Sit quietly and read time: AI, Meta, money and… Tintin?

Good AI: Finding what needs to be fact checked

If I was to sum up my attitude in AI in journalism right now, it's this:

• AI to create reader-facing journalism: bad
• AI to help investigation and reporting: good

This article is a great example of how AI can be used to pre-filter a vast sea on content, to spot what's worth human investigation. Choice quote:

AI helps “in the process of identifying what we should fact check each day. It’s really good at that. We use it to find repeats of things that we previously fact checked because we want to understand our impact, we want to understand the media information ecosystem”.

How Full Fact Uses Generative AI to Find Harmful Health Advice

From multimodal misinformation detection to harm rating and ranking

Generative AI in the NewsroomClare Spencer

Love it.

One last mention of Careless People, honest

I've finally finished the Facebook exposé Careless People. Having torn through the opening chapters, I slowed down toward the end, simply because what the senior Facebook staff were doing was so damn grim, there was only so much I could stomach in one sitting.

But the ever-excellent Cory Doctorow devoted it much more quickly, and his thoughts on it are just spectacular. Choice quote:

But Wynn-Williams was a lot closer to three of the key personalities in Facebook's upper echelon than anyone in my orbit: Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and Joel Kaplan, who was elevated to VP of Global Policy after the Trump II election. I already harbor an atavistic loathing of these three based on their public statements and conduct, but the events Wynn-Williams reveals from their private lives make them out to be beyond despicable. There's Zuck, whose underlings let him win at board-games like Settlers of Catan because he's a manbaby who can't lose (and who accuses Wynn-Williams of cheating when she fails to throw a game of Ticket to Ride while they're flying in his private jet). There's Sandberg, who demands the right to buy a kidney for her child from someone in Mexico, should that child ever need a kidney.

And wait until you hear about Kaplan…

Pluralistic: Sarah Wynn-Williams’s ‘Careless People’ (23 Apr 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Cory Doctorow

Leave Substack, make more money?

Turns out some big newsletter publishers who left Substack for competitors like Ghost and Beehiiv started making more money, just because of the different prising structures.

Choice quote:

“I was paying like $10,000 or so a year to Substack to host my blog. Even if you don’t disagree with them on politics, what are some of these bloggers 5 or 10 or 100 times bigger than me doing here, man?” said O’Neil, who said that he would still pay a lower fee to Ghost even if his newsletter had five times the subscribers under the service’s flat rate pricing model. “Paying someone $100,000 a year to host your blog. Come on buddy. I said I hate being a businessman, but even I know that’s fucking stupid.”

Former Substack creators say they’re earning more on new platforms that offer larger shares of subscription revenue

Former Substack writers who exited the platform in early 2024 are making more money on Beehiiv and Ghost thanks to their fixed pricing models.

DigidayAlexander Lee

Charles Arthur raises a good objection:

That’s fine, but these tend to be people who had a substantial audience already, and took them along on their exit. The bigger question is how those with much smaller audiences can build a presence, and whether it’s easier or harder than on Substack.

I don't think there's much doubt about that currently: it's easier to build an audience on Substack and then move it elsewhere, than build it out on the open web.

But that could be changing…

And finally… the aesthetics of Tintin

Some branches of my family are deeply obsessed with Tintin albums. Why? It's all in the surname. “Tinworth” leads to nicknames like “Tinribs” (my dad), “Tinbrain” or “Tinners” (me) and “Tinpot” (my brother). And, yes, Tintin.

And so, yes, we're all quite familiar with his adventures including the, uh, racially insensitive early ones. But it's the incredible visual aesthetic that leaps out, and this is a lovely exploration of that.

Choice quote:

Tintin longingly gazing at the skyline of New York City offers a familiar whimsy. The sense of adventure in the Shanghai presented in The Blue Lotus is the same one we may feel simply wandering around a new city, especially in a foreign country. Even the natural settings in Hergé’s work offer recognizable immensity and awe.

Celebrating the Timeless Allure of Tintin’s Aesthetics

The Adventures of Tintin officially entered the public domain in 2025. We now all own the alluring aesthetics of this timeless classic.

College TownsRyan M Allen