Will tech companies and startups continue to have layoffs?

It’s not just early-stage startups that are feeling the burn.

Updated: July 1, 2022 at 3:36 p.m. EDT.

What goes up must come down.

High-flying startups with record valuations, huge hiring goals and ambitious expansion plans are now announcing hiring slowdowns, freezes and in some cases widespread layoffs. It’s the dot-com bust all over again — this time, without the cute sock puppet and in the midst of a global pandemic we just can’t seem to shake.

Founders and investors are preparing for what looks like an economic downturn — and perhaps even a recession. In May, Y Combinator sent an email to its portfolio founders warning them to “plan for the worst.” The startup accelerator cautioned that the downturn would likely most affect “international companies, asset heavy companies, low margin companies, hardtech, and other companies with high burn and long time to revenue."

It’s not just early-stage startups that are feeling the burn. Big tech companies including Meta, Salesforce and Netflix have also recently announced hiring freezes or layoffs in the midst of cost-cutting pressure and rising inflation, coupled with a looming bear market and rising interest rates. Industry stalwarts (Microsoft), upstart social media companies (Snap) and crypto newbies (Coinbase) haven’t announced layoffs, but they’ve all slowed hiring after poor quarterly results. By late May, the S&P 500, dominated by tech stocks, had lost over 20% of its value since the beginning of the year.

On Blind, speculative posts about layoffs like one called “Layoff safe companies that are still hiring?” have drawn hundreds of comments. One user wrote, “No company is lay-off safe. You need to make yourself lay-off safe. Get some seniority and work hard to make yourself irreplaceable. Or at least a strong contributor.”

The bright spot? The tech industry may be under siege, but American job seekers overall still have substantial bargaining power. What we’re seeing in one sector — though a substantial one — stands in stark contrast to the rest of the economy, with U.S. employers adding 428,000 jobs in April, more than expected, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. Average hourly wages are also still continuing to grow (but still below the pace of inflation).

Layoffs range from the small-scale to, in the worst cases, mass layoffs conducted via impersonal video messages that have left employees gutted and the industry questioning, “Are Zoom layoffs ever OK?” In mid-May, former Employment Development Department director Michael Bernick told KTVU that tech layoffs were at their highest point since January 2021, and they’ve come for both the giants and startups. A crowdsourced tech startup layoffs tracker, Layoffs.fyi, recorded 60 tech companies with layoffs in the last month or so, with more than 16,000 employees laid off. Some of the companies that have cut staff in the last few weeks include nutrition startup Noom, on-demand grocery delivery service Getir and fintech company Bolt, according to Layoffs.fyi.

Cybersecurity firm Lacework laid off 20% of its workforce. Though it didn’t disclose the number of people this would affect, the company had previously reported having more than 1,000 employees as of March 2022. Lacework said in a blog post that the decision was part of “restructuring and modification to the company plan." Cybersecurity professionals have been in high demand, with companies like Microsoft announcing plans to help with reskilling efforts to account for the widening gap in jobs and those with the knowledge to fill them.

On-demand grocery app Gorillas cut half its corporate staff, or about 300 employees around the world. In a message to staff, Gorillas co-founder and CEO Kagan Sumer said: "Two months ago in March, the markets turned upside down, and since then the situation has continued to worsen.”

Just weeks after laying off more than 80 employees at its San Jose headquarters, PayPal let go of additional employees in risk management and operations in Chicago, Nebraska and Arizona.

Maju Kuruvilla, the CEO of payments company Bolt, told employees that the company is undergoing “several structural changes,” and cut more than 100 staff members in order to “secure [Bolt’s] financial position” amid shaky market conditions.

Online used car dealer Carvana laid off 2,500 employees, many of them over Zoom. The laid-off employees mostly served in operational roles and made up about 12% of the company’s workforce. Carvana said the decision was due to “macroeconomic factors” that “have pushed automotive retail into recession.”

Several employees at collaboration tool startup Mural were let go, according to LinkedIn posts from affected employees. The exact number of employees laid off was not reported. Leah Taylor, a spokesperson for Mural, told Protocol that staffing reductions were “focused on redundancies.”

Productivity app ClickUp laid off 7% of its staff in an unexpected move. CEO Zeb Evans told Protocol the goal was to ensure ClickUp’s profitability and efficiency in the future, saying it puts the company “in a position to accelerate our timeline to profitability and ultimately achieve our goal of going public.”

"Buy now, pay later" company Klarna laid off 10% of its workforce as it has reportedly been looking for more funding, potentially at a lower valuation. Klarna has about 5,000 employees, according to website. In a prerecorded message to the entire staff, Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said the company set its business plans last year in “a very different world than the one we are in today.”

Celebrity video greetings startup Cameo laid off 87 staff members, affecting some of Cameo’s most senior executives, including CTO Rob Post, top marketing executive Emily Boschwitz, CPO Nundu Janakiram and Chief People Officer Melanie Steinbach. CEO Steven Galanis pointed to pandemic-fueled hiring as a reason for the cuts, as “market conditions have rapidly changed.”

