Data from Spate shows that beauty's top 10 brands by TikTok views growth during the first quarter of 2026 were catalyzed almost entirely by paid content rather than organic virality.
Publicly traded companies are by legal definition and requirement completely amoral. They want only one thing, to raise their stock price, and the public good and common decency are just obstacles to be overcome or spun in that quest.
We've both fought against needless promotional content before and lamented that frontier AI platforms are falling into the same pattern. As designers and users, we've learned that "free" usually means putting up with interruptive, slightly creepy ads that feel more like a tax than a benefit - a frustration tax that now colors how we approach free‑tier services and now AI tools.