The Citizens and Technology Lab at Cornell is running a survey for a project to study the privacy expectations and content moderation experiences of people who use encrypted messaging apps. https://surveys.citizensandtech.org/216171?lang=en
Every month, I set aside one afternoon to write and reflect about my work and the media space more broadly in a newsletter. It's very helpful as an exercise to pause and reflect. I strongly recommend it.
This month, I wrote about some similarities between audience research and investigative reporting in their purest forms. Some wishful thinking around platform and vendor data certainty, in research along with performative aspects of both fields, has made the two drift apart. In reality, they're actually quite similar.
Journalism is much simpler than we make it out to be. It only gets complicated when we seek to perpetuate systems that aren't of service. This is the real opportunity right now: to disentangle and rebuild.
Another reason is bad short term metrics thinking, CTR tend to be lower on illustrations.
This is great: Using Illustration To Help Investigations Stay Grounded and Approachable https://themarkup.org/premium-penalty/2024/08/03/using-illustration-to-help-investigations-stay-grounded-and-approachable
Venezuela: VEsinFiltro documented 12 new cases of blocking against media outlets, human rights organizations and a VPN https://vesinfiltro.org/noticias/2024-08-01-venezuela_elections_censorship/ also Wikipedia and WSJ
One of the things that is depressing about Generative AI and imagery is that the outputs all start to look the same - high gloss illustration/ animation-y.
Today the only popular magazine cover that features art in the states is The New Yorker. Previously Life, Time and others often featured original art.
This link features a set of prints from agricultural magazine covers of the previous century. The amazing thing is the wide diversity of art and styles and even mediums.
We need AI to clean bathrooms not do art.
https://www.fifteen.ca/collections/agricultural-arts?page=3
#art
Yesssss! Also illustrators are generally not cost prohibitive for a publication. Most pay more for photo subscriptions or useless syndications
A media project I consulted with is looking for a UX frontend designer with native Chinese skills to work full time on a new b2b media venture, remotely from anywhere ideally US, (just not Chinese mainland.)
Great opportunity for media folks to work with OTF. They are looking for experts in editorial services, and graphic design to support the adoption of censorship and surveillance resilient technologies. Check out the RFP for more details: https://www.opentech.fund/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Impact_and_Engagement_Lab_RFP.pdf
From scissors to scraping: a good read on the evolution of content sharing: https://www.techdirt.com/2024/07/29/sharing-material-used-to-be-the-norm-for-newspapers-and-should-be-for-llms/ packaged content has very little inherent value, information or relationships have
A federal judge in New York ruled that Customs and Border Protection can’t search travelers’ phones without a warrant. The ruling theoretically applies to land borders, seaports, and airports — but in practice, it only applies to New York’s Eastern District. https://www.theverge.com/2024/7/29/24209130/customs-border-protection-unlock-phone-warrant-new-york-jfk
I'm worried that by the time we're collectively ready to move beyond Big Tech walled gardens, most publications will already be locked into Threads as their primary platform.
While Flipboard is great at bringing publications to the fediverse, relying on volunteers to do this for their favorite media outlets (like someone in New Jersey does for RFA) isn't sustainable and doesn't grant true ownership.
Could we develop a program that:
1. Establishes nostr identities for news organizations to claim when ready?
2. Utilizes RSS feeds or alternative sources to build a following?
3. Offers support to individual journalists and newsrooms?
4. Pursues web-of-trust verification and actively recommends accounts?
This could extend to other public utilities, such as transit systems or weather services.
Curious if in browser cached models could work as an alternative for on-premise hosting for simple republished tasks in terms of security or if that doesn’t make sense https://xenova.github.io/transformers.js/
“The democratization of publishing has had lots of good effects for the growth of media around the world, the biggest being the proliferation of previously under-represented groups to have a voice. But amongst the worst effects of it has been the perception that it is easy to be in media, have a career in media, raise money in media, build a company in media. “ http://rafat.org/post/180621846031
Flipboard onboarded 64 U.S.-based local and regional publications to the fediverse https://about.flipboard.com/fediverse/flipboard-brings-local-news-to-the-fediverse/
Civic media can set standards if they want to. Now would be a good moment again.
nostr:note1ge2p9uqpkua6x26pfvlhea7lhdnzn68lgzsn6kkllxjwp5jp3q5seeud9v
🤯 this is great!
nostr:note1zv3qp58nk6k7sp7rwppxd2ws4gz5sgquzyvgxjawhhz8n63klneqgysptq
Why critique decentralized social media protocols on platforms that harvest your data and where you have no ownership of your relationships, no say in your algorithmic discovery, and your data gets harvested?
It's pointless to bash alternative protocols while comfortably nestled in the walled gardens of Big Tech.
If you're genuinely concerned about the future of social media, direct your efforts: Invest time, thought, or resources into developing alternatives. Don't just complain—create.
The web scraper bot for Anthropic’s AI chatbot Claude hit iFixit’s website nearly a million times in a single day, despite the repair database having terms of service provisions that state “reproducing, copying or distributing any Content, materials or design elements on the Site for any other purpose, including training a machine learning or AI model, is strictly prohibited without the express prior written permission of iFixit.” https://www.404media.co/anthropic-ai-scraper-hits-ifixits-website-a-million-times-in-a-day/
CrowdStrike sent Uber Eats $10 apology gift cards to say sorry for outage. Several people who received it found that the cards didn't work.
https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/24/crowdstrike-offers-a-10-apology-gift-card-to-say-sorry-for-outage/