Wednesday, September 11, 2024 |
| “We don’t know whether or how this nonprofit and its fund will operate, and likely won’t for some months (nonprofit governance is many things, but fast is not one of them).” By Sophie Culpepper. |
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| After finding success — and a Pulitzer Prize — in Santa Cruz, Lookout aims to replicate its model in Oregon. “All of these playbooks are at least partially written. You sometimes hear people say, ‘Nobody’s figured it out yet.’ But this is all about execution.” By Joshua Benton. |
What We’re ReadingNPR / Dara Kerr
How Memphis became a battleground over Elon Musk’s xAI supercomputer →“The project has moved at breakneck speed and has been cloaked in mystery and secrecy. Musk has yet to make a public appearance, and officials from the local utility who were briefed on the project signed nondisclosure agreements, according to the utility’s spokeswoman. The NDAs were first reported by Forbes. The news dropped on Memphis in a press conference in June that was announced with little notice and caught members of the City Council, environmental agencies and the community off guard.”The Washington Post / Will Oremus
How TikTokers think about misinformation →“Most of those interviewed reported that they have come to accept that some of what they see on the app will be misleading, fake or otherwise unreliable, and to view it through a skeptical eye. Whether well-founded or not, many expressed confidence in their ability to spot misinformation on the app and suss out the truth.”The Verge / Lauren Feiner
Google dominates online ads, says antitrust trial witness, but publishers are feeling “stuck” →“I felt like they were holding us hostage,” said Stephanie Layser, a former programmatic advertising executive at News Corp.Axios / Sara Fischer
The New York Times Tech Guild has voted to authorize a strike →“The guild, which was formed in 2022, has yet to secure a contract after more than two years of bargaining…It’s unclear when the guild plans to strike, but with the elections coming up, any time in the near future would be problematic for The Times.”MIT Technology Review / Chris Lewis
Why a ruling against the Internet Archive threatens the future of America’s libraries →“This decision also renders the fair use doctrine—legally crucial in everything from parody to education to news reporting—almost unusable. And while there were occasional moments of sanity (such as recognizing that a ‘Donate here’ button does not magically turn a nonprofit into a commercial enterprise), this decision fractured, rather than clarified, the law.”Wired / Brian Barrett
Donald Trump has pushed the limits of being too online →“Something this fevered, this outrageous, frankly this unhinged, would feel much more at home in a backwoods corner of the internet. At last night’s presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, it escaped containment. Trump pushed the baseless anti-immigrant conspiracy, likely introducing it to a vast swath of the voting public, along with a handful of notable others. Democrats executing babies. Transgender operations on illegal aliens in prisons. All the fury and paranoia of a nation’s conspiratorial cousins delivered in a highly concentrated dose.”404 Media / Matthew Gault
A historic newspaper in Hawaii is using janky AI newscasters against its workers’ wishes →“We’ve been pushing back for years on mainland owners and interests that aren’t familiar with the communities and cultures of these islands. It’s exploitation, and this is just an extension of that. I don’t see this as anything less than digital colonialism.” – Kaitlin Gillespie, staff representative for Pacific Media Workers, which represents workers at The Garden Island. The Verge / Kylie Robison
Will California flip the AI industry on its head? →“Critics have painted a nearly apocalyptic picture of its impact, calling it a threat to startups, open source developers, and academics. Supporters call it a necessary guardrail for a potentially dangerous technology — and a corrective to years of under-regulation. Either way, the fight in California could upend AI as we know it, and both sides are coming out in force.”TechCrunch / Devin Coldewey
Senate leaders ask FTC to investigate AI content summaries as anti-competitive →“In a letter to the agencies, the senators, led by Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), explained their position that the latest AI features are hitting creators and publishers while they’re down. As journalistic outlets experience unprecedented consolidation and layoffs, ‘dominant online platforms, such as Google and Meta, generate billions of dollars per year in advertising revenue from news and other original content created by others. New generative AI features threaten to exacerbate these problems.'”Reuters / Nate Raymond
Utah law restricting youth social media use blocked by judge →“The court recognizes the state’s earnest desire to protect young people from the novel challenges associated with social media use,” [Chief U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby] wrote. But he said, “even well-intentioned legislation that regulates speech based on content must satisfy a tremendously high level of constitutional scrutiny.”The New York Times / Michael M. Grynbaum
ABC’s matter-of-fact moderators built factual guardrails around Trump →“In the context of 105 minutes of fierce debate in Philadelphia, these exchanges were fleeting. But they signaled a shift — for an evening, at least — in the balance of power between Mr. Trump and the many journalists who have struggled, or stopped trying, to construct factual guardrails around the bombardment of baseless claims that he regularly unleashes on live TV.”
Nieman Lab / Fuego
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