Horrific-Terrific - 👍 Antitrust Thrust
If someone forwarded this email to you, consider subscribing! Also if you’re already subscribed… consider paying? Thanks! Note: there will be no newsletter next week, but on the 30th I will send out a Horrific/Terrific Year in Review featuring interviews from experts in various fields including NLP, content moderation, data privacy, and cyber security. Hello, how are you? Me? I’m freezing, thanks a lot, winter. This week was good! Finally 👍. My reasoning is muddled. Maybe you should just decide yourself:
💙 The Twitter Blue subscription model is as old as web2 itselfThis week, Casey Newton wrote about how Elon Musk’s next big idea for Twitter is to reintroduce the Twitter Blue subscription thing, but those who choose not to pay will be forced to be subject to personalised ad targeting if they want to keep using the platform for free. (I managed to find the full Casey Newton piece for free on GameFAQs of all places, in case you’re not a paid subscriber to Platformer and want to just read this one thing). First of all, I know this is a really obvious point, but my least favourite thing about the current internet landscape is the weaponisation of ads. Online ads are unappealing in every single way: they’re loud, distracting, ugly, and sometimes get mistaken for actual content. The web has evolved in a way that has made us think you’re just supposed to get content for free, and luckily for advertisers and publishers, they figured out that tracking online behaviours and advertising to people without their knowledge or consent was a great way to make money — much easier than creating content and asking people to pay for it. So now we find ourselves wanting to pay for services not because the services are good, but because we are sick to death of online ads. It’s literally lose-lose for the user. Your online experiences are either ruined by adverts, or you find yourself saddled with yet another subscription for something that you’re not even sure is that valuable. I actually think that we should pay for something like Twitter — but not under these conditions. What you get with a big centralised platform like Twitter is the ability to broadcast information and amplify it. Maybe I’m just an idiot who should look at more traditional news sources, but there are some really big things that I learned about just from looking at Twitter: the murder of George Floyd, and the protest movement that followed; the protests in Hong Kong; people’s personal experiences with Covid-19 — this stuff is not the same as traditional reporting and is extremely valuable. Of course I do understand that algorithmic amplification doesn’t seem to discriminate, and harmful content often goes viral. I don’t know what the answer is, but extracting more data from users in the name of personalised ads is definitely not it. Is this really the best thing all of those ‘innovators’ in Silicon Valley can think of? 🤝 *Laughs in market dominance*Okay LOOK let me just explain something to you: I don’t care that we are living under capitalism, big companies need to stop getting bought out by even BIGGER ones. This week I refer specifically to Microsoft’s upcoming acquisition of Activision-Blizzard (a game publisher), and how everyone is getting up in arms over the FTC’s decision to try and block it. 🔍 Let’s examine some facts:
That last point really is the antitrust cherry on top of an ice-cream sundae of LIES. Microsoft offer this ten-year deal to Sony like it’s a righteous illustration of their commitment to fostering healthy gaming communities. But, before this acquisition was on the table, Call of Duty was just, you know, available to play pretty much everywhere and wasn’t subject to a limited-time deal. There’s nothing stopping Microsoft from making COD exclusive to the Xbox once the deal is over, and yet they wonder why Sony are reticent to take this deal. I also want to point out that games like Call of Duty and Overwatch are free to play — and so is Candy Crush. When a game is free to play, it makes money in two other ways:
So what Microsoft stand to gain here is a constant stream of money, and a constant stream of data (which is also a constant stream of money, I guess). They are so sure that this acquisition will go through, that they aren’t even trying to come up with arguments about how this is not anti-competitive. Their current line is “The allegation that this deal is anti-competitive doesn’t align with the facts”. It doesn’t?? It will literally give them the power to decide where huge, popular games do or do not get published — but sure. 💸 Sam Bankman-FuckedSam Bankman-Fried, previous CEO of FTX, has finally been arrested for all of his wrong doings. And what are those again? Ah yes, he ‘defrauded investors’. Investors — i.e. people who have more money than they need — are the last group of people you’re meant to defraud. Investors make up a key thread in the rich tapestry of free-market capitalism. We must not defraud investors; we must keep them happy all the time or it all falls down. But anyway, I think that SBF having his liberty taken away (or at least his ability to run a a crypto exchange) is actually good for humanity overall, and the same thing should probably happen to Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, which seems to also be on the verge of collapse. Actually… every single crypto exchange founder should just disappear into oblivion, along with the exchanges themselves. I just think it’s really interesting that these people — who thought that running an unregulated bank full of fake currency was a good idea — are now reaping the ‘benefits’ of all the stupid systems they advocated so hard for. What they wanted was a financial ecosystem with no rules, as long that lack of rules meant they got to become rich. What they failed to realise was how ‘no rules’ doesn’t protect them from fucking themselves over. My hope is they all eject themselves into space when the time to evacuate Earth finally comes, and then for a brief moment, before we all die, we can have some peace. Sorry that got dark. Try and have a nice weekend despite how depressing I’m being. 💌 Thank you for subscribing to Horrific/Terrific. If you need more reasons to distract yourself try looking at my website or maybe this ridiculous zine that I write or how about these silly games that I’ve made. Enjoy! |
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👍 Metaverse Party
Friday, December 9, 2022
ChatGPT wrote this newsletter for me | Apple have learned the importance of encryption | Never throw a 'metaverse party'
🤷 No Data
Friday, December 2, 2022
Christmas AI for supermarkets | MLMs are running out of data | How to 3D print a moon base
👍 The New Internet
Friday, November 25, 2022
Whats the difference between web3 and web 3.0? | advertisers consciously uncouple from Twitter | Meta's new 'diplomacy' AI
👎 Green Capitalism
Friday, November 11, 2022
The transition to renewables is really fucking us | US government departments use a special Facebook portal to fight disinfo
👎 Sinking In
Friday, November 4, 2022
This has been a weird week for social media | The Digital Markets Act will soon manifest | Apple are really taking the piss now
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