Five telling quotes
Five pieces worth your times — and quotes that show you why.
You are not your audience
Sarah Scire, quoting Fernanda Braune Brackenrich, U.S. audience engagement editor at the Financial Times for Nieman Lab:
“Journalists have assumptions about their readers,” Brackenrich noted. “One of them that is very common is that they think their readers are as obsessed with the news cycle as they are. They cannot fathom why that explainer — with ‘such basic questions’ — did so well.”
Social Media ≠ The World
Yascha Mounk, reviewing his predictions for 2024:
Today, social media retains a key role in society—but the recognition that the posts that get the most likes on Twitter, Instagram or (yes) TikTok don’t necessarily represent the views of most Americans has thankfully spread far and wide.
Just say no to the AI chum
Users have found some of Meta’s experimental AI-created profiles. And they are… underwhelmed:
“What the fuck does an AI know about dating?????” reads one recent comment on the AI dating coach bot’s profile. “This isn’t only virtual blackface, but it’s just all around weird,” a commenter wrote on a post on Liv’s page.
I keep saying it, but using AI to create things people don’t want is not a smart use of the tech.
Imagine all the people, created by an AI
Nick Heer, on the same story:
Imagine opening any of Meta’s products after this has taken over. Imagine how little you will see from the friends and family members you actually care about. Imagine how much slop you will be greeted with — a feed alternating between slop, suggested posts, and ads, with just enough of what you actually opened the app to see. Now consider how this will affect people who are more committed to Meta’s products, whether for economic reasons or social cohesion.
Digital is IRL
Ed Zitron in a marvellous end of year rant:
There is no digital world and physical world — they are, and have been, the same for quite some time, and reporting on tech as if this isn’t the case fails the user. It may seem a little dramatic, but take a second and really think about how many little digital irritations you deal with in a day. It’s time to wake up to the fact that our digital lives are rotten.
Quick Links
- 🥇 Lovely to see my old colleague Rebecca Thompson in the New Years Honours, for her early work on breaking the Horizon / Post Office scandal in her Computer Weekly days. That story had its roots in the community building work we were doing back then…
- 😠 The WordPress situation is… not getting any better. Matt Mullenweg is now deleting the accounts of people doing things he disagrees with…
- 💲 This is an interesting decision from Alamy. If this invoice is enforceable, the way we do social media literally changes forever.
- 🕵🏻 Google is squaring up for a dispute with the EU over fact-checking.
- 🍆 And finally… explainers on Porn Hub. Uh-huh.
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