The evolution of content continues at warp speed due to pure individual creativity
By now, the open algorithm, where a new account can blow-up in the first week because videos are not pre-judged by past performance or prior stats is well known and a huge draw to creators.
The apps and filters and tricks that are provided by the software are also extremely enticing. There are many videos (“TikToks”) that feature how-to and DIY tips for using various hacks to get SFX into your clip.
But, by far, the biggest draw and quality that most sets TikTok apart from virtually all other social media is the character of the creators themselves. And the diverse and unique spectrum of what can be perceived as successful and popular on the app is a creation of the creator and user community itself.
The contrast with Instagram and Facebook couldn’t be more extreme
After sampling 20 hours of TikToks a year ago and comparing those to today, what stands out most is how the same qualities that seemed like a blast into a different universe a year ago, compared to what came before, are now much more developed and refined, if a concept like refinement can be applied to absolute quirky free expression.
What stands out is the level that creators are embracing the platform, not just to get seen and build stats, and possibly influence earning potential, but to communicate. With sometimes almost shocking honesty what they really believe in and and especially who, exactly, they are. That confidence is contagious and gives the experience an addicting quality, and yet, it’s a more positive addiction than any other social media experience.
Most intriguing, from a journalists point of view, is how highly intelligent, mostly self-educated creators are devoting enormous energy toward propagating highly valuable, yet often overlooked, insights about society, finance, internet business, wealth and, well, life itself. All without concern for an immediate reward.
There’s an electric feeling that, once given a platform and a megaphone, the chance exists for a world of information and constantly changing ideas to be rescued from the bland pit of ignorance and convention that is the weakness with most of media product.
Above: 3 TikTok Creators / Photos from TikTok
A faint echo of hope, bouncing back from the dream of a better future
News and media web sites, that bend and contort content choices out of fear of revenue reductions, are rightfully lambasted and called-out for lack of coverage in areas that are critically important and yet given scant or negative coverage.
The ethos of being yourself, with or without glamor, and still be accepted, or even rising to the top echelons of stat-killing influencers, is not just a theoretical fairytale but is a visible reality all across the community.
You just have to look at what is popular, or even just showing viewer interest generally, and you’ll see incredibly creative people who made the choice to double-down on their uniqueness, rather than trying to conform to some social standard of bland attractiveness or fake charisma.
Because of the emphasis on the “content” of the content, for the most part, rather than slick visuals and production values, or a fake self-aggrandizing fantasy image bolstered by props like mansions, hot cars, make-up and wardrobe, etc. there’s a feeling that great clips will be rewarded for authenticity, more often than not.
The ethos and attitude that pervades the experience as a passive user is an organic outgrowth, in part, of the openness of the algorithm, and appears to be a more honest reflection of what people will “like” if not manipulated with dark patterns and all of ‘Zuckerbergian’ tricks.
Above: 3 TikTok Creators / Photos from TikTok
Don’t mess with the recipe: just let it grow and evolve
Of course, no app or community is perfect and the best of what is happening on TikTok could disappear at any time. On the whole, however, it seems like the app is now locked into a situation where if TikTok were to lose that “magic”; the magic created by the community of creators themselves, it would destroy the actual formula that built the success of the platform.
And, hopefully, that reality will therefore prevail and will continue and allow millions of creators to grow, share insights and evolve together into a force that could, one day, make the rest of social media adopt at least some of those positive qualities, in order to maintain their own fan base and popularity. Or they will just disappear, to be replaced by a new type of online exchange that has not yet been conceived.
“we r hot” show dance rehearsal with commentary (hilarious sexy fun)
After her wild Ukulele post popped up on her crazy subterranean TikTok account and a couple of random posts since, today Billi Eilish posted what appears to be a impromptu reversal video with some hilarious commentary. Set to the song “Lost Cause” (very hot now).
The account which only has 14 videos since it first popped up and has 35.4 million followers (of course!) and 190.3 millions likes, and the video (below) got a whopping 3.2 million in the first hour and currently has accumulated 80 million views to date. The first full video on the account – other than the Ukulele post mentioned above. That one went live back on November 13, 2020.
It’s pretty clear from the humor, voice over and the attitude that Billie loves the vibe and spontaneity of TikTok and this video and her rogue account style fits right in!
Even at the relatively elderly summit of 19 her sultry, dark style along with top of the world presence continues to command loyalty and love for her music and style. Her recent biographical photo book was also a hit and the new songs will likely continue at the top of our summer list. The documentary is great also.
Oh, and the WORLD TOUR 2022 starts in February! Kicking off in Smoothie King Center, New Orleans, LA, however, unfortunately tickets for that show has since been SOLD OUT!
Digital rights advocates on Tuesday welcomed Facebook’s announcement that it plans to jettison its facial recognition system, which critics contend is dangerous and often inaccurate technology abused by governments and corporations to violate people’s privacy and other rights.
“Corporate use of face surveillance is very dangerous to people’s privacy.”
Adam Schwartz, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) who last month called facial recognition technology “a special menace to privacy, racial justice, free expression, and information security,” commended the new Facebook policy.
“Facebook getting out of the face recognition business is a pivotal moment in the growing national discomfort with this technology,” he said. “Corporate use of face surveillance is very dangerous to people’s privacy.”
The social networking giant first introduced facial recognition software in late 2010 as a feature to help users identify and “tag” friends without the need to comb through photos. The company subsequently amassed one of the world’s largest digital photo archives, which was largely compiled through the system. Facebook says over one billion of those photos will be deleted, although the company will keep DeepFace, the advanced algorithm that powers the facial recognition system.
