Why does this exist?
⚠️ Please note: I switched newsletter providers after the first issue was published. This issue was originally published on mataroa.blog. I am no longer using that service and have switched to Buttondown.
I’ve updated all the subscription links in this newsletter to point to the new subscription pages, and I've crossed out two sentences about this blog being hosted on Mataroa. Aside from that, nothing changed.
What I said below about Mataroa Blog is still true though — It’s a great service! I just wanted a few more features. However, if you're looking for a minimalist blogging platform, I'd definitely recommend giving Mataroa a shot!
Things nobody asked for, Let's reclaim the verb "to tweet" and a bunch of fun things I found across the web lately. This is update: it crashed – a newsletter/blog-ish situation by @trainsandinternet.
Hello and welcome to the first issue of update: it crashed!
New online presences are always fun, for a lot of reasons. But with this one, I'm especially exited. It has been a blast setting up this blog page, even though or rather because mataroa.blog, the service I use for this new online adventure, is so simple and minimal. I'm of course also really stoked about the things I will publish here, more about them below. My list of writing ideas is already way too long.
But for now, let's jump straight to today's topics:
Why does ______ exist?
This Newsletter
In the intro, I teased this segment with the phrase "Things nobody asked for." That's technically true, you did not ask for this newsletter but in my very unbiased opinion you should ignore the negative connotation of the phrase in this case because there's a lot to be exited about:
Most of the time, I will just share the things I found and that happened across the web since the last issue as well my thoughts on them. The format of how I will do that isn't set - sometimes it'll just be a short comment and sometimes multiple paragraphs of text.
From time to time, there also will be some longer writing.
Some credits: The newsletter's name was stolen (with permission) from this thread by the great Elouan Grimm, the idea for the basic format of this newsletter is inspired by The Verge's Installer newsletter, Tom Scott's newsletter and the Platformer newsletter.
The newsletter itself is hosted onmataroa.blog, a really great service with an insanely generous free plan!There also won't be a schedule for when new issues drop, so its best to just subscribe via RSS or Email.
For the most part, this newsletter exists as a place for me to share my medium important thoughts without a character limit. But let's just see where we're going to end up - maybe this is the first and last blog post I'll ever write.
Spotify Messages
You can now message people on Spotify and I really have no idea whatsoever why this exists. I of course see the need for and value of sharing content, especially as Spotify becomes more and more of a social platform and is seemingly trying to compete with YouTube. But a chat UI is just a bad one for that purpose in my opinion.
My idea for a better UI (not only for Spotify) is for content to just show up in home and vertical video feeds. I would be awesome if I were just scrolling through, for example, Shorts and as I scroll to a new video a banner saying "sent to you by Friend XY" appears. The same could work on Home/Explore pages, such as YouTube's or Spotify's.
There are two other things about Spotify Messages though other than it being weird:
Firstly, it would have been objectively very funny if the chat bubbles in Spotify Messages were green - but they aren't, I would accuse on purpose.
Secondly, Spotify Messages is a good reminder to remove Share IDs and UTM parameters when sharing links. I started a Spotify Messages chat with a friend, just to find links to songs and playlists I shared with them in other places as a chat history. While a sort of useful feature, it's pretty privacy invasive that Spotfiy logs who opens your links.
YouTube AI dubbing
I do not understand YouTube AI dubbing. To be more precise, I hate it. I do not know a single person who finds it useful or uses it regularly. If I want to watch a video, chances are I want to hear the creator's voice and not Google Assistant's. And the AI voice clones YouTube roles out now aren't really better. Plus, you can't really turn it off. There isn't a switch that abandons it site-wide and on the mobile website (m.youtube.com), there isn't even a way to turn it off on a per video basis.
Making content available to as much people as possible isn't a crazy idea. In fact, I think it's in theory a good one - more content and knowledge are always a good thing and more content for more people means more ad revenue for YouTube. It's a win win situation, except it's not. Because in my opinion, the word "knowledge" is key in this sentence: To get other countries' perspective on - let's say - current political issues is valuable. But a lot of entertainment these days is built on para social relationships. And for the 0.5% chance of you bumping into your favorite creator, you at least want to speak their language to ask them for a selfie.
