The 404 Media Podcast (Premium Feed)

Joseph: 00:10

Hello. Welcome to the latest episode of the four zero four Media Podcast comment show. That's what I'm gonna call it this time. As a paying subscriber, you get access to this where you're able to comment on the site, and then, of course, we riff off them. We respond to them.

Joseph: 00:26

There's some really, really useful stuff in there. A lot to get to, so we'll go straight into this. Here's one from an article I wrote. It was about location data and all of these apps that are being hijacked to send your location data, including Candy Crush, Tinder, and MyFitnessPal. This comes from Tom, who says they're a tech executive at ads slash comms conglomerate.

Joseph: 00:52

In the in my experience, twenty plus years building mobile apps and working in advertising and tech in general, Tom says developers absolutely understand what data is being sent to RTB exchanges and thus able to be harvested by intermediaries with access to those exchanges. Sorry to get technical immediately. But basically, this the story was based on this hacked data from a company called Gravy, the beating heart of the location data industry. And we took that data, we cleaned it up, and filters it, and we published this list of something like 10,000 apps that have adverts inside them, or at least a very, very large number of them do. And then that's how companies were tracking the location of those users.

Joseph: 01:41

Sometimes that was through GPS. Other times, it was through IP address, which you then, you know, you'd link to a physical location. And what I said in that article, which I think I still lean towards, but, Tom has a different point of view, is that it's not like these apps, like the Muslim prayer apps I've covered before, which they put code into there to then sell the location data of their users. Like, they're very conscious of that. There's a deliberate contractual decision going on there.

Joseph: 02:14

And I believe that, you know, when it comes to adverts, maybe apps and their developers don't know as much. They just I don't know. They put programmatic ads in there, and then they really look what's actually going on. But it's very interesting to hear that perspective from Tom, especially given his experience that developers absolutely do understand what data is being sent. And, I mean, kind of regardless, I guess the broader thing is, like, they probably should understand.

Joseph: 02:45

I'm just poking around some more location data stuff at the moment, and I went to a page on an app website which lists all of the advertising companies it uses and is affiliated with. And while I was doing that, that page went offline, which was, pretty strange. It came back, and it was updated with even more. So they click they they do know what ad companies are interfacing with their product because they're updating the list. You know?

Jason: 03:12

I think that the the theoretically, the ad company should know and the ad industry should know, and a lot of these developers are probably just plugging in the advertiser's code to display on their, you know, app. I think it it to your point, it's like, is this an app that has a team of developers working on it, or is it some person's, like, one coder project where they're just making, like, a weird game and posting it and moving on to the next thing. It probably depends on the sort of the size of any given coding team and the sophistication involved there.

Joseph: 03:53

Yeah. If you're a Grindr or a Tinder or a My Fitness Pal or Candy Crush, one of these big apps, even if you don't know, you absolutely should know. I think we can probably all agree on that. Who is this next one? Because I changed the order of the Google Doc, so I don't know who comes next.

Joseph: 04:11

But the headline is CEO of AI music company says people don't like making music, which I think is Emmanuel's.

Emanuel: 04:19

Yeah. This

Jason: 04:21

is

Emanuel: 04:21

a comment on my story. It is from Josh Mayfield. Josh says, executives hate creatives. They are executives because they're not creative. The current generation of AI tools is incapable of producing compelling art of any kind, but that won't stop these guys from trying to convince the world otherwise.

Emanuel: 04:40

Also, I'm a musician making a good sounding track and indeed be challenging, and it's always a lot of work, but I love all of it. Good things are worth the effort. I want to include this comment because I think this article, which was pretty short and was basically just about what the CEO of Suno said in this interview, but it got a huge reaction. I think it's the most comments I've gotten in the story or it's definitely up there. And I think the reason for that is that it is such a comically, not evil, but ignorant way of talking about art, of talking about music, and for it to come from the CEO of a generative AI company, not a small one, like a big one.

Emanuel: 05:39

This is a big company in the space. This company is currently being sued by the record label industry, and it is so dismissive of what is probably the oldest form of human expression that exists, and, like, probably the most primal form of of human expression that exists. And to dismiss all of it as being a waste of time is just you're you're kinda asking for it, and I have to wonder if he almost said this as a provocation, just to get attention. And two things specifically about this comment. I can't help but kind of agree with the first part of the statement that there is there appears to be this general animosity towards creative from executives and from the executive at these generative AI companies because all this guy is saying is a more explicit version of what all of them is are saying, which is why would you bother, illustrate a storyboard or, make cover art for your comic book or just, like, take photographs for your product when, it's a waste of time and you can ask AI to do it.

Emanuel: 07:08

The answer for which is good work usually produces good results, and people see that and appreciate it. And they appreciate that a lot of human labor went into something, and maybe that makes them want to engage with it, more. And then the second part of it and, Joe, I know you wrote about this in your BTB a couple weeks ago, but just wanted to agree with this as well where it's just very depressing to think about, the idea that people can appreciate, the challenge in doing something just for the challenge. And I feel like that is such a huge part of my life, not just in, work. It's definitely something that I feel about what I do professionally.

Emanuel: 08:01

Like, I don't feel like I'm especially gifted at writing, but working on it every single day and see myself get better, that's where I derive a lot of my satisfaction as a human being. And then also in my free time, like, I love hard video games. I love to play from software games and bash my head against the wall and then finally get a little bit better and a little bit better and beat the game. So much of my life is about this exact thing, and to see it dismissed, I think a lot of people basically basically feel the same. So just wanted to shout out Josh.

Joseph: 08:39

That's very fair. Follow-up question. How many FromSoftware games have you completed or and and or a

Jason: 08:44

%? Come on. Probably zero.

Joseph: 08:47

You you can't just say something like that in the podcast and be, oh, yeah. I love FromSoftware. How many of you %

Emanuel: 08:53

A %? Zero.

Joseph: 08:55

Zero. K. Cool. Just

Jason: 08:57

I I have some things I wanna say about this. I'm sorry. I'm Joseph's behind the blog. You should go read it. It's about Joseph playing guitar or something.

Jason: 09:06

I don't fucking know. But Yeah. Sorry about that. This is happening across all of society, in a way and and probably has been for a long time, but I really noticed it because my hobby, as I've talked about many times, is surfing. And surfing is something that you suck at for a long time, but there's a very gradual, like, you you gradually get better at it.

