Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Before starting the most successful media company in the history of the Internet, BuzzFeed founder Jonah Peretti was apparently an armchair Marxist and postmodern theorist. Some people believe this essay, first published just after Peretti graduated from UC Santa Cruz in 1996, lays the theoretical foundation for Buzzfeed’s media empire. Peretti’s piece originally appeared in…
Earlier this year, Juan Hernandez was having exciting conversations with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative about what to do with his next round of funding. Hernandez, the CEO of Creser Capital Fund, had received $500,000 two years earlier from Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan’s mammoth philanthropic organization for his nonprofit, which provides loans to Latino entrepreneurs….
Brands are spending billions of dollars on ads without knowing for sure that they are actually being shown to humans. The companies they pay to help figure that out are struggling with the task. At least 40% of web traffic is made up of fake users, or computerized bots, according to cloud-services provider Cloudflare. And…
WASHINGTON – Tech billionaire Elon Musk, speaking at a Trump celebration rally at Washington’s Capital One Arena, appeared to conclude his remarks with a “Roman salute,” a fascist gesture most commonly associated with Nazi Germany, where it was performed alongside the phrase “Heil Hitler.” The gesture continues to be used among far-right groups worldwide, particularly…
In his first public appearance after five years of semiofficial banishment, Curtis Yarvin began to cry. It was late February 2020 and Yarvin was the special guest at a live podcast in Los Angeles. A graphic promoting the event shows the computer engineer turned political philosopher, then 46 years old, wearing his black leather motorcycle…
It was Halloween in Orlando, and we had piled into a car to make a short trip from the Hilton to an after-party down the road, to wind up the first night of the latest edition of a gathering called the National Conservatism Conference. For at least many of the young people, the actual business…
Last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg did an interview with The Verge outlining the company’s plans for AI, augmented reality, and wearables. Unlike Meta’s previous metaverse pivot, it seems like the company is much more confident this time that they’re building the future. Zuckerberg told The Verge’s Alex Heath that Meta’s new Orion glasses, which…
AI is becoming synonymous with things that are unbelievable, generic, or just a little bit off. Photo-Illustration: Intelligencer; MadMusclesPlans/X It’s an exciting time at the cutting edge of AI research. Massive companies are spending tens of billions of dollars to build, train, and deploy new AI models with which they hope to automate a…
Two years ago, retail media networks were at a crossroads. At the time they were weighing whether to become traditional walled gardens or allowing the programmatic ecosystem open access to data. Retailers are long past that point. Hundreds of store operators launched retail media businesses in the past couple years alone. And most of the…
Beginning next week, the search giant will face off against the US Justice Department over allegations that the company’s adtech practices are anti-competitive. In a historic trial set to begin on Monday, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) will take on Google, challenging the way it monetizes advertising and accusing it of stifling competition in…