📡 – 2024-02-16
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Hello! It has been a minute – and for that I apologize. I made a big deal about moving to Buttondown and then... poof. I think my excuse is ok, though. It's been all hands on deck for the last couple months as I've launched a new project: Never Post, a podcast about the internet.
The show format is, funnily enough, newsletter-ish: each episode is in sections which tackle specific topics related to Being Online. The first episode has segments about the disappearance of tween fashion, and "posting disease"; the second, about "influencer voice" and why so many people have been retiring from YouTube over the last few months (that segment is with YouTuber Adam Neely). Our Episode 0 is a roundtable conversation with a few amazing people from worker-owned, independent media collectives.
The subject matter overall should be familiar, as I think a lot of it will echo the sort of things that end up here, at the top of 📡 emails: ways to think about, and pick apart, and understand the experience of the internet, and the world because of the internet.
As far as 📡 specifically, no plans to cease or change anything about how this goes; hoping to get back to biweekly as of this month. 🤞
Anyway! On to some stuff I liked...
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“Nobody solves media except temporarily”: Four indie media owners on money, sustainability, and “making cooler, weirder things”
The four talked about why they went indie, the traumas of working in legacy media, the pros and cons of working for yourself and in a collective, money, and work-life balance. Their conversation is funny, candid, and hopeful for a new era in journalism. The transcript of their discussion, edited for length and clarity, is below. Listen to the full episode here.
The Lure of Divorce Seven years into my marriage, I hit a breaking point — and had to decide whether life would be better without my husband in it.
https://www.thecut.com/article/marriage-divorce-should-i-leave-my-husband-emily-gould.html
I built a case against my husband in my mind. This book of his was simply the culmination of a pattern: He had always put his career before mine; while I had tended to our children during the pandemic, he had written a book about parenting. I tried to balance writing my own novel with drop-offs, pickups, sick days, and planning meals and shopping and cooking, most of which had always been my primary responsibility since I was a freelancer and Keith had a full-time job teaching journalism. We were incompatible in every way, except that we could talk to each other as we could to no one else, but that seemed beside the point. More relevant: I spent money like it was water, never budgeting, leaving Keith to make sure we made rent every month. Every few months, we’d have a fight about this and I’d vow to change; some system would be put in place, but it never stuck. We were headed for disaster, and finally it came.
Confessions of an AI Clickbait Kingpin
https://www.wired.com/story/confessions-of-an-ai-clickbait-kingpin/
He gets why writers are unhappy that their work has been erased and replaced by clickbait. (The Hairpin’s founding editor, Edith Zimmerman, calls his version of the site “grim.”) But he defends his choices, pointing out that his life has been tougher than that of the average American blogger. Although ethnically Serbian, Vujo was born in what is now known as Bosnia and Herzegovina, and his family fled during the breakup of Yugoslavia. “I had two wars I escaped. I changed nine elementary schools because we were moving. We were migrants,” he says. “It was terrible to grow up in this part of the world.” He says his economic options have been limited, and this was simply a path available to him.
“My life changed overnight”: Dealing with sudden hearing loss and tinnitus
It hit me like a ton of bricks. I was bedridden with vertigo for a week, unable to do much but eat bowls of cereal, vomit and sleep. I managed to drag myself to a GP who put the symptoms down to Labrynthitis and gave me a load of pills to ease the dizziness and sickness. I was signed off work for a few weeks and spent most of the summer on the sofa watching The Wire. I could walk but it took months to feel steady on my feet and I was constantly wondering about the ringing noise in my ear and whether my hearing would return. It was a very grey time, a fever dream in which my life had stopped but the world of my friends, colleagues and peers kept turning. At some point I realised that it was probably more serious than a standard ear infection.
What We Discovered on ‘Deep YouTube’
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/01/how-many-videos-youtube-research/677250/
When a platform becomes natural, transparent, and essential because of the ways people use it, it becomes infrastructure. Similarly, if large parts of society organize themselves around something such that a breakdown would have profound economic, social, and operational effects, it probably makes sense to use that term. Infrastructures are, after all, most visible when they stop working properly. Talking about YouTube as infrastructure doesn’t automatically mean, as many pundits recommend, treating it the same way we do public utilities such as gas and water, and doesn’t mean we must repeal Section 230. Rather, we have to think about a new set of principles for the site, free of partisan outrage.
The dating app paradox: Why dating apps may be worse than ever
But there's an awkward tension at the heart of the dating app business model. They are for-profit tech companies that want to attract as many users as possible and inevitably make money from them. But at the same time, true success for their users — at least for the large population looking for more than just hookups — means that they find love and get off the apps. For each successful match, the dating app loses not just one, but two customers!
Call it the dating app paradox: Dating apps are supposed to be matching lovebirds together, but once they do, the lovebirds fly away — and take their money with them.
Your AI Girlfriend Is a Data-Harvesting Horror Show
https://gizmodo.com/your-ai-girlfriend-is-a-data-harvesting-horror-show-1851253284
You’ve heard stories about data problems before, but according to Mozilla, AI girlfriends violate your privacy in “disturbing new ways.” For example, CrushOn.AI collects details including information about sexual health, use of medication, and gender-affirming care. 90% of the apps may sell or share user data for targeted ads and other purposes, and more than half won’t let you delete the data they collect. Security was also a problem. Only one app, Genesia AI Friend & Partner, met Mozilla’s minimum security standards.
Sony is erasing digital libraries that were supposed to be accessible “forever”
So even if you, understandably, thought you were buying a "forever" digital copy, the wordy truth is that you never really owned it. Yet, it wouldn't be surprising to hear that someone relying on digital copies to preserve their purchased media didn’t properly understand (or read) those terms before discarding their physical copies.
‘Evidence Maximalism’ Is How the Internet Argues Now
Of course, this kind of confirmation bias is not new, but the internet has supercharged it. Because our attention is so fragmented online, any big story—such as the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce romance—becomes an ideological battleground, with different camps trying to ride its coattails. It’s difficult to get anyone to care about anything, including DEI programs at Fortune 500 companies, for an extended period of time, but when a plane’s door rips off mid-flight, it provides an opening. From there, any motivated actor can reverse engineer evidence with some light Googling. A Boeing plane has mechanical trouble; head to the company’s website, browse its press releases, find a DEI report that states the company is looking to “increase the Black representation rate,” and draw a causal link.
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Twitch
mikerugnetta went live on Twitch. Catch up on their Just Chatting VOD now.
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I was on Press Start recently talking about how my relationship to games has changed over the last year or so of Parenthood™ – but also talked about my top 5 games, gamergate, and a bunch of other stuff. Check it out wherever you get pods.
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The big news here is, as you already know, Never Post – Episode 3 comes out February 28th, though there will be extended cuts of my conversations with Lisa and Adam going up for Members next Weds. There is already an extended cut of my conversation with Bijan about Posting Disease (which a close friend described to me as "so fucking good", if you needed any convincing.)
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That's all I got for you! Until next time, please stay warm or cool or dry or whatever state is the opposite of the most unpleasant extreme of your current location. <3