Trading app Robinhood laid off roughly 9% of its full-time workforce. Following a period of "hypergrowth," the company cut down on duplicate roles and job functions as a way to mitigate "more layers and complexity than are optimal," CEO Vlad Tenev said in a blog post. The decision affected roughly 340 Robinhood employees.

Netflix first laid off a number of journalists working for the company’s entertainment site Tudum in late April. Weeks later, the company laid off an additional 150 employees, then cut an additional 300 a month after that. Following the company’s less-than-stellar Q1 earnings report, Netflix CFO Spencer Neumann said that the company would be pulling back on some of its spending to get costs under control.

Enterprise video messaging company Loom laid off 34 employees across product and operations teams, representing 14% of its staff, according to TechCrunch. In a statement, CEO Joe Thomas said that the decision was made in order to ensure that the company is able to "move forward sustainably."

Gemini, the crypto exchange run by brothers Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, is cutting 10% of its staff. Gemini did not disclose how many total jobs were cut, but the company employs just over 1,000 people. The Winklevoss brothers said in a memo to staff that the crypto industry is "in the contraction phase that is settling into a period of stasis."

Cybersecurity firm Cybereason disclosed layoffs affecting 100 employees, or about 10% of its staff, the company told Protocol. Venture-backed Cybereason cited its inability to go public in the near term as the driver for the cutbacks. With the tech IPO market now “essentially closed, companies like us must now exercise more strict financial discipline,” the company said in a statement.

Social media startup IRL laid off around 20 employees, The Information reported. The company is backed by SoftBank, and had around 100 employees prior to layoffs.

Insurtech company Policygenius laid off 25% of its staff, according to TechCrunch. Though the number of affected employees was not confirmed, reportedly 170 were laid off. The company had raised $125 million in Series E funding in March. CEO Jennifer Fitzgerald said in a statement that the "sudden and dramatic shift in the economy has forced us to adapt our strategy."

Tesla is cutting about 10% of salaried workers. Almost 100,000 people work at Tesla and its subsidiaries, according to an SEC filing late last year, meaning 10,000 employees could lose their jobs. Musk told fellow executives he had a "super bad feeling" about the economy, and told CNBC that the company has "become overstaffed in many areas." The layoffs don't apply to anyone "actually building cars," said Musk, and follows the CEO calling both Tesla and SpaceX employees back to the office for 40 hours a week. The company then reportedly laid off around 200 employees on its Autopilot team.

British online used car dealer Cazoo is cutting 15% of its staff amid the rising risk of a recession in the U.K., the company said. Cazoo employs around 3,500 people.

Scooter startup Bird is slashing 23% of its staff, affecting a range of positions from new hires to senior staff. Bird told TechCrunch that "macro economic trends impacting everyone have resulted in an acceleration of our path to profitability." Bird has around 600 employees.

Security software company OneTrust is laying off 25% of its staff, affecting around 950 employees. CEO Kabir Barday said in a blog post the move was a response to the shift in sentiment in the capital markets.

BlockFi is cutting 20% of its staff. The crypto lender said it must respond to a "dramatic shift in macroeconomic conditions worldwide." The company has a head count of around 850, meaning the layoffs will affect roughly 170 staff members.

Coinbase is laying off 18% of its staff "to ensure we stay healthy during this economic downturn," CEO Brian Armstrong said. The company first slowed, then froze hiring and rescinded offers as it looked to "reprioritize our hiring needs against our highest-priority business goals," COO Emilie Choi said. The company later created a database of laid-off employees to help them find new work.

Real estate tech company Redfin is laying off about 470 employees, TechCrunch reported. The company cited low demand for home buying as mortgage interest rates surge.

Real estate company Compass is laying off 10% of its staff, or about 450 people. A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that the staffing cuts are due to "clear signals of slowing economic growth."

Online notarization company Notarize laid off 110 employees, or 25% of staff, the Boston Business Journal reported. The cuts trimmed its workforce down to 325 employees.

Celebrity education tech platform MasterClass cut 20% of its staff, or around 120 employees. The company said the move would "strengthen our position both financially and strategically."

Investment firm Backstage Capital, which funds startups led by underrepresented founders, cut all of its operation staff due to fundraising challenges, according to its founder Arlan Hamilton. The firm cut 75% of its staff, going from a dozen employees to three. It is still seeking to raise a $30 million opportunity fund.

Fintech company Amount, which reached a valuation of more than $1 billion last year, laid off 18% of its workforce. CEO Adam Hughes blamed "the current macro-economic environment." The company did not say the number of employees affected.

Gaming company Niantic cut around 8% of its staff, affecting around 85 to 90 employees. The company also canceled four projects as it is “facing a time of economic turmoil” CEO John Hanke said in an email viewed by Bloomberg.

Newsletter company Substack laid off 13 employees, or roughly 14% of its workforce. CEO Chris Best said in a letter reported by Axios that the company's goal is to survive tough market conditions without "relying on raising money." The cuts were made across HR, support and operations departments.

