Frontier AI Labs with Wil Waldon
Aug 6, 2026 · 30 min · 17 segments
Disney reported higher revenue, stronger streaming profits, and continued momentum from its parks and cruise business. Then it added an unexpected twist: a new partnership with TikTok designed to…
They are taking an infrastructure built entirely on premium, highly controlled intellectual property and just, you know, deciding to open its gates to vertical user-generated content.
You open the application, and instead of just the traditional hundred million dollar movies and the heavily vetted television series, there's just a pipeline for social media clips.
You log in expecting a highly polished cinematic feature, something that took thousands of people years to render and produce, and you are presented with social media clips.
Oh.
The historical posture of this specific company is absolute control over its characters, its stories, the entire user experience.
Yeah, completely locked down.
So allowing independent fan creators to exist inside that walled garden, it alters the core value proposition.
I mean, if a subscriber is paying for exclusive access to a certain tier of quality, introducing a format they can scroll through for free on their phone, it changes the relationship between the user and the platform.
And the specific intellectual properties they are feeding into this pilot program are their most protected assets.
These user-created videos are gonna live in a dedicated section on the platform they are calling Verts.
If you're not subscribed yet, take a second and hit follow on whatever podcast app you're using.
Helps us keep making this.
We appreciate you being here.
So you have the traditional horizontal movie player, the grid of movie posters, and now this separate silo explicitly designed for vertical scrolling.
Yeah.
The decision to brand it Verts indicates this is a promoted standalone experience.
It's competing for attention right alongside the theatrical releases.
They are taking characters that usually require, you know, a board of directors to approve a script change and handing them over to opt-in creators.
They are taking an infrastructure built entirely on premium, highly controlled intellectual property and just, you know, deciding to open its gates to vertical user-generated content.
You open the application, and instead of just the traditional hundred million dollar movies and the heavily vetted television series, there's just a pipeline for social media clips.
You log in expecting a highly polished cinematic feature, something that took thousands of people years to render and produce, and you are presented with social media clips.
Oh.
The historical posture of this specific company is absolute control over its characters, its stories, the entire user experience.
Yeah, completely locked down.
So allowing independent fan creators to exist inside that walled garden, it alters the core value proposition.
I mean, if a subscriber is paying for exclusive access to a certain tier of quality, introducing a format they can scroll through for free on their phone, it changes the relationship between the user and the platform.
And the specific intellectual properties they are feeding into this pilot program are their most protected assets.
These user-created videos are gonna live in a dedicated section on the platform they are calling Verts.
If you're not subscribed yet, take a second and hit follow on whatever podcast app you're using.
Helps us keep making this.
We appreciate you being here.
So you have the traditional horizontal movie player, the grid of movie posters, and now this separate silo explicitly designed for vertical scrolling.
Yeah.
The decision to brand it Verts indicates this is a promoted standalone experience.
It's competing for attention right alongside the theatrical releases.
They are taking characters that usually require, you know, a board of directors to approve a script change and handing them over to opt-in creators.
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