Facebook has announced they will be deleting over a billion face recognition templates as they shut down their entire face recognition system. This is great news for Facebook users, and for the global movement pushing back on this technology. https://t.co/0ErdCBhkCT
In a blog post, Jerome Presenti, the vice president of artificial intelligence at Meta—the new name of Facebook’s parent company following a rebranding last week that was widely condemned as a ploy to distract from recent damning whistleblower revelations—described the policy change as “one of the largest shifts in facial recognition usage in the technology’s history.”
“The many specific instances where facial recognition can be helpful need to be weighed against growing concerns about the use of this technology as a whole,” he wrote.
Facial recognition technology, which has advanced in accuracy and power in recent years, has increasingly been the focus of debate because of how it can be misused by governments, law enforcement, and companies. In China, authorities use the capabilities to track and control the Uighurs, a largely Muslim minority. In the United States, law enforcement has turned to the software to aid policing, leading to fears of overreach and mistaken arrests.
Concerns over actual and potential misuse of facial recognition systems have prompted bans on the technology in over a dozen U.S. locales, beginning with San Francisco in 2019 and subsequently proliferating from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon.
Caitlin Seeley George, campaign director at Fight for the Future, was among the online privacy campaigners who welcomed Facebook’s move. In a statement, she said that “facial recognition is one of the most dangerous and politically toxic technologies ever created. Even Facebook knows that.”
"Facial recognition is one of the most dangerous and politically toxic technologies ever created. Even Facebook knows that," @caitlinseeley of @fightfortheftr told ABC News, "and even as algorithms improve, facial recognition will only be more dangerous." https://t.co/XBZGfyE6mp
— Evan Greer is on Mastodon and Bluesky (@evan_greer) November 2, 2021
Seeley George continued:
From misidentifying Black and Brown people (which has already led to wrongful arrests) to making it impossible to move through our lives without being constantly surveilled, we cannot trust governments, law enforcement, or private companies with this kind of invasive surveillance.
“Even as algorithms improve, facial recognition will only be more dangerous,” she argued. “This technology will enable authoritarian governments to target and crack down on religious minorities and political dissent; it will automate the funneling of people into prisons without making us safer; it will create new tools for stalking, abuse, and identity theft.”
Seeley George says the “only logical action” for lawmakers and companies to take is banning facial recognition.
So Facebook is deleting one billion facial recognition scans, but it's keeping DeepFace, the model that is trained on all those faces. Note that "the company has also not ruled out incorporating facial recognition into future products." Very meta. 👀 https://t.co/8ntPg5Hyf9
Amid applause for the company’s announcement, some critics took exception to Facebook’s retention of DeepFace, as well as its consideration of “potential future applications” for facial recognition technology.
Originally published on Common Dreams by BRETT WILKINS and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
“Changing their name doesn’t change reality: Facebook is destroying our democracy and is the world’s leading peddler of disinformation and hate.”
Tech ethicists and branding professionals on Thursday said consumers should not be hoodwinked by Facebook’s name change, which numerous observers compared to earlier efforts by tobacco and fossil fuel companies to distract attention from their societal harms.
“Don’t be fooled. Nothing changes here. This is just a publicity stunt hatched by Facebook’s PR department to deflect attention as Zuckerberg squirms.”
Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the Meta rechristening during Facebook Connect, the company’s annual virtual and augmented reality conference, explaining that “we are a company that builds technology to connect people and the metaverse is the next frontier, just like social networking was when we got started.”
“Some of you might be wondering why we’re doing this right now,” he added. “The answer is that I believe that we’re put on this Earth to create. I believe that technology can make our lives better.”
Many critics found Zuckerberg’s explanation unconvincing at best and, at worst, disingenuous.
“Changing their name doesn’t change reality: Facebook is destroying our democracy and is the world’s leading peddler of disinformation and hate,” the watchdog group Real Facebook Oversight Board said in a statement. “Their meaningless name change should not distract from the investigation, regulation, and real, independent oversight needed to hold Facebook accountable.”
Us: Please stop destroying society
Facebook: Okay what if you just call us Meta now 😉
Vahid Razavi, founder of the advocacy group Ethics in Tech, told Common Dreams: “Don’t be fooled. Nothing changes here. This is just a publicity stunt hatched by Facebook’s PR department to deflect attention as Zuckerberg squirms” over the negative press from recent whistleblower revelations.
Former Facebook employees-turned whistleblowers say the company’s profit-seeking algorithms—and its executives who know their insidious impacts—are responsible for the mass dissemination of harmful content, including hate speech and political, climate, and Covid-19 misinformation.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia and author of the book Antisocial Media, told Time that “the Facebook of today has never been the end game for Zuckerberg.”
“He’s always wanted his company to be the operating system of our lives that can socially engineer how we live and what we know,” Vaidhyanathan continued, adding that the new name is “not going to change his vision for his company—he’s never let anybody on the outside change his mind.”
Zuckerberg, he said, “wants to take the dynamic of algorithmic guidance out of our phones and off of our computers and build that system into our lives and our consciousness, so our eyeglasses become our screens, and our hands become the mouse.”
Some observers compared Facebook’s attempt to rebrand itself to what they called similar efforts by Big Tobacco and fossil fuel corporations.
“It didn’t do anything,” Laurel Sutton, co-founder of the branding agency Catchword, toldTime. “People still knew that Altria was Philip Morris and they didn’t rehabilitate their reputation simply because they changed the name.”