Game development tools provider Unity laid off more than 200 employees, approximately 4% of its staff. The company said in a statement to Protocol that it "decided to realign some of our resources to better drive focus and support our long-term growth."

Though major companies haven’t had to make drastic cuts, several are slowing down or freezing hiring, citing disappointing earnings and a battered tech sector, but continue to reassure staff that job cuts aren’t imminent. A lot of these hiring slowdowns, like at Microsoft, are contained to specific departments rather than companywide.

Microsoft slowed hiring for its Windows, Office and Teams software groups. The slowdown is specific to those teams, as they've expanded recently. A spokesperson for the company told Bloomberg that Microsoft is “making sure the right resources are aligned to the right opportunity” as the new fiscal year approaches.

Nvidia will slow hiring later this year, the company said in its latest earnings call. Nvidia told Protocol that the move is "to focus our budget on taking care of existing employees as inflation persists.”

Lyft is slowing hiring to focus on critical open roles. President John Zimmer told staff in a memo that the company would be cutting costs in response to "an economic slowdown and the dramatic change in investor sentiment."

After struggling to meet earnings estimates, Snap announced that it would hit the brakes on hiring through the end of the year. Snap CEO Evan Spiegel denied both layoffs and a hiring freeze. The company pointed to a few reasons for the slowdown: rising inflation, rising interest rates, supply chain, the war in Ukraine and Apple’s new ad-tracking policies.

Uber is cutting back on hiring and other costs to address a "seismic shift" in the market, according to an email that CEO Dara Khosrowshahi sent to staff. Khosrowshahi said hiring should be treated as a "privilege,” and that the company would scale back on the "least efficient" marketing and incentive costs.

Per an internal memo, Salesforce slowed hiring and cut back on other expenses, including corporate travel and some upcoming off-sites. The company didn’t provide a reason for the cutbacks. Salesforce’s stock price has plunged almost 50% in the last six months.

Meta is perhaps the biggest company to have announced a hiring freeze for certain roles as it works to control its spending amid an “industry-wide downturn.” Mark Zuckerberg assured employees at an internal all-hands that job cuts aren’t planned. The hiring cutbacks will hit “almost every team across the company" and will last for the rest of the year. On June 30, Zuckerberg reportedly told employees that the company is slashing its hiring goals for engineers by at least 30% this year, and told them to brace for "one of the worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history.”

CEO Parag Agrawal announced in a memo that it would freeze hiring and pull back spending. Two key leaders, Kayvon Beykpour and Bruce Falck left the company. Agrawal said the company made these decisions after struggling to meet audience and revenue growth goals, though the company has faced some internal turmoil amid Elon Musk’s takeover deal. It’s also been reported that Twitter has even started rescinding job offers.

Intel is freezing hiring for at least two weeks in its division responsible for desktop and laptop chips, according to Reuters. The company is "pausing all hiring and placing all job requisitions on hold" for the divisions with the goal of cutting down costs. The company is doing this while it reevaluates its hiring priorities, but all current job offers will be honored.

Spotify CEO Daniel Ek said in an email to employees that it would slow its hiring targets by 25%. Prior to this, CFO Paul Vogel said at the company’s investor day that it is "clearly aware of the increasing uncertainty regarding the global economy" and would evaluate head count in the near term.

This story was updated on May 31, 2022 to correct the audience of Klarna's prerecorded message.

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Nat Rubio-Licht is a Los Angeles-based news writer at Protocol. They graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in newspaper and online journalism in May 2020. Prior to joining the team, they worked at the Los Angeles Business Journal as a technology and aerospace reporter.

Michelle Ma (@himichellema) is a reporter at Protocol, where she writes about management, leadership and workplace issues in tech. Previously, she was a news editor of live journalism and special coverage for The Wall Street Journal. Prior to that, she worked as a staff writer at Wirecutter. She can be reached at mma@protocol.com.

A first-in-the-nation bill would support wave and tidal energy as a way to meet the Garden State's climate goals.

Technological challenges mean wave and tidal power remain generally more expensive than their other renewable counterparts. But government support could help spur more innovation that brings down cost.

Lisa Martine Jenkins is a senior reporter at Protocol covering climate. Lisa previously wrote for Morning Consult, Chemical Watch and the Associated Press. Lisa is currently based in Brooklyn, and is originally from the Bay Area. Find her on Twitter ( @l_m_j_) or reach out via email (ljenkins@protocol.com).

Move over, solar and wind. There’s a new kid on the renewable energy block: waves and tides.

Harnessing the ocean’s power is still in its early stages, but the industry is poised for a big legislative boost, with the potential for real investment down the line.

A New Jersey bill introduced this week would make the state the first in the U.S. to throw government support behind ocean energy. It would direct the state’s utility board to both initiate a study of generating power from waves and tides (they’re different, but more on that in a second), and simultaneously support ocean energy pilot projects. The bill isn’t just focused on studies and pilots, though; it calls for the board to produce a plan for deploying these technologies and potentially offering financial incentives as well.

