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Good morning. Turns out, Facebook's big announcement wasn't even the most interesting development of the day. This newsletter is like a Thanksgiving feast of business news, so dive in and save a little room for a puzzle dessert.
Markets: Oil prices fell for the sixth-straight day to their lowest level since May over concerns of slowing global economic growth. Case in point: Goldman Sachs just slashed its Q3 GDP forecast for the US due to the recent Delta wave having a bigger-than-expected impact on the economy.
Covid: American deaths from Covid-19 are at their highest levels since February. In some states, hospital beds are extremely scarce—ICU beds are full in Alabama and above 90% capacity in Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, and Texas. The good news is that more than 1 million Americans received a Covid-19 vaccine dose on Thursday, the first time we hit that number in almost 7 weeks.
OnlyFans, the adult entertainment platform we wrote about earlier this week for launching a parent-approved app, made a bigger, shocking move away from porn yesterday.
Starting in October, it's banning users from posting sexually explicit content. Creators will still be allowed to post nude photos and videos, but under new content guidelines that haven't been released yet.
What changed?
OnlyFans said the reason for shutting down sexually explicit content was "to comply with the requests of our banking partners and payout providers," aka it was feeling the heat from the likes of Visa and Mastercard, which don't want their services used for potentially illegal material.
Financial challenges did seem to be mounting. An Axios article published just hours before the announcement revealed that OnlyFans was having trouble attracting investors because they don't want to be associated with its adult content.
"Any other company with growth like OnlyFans would be able to raise big money in a matter of minutes," Axios's Dan Primack wrote.
The BBC provided another perspective. The news organization said that leaked documents showed that OnlyFans moderators sometimes allowed illegal content, such as child pornography, to slip by—and moderators were sometimes directed not to shut down successful accounts even if they broke the law.
The BBC said it approached OnlyFans with the leaked documents, implying that these allegations were linked to yesterday's ban.
The fallout
OnlyFans will need to find itself a new content strategy, considering it just blew up the one that it relies on currently. But the impact might be most keenly felt by the more than 2 million creators who have built businesses on its platform.
Those creators have earned more than $5 billion since the company started in 2016, per OnlyFans.
Around 16,000 earn at least $50,000 annually, and more than 300 earn at least $1 million.
Looking ahead...expect other adult entertainment platforms to crop up and try to dethrone a wounded OnlyFans. Many also think the crypto sector could seize the opportunity, since the industry operates outside the scope of traditional payment providers. — NF
Facebook launched a private beta of its "Workrooms" app yesterday, which allows users to attend meetings with their coworkers in a digital shared space by using VR headsets. This is our first glimpse at Mark Zuckerberg's vision of the "metaverse," or as he calls it, the "embodied internet."
What does it look like?
Well, it's more like "disembodied internet" because the avatars don't have legs, but when you step foot float into Workrooms, your coworkers' avatars will join you at a virtual meeting table. Synced-up hand gestures, interactive white boards, and spatial audio help make the experience feel more realistic.
Zoom out: Workrooms is one part of a larger VR experience called Horizon that Facebook originally planned to launch last year. But because a true "metaverse" in the Wreck-It Ralph sense would involve lots of unique, interconnected experiences (Workrooms being just one), Facebook's currently working on tools that will allow creators to help build it out.
Bad timing? Or maybe clever timing?Facebook's announcement came right before the FTC refiled a lawsuit yesterday alleging the company has a "monopoly" on social networking. – JW
The semiconductor shortage is like that bad TV show you haven't watched in years...but somehow it's still on the air.
This week's episode is the worst yet: Toyota said yesterday it was cutting auto production in Japan by 40% next month because it doesn't have enough chips to put in its vehicles.
And because every bad episode has a few bad subplots, other automakers like GM, Ford, Stellantis, and VW said this week they're likely cutting production soon due to the lack of chips.
The backstory: The chip shortage stems from last spring, when automakers cut back on their orders during those uncertain days and failed to foresee the surge in demand for cars that would be coming just a few months later.
The chip situation was supposed to get better in the latter half of 2021, but the "my fall plans // the Delta variant" meme says it all. Recent Covid-19 outbreaks in Southeast Asian manufacturing hubs mean the chip shortage could hamstring auto production into 2022. – NF
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Stat: Among its many indirect effects, Covid-19 has led to a startup boom in the US. The number of applications to start new businesses in the US grew 24% last year to 4.3 million, the highest on record by far. That's helping to reverse what had been a 40-year decline in US entrepreneurship.
Quote: "Anyone who has tequila right now is selling it at the price of gold."
That's how one Mexican agave producer described the tequila boom to the LA Times. And what a boom it is: Thanks to a surge in brands started by celebrities—including The Rock, Nick Jonas, and the OG tequila influencer, George Clooney—Mexico is producing 800% more tequila than it did 20 years ago.
Read: On the rise and fall of emotional support animals. (Year Zero)
Amazon is like that monster from horror movies that kills its victims then assumes their identity. The company is planning to open several large brick-and-mortar retail locations in the US that resemble department stores, the WSJ reports.
The physical stores will mostly sell clothing, household items, and electronics. Amazon execs hope these locations will allow them to collect even more data about their customers, from how long you spend comparing two smart speakers to your physical path to the register.
The backstory: After opening its first brick-and-mortar bookstore in Seattle in 2015, Amazon has expanded its physical footprint to grocery and cashierless convenience stores.
Apparel is the next category it hopes to conquer. Already, the company has surpassed Walmart to become the largest seller of clothing in the US, and it topped $41 billion in apparel sales last year, per Wells Fargo.
Zoom out: Despite being crowned a pandemic winner by virtually every pundit, Amazon's stock hasn't reflected its recent success, tumbling nearly 14% since early July. – SQ
A man who claimed to have a bomb in his pickup truck near the Capitol is in custody after an hourslong standoff with the police. Several government buildings in the area were evacuated.
End of an era: MLB is ending its 70-year relationship with Topps for baseball cards after it struck a deal with Fanatics.
How Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are handling the Taliban.
The FAA has proposed more than $1 million in fines for unruly airplane passengers so far this year.
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Follow Friday: 1)Barbara Corcoran's TikTok is a national treasure and 2) TikToker Tom Cruz is going viral for Forbes-ranking his wealthiest friends...if you want to form an opinion on that.
Buying bitcoin without buying bitcoin: We put together a list of six different ways to expose your portfolio to bitcoin without actually buying the crypto itself. Read it here.
Today's Friday Puzzle is dedicated to Maki Kaji, the inventor of the Sudoku puzzle, who died this week at 69. Thank you for bringing the joy of puzzles to the world, Mr. Kaji.
See if you can solve this Sudoku-type game: Fill the grid with the numbers from 1 to 4 such that no number appears more than once in each row or column, and that the numbers in each of the two regions add to the same sum.
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