Notices by Casey Newton (caseynewton@mastodon.social)

OpenAI's announcement of a partnership with Mattel today made me worry about the prospect of a sycophantic AI Barbie. But the first products will be aimed at families and users 13 and older, I'm told: https://www.platformer.news/openai-mattel-partnership-child-safety/

Let's talk about Meta's investment in Scale AI and whether *this* reorg will be different than the others https://www.platformer.news/meta-scale-investment-zuckerberg-wang/

It's understandable to focus on what Musk might lose now that he has gone to war against Trump. But never forget just how much he *got* from his time in DC https://www.platformer.news/musk-trump-feud-epstein-fallout/

After a proposed 10-year ban on state regulations, some Republicans are finally starting to talk about the fact that AI might be dangerous: https://www.platformer.news/state-ai-moratorium-republican-opposition-greene/?ref=platformer-newsletter

The economic foundations of the web are crumbling, but everyone is now racing to build a new web *browser.* I wrote about the AI browser war to come https://www.platformer.news/ai-web-browsers-openai-perplexity-opera/

I wrote about Great Replacement Grok and the growing number of ways that AI systems are working against their own users. It's the age of adversarial AI: https://www.platformer.news/grok-white-genocide-x-adversarial-ai/

I wrote about AI's memory problems https://www.platformer.news/ai-memory-personalization-privacy-risks/

It's Hard Fork Friday! This week: Apple lying on the stand, author Karen Hao on AI as an oppressive force, and a lesson in Italian brainrot https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/podcasts/hardfork-apple-app-store.html

Wrote about the warning hidden in the news that searches declined in Safari for the first time last month https://www.platformer.news/safari-search-decline-apple-google/

Among the many other stupid things today is that Trump's reported deal to save TikTok appears to let it keep running exactly as is without addressing the reasons Congress banned it in the first place https://www.platformer.news/trump-tariffs-tiktok/

NEW: AI bots caused Wikipedia's bandwidth costs to increase by 50 percent last year, and are still growing exponentially. I wrote about its plan to fight back — and whether it will be enough. https://www.platformer.news/wikipedia-ai-bot-traffic-costs-plan/

Meta's embrace of Community Notes over professional fact-checkers means people are going to see more nonsense. What a waste of everyone's time and attention https://www.platformer.news/meta-community-notes-launch/

Training Grok 3 took Elon 200,000 GPUs and untold billions, and it's ... decent at best? I wrote about AI's commodity problem

https://www.platformer.news/too-many-ai-companies/

I wrote about Google's leaked 'AI mode' for search and the dwindling number of reasons to post anything for free on the web https://www.platformer.news/google-ai-mode-web-decline-design/

I wrote about Google unveiling its 'responsible AI progress report' by quietly deleting the part of its AI principles where it promised not to work on weapons https://www.platformer.news/google-ai-principles-military-safety/

I wrote about Google unveiling its 'responsible AI progress report' by quietly deleting the part of its AI principles where it promised not to work on weapons https://www.platformer.news/google-ai-principles-military-safety/

I wrote about my first experiences with OpenAI's Operator agent https://www.platformer.news/openai-operator-ai-agent-hands-on/

NEW: Meta has quietly dismantled the system that prevented misinformation from spreading in the United States. Machine-learning classifiers that once identified viral hoaxes and limited their reach have now been switched off, Platformer has learned https://www.platformer.news/meta-ends-misinformation-enforcement-zuckerberg/

NEW: The head of Facebook Messenger has a non-binary child and last week assured employees that Meta would work to preserve queer voices. Two days later the company deleted its trans and non-binary pride themes in Messenger https://www.platformer.news/meta-trump-pivot-messenger-themes-labor-zuckerberg-wishlist/

NEW: Meta just killed its diversity, equity and inclusion program. Employees aren't buying the company's argument that it's the result of a 'shifting legal landscape.' What they're saying inside the company ➡️ https://www.platformer.news/meta-kills-dei-program-diversity-inclusion/