Jason: 09:27

You gradually get stronger at it. And in the meantime, there it's also something that has, like, a lot of gatekeeping and, like, annoying culture associated with it. But in the meantime, it's like you you can do kind of, like, stand up paddle board where you stand on a board and it's, like, a little bit easier. It's better for older people. I have nothing against it necessarily, but there's also, like, hydrofoils where which is what Mark Zuckerberg rides where it it's can be propelled or it's, like, an easier way to to to propel yourself.

Jason: 09:59

And that is very much, like, looked down upon by surfers, and and people are saying, like, Mark Zuckerberg is a kook, which is interesting. But I've also been getting ads or actually PR pitches recently. Emanuel got this too For a surfboard that has a hidden motor in it, and it's, like, $15,000. And it's, like, if you don't want to put in the time and effort to learn how to paddle a surfboard and how and to train your body to, you know, fight the waves and all these things that are, like, basically the point of surfing, you can buy this secret motorized surfboard. And I feel like things like that are happening across all of our society.

Jason: 10:40

It's sort of like what, this Suno AI CEO is talking about. It's like, well, what if you could just be, like, an incredible surfer immediately? What if you could just be, like, an amazing, you know, musician immediately? And the last thing I'll say is that there's an amazing article in Harper's that came out earlier this month about Spotify and Spotify's perfect fit content, which are better known as ghost artists, where basically, like, Spotify was putting in, like, royalty free music into playlists because they could pay the artist less money to do this. And it's part of a, book that's coming out by Liz Pelle, the the author of this Harper's excerpt, but I suggest that you go read it.

Jason: 11:27

And I'm also gonna make a plea that if you know anything about AI generated music being, like, put into Spotify or other platforms, that's something that we really wanna know about.

Joseph: 11:40

Yeah. For sure. I mean, you say, and I agree with you. You you say, like, buy this surfboard and you can be a good surfer immediately. No.

Joseph: 11:51

You're not a good surfer. You're not. Right? You are, like, an echo or, like, you know

Jason: 11:56

And, also, definitely, the people who would buy that are gonna suck even with that thing, which is kind of where AI music is right now where it's like, I mean, there there I've heard some some AI generated music that is kind of interesting, like Glorb, for example, but which I think Sam and Emmanuel can talk more about, but it's like SpongeBob themed AI generated music. But this is not someone typing a prompt into Suno. This is someone who, like, knows a lot about music production, who is using a variety of AI tools, but then also general, like, music production knowledge to make something that's, like, pretty interesting. Yeah. Anyone wanna describe what Glorb is?

Jason: 12:41

Do we still like Glorb? I don't know if Glorb is canceled or not.

Emanuel: 12:44

I haven't seen Glorb in a minute, but I definitely like the Glorb Globe that I've seen. Like you say, it's AI generated voices, but everything is composed and more importantly written. Like, the lyrics are very funny. It's all Spongebob themed rap, essentially. And he he just uses AI to generate the various characters' voices.

Emanuel: 13:09

So it's not exactly the same as Suna, which is what you say where you type a prompt and it generates a track. And I'm sure that or I'm fairly sure. Like, I I I feel pretty confident that some version of this will make its way into the music production process for some artists. I don't see it as that different from other tools, but those people who use it, if they're gonna become successful, they're gonna have some education in music production and also some education and training and experience in how to use these tools to actually produce something interesting. I also wanna note, it just looks so frustrating for this guy to say that people don't get pleasure out of the struggle of making music where the CEO class or, I don't know, like, the tech bro hustle culture.

Emanuel: 14:08

It's all about the grind. Right? It's like, they totally understand the idea of you come in, you wake up at 4AM, you run, you drink your Soylent, then you do twelve hours of work, and you keep grinding and grinding until your company goes public and you become a billionaire. It's just like a different type of of grind. So it's just dismissing musicians and artists specifically.

Emanuel: 14:32

It's not like they don't understand the concept of, working hard to to to to make something worthwhile.

Joseph: 14:39

Yeah. You wake up at 4AM and do the c major scale over and over again. That sounds fun and exciting.

Jason: 14:47

Sam, did I hallucinate that you're a big Glorb fan? Did I invent that as part of your canon? That is not true.

Sam: 14:53

A Glorb fan.

Jason: 14:54

I don't

Sam: 14:54

think that's I mean, I'm not a big Gorb fan, but I am a Gorb appreciator. It's catchy, man. I was just thinking about do you remember Diddy, the app? D I t t y? Oh my god.

Sam: 15:06

I'm sure you you remember this. It's like they did, like, the Mr. Krabs is one sick bitch meme. I'll we'll have to insert this. We'll get our producer to insert this.

Sam: 15:17

But it's like it was like an AI voice thing that made little music memes from, like, 2017 or something. Yeah. It's like it's I feel like we have evolved from that being, like, a fun genre of its own to, like, no. We're gonna replace, like, all of music with AI bullshit, which is insane and crazy.

Jason: 15:40

We we can move on in a second, but there was a period of time when Suno first launched that some of my friends in group chats would make songs about each other in Suno, AI generated songs, and then I would listen to them and I would laugh. Is that allowed?

Joseph: 15:58

Well, has has, like, the moment passed? Like, you wouldn't you wouldn't find the fun anymore.

Jason: 16:03

I'm just saying it's like I mean, it's the same with, like, AI generated images, and it's like the the technology is unethical for, like, the reasons that we report on, the environmental impacts, the fact that it's stolen from people, blah blah blah. But there is definitely a class of people who are using chat GPT, various image generators, Suno, things like that to, like, have inside jokes with their friends and, like, share things privately as, like, look at this funny meme that I made. And it's like I don't know. There I think that the conversation about AI is such where there are a lot of people who are, like, do not touch it under any circumstances whatsoever. And it's like, I'm not really making AI generated memes, but I I will admit I have, like, seen AI images.

Jason: 17:02

I'm like, funny. Are we allowed to do that? Am I allowed

Sam: 17:06

to laugh? You're canceled. You're over.

Jason: 17:07

I'm not allowed to laugh.

