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Zuckerberg officially gives up
Read to the end for an incredible thread of terrible Reels music
The End Of Content Moderation
I floated a theory of mine to Atlantic writer Charlie Warzel on this week’s episode of Panic World that content moderation, as we’ve understood, it effectively ended on January 6th, 2021. You can listen to the whole episode here, but the way I look at it is that the Insurrection was the first time Americans could truly see the radicalizing effects of algorithmic platforms like Facebook and YouTube that other parts of the world, particularly the Global South, had dealt with for years. A moment of political violence Silicon Valley could no longer ignore or obfuscate the way it had with similar incidents in countries like Myanmar, India, Ethiopia, or Brazil. And once faced with the cold, hard truth of what their platforms had been facilitating, companies like Google and Meta, at least internally, accepted that they would never be able to moderate them at scale. And so they just stopped.
This explains Meta’s pivot to, first, the metaverse, which failed, and, more recently, AI, which hasn’t yet, but will. It explains YouTube’s own doomed embrace of AI and its broader transition into a Netflix competitor, rather than a platform for true user-generated content. Same with Twitter’s willingness to sell to Elon Musk, Google’s enshittification, and, relatedly, Reddit’s recent stagnant googlification. After 2021, the major tech platforms we’ve relied on since the 2010s could no longer pretend that they would ever be able to properly manage the amount of users, the amount of content, the amount of influence they “need” to exist at the size they “need” to exist at to make the amount of money they “need” to exist.
And after sleepwalking through the Biden administration and doing the bare minimum to avoid any fingers pointed their direction about election interference last year, the companies are now fully giving up. Knowing the incoming Trump administration will not only not care, but will even reward them for it.
Like everything else in culture right now, much of this can be traced back to Musk, who has spent the last two years proving to other tech CEOs that no one will or can really stop them from using their massive information networks to fulfill their most despotic desires. But Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, this week, is the first Big Tech oligarch to fully come out and admit he just doesn’t give a shit anymore.
In a Reel on Tuesday, Zuckerberg took a break from, it looks like, selling counterfeit Supreme jackets on eBay to announce that “free expression” was coming back to Facebook and Instagram. What does that actually mean in practice? Both platforms are dismantling what is left of their factchecking teams and instituting X-style community notes. They’re also lifting restrictions around topics like politics, immigration, and gender. Zuckerberg said that the teams that are still doing some kind of content review for Meta in the US will be moving from California to Texas. Just in case Republicans didn’t immediately get he’s catering to them here.
Meta’s new moderation rules, or lack thereof, have already been revised to make it ok to post content claiming that LGBT people are mentally ill. And you can also now insult users based on their race, gender, caste, or disability. Meta employees told Platformer’s Casey Newton the decision was a “precursor to genocide.”
Incidentally, Meta is still doing some content moderation, but only when it comes to their own reputation. The company is deleting internal criticism of their new board member, UFC CEO Dana White and blocking stories from 404 Media about said internet censorship.
WIRED is reporting that Meta’s third-party factcheckers were “blindsided” by the announcement and many don’t know if they can survive without Meta contracts. So it’s safe to assume that the entire moderation industry will be impacted. And it is also safe to assume that the majority of internet users right now — both ones too young to remember a pre-moderated internet and ones too normie to have used it at the time — do not actually understand what that is going to look and feel like. But I can tell you where this is all headed, though much of this is already happening.
Under Zuckerberg’s new “censorship”-free plan, Meta’s social networks will immediately fill up with hatred and harassment. Which will make a fertile ground for terrorism and extremism. Scams and spam will clog comments and direct messages. And illicit content, like non-consensual sexual material, will proliferate in private corners of networks like group messages and private Groups. Algorithms will mindlessly spread this slop, boosted by the loudest, dumbest, most reactionary users on the platform, helping it evolve and metastasize into darker, stickier social movements. And the network will effectively break down. But Meta is betting that the average user won’t care or notice. AI profiles will like their posts, comment on them, and even make content for them. A feedback loop of nonsense and violence. Our worst, unmoderated impulses, shared by algorithm and reaffirmed by AI. Where nothing has to be true and everything is popular. A world where if Meta does inspire conspiracy theories, race riots, or insurrections, no one will actually notice. Or, at the very least, be so divided on what happened that Meta doesn’t get blamed for it again.
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Meh
Yep, that's it.
Meh.
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Some Excellent Welsh Content
This takes “the European mind could never comprehend” but throws it right back bc I am utterly shaken
— Katie Notopoulos (@katienotopoulos)
12:49 AM • Jan 7, 2025
btw if you want to follow this incredible girly — and you should — her fantastic TikTok account is here. And if you’re looking for a bit more context, you should click here.