The bill doesn’t provide funds for the fledgling technology at this point, but the state’s 2023 budget — signed into law Thursday — includes $500,000 dedicated to a feasibility study and pilot program for ocean-based energy, opening the door for New Jersey to continue to ride the wave energy … wave.

With the legislation, “New Jersey serves as a model to all states seeking to bring new forms of renewable energy into the future,” said Democrat Assemblyman Robert Karabinchak, who introduced the bill. The state has set a 2050 net zero goal, and Karabinchak said that wave and tidal energy could help make progress toward that North Star.

There’s a subtle difference between tidal and wave energy. In broad strokes, the former uses the push and pull of the tides themselves to push a paddle or spin a turbine and convert its flow into electricity, while wave energy relies upon the thrust of often-unpredictable surface waves to do so.

According to the Energy Information Administration, waves off the coast of the country are churning out 2.64 trillion kilowatt hours of untapped energy. That’s equivalent to 66% of U.S. electricity generation in 2020.

Wave energy has been around as a concept since 1799, when Pierre-Simon Girard filed a patent in his native France for using the waves “like motors” for simple machines like pumps. Modern wave energy converter technology, however, didn’t see its debut until the 1940s, when Japanese navy commander Yoshio Masuda created a wave-fueled navigation buoy that was ultimately sold commercially in the 1960s. Yet despite early work and the promise of abundant energy, the ocean presents challenges and surprises that have made it hard to tap.

“The problem is that these converters have to operate in very harsh environments,” said Muhammad Hajj, chair of the civil, environmental and ocean engineering department at the Stevens Institute. “You could design something to harness the energy of a 3-meter wave … but if the wave height becomes 8 meters, how will it respond?”

These technological challenges mean wave and tidal power remain generally more expensive than their other renewable counterparts. But government support could help spur more innovation that brings down costs.

The New Jersey legislation would provide a path to include the nascent ocean-based energy technologies in the state’s energy master plan, released once per decade. The 2019 installment pushed for the state to develop renewable technologies such as offshore wind, solar and storage, but made no mention of ocean power.

While the bill’s fate is anything but certain, the mere fact of its existence is encouraging to Inna Braverman, founder and CEO of Eco Wave Power. Her company has developed technology that converts wave power to electricity directly at breakwaters.

“I really believe that not only [will it] enable us to implement projects in New Jersey, which has amazing wave conditions, but also other states will follow,” she told Protocol.

Both Braverman and Hajj testified at a New Jersey Assembly committee hearing on the topic back in March, where Braverman characterized the response from both sides of the aisle as enthusiastic.

Various companies have tried to harvest energy from waves in recent years, but most have yet to succeed. That includes the high-profile failure of Ocean Power in 2014, which dealt with cost overruns and other challenges.That’s meant that waves have lagged behind both wind and the sun for generating electricity. Braverman attributes some of these to the fact that early efforts were far offshore.

“Not only is it expensive to install offshore, but … you get waves with a height of 20 meters. And no man-made stationary equipment can really withstand the load of a 20-meter wave height,” Braverman said. It became difficult to fund and insure these earlier projects, not to mention build the transmission lines to connect them to the grid.

In contrast, Eco Wave Power connects its technology to existing man-made structures — piers, breakwaters, jetties and other marine structures — in order to keep overall construction costs low and avoid the practical pitfalls of the open ocean. The company has two operational projects, one at the Port of Gibraltar and one in Israel, and several more in the pipeline.

Today, Eco Wave Power is focused primarily on the U.S. and European markets, Braverman said, which differ in large part because Europe already has regulations and legislation in place that enable the easy entrance of new wave projects while the U.S. does not — yet.

“We really need to introduce new renewable energy sources in order to really be able to get to net zero carbon emissions by 2050,” she said. “And I truly believe that wave energy can be the solution for that. New Jersey is just the start.”

Lisa Martine Jenkins is a senior reporter at Protocol covering climate. Lisa previously wrote for Morning Consult, Chemical Watch and the Associated Press. Lisa is currently based in Brooklyn, and is originally from the Bay Area. Find her on Twitter ( @l_m_j_) or reach out via email (ljenkins@protocol.com).

Every day, millions of us press the “order” button on our favorite coffee store's mobile application: Our chosen brew will be on the counter when we arrive. It’s a personalized, seamless experience that we have all come to expect. What we don’t know is what’s happening behind the scenes. The mobile application is sourcing data from a database that stores information about each customer and what their favorite coffee drinks are. It is also leveraging event-streaming data in real time to ensure the ingredients for your personal coffee are in supply at your local store.

Applications like this power our daily lives, and if they can’t access massive amounts of data stored in a database as well as stream data “in motion” instantaneously, you — and millions of customers — won’t have these in-the-moment experiences.