Sam: 17:08

I'll allow it. I know

Emanuel: 17:10

it's okay.

Jason: 17:10

Laughing aloud.

Emanuel: 17:11

It's definitely a thing that people do, and it's definitely, like, a proven use case for generative AI. It's just funny because it's one of the few proven use cases for generative AI. Just making memes for your group chat doesn't really feel like a $4,000,000,000,000 business or whatever it's evaluated as right now.

Joseph: 17:28

Yeah. Fair. Jason, I think this is your one. Decentralized social media is the only alternative to the tech oligarchy.

Jason: 17:38

Yeah. This is from Kevin Mirsky, who said, I just hope we can find a way to make these sustainable to run. Advertising is fragile income, as you have said, and often sidestepped by ad blockers and third party apps. A tiny fraction of users are willing to donate and potentially even less will be willing to pay a mandatory free, fee, which also runs against network effect. I don't mean to doom and gloom.

Jason: 18:00

I post almost entirely on Mastodon, but this will be an uphill challenge when we're against you with money to burn in hopes they can eventually extract more out. I think there's a really good impression comment and is a big problem. It's like Blue Sky is VC funded right now by a company called Blockchain Capital of all things. They said that they're gonna add a premium tier at some point that you can pay for, but there's no ads on Blue Sky. There's no ads on Mastodon.

Jason: 18:31

Ads are the dominant way of funding social media companies across time and space, and there have been recent efforts to crowdfund, like, efforts to make decentralized media more more interoperable and more stable and things like that, and they've gotten very few donations. There was also that, like, anti AI Instagram competitor whose name I'm I'm blanking on at the moment. It was not PixelFed. It was another one, that

Sam: 19:09

had

Jason: 19:09

a ton of users and sort of got crushed under the weight of its server costs pretty quickly. And and I'm not yeah. And I'm not sure if I think that they've figured it out at this point, but I do think that funding this stuff is pretty difficult. And then also in my article, I talked about the fact that a lot of people are on TikTok and Instagram because they're trying to make money. And maybe that is a bad impulse, but it is the current state of things that a lot of Instagram influencers are trying to build a following so that they can then have sponsored content, or a lot of companies are on Instagram so that they can boost their posts and pay money to Facebook because they'll be able to sell more shirts or whatever.

Jason: 19:59

And, I mean, I think that's not a great state of affairs, but it is also kind of the world that we live in. And I think that a lot of people are only using social media because there's some sort of financial incentive for them to do so, and I think it's a pretty tricky problem.

Joseph: 20:16

Yeah. Like, I don't think there's anything intrinsically wrong with people wanting to use social media as a business tool. It's just those incentives can kind of get a little bit warped when everybody's using the same social media platform. It's not like there's Instagram for business, Instagram for normal people, and there obviously is not blue sky for business, Blue Sky for normal people. It's just all the same tool.

Jason: 20:40

Right?

Emanuel: 20:41

All the money that comes from the platform's various creator programs, I mean, that's kind of like fake growth. That's fake engagement in my opinion. Don't you think, Jason? It's not people inherently finding value in the platform, making content, and then finding a way to monetize this content. It's more like TikTok realizing that it has an opportunity to grab a huge audience instead of another platform grabbing the same audience.

Emanuel: 21:15

They pump money into the platform. And then, obviously, eventually, they're gonna pull that money, and then we'll see whether those creators stay there because they feel like they're trapped and they have to, or they just go to a different creative program, or they just stop making content. But it's sort of like fake.

Jason: 21:31

I mean, the like, in Facebook's case, they're basically bribing people to spam their platforms.

Emanuel: 21:37

Is TikTok not similar?

Joseph: 21:39

Like, they're great.

Jason: 21:40

TikTok does. It's just and TikTok is it's happening on TikTok too, but I haven't seen as many guides for how to directly abuse the program. I mean, we've written about some, and it's definitely happening, but a lot of the sort of, like, overt spam, like, spam this and you'll get rich has moved to YouTube shorts and has moved to Instagram, which makes me think that maybe they're paying better rates on Instagram and, YouTube. But it's interesting because it it it takes social media from being something social to being just like you you have creators who are making stuff and and posting stuff, and then you have an audience that's consuming it. And that that's largely what TikTok is.

Jason: 22:26

I I I don't have the numbers in front of me, but there's been, like, surveys and studies that show, like, very few TikTok users actually post the platform. People just consume it. And there must be there's either the Uber effect where you're trying to get lock in, and then you're gonna rug pull on that money later. So it's like you you are taking a loss on this program from the out outset, and then you're gonna take it away or or diminish the payments later, or they're making so much money from ads that they are able to pay a fraction of the ad revenue to people who go viral. And, unfortunately, the economics of these systems are are very opaque, so we don't know.

Jason: 23:11

I do agree that it's, like, relatively fake, but the goal is just to, like, people keep people scrolling forever. I don't I don't even think it's necessarily about attracting top top tier talent to your platform because the Facebook one is straight up people copy pasting from Chinese social media over to Facebook platforms and doing copyright infringement, but that is unenforced because no one cares about Chinese copyrights in The United States more or less. But I don't know. It's it's very, like, super interesting topic, or I'm very interested in it at least.

Joseph: 23:50

For sure. Here's another I'll keep this one super brief from me because it's just about the location data again. But Tim t asks about that stuff I mentioned earlier. Is there any value in ditching your old phone and starting with a new one if you want a fresh start? And if so, what of what sort of phone and settings on that device might improve security, if any?

Joseph: 24:10

Asking for a friend. I mean, the main thing is the mobile advertising ID, the maid. That's sort of a generic term. And I think, you know, Apple has AA ID and Google calls it something else, and they've changed over the years. But, basically, it's the glue between your device and your location data.

Joseph: 24:32

It's like a unique identifier. You can go into your settings, and, remove this. You can, like, delete it or you can recycle it. I think we have links in some of our stories to this. I've always just Googled how to change or remove made.

Joseph: 24:49

And that's the main thing. I mean, if you really want, you can get a new phone, but, honestly, I don't think it's necessary. I think it's mostly about just getting a new mobile advertising ID, really, depending on your frame at all. Okay. Egg time, Jason.

Sam: 25:07

Egg time.

