Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
The Metaverse, the once-buzzy technology that promised to allow users to hang out awkwardly in a disorientating video-game-like world, has died after being abandoned by the business world. It was three years old. The capital-M Metaverse, a descendant of the 1982 movie “Tron” and the 2003 video game “Second Life,” was born in 2021 when…
The news-rating group NewsGuard has found dozens of news websites generated by AI chatbots proliferating online, according to a report published Monday, raising questions about how the technology may supercharge established fraud techniques. The 49 websites, which were independently reviewed by Bloomberg, run the gamut. Some are dressed up as breaking news sites with generic-sounding names…
The media bet its future on Facebook. Did it learn from that mistake? Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Images Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; Photo: Getty Images BuzzFeed, the archetypal new media company of the 2010s, announced last week that it was shutting down its news division. In 2012, the small “web buzz” start-up started hiring reporters. The newsroom…
“What Cheese Are You?” was a quiz that appeared online in February 2014. BuzzFeed, the digital media company that published the quiz, returned to the same theme in December 2016 (“What Delicious Cheese Are You Based on Your Zodiac Sign?”), February 2018 (“Everyone Has a Cheese That Matches Their Personality—Here’s Yours”), August 2019 (“This…
For a long time we have existed in a weird world where if as a human you want to use a website you agreed to a long terms-of-service either explicitly or implicitly… But if you were a robot accessing a website the rules of the road were pretty basic: 1. There was some usual blanket…
(Reuters) – BuzzFeed Inc said on Monday that most of its cash and cash equivalents were held at Silicon Valley Bank, which was shut down last week. The digital media firm said it had about $56 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of 2022. Startup-focused lender SVB Financial Group last week became…
Increasingly, I’ve found myself enraged by the White Man With A Newsletter pundit set using to tell the world that because I am doing everything in my power to protect my 17-month-old from being that could kill him, I am a paranoid ideologue who rejects science and reason. These Davids, Jonathans, and Alecs fundamentally predicate…
Inside the Turmoil at Jezebel Nine people have left the website since March. Those we spoke to cited executive overreach and dwindling resources Jack Koloskus In March, G/O Media — the parent company of several former Gawker Media websites including the feminist blog Jezebel — hired former Forbes and Marie Claire editor, Lea Goldman, as…
The Post-Dirtbag Left For years, “Chapo Trap House” and other podcasts have paired anti-capitalist ideas with the rhetorical style of social media. Is a new form emerging? July 26, 2021 Two shows harness a progressive energy, but they differ sharply in affect.Illustration by Miguel Porlan On the evening of January 6th, while National Guard troops were…
This article is part of the Digiday Privacy Preview, a digital issue of stories examining what the coming changes to Chrome and iOS will do to the worlds of media and marketing. Read the rest of that coverage here. More than $10 billion worth of digital ad revenue rides on the media industry’s ability to figure…