Thursday, June 20, 2024 |
| Aggregate data from 47 countries shows all the growth in platform news use coming from video or video-led networks. By Nic Newman. |
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| Is increasing subscriber numbers by offering people rock-bottom trial prices sustainable? By Craig Robertson. |
The Baltimore Banner, turning two, celebrates a subscriber bump and a new education hub What We’re ReadingWIRED / Dhruv Mehrotra and Tim Marchman
Perplexity is a bullshit machine →“A WIRED analysis and one carried out by developer Robb Knight suggest that Perplexity is able to achieve this partly through apparently ignoring a widely accepted web standard known as the Robots Exclusion Protocol to surreptitiously scrape areas of websites that operators do not want accessed by bots, despite claiming that it won’t. WIRED observed a machine tied to Perplexity—more specifically, one on an Amazon server and almost certainly operated by Perplexity—doing this on WIRED.com and across other Condé Nast publications.”The Canadian Press / Mickey Djuric
AI chatbots use Canadian news, but Ottawa won’t say if they should be paying for it →“Last year, the Liberal government passed the Online News Act, which requires some tech companies to negotiate licensing agreements with news publishers to use their content. The government won’t say if the law should also apply to AI services, such as massively popular chatbots.”TechCrunch / Lauren Forristal
Spotify quietly lets all podcasters upload videos, surpasses 250K shows →“There are more than 170 million global users watching video podcasts on Spotify, and the number of monthly active users watching video podcasts has grown by 40% year-over-year. Additionally, the platform recorded a bigger increase in video consumption hours compared to audio-only consumption hours in the same period.”The Guardian / Anna Isaac and Stephanie Kirchgaessner
Washington Post publisher alleged to have advised Boris Johnson to ‘clean up’ phone during Partygate →“Will Lewis, the Washington Post publisher, advised Boris Johnson and senior officials at 10 Downing Street to “clean up” their phones in the midst of a Covid-era political scandal, according to claims by three people familiar with the operations inside No 10 at the time … The claims suggest Lewis’s advice contradicted an email sent to staff at No 10 in December 2021 which instructed them not to destroy any material that could be relevant to an investigation.”Adweek / Mark Stenberg
Zuora acquires AI firm to end A/B testing for paywalls →“Unlike propensity models, however, which must be periodically adjusted, Sub(x) will constantly intake information about the efficacy of its past offers and recalibrate future offers accordingly. As a result, the technology claims it will eliminate A/B testing, automating away the manual process of trial and error that paywall providers have historically used to improve their conversion rates over time.”Bloomberg / Eltaf Najafizada
India denies permit to French reporter in blow to press freedom →“‘This work ban comes as a big shock: it was communicated to me on the eve of the Indian general elections, the largest democratic elections in the world, which I was hence forbidden to cover,’ said Farcis in his post on X. ‘This appeared to me as an incomprehensible censorship.’ India’s national elections began on April 19. Votes were counted on June 4, with Modi reelected as prime minister for a third consecutive term.”Vulture / Nicholas Quah
How chat podcasts have taken over the medium and dominated the cultural discourse (again) →“If the public face of podcasting was once thinky narrative shows vying for high-art legitimacy, these days it’s chat and interview programs that hustle their way into your life.”Axios / Sara Fischer
Forbes threatens Perplexity AI with legal action over copyright infringement →“The letter, dated last Thursday, demands that Perplexity remove the misleading source articles, reimburse Forbes for all advertising revenues Perplexity earned via the infringement, and provide ‘satisfactory evidence and written assurances’ that it has removed the infringing articles.”Los Angeles Times / Mary Rasenberger
Authors Guild CEO: Generative AI is built atop the theft of creative professionals’ work →“These companies claim they need our work to succeed but can’t afford to pay for it.”
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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