Wednesday, August 14, 2024 |
| Plus: One way local newspapers covered the pandemic well, how rational thinking can encourage misinformation, and what a Muslim journalistic value system looks like. By Mark Coddington and Seth Lewis. |
What We’re ReadingThe Verge / Adi Robertson
X’s new AI image generator is exactly as chaotic as you might expect →“Subscribers to X Premium, which grants access to Grok, have been posting everything from Barack Obama doing cocaine to Donald Trump with a pregnant woman who (vaguely) resembles Kamala Harris to Trump and Harris pointing guns…OpenAI, by contrast, will refuse prompts for real people, Nazi symbols, ‘harmful stereotypes or misinformation,’ and other potentially controversial subjects on top of predictable no-go zones like porn. Unlike Grok, it also adds an identifying watermark to images it does make.”Wired / Vittoria Elliott
Gamergate’s aggrieved men still haunt the internet →“While the ideas of Gamergate may live on in the far right and the GOP, the aggressive, harassing fandom behaviors are not limited to a political party…’I think a lot of people who were involved in Gamergate, you see now having more of a sort of radical leftist kind of ideology, because they’ve seen that’s where they’re going to get more clout,’ [says Jessica O’Donnell, author of a book on Gamergate]. ‘It’s more about picking the winning team, rather than the team to win.’ In other words, Gamergate was the internet—and it’s everywhere now.”MIT Technology Review / Melissa Heikkilä
Here’s how people are actually using AI →“Two years on, most…productivity gains haven’t materialized. And we’ve seen something peculiar and slightly unexpected happen: People have started forming relationships with AI systems. We talk to them, say please and thank you, and have started to invite AIs into our lives as friends, lovers, mentors, therapists, and teachers.”New York Magazine / Errol Louis
The New York Times’ endorsements decision is a huge mistake →“When the time of choosing arrives, it is a paper’s editorial watchdogs that let readers know who has played it straight, who’s been lying, who has potential, and who has conflicts of interest. Local endorsements are as much a form of public service as is warning readers about a coming snowstorm, a road closure, or the outbreak of a disease. They also serve as a carrot-and-stick incentive to candidates to tackle and discuss problems and solutions.”Washington Post / Ben Brasch, Sofia Andrade and Anumita Kaur
Ex-police chief who led raid on Kansas newspaper faces felony charge →“’It’s disappointing that the prosecutors clearly established we committed no crime, and the search and raid were wrong and shouldn’t have happened,’ [Eric Meyer, the Marion County Record’s publisher] told The Post. ‘To date, no one in local government in any of these positions has ever admitted: We have messed up. And it would be nice to for them to admit that.'”Axios / Sara Fischer
The New York Times is making a Wirecutter podcast →“This podcast is taking a different lens to the Wirecutter sensibility,” [Cliff Levy, deputy publisher of Wirecutter] said. “It’s not about telling you what to buy…It’s about being helpful.”Bloomberg / Leah Nylen and Anna Edgerton
The DOJ is considering trying to break up Google →“The move would be Washington’s first push to dismantle a company for illegal monopolization since unsuccessful efforts to break up Microsoft Corp. two decades ago. Less severe options include forcing Google to share more data with competitors and measures to prevent it from gaining an unfair advantage in AI products.”NPR / Dara Kerr
Meta is shutting down CrowdTangle today →“Shuttering this critical tool in another brazen blow to transparency across its platforms,” the Real Facebook Oversight Board, a coalition of academics and civil rights groups, said in a statement. “RIP Crowdtangle.”CapRadio / Sarit Laschinsky, Megan Myscofski, Vicki Gonzalez, and Claire Morgan
Amid layoffs and financial woes at CapRadio, a former GM is being investigated over $500,000 in mysterious payments →A forensic analysis of Sacramento-based CapRadio found over $760,000 in “unsupported” payments, or payments that couldn’t be backed up with an expense report or receipts. More than half those mysterious payments – some $460,000 – were made to a single CapRadio executive. A spokesperson for the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Office confirmed it was investigating former CapRadio GM Jun Reina.
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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