The First-Ever AI-Assisted Terror Attack
The 37-year-old man who shot himself and exploded a Tesla Cybertruck in front of Trump Hotel in Las Vegas last week reportedly used ChatGPT for help while planning the attack. According to The Associated Press, he asked ChatGPT about explosives, ammunition, and the legality of fireworks in Arizona. Law enforcement told reporters this is the first time they’ve seen AI used in this type of crime. Though, as with Luigi Mangione’s confusing data trail, it is probably best to view this less as a nefarious AI helping a would-be terrorist and more just a sad snapshot of how ubiquitous this technology is now.
As for the attacker’s motive, authorities are still digging through his digital footprint, but it seems pretty clear already that it was accelerationist in nature. In one letter left behind, the 37-year-old wrote that it was meant to be “a wake up call,” writing, “Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives.”
Guess he should have asked ChatGPT for advice about how to write a letter that could more clearly lay out exactly what we’re supposed to be paying attention.
Landlord Experiences Climate Change, Has A Bad Time
To once again — three times in the last year according to Garbage Day archives — quote the now-deleted post from X user @PerthshireMags, “Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it.”
It will, also, apparently, manifest as increasingly desperate landlords showing their whole ass online.
(X.com)
Keith Wasserman, a real estate investor and landlord who, up until today, mainly used his X account to complain about having to pay property taxes, decided to ask the internet if anyone knew of “private firefighters” that could save his house from the wildfires devastating Los Angeles right now. After getting thoroughly dunked on, Wasserman decided to delete his account.
Sorry Keith, climate change also affects rich people. Hopefully, you make it somewhere safe and have some time to google what property taxes pay for.
What Is PR Now?
The Washington Post went through a round of layoffs this week, effectively shuttering their PR department. If you aren’t familiar with what a PR team does for a newsroom, they basically reach out to larger media institutions — TV shows, radio shows, larger outlets, etc. — and try and get them to feature that newsroom’s reporters or reporting.
In its place, The Post plans to launch something called a “Star Talent Unit,” which appears to be some kind of influencer program focused on what they’re calling “talent-driven journalism.” This is extremely funny and ironic for a couple reasons.
First, in the 2010s, as platforms like Facebook and Twitter were super-charging news consumption, there were a lot of writers at newsrooms across America that were well on their way to becoming, as The Post is calling it, “star talent.” Almost across the board, most of these “stars” were crushed or frozen out or sidelined because they were seen as a threat to the brands they worked for. Hard to pay someone $110,000 a year if you’re admitting their a star. And, second, this plan will not work unless The Post can offer these stars more money and freedom than they could get on their own. And if they’re big enough to function as in-house influencers for The Post, they’re easily big enough to leave.
But this does have some uncomfortable implications for the world of, say, TV, which has always been treated as a level up from a newspaper or print outlet. The Post axing the team that used to interface with TV shows is basically an admission that TV doesn’t matter anymore. Which should freak out anyone working as a producer at a news show right now.
Philanthropy Vs. The End Of The World
I acknowledge that this issue is a bit a bummer lol. So here’s something you can feel good about. Jeff Atwood, the co-founder of Stack Exchange, current executive chairman of Discourse, and long-time Garbage Day reader 👀, published a big blog post this week about how he’s feeling about the incoming Trump administration. SPOILER: He’s not pumped.
But Atwood also included a list of very real and practical ways his family is putting their money where their mouth is. They’ve already made huge donations to groups like Planned Parenthood and The Trevor Project and plan to donate even more over the next few years.
Hopefully some other powerful folks in Silicon Valley follow Atwood’s lead here instead performatively moving to Texas or whatever.
Auntie Anne’s Needs To Talk To A Furry
Auntie Anne’s, the place that sells extremely good smelling goo-covered cardboard at the mall, has a merch store. And, unfortunately for them, they don’t seem to have any furries working on their team. Because if they did have a furry on staff, they probably would have told someone at Auntie Anne’s that “knotting” or getting “knotty” or “knots,” in general, are fairly well-known fetish terms among that community. Not only is Auntie Anne’s selling “naturally knotty” sweaters and mugs, they’re also, very unfortunately, selling dog collars. Which, without getting to into the weeds about what “knotting” means in the furry community (google at your own peril), is really on the nose.
Auntie Anne’s is not the first brand to step on this rake. Back in 2016, Pizza Hut used similarly unfortunate language to advertise their new garlic knots crust pizza.
A Good Post
Some Stray Links
P.S. here’s an incredible thread of terrible Reels music.
***Any typos in this email are on purpose actually***
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