TikTok is testing the waters with a paid subscription mode for creators, joining Facebook, Clubhouse and others. Although TikTok remains tight-lipped about the experiment, it seems designed to keep TikTok influencers on the ByteDance platform rather than leaving for more lucrative pastures. Last week, Instagram announced a test allowing creators to charge from 99 cents to $99 per month for exclusive content, while Twitter in September debuted Super Follows, with rates of $2.99 to $9.99 per month. A creator with 13,000 followers that gets a 2 percent take rate at $4.99 per month can make $900 a month. YouTube and Snapchat also offer monetization options. Read more

Netflix stock dropped 20 percent Thursday on news that the streaming platform’s subscriber growth is slowing. Netflix missed its target only slightly, adding 8.3 million subscribers in Q4, versus its projected 8.5 million. But that missed target is combined with escalating content costs and a forecast that 2.5 million subscribers will be added in the first three months of 2022 as opposed to 4 million in Q1 2021. A significant portion of Q4’s subscribers growth was in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, up 3.5 million. Netflix added 1.2 million subs in the U.S. and Canada, only a slight improvement year over year. Read more

Instagram is testing a feature that allows creators to charge for premium content, a growing trend as platforms vie for popular personalities that drive traffic and engagement. The Meta Platforms social network introduced the feature last week, saying it will initially be offered on a limited basis in the U.S. “Subscriptions are one of the best ways to have a predictable income — a way that’s not attached to how much reach you get on any given post, which is inevitably going to go up and down over time,” Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said in a Twitter post. Read more

Meta has a VR megaphone; Apple has been working on an AR headset; and Microsoft wants the best of both worlds, with its mixed reality HoloLens and headset-agnostic Xbox game platform. But observers say don’t count Google out. The search giant is reportedly ramping up its headset efforts under the codename Project Iris with a release target of 2024. As with HoloLens and, experimentally as of last summer, Passthrough API-enabled Oculus Quest 2 headsets, Google’s device-in-progress is said to use an outward-facing camera to provide a real-world backdrop for digital images. Read more

The Senate Judiciary Committee voted Thursday to advance a bill designed to level the playing field between Big Tech and smaller players forced to rely on the giant firms to reach customers. Allegations that the behemoths abuse their power to subjugate competitors and exploit consumers permeate Capitol Hill. After being reminded by Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minnesota) that antitrust laws haven’t been meaningfully updated “since the birth of the Internet,” the American Innovation and Choice Online Act was advanced on a bipartisan basis, setting it on a path for a full Senate vote. Read more