And for translating knowledge, there already is well-working way of doing that: subtitles.
To this day, transcripts in the Podcasts app are the only useful AI feature Apple ever released. To give them credit once, those transcript are incredibly accurate. Nevertheless, if you're an Apple stakeholder this should worry you. But if you're Google, you should stop grilling Apple for one second and take some notes. Because right now, YouTube subtitles aren't bad but there's definitely room for improvement, especially in languages other than English. To have auto-generated subtitles in as good as quality as they exist on Jetlag: The Game would be a dream.
There are just two problems: First, I'm calling to replace a whole industry with robots here. And second, subtitles don't work for blind people. The things expressed above would make YouTube better for me, certainly not for everybody.
The Vibes feed in the Meta AI app
Meta thinks you would like to scroll through an endless feed of AI slop and OpenAI shares this belief. I quite frankly don't. I also want to remind you that what we now call "AI video" and what OpenAI calls "cameos" used to be called "deepfakes," and we used to make TV reports on how dangerous they were. And we did so rightfully.
I would consider myself an AI skeptic. I don't see that we are headed towards an utopian future thanks to AI. I rather see that AI will be used to automate jobs away that belong people are especially dependent on them and that it'll make rich people even richer. That doesn't mean that Artificial Intelligence is totally useless but it does mean that there's urgent need for strong AI regulation. And part of that regulation needs to be the complete ban of AI video. The bad things you can do with deepfakes and AI-generated videos outweigh the good and funny things by a ton, especially if the videos look extremely realistic and not cartoon-ish.
Let's reclaim the verb "to tweet"
A lot of people refuse to call the micro blogging platform formerly known as Twitter "X" to this day. That is understandable, X is a terrible name. But X is also terrible platform at this point (and you should leave it right now if you're still on it, especially if you're a public institution or (local) government)
A lot of people also associate positive memories with Twittter and Twitter also achieved probably every company's dream: They managed to get the verbi-fied form of their name into people's every-day language use and into the dictionaries, where it stays to this day.
What didn't stay was the vibe of Twitter. It is long gone and may never come back. But new platforms and places have showed up, promising us a not too dark future. But they are also kind of a mess, because the one platform Twitter used to be won't return. That's on one hand good, because competition but on the other hand, in a world, where everyone has accounts on at least two different text-based social media sites, there isn't really a good word for those sites in general. Except, there is: Twitter.
Let's reclaim the word "Twitter", the verb "to tweet" and the word "Tweet" - and use them for our new social sites, that aren't, well, owned by a fascist billionaire. Because positive words should be used for positive things!
A bunch of fun things I found across the web lately
I switched to Stario launcher after this post by Adam Molina and I really like it so far.
Adam Molina also restarted his newsletter this week, which I love.
I discovered Turnstile, a beautiful transit app for New York City and I'm kinda sad I don't live there now.
Yahoo apparently wants to sell AOL to the comapany behind WeTransfer, Evernote and komoot. - I'm seeing some insane nostalgia-bait incoming.
The paid search engine operator Kagi launched Kagi News. I'm sort of torn on what to think about that: The product is really good but I'm not a fan of replacing journalistic work with AI. And if you're feeling the same, check out newsasfacts.com. The site basically parses current events from Wikipedia and displays them in a nice, minimal UI.
I really recommend this video about designing a Linux desktop by Juxtopposed.
This Instagram account is very funny, especially if you like trains. It's in German but that isn't a problem as it's just images which is surprisingly refreshing.
Helium is a neat seeming Browser by the folks behind cobalt.tools. It's nothing special but has some cool features, like native Bangs. It won't replace Zen Browser as my standard browser but I will leave it installed on my computer for when I need something Chromium-based.
The Verge is launching a new podcast I'm incredibly excited for!
That's all for today. If you've read until here, thank you! and if you feel like this newsletter is for you, consider subscribing via RSS or Email - I would love to have you around!
Have a nice day, and also, you may now listen to Christmas songs. Until next time!