• Instagram is testing a feature that makes some ads unskippable.
• YouTube has a similar strategy, which requires non-paying users to view ads before watching videos. 
• Instagram's focus on new features like Reels may have helped it surpass TikTok in growth.

Quickly scrolling past AI-generated ads on Instagram that you don't care to see could soon no longer be an option.

With Reels, Instagram became more like TikTok. With Threads, Meta paired Instagram with a new X competitor. And now, the social media giant may be taking a page out of YouTube's book.

Instagram is testing out a feature that stops some users from scrolling for a brief period of time to watch an ad, a Meta spokesperson confirmed in a statement to Business Insider.

Only some users can see this feature, per posts on X and Reddit, but Meta said the feature could become a permanent addition to the app.

"We're always testing formats that can drive value for advertisers. As we test and learn, we will provide updates should this test result in any formal product changes," the spokesperson told BI.

YouTube employs a similar ad strategy, making users of its free version sit through advertisements before they can watch videos.

Like TikTok, Instagram allows users to scroll past ads that appear in the main feed — or in between Stories — though that may now change.

According to social media posts from users who have been served the new unskippable ads, when users scroll through content, they see a small counter at the bottom of their screen that says "ad break."

"Sometimes you may need to view an ad before you can keep browsing," a text box explaining the feature on the Instagram app says, per a screenshot captured by Morning Brew.

Business Insider was unable to see the ad break feature on Instagram.

Over the past few years, Instagram has been experimenting with new features on its app, including Reels — which recommends videos in a TikTok-like fashion.

The emphasis on short-form video content has resulted in the app deemphasizing traditional photo posts from mutual followers — a practice that has seen mixed reviews.

Regardless, the changes could benefit the app: In 2023, Instagram beat out TikTok in growth and downloads.

• Doug Leone wrote on X that he will support Donald Trump for president in this year's election.
• Leone previously rebuked Trump, saying he'd incited the riot at the Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
• Leone's endorsement adds him to a growing list of Silicon Valley elites supporting Trump.

Billionaire venture capitalist Doug Leone, a partner at Sequoia Capital who managed the firm until 2022, reversed his previous critiques of Donald Trump on Monday and said he would support the former president and convicted felon's campaign.

He joins a growing list of Silicon Valley elites backing Trump.

"I have become increasingly concerned about the general direction of our country, the state of our broken immigration system, the ballooning deficit, and the foreign policy missteps, among other issues," Leone wrote in a post on X. "Therefore, I am supporting former President Trump in this coming election."

After the January 6 attack on the Capitol, Leone had previously renounced his support for Trump, saying the former president's behavior during the riots caused him to lose "many of his supporters, including me," Leone said in a statement to Vox's Recode at the time.

The re-endorsement adds Leone to a growing list of Silicon Valley elites who have said they will be backing Trump following his recent felony conviction in New York. Among them are Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia, and billionaire venture capitalist David Sacks.

Leone and representatives for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

• Ethan Liebross, a first-year medical student, lives full-time in a DIY-converted van in California.
• Liebross, 24, bought the van for $20,000 and spent $13,460 on the conversion.
• He says he hopes that living minimally will help him become a better person and future doctor.

Some medical students choose to stay in dorms, while others opt to live in apartments off campus.

Ethan Liebross went for a less common housing option: He lives full-time in a van — a 2015 Ford Transit that he turned into a mobile, off-grid home.

"The decision to live in a van by choice is very different from the one that a lot of people have to make because there are people who are really suffering," Liebross, 24, told Business Insider. "I wanted to live as simply and minimally as possible, as a practice to help me become a better individual and a better future doctor."

Although he grew up on a farm in New Jersey, he's no stranger to van life.

During his gap year, he had lived out of another van while working as a freelance writer for local newspapers.

"At that time, I couldn't afford to stay in hotels for a whole year, and the practicality of couch surfing didn't really make sense," Liebross said. "So I decided to convert a little camper van — a Ford Transit Connect — and I traveled around the US."

The experience was challenging but enjoyable, and it left such an impact on Liebross that he decided to do it again when he started medical school.

"I thought if I liked it this much and I really enjoy the simple life, why not give it a try?" Liebross added.

The hunt for a van

But first, he needed a new vehicle — the Ford Transit Connect was too small to be a permanent home for the next four years.

He couldn't stand up inside, and all he had was a cooler that needed ice changed every two days.

"I was sleeping on the floor with no mattress or anything because the space didn't really allow it," Liebross said.