“There’s no name that’s going to rehabilitate the behavior that they’ve displayed so far,” Sutton said of the social media giant. “Maybe put that time and energy into rehabilitating their morals and ethics and business decisions rather than just trying to slap a new name on something.”
Originally published on Creative Commons by BRETT WILKINS and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)
“This industry is rotten at its core,” said one critic, “and the clearest proof of that is what it’s doing to our children.”
Internal documents dubbed “The Facebook Papers” were published widely Monday by an international consortium of news outlets who jointly obtained the redacted materials recently made available to the U.S. Congress by company whistleblower Frances Haugen.
“It’s time for immediate action to hold the company accountable for the many harms it’s inflicted on our democracy.”
The papers were shared among 17 U.S. outlets as well as a separate group of news agencies in Europe, with all the journalists involved sharing the same publication date but performing their own reporting based on the documents.
According to the Financial Times, the “thousands of pages of leaked documents paint a damaging picture of a company that has prioritized growth” over other concerns. And the Washington Postconcluded that the choices made by founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, as detailed in the revelations, “led to disastrous outcomes” for the social media giant and its users.
From an overview of the documents and the reporting project by the Associated Press:
The papers themselves are redacted versions of disclosures that Haugen has made over several months to the Securities and Exchange Commission, alleging Facebook was prioritizing profits over safety and hiding its own research from investors and the public.
These complaints cover a range of topics, from its efforts to continue growing its audience, to how its platforms might harm children, to its alleged role in inciting political violence. The same redacted versions of those filings are being provided to members of Congress as part of its investigation. And that process continues as Haugen’s legal team goes through the process of redacting the SEC filings by removing the names of Facebook users and lower-level employees and turns them over to Congress.
One key revelation highlighted by the Financial Times is that Facebook has been perplexed by its own algorithms and another was that the company “fiddled while the Capitol burned” during the January 6th insurrection staged by loyalists to former President Donald Trump trying to halt the certification of last year’s election.
CNNwarned that the totality of what’s contained in the documents “may be the biggest crisis in the company’s history,” but critics have long said that at the heart of the company’s problem is the business model upon which it was built and the mentality that governs it from the top, namely Zuckerberg himself.
On Friday, following reporting based on a second former employee of the company coming forward after Haugen, Free Press Action co-CEO Jessica J. González said “the latest whistleblower revelations confirm what many of us have been sounding the alarm about for years.”
“Facebook is not fit to govern itself,” said González. “The social-media giant is already trying to minimize the value and impact of these whistleblower exposés, including Frances Haugen’s. The information these brave individuals have brought forth is of immense importance to the public and we are grateful that these and other truth-tellers are stepping up.”
While Zuckerberg has testified multiple times before Congress, González said nothing has changed. “It’s time for Congress and the Biden administration to investigate a Facebook business model that profits from spreading the most extreme hate and disinformation,” she said. “It’s time for immediate action to hold the company accountable for the many harms it’s inflicted on our democracy.”
“Kids don’t stand a chance against the multibillion dollar Facebook machine, primed to feed them content that causes severe harm to mental and physical well being.”
With Haugen set to testify before the U.K. Parliament on Monday, activists in London staged protests against Facebook and Zuckerberg, making clear that the giant social media company should be seen as a global problem.
Flora Rebello Arduini, senior campaigner with the corporate accountability group, was part of a team that erected a large cardboard display of Zuckerberg “surfing a wave of cash” outside of Parliament with a flag that read, “I know we harm kids, but I don’t care”—a rip on a video Zuckerberg posted of himself earlier this year riding a hydrofoil while holding an American flag.
While Zuckerberg refused an invitation to tesify in the U.K. about the company’s activities, including the way it manipulates and potentially harms young users on the platform, critics like Arduini said the giant tech company must be held to account.
“Kids don’t stand a chance against the multibillion dollar Facebook machine, primed to feed them content that causes severe harm to mental and physical well being,” she said. “This industry is rotten at its core and the clearest proof of that is what it’s doing to our children. Lawmakers must urgently step in and pull the tech giants into line.”
Happening now: we are outside UK parliament with a visual protest against Facebook’s treatment of children and its business model which puts profit before public safety. (1/7) #PeopleVsBigTechpic.twitter.com/37UA18PL3r
“Right now, Mark [Zuckerberg] is unaccountable,” Haugen told the Guardian in an interview ahead of her testimony. “He has all the control. He has no oversight, and he has not demonstrated that he is willing to govern the company at the level that is necessary for public safety.”
Correction: This article has been updated to more accurately reflect the context of the comments made by Jessica González of Free Press, who responded to the revelations of a second whistleblower not those of Frances Haugen.
Originally published on Common Dreams by JON QUEALLY and republished under a Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
“How many more insurrections have to happen before we hold Facebook to account?” one group asked after whistleblower Frances Haugen said the corporation is unwilling to confront hate speech and disinformation.
Following whistleblower Frances Haugen’s Sunday night allegation that Facebook’s refusal to combat dangerous lies and hateful content on its platforms is driven by profit, social media experts denounced the corporation for embracing a business model that encourages violence and endangers democracy—and urged the federal government to take action.
Haugen, who copied a “trove of private Facebook research” before she resigned from the social media company in May, toldCBS‘s Scott Pelley during a “60 Minutes” interview that the tech giant took some steps to limit misinformation ahead of the 2020 election because it understood that then-President Donald Trump’s incessant lies about voter fraud posed a serious threat. Many of the safety measures that Facebook implemented, however, were temporary, she added.
