Notices by Casey Newton (caseynewton@mastodon.social)

It's Hard Fork Friday! This week: how the crypto lobby took Congress, OpenAI product lead Nick Turley on the first two years of ChatGPT, and we answer a listener's question on Threads vs. Bluesky vs. Mastodon vs. X https://www.nytimes.com/2024/11/15/podcasts/crypto-congress-hbd-chatgpt-what-social-media-platform-should-i-be-on.html

The right-wing effort to promote claims of voter fraud is well underway https://www.platformer.news/election-day-fraud-claims-musk-trump/

We don't know who's going to win tomorrow. But we do know that Elon Musk will promote false claims of voter fraud to tens of millions of people — and that X will be a central clearinghouse for conspiracy theories in the days ahead https://www.platformer.news/x-election-elon-musk-voter-fraud-misinformation/

I wrote about the tension between Facebook redesigning its app to appeal to younger users while its older users simultaneously fill it up with AI slop https://www.platformer.news/facebook-gen-z-redesign-ai-slop/

It's Hard Fork Friday! This week, I report back from my trip to Meta Connect. Then, Googler and author Steven Johnson stops by to talk about how NotebookLM can turn almost anything into a podcast. (It's amazing.) And we end with some HatGPT! https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/27/podcasts/metas-race-for-your-face-googles-hit-ai-notebook-and-hatgpt.html

@dmitry i've written more about Mark's ethical lapses than almost anybody. a daily newsletter, mostly about Facebook, for seven years. i wrote about him yesterday and I think I was perfectly clear eyed https://www.platformer.news/meta-connect-zuckerberg-orion-ray-ban-ai/

OpenAI is a weird company https://www.platformer.news/openai-murati-leaves-x-bans-klippenstein/

I wrote about today's Zuck-or-nothing Meta Connect https://www.platformer.news/meta-connect-zuckerberg-orion-ray-ban-ai/

X's lawsuit against the advertising industry is part of a larger conservative project to weaponize the courts against content moderation — and it appears to be gaining momentum https://www.platformer.news/x-sues-advertising-industry-musk-garm-jordan/

There was a time platforms like Twitter tried to remove obvious conspiracy theories from their trending pages. But this weekend’s events showed how platforms are increasingly content to let us choose our own realities https://www.platformer.news/monday-newsletter-3/

It’s Hard Fork Friday! And as someone who has made her chicken with lemon and dates countless times, it was a *dream* to have Alison Roman join us to answer your hard questions https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/12/podcasts/hardfork-alison-roman-hard-questions.html

@Gargron @bart @pxl definitely built on top of it! not sure what they might have changed

NEWS: After sustained attacks from House Republicans, the Stanford Internet Observatory is being dismantled. A huge blow to academic freedom and our ability to understand platforms and influence operations https://www.platformer.news/stanford-internet-observatory-shutdown-stamos-diresta-sio/

@Gargron great point! would love to see them engage with that more directly

There's yet another open letter from the AI safety crowd. If they want more people to take them seriously, they need to get more specific

https://www.platformer.news/tuesday-newsletter/

After a new investigation in the WSJ, I am once again asking: what is the conflict of interest policy at OpenAI?? https://www.platformer.news/openai-altman-investments-conflicts-wsj/

This year at Platformer we want to tell more stories about the web as it enters a state of managed decline. Here's @zoeschiffer interviewing a man whose independent games site was crushed by a change to Google's search rankings and its embrace of AI: https://www.platformer.news/google-retro-dodo-core-algorithm-change-ai-publishers/

Here's Retro Dodo's founder:

Most AI chatbots are cold and clinical. OpenAI's new voice mode for ChatGPT is warm and flirty. That could have big, unpredictable consequences https://www.platformer.news/openai-gpt-4o-chatgpt-voice-vision/

With today’s announcements at Google I/O, the web has entered a state of managed decline https://www.platformer.news/google-io-ai-search-sundar-pichai/

It’s Hard Fork Friday! This week: your wildest stories about using AI at work. Then, Hank Green joins us to share his thoughts on a TikTok ban. And finally, the deepfake that roiled a Maryland high school https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/03/podcasts/hard-fork-work-hank-green-deepfake.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb