This week's best things
A new social media platform from Buzzfeed, stuff about AI policies, monks and distraction, football and social media, Elon Musk and Wikipedia, Barnes & Noble and the internet, revisiting The Sims, recording memories, the privacy implications of photo sharing, and a few more vacancies.
BuzzFeed wants to fight AI-driven social media with a platform of its own
This week Buzzfeed announced that it is launching its own social media platform.
A sigh and a roll of the eyes might follow, but in the blog post that announced this move Buzzfeed Founder & CEO, Jonah Peretti identified a whole host of reasons about why they're doing this and (whisper it) they sound fairly compelling.
"It turns out when an app company doesn't care about content and asks an AI to maximize usage the result is a service that incentivizes content that maximizes addictiveness. The type of content that gets created and recommended is not the best content, but the content that elicits the most compulsive and predictable response from the human brain. When the platforms don’t care about content and ask the AI to maximize usage, the content evolves into what I call “SNARF.” SNARF stands for Stakes/Novelty/Anger/Retention/Fear."
Of course, if the last 10-15 years have shown us anything it's that if this new initiative is successful it'll soon get destroyed and enshittified, but for now it's interesting to see a platform like Buzzfeed taking a position like this and - seemingly - putting its money where its mouth is.
"Unlike the platforms, we care about internet content and know that it moves culture and the world forward. We have an opportunity to fight back against SNARF and bring some joy and fun back to the internet. People are craving the “beer and wine” era of the internet and we can bring that back on BuzzFeed, HuffPost, and Tasty. We can make content that gives you a little buzz, helps you relax, have a good time, and connect with your friends. But we can’t be naive about how hard it is to sell beer when your competitors are offering hard drugs free of charge. We need to be maniacal about packaging our content so it can compete in the social media feeds against SNARF. We need to select stories where the stakes and novelty are actually high, and not fake it. We need to cover stories where anger and fear are justified, but also balance it with joy and entertainment, and prove that positive and truthful content can also perform if we give it the right care and attention. We need to tell great stories that keep people engaged, without annoying retention hacks, but still be savvy about what makes people want to stay until the end. Put simply, we need to inject some truth, joy, creativity, and positive entertainment into the social web"
It's perhaps slightly ridiculous to see the home of the listicle saying that they 'care about internet content', but Buzzfeed has done a bunch of useful and interesting things over the years so I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.
Watch this space, I guess.
Emma Roth
Jonah PerettiBuzzFeed Founder & CEO
UK Government AI Playbook
"The UK government has today published its AI Playbook, a practical guide for civil servants and technical teams to responsibly develop, buy, and implement AI to improve public services.
With AI already helping to predict weather patterns, streamline MOT inspections, and supporting apprentices at risk of dropping out, the Playbook sets out 10 key principles to ensure AI is used transparently, effectively, and in the public interest.
Some key takeaways:
- AI should be used where it adds real value—not just for the sake of it.
- Human oversight is essential to ensure AI supports, not replaces, decision-making.
- Public sector teams should collaborate openly, sharing learnings and best practices."
The work of the Government Digital Service has been definitive across a number of areas, I suspect this AI Playbook will be a useful tool for many organisations to at least use as a starting point.
The playbook itself specifies 10 key principles, and also has some useful definitions of the various technologies it classes as falling within the umbrella term of AI.
Government Digital Service
The development of Art Fund's AI Policy
On the subject of AI policies, the Digital Works Podcast is back, and the most recent episode is a conversation I had with Art Fund's Associate Director of Digital Experience, Mike Keating.
Most of our conversation was focused on the recent development of the Art Fund's AI policy.
"...remember that a lot of people are afraid of this technology and actually will really resist ever trying to get involved in it, and you need to do something for the people who are afraid but interested, and the best way to do that is by being specific.
You can use it to do this, you cannot use it to do this. You can use this tool for copywriting, you can use this tool for research.
Because that's what breaks down the barriers.
If you just tell people, oh yeah, there's this thing called AI and here are some websites, that's not going to reduce people feeling like they're going to do it wrong.
I'd say to take that as an initial focus, what can you do to make people feel like they aren't doing it wrong?"
We also spoke about the work that Mike has been focused on over the last few years at Art Fund, introducing a more user-centred culture.
He spoke directly to the nervousness that many organisations feel when first embarking on this sort of work, "there was definitely a lot of trepidation within the team around are they [users] going to rip apart everything that we've worked really hard to create?".
But he was unequivocal about the benefits, to the whole organisation, of working in this way, "once you get over that hill and you do the sessions, everyone was saying, oh, that was brilliant. And then they start to talk about it and people across the organization are like, oh, wow, that sounds pretty cool. How do I apply something like that to my job?"