“As soon as the election was over,” Haugen said, “they turned them back off or they changed the settings back to what they were before to prioritize growth over safety. And that really feels like a betrayal of democracy to me.”
Facebook officials claim that some of the anti-misinformation systems remained in place, but in the interregnum between Election Day and President Joe Biden’s inauguration, far-right extremists used the social networking site to organize the deadly January 6 coup attempt—something acknowledged by an internal task force’s report on Facebook’s failure to neutralize “Stop the Steal” activity on its platforms.
There is, according to Haugen, a simple explanation for why executives at the company refuse to do more to mitigate harmful social media behavior: “Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they’ll click on less ads, they’ll make less money,” she said.
“The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” Haugen told Pelley. “And Facebook, over and over again, chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money.”
Haugen—who first revealed her identity on Sunday after having secretly shared internal documents with federal regulators, reported on in the Wall Street Journal‘s series, “The Facebook Files”—also said the corporation is lying to the public about how effective it is at curbing hate speech and disinformation, arguing that “Facebook has demonstrated it cannot operate independently.”
In the wake of Haugen’s bombshell interview, social media experts condemned Facebook for prioritizing “profits above all else.”
“Facebook runs on a hate-and-lie-for-profit business model that amplifies all sorts of toxicity on its platforms,” Jessica J. González, co-CEO of Free Press, said Monday in a statement. “Thanks to this brave whistleblower, we now have further proof that Facebook’s executives—all the way up to CEO Mark Zuckerberg and COO Sheryl Sandberg—routinely chose profits over public safety.”
González, co-founder of Ya Basta Facebook and the Change the Terms coalition, added that Facebook executives “designed the company’s algorithms to put engagement, growth, and profits above all else, even allowing lies about the 2020 election results to spread to millions in advance of the white-nationalist assault on the U.S. Capitol.”
Longtime critics of Facebook argued that the “new revelations” about the company demand immediate federal intervention.
“How many more insurrections have to happen before we hold Facebook to account?” the Real Facebook Oversight Board, a coalition of civil rights leaders and academics, asked in a statement released after Haugen’s interview aired. “The system is blinking red, and without real, meaningful, independent, and robust oversight and investigation of Facebook, more lives will be lost.”
“The goal,” added the group, “is no longer to save Facebook—Facebook is beyond hope. The goal now is to save democracy.”
Free Press summarized the Journal‘s key findings on Facebook, which we now know stem from internal documents provided by Haugen:
Facebook exempted high-profile users from some or all of its rules; Instagram is harmful to millions of young users; Facebook’s 2018 algorithm change promotes objectionable or harmful content; Facebook’s tools were used to sow doubt about Covid-19 vaccines; and globally, Facebook is used to incite violence against ethnic minorities and facilitat[e] action against political dissent.
Shireen Mitchell, founder of Stop Online Violence Against Women, praised Haugen for exposing Facebook’s “amplification and use of hate to keep users on the platform engaged.”
Facebook has “weaponized… data in harmful ways against users,” Mitchell continued, and failed to consider the negative effects of “hate-filled rhetoric” even after the Myanmar military used Facebook to launch a genocide in 2018.
González argued that Haugen “turned evidence of this gross negligence over to the government at great personal risk, and now we need the government to respond with decisive action to hold the company responsible for protecting public safety.”
“The government must demand full transparency on how Facebook collects, processes, and shares our data, and enact civil rights and privacy policies to protect the public from Facebook’s toxic business model,” said González.
“Facebook must also act swiftly to remedy the harms it is continuing to inflict on the public at large,” she added. “It must end special protections for powerful politicians, ban white supremacists and dangerous conspiracy theorists, and institute wholesale changes to strengthen content moderation in English and other languages—and we need this all now.”
According to Carole Cadwalladr, a journalist at The Guardian and co-founder of the Real Facebook Oversight Board, “Facebook is a rogue state, lying to regulators, investors, and its own oversight board.”
“What we are seeing today is a market failure with profound, devastating global consequences,” she said. “Executives and board members must be held to account. There is evidence to suggest that their behavior was not just immoral but also criminal.”
Shoshana Zuboff, professor emeritus at Harvard Business School and author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, argued that “even as we feel outrage toward Mr. Zuckerberg and his corporation, the cause of this crisis is not a single company, not even one as powerful as Facebook.”
“The cause is the economic institution of surveillance capitalism,” said Zuboff. “The economic logic of these systems, the data operations that feed them, and the markets that support them are not limited to Facebook.”
“The imperatives of surveillance economics determine the engineering of these operations—their products, objectives, and financial incentives—along with those of the other tech empires, their extensive ecosystems, and thousands of companies in diverse sectors far from Silicon Valley,” she continued. “The damage already done is intolerable. The damage that most certainly lies ahead is unthinkable.”
Zuboff added that the only “durable solution to this crisis” is to “undertake the work of interrupting and outlawing the dangerous operations of surveillance capitalism and its predictable social harms that assault human autonomy, splinter society, and undermine democracy.”
Haugen is scheduled to testify on Tuesday at a Senate subcommittee hearing on “Protecting Kids Online.”
Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
The tweak, which targets the code in accessibility features for visually impaired users, drew ire from researchers and those who monitor the platform
Facebook has begun rolling out an update that is interfering with watchdogs monitoring the platform.
The Markup has found evidence that Facebook is adding changes to its website code that foils automated data collection of news feed posts—a technique that groups like NYU’s Ad Observatory, The Markup, and other researchers and journalists use to audit what’s happening on the platform on a large scale.