Joseph: 25:07

Egg time.

Sam: 25:08

So

Jason: 25:09

This isn't in the document.

Sam: 25:11

Is it?

Emanuel: 25:12

We added it. Look at it

Joseph: 25:13

right now.

Jason: 25:13

I didn't see it. Oh, I'm gonna get accosted.

Emanuel: 25:16

Talk about your eggs, you piece of shit. Depends

Sam: 25:19

your egg stance.

Joseph: 25:20

How dare you? So what did you post to Blue Sky? But how how about this? How about this? Jason, what did you post to Blue Sky?

Joseph: 25:27

And then, Emmanuel, what did you find so fucking funny about how ratioed he got? So, Jason, what did you post?

Jason: 25:34

I posted the last four grocery stores I've been to have not even had eggs.

Sam: 25:40

And if this is shit?

Joseph: 25:42

Yep. And then Emmanuel? What was the response?

Emanuel: 25:46

I mean, the response how many comments are on that right now?

Sam: 25:50

This is blue sky, by the way. I did barely say this.

Emanuel: 25:52

Yeah. It's on blue sky you had when I look at

Sam: 25:54

it, it's

Emanuel: 25:54

200. Now it is

Joseph: 25:55

Two two four.

Emanuel: 25:58

Two two four. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, technically, it's a ratio because he got a 57 retweets or whatever it's called on Blue Sky.

Jason: 26:07

A lot of likes, though. A lot of likes.

Emanuel: 26:09

A lot of likes. It's it's technically a ratio, but I say it's not a full on, like, Jason is getting canceled ratio. He wouldn't be on the podcast. We wouldn't have him if he got fully ratioed. But it's very funny because I haven't seen back when Twitter was bad in the good old fashioned way that it was bad where it was just very embarrassing and a waste of everyone's time.

Emanuel: 26:33

I feel like I don't see those problems on Twitter anymore. The problems I see on Twitter now are far worse and more depressing. But it's a mix of everyone telling the Jason the same thing without checking that a million other people said it to him already. And then, I don't know, saying he has egg privilege or something, and then people fighting with other people in his comments. And I don't know.

Emanuel: 27:00

It's quaint, I suppose. Like, back in the day, I can imagine getting very upset if this happened to me. But now it's like, oh, I remember when people fought about nonsense like this on Twitter. And I guess Blue Sky is successful in the sense that it managed to revive

Jason: 27:19

To dunk on me for hours.

Emanuel: 27:21

But it's not just it's not dunking. It's people being like, well, you know that there's a bird flu pet. You know, there's a bird flu that's and it's like, yeah. Of course, you know that. But a million people need to tell you that.

Emanuel: 27:34

And then some of them are suggesting that you're bad for not knowing, but others are just they just wanna say something to let you know that they know that it's happening and kind of, I don't know, voice some concern for the cost of inflation and how hard it is to get by as a normal person in this country buying eggs, which is certainly all true. But to take Jason's little post and then kind of extrapolate it to, like, every political argument that exists on the Internet, it's just very funny. And the fact that that what makes me really laugh is that, you know, Jason is probably blackout drunk in some bar, and his phone is going crazy with all these randos, commenting. And, you know, I'm saying disparaging things about people who are commenting, and it's in good fun. But I'm

Jason: 28:26

sure they're not bad people.

Emanuel: 28:28

They're Most of them are not

Jason: 28:30

sorry. Go ahead.

Joseph: 28:31

I was just gonna say definitely old school Twitter vibes when it was bad in a good way for sure. I mean, there's the classic tweet, right, where Twitter's the only place where you can, like, post that I like pancakes and somebody is like, so you hate waffles? It would it felt like that it felt like that in a good way.

Emanuel: 28:48

Yeah. Exactly.

Joseph: 28:49

Yeah. Yeah.

Emanuel: 28:49

So, Jason, let me ask. Kick your feet up on my therapist's sofa, and I wanna ask you. Like, you're kinda posting. You know what I mean? You're posting about eggs.

Emanuel: 28:58

It's, like, classic just like I'm posting. What's up with that? No judgment. I'm just asking them and you can even talk about it.

Jason: 29:04

The therapist says what I would love to to post, first of all. Second of all, I mean, I'll be very honest. I've gotten a lot of traction on Blue Sky, and so I'm like, let me let me not just be someone who posts only my articles and nothing else. Let me contribute to the conversation by posting about eggs. Things like this.

Jason: 29:25

I I think that's what's happening in my mind. I was gonna say so Mike Masnick, who runs TechDirt and is a big time blue sky poster, but also, like, one of the best to ever do it. He knows, like, more about he's forgotten more about tech governance than I will ever know. Posted yesterday, he said, some of us have been warning about this and calling for anti slap laws, both federal and state, for years and years and years, and I'm not stopping now. Defamation law has been so widely abused to chill speech, and so few people know about it, which was relating to people being afraid to, like, beef with Elon Musk or call what he did at the inauguration a Nazi salute a Nazi salute.

Jason: 30:12

And there is one lawyer in his mentions that has been arguing with him about the definition of, quote, the law for, like, eighteen hours, and it keeps popping on my up on my feed over and over and over and over again. And I'm like, this is very wild that that they are beefing about this. And I I was gonna bring this up, this anecdote up because I was like, I don't know. The the pedantic arguments that used to happen on Twitter but now no longer happen on Twitter because, like, a real Nazi will just say something and then you'll log off, are happening on Blue Sky now in an interesting way. And then I hopped up on Mike's, thing, and he posted, there's an egg shortage in the Bay Area due to bird flu issues, and we've tried a few times to buy eggs in the last few weeks.

Jason: 31:05

No luck. I went to Costco this morning right as it opened and was able to buy some, but the woman in front of me loaded her cart with 53 cases with two dozen eggs each. And he's gotten super ratioed on this egg post, and he had to follow-up and say, people are accusing me of making up my egg post. So eggs are, like, the hottest topic. Like, you can't you can't talk about them.

Emanuel: 31:30

I feel strongly about the eggs. I'd be very upset if I wasn't able to get eggs.

Jason: 31:34

Dude, I that's what I said. I went to four fucking stores trying to buy eggs because I haven't had them in weeks because I none of the stores near me have them. And then I finally found them last night, and they were $9 a dozen, and I bought one bought one one dozen eggs.