For other cultural reading around AI stuff, this week Neil Williams (BFI Director of Technology & Digital Transformation) shared some thoughts on his blog:
"For my teams & organisation: I’m open to using it for service improvement and productivity gains, and conscious we can’t ignore it like other hype tech (NFTs/Metaverse) …but FOMO is not a reason to rush into it. We should start to include it in the work we’re doing, aligned to existing goals. Any use on my watch needs to be grounded in user needs and tempered with user centred design, with harmful impacts understood and kept within tolerable levels."
And in this post on LinkedIn, the National Library of Scotland's Rob Cawston proposes a sensible shift in the language we use, "I would add considering ditching the catch-all term "Artificial Intelligence" to think instead about "automation tools" - to surface what is being automated, who is doing it and who may gain or lose as a result."
How to Reduce Digital Distractions: Advice From Medieval Monks
I feel like I've shared this before but a cursory search didn't turn anything up.
A good read on how medieval monks battled distraction.
"Sometimes they accused demons of making their minds wander. Sometimes they blamed the body’s base instincts. But the mind was the root problem: it is an inherently jumpy thing. John Cassian, whose thoughts about thinking influenced centuries of monks, knew this problem all too well. He complained that the mind ‘seems driven by random incursions’. It ‘wanders around like it were drunk’. It would think about something else while it prayed and sang. It would meander into its future plans or past regrets in the middle of its reading. It couldn’t even stay focused on its own entertainment – let alone the difficult ideas that called for serious concentration."
Jamie Kreiner
Football and social media: What next for players and clubs in a changing landscape?
An interesting perspective on social media in The Atheltic.
Whether or not you care about football at all, if you're interested in the role social media could/should play in engaging with your fans (whoever your fans may consist of) then it's worth a read.
"Ultimately, people will go to where the fans are. It’s a numbers game. Clubs often have small, very hard-working social media teams, the ‘admins’ as people call them, and there are only so many platforms you can operate and activate effectively at the same time and ultimately they will go where the fans are.
“People forget that actually, even though it’s not as socially relevant anymore, you’ve got 3.1 billion users on Facebook and 400 users are added every minute. It still accounts for about 30 per cent of all social media ads spent.
“So Facebook is an absolute monster, and in other markets in the world, places such as Africa and Asia, it’s still absolutely huge as the first point of call for fandom."
It's also interesting to look at the way in which football clubs are shifting how they view social media.
"It’s becoming about having your own dataset on fans. Football clubs realised very quickly that social media is great for reaching a critical mass of fans and talking to fans, but when it came to trying to get some rich data on those fans, the social media platforms said you had to pay for it or they were putting up barriers.
“Football clubs are starting to wake up to the importance of developing their own platforms. You’ve got Real Madrid who have got 126 million Facebook followers, but what does that actually mean in terms of fans?
“You can’t really call each account on there a Real Madrid fan so it’s a bit of a false economy and I think football clubs are really going to be focused more on growing their own audiences directly."
Global Caps Lock
This is chaotic.
"the world shares this caps lock key
whenever anyone running the client presses caps lock, it presses it for everyone else"
I really enjoy this sort of anarchic/extremely democratic, internet-enabled nonsense.
Elon Musk Wants What He Can’t Have: Wikipedia
A long read from Lila Shroff in The Atlantic about Elon Musk (and friends) turning their ire and attention on Wikipedia.
They are using money, influence, and all sorts of technological levers (using facial recognition software, analysing text patterns, usernames, and technical data etc) to try and dox Wikipedia editors at scale and delegitimise Wikipedia as a source of information.
"Wikipedia is certainly not immune to bad information, disagreement, or political warfare, but its openness and transparency rules have made it a remarkably reliable platform in a decidedly unreliable age. Evidence that it’s an outright propaganda arm of the left, or of any political party, is thin. In fact, one of the most notable things about the site is how it has steered relatively clear of the profit-driven algorithmic mayhem that has flooded search engines and social-media platforms with bad or politically fraught information. If anything, the site, which is operated by a nonprofit and maintained by volunteers, has become more of a refuge in a fractured online landscape than an ideological prison—a “last bastion of shared reality,” as the writer Alexis Madrigal once called it. And that seems to be precisely why it’s under attack."
There's more on this in this Slate article from Stephen Harrison, and in Molly White's Citation Needed newsletter.
Lila Shroff
Google Maps Says ‘Gulf Of America’ While Google Calendar Drops Pride, Black History Month
Wikipedia may be putting up a fight, but Google certainly seems to be toeing the new Trump administration line (following in the footsteps of the changes Meta have made over recent weeks).
This week Google has made changes to a number of its products, including renaming the Gulf of Mexico on Google Maps (Apple and Bing maps have not (yet) changed anything), and removing events such as Pride and Black History Month from Google Calendar.
The race to the bottom is well and truly on.
Conor Murray
The PC is Dead: It’s Time to Make Computing Personal Again
A good read from Benj Edwards looking back at a time when technology didn't always feel so expoitative and...evil.
