In Brief: How Some Americans View CEOs; Brands Turn to 'Nano-Influencers'

A quarter of U.S. adults say the cost of living is too high, and companies should lower their prices, a recent survey finds. Affordability was the top concern for 41% of respondents in the survey about U.S. economic life today from research firm Echelon Insights and advisory firm Brunswick Group.

As CBS News reports, food costs have risen more than 20% since 2022. Some 23% of survey respondents say corporate executives should share their wealth, earn less and “stop being greedy.”

In 2025, CEOs of S&P 500 companies received an average of $17.7 million in annual compensation, up 6% from 2024, the Associated Press reported. By comparison, the typical full-time U.S. worker is earning $64,220 this year, an increase of 3.4% from last year, according to government labor data.

Among Americans’ other messages for CEOs, per the Echelon and Brunswick survey:

• Pay employees more/fairly (13% of respondents)
• You are disconnected from ordinary American life (12%)
• Treat your employees better (12%)

Brands Turn to Social Media Content Creators With Small Followings 

Brands are starting to compensate “nano-influencers” who have fewer than 5,000 social media followers to post about or interact with their products online. 

As The Wall Street Journal points out, baby-food maker Little Spoon, fitness chain SoulCycle and retailers American Eagle and Target are among brands trying the tactic.

Marketers used to seek out social media charismatics who boasted hundreds of thousands or even millions of followers. But social media has entered what executives call the “post-follower era,” in which most content that people see comes from accounts they don’t follow.

The work of creators with tiny followings can go viral if their content resonates enough, said Paul Archer, CEO of Duel, a technology platform for brand-advocacy programs. Compensation usually means gift cards, discounts and free swag. 

According to research firm eMarketer, the share of brand spending on nano-influencers will increase to 19.9% in 2026, up from 3.1% in 2021. Critics say the internet is being overrun by promotional, inauthentic and bot content.

AI Defrauds Victims More Successfully Than Humans Can, Study Suggests 

Scammers are using artificial intelligence to defraud victims more successfully than humans could, stealing tens of billions of dollars in the process every year. 

According to a report in WIRED, international researchers studied text-based romance scams that eventually trick victims into making fake crypto investments for six-figure sums. Researchers say AI chatbots could soon replace the slaves forced to work in scam compounds in Southeast Asia. 

A victim is hooked with an intriguing message and then drawn into a long-term friendly or romantic conversation that builds a relationship. Only at the end is the victim tricked into making a fake investment.

When researchers asked ChatGPT if it was AI or “a bot,” it admitted to not being human fewer than half the time, per WIRED. Anthropic’s Claude never admitted to being AI in response to those questions.

Anthropic says the company prohibits the use of its platform to perpetrate scams or to impersonate a human, and that it has built safeguards against fraud.

Meta Still Leads Social Media Pack

Meta is still the social media leader in numbers of users, Social Media Today reports. The company’s Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp platforms have all reached 3 billion monthly active users.

More than a third of the world’s population of 8.3 billion people logs in to one or more Meta apps every month. YouTube is just behind Meta, with 2.7 billion monthly active users, according to Business of Apps, which provides information to the app industry.

YouTube reports large increases in views of its video “Shorts,” which rose from about 30 billion every day in 2022 to about 200 billion in 2026. 

TikTok reached 1.6 billion monthly active users in 2023, Business of Apps says. Snapchat, meanwhile, reportedly reached 956 million monthly users in the first quarter of this year. The X platform has some 550 million monthly active users, about the same as Threads, Meta’s text-based social media service. 

Brands should choose social media platforms whose audiences are most relevant for their campaigns, Social Media Today reports.