Joseph: 31:50

I feel like we should be spinning out egg related content across different forms of IP. A medium will have a egg podcast, egg

Jason: 32:01

feature show. About eggs in my behind the blog several weeks ago. It's a repeated topic of inquiry. Amen. I

Emanuel: 32:10

was just gonna say, I think the reason people feel very strongly about eggs because, we love this, this, saying that, god. It just slipped my mind. It's like the not apocalypse. The dystopia is already here, just not evenly distributed. And this is, like, one of those things.

Emanuel: 32:35

Like, the fact that I can't get eggs because of the bird flu feels very dystopian and actually upsetting, and I think that's what really gets people amped up.

Joseph: 32:45

Yeah. And all of the talk about it about grocery prices and inflation and just the more, like, boring strength of school races.

Jason: 32:54

The eggs nearly free.

Joseph: 32:56

Right.

Emanuel: 32:56

And they're He's gonna lay them. I can go lay them myself.

Jason: 33:01

Sam, are you posting?

Sam: 33:03

I have first of all, I wanna say something. Eggs are disgusting. And I every time I every time out. Every time I

Joseph: 33:11

Take it to blue sky, man.

Sam: 33:13

Like Every I

Joseph: 33:14

don't want the the negativity here.

Sam: 33:15

I'm not even vegan. Every time I prepare eggs, I'm like, I should eat eggs because they're healthy and full of protein. Whatever the fuck. Big egg has told me I should eat eggs, first of all, lie. But I prepare my eggs.

Sam: 33:28

I crack them. I whip them. I take that fucked up little white shit out of there, and I turn them into scrambled eggs. And then if I successfully eat two whole eggs and don't gag, good day. I should get a standing round of applause.

Joseph: 33:41

You can't you can't post this to Blue Sky. Holy shit, man. I didn't realize you were gonna say stuff like this.

Jason: 33:46

This is not great. They're egg haters there. Also, the white stuff. Are you talking about the shell?

Sam: 33:51

No. Like, the the

Joseph: 33:53

glue. Okay.

Sam: 33:54

No. Not the white. It's not the white. There's, like, a white listen. You're not looking at your eggs.

Sam: 34:00

Apparently, no. Gotta get that you gotta get that white, like, membrane.

Jason: 34:04

That's the flu part.

Sam: 34:05

Flu. That's the egg flu. Biden put that in there.

Joseph: 34:08

Probably. Sure.

Sam: 34:10

Anyway, yeah. What was that? I'm posting on Blue Sky, to answer Jason's question. I agree. It's like I feel like more people are on Blue Sky and, like I don't know.

Sam: 34:19

It's, like, a little bit more fun to post on Blue Sky because people are, like, people that I actually like and semi know in an Internet kinda way. Whereas on Twitter, it's just like randos talking at me at this point. I opened my replies on Twitter for the first time, like, a couple months ago, which I never did before because it was trash. And people don't even reply. Like, they're just, like, whatever.

Sam: 34:40

I don't have a big account, so it's like, you know, it's not like people are clamoring to talk to me. But, like, on Blue Sky, I get a few nice replies usually, and it's fun. I don't know. It feels like less high stakes. It feels lower stakes to put some Blue Sky.

Sam: 34:54

But unless you're Jason, which, by the way, he loves this. He's having a good time. He's loving it. This is his ideal posting scenario.

Jason: 35:01

Check my notifications when I when I don't wanna be if I just close it and they're not there.

Sam: 35:07

Yeah. But, yeah, I I agree. I like doing little shitposts on Blue Sky. It's fun.

Joseph: 35:12

I I guess I'll say super briefly why I don't post. And, I mean, I haven't done that in a while. And it's just like, it comes from the days of you post anything on Twitter, and it's just completely read in bad faith or whatever, it's I don't know. Read the fucking article, the answer's in there. And just tired of that.

Joseph: 35:32

And but now mine has escalated so much where I don't even scroll anymore. The only social network I'm actually scrolling through, I can't believe it's come to this as LinkedIn because I actually find good stories there. Like, the GeoSpy one, I saw a post about that. I was like, oh, shit. I really have to cover that company.

Joseph: 35:50

There's a ton of, like, good fraud and fraud stuff on there. I scroll through Blue Sky, and there's people arguing about x with Jason, which is fine. I just rely on you guys to tell me when the funny shit's come up or Twitter or wherever. It's just horrible, obviously. But I'm glad some of us are posting, at least.

Joseph: 36:13

Where's the next one? Instagram ads. This is so funny. I literally can't read the headline because Sam's little purple cursor was

Sam: 36:23

Can you read it?

Joseph: 36:24

I can't yeah. Please go ahead.

Sam: 36:25

Ads send this notify site 90% of its traffic, and this is Emmanuel's story. And I'm gonna move my cursor.

Emanuel: 36:32

So this is a comment from Steven Smith, prolific commenter. Thank you for reading and engaging with our stories. He says, so here's my question about Notify apps. Do users actually think it's actually a naked picture of the person in question? And if not, what are they getting out of it copy pasting the head onto the naked body in Paint couldn't give them?

Emanuel: 36:56

Such a simple and excellent question. I'll give my take. And, Sam, I definitely wanna hear from you about this question because, you're the expert on this, and I've kind of been answering this since 2017. So two things. One, to back out and talk about pornography more broadly, it's all fake.

Emanuel: 37:23

Right? It's all, produced. It's all a fantasy. It's all heightened. If you have sex like that, power to you, but it's like real sex.

Emanuel: 37:35

Normally, it doesn't look like pornography. So there's an artifice to all of it anyway, and the people who consume pornography, which is all of us, we all know that. And we're okay, and in fact, we're attracted to it. Like, that's why we go to it because it is you're indulging in some in some produced fantasy. So that's not unique to deepfakes, their Unify apps, or, whatever it is.

Emanuel: 38:02

Like, the fact that it is fake is not negative. It's a positive. And then the darker part of it is that in my experience, looking at the communities where people make and share this stuff, there is an element of people getting off on the fact that the person that this is being done to doesn't want it to happen. It's a violation of the person. And a lot of fetishes are about taboos and breaking taboos and engaging in behavior you're you're you're not supposed to engage with, and, that is fine as long as it's consensual.