The changes, which attach junk code to HTML features meant to improve accessibility for visually impaired users, also impact browser-based ad blocking services on the platform. The new code risks damaging the user experience for people who are visually impaired, a group that has struggled to use the platform in the past.
The updates add superfluous text to news feed posts in the form of ARIA tags, an element of HTML code that is not rendered visually by a standard web browser but is used by screen reader software to map the structure and read aloud the contents of a page. Such code is also used by organizations like NYU’s Ad Observatory to identify sponsored posts on the platform and weed them out for further scrutiny.
“We constantly make code changes across our services, but we did not make any code changes to block these research projects,” Lindy Wagner, communications manager at Facebook, said in an email to The Markup.
Following the changes, the Citizen Browser project experienced a drop in data collection rates from early September, prompting the investigation that uncovered these changes to the code. At around the same time, users of certain ad blockers noticed a decrease in their effectiveness.
Laura Edelson, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering and founder of the Ad Observatory project, expressed dismay at Facebook’s latest move impacting data collection. The website update had at first caused a sharp drop in the amount of data collected by the Ad Observatory, she said, but a fix was found that allowed the team to collect data at normal levels.
“I think it’s unfortunate that Facebook is continuing to fight with researchers rather than work with them,” she said.
Facebook has used similar tweaks to attempt to frustrate researchers and ad blockers in the past, often with the result of making the platform less accessible to visually impaired users.
In 2019, the company made changes to obfuscate its code in a way that blocked ad collection efforts by ProPublica, Mozilla, and British ad transparency group WhoTargetsMe. And in 2020, Quartz reported that visually impaired users had been unable to hear a legible label distinguishing between sponsored and nonsponsored posts for the previous two years because the platform had added numerous junk characters to the text to reduce the efficiency of ad blocking software.
In its latest update, Facebook seems to have implemented the code in a way that prevents screen readers from reading the new tags. As the update has not yet been rolled out to all users, it’s unclear what, if any, impact the change may have on visually impaired users. In at least one circumstance, a developer from The Markup who was testing the new code found that the Microsoft Narrator screen reader read aloud a string of junk characters as an unintelligible word when accessing the site through the Google Chrome browser.
“Our accessibility features largely appear to be working as normal, however we are investigating the claim,” Facebook’s Wagner said.
Jared Smith, associate director of accessibility research and training nonprofit WebAIM, expressed concerns about the code in Facebook’s web update after reviewing it for The Markup.
According to Smith, the new updates break many basic rules of accessibility design. Rather than presenting a clear and simplified structure, he said, the accessibility code was hugely complex, potentially heralding problems down the road.
“When you see thousands and thousands of patterns of ARIA attributes—code that could be used for accessibility but doesn’t seem to support accessibility—it poses a scenario where things could jump the rails and really negatively impact accessibility,” said Smith.
“We’ve seen misuse of technologies like this for things like search engine optimization, but this is on an entirely different scale,” he added.
In July 2020, a blog post from the Facebook engineering team trumpeted an extensive rebuild of the site that was apparently made with accessibility in mind. This included requirements for Facebook developers to use a code linting plugin (similar to a spelling autocorrect) that would highlight violations of ARIA standards.
“I suspect that the Facebook team implementing these apparent anti-transparency mechanisms does not realize that there are potential accessibility consequences to what they’re doing,” said Blake E. Reid, a professor at the University of Colorado Law School who focuses on accessibility and technology policy.
Sen. Ron Wyden, who has been critical of the company in the past, told The Markup in an emailed statement that Facebook’s latest move showed a disregard for visually impaired users.
“It is contemptible that Facebook would misuse accessibility features for users with disabilities just to foil legitimate research and journalism,” he said.
Facebook has long claimed that it wants to share data with researchers, Edelson said, but in practice numerous social scientists have faced obstacles when trying to work with the platform.
In August of this year, Facebook disabled the accounts of NYU Ad Observatory researchers for alleged violations of its terms of service with the researchers’ own ad collector. (At the time, The Markup’s senior executives published a press release critical of Facebook’s actions.)
And reporting by The New York Times brought to light the fact that Facebook had given incomplete data to misinformation researchers from the high profile Social Science One research group, potentially undermining the findings of years of academic studies. The error was first uncovered by a university professor who found discrepancies between numbers in the Social Science One data and Facebook’s recently published Widely Viewed Content Report.
“At what point does the research community stop thinking of Facebook as a positive actor in this space?” Edelson said.
I can’t link to a particular article explaining it because most of what’s out there is misleading. The truth is that nobody knows. The term comes from various science fiction sources, the most recent and least accurate is from “Ready Player One”.
The general idea of that book & film example is a future scenario where many, particularly the young, spend endless hours logged into a shared virtual reality game-like scenario where they can create a unique identity, via 3D avatars, and can interact in a realistic, yet magical, virtual reality environment.
There are many individuals and companies, such as Facebook that are advocating a link from the current online “world” to this type of “enhanced” 3D interactive “metaverse”. They even use the term and try to define its meaning based on their “vision” for the future of social media and the internet.
Zuckerberg monopolizing the Metaverse before it even exists?
The problem is, they are almost certainly wrong in this future prediction. The metaverse is already here, albeit in a very primitive form, where it will lead and what it will eventually turn into is completely open and up to all who inhabit it now and going forward.
The problem is, they are almost certainly wrong in this future prediction. The metaverse is already here, albeit in a very primitive form; where it will lead and what it will eventually become is completely open, and up to all who inhabit it now and going forward.
