TAPinto Newark / Matt Kadosh
404 Media / Samantha Cole and Emanuel Maiberg
The Taylor Swift deepfakes disaster threatens to change the internet as we know it →“The state of nonconsensual, AI-generated pornography on the internet at the moment is completely out of control. AI startups are flush with cash from venture capitalists and they are racing to make their tools available before they stop to stress test how those tools could be abused, and nobody seems to care until the Swifties show up.”
Intelligencer / Jordan Hoffman
Killing The Messenger: My final days working at a disaster →“It was clear, pretty much on day one, that in addition to writing with an authoritative and articulate voice with over 15 years’ experience, I would be expected to help shovel the furnaces with SEO coal. I was happy to pitch in. But I soon recognized that time-consuming reporting or rich critical essays were less valued by upper management than quick hits. I’ll never forget the day I was told, breathlessly, by the then-head of the entertainment channel that Toni Collette was trending.”
The New York Times / Ben Sisario
Universal Music Group pulls songs from TikTok →“Universal’s clash with the platform is the latest manifestation of a media conflict that has played out repeatedly over the last two decades, pitting tech companies’ innovations against the music industry’s demands for control and compensation.”
The Washington Post / Laura Wagner
The Atlantic / Conor Friedersdorf
Readers share the state of their local journalism →“A longtime Seattle Times staff journalist recently started a new full-featured paper focused mostly on the northernmost 50 miles of the state. It took six months before a weekly paper copy was published. It’s now almost as large a paper, by weight, as my Sunday Seattle Times. I think the Cascadia Daily News succeeds in large part because it has a strong local focus. It also has a sense of humor, and isn’t afraid of the big stories.”
The New York Times / Benjamin Mullin