It wasn't going to be sustainable, especially since he knew that medical school was going to be challenging, he added: "I wanted to make sure I was getting very high-quality sleep, and I knew I couldn't be running around trying to find ice all the time."

After driving all over New Jersey to visit car dealerships with his dad, Liebross ended up getting a used 2015 Ford Transit off Facebook Marketplace for $20,000.

After that, it was a race against time to complete the van conversion.

"I only had three months before I needed to make it to California for school," Liebross said, adding that he had already spent a month looking for the van.

Even though he had some experience, the scale of this conversion was larger and more complicated than his first van project.

"The whole thing was just one big lesson in problem-solving," Liebross said. One day, he'd be trying to figure out the right inverter to buy, and the next day, he'd be researching how to cut down a butcher block countertop, he said.

"I woke up at 5:30 a.m. most days, and I worked until 9 p.m. at night," he said. "And even when there were family events going on, I couldn't go because I was really tight on time."

Even though things were tricky, he enjoyed the process. Thankfully, he also had some help from his dad.

"We worked together on the weekends or when he came home from work," Liebross said. "It's such an awesome thing to get to work side by side with my dad, who's someone I really admire."

A modern tiny home

Liebross' van, which is equipped with solar panels, is simple and cozy with details reminiscent of a modern home.

Behind the driver's seat is a kitchenette area complete with cabinets, a stainless sink, and a gas range. The sleeping area, with a memory foam mattress, is at the back of the van.

The passenger seat also swivels around, and he finds it useful when he has friends over.

However, there's no proper toilet in the van, he said: "There are a couple of gyms on campus, so I'll just bike over, work out at the gym, and then take a shower."

The hardest part of the build was figuring out the electrical system.

"It was really complex, dealing with a lot of complex physics and mechanics, and it can also be pretty dangerous, so you have to be very careful," Liebross said.

Liebross says he spent $13,460 on the van build. Including the cost of the van, he spent $33,460 in total.

In contrast, university housing rent for a single tenant in the upcoming school year starts from $1,500 a month but can go up to almost $3,500, depending on the location and the size of the apartment. At those rates, the minimum cost for four years of housing could have added up to at least $72,000.

Full-time van life

Liebross drove cross-country with his dad to California and moved into the van about a week before school started in early August.

He's been living in the van ever since.

"It's been pretty good, especially compared to that year I had off. That was roughing it out a lot more, especially in the colder months," Liebross said. "Luckily, I live in sunny California now, so it never got below freezing during winter."

His parents have also been supportive of his decision to live in a van during college.

"I guess the shock really came when I wanted to do it during my gap year," Liebross said. "I'd probably said it to them for months and months in passing — it didn't come out of the blue."

Although his parents, and especially his mom, were worried about his safety, they trusted him to be careful.

"I think overall, they knew that I was really smart about it. I really prioritized my own safety," he said. "And I think now they probably think it's cool and different. They've just been very supportive and I'm really lucky to have them in my life."

Although LA can be scary due to its crime rates, Liebross says he feels safe living in the van because he takes extra precautions.

"I try to be as safe as possible," Liebross said. "I try to be really aware of my surroundings and I don't really tell people where I park or my location."

Liebross parks his van on the streets about 10 minutes from campus and usually cycles to class.

"I don't move around a whole lot because if you leave your spot, you have to try to get a new one," he said. "Driving also isn't the most environmentally conscious, so I try to bike around as much as I can."

A lesson in simplicity

Looking back, Liebross says the entire experience has been gratifying.

Not only did the process feel special because he got to work with his dad, but it was also nice to have the results of his hard work on display.

"I'm really proud of the final outcome," Liebross said. "I really enjoy the challenge of living in a smaller space, biking to take a shower at the gym, and cooking healthy meals with limited resources. It makes you deeply appreciate the little things."

He also hopes that living in a van will help him become more disciplined, creative, and compassionate.

"I've come to the realization that if I really want to practice medicine selflessly and make a difference, I need to create a life for myself that doesn't require a lot of money or things," Liebross added.

Have you recently built or renovated your dream home? If you've got a story to share, get in touch with me at agoh@businessinsider.com.

• The H5N1 bird flu virus has infected a third person in the US, this time with respiratory symptoms.
• The new patient's cough and sore throat could help the virus get better at infecting humans.
• Experts fear the US is missing critical opportunities to check the virus's DNA for new mutations.

The H5N1 bird flu virus has once again infected a human. But this time, the unlucky patient had a cough and a sore throat, which is a new milestone for the virus's spread in the US.

The H5N1 virus has become a pandemic among animals, raging through worldwide bird populations and now through US cattle herds.