Elon Musk once said “We are all already Cyborgs” referring to the way cell phones (and for Tesla owners the onboard computer in their cars) extend our senses in a nearly continuous manner. We really can’t live the digital life most of us currently lead without our technological enhancements via hand-held (for now) computing.
Since this progression from the primitive early internet and web to the current, still primitive, phase of work-from-home and zoom business and education the is a continuous extension of our “world” into an artificial computer-aided meta-universe that is slowly becoming more responsive to our unspoken needs and wants.
“our electric global networks now begin to simulate the condition of our central nervous system. But a con-scious computer would still be one that was an extension of our consciousness, as a telescope is an extension of our eyes, or as a ventriloquist’s dummy is an extension of the ventriloquist.
Marshall Mcluhan, from “Understanding Media, pg. 388
What are “Dark Patterns”
Another recently coined term, dark patterns, has come to mean the ways that software designers use user interfaces to influence behavior and elicit a desired outcome, such as clicking a “buy button”.
Another way to imagine it is the digital equivalent to the grocery store designs that put necessities and staples like milk & eggs as far away as possible from the entrance, to try and entice impulse buying, while filling the check-out aisles with candy and other low cost / high margin goodies.
“We drive into the future using only our rearview mirror”
Marshall Mcluhan
The disconnect in this analogy is that people intuitively believe that the digital dark patters are less powerful and have less impact since they operate in cyberspace, while in fact is that the ability to manipulate behavior is much, much more powerful in the digital realm.
The “Dead Internet Conspiracy Theory” is just reality bumping into the truth
A recent article in the Atlantic noted the existence of the theory, and concluded that, though it had a ring of truth, ultimately the fact that this theory, on an obscure web page was possible to find, meant that the internet is not dead, and therefore the theory is invalid.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The rise of Dark Patterns, even as the devices we use and the sites we surf to and exist inside of (like Facebook) are evolving, and the endless self-inflating systems and algorithms that surround us are literally killing the internet and destroying our digital lives.
Infanticide would be a more accurate term, perhaps, since we are all baby cyborgs of the pre-metaverse and have barely had a chance to live, while these powers expand endlessly into a death-machine for our extended consciousness.
Infanticide would be a more accurate term, perhaps, since we are all baby cyborgs of the pre-metaverse and have barely had a chance to live, while these powers expand endlessly into a death-machine for our extended consciousness.
The internet is currently on life-support, because the one thing that it is innately predisposed toward, the enhancement and amplification of human interconnected communication, is at odds with the corporate goals of the gatekeepers, mainly Amazon, Facebook and Google.
Free and open communication, coupled with ever evolving and improving upgrades to the software of our lives, is nearly extinct, before it has even begun, due to this infinite conflict of interest.
Algorithms define our lives, the Metaverse is already our home and Dark Patterns follow us everywhere
The above, a dramatically described and yet painfully obvious truth, is what has even the US government, in the form of the FTC and its chair, Lina Khan, looking at antitrust remedies for the economic devastation that has been caused by the dead internet paradox.
And it has inspired legions of blockchain and coding resistance fighters to start the long process of finding a way to launch WW3, and other independent ways to connect humans using computers that are in are pockets, in our living rooms, and perhaps soon, implanted in our bodies.
Another example is Pi, a new and upcoming cryptocurrency, based on a future where a billion people will be mining and sharing the proceeds equitably using cell phones, and since they will all be connected via the mining software, the realization of this goal would automatically create, for a billion people worldwide, an alternative network, one without gatekeepers to block people from freely interacting with each other.
Oddly, it is the dim realization that the internet is, in fact, already dead in its current form, that will lead to the changes that will ultimately bring about a digital communication revolution, one that will make WWW1 look like a mistake from a primitive and misguided time.
Oddly, it is the dim realization that the internet is, in fact, already dead in its current form, that will lead to the changes that will bring about a digital communication revolution, one that will make WWW1 look like a mistake from a primitive and misguided time.
Anything, and anyone, that can wake us up to what we lack, and what we are missing, in our digital worlds and our lives – in the pre-metaverse – is a hero of the future and must be praised as such. Starting now.
They said Google’s decision to block advertisers from seeing “Black Lives Matter” and other social justice YouTube videos was the last straw
By: Aaron Sankin
Following a recent Markup investigation revealing a secret Google Ads blocklist that hides Black Lives Matter YouTube videos from advertisers—but allowed them to find videos related to “White lives matter”—some small YouTube creators have pledged to leave the platform.
“I will not post any further content on the platform,” Carrie the One, a drag queen and YouTuber with a few dozen followers, said in an email. “I hope that by walking away from YouTube, we can inspire others to join us and put enough pressure on them to change course and do better for all of us.”
“I understand it’s one of the largest media sharing sites,” wrote another streamer who goes by the name Jambo and is mostly on Twitch, “but morals matter, and theirs are not for me.”
Both said that the decision was not hard for them because they hadn’t dedicated much time to YouTube content and didn’t depend on its ad revenue for their livelihood.
Google would not comment on the defections.
The Markup’s two-part investigative series, published earlier this month, dug into the Google Ads portal that allows advertisers to pick specific YouTube videos and channels for their ads. We found that Google’s blocklist missed most of the hate terms and slogans we checked but blocked equivalent social justice terms.
When we took our findings to Google, the company blocked all but three of the hate terms, but it also increased exponentially the number of social justice terms it blocked for ad searches, eliminating advertisers’ ability to search for 83 percent of the terms on our list, including “Black excellence,” “civil rights,” and “LGBTQ.”