Emanuel: 38:51

The problem here, obviously, as we say in every single story about this issue, is that it's not consensual. So, and that's where the problem lies. Right? Like, a lot of it is similar to regular pornography, only that you're doing this to a person who doesn't want it to be done to them, and that's where it, is immoral, unethical, and increasingly illegal. Sam, what do you what do you think about the fact that these Nudify apps, while they're easy to use and they make it incredibly easy to produce an image like this of of someone, they're still, a lot of the time, pretty obviously fake.

Emanuel: 39:33

So, like, what what what do you think the attraction is?

Sam: 39:35

Yeah. I mean, yeah. It's it's like you said. It's like the the attraction for someone making us is a big part of it is, that it is nonconsensual. We're talking a lot of the time, not all the time, obviously, but a lot of the time and a lot of what we see in the news lately about high schoolers and middle schoolers.

Sam: 39:55

We're talking about teenage boys, to be honest. And, god forbid, we get into the mind of a teenage boy, and you guys can tell me more about that, but I'm sure you were angels. But, like, yeah, it's like this element of, like, social shame is a big part of it. It's like shaming someone else, and, also, it's very effective because it doesn't matter that it's real or not. It doesn't matter that people believe that it's real or not.

Sam: 40:19

It's that the person who's targeted is embarrassed, shamed by it, ostracized by it. It's like spreading like a horrible rumor that people don't believe, but, like, they still spread it because it's mean and, like, but it's obviously a much bigger scale because a lot of the time you're making, you know, nonconsensual porn of if it's a peer in high school, it's that's a minor. So this is obviously it's a it's a crime. It's a serious crime. Even if it wasn't legally a crime, it's morally awful.

Sam: 40:48

And a lot of the people that we talk to about, deepfakes who are victims of deepfakes talk about that element of it. Like, it spreads like wildfire. It takes over your life. Everywhere you turn, people are talking about it and posting it and, like, laughing at you about it or, you know, like, making horrible jokes. I was thinking about the the streamer, cutie cinderella from, like, a couple years ago.

Sam: 41:17

And she was she still is, like, a really big streamer, but she she had all these deep fakes made of her. And she told me that, like, she was someone who would ask the same question. Like, what's the big deal? Like, you could do this in paint. Like, if it's not real, why does it affect you so deeply?

Sam: 41:34

And she was like, I didn't really think about it that way until it happened to me. And, like, it really does, like, psychologically feel like someone is spreading your literal nudes, with your face on them, your actual images that they got in secret or something. And, like, that's a really that's like a a psychological toll that it takes on somebody. And there are studies about this. Like, this is something that's been studied and, proven that it's the similar kind of effect that it has on people.

Sam: 42:02

So, yeah, I mean, it's like and it's yeah. It's it's definitely I think I said this already, but it's the scale of it. It's like that you can just turn these out. No problem. And they look pretty real.

Sam: 42:12

It's just a tool that people are using now to do that. You know? It's like that it is like a viral like, almost like a trend to make these things a lot of the time, within, like, schools or whatever it is. Whereas it wasn't really a, like, a trendy thing to do in paint when we were in school. It takes a little bit more skill slower.

Sam: 42:34

And also, you know, it wasn't like the thing to do to shame your classmates. I think it's just like a totally different, like, environment that, these things are operating in that we might not be familiar with as, like, well adjusted adults who didn't deal with this when we were, you know, young people. Yeah. I don't know. What do you guys think as I think Emmanuel and I are deep in the sauce about this a lot of the time.

Sam: 43:00

So if you have anything to add, I wanna hear it.

Joseph: 43:03

Only that. And I know our commenter's not making this point. It's more when you do have people go, well, yeah, but I could just print it out and stick their face on, and that would be the same. Like, why are you blaming AI? It's like, no.

Joseph: 43:19

It is qualitatively different, not just at scale, which is obviously quantitative. But, like, it becomes so easy to produce that it does functionally become something else. And, come on, to be real, if you were cutting it out of paper and sticking it with a glue stick and stuff, it's not gonna look as good as an AI image. Like, AI images often look shit. But, unfortunately, when they're doing non con nonconsensual nudes, they can actually look pretty good.

Joseph: 43:48

You know? Let's move to this one. I Sam, did you do this one as well?

Sam: 43:56

I added it. I just added it because it's going back to your behind the blog about music. I just wanted to hear more about your your musical abilities, but, I wanted you to play us a little song. We can skip it, but it was basically it was just like someone it was, replying to our latest behind the blog, the TikTok band and Joyless AI, going back to the Suno thing. A commenter named Dan said, this idea that music creation should be open to everyone was the entire point of punk and DIY movements.

Sam: 44:28

But, you know, they also picked up instruments and started making noise. And a lot of it was really bad, but, it was still that they picked up something and said, you know, we're gonna we're gonna try to make something out of this that isn't just like pushing a button. That's what AI bros aren't getting.

Joseph: 44:44

Yeah. And they never want people like, even with these AI tools, you don't want people to think that, oh, I can't play an instrument, so I should just not explore music whatsoever. Like, if the way that you are exploring music and it is giving you joy is through these AI music generators. I mean, that's up to you. Right?

Joseph: 45:08

You then also have all the ethical issues of how that's being generated and ripping off other people's work and and all of that sort of thing. But it's more about the CEO's comments where he said, you know, people don't enjoy making music anymore, which as Emmanuel explained earlier, is just flat out wrong. Like, I literally don't know how you you can come to that conclusion. Yeah. My comment's more about just, you know, being a musician for a long time and then trying to pick it up, again more recently when I have played with AI music generators.

Joseph: 45:43

I just don't consider it something that I've created because it wasn't based off my body of work. It was just a prompt. Now maybe that would change if you get really good at engineering prompts or something like that. But just for me personally, I don't think I'm gonna be able to cross that line nor am I really particularly interested in doing so. I mentioned this in behind the blog, but I really do recommend people go listen to that on the media episode where a very accomplished composer does end up grappling with, well, maybe I have to use these tools for my own creation because they're professional.