This latest human case, which the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed on Thursday, is the third known human case in the US, following one in Texas and another in Michigan.

All three people are dairy farm workers who were exposed to infected cows, according to the CDC.

The first two cases, however, only involved eye symptoms, including conjunctivitis or pink eye. That means the infection was probably limited to their eyes. Now it has hit someone's lungs.

The risk to the general public is still low, the CDC says, but these new symptoms suggest the virus may have entered a new phase of its flirtation with human infection.

Lungs give the virus more opportunity to adapt to humans

St. Jude virologist Richard Webby is a leading researcher on an H5 group of influenza viruses, which have been circulating in bird populations for about 25 years.

Since 2021, the H5N1 virus has branched out to new frontiers of sustained spread, infecting dolphins and porpoises, migrating to the Americas, culling sea lions and seals, and now spreading through US cattle herds.

"This virus keeps on turning up surprises," Webby, who directs the World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Studies on the Ecology of Influenza in Animals and Birds, told Business Insider. "Had you asked me, beginning of the year, what the chances are of H5 turning up in cows, I would have said exceedingly low."

Still, he said, H5N1 is still more of a bird virus than a mammalian virus. That's mainly because of the receptors it binds to in order to enter its hosts' cells and replicate itself.

"Avian viruses bind to one form of this receptor on the host cell. Mammalian viruses bind to a different form," Webby said.

The mucus lining the human eye (where the first farmworker got conjunctivitis) is rich in the receptors that avian viruses grab, he said. There, the H5N1 virus can continue operating as an avian virus grabbing avian receptors, with no need to adapt to human receptors.

But our respiratory tracts are full of both forms of this receptor — the form preferred by avian viruses and the one preferred by mammalian viruses. Therefore, being in the lungs gives H5N1 more exposure to the receptors that mammalian viruses use, according to Webby.

That gives H5N1 more opportunity to sustain a mutation that would allow it to bind to those mammalian receptors, adapting better to human bodies.

That's the concern, but it's not clear if that has actually happened inside this patient's lungs. For such a mutation to be significant, it would then have to spread to other people as well. So far, based on all known cases, the virus has been unable to spread from one person to another.

Sequencing the virus tests for mutations

In a New York Times opinion piece on Sunday, virologist Rick Bright argued that the emergence of respiratory symptoms indicates "a dangerous inflection point" for the virus.

After all, he wrote, "Coughing can spread viruses more easily than eye irritation can."

But for Webby, the Michigan patient's cough "doesn't change a whole lot."

Two previous one-off human cases of H5N1 — one in Chile and one in Ecuador — featured respiratory symptoms.

The virus didn't necessarily have to mutate to infect the Michigan farmworker's respiratory system, according to Webby. The person could have simply encountered a large amount of virus, maybe an especially ill cow.

"That's me sort of looking at the crystal ball a little," he said, adding that it's "the most likely explanation for what we're seeing, rather than the other one, which is of course much more scary, that this virus has already changed."

Either way, scientists won't know if any scary mutations have occurred until they can examine the virus's DNA sequence from this new case. The patient carried such small amounts of the virus, though, that it's possible the CDC won't have enough to get the sequence, Webby said.

DNA sequences are critical. By checking the virus's genes in each new human case, no matter how mild the symptoms, scientists can identify any fresh mutations that help it adapt to humans. If H5N1 becomes a bona fide mammalian virus, they could watch its transformation in real-time.

"The very first signals we're going to get that this virus is changing are probably going to come from human infections," Webby said.

So far, though, the government's monitoring may not be robust enough to spot those mutations early.

Experts call for more testing so they won't miss mutations

The FDA has detected fragments of the virus in commercial milk and beef. Though it's unlikely that food could infect you, public-health experts have told BI, caution-minded people can cook their eggs and meats all the way. Nobody should drink unpasteurized milk, aka raw milk, they say.

The real risk is to people who work directly with sick animals, especially farmworkers like the three who have been infected so far.

Nationwide, the government is monitoring about 350 people who may have been exposed to H5N1, most of them in Michigan, CDC Deputy Director Nirav Shah told the press in a briefing on Thursday. However, only about 40 farmworkers have been tested for the virus, The New York Times reported.

"We would like to be doing more testing," Shah said, according to STAT News.

Bright argues that the government's weak testing regime could be allowing farmworker infections to fly under the radar.

However, undetected cases are not the same thing as undetected spread.

Bright's essay rings alarm bells about unknown human-to-human transmission, but Webby finds that unlikely. Even with its current monitoring, the CDC would probably detect sustained human spread, he said.

Rather, the problem with undetected cases is that nobody can sequence their samples. Those are windows into the virus's DNA (and possible mutations) that nobody is peeking through.

Webby and Bright agree that scientists need more sequences of the virus, more quickly. Despite the ongoing herd spread, for example, the USDA hasn't shared a new sequence from a cow infection sample in weeks, according to Bright.

"Bottom line is we need to have more information from exactly what this virus is doing," Webby said. "The more we can understand about it, I do believe we can properly control it, or at least control it way better than we are."

• Keith Gill may face an E*Trade ban, sources told The Wall Street Journal.
• Gill posted a screenshot on Sunday that appeared to show he had a $116 million position in GameStop.
• E*Trade, owned by Morgan Stanley, is worried about potential stock manipulation, the Journal reported.

Trader Keith Gill, also known on social media as "Roaring Kitty" or "DeepFuckingValue," could get barred from E*Trade after a screenshot he posted that appeared to show a huge stake in GameStop caused the stock price to soar.

That's according to a Monday report in The Wall Street Journal, which cited unnamed people familiar with the situation at E*Trade, a trading platform owned by Morgan Stanley.

The unnamed sources said the prominent meme-stock trader sparked concern about potential stock manipulation after he bought a bunch of GameStop options shortly before breaking his three-year social media silence last month.

Prior to last month, Gill had not posted to his social media accounts since 2021. Then, on May 12, he began making cryptic posts on X. After he reemerged, GameStop surged yet again.

Then, on Sunday night, he shared a screenshot of an E*Trade account that appeared to show he had a $116 million position in GameStop, triggering another frenzy that caused the meme stock to soar.

The Journal also reported that the Massachusetts securities division is examining Gill's actions. The Massachusetts securities division did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

The Journal reported no decision had been made yet on whether to stop Gill from trading on the platform. People familiar with internal discussions told the outlet they are still weighing if Gill engaged in manipulation and that the platform is concerned about losing customers — and the potential reaction of Gill's fans — if he were barred.

Morgan Stanley declined to comment when reached by Business Insider. Gill did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI.

Shortly after the Journal reported on his potential barring from E*Trade, Gill posted another screenshot that appeared to show he maintained his position in GameStop on Monday, even as the value of his stake seemingly jumped from $116 million to $140 million in less than a day.

• Tech, consulting, and finance jobs are harder to secure due to hiring cuts and more competition.
• Students are stacking internships and expanding their job search — including to the government.
• Plagued by layoffs, hiring at tech seems to have taken the biggest hit — by nearly every measure.

Management consulting, Big Tech, and finance are the go-to industries for many college students because they pay big money and look great on a résumé.

But those jobs at the entry level are harder to come by now, data shows and experts say. It's upending the job search for young people trying to find their footing in a fast-shifting workforce.

According to one survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 21% of companies at large said they expect to decrease hiring this academic year. In the 2023 and 2022 versions of the survey, only 6% and 3.5% of employers, respectively, said that they expected hiring to drop.

Economists, career experts, and students who spoke to Business Insider all agree on one thing: If you're fixated on a career in one of these three industries, it's going to be a tough ride that won't get easier for future classes, especially as artificial intelligence starts to affect white-collar jobs.

Last month, people at Wall Street banks, including Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, told The New York Times that their firms are considering cutting back on fresh graduate hiring by up to two-thirds. Analysts who make it in may be offered lower salaries because their work can be assisted by AI.

Those in tech fear a similar fate.

Students "are scared that engineering roles will be replaced in the future," said Austin Wang, a class of 2025 computer science major at Yale University.

Management consulting

Known for $200,000 straight-out-of-business-school pay packages and work across industries, consulting giants like McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, and Bain & Company have long been the dream for fresh graduates.

Now, less client work is forcing these firms to tighten their belts.

In March, professional services firm Accenture pushed back start dates. McKinsey went one step further and offered UK employees nine months' worth of pay and career-coaching services as an incentive to leave the firm. The tactics came after the firm said it would slash 1,400 jobs globally last year.

Industry woes are showing up in hiring numbers, too.

Jobs posted for fresh graduates under the category "professional services" — a proxy for consulting — fell over 14% from 2023 to 2024, according to data from Handshake, a job platform for college graduates.

"Consulting has been very difficult in particular because these companies who hired interns to work for them have asked them to delay their start date," Beth Hendler-Grunt, the president of Next Great Step, a career counseling service for college graduates, told BI.

Some consultancies pushed entry-level start dates back eight to 11 months, she said: "That is a lot to ask of somebody to wait around and hope that the job is still there."

