Tech Time by Tim #43

Hey you. Want a nice popsicle on this hot summer day? What’s that, staring at you? Don’t be silly, that’s just one of the items this week, we’re talking about AI whiteboards and frozen heads, after passing through a funnel made of threads! Also on the docket are archives of our own, fediverse frenemies, and voicing concerns. Last but not least, money talks louder than words.

At A Glance

A quick overview of this week’s content.

·??????The Week that Was: A Funnel Made Of Threads, AI Whiteboards And Frozen Heads

·??????U and I: Archives Of Our Own, Fediverse Frenemies

·??????Rules of Engagement: Voicing Concerns, Money Talks Louder Than Words

The Week that Was:

A look back at the tech world of the past week.

A Funnel Made Of Threads:

Following the discourse around Meta’s new Twitter adjacent app ‘Threads’ this past week has been a surreal experience. People seem to be shocked at both its rapid growth and its horrific privacy (or lack thereof ) policy. They’re wondering if this will finally be the Twitter killer in the same breath as they lament their Instagram accounts being taken hostage . The timing of Threads is no coincidence. It all comes down to why Twitter has always struggled so much to become profitable, why Facebook couldn’t just buy it, and indeed, why Facebook had to wait with the launch of its Twitter alternative until now.

Contrary to what Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri might want you to believe, launching Threads as a pseudo-standalone app is not a risky bet at all . In fact, it is the most logical thing in the world considering how Twitter has always been a funnel without a reservoir. A quote commonly attributed to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is that Twitter “crashed a clown car into a gold mine.” That gold mine is the incredible way Twitter could have profiled and data-mined users, a system only really rivaled recently by the advent of TikTok. The clown car part is how Twitter’s leadership just couldn’t figure out how to put this treasure trove of information to ‘good’ use.

Enter Facebook, which has the largest reservoir in the world as far as social media goes. You often hear offhanded remarks about how only old people use Facebook now. This is mostly true for Western countries, but not so for other parts of the world. Instagram is more popular with younger users in general, though its spotty track record with platform safety has led to some pretty tragic events in the past. Instagram and chat service WhatsApp are both part of the same reservoir as Facebook. The dominance of the latter in South American, East Asian, and the hotly contested Indian markets is not to be underestimated. All this brings us to the single biggest advantage a Facebook version of Twitter has always had, it doesn’t need to make money, it just needs to be a good enough funnel. LINK

AI Whiteboards And Frozen Heads:

I like dark humor because it can speak to the raw, ridiculous cruelty of life in a way that makes it not only bearable, but which can also inspire people to make changes for the better. As far as dark humor goes, here’s a funny joke: Some of the world’s richest people continue to freeze their own severed heads whilst the consequences of their actions and inactions continue threatening to burn the rest of us alive . OpenAI remains more worried about AI catastrophe than climatological collapse. And so the company is doubling down on efforts to control super intelligent AI.

Cynics have claimed OpenAI just needed a buzzy press release now that ChatGPT metrics are down for the first time . I disagree with the cynics on that front though. Fewer users are logical as the hype calms down and more people figure out what the tech can and can’t do for them. Some of the use cases so far have been a sexbot , investment banker , and assassination consultant… wait what ? Yeah… some use cases are a little safer than others. OpenAI are now rolling GPT-4 out to everyone , so it’ll be interesting to see what comes from that. Naturally, they want this rollout to go as smoothly as possible. Less server strain will likely lead to a more positive experience, which will increase the likelihood of a conversion to paid subscriptions for features such as the code interpreter .

Rivals to OpenAI and Microsoft such as IBM are still playing catch-up as far as PR goes, but it is worth paying attention to how they try to position themselves in the market. AI progresses so rapidly that there can be multiple breakthroughs per day, corporate strategy is a lot slower and more predictable than that though. Especially in creative industries, it’s important to be weary of the digital whiteboard effect though. To summarize, this is when you spend too much time and effort planning and organizing things perfectly in a productivity app, having neither time nor energy left to actually execute that plan. LINK

U and I:

How UI and UX mediate our relationships with both technology and each other.

