The clippening

A striking development has emerged in artificial intelligence. Report ReportPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All Report Business BusinessPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All Business Tech TechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

FollowSee All TechThe clippening“Clippers” cut up podcasts, videos, and events into infinite shorter versions. How long can they ride the algorithms? by Mia Sato Mia SatoFeatures Writer, The VergePosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.

Technical Details

FollowSee All by Mia SatoMay 6, 2026, 11:00 AM UTC Mia Sato Mia SatoFeatures Writer, The VergePosts from this author will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed. FollowSee All by Mia Sato is features writer with five years of experience covering the companies that shape technology and the people who use their tools. Earlier this year, after a tumultuous period serving as the former second-in-command at the FBI, Dan Bongino went back to what he is perhaps known best for: video podcasting.

After Bongino exited the role in January, he began promotion for the return of his podcast, The Dan Bongino Show. He bought out a billboard in Times Square in New York; he dropped teaser videos for his first new episode in months. Bongino also deployed a more experimental promotional tactic, aimed at getting portions of his show in front of a wider audience.

For this, he used clippers. Clippers are largely anonymous social media accounts whose sole purpose is to rack up views. The accounts take a piece of longform content — an hours-long livestream, for example, or a podcast — and pull out the most exciting, controversial, or shocking moments.

Industry Implications

Sometimes the accounts are dedicated to clipping, but companies will also recruit accounts with existing followers. Clippers can be based anywhere in the world (one tech founder who uses clippers has described some of them as “hungry Slovakian teenagers”) while targeting English-speaking audiences. After clippers get the source material that a brand wants to promote, they cut it down and blast their version into the open web.

Hundreds or even thousands of clipping accounts might be sharing similar videos, all in competition with one another. You have perhaps learned about a TV show moment, a celebrity podcast appearance, or a new band via clippers without even realizing it; it just looks like someone sharing something. Clippers do not need to be affiliated in any real way with the subjects they are clipping, and the clipped content does not need to be creative, transformative, or even interesting.

It is the cartilage of the internet, the placeholders for the algorithm to suck in and spit out. According to a campaign listing on the service Clipping. net, The Dan Bongino Show started a 31-day campaign beginning the day after his podcast returned in February.

This advance offers important signals about the future of the sector, and the tech world is watching closely.