You know things have gotten bad—just really hit the subterranean bottom of the barrel—when a) Spirit Airlines is dead and b) people are actively mourning it, as though they just lost a dear friend. That’s where we’re at, to say nothing of wars, the slow, AI-driven deconstruction of all we hold dear, and rampant conspiracy theories about the dumbest things possible. But at least some of those directly and indirectly responsible for the current state of the world are also feeling the squeeze.
Most notably, The Daily Wire—the shameless far-right content mill run by sniveling gremlin man Ben Shapiro—is laying off a significant chunk of its staff following estimates that it has lost 90 percent of its YouTube audience since 2023. As Garbage Day points out, this is part of a larger MAGA civil war that has turned even more extreme extremists like former Daily Wire host Candace Owens into stars:
If you add the amount of money The Daily Wire has lit on fire over the last five years producing Tubi-original right-wing movies no one watches, a floundering streaming app no one is using, and a shrinking roster of relevant pundits to hire, it’s hard to imagine how they could reverse this. Speaking of relevant pundits, there’s also the Israel problem. The MAGA civil war that’s been happening since Kirk died largely boils down to whether or not American conservatives should support Israel or not. Kirk was something of a bridge there. The “cool” new far right, led by figures like Owens and Nick Fuentes are both anti-Israel and blatantly anti-Semitic, while Shapiro, of course, is not. The age old problem with working at the racism factory! They eventually make a new racism that includes you.
So, in the grand scheme of things, all of this may or may not prove great for, you know, civilization, but it’s heartening to know that occasionally what goes around still comes around.
On an entirely different platform, unpopular edicts heralded down from on high have actually produced consequences. You might remember that at the start of this year, Roblox began requiring facial age checks in order for users to chat with other users. This feature was added under the guise of “safety”—the same drum others like Discord, YouTube, and Instagram have been beating—but such policies just so happen to give companies and the many governments in the US, UK, EU, and Australia pushing for them access to treasure troves of personal data. (Also, they don’t keep kids safe!)
Online anonymity has been a thorn in the side of powerful people since the internet first took over as the primary communications medium of our age, and they’ve been working tirelessly to eliminate what remains of it for years—especially since platforms like TikTok allowed for the spread of anti-Israel sentiment following October 7, 2023. It is no coincidence that the Biden administration proceeded to sign Trump’s proposed TikTok ban into law in 2025, ultimately delivering the app (and all of its data and surveillance capabilities) into the hands of Larry Ellison, a staunch Trump ally and prominent Israel supporter.
Roblox, at least, seems to be suffering a little for its decision to help lead the anti-privacy charge. The company’s own numbers, as highlighted by The Verge, show that daily active users have taken a tumble—from 152 million in Q3 2025, to 144 million at the end of 2025, to 132 million as of its latest earnings report, which came out last week.
This corresponds roughly with the timing of Roblox’s slow age verification rollout, something the company was forced to acknowledge amid otherwise triumphant corpo-speak: “We believe growth was also tempered by greater-than-expected headwinds from our age-check roll out, which restricted on-platform communication for non-age checked users, diluted communication for age-checked users, and slowed new user acquisition,” the company wrote in its earnings report, also blaming Russia’s December 2025 ban of the game for flagging numbers.
Despite how much people clearly hate having their faces scanned—especially considering that companies have proven embarrassingly terrible at keeping our data under lock and key—Roblox plans to continue full speed ahead with age verification, lowering “expectations for topline growth in 2026” as a result. Some things, like spying on children, are just more important than infinite growth.
Recommended
Nicole Carpenter