Archives Of Our Own:

The United States loves its constitution. The amendments in particular are held up as sacred, iron clad rules. With how hotly contested and easily bypassed they are though, these amendments can perhaps best be viewed as guidelines. This past week a Louisiana judge granted a preliminary injunction that forbids officials in the Biden administration from flagging specific posts on social media platforms or requesting reports about platform’s efforts to take down content. The ruling said that the government could still ‘notify’ platforms about posts detailing crimes, national security threats, or foreign attempts to influence elections. If you’re wondering how to draw the line between those seemingly conflicting statements, you’re not alone, welcome back to the US Culture War.

To give two examples of why this is such a complex issue, let’s look at the Taliban and Sex workers. The Taliban endorse Twitter as their platform of choice. Sex workers struggle to avoid bans from the services they depend on for their livelihoods. Sex and violence are two of the most divisive topics when it comes to social media moderation and safety. This came to a head in an unexpected way via a major Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack on a popular fan fiction archive called Archive Of Our Own (ao3) . Ao3 is well known for being a safe haven for explicit content, much of it the kinds that are extra controversial on mainstream social media, LGBTQ+ erotica, for example. The attackers also attempted to extract the IP addresses of visitors to the site.

The name and purpose of this particular site are ironic, since that is what everyone wants from social media, an archive of their own. Of their own thoughts, feelings, opinions, beliefs, and all the validation of their likeminded peers. Companies monetize not only this, but the conflict that occurs between groups with conflicting worldviews, this is what I refer to in my newsletters as ‘enragement’ (rage + engagement). That’s ultimately what this new US court case is about, who gets to control what you see, and how you can engage with it. TikTok, owing to its controversial Chinese ownership is still the poster child of the User Experience (UX) battlefront in this greater conflict, but it's issues in this regard apply to every platform. LINK

Fediverse Frenemies:

Fediverse (Federation + Universe) is the umbrella term of an independent network of social media platforms and other software that can be interwoven with one another, which is the federation part. There are two primary representatives at present, at least as far as relative mainstream viability is concerned. Those options are Mastodon, and Bluesky, both of which I’ve written about in previous newsletters, nudge, nudge, wink, wink.

As a quick refresher, Mastodon is a non-profit platform that people can essentially build their own communities on. More and more companies are building custom apps for it, which is sorely needed. The vanilla Mastodon experience has been described to me by friends as “about as comfortable as getting kicked in the nuts,” ouch. Mastodon is at least doing its best to major issues , which is vital to its ultimate success. A comfortably and intuitive experience is vital for keeping users around. Bluesky is also attempting to become the infrastructure upon which a new generation of Fediverse experiences will be built. It is currently only a for-profit app by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, launched in an invite only state. Launching the app before the Fediverse protocol remains a point of contention.

A big threat looms ever larger though, Meta, of course. It’s no secret that Meta has been looking for a way into the Fediverse for some time now via Facebook. Now, there’s treads to content with as well. Threads is a far more direct comparison to the core ‘Twitter-like’ value propositions of Mastodon and Bluesky. Fearful diehards of these platforms are now pleading with them to get on the same page before it’s too late. Given that commercial spyware continues to be a growth market, the promise of a secure and private social network continues to become more and more appealing. LINK

Rules of Engagement:

Ethics and legal matters regarding tech engagement.

Voicing Concerns:

Legal personhood for AI agents is a topic that continues to speak to the imagination because of its long history of representation in famous classics such Bladerunner, Ghost In The Shell, and Terminator. In that regard, calls for AI firms that create ‘fake humans ’ to face prison sentences is nothing new. What is new though, is a high profile deepfake (highly convincing imitations) scandal in the Skyrim modding community. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is at time of writing still the most recent entry in a legendary gaming franchise. It is also home to one of the largest and most prolific modding communities in the world.

The scandal in question involves AI powered voice cloning tech being used to insert the voices of the game’s official voice actors into erotic mods. The algorithms behind voice cloning, like other forms of generative AI, are trained in large part via public data, which platforms such as Reddit have claimed as major motivators for locking down their platforms. Name, Image, Likeness (NIL) is so complex to enforce with regards to generative AI because you can’t take data that’s been fed into a Large Language Models (LLM’s) out again. Though it might sound counterintuitive, the dramatic sounding opportunities for harm of generative AI are driving broader conversations about online safety.