“Customers demand these real-time experiences, and companies that fail to meet those expectations risk falling behind,” said Chet Kapoor, chairman and CEO at DataStax, a technology company that helps businesses deliver real-time data at scale. “We live in a time where real-time applications are the engines of innovation and economic growth.”

In my conversation with Kapoor, he shared his perspective on why every business must embrace real-time data today.

Companies that don’t harness real-time data risk becoming irrelevant

While the concept of utilizing real-time data is not new, the urgency to do so is. Digital leaders — those at the forefront of building a data-driven business — are effectively capturing and processing data in real time, and then using it to deliver instantaneous experiences. Customers not only expect these digital experiences; they are increasingly demanding them from every business.

McKinsey & Company supports this view. According to a recent McKinsey report, “The Data-Driven Enterprise of 2025,” real-time data is key to success. It listed the following characteristics of top data-driven enterprises:

However, McKinsey & Company also reported that only a fraction of the amount of data from connected devices is processed in real time. The report found common roadblocks include legacy software, the challenges of adopting modern architecture and high computational demands.

“The great news is that technology has advanced to the point where real-time applications are now possible — not only for the largest organizations, but every organization,” said Kapoor. “And those who can’t deliver these experiences risk becoming irrelevant.”

Real-time technology is finally here — and it just works

Constant innovation is what solves today’s business problems. Leading enterprises prioritize giving their developers the tools and data that inspire them to innovate and do what they do best: Build the applications that improve our lives.

“Software developers are on the front lines, and their mission is to bring modern applications to life,” said Kapoor. “The good news is, the technology to build real-time applications is here; it’s easy and affordable. We’re enabling developers to do what they do best: build.”

Kapoor said that spurring developer creativity is one of the many reasons he’s excited about DataStax’s open data stack for real-time applications. Available on any cloud, DataStax delivers both a massively scalable database — Astra DB — and advanced streaming technology, Astra Streaming. Together, Astra DB and Astra Streaming provide developers with a stack that mobilizes all enterprise data to build powerful real-time applications.

“Astra DB brings the power and scale of Apache Cassandra to every developer. It uses simple developer APIs and works with developers’ favorite tools and languages, so developers can focus on what they do best — building real-time, high-growth applications that drive change,” said Kapoor.

Kapoor is also enthusiastic about the company’s event streaming and messaging technology Astra Streaming, built on the advanced Apache Pulsar open-source software. As the only streaming service that can easily turn existing messaging data into real-time data, Astra Streaming can give many types of data real-time value.

“An open stack with Astra Streaming and Astra DB enables enterprises to activate all real-time data — it just works,” he said.

Real-time data drives real change

Many of the challenges facing our world today are increasingly complex and critical, such as climate change, talent shortages and supply chain disruptions. Solving these problems requires analyzing large data sets, quickly. Additionally, organizations must use data to predict future issues and then determine the most effective solution. According to Kapoor, activating data in real time can be a powerful way to help organizations create the innovations needed to overcome both big and small challenges. In fact, new business models are being forged on the back of real-time data all the time.

As an example, a DataStax customer and AI-based irrigation company that made the Time Best Inventions list uses real-time data to conserve water while improving farmers’ outcomes. By using IoT devices sitting on or near the crops, the system sends data to the cloud, which then triggers alerts based on the data analytics. If fruit on the vine is at risk for spoiling, the system notifies the farmer to harvest the crops to reduce loss. The technology also helps farmers manage water resources, prevent plant stress, improve production and maximize crop potential — all in real time.

The Gartner report "Innovation Insight for Streaming Data in Motion: The Collision of Messaging, Analytics and DBMS”, explored opportunities for organizations to use event streaming for diverse business purposes. For example, “traffic, weather and vehicle telemetry streams enable trucking companies, railroads, airlines, shipping companies, car ride services and other transportation operators to monitor and manage fleet movements.” According to Gartner, "Large organizations already have copious amounts of streaming data in motion, but many fail to use it effectively. Data and analytics leaders must adopt recent advances in stream analytics, event broker messaging and data management technology to implement real-time systems with more business value.”

Kapoor observed that when we use data in real time, customers and companies get smarter together.

“Everyone succeeds by delivering more value, faster. We are all on a journey toward doing this. The only question is whether companies will be ahead of the curve — or playing catch-up,” he said. “Today, you’re either real time or you’re out of time.”

Learn more about DataStax’s open data stack for real-time applications here.

Don’t know what to do this weekend? We’ve got you covered.

Here are our picks for your long weekend.

Nick Statt is Protocol's video game reporter. Prior to joining Protocol, he was news editor at The Verge covering the gaming industry, mobile apps and antitrust out of San Francisco, in addition to managing coverage of Silicon Valley tech giants and startups. He now resides in Rochester, New York, home of the garbage plate and, completely coincidentally, the World Video Game Hall of Fame. He can be reached at nstatt@protocol.com.

Kick off your long weekend with an extra-long two-part “Stranger Things” finale; a deep dive into the deckbuilding games like Magic: The Gathering; and Neon White, which mashes up several genres, including a dating sim.