The Markup also found discrepancies in how different religions were treated. When we first tested the portal last November, we found that terms like “Muslim parenting” and “Muslim fashion” were blocked for searches, whereas “Christian fashion” and “Christian parenting” were not—nor were the anti-Muslim hate terms “white sharia” and “civilization jihad.”
Rather than lift its ban on phrases containing “Muslim,” Google Ads now also blocks those and other innocuous words in combination with “Christian,” “Buddhist,” and “Jewish.”
As the investigation traveled on social media last week, with thousands of people sharing posts about it, dozens tweeted that they’d had enough and would quit the platform.
We spoke to eight YouTubers who said they were quitting, each with relatively small followings of less than 2,000 YouTube subscribers apiece. They said their decisions to leave the platform reflect a desire to push back at a powerful tech company they believe has done a poor job of listening to their concerns.
“I was pretty disgusted that a platform would use such thinly-veiled tactics and exhibit such overt disregard for the experiences and voices of marginalized folks,” Carrie the One said in an email.
“We know that racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and islamophobia exist and thrive within the systems and structures that our society operates within, but to see those same forces INTENTIONALLY employed by a platform that claims to protect the same folks they are targeting was more than I felt like I could tolerate.”
Google would not respond to The Markup’s questions for the original investigation about why terms like “Black Lives Matter” were blocked—or why it expanded the block.
In response to questions for this story, Google spokesperson Christopher Lawton said in an email: “We know that many brands want to reach audiences who are interested in social justice causes and we want our creators who make videos about these topics to thrive on YouTube.”
He added that YouTube “videos about topics like Black Lives Matter, Black culture and Black excellence, can and do monetize on YouTube, along with topics related to a wide range of social justice issues,” meaning that if advertisers can find these videos despite the block, the videos themselves can run ads.
Graham Jenkins, a video game streamer who uploads on the channel 170Out, said the revelations in The Markup’s investigation pushed him over the edge.
“It’s been on my mind to move from YouTube for a little while now,” Jenkins said in an email. “This isn’t the first time that YouTube has blocked phrases like this but allowed right-wing content to stay unchallenged. I think there was an issue where they blocked LGBT content previously, but are quite happy to allow anti-LGBT videos to remain untouched.”
He was referring to research in 2019 by a group of YouTube creators that showed the platform was systematically demonetizing videos that contained LGBTQ content. YouTube was also criticized for knowingly leaving homophobic content accessible on its platform.
Jenkins said he would stop uploading new content to YouTube as soon as he found another platform that is free for videos of any length.
“Sadly, there are currently not any other strong distribution options out there to compete with YouTube…”
— streamer who goes by the handle Glam Shatterskull
That might not be so easy. Other YouTubers told The Markup that the platform’s massive reach and ease of use made the choice to stop posting there more difficult.
“Sadly, there are currently not any other strong distribution options out there to compete with YouTube,” said a streamer who goes by the handle Glam Shatterskull and previously posted video gaming content to the platform.
“I would love to see Twitch flesh out its video production offerings,” he said. “In the meantime I will most likely be building out my own website to host video content.”
These content creators weren’t the only ones with harsh words for Google following revelations about its advertising blocklist.
The method Google used to add previously unblocked terms to its blocklist in response to our investigation makes future similar watchdog reporting impossible.
The blocked terms are now indistinguishable in the code from the responses the portal gives for gibberish. Because we now cannot know for certain which terms are blocked, as opposed to the platform not finding any related videos, Google has shielded itself from future scrutiny of its keyword blocks on Google Ads.
This didn’t sit right with Sen. Ron Wyden (D–OR), who authored legislation in 2019 that sought to require tech companies to audit their algorithms for bias.
“Google clearly has a lot of work to do to block hateful videos from advertisers,” said Wyden, who said he plans to reintroduce the bill. “Hiding how it screens those videos is exactly the wrong way to respond to legitimate reporting.”
Lawton, the Google spokesperson, declined to comment on Wyden’s criticism.
The Markup found industry fingerprints on at least five bills around the country—weak laws, experts say, that are designed to preempt stronger protections
By: Todd Feathers
Concerned about growing momentum behind efforts to regulate the commercial use of personal data, Big Tech has begun seeding watered-down “privacy” legislation in states with the goal of preempting greater protections, experts say.
The swift passage in March of a consumer data privacy law in Virginia, which Protocol reported was originally authored by Amazon with input from Microsoft, is emblematic of an industry-driven, lobbying-fueled approach taking hold across the country. The Markup reviewed existing and proposed legislation, committee testimony, and lobbying records in more than 20 states and identified 14 states with privacy bills built upon the same industry-backed framework as Virginia’s, or with weaker models. The bills are backed by a who’s who of Big Tech–funded interest groups and are being shepherded through statehouses by waves of company lobbyists.
Meanwhile, the small handful of bills that have not adhered to two key industry demands—that companies can’t be sued for violations and consumers would have to opt out of rather than into tracking—have quickly died in committee or been rewritten.
Experts say Big Tech’s push to pass friendly state privacy bills ramped up after California enacted sweeping privacy bills in 2018 and 2020—and that the ultimate goal is to prompt federal legislation that would potentially override California’s privacy protections.
“The effort to push through weaker bills is to demonstrate to businesses and to Congress that there are weaker options,” said Ashkan Soltani, a former chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission who helped author the California legislation. “Nobody saw Virginia coming. That was very much an industry-led effort by Microsoft and Amazon. At some point, if multiple states go the way of Virginia, you might not even get companies to honor California’s [rules].”
