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The Spyglass Dispatch is a newsletter sent on weekdays featuring links and commentary on timely topics found around the web. Feel free to forward it to others who can sign up and view previous dispatches here. You can also view this particular dispatch on the web here.
While I like my title here, reflecting on Mark Zuckerberg's long, tedious appearance on The Joe Rogan Podcast – did you make it to the point where they're just Googling if RCS can send encrypted messages to an iPhone? No? Only me? – I'll also highlight the following excerpt for a taste of the take: On paper, it's the right Bro message, but the framing is far too into Jordan Peterson territory. And he's too Bromo Sapien, a specifically uppity, intellectual, and peacocking Bro. The Bro audience you're aiming for here, Zuck, is Bromo Erectus. The Dude Bro. The Masculine Bro.
I Think...🕹️ Microsoft’s Gaming Business Falls Short, Despite Activision – The hits keep coming for Xbox – and not in a good way. Despite spending $80B+ on acquisitions in the past few years, the business is meandering at best, and floundering at worst. Look no further than Microsoft failing to meet their own internal goals for growth – goals to which Satya Nadella's pay package had been partially tied, and goals which were subsequently untied from that package after they kept missing them. Per the report, Microsoft considered shutting down their gaming efforts in 2021, but decided to make those big acquisitions instead. But despite Microsoft now owning some massive titles, the industry overall still seems to be balking at the Game Pass model. And so Microsoft's model keeps shifting to try new things. With Nintendo about to kick off the next console generation, the question comes up: does Microsoft have one more generation in them? A handheld, perhaps? Right now, it's looking like a rare strategic miss for Nadella (this isn't really bolstering their cloud business as everyone assumed it would) – though largely masked by the massive and ever-growing AI spend. That's really all that matters now. [Information 🔒] 🎚️ Meta Just Flipped Off the Switch That Prevents Misinformation From Spreading in the United States – Hardly a surprise given, you know, the last week of Mark Zuckerberg's heel turn. But good on Casey Newton for confirming this. The most interesting element of this to me now: if nothing else, doesn't Meta worry that this will make the experience of using their services worse? To this, I suspect Zuck would say that such information is subjective, as that's essentially the argument he made on The Joe Rogan Podcast. And, I mean, some of it, sure. But a lot of it will just be bonkers conspiracy theories, utter nonsense, and yes, spam. No matter what you think about Xitter under Elon Musk, I have to believe that most everyone finds it more chaotic and spammy now, which is just a much worse experience – unless you're a chaos agent or spammer! Speech may be more "free", technically, but it's just worse to actually use the service. And Meta's products have 10x the users that Xitter does! Better hope their filters are really good – oh wait, they just turned those off. With all that in mind, my actual read here is that Meta, and really, Zuck, just doesn't really give a shit about the "broadcast" experience of their products any more. It's all about group sharing and private messages. And really, for the company, it's all about AI. Nothing else matters. Facebook, as we knew it, is dead. The barbarians didn't overtake the gates, Zuck just threw them open. (Aside: I had to alter Casey's headline as I kept reading it that Meta had flipped on such functionality...) [Platformer] 🕚 TikTok Prepares for Immediate Shut-Off in the U.S. on Sunday – We're in the end game now and all stops are being pulled and "various scenarios" being plotted. Legally, the app just has to be removed from App Stores in the US on Sunday. Technically, Apple and Google can do this too. But that doesn't mean ByteDance has to shut off the network to users in the US, but they're going to anyway – or at least threaten to – clearly, to send one last message to US politicians and law makers (though such tactics have backfired in the past, and they just sort of prove a reason why the app is getting banned in the first place). It sort of feels like this is shaping up for some sort of temporary stay of execution, with so many pieces in motion – including, of course, a new incoming President weighing in on the matter – but we'll see, the law is the law and the courts tend to uphold it. If it really vanishes, it will be fascinating to see which services benefit. The move to Xiaohongshu (aka 'Little Red Book') is sort of a cute protest vote, but not actually tenable. Do TikTokers move to Reels? YouTube? Xitter? Something else? Something new? [Information 🔒]
I Link...Just a lovely love letter to the city, quite literally under fire, that houses Snap. There have been a lot of nice gestures from companies stepping up to try to help with the disastrous situation, but most of it is corporate speak. Nothing necessarily wrong with that, but this is just different. It reads more personal because it's written in a far more personal manner than most PR teams would advise. And it's certainly a different tone from, say, this. (Which, yes, is ironic in that Evan Spiegel has long had the 'Bro' knock on him, whereas Mark Zuckerberg was the nerd.)
