A thread for updates on the various ways the internet is destroying everything and the undying hellsites of social media. Let's all laugh at the abyss.
Alright, as promised, non-AI news.
New podcast creation has fallen off a cliff
One thing I keep hearing over and over is that it is so much harder to launch a podcast now than it was, say, three or four years ago. And that is usually coming from people at established studios with at least some marketing might. For independent creators, it must be nearly impossible. It is not entirely surprising that, according to data compiled by Chartr from Listen Notes, fewer podcasts were created in 2022 than in the two years prior. Even so, the margin is shocking: the number of new shows created dropped by nearly 80 percent between 2020 and 2022.
Some of that can be attributed to the pandemic — podcast creation peaked in 2020 when people truly had nothing better to do. But the number of new shows in 2022 was even lower than pre-pandemic levels: 337,063 podcasts were launched in 2019, compared to 219,178 in 2022. New episode creation has fared somewhat better. Though still lower than 2020 and 2021 figures, Listen Notes logged 26.1 million new episodes published in 2022, up from the 18.1 million episodes in 2019.
Creators seem to recognize that until podcast discovery improves, launching a podcast may be a losing proposition. The system seemingly cannot effectively handle the number of podcasts that already exist. One small solution seems to be launching new shows on old feeds, such as what The New York Times did with Hard Fork and Pivot’s RSS. The feed had a built-in audience and made it much easier for listeners to discover the new show. It may not have landed well with all subscribers (or podcasters), but Hard Fork ranks in the top five technology podcasts on Apple and Spotify several months after its launch.
^^Why everything we do is still in the same feed. Honestly I'm curious to see if we're able to break anything if we can get the counters to go up to 1000 eps. This motivates me a lot more than it should.
In addition to being a lot of glut out there from the pandemic, the downside to everyone being home is a lot of people were listening to podcasts less because it's often a commuter activity. Also, many people were getting digital exhaustion from being in front of screens and in headphones all the time, so there's a multiple-layered punch of dropping listenerships across the board to changing tides of interest and oversaturation of the market.
So many podcasts I listen to have patreons nowadays and a common selling point is access to patron exclusive episodes. More podcasts to listen to is pretty much the last thing I need though. Fortunately most of them seem to be doing perfectly fine so I might be a rare case.
I know I just parachute in here and post these but I found this episode of Offline in particular to be extremely helpful. Obviously, it might not be a solution for everyone and folks might already have a good balance of screen time vs real life.
In a press statement shared with The Verge, the stock photo company said it believes that Stability AI “unlawfully copied and processed millions of images protected by copyright” to train its software and that Getty Images has “commenced legal proceedings in the High Court of Justice in London” against the firm.
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“The driver of that [letter] is Stability AI’s use of intellectual property of others — absent permission or consideration — to build a commercial offering of their own financial benefit,” said Peters.
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The lawsuit marks an escalation in the developing legal battle between AI firms and content creators for credit, profit, and the future direction of the creative industries. AI art tools like Stable Diffusion rely on human-created images for training data, which companies scrape from the web, often without their creators’ knowledge or consent.
This seems really stupid to me. People learn how to do things (partially) by examining what other people have done. You learn about writing a book by reading books. You get an idea of how songs work by listening to other songs. And, yes, you figure out about pictures by looking at pictures done by other people. Naturally, there's a lot more to it than just that, but examining other people's art is vital to learning how to create it yourself.
If the picture's on the internet, and it's not behind a paywall or something, a person could go and look at it whenever they wanted. A person could therefore use those images to help them learn how to create images, whether those originals are copyrighted or not. As long as they're not passing off the original images as their own work, nobody would have a problem with this. So why is it "wrong" for AI to do the same?
The answer, obviously, as it always is, is "money".
Yeah, since the pandemic I've had 3 or 4 people recommend The Adventure Zone or Critical Role or Dimension 20 to me (I think only the first is a podcast, but you know what I mean) and I'm just like...
...I don't have time. My regular rotation of podcasts means I literally do not have time to add those shows to my carousel.
This is me, too.
I am down to one or two a week that often get listened to, usually on a walk during breaks from working at home. Sometimes in the car doing errands.
There are another batch of content creators in specific hobby areas that I still subscribe to but only rarely actually listen, and only if the topic is compelling at the time.
This is very similar to how my TV time works. One or two things I will absolutely watch but there's just no such thing as nightly TV block watching.
Keldar, to the vast majority of Joe/Jane Citizens, the philosophical dispute over copyright in works on which AI is trained upon has no impact to them. That's because captalist society concentrates wealth and intellectual property in those with capital, not necessarily their creators. We want to enjoy new experiences and cheaply - this suggests the average citizen would champion AI efforts...if the quality is there.
