YouTube

Meta’s Moment of Reckoning

Pop some popcorn. Put some butter. Add some salt. Because opportunists (politicians) are pointing their muskets at villains (tech bros), using children’s welfare as the ammunition. In case you were wondering, I am talking about the battle between New Mexico AG and Silicon Valley’s villain in chief.

The next bout is on May 4. So mark your calendars. Why?

This week two verdicts came in quick succession. First, a New Mexico jury ordered Meta to pay $375 million for knowingly enabling child predators on Instagram and Facebook. Then, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube negligent for designing platforms that addicted a young woman who first used YouTube at age six and Instagram at nine.

On the surface this is big win for ambulance chasers. However it could be much bigger if politicians actually have the best intentions that go beyond winning the next elections. History tells me, they

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Technology
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YouTube on Vision Pro! Finally!

Some days are just good for one thing—lying in bed and doing absolutely nothing. Today happens to be one of those days! I am just lazing here. I have a Vision Pro (version two) strapped to my face, and I am watching some of my favorite shows on YouTube in all their glory on the official YouTube app for Vision Pro.

For the past two years, I have been waiting for the official app to arrive. Can you believe it has been two years since Apple launched this “headphone for the eyes”? Watching YouTube videos via the browser was fine, but it was nothing like getting a 4K (or higher bitrate) stream. The app allows you to access standard videos, 180° videos, 360° videos, and YouTube Shorts. The M5 chip version allows you to watch YouTube videos in 8K.

This release has made me so happy. I use Vision Pro

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Notes, Technology
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Velocity Is the New Authority. Here’s Why

Why does everyone feel overwhelmed by information? Why does it feel impossible to trust what passes through our streams? We tend to blame individual publications, specific platforms, or bad actors. The real answer has less to do with any single media entity and more with structural changes in the information ecosystem.

I started my “information” life typing copy on an ill-tempered Remington. As a teenage reporter, I saw newspapers being typeset, one letter at a time. It was a messy, slow, and laborious process. So I don’t carry romantic notions about the old days. I’ve been quick to embrace any technology that, in Stephen Covey’s words, helps me keep “the main thing the main thing.” The main thing is telling a thoroughly reported, well-written story.

The early 1990s Internet, followed by blogging at the turn of the century, and social media a decade later all helped me do that main thing. In the mid-2000s I embraced Dave Winer’s mantra of “sources going direct.” As far back as 2009, I outlined the coming changes in my essays “How Internet Content Distribution and Discovery Are Changing” and “Amplification and the Changing Role of Media.”

For the past decade and a half, the whole

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My Essays, Technology
34 comments

The Tyranny of Content Algorithms

No matter who you are, how skilled you may be, or how much knowledge you possess, excessive activity will inevitably lead to a return to the average. This phenomenon is observable every day on the Internet. Before Instagram became a competition for the lowest common denominator, there were a few photographers I followed. They consistently shared captivating images, always managing to evoke a sense of inspiration with each viewing of their work. 

I wasn’t alone in this appreciation—over time, they gained more recognition and accumulated larger followings. Or perhaps it was the other way around. The ‘larger following’ meant they were able to monetize their audience. However, soon the tail was wagging the dog. 

As the years passed, I noticed them sharing more frequently, yet the quality of their work declined. They gradually transitioned from being exceptional to merely average. I suppose this is what they mean by “regression to the mean.” Although Sir Francis Galton, a 19th-century scientist, originally used this

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My Essays, Technology
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For kids, Social Media is kaput.  

One of the biggest problems with old people is that they forget that they were young once, or that they were easily bored and did things that annoyed their parents, or that they had their own creative ways to deal with boredom and wasting time. And that is why I am a bit sanguine about how the young and the restless use the Internet and social media. 

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Technology
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Social Internet Is Dead. Get Over It.

**

The New Yorker

The social-media Web as we knew it, a place where we consumed the posts of our fellow-humans and posted in return, appears to be over.…In large part, this is because a handful of giant social networks have taken over the open space of the Internet, centralizing and homogenizing our experiences through their own opaque and shifting content-sorting systems.

The Atlantic

Algorithms optimized for engagement shape what we see on social media and can goad us into participation by showing us things that are likely to provoke strong emotional responses. But although we know that all of this is happening in aggregate, it’s hard to know specifically how large technology companies exert their influence over our lives.

Bloomberg

The moment exposes the tension between how social networks wish people used their services and the reality … Asking users to unlearn the habit of relying on social media will take

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My Essays, Technology
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Why these are Google’s 7 best acquisitions

From Wall Streeters to members of the media, it is not uncommon to hear people wax eloquent about Facebook’s high-profile acquisition of Instagram and WhatsApp as prescient moves toward future-proofing the business. But Google’s success with perhaps innocuous-seeming acquisitions often gets overlooked.

The jury is still out on Looker, the data analytics company Google bought to add muscle to its fledgling cloud business for $2.6 billion. Whether or not it turns out to be the next YouTube or next Motorola, it is an interesting bet. In its history, Google has bought over 200 companies, spending quite a substantial chunk of change on them. Many of them were well-known and, in some cases, established businesses — Doubleclick, for example.

However, I want to focus on strategic deals that have helped Google evolve and have kept it a dominant player in the ever-changing Internet ecosystem. Here is my list of their top acquisitions based on the best return on investment for the company and the potential for future-proofing it effectively.

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Technology
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What’s Worth Reading Now

  1. The best shows are on HBO, Seriously! Vulture ranks the catalog of the network, and after you are done reading the article, you realize how much quality is packed into the HBO archives. The Wire is probably the number one show on HBO ever, though these writers don’t agree with me on that.
  2. Technology is as biased as its makers. Machine learning and algorithms have received recent attention for being biased, but technology has always been this way.
  3. What’s with Khaki? Where did it come from?
  4. The unlikely origins of USB, the port that changed everything. This is by one of my favorite writers, Joel Johnson. So, you know it is very good and deeply researched.
  5. How YouTube’s related algorithm is helping create a new genre of music: Vice calls it “the first genre of Algorithm Age.”

This first appeared on my June 2, 2019, weekly newsletter. If you like

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Musings
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