Joseph: 46:18

They're making music for adverts and, like, stuff like that. Right? And I think they type in, please generate some music from Jamaica in this decade, in this style. And it's, like, insane. Like, the lyrics sound really good.

Joseph: 46:33

The vocals sound really good. The instruments are spot on, all of that. So what he ends up doing is, well, I'm gonna take these motifs I've, written, but I haven't completed. I'll put them into the AI thing. Now I think I am gonna experiment more with that.

Joseph: 46:47

Like, you know, I have a lick or a riff or something, and I just wanna make a backing track from it, or maybe just out of curiosity. And maybe you would feel a bit more of a creative connection to it, but, ultimately, probably not. But, again, it still comes to the comment on whether you want to make music and the the time and the the time and the space and the era that you're in. Punk obviously came a very particular political and musical and cultural point in time. AI is now coming in its own certain point of politics and time.

Joseph: 47:27

None of these creative tools exist in a vacuum. So, I don't know, if you don't blame me, go ahead. Nobody's gonna stop you, but fuck the CEO's comments, basically. Which one do we do next? I think we only have one or two more.

Joseph: 47:42

Did someone add this one? If not, I can do the one after.

Sam: 47:45

Or Yeah. I added this one, and we could do it quickly. Yeah. This is, this is another comment to the behind the blog where we're talking again about this new AI guy, but this is slightly different and kind of off topic for anything we wrote about this week. This is a meta comment about the podcast.

Sam: 48:05

So we put our podcast on YouTube. And I read about this in the behind the blog, which will be linked in the show notes, I'm sure, because we've talked about it so much. But, we put the podcast this recording on YouTube for free. And people comment and have usually really nice things to say, and sometimes people have wild, rude things to say as is the nature of YouTube comments. But, somebody commented on one of our videos.

Sam: 48:33

He said, dudes, we don't have fifty minutes to spend waiting for your content. The material is valuable. It just takes too long to get to the meat of it. We'll just hand the transcripts to AI from now on. And this comment is addressing that.

Sam: 48:49

Axim Titanium says, at fifty minutes, y'all are far less verbose and meandering. The most of the podcasts I listen to, Remap just put out their first part of their game of the year podcast. It's four hours long, and they barely made it through a third of their lists. Jeff Gerstmann somehow manages to monologue for three hours per week on his show. Fifty minutes is short and sweet.

Sam: 49:09

So first of all, we love and respect Remap, and we love and respect that they put out. So such a long ass podcast. But, yeah, this this person is making a really good point. It's like, other shows are we're not, you know, we're not a podcast. We're a media organization that has a podcast, so our podcasts are obviously a little bit shorter than others.

Sam: 49:32

But, what I liked about this comment and I'll say, like, all the comments that jumped in on YouTube after this guy who said he was gonna feed our podcast to AI to get it in shorter form, they were like, fuck off, basically. Someone was like

Jason: 49:46

Someone said they were gonna

Joseph: 49:47

do that. They were gonna feed it to AI. Alright.

Sam: 49:49

Yeah. They he said, you know, I'm gonna your your your podcast is too long. It's it's it takes too long to get to the information, so I'm just gonna put it in AI and make it tell me what the points were, which is stupid and lazy and against everything we talk about on the podcast, which is so funny. And then everyone jumped in and was like, I'm listening to this. We're walking up a big hill on the countryside.

Sam: 50:08

And then someone else was like, then consider going and reading the article that this is an audio format of or just unplugging your computer, then fucking read the articles as they're published. Jesus fucking Christ. It was like all of the comments replying to this guy were, like, get wrecked, basically, which I appreciated and I think we all agree with. And it goes back to kind of this idea that, like, AI is try like, these AI bros, like this one CEO, they're trying to push this idea that everything should be so efficient that it shouldn't take you any amount of time. It should you shouldn't, like, have to enjoy the process of learning or getting that information.

Sam: 50:49

You should just be allowed to, like, dog food it down into something that we can then, like, spoon you, in bullet point form or whatever the fuck. So, yeah, I just I don't know. I I had a laugh about that Yeah. Podcast that podcast comment in general.

Joseph: 51:06

Just before we started recording this, I was listening to Patrick and Rob from Remap. And for those who don't know, because I don't wanna I don't wanna assume everybody knows, Remap is a gaming focused podcast. They have a site as well, and they're doing writing. And they came out of Waypoint, which was the gaming section of Vice. They got laid off, unfortunately.

Joseph: 51:31

And then, more fortunately, they were able to spin out and make their own company, their own outfit, which is Remap. Just before we were recording this, I was listening to Rob and Patrick talk about is it the NFL they talk about on their podcast? I actually don't They're

Sam: 51:47

the Bears. Right?

Joseph: 51:48

They I don't even fucking know what they talk about. The Bears. But they're such incredible podcasters. And Rob is, like, one of the most particular podcasters I've ever listened to, and I I just love their dynamic. And I just listen to it.

Joseph: 52:01

I ain't watch sports. I don't give a fuck, but they're so good at it. And this comment where they just say, you know, the remap one is really long or whatever and takes too long. I mean, obviously, I strongly disagree, but also would just say that we can we couldn't do this for three or four hours. I need to pee right now.

Sam: 52:19

I can't remember. We can we can

Jason: 52:21

finish fifty

Joseph: 52:21

two minutes.

Jason: 52:21

I feel like Emmanuel doesn't listen to anything that's that's any less than one fourth of a day long.

Emanuel: 52:29

I don't if a podcast is less than an hour long, I kind of

Jason: 52:33

It's like you can respect your listener.

Emanuel: 52:35

Right. Yeah. I do I wanna, take this first offensive, rude comment and just say that Rob and Patrick and Cotto are and now Janet is also on the podcast. They're some of the best to ever do it. I mean that sincerely.

Emanuel: 52:57

I listen to a lot of podcasts. They really have a gift, or I don't think it's even a gift. They've just they've been doing it for so long. They're very good at just gabbing on the mic and speaking fluently and eloquently for hours on many subjects, and I find all of it enjoyable. It's just fun to listen to them.