I Note...- Reminders and To-Dos being added to ChatGPT seems like a small thing, but perhaps augurs something bigger. Something agentic this way comes... [Verge]
- The SEC sues Elon Musk one last time on their way out the door. Jokes aside, obviously, there is roughly a zero percent chance this moves forward once Gary Gensler moves on in a few days. [NYT]
- Court documents unsealed in an AI copyright case against Meta showcase their complete and utter focus on competing with OpenAI. I'm not saying they were willing to cut corners but... they were certainly willing to cut "copyright" and "all rights reserved" disclaimers in the data (in the name of improving the dataset, of course)! Also note their complete and utter dismissal of their fellow "open source" (read: open weight – perhaps related to all this) player, Mistral. [Verge]
- Speaking of court, Drake has dropped his petition against his record label and Spotify, which accused them of using bots to inflate the the popularity of Kendrick Lamar's "diss" track against him in a wild new Streisand Effect twist. [Variety]
- The CFTC is looking into the legality of betting on the Super Bowl on Crypto.com – to which I'll just point out that this likely won't stop anyone because of words that were once drilled into my head during a Super Bowl: fortune favors the brave! [Bloomberg 🔒]
- On the sanitary scale, the restrooms at Starbucks, at least in my experience, rank somewhere just below licking old sponges. So it seems good that the company is reversing their open bathroom policy. Wait, they had an open bathroom policy, WTF?! A good first turnaround step... [NYT]
- MSNBC's new name will be... MSNBC. Which seems like a good thing with their spin-off from Comcast – even though neither MS (Microsoft) nor NBC News will now be involved with the entity. [Deadline]
- Parallels now finally supports x86 emulation on Apple Silicon chips – which is sort of wild because those chips rolled out five years ago this year. But if you're looking to run Windows on those machines, be prepared for "up to seven-minute boot times"! Turning on a computer and waiting seven minutes to run a Microsoft OS? It's like the 1980s all over again. [Verge]
- Apple has joined the Ultra Accelerator Link Consortium (UALink) in order to help create a standard for connecting GPUs together in data centers. Who else is involved? Basically everyone not named NVIDIA, which naturally has their own proprietary method for doing this. Surprised it took Apple this long to join given that they're one of the few (maybe only?) players not closely partnered with NVIDIA right now for AI work... [9to5Mac]
- Speaking of new social apps, Pixelfed, the ActivityPub-powered open Instagram competitor, now has official mobile apps. [TechCrunch]
I Quote..."I feel liberated. We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled . . . it’s a new dawn."
-- A "top banker", as quoted by The Financial Times in their trend piece on "corporate America going MAGA" (something I sort of read the tea leaves on back in August, thanks to who else but Zuck – and really, the signs started before that). They also draw a parallel to what is happening now to the corporate rush towards liberal causes and ideals following the murder of George Floyd in 2020. And that, as dark as it is, would signal that yes, the tide will shift again. As it always does...
I Spy...Given how much I saw it shared on social media yesterday, I'd say Apple's Grand Central Station stunt – putting some of the actors who star in the Apple TV+ show Severance in glass cages, sitting in their cubicles from the show and having them "work" as if nothing strange is happening – was well played. I've mentioned it before, but I've tried three different times now, I just can't get into the show for whatever reason. I find it far too cumbersome and esoteric for my tastes. But I know so many people who not only love it, but consider it one of their favorite shows ever, that I'm always debating trying yet again to get back into it – especially now with season 2 looming (per the marketing stunt). This was, of course, all playing out in front of an Apple Store. With show creator/director Ben Stiller there to supervise.
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