That leads to the stakeholders who have real beef on these issues are content creators and corporations who exploit intellectual property (usually created by other people who have been paid a pittance for their work).
So the average person really doesn't care because to them they want to read a book they will buy it or rent it from their library...or download an epub/PDF from somewhere. That's annoying and costing the creator/owner of the IP in lost revenue, but it's not as offensive as somebody taking their work and profiteering from it.
Same thing with art - it's a human expression which is intended to represent the artist's skill and expression that is unique to them. It's true other artists can copy their techniques, but the value of the work is usually tied intrinsically to the artist's reknown, which in turn is from the development of skills and experience. AI makes it a joke as it can readily replicate the techniques of an unlimited number of artists, whereas a single human artist would struggle to copy more than a few styles at best.
Meanwhile, in the Metaverse....
For the modest price of 10,000 MANA tokens (or $7,000) per day, anyone can rent land parcel 27,87 in Decentraland, a 3D virtual world that runs on the Ethereum blockchain. Renting the plot would give the tenant the right to build anything they please—a shop, an event space, an art installation, or whatever else—to host friendly passersby. But the real winner would be their landlord, who goes by the name Beatrix#7239, their virtual pockets bulging with cash.
Not every property is as expensive as parcel 27,87, which is located in the center of the world map, close to where people first spawn into Decentraland. And no one has taken up the rental offer on these terms yet. However, a market for leasing virtual real estate is beginning to take shape, creating a new source of income for virtual landowners who buy up attractive spaces in the metaverse.
There's a ton of these nonsense projects. Decentraland, Earth 2, Next Earth, SuperWorld, Infiniverse, Mossland, and dozens more.
Earth 2 got a lot of attention, promising a 1:1 digital recreation of Earth in a "Matrix/Ready Player One" style metaverse. But see, that's Phase 3. Phase 1 is where all the "land" is sold as tiles over a Mapbox map.
I'm just like...
...I don't have time.
This right here is why I look at AI-generated art as being akin to bringing sand to a beach.
There are more albums released in a year that would interest me than I can listen to. There's more games already in my Steam account than I will ever play. There are books wishlisted and movies and TV shows watch-listed that will never make it off of those lists. I could quit my job and still never catch up.
Like I need a bunch of algorithms shoving endless mid-tier (if that) junk onto my backlog.
Companies like Getty are never in the right. Ever. Unless they've produced the images themselves. I'm reminded of the case where a photographer released her entire catalog to the public domain, and Getty snatched the whole thing up. Then, when she used her own goddamn photographs for something online, Getty sued her, and won.
I'm sad to see that Amazon is discontinuing their AmazonSmile charitable donations effort.
I'm more annoyed by it. But, I got their email announcement last night, and it's not entirely wrong that their efforts were probably spread too thin by the program. A good way to change that would be to rotate out who they were sponsoring on a monthly basis, instead of letting the users pick who to sponsor. Or, you know, just cut into their profits a little more instead of taking a mere pittance from each purchase for charity. Instead, they'll just erase that line item from their budget while pretending to continue charitable efforts, and life will go on as everyone continues to order their random sh*t.
I'm sad to see that Amazon is discontinuing their AmazonSmile charitable donations effort.
Why? That is annoying. It is a good thing
I could quit my job and still never catch up.
Some days I really want to try that.
*Legion* wrote:I could quit my job and still never catch up.
Some days I really want to try that.
I quit my job and was out of work for 3 months last year.
I thought it was going to be a glorious lot of vidjagame time but I almost found myself playing LESS games and spending more time out of the house doing stuff.
Its almost as is work is a stressor and games are a coping mechanism. Who knew?
Is that someone we should know or a parody account?
Companies like Getty are never in the right. Ever. Unless they've produced the images themselves. I'm reminded of the case where a photographer released her entire catalog to the public domain, and Getty snatched the whole thing up. Then, when she used her own goddamn photographs for something online, Getty sued her, and won.
Is that someone we should know or a parody account?
He’s a paradoxically influential conservative sh*t poster. Trump retweeted on several occasions and Musk is a big fan.
Many conservatives have learned that the best way to get engagement and increase influence is to be self-parodies. Just non-stop "own the libs" sh*tposting. Yes they're lying and making up sh*t, but their followers don't care and the angry responses they get from liberals just boost their profile. Catturd2 does it, Nick Adams does it, Ben Shapiro does it, Steve Crowder does it, Candace Owens does it.
I'm sad to see that Amazon is discontinuing their AmazonSmile charitable donations effort.
Same. As a non-profit my kid's daycare is on the list and I love that buying the school supplies gives them a little extra bump every now and then.
This seems like the same phenomenon as the panacea, people latching on to every medicine, every medical breakthrough, every fringe diet ingredient as being capable of just solving everything.
Only these guys are 'in on it' so they think it'll make them rich too.
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