Emanuel: 53:17

And if you listen to podcast, I find that the experience of listening to a podcast is you're listening to a conversation. If it's good, it feels like you're listening to your friends talk, and you're kind of responding in your head. And maybe in you in your head, you think, oh, I could be on this podcast, and this is what I would say now. And I've definitely had that thought, that kind of parasocial relationship with a podcast. But then I've also had the experience of listening to Patrick and Rob on various podcasts for years and then being invited on their podcast.

Emanuel: 53:49

And it's not as easy as it seems. It's actually quite difficult and exhausting. Like, if you've ever done a three hour podcast with Rob, you get out of that like you ran a marathon. And I just did it. I just said, and it's very hard to talk without all these ticks, and I wish we were perfect at it and or or were as good as Rob and Patrick are.

Emanuel: 54:16

But, you know, we're noobs. We're we're new to the game. It's a new podcast. I do want it to keep improving, but it's harder than it looks, I guess, is all is all I'm trying to say.

Sam: 54:27

I don't know if the commenter is, like, shitting on Robin Patrick's style or length either, by the way. Like, they're they're saying there are longer podcasts. Like, you guys are fine. Like, four zero four is fine. There are podcasts where people just talk for four hours, which but, yeah, everything you said is very true.

Sam: 54:43

It's like we don't, you know, we're not

Jason: 54:44

It's funny on the days that we that we record podcasts. I feel like I really enjoy doing it and, you know, I go on other people's podcast too. But let's say I do two of them in a day or something, I'm like, woah. I'm so drained. I'm very tired.

Jason: 55:01

My my, like it's physically kind of demanding as well where

Sam: 55:06

Yeah.

Jason: 55:06

I'm like, cool. Like, my throat hurts or whatever. So it really is a gift. It it it's hard to do. A lot of people listen to podcasts on fast speed also.

Jason: 55:19

So

Sam: 55:19

No. You do that. Right? Yeah. Do you generally have your brain works fast.

Joseph: 55:25

Do you think you listening to podcasts on, like, two x is similar to the people who want to, like, cut out all of the dry air of a pod, or do you think you do it for a different way? Or you just do it because it's faster. Right?

Jason: 55:37

I mean, it depends on the podcast because some podcasts, I actually like when they kind of, like, you know, talk about their lives so on and so forth. Some podcasts, especially if I'm coming to a new podcast, it's, like, dribbling on about some random thing I don't inside joke or whatever. I'm like, I don't have time for this. I don't know what's going on, which is I mean, that that's kind of the give and take when you're trying to build a new audience is, do these people know me? Am I trying to grow that audience?

Jason: 56:07

Am I putting people off by having it be inscrutable to new listeners? Like, is there a natural joining point? Blah blah blah. And I do find that listening at two x makes me not worry about that. It's just like I get through it a lot faster.

Jason: 56:26

But, also, chat podcasts, like the one that we're currently doing, you don't need to catch every single word. It's not if you if you zone out for a second, it doesn't matter, necessarily.

Joseph: 56:39

Yeah. This is totally different, I think, to the weekly pod, obviously, because we're talking to paying subscribers who I feel like we can be a bit looser with because, you know, you already have, like, an interest in 04/2004. But, yeah, I mean, with the weekly podcast, I'm really conscious of that idea that, like, we don't do too many, like, in jokes or anything like that because if we're a certain size and we want to grow, which we do, we wanna grow this company in all sorts of different ways. You don't alienate people immediately. That's why it's just like, here's the same intro every time, which lays out what it is.

Joseph: 57:13

Let's get straight to the stories, maybe a bit of housekeeping, and then blah blah blah. And then in that subscribers only section that we do every week, I feel like we can shell a bit more and, like, take the piss out of each other. But, like because I hate that feeling when you do listen to a new pod and you're like, I know what's going on, man. Like, I can't get into this, but, you know, I think we have the best of both worlds with the subscriber and the free one.

Jason: 57:34

Something pretty wild happened while we were on this podcast that I've been chatting to Emmanuel about in the background that I don't think he's looked at yet.

Emanuel: 57:42

I'm looking, but it's, like, in Polish, and I'm like, I can't process this right now.

Jason: 57:45

I'm gonna tell you, like, what happened because this has not really happened to me. It's been a while since something like this happened. So we published an article about how Mark Zuckerberg, loved a slop image on Facebook of a bread horse, a horse made out of bread. And the story is accurate. That remains true.

Jason: 58:09

It has 2,600,000 likes, and it was posted by a spam page. But I've learned while we've been recording this that this AI image was stolen from a Polish news organization that earlier this month did a series of public service announcement type reporting about the scourge of AI spam on Facebook that accidentally went viral on the Polish Internet and was subject to, from what I can tell, like, Polish government, like, PSAs warning people about the nature of disinformation and things. And so there's, like, 14 articles in Polish about how this accidentally went viral on Facebook. But then it was stolen by this spam page, and then Mark Zuckerberg liked it on the spam page later. So, we talk about often how we kind of write articles about dumb things sometimes because they end up being interesting.

Jason: 59:12

The backstory here is really wild. I'll probably do a follow-up article, and that I'm sure it'll be online by the time this podcast is up. But a peek behind the curtain is, this is very interesting, very interesting things happening in Poland.

Joseph: 59:26

Makes the story even better. The not only did Mark Zuckerberg love that AI spam photo, but one that was, like, a second level rip off, basically. Yeah. That's crazy. Alright.

Joseph: 59:39

Should we Wait.

Sam: 59:39

Before we close, can we try can I try something? Can I try to play the ditty sound that I was describing to you a minute ago?

Emanuel: 59:45

Mhmm.

Sam: 59:46

Okay. Please. Joe's like, okay. One second.

Joseph: 59:51

I just don't know if it's gonna come for your speakers or your mic, but we'll see.

Sam: 59:54

Wait. Here we go. Alright. I'm sending it up. I'm sending it up.

Emanuel: 01:00:11

I'm unfamiliar.

Sam: 01:00:14

What do you think?

Emanuel: 01:00:15

I remember. I remember. I love it.

Sam: 01:00:19

Anyway, okay. We can go.

Joseph: 01:00:20

I well, I should have had that as the outro music.

Sam: 01:00:23

That would have been Wait. Yeah. Outro music in

Joseph: 01:00:26

Diddy. Okay. We we we will figure that out. Okay. Thank you everybody for being, paying for a full media subscriber, and we will see you again soon.