Given the market's pessimism, students are applying to more companies, hoping to improve their odds of success. Business students from this year's graduating class are less likely to apply to consulting roles and more likely to seek positions in customer relations, marketing, and analytics, according to a Handshake survey. Handshake polled about 2,700 undergraduate students who are graduating this year from 616 US colleges.

Matthew Park, who just graduated from Yale after serving as the president of the university's undergraduate consulting group, said the market has changed since he applied to internships in 2022. He said those who applied with him had a much easier time landing offers than this year's cohort — but his peers, on the whole, want to stick with consulting.

"I don't really think there's been a marked shift in student interests," Park said about the demand for these roles. "If there has been a shift, I'd say it's a shift more out of necessity than intrinsic interest."

Tech

Plagued by layoffs and budget cuts, hiring in tech seems to have taken the biggest hit of all three industries examined in the story.

Tech job postings geared toward fresh graduates fell by 30% compared with last year, according to data compiled by Handshake, a job platform for college graduates. Companies are cutting workforces that swelled during zero-interest-rate, pandemic-era boom times.

Career consultants are seeing a change in the job market.

"We have students who come in from excellent schools and Ivy League schools with STEM experience and are still struggling to land interviews," said Hendler-Grunt, the career advisor.

To improve their chances, some students are branching out.

Yale's Wang, who leads a computer science club at the university, has seen his peers apply to more jobs and more diverse roles, including engineering jobs in finance.

"There is overall a lot more stress going around this year due to the recruitment cycles being tougher than usual," Wang said.

Anika Nair, a computer science student who graduated from Rutgers University last month, said she expected her résumé — including cloud certification and a software engineering internship at JPMorgan — would make her search straightforward.

"I started job searching in December of last year and continued to do so through 2024 — I sent out around 200 applications, received 20 interview invitations, and experienced numerous ghostings and rejections," she told BI. "I didn't expect it to be this hard."

Investment banking

The first quarter of the year has been one of mixed signals for Wall Street's mightiest investment banks — and their head counts.

Citigroup began the year saying it would lay off as many as 20,000 employees in the next two years. Around the same time, JPMorgan said it would spend $2.8 billion in 2024, primarily on hiring. Within a month of those announcements, Deutsche Bank announced it would cut 3,500 jobs.

While industry hiring sentiment remains mixed, job platforms are seeing a drop in finance postings. The number of early-career postings for financial services, which include more than just investment banking roles, dropped over 13% for the Class of 2024, according to Handshake. Finance-related roles made up more than one-fifth of total applications, the survey found.

In Singapore, undergraduates are stacking investment banking internships with the ultimate prize: a full-time job. Some Singaporean students take off a semester for off-cycle internships to bolster their résumés.

"There's so much stress seeing friends taking a whole semester off to do an internship. If you are not taking the semester off, you'll be like, 'Oh, am I doing something wrong?'" one National University of Singapore student previously told BI.

Students are hedging their bets

The government looks like the biggest winner of the drop in tech and professional services hiring.

According to Handshake, about 7.4% of job applications from 2024 graduates have been submitted to government roles, compared to 5.5% last year.

After hearing about so many layoffs and hiring freezes, some students are prioritizing working in industries that feel more stable, like government work, said Christine Cruzvergara, the chief education strategy officer at Handshake.

Career counselors at top schools are also noticing that students are less likely to stick to a short list of companies.

Richard Carruthers, the deputy director of careers service at Imperial College London, said more students this year have backup plans and that the process is taking longer for students who get offers.

"We're seeing more students waiting longer for decisions about offers, across many sectors," he said. "Students with good prior experiences and strong CVs are included within this."

Work visa restrictions

A tougher job market means more clampdowns on work visas.

Over the past month, KPMG, Deloitte, and HSBC rescinded offers for foreign graduates who no longer meet sponsorship requirements due to UK visa rule changes. Employers must now pay skilled workers nearly 50% more than the previous minimum threshold to be able to sponsor work visas.

An international student at the National University of Singapore who graduated with internships at Amazon Web Services and Deloitte said she started her job hunt in August and has applied to over 400 roles. She spoke anonymously because of her ongoing job search; her identity is known to BI.

"It's quite bad for entry-level jobs in general but even worse for international students," she said. "I've reached out for referrals to seniors, only to learn that their company has stopped sponsoring visas."

"I saw my friends struggle to get interviews in 2023, and with the way layoffs continued, I knew it would be harder in 2024," she said.

She has yet to receive a full-time offer.

Do you have a career story to share? Get in touch with this reporter by email.