The finale of Stranger Things’ fourth season debuts today, bringing an end to the show’s most horror-filled and grave storyline to date. Though this volume is billed as a second part to the show’s fourth installment, it is in fact two extra-long additions tacked onto a season already filled with hour-plus episodes. The first will be 85 minutes, and the second is roughly 2.5 hours long. That’s a lot of “Stranger Things” to tide you over this holiday weekend. I’m hoping for a happy ending, though given the tone so far, it sure seems like “Stranger Things Vol. 2” might have its fair share of tragedy, too.

Neon White is best described by its inexplicable mashup of genres. It is one part speedrun-friendly parkour game, one part first-person shooter disguised as a deckbuilder and one part … dating sim. The resulting combination somehow works wonderfully, creating a high-octane action platformer that dares you to try to beat your high scores by striving for near-perfect runs. Between the action, you chat with NPCs and can even romance other characters, sending this bizarre gaming concoction to a totally unnecessary but hilarious new height.

The surprising combination of two of the most influential video game genres into the so-called roguelike deckbuilder has, against all odds, inspired a massive and enduring movement in the indie game community. In a great new report for The Verge, writer Lewis Gordon spoke to early pioneers like Magic: The Gathering creator Richard Garfield, Slay the Spire designer Anthony Giovannetti and Signs of the Sojourner maker Dyala Kattan-Wright about the evolution of card games and procedural design, and why so many breakout Steam hits these days are incorporating elements of the genre.

A Coen Brothers take on Macbeth ends up being a lot more interesting than it sounds, thanks in part to the noted absence of Ethan Coen. Directed by Joel Coen, in his solo directorial debut, this monochrome and rather faithful adaptation of the classic Shakespeare tale is a big departure from the duo’s typical dark humor-infused Americana, featuring a legendary performance by Denzel Washington as the title character. The A24 film was released last year in a limited theatrical run; it picked up three Oscar nominations, and landed on Apple TV+ back in January.

A version of this story also appeared in today’s Entertainment newsletter; subscribe here.

Nick Statt is Protocol's video game reporter. Prior to joining Protocol, he was news editor at The Verge covering the gaming industry, mobile apps and antitrust out of San Francisco, in addition to managing coverage of Silicon Valley tech giants and startups. He now resides in Rochester, New York, home of the garbage plate and, completely coincidentally, the World Video Game Hall of Fame. He can be reached at nstatt@protocol.com.

Leverage helped mining operations expand as they borrowed against their hardware or the crypto it generated.

Dropping crypto prices have upended the economics of mining.

Tomio Geron ( @tomiogeron) is a San Francisco-based reporter covering fintech. He was previously a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, covering venture capital and startups. Before that, he worked as a staff writer at Forbes, covering social media and venture capital, and also edited the Midas List of top tech investors. He has also worked at newspapers covering crime, courts, health and other topics. He can be reached at tgeron@protocol.com or tgeron@protonmail.com.

As bitcoin boomed, crypto mining seemed almost like printing money. But in reality, miners have always had to juggle the cost of hardware, electricity and operations against the tokens their work yielded. Often miners held onto their crypto, betting it would appreciate, or borrowed against it to buy more mining rigs. Now all those bills are coming due: The industry has accumulated as much as $4 billion in debt, according to some estimates.

The crypto boom encouraged excess. “The approach was get rich quick, build it big, build it fast, use leverage. Do it now,” said Andrew Webber, founder and CEO at crypto mining service provider Digital Power Optimization.

Bitcoin miners are HODLers by nature. Many preferred to hold most of the bitcoin they generated, selling just what they needed to pay employees or other suppliers, because they believed it would go up in value.

Everything in this crypto market comes back to leverage. While miners are typically borrowing to operate, not speculate, debt is still a key part of the business.

Are defaults coming? As the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has fallen, so has the value of mining hardware. This could be forcing some to decide whether it’s worth making payments, Webber said. “I expect there's gonna be some meaningful distress and likely some liquidation or consolidation across the space.” It wouldn’t be the first time a rush for money turned to bust.

Tomio Geron ( @tomiogeron) is a San Francisco-based reporter covering fintech. He was previously a reporter and editor at The Wall Street Journal, covering venture capital and startups. Before that, he worked as a staff writer at Forbes, covering social media and venture capital, and also edited the Midas List of top tech investors. He has also worked at newspapers covering crime, courts, health and other topics. He can be reached at tgeron@protocol.com or tgeron@protonmail.com.

Prescription drug ads are all over TikTok, Facebook and Instagram. As the potential harms become clear, why haven’t the companies updated their advertising policies?

Even as providers like Cerebral draw federal attention, Meta’s and TikTok’s advertising policies still allow telehealth providers to turbocharge their marketing efforts.

Hirsh Chitkara ( @HirshChitkara) is a reporter at Protocol focused on the intersection of politics, technology and society. Before joining Protocol, he helped write a daily newsletter at Insider that covered all things Big Tech. He's based in New York and can be reached at hchitkara@protocol.com.