Passionate community members creating huge amounts of free content is the backbone of User Generated Content (UGC) platforms. Generative AI looks to be a tremendous force multiplier in this regard, so it is goof that those AI companies that wish to reap the rewards are also under close scrutiny to ‘do things right’ so to speak. One tangible example of that is the recently launched Open RPG Creative License (ORC). This ?legal framework intended for Tabletop Roleplaying Games (TTRPG’s). I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that it may well be used as a reference for wider generative AI terms of use going forward. LINK

Money Talks Louder Than Bans:

Soooo… about those NIL rights! Google has officially admitted to training the LLM’s of its Bard AI with scraped data and as a precaution, reiterated that it has the right to train Bard with user data from any of its products and services. Why wait until now to state the obvious? Because the EU and US finally agreed on a new data sharing deal. This is purely a formality of course, since there was never any chance of US companies stopping their data extraction practices in Europe. To be fair to them, critical parts of those products and services do rely on certain kinds of voluntarily provided user data to function. The main sticking point in this whole situation is of course how one defines ‘voluntary.’ Terms of service agreement is a farce at best and over the past few weeks alone we saw numerous EU specific delays of new products and services. Perhaps to put extra pressure on regulators via angry consumers.

Having said that, when consumers really want something, they’ll find a way to get it, as the massive popularity of Meta’s threads in China shows. The app is banned there . Digital gatekeeping in general is in a weird state of flux. Apple, for example, is technically being forced to open up its app store to competition soon. Fat chance it will actually do that , yet neither can Apple punish companies like Spotify for moving their payments elsewhere like it used to. Even Amazon and cable TV’s iron grip on some of their respective trump (not that one!) cards appears to be loosening.

Amazon is internally worried about a ‘day 2 ’ mentality as it loses ground to rivals for the first time since it invented the ‘Prime Day’ sale. Meanwhile illegal sports streaming is at an all-time high, as rights for cable’s previous trump card against streaming services become so fragmented that even stubborn fans are starting to shop around for eye patches and parrots , if you catch my drift. Against this backdrop, it’ll be interesting to see what kind of impact China’s strategic restrictions on rare earth metals will have. Even tech titan’s backs are closer to the wall than they’d like right now, and there’s only so many extra costs consumers will tolerate. LINK

A Nice Cup of Serendipity:

Cool bits and bobs from around the web.

Satana Origins LINK

Easter Eggs LINK

Ive’s New Groove LINK

Samsung Vision No LINK

Lab Meat LINK

Science Activism LINK

Hungry Caterpillar LINK

Speedrun Denied LINK

The Deep End:

A weekly batch of longform content recommendations.

Kairos:

A review of a book about time and how we experience it. LINK

Dishonesty Inception:

Those in the fields of sociology and psychology often fall victim to the traps they study. LINK

Deepmind Interview:

An Interview with Google Deepmind’s Demis Hassabis. LINK

The Making Of Immortality:

A making-of documentary about a unique movie/video game hybrid. LINK

One More Thing…

Have you been enjoying your summer? I have. I’m looking forward to the summer BBQ package we get in the summer from work. There’s focaccia in there and early readers of my newsletters will know about how I got the title of “The Focaccia Fiend” around the office. We had focaccia left over from the new year’s party once. The freezers were packed for ages. Oh valley of plenty, oh valley of plenty! I was told to help myself, and so I did. Everyone was grateful to me in the end since it opened up room in the freezers for ice cream! My bosses have (mostly) exquisite taste, so they always order amazingly fresh produce and other culinary items for the care packages we get around special celebrations.

And as I advised all those newsletters ago, should you find yourself in possession of a good quality focaccia bread… Get some good, strong cheese, and some quality ham from an organic butcher. Substitute mushrooms, courgette, and carrot if you’re vegan. Chutney is optional for both, some like it, some don’t. Put that bread on a toaster for a few minutes, and boom. You’ve just saved yourself a trip to a restaurant for lunch.