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caseynewton

@caseynewton@mastodon.social

Email salesman at Platformer and podcast co-host at Hard Fork. casey@platformer.news

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caseynewton , to random
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There was a time platforms like Twitter tried to remove obvious conspiracy theories from their trending pages. But this weekend’s events showed how platforms are increasingly content to let us choose our own realities https://www.platformer.news/monday-newsletter-3/

caseynewton , to random
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NEWS: After sustained attacks from House Republicans, the Stanford Internet Observatory is being dismantled. A huge blow to academic freedom and our ability to understand platforms and influence operations https://www.platformer.news/stanford-internet-observatory-shutdown-stamos-diresta-sio/

caseynewton , to random
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This year at Platformer we want to tell more stories about the web as it enters a state of managed decline. Here's @zoeschiffer interviewing a man whose independent games site was crushed by a change to Google's search rankings and its embrace of AI: https://www.platformer.news/google-retro-dodo-core-algorithm-change-ai-publishers/

Here's Retro Dodo's founder:

But the recent announcements at Google I/O, with executives saying that Google will do the Googling for you, producing AI messages that have been ripped from independent sites, it’s just the cherry on top. For independent publishers, there's just no more incentive. The way we earn money is that if a visitor comes to our website, we can show them around our site, there'll be a few display ads, maybe you can check out my book that took two years to create, or maybe you can check out our podcast and we maybe we’ll work with a sponsor so that we can show you products that we like. That's how we monetize. But the fact that Google now classifies our site as unhelpful, but are more than willing to crawl our website for information that is deemed helpful for their AI results, that is just the cherry on top. Google doesn't make money from visitors coming to our website, they make money from their search results, their advertisers spending longer on their search pages. I think that's just the future of Google now, which is really quite painful for independent publishers that rely so heavily on Google.
ALT
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    • + Npars01
    caseynewton , to random
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    A few more words about the OpenAI / Scarlett Johansson situation https://www.platformer.news/platform-sales-tax-california-sb1327-glazer/

    The company is not answering any follow-up questions on the record. As far as I can tell, its story is that Altman pursued Johansson to voice ChatGPT as a kind of rogue side project, while a separate team undertook a separate casting process that accidentally resulted in it choosing a woman whose voice sounds uncannily like Johansson’s. It then chose to use the Johansson-like voice in all of its demos last week for unspecified reasons, and Altman posted “her” on X for additional unspecified reasons, and anyway the whole thing was just a crazy coinkydink that not even ChatGPT herself could have ever dreamed up. On one hand I understand that this is just a voice that we are talking about, and if superhuman intelligence is on its way here then we all have much bigger problems to worry about. On the other hand the OpenAI team has spent nearly a decade talking up the values of trust, transparency, collaboration, and alignment with human intent, only to lose sight of them all here. Its narrative about the Johansson debacle is essentially that its chief executives slipped on a series of banana peels over the last nine months until they were trapped in an uncanny valley between one of the world’s most famous actresses and another actress, whom it declines to name, who sounds just like her.
    ALT
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    • + picard
    caseynewton , to random
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    Most AI chatbots are cold and clinical. OpenAI's new voice mode for ChatGPT is warm and flirty. That could have big, unpredictable consequences https://www.platformer.news/openai-gpt-4o-chatgpt-voice-vision/

    ChatGPT’s warm, giggly responses can only be described as flirting. “That’s incredible, Rocky,” it squeals, after learning about the interview. Looking at his unkempt mane, the bot says: “you definitely have the ‘I’ve been coding all night’ look down.” It suggests he run a hand through his hair. After Smith dons a bucket hat and says he’ll wear that to the meeting, the bot laughs — hard. “Oh, Rocky. That’s quite a … statement piece.” It laughs again, and stutters a little. “I mean … you’ll definitely stand out. Though maybe not in the way you’re hoping for an interview?” This warm, generous, supportive banter is exactly what leads Joaquin Phoenix’s character in Her to fall in love with Johansson’s Samantha. And it stands in sharp contrast to the tone of bots from Google, Anthropic, and Meta, which take pains to remind users that they are bots and are never more emotional than a librarian would be in recommending a book.
    ALT
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    • bontchev ,
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    @caseynewton Additional Laws of Robotics, invented by a Bulgarian SciFi writer:

    1. A robot must always identify itself as a robot.

    2. A robot must know that it is a robot.

    caseynewton , to random
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    Here's @zoeschiffer interviewing Mastodon founder @Gargron on the state of the platform and its relationship with Meta. He says he thinks two-way federation between Threads and Mastodon is coming this summer https://www.platformer.news/mastodon-interview-eugen-rochko-meta-bluesky-threads-federation/

    I know that they're working on this, and I believe that it's going to be available in the summer: two-way federation between Threads and Mastodon, and I'm looking forward to it. Obviously you have to keep an eye out on what's happening and whatnot, and I think it's a valid question to ask, will Mastodon still be in charge of its destiny? But at the same time, the status quo is that we're here and we're doing what we're doing, and if Meta decides to pivot on that, we're still exactly where we were, and there's nothing we can do about any of this. So I see no point in really freaking out about it.
    ALT
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    • + saharafang
    caseynewton , to random
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    New, Substack-free website just dropped https://www.platformer.news/

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