"For a while—in the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000s—it felt like nerds were making the world a better place. Now, it feels like the most successful tech companies are making it worse."
Although it's overly nostalgic and naive in parts, it's nice to revisit a time when technology felt like a tool that you had agency over, rather than an unstoppable tide of bullshit that had flooded into every area of life whether you liked it or not.
mmrytok
A potential nice idea.
Record 1 memory a day.
I'm not entirely sure what happens to the memories once they're recorded mind you...
Wait! The Sims is a lot bleaker than I remember
A nice read on the Guardian in which Bex April May revisits The Sims, and discovers it's a lot darker than she remembers...
"And having a social life? Forget it, at least when you’re on the bottom rung of your random career ladder. There’s simply no time to make friends, something I didn’t remember from my days as a Sims-obsessed tween. I now realise that my neighbourhood’s messy EastEnders-level entanglements were largely scripted in my head. Instead, you must chip away at ++ and – – relationship scores until you can finally, anticlimactically ‘Play in bed,’ thanks to the Livin’ it Up expansion pack that provided the world’s most basic sex education to a generation of 11-year-olds. There’s nothing dark about that expansion’s heart-shaped bed. I still want it in real life."
Bex April May
They see your photos
An interesting demonstration of how much can be inferred (or not) by AI tools from a single image.
Upload a photo of yourself and see what the Google Vision platform can deduce about you. I'd recommend you only upload a photo that perhaps already exists in the public domain such as a profile photo you use on social media.
It's a few steps on from the banal generalities of horoscopes.
The Internet Almost Killed Barnes & Noble, Then Saved It
A good read in Bloomberg Business Week about the recent turnaround in fortunes experienced by the American bookshop chain, Barnes & Noble.
It's interesting to read how they've radically reshaped the design of their in-store experiences, and the focus of the types of books they stock and promote, to better respond to (massive) shifts in customer behaviour.
"The company’s new management took advantage of pandemic-era shutdowns to reorganize stores and selections, culling less popular titles and creating more communal spaces to encourage shoppers to stay and hang out—something rival Amazon.com Inc. hasn’t been able to pull off. The chain has also fully embraced books popularized by online creators, prominently displaying tables of trendy titles like Sarah J. Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses and Rebecca Yarros’ Empyrean series under BookTok signage. Influencers on BookTok—and BookTube and Bookstagram, the YouTube and Instagram equivalents—have helped these titles go viral by posting video reviews, promoting their favorites and unpacking their bookstore hauls in front of the camera."
Lily Meier
Robots are bringing new life to extinct species
A cool long read about how robotics can be used to help understand extinct species.
"Digital models already do a decent job of predicting animal biomechanics, but modeling complex environments like uneven surfaces, loose terrain, and turbulent water is challenging. With a robot, scientists can simply sit back and watch its behavior in different environments. “We can look at its performance without having to think of every detail, [as] in the simulation,” says John Nyakatura, an evolutionary biologist at Humboldt University in Berlin. "
Shi En Kim
Vacancies
These seemed to be popular last week so I'll include this section as and when there are enough interesting jobs to make it worthwhile.
- Senior Delivery Manager - British Heart Foundation - London/hybrid, UK - £65,000 to £67,000 - deadline 24/02/2025
- Digital Marketer (PPC-focused) - One Further - Remote (UK) - £25,000 to £29,000 - deadline 02/03/2025
- Head of Cinema - Barbican - London, UK - £63,910 to £72,390
- Digital Trustees - UK - volunteer - I saw this initiative to try and matchmake digital experts and charities who lack that expertise at trustee level, worth a look.
This week's consumption
This song from Ane Brun is beautiful, and was the culmination of her show, 12 Songs, which I saw last year. It's called All We Want Is Love.
I was ill last week so I watched a lot of tv.
Including the adaptation of A Gentleman In Moscow (which was one of my favourite books that I read last year). I found it very moving at points (particularly the second half of the final episode) which I think means it worked, for me at least.
I also watched Skeleton Crew on Disney+ which is one of the (much) more successful Star Wars tv shows, very charming and the Goonies comparisons are pretty spot on.
I finished The Night Manager, with Tom Hiddleston, Hugh Laurie, and Olivia Colman, which was very good.
I started The Gentlemen, which is a Guy Ritchie thing on Netflix that normally I wouldn't go anywhere near but, what can I say, I was ill. And it's actually quite good! Slightly less geezer-y and more Layer Cake-esque than his normal stuff, but still with a lot of over-the-top violence and generally silliness.
I finally bought myself a copy of Pachinko, which I've looked for in every book shop I've been to in the last six months and none of them had it in stock. Thus far it is very very good.
See you next week
Thanks for reading all the way to the end. To finish, a quick reminder that I'm a consultant who helps cultural organisations do better digital work - if it sounds like I could be useful, then let's chat.