The 205th Block: Social media self-destruction
And all the silly things China, Israel, and Germany, among others, are doing
This week…
Your reading time is about 5 minutes. Let’s start.
In recent months, Substack made a massive change to its main feature. As a newsletter platform, the default feature used to be to subscribe to a newsletter. Now, the default is to follow an author. This isn’t XTwitter, Instagram, heaven forbid, LinkedIn. People here just wanted to read newsletters, not follow people. As someone who cares little about stats, I barely took notice. Plus, I had given the assurance several times before that because subscribers cannot opt out of activity tracking, I have made it a point not to snoop about my stat page to see what you do or don’t do.
In light of this major change to the platform, though, I admit I did have a little peek at the stat page. As many others have reported, my subscriber count, too, remained rather flat while my follower count ticked upward at a similar pace to what my subscriber count used to. Does following (rather than subscribing) mean your stats won’t be accounted for? It seems so. For individual posts, I can only see stats from subscribers—open rate, links clicked, devices—but not from followers. So maybe it’s better to follow than subscribe if you want to minimise user activity tracking—but only if you already have a Substack account.
And now, a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
ICYMI: The Previous Block on transnational repression and platform wars. CORRECTION NOTICE: None notified.CHINA
China is using AI to sow disinformation and stoke discord across Asia and the U.S., Microsoft reports
Koh Ewe for Time:
Faking a political endorsement in Taiwan ahead of its crucial January election, sharing memes to amplify outrage over Japan’s disposal of nuclear wastewater, and spreading conspiracy theories that claim the U.S. government was behind Hawaii’s wildfire and Kentucky’s train derailment last year. These are just some of the ways that China’s influence operations have ramped up their use of artificial intelligence to sow disinformation and stoke discord worldwide over the last seven months, according to a new report released Friday by Microsoft Threat Intelligence.
The Microsoft report can be accessed here. Loosely linked:
China turns to AI in propaganda mocking the ‘American Dream’ by Erin Hale for Al Jazeera.
Media feel pressure to tell ‘positive’ China story as party tightens grip by Frederik Kelter for Al Jazeera.
Data protection fears raised over shopping giant Temu's cash giveaway by Doloresz Katanich for Euronews.
OPEN SECRETS
A scoop by Correctiv sparked huge pro-democracy protests all over Germany. How did they pull it off?
Benjamin Bathke for Reuters Institute:
The story revealed how right-wing party Alternative for Germany (AfD) together with neo-Nazis and sympathetic businessmen met in a hotel near Berlin to fine-tune plans to deport millions of people currently living in Germany, including some with German citizenship.
To Gabriela Keller, one of the investigative reporters behind this seminal work, publishing such an impactful story was a “mind-blowing” experience.
Loosely linked:
Lavender: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza by Yuval Abraham for +972 Magazine.
Top Israeli spy chief exposes his true identity in online security lapse by Harry Davies and Bethan McKernan for The Guardian.
A TikTok whistleblower got D.C.’s attention. Do his claims add up? ($) by Louise Matsakis for Wired. (Spoiler: Nah.)
ALL THE SILLY GEESE
Substack is setting writers up for a Twitter-style implosion
Andrea Grimes for HWTA:
New reporting from The Wrap details how Substack’s decision to implement a new “follow” feature — part of its transition from newsletter publishing platform to social media site — has tanked subscription growth for lots of newsletter writers.
[…]
Essentially, the “follow” feature allows Substack to hold writers (and readers) hostage on their platform, forcing them to operate in a closed-content ecosystem that predominantly benefits Substack. Readers must use the Substack app or the Substack site to see content from writers they “follow,” and writers have no way of independently reaching their “followers” — whereas they can email their subscribers directly, or, if they transition to another platform, can bring those subscribers with them.
Everyone has social media fatigue right now Loosely linked:
Threads is the gas-leak social network by Max Read for Read Max. “It’s someone I don’t know telling a story I can’t follow for reasons I don’t understand,” is 100% accurate for me.
X’s ‘complimentary’ Premium push gives people blue checks they didn’t ask for by Amrita Khalid for The Verge.
Google agrees to delete Incognito data despite prior claim that’s “impossible” by Ashley Belanger for Ars Technica.
What I read, listen, and watch…
I’m reading From Here (2023) by Luma Mufleh, a poignant memoir about growing up as a gay Muslim woman in Jordan.
I’m listening to Jack Rhysider’s Darknet Diaries with social engineer Rachel Tobac.
I’m watching CNA Insider’s miniseries Cyber Scammed. This is the second part, about the AirAsia data theft of 2022.
I’m also watching FT Film’s doco on the rise of Pinduoduo and Temu.
Other curious links, including en español et français:
The miseducation of Kara Swisher ($) by Edward Ongsweso Jr. for The Baffler. “The long and short of it is that Swisher is not a good journalist—or, framed more generously, that she thrived in an industry with remarkably low standards for which we are still paying the price.”
How therapy-speak ‘processed’ its way into pop music by Emma Madden for GQ. “It’s perhaps not unconnected that the rise of therapy-speak in pop is occurring at the same time as the Uberfication of mental health, with AI therapy bots and apps like BetterHelp dominating the marketplace, while graphic designers on Instagram post nursery school-like infographics on how to interact with other people.”
Fake news legislation risks doing more harm than good amid a record number of elections in 2024 by Samuel Jens (Stony Brook University) for The Conversation.
Bangladeshi women left 'suicidal' by TikTok troll by Tracy Higgins for BBC.
¿TikTok te conoce mejor que tu madre? Cómo pedirle los datos que guarda sobre ti y limitar la información que recopila por Isabel Rubio en El País.
El español que desató la 'pesadilla' de las grandes tecnológicas en Europa por Alberto R. Aguiar en BI.
Ça tient dans la poche : des soldats français ont mis au point un système anti-drones individuel par Eric Biegala dans France Info.
Musique et IA : une partition injouable ? par Paul J. F. Fleury (Université Rennes 2) dans The Conversation.
Chart of the week
Marcus Lu, Dorothy Neufeld, and Miranda Smith visualised Nvidia’s revenue by product line between 2019 and 2024 for Visual Capitalist.
It is impressive how much the largest U.S. chipmaker’s revenue has shifted since the AI boom. “Today, data centre processors for analytics and AI have quickly become Nvidia’s largest source of revenue, surpassing the company’s historical main business line of GPUs,” wrote Lu, with a detailed breakdown and the screen-reader-friendly text format here. (Apologies, alt text is broken on Substack at the time of publication. I will add it in post when the function returns.)
And one more thing
Now, you, too, can be NYT’s homepage editor with Paolo Pedercini’s free browser-based game. (I told you, NYT sucks.)