic level, it feels as familiar as using TikTok: you scroll, like, and comment. It works well. The one significant drawback, however, is its limited content. Currently, Skylight has nowhere near the wealth of videos that TikTok offerswhich is no surprise, given the platform’s youth. In August, TechCrunch reported that the app had garnered around 240,000 downloads and had approximately 100,000 videos uploaded to its platform. But that could change. At one point, the AT Protocol-based Bluesky also had similar numbers, and now that decentralized platform is approaching 40 million users. Will Skylight ever reach that level? One should hope so. As tech giants and billionaires continue to consolidate their grip on the worlds social media networks, and even liberal democratic governments threaten to ban those same networks, the world needs platforms that their creators and users command. The future of free, unfettered speech that cant be controlled by corporations may depend on it.
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E-Commerce
Maybe youre managing a team while being a caregiver, or breaking sales records while working remotely as a single parent. Each challenge carves a mark on your journey to growth, purpose, and legacy, and earns a spot on your résumé. A résumé of challenges is not a list of defeats, but a record of victories: the battles youve fought, the lessons youve learned, and the resilience that will carry you forward. Having an awareness and understanding of your résumé of challenges helps you understand your own strengths and ability to rise. Being able to speak to your honest (nonfabricated or misrepresented) résumé of challenges before and/or during a job interview can be an authentic way to highlight what you bring to the table, which may not be visible in your submitted résumé. Benefits of Having a Résumé of Challenges 1. Provides proof of critical intangible traits and abilities Challenges not only show what youve been through. They show your resilience, adaptability, grit, and problem-solving ability. A résumé of challenges highlights strength of character. It can demonstrate your integrity, as well as your ability to stay honest and truthful and to maintain ethical principles, even when it is difficult or personally detrimental. It allows you to demonstrate your growth by talking about the lessons, skills, and wisdom left behind from each challenge. Also, your résumé of challenges can be proof that you can thrive in uncertain environments. 2. Demonstrates credibilitySharing and discussing your résumé of challenges and what you have learned from them provides transparency. It makes you more relatable and garners more respect. It demonstrates authenticity. Also, being authenticand having faced adversity and learned from itmakes you a better leader, and one that people trust. 3. Boosts self-confidence, fosters good mental healthReviewing your résumé of challenges can help remind you of what you are capable of accomplishing when facing new obstacles. This will feed and encourage your own personal confidence and empowerment. It also prepares you to face new obstacles without unwarranted fear. And maybe most of all, it helps you recognize your personal worthbeyond job titles or job descriptions. 4. Reframes setbacks as assetsYour résumé of challenges provides you with the opportunity to explain how your failures were used as stepping stones to higher growth and development. It can help you transform pain into purpose, showing value in lived experiences. 5. Inspires others, leaves a legacySharing your résumé of challenges normalizes struggle as a part of success. It creates a ripple effect that motivates others to keep going. And lastly, your résumé of challenges is part of your legacy. Its a record of strength that you can pass on to the next generation. Your story will tell them: Heres what I endured. Heres what I learned. Heres how you can rise, too. In many ways, that résumé becomes the most valuable document of your life, because it tells the truth about who you are to your core. Heres My Résumé of Challenges As an example, here are some things on my résumé of challenges. I was the first female, first Black person, and/or first Black female to achieve my roles in white male-dominated industries in corporate America. Because of this, I had to navigate the daily realities of sexism, racism, sexual harassment, and classism. During my engineering days, I often had to spend time in environments that did not have basic bathroom or sleeping accommodations for women. I also had to face many personal challenges while still showing up to perform and grow in my career, such as the loss of many dear loved ones, caring for my husband during his battle with colon cancer, and multiple health issues. Persevering through all these adversities, while maintaining my integrity, was proof of my resilience and character, earned me respect and trust, and shaped me into a person and leader who values diversity and inclusion, knows how to build high-performing teams, and strives to make everyone feel valued and appreciated. The next time you update your professional résumé, take a moment to update your résumé of challenges, too. Write down the hurdles youve cleared, the moments you thought you wouldnt survive but did, and the lessons that reshaped you. Because in the end, its not the titles we hold that define us, but the challenges weve overcome to get there. And when you know and understand your résumé of challenges, youll never again doubt your ability to rise.
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E-Commerce
For women reading this article, how old were you when you received your first sexual advance from a man? For men reading, ask any woman you know. Better yet, ask several of them. I bet their answers turn your stomach. In late September, The Guardian reported that Meta used back-to-school photos of teenage girls to advertise the Threads app to fully grown men. Girls as young as 13. These photos were posted by regular moms on Facebook and Instagram, some of whom had their profiles set to private. The photos of girls in their school uniforms appeared in-feed as advertisements resembling organic suggested threads posts, or were outright cross-posted without consent. Their faces werent hidden or blurred. In fact, some ads even bore the childs real name. According to one mother with fewer than 300 Instagram followers, the cross-posted photo of her 15-year-old daughter garnered almost 7,000 views, with 90% of them from nonfollowers. Also, 90% of the views came from men, half from men at least in their forties. TRUST AND POLICIES This reporting sent me reeling back into my memories of high school and earlier. Memories Ive never re-examined or tried to make sense of as an adult. I talked it out with my best friend, and we were both taken aback by how common, how frequent this harassment was visited upon us and our peers. I polled another friend, who grew up in a completely separate part of the country. Yep, they said. We lost at least one teacher every year to that kind of thing. Of course, a Meta spokesperson said the images didnt violate their policies and blah blah blah. I and others have written extensively about Metas history of manipulating its users. I dont know why they trust me, dumb fucks, Zuckerberg wrote of the early Facebook users, while he was still at Harvard around 20 years ago. Ill note here that before Facebook, then-college sophomore Zuckerberg created a website called Facemash, where people could vote on the attractiveness of Harvards female students. He got the girls photos by hacking into the universitys official directories. WHEN SOMEONE TELLS YOU WHO THEY ARE, BELIEVE THEM Zuckerberg, like Elon Musk, hit the millionaire mark in his twenties. Sometimes I wonder if theres some sort of arrested development thing happening here. As Musk turns up the Nazi and porn dials on X and Zuckerberg rebrands himself as a jiu jitsu guy, it has never been clearer to me that we are all suffering a world in which morally stunted men wield immense power, often with a sneer. Dumb fucks. Thats what they think when we trust them. Even if they present themselves before Congress as mild, soft-spoken brainiacs, I dont think they cant be trusted to police themselves or remediate harmful aspects of their platforms. In my opinion, simple, common decency seems beyond their reach. THE NEED FOR REGULATION I desperately hope regulations take shape that curb the exploitation of our minds, bodies, and identities for the financial gain of any company. And in this specific case, it feels fairly minimal to me that it should illegal for companies like Meta to use our personal images, especially minors, without explicit, informed consent. We need clear laws that prevent teen content from being served to adult audiences. Platforms should be required to prove how their algorithms target and amplify posts, and to give families real legal recourse when their childrens photos are repurposed as ad bait. Until we have that kind of accountability, these platforms will keep hiding behind their terms of service while building empires on our faces, our trust, and our kids. As we wait and advocate for those regulations, I have to ask: At what point do these platforms become so flagrantly harmful, manipulative, and bot-bloated that we are compelled to divest our time and attention away from them? Lindsey Witmer Collins is CEO of WLCM App Studio and CEO of Scribbly.
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E-Commerce
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