In the United States, prescription drug advertisements are as commonplace as drive-thru lanes and Pete Davidson relationship updates. We’re told every day — often multiple times a day — to ask our doctor if some new medication is right for us. Saturday Night Live has for decades parodied the breathless parade of side effect warnings tacked onto drug commercials. Here in New York, even our subway swipes are subsidized by advertisements that deliver the good news: We can last longer in bed and keep our hair, if only we turn to the latest VC-backed telehealth service.

The U.S. is almost alone in embracing direct-to-consumer prescription drug advertisements. Nations as disparate as Saudi Arabia, France and China all find common ground in banning such ads. In fact, of all developed nations, only New Zealand joins the U.S. in giving pharmaceutical companies a direct line to consumers.

As it so happens, Americans are also highly medicated. A Mayo Clinic study from 2013 found that nearly 70% of Americans regularly took at least one prescription drug. Nearly half the population took at least two, and more than 20% of Americans took five or more. The researchers identified prescription drug abuse as the “fastest-growing drug problem” in the U.S. They also found prescription rates had increased significantly over that preceding decade.

Given the continuity of these trends, it would be easy to overlook a new factor in the equation: social media. Telehealth services have spent millions of dollars promoting prescription drugs on TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. They play on users' insecurities, describing symptoms as vague as “stress” and “losing track of time.” Mood-altering medications such as SSRIs are sold as having straightforward benefits, with companies promising those suffering from depression and loneliness that 80% of customers feel better with treatment.

One major telehealth provider, Cerebral, is now under investigation by the Department of Justice over possible violations of the Controlled Substances Act. Nurse practitioners working for Cerebral said they felt pressure to see dozens of patients a day and push prescriptions, according to reports from Insider, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg. (A Cerebral spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal they encourage clinicians not to rush diagnoses and provide time beyond 30 minutes if needed.)

Even as providers like Cerebral draw federal attention, Meta’s and TikTok’s advertising policies still allow telehealth providers to turbocharge their marketing efforts, enticing many patients to start treatments they may regret. As one Cerebral patient told Protocol, “On principle, I want to shout from the mountaintops so no one else falls into their nonsense.”

Both Meta and TikTok allow telehealth providers to promote prescription drugs to users ages 18 and up in the U.S. and New Zealand. Both companies make a distinction between promoting prescription medication, which is allowed, and direct drug sales, which are not. Meta and TikTok work with third-party compliance companies such as LegitScript to approve telehealth providers. Advertisements must also comply with any other relevant platform rules — for example, both platforms prohibit ads for weight loss treatments.

When asked for comment, spokespeople from Meta and TikTok referred Protocol to their respective advertising and community guidelines. (Meta’s policies are available here and here, and TikTok’s are here, here and here.) After being contacted by Protocol, Meta also removed three advertisements from its sites for violating its policies.

Meta and TikTok also say ads cannot contain misleading or inaccurate claims. However, medical experts said advertisements on their platforms do exactly that. On several prior occasions, the companies pulled certain pharmaceutical ads only after the media brought policy violations to their attention. And despite the high stakes involved in promoting medication, both companies rely in large part on automated ad verification systems, which can be prone to error.

Telehealth provider Done, for example, promoted a TikTok ad that describes how being “spacey, forgetful, or chatty” can be a symptom of ADHD. Another Done ad warned symptoms of ADHD in women “are often viewed as character traits rather than symptoms.” In an active ad campaign on Meta, Done promises gaining access to “worry-free refills” is “as easy as” taking a one-minute assessment, followed by a 30-minute appointment available as soon as the next day. (Many of the ad campaigns referenced in this article come from Meta rather than from TikTok because, to Meta’s credit, it has a transparency tool for archiving ad campaigns.)

Ads that generalize ADHD symptoms could violate Meta’s and TikTok’s own policies on misleading consumers, as nonprofit research organization Media Matters points out.

“I think this is really playing on people’s insecurities,” Dr. Kevin Martin Antshel, a psychology professor at Syracuse University who specializes in ADHD, told Protocol. Dr. Antshel noted that ADHD in adults often co-occurs with other psychological disorders such as anxiety and depression. He expressed concern that ads from telehealth providers were leading people to believe ADHD could be treated with stimulants alone, which he said is almost never the case.

Telehealth providers also seem to play on users’ insecurities when promoting erectile dysfunction medication. On Instagram, a recently removed ad campaign from Hims depicted a man asking himself, “What if it happens again today? What if I can’t get it up?” Another of its ads, which was active as of June 26 but has since been removed, shows a couple in bed with text overlaid: “POV: There’s a gorgeous woman in your bed. But you have ED & can’t get it up.” Some of the videos instruct users to “take the quiz” — a rather casual euphemism for kicking off a process that could lead to a medical diagnosis — next to a picture of someone holding a pill.

