Scared, Confused, and Gloating

Sports Internet Scares Me

I’m very online. That’s kinda the whole point of this newsletter. I poison my brain with weird pockets of internet obsession and attempt to filter the interesting bits into something a healthy human brain could safely encounter. But sports fandom is a dark place even I dare not tread. Why? Because when it does surface in my life it looks like this sentence: Is Baby Gronk the new Drip King, or is he just getting rizzed up by Livvy?

I guess it has something to do with this pee-wee football player/influencer. The internet was indeed a mistake. Sports internet is a war crime. 

LGBTQ Update

Apparently, Hank Green is bi. 

Platform Updates

Instagram 

• Instagram Tests New AI Chatbot Experience in DMs

• Instagram reinstates Robert Kennedy Jr. after launch of presidential bid (he was originally banned for vaccine misinformation in 2021)

• Instagram may be getting its own AI chatbot soon. Here's what we know

• This is what Instagram’s upcoming Twitter competitor looks like

The Rest of Meta 

• Meta is testing Reels on Quest (the Pivot to the Metaverse is pivoting to video) 

TikTok

• TikTok users with at least 10,000 followers can now release premium videos behind paywalls

YouTube

• YouTube changes policy to allow false claims about past U.S. presidential elections

Apple 

• Apple WWDC 2023 keynote in 26 minutes

Reddit

• Thousands of Subreddits Set to ‘Go Dark’ Next Week in Protest Over API Pricing Changes

• Popular third-party Reddit app Apollo is shutting down as a result of Reddit’s new API pricing

LinkedIn 

• LinkedIn Launches DMs for Company Pages

• LinkedIn Adds New Video Ad Options, Expands Access to Conversation and Thought Leader Ads

• LinkedIn Experiments with New AI Assistant for InMails

Twitch 

• Twitch backtracks on branded content changes after streamer backlash

Twitter

The Product

• n/a

The Dumpster Fire

• Twitter’s Ad Revenue Continues to Decline Under Elon Musk

• Twitter Missed Dozens of Known Images of Child Sexual Abuse Material, Researchers Say

• Twitter Admits in Court Filing: Elon Musk Is Simply Wrong About Government Interference At Twitter

Twitter Alts

• Artifact news app now uses AI to rewrite headline of a clickbait article

Culture Movers 

Laws

• Louisiana passes bill banning kids from the internet without parental consent

Film & TV

• CEO Chris Licht ousted at CNN after a year of crisis

Creator Economy 

• Spotify cuts 200 roles from its podcast division

Sports

• Why Saudi Arabia wants in on American golf

AI 

• CNET is overhauling its AI policy and updating past stories

• OpenAI Hit With First Defamation Suit Over ChatGPT Hallucination

Scams

• The SEC is suing Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange

• Feds Sue Coinbase One Day After Filing Suit Against Binance

How Do You Judge a Part 1?

I went to see the new animated Spider-Man movie last week. Like the first Spider-verse film, this movie seems to actually like its source material: comic books. The animation was stunning, the characters were compelling, the humor was pitch-perfect. I was having a great time until the server at Alamo Drafthouse dropped the check at my table, signaling there were about 30 mins left in the movie, and the plot was nowhere close to being resolved. I’d forgotten that this movie was just a part one. 

I’ve been trying to actually use Letterboxd this year. Keeping track of the films I’ve seen and what I thought encourages me to go see more new movies or seek out obscure cult films and classics I might have missed. I had a hard time scoring Across the Spider-Verse. I enjoyed my time in the theatre with the movie, but it fails one of my basic criteria for judging plot-driven media: does it have a compelling and internally consistent beginning, middle, and end? By itself, part ones fail that test. I liked all of the pieces and feel confident that part two could pull it all together in a satisfying way, but I haven’t actually seen that yet. 

This is also how I feel looking at Apple’s newly announced Vision Pro. 

A $3,500 product announced at a developer conference isn’t a consumer product. Not yet. It’s the outline of where an eventual mass-appeal device might end up. I liked many ideas for blending immersive VR with the real world. The UI reminds me of the best sci-fi holographic computer interfaces. But even if I could afford one, I’m not sure I’d want it. I certainly wouldn’t want to be seen wearing one in public. The endpoint of Spacial Computing might be a win, but this feels like a no for me dawg. Count me out, at least for part one.

Crypto, I Told You So 

No profound insight here, but I want to take a moment to gloat, and I’ll invite many of you to join me. So many of us rolled our eyes watching the rise of cryptocurrency trading, NFTs, meme tokens, and DOAs. We could spot the cam from miles away and felt unmoored from reality watching Super Bowl ads and Jimmy Fallon interviews hyping apes up as the future of technology, the economy, and culture all at once. Now that the feds are coming in to crack down on some of the biggest players in these confidence games, I’d like to invite everyone else who knew it was a scam to give yourself a pat on the back and join me for a nice big “I told you so.”