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February 16 · Issue #100 · View online
A newsletter of innumerable confusions and a profound feeling of despair collected and written by @poploser.
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Just before the new year, I wrote a thing about Facebook (which you likely saw in such newsletters as this one and probably just this one) and it was fine. Not especially good, certainly not great, but definitely fine. And that was after an editor saved me from an awful second draft. The thing I hadn’t anticipated going in is how hard Facebook is to write about because there’s too much. Facebook is impossibly large and sprawling and influential and trying to pin down something as broad as “Is it good?” is nearly impossible, or at least requires someone smarter than me to distill it to 1,500 words.
Wired‘s deep dive into the last couple years at Facebook, from roughly the time the trending topics controversy began to Zuck’s recent New Year’s resolution, is 10,000 words, so it’s much better.
By now, the story of Facebook’s all-consuming growth is practically the creation myth of our information era. What began as a way to connect with your friends at Harvard became a way to connect with people at other elite schools, then at all schools, and then everywhere. After that, your Facebook login became a way to log on to other internet sites. Its Messenger app started competing with email and texting. It became the place where you told people you were safe after an earthquake. In some countries like the Philippines, it effectively is the internet.
But I also agree there’s a strange optimism to the tone of the piece—like Facebook is really out there doing its best to make the world a better place. It’s especially naive now that we know Facebook self-funded the research suggesting their Messenger Kids app is really good for children and that they are patenting an algorithm that can identify social class, which it is assumed will be added to the many ways advertisers can slice and dice their targets.
Hey, 100 is a big round number. It sure is. And I wish I’d thought of something special to do for it, but I didn’t. Anyway, thanks for hanging around and be sure to tell your friends.
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What Remains of Chatroulette: It’s Gone to the Do(n)gs
Chatroulette is apparently still 1) a thing and 2) full of dicks. Browsing the site today, you’ll find an interface slightly more sleek than the original AIM-like screen. It’s been eight years since the site’s supposed death, but a small community persists. The men who remain — and make no mistake, they are overwhelmingly men — still consider it a place to waste a little time online. Between the occasional, curious user who is truly interested in just chatting, are the ones everyone has come to expect: the on-cam men jerking off.
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A Walden for the YouTube Age
People really love watching this guy build shit out of mud and sticks. It’s a niche concept, to be sure. The channel does not focus on historically accurate building techniques. It does not offer explanatory tutorials. It will not even help you survive in the wilderness: the “fire sticks” with which he ignites tinder require at least twenty-four hours to prepare and look fiendishly hard to use. So why have the videos attracted millions of viewers? And what do viewers like myself seek when we watch the channel on loop? What do we get from it?
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Like and Subscribe
What hath YouTube wrought? The seeming haplessness of YouTube in the face of its own algorithms, then, is not accidental. It has become conventional wisdom that YouTube has lost control of its platform to its algorithms, which, for instance, automatically restrict any and all LGBTQ+ content but encourage people to watch Nazi and alt-right content and create child-traumatizing clickbait. But rather than a loss of control, these outcomes prove YouTube is functioning as intended. By design, YouTube has little direct control over what its platform shows to any particular viewer compared with, say, NBC. Despite making some shows, YouTube’s primary business is not producing or even curating content; it is brokering as many matches as possible between content, viewers, and advertisers.
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Salon Wants to Hijack Your Browser to Mine Cryptocurrency
It’s not the worst idea somebody has had to monetize writing online.
The site laid out what it views as strict rules of operation: It would only mine cryptocurrencies while users are on the Salon page, and would require users to opt in every 24 hours.
Though Hoffner would not release specifics, the CEO said mining cryptocurrency will yield a number of benefits for the publication’s actual journalism. Longform reporting would be encouraged, he claimed, as the outlet could potentially mine more currency if users spend longer periods of time viewing the site.
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Natalie’s Rap 2
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Dinner at the End of America
Planet Hollywood, dazzling and dingy, is a larger-than-life version of the America of the mind. It holds infinite promise and anguish.
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The Case for Breaking Up Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google
Four companies dominate our daily lives unlike any other in human history: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. We love our nifty phones and just-a-click-away services, but these behemoths enjoy unfettered economic domination and hoard riches on a scale not seen since the monopolies of the gilded age. The only logical conclusion? We must bust up big tech.
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What drives art collectors to buy and display their finds? | Aeon Essays
Collectors drive the art world, but what drives art collectors? It’s less about aesthetics than self-identification.
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The Listening Con
How the powerful learned to launder their reputations using focus groups.
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Publishing is an upper-class industry that attracts upper-class writers. This social and cultural sliver has a profound impact on whose stories get told
When Kit de Waal was growing up in 1970s Birmingham, no one like her – poor, black and Irish – wrote books. Forty years on, the author asks, what has changed?
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