Meta has touted Roman, one of the telehealth providers that sells ED medication, as a “success story” that could serve as a case study for marketers. Meta’s case study details how Roman was able to double its sales and click-through rate on an ad campaign that promoted testosterone supplements between mid-September and mid-November 2019. Roman was among the top 10 mobile advertising spenders on Facebook that year, as were Pfizer, Allergan and Merck.

Active ad campaigns from Hims entice customers with simple solutions for treating anxiety and depression. One advertisement — which directs users to a page offering generic versions of SSRIs Prozac and Zoloft — tells viewers that “80% of customers feel better with treatment.”

Such straightforward promises don’t always align with patient experiences. One Cerebral patient described suffering severe withdrawal symptoms after being unable to schedule a refill appointment through the company. “I would fret for days over collecting my meds. I would become sick and incapable when they’d miss the refill,” the person told Protocol.

“I find myself constantly pushing [Cerebral] on people because if they use my reference code I can get a $200-off credit,” another Cerebral patient told Protocol.

A campaign from Cerebral that was active as recently as June 26 told viewers they can “overcome opioid use 100% online.” That ad, which featured a large icon of a prescription container, linked to a landing page that said “reduce cravings with medications like Suboxone.”

“It's not ideal,” Jeffrey Scherrer, an associate professor at Saint Louis University who researches opioid use, told Protocol. “But it's certainly a second option for people who otherwise wouldn't even consider seeking care — because I think it offers a little bit more privacy and reduces, for those in rural areas, the need to drive long distances to reach a provider.”

It’s hard to imagine we’d ever think of the “good old days” for drug advertising as when gray-haired men were suggestively throwing footballs through tire swings between news segments on the Iraq War — yet here we are.

In the television era, regulators faced a simpler task. To start, there were only so many ad slots to fill, which limited the pool of companies that could reasonably afford to buy air time. (Devoted NFL fans can list the blue-chip advertisers by heart.) Broadcast and cable channels could review what went in their slots, and the FCC could feasibly monitor ads on the hundred-or-so cable channels beamed into American living rooms.

Social media advertisements operate at a scale that would have been unfathomable in the television era. Meta hosted over 10 million advertisers on its platform last year. In the fourth quarter of 2021 alone, TikTok removed 3.2 million ads from its platform due to policy infringements.

Social media platforms also allow for more precise targeting. A 2021 investigation from The Markup found that Meta allowed drug manufacturers to target potential patients granularly based on proxy categories. For example, an advertisement promoting a drug used for inflammatory lung disease was aimed at users interested in cigarettes. Similarly, advertisements promoting antipsychotic medication targeted users interested in therapy. Those categories allowed for targeting even though Meta says ad rankings can’t be informed by medical conditions or psychological states.

Age verification poses another significant problem. Meta and TikTok both only allow prescription drug advertisements to be shown to users above the age of 18. But their age verification systems have loopholes that could still let ads slip through to children.

Some prescription drug campaigns seem tailored for younger audiences. A Done ad that ran on Instagram as recently as June 26, but has since been taken down, depicts a young woman telling her mom and dad, “I think I may have ADHD.” The mom in the skit responds, “You’re probably fine — you’ll always be my baby.” The dad advises, “Why don’t you go to the gym and sweat it out.” But the skit concludes with the young woman deciding to ignore her parents and instead take a one-minute assessment from Done.

The other open and troubling question is whether social media worsens users’ mental health, which could make these advertisements more appealing. In leaked internal documents from Facebook, researchers wrote that “teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression.” Mark Zuckerberg told Congress those research findings were inconclusive.

“If [social media users] are displaying symptoms of pain, despair, depression, hardship [and] loneliness, then what sort of adverts would you expect to be targeted in those situations?” Professor Victoria Nash, director of the Oxford Internet Institute, asked Protocol. “I wouldn’t be surprised that in a more unregulated context — which I think the U.S. probably is — that this is where you would see prescription drugs being targeted.”

High-frequency digital activities — like scrolling through social media — are so out of sync with the pace of ordinary life that people come to feel more distractible when they aren’t online, according to Antshel. He said social media is “in a sense conditioning people to want this kind of rapid operational speed, constant mental stimulation.” When that stimulation isn’t available in a domain such as the classroom, people are more likely to notice their distractibility, he explained.

Still, Antshel wasn’t ready to call for a ban on prescription drug advertising. He pointed to benefits from drug ads, including reaching people who lack information and access to treatments. “So knowing what to talk about with the primary care physician, I think, could potentially be a good thing. But I can also tell you that I routinely see patients coming in [and] telling me what type of medication they want [and] what type of dose they want.” The issue, he said, is that “we're taking the direct-to-consumer advertising to an extent where it really is creating the potential for harm.”

Hirsh Chitkara ( @HirshChitkara) is a reporter at Protocol focused on the intersection of politics, technology and society. Before joining Protocol, he helped write a daily newsletter at Insider that covered all things Big Tech. He's based in New York and can be reached at hchitkara@protocol.com.

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