California’s laws, portions of which don’t go into effect until 2023, create what is known as a “global opt out.” Rather than every website requiring users to go through separate opt-out processes, residents can use internet browsers and extensions that automatically notify every website that a user wishes to opt out of the sale of their personal data or use of it for targeted advertising—and companies must comply. The laws also allow consumers to sue companies for violations of the laws’ security requirements and created the California Privacy Protection Agency to enforce the state’s rules.
“Setting up these weak foundations is really damaging and really puts us in a worse direction on privacy in the U.S.,” said Hayley Tsukayama, a legislative activist for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Every time that one of these bills passes, Virginia being a great example, people are saying ‘This is the model you should be looking at, not California.’ ”
Amazon did not respond to requests for comment, and Microsoft declined to answer specific questions on the record.
Industry groups, however, were not shy about their support for the Virginia law and copycats around the country.
The Virginia law is a “ business and consumer friendly approach” that other states considering privacy legislation should align with, The Internet Association, an industry group that represents Big Tech, wrote in a statement to The Markup.
Big Tech’s Fingerprints Are All Over State Privacy Fights
In testimony before lawmakers, tech lobbyists have criticized the state-by-state approach of making privacy legislation and said they would prefer a federal law. Tech companies offered similar statements to The Markup.
Google spokesperson José Castañeda declined to answer questions but emailed The Markup a statement: “As we make privacy and security advancements to protect consumers, we’ll continue to advocate for sensible data regulations around the world, including strong, comprehensive federal privacy legislation in the U.S.”
But at the same time, the tech and ad industries have taken a hands-on approach to shape state legislation. Mostly, industry has advocated for two provisions. The first is an opt-out approach to the sale of personal data or using it for targeted advertising, which means that tracking is on by default unless the customer finds a way to opt out of it. Consumer advocates prefer privacy to be the default setting, with users given the freedom to opt in to certain uses of their data. The second industry desire is preventing a private right of action, which would allow consumers to sue for violations of the laws.
The industry claims such privacy protections are too extreme.
“That may be a bonanza for the trial bar, but it will not be good for business,” said Dan Jaffe, group executive vice president for government relations for the Association of National Advertisers, which has lobbied heavily in states and helped write model federal legislation. TechNet, another Big Tech industry group that has been deeply engaged in lobbying state lawmakers, said that “enormous litigation costs for good faith mistakes could be fatal to businesses of all sizes.”
Through lobbying records, recordings of public testimony, and interviews with lawmakers, The Markup found direct links between industry lobbying efforts and the proliferation of these tech-friendly provisions in Connecticut, Florida, Oklahoma, and Washington. And in Texas, industry pressure has shaped an even weaker bill.
Additionally, The Markup found a handful of states—particularly North Dakota and Oklahoma—in which tech lobbyists have stepped in to thwart efforts to enact stricter laws.
Connecticut
The path of Connecticut’s bill is illustrative of how these battles have played out. There, state Senate majority leader Bob Duff introduced a privacy bill in 2020 that contained a private right of action. During the bill’s public hearing last February, Duff said he looked out on a room “literally filled with every single lobbyist I’ve ever known in Hartford, hired by companies to defeat the bill.”
The legislation failed. Duff introduced a new version of it in 2021, and it too died in committee following testimony from interest groups funded by Big Tech, including the Internet Association and The Software Alliance.
According to Duff and Sen. James Maroney, who co-chairs the Joint Committee on General Law, those groups are now pushing a separate privacy bill, written using the Virginia law as a template. Duff said lawmakers “had a Zoom one day with a lot of big tech companies” to go over the bill’s language.
“Our legislative commissioner took the Virginia language and applied Connecticut terminology,” Maroney said.
That industry-backed bill passed through committee unanimously on March 23.
“It’s an uphill battle because you’re fighting a lot of forces on many fronts,” Duff said. “They’re well funded, they’re well heeled, and they just hire a lot of lobbyists to defeat legislation for the simple reason that there’s a lot of money in online data.”
Google has spent $100,000 lobbying in Connecticut since 2019, when Duff first introduced a consumer data privacy bill. Apple and Microsoft have each spent $124,000, Amazon has spent $116,000, and Facebook has spent $155,000, according to the state’s lobbyist reporting database.
Microsoft declined to answer questions and instead emailed The Markup links to the testimony its company officials gave in Virginia and Washington.
The Virginia model “is a thoughtful approach to modernize United States privacy law, something which has become a very urgent need,” Ryan Harkins, the company’s senior director of public policy, said during one hearing.
Google declined to respond to The Markup’s questions about their lobbying. Apple and Amazon did not respond to requests for comment.
Oklahoma
In Oklahoma, Rep. Collin Walke, a Democrat, and Rep. Josh West, the Republican majority leader, co-sponsored a bill that would have banned businesses from selling consumers’ personal data unless the consumers specifically opted in and gave consumers the right to sue for violations. Walke told The Markup that the bipartisan team found themselves up against an army of lobbyists from companies including Facebook, Amazon, and leading the effort, AT&T.
AT&T lobbyists persuaded House leadership to delay the bill’s scheduled March 2 hearing, Walke said. “For the whole next 24-hour period, lobbyists were pulling members off the house floor and whipping them.”
Walke said to try to get the bill through the Senate, he agreed to meetings with Amazon, internet service providers, and local tech companies, eventually adopting a “Virginia-esque” bill. But certain companies remained resistant—Walke declined to specify which ones—and the bill died without receiving a hearing.
AT&T did not respond to questions about its actions in Oklahoma or other states where it has fought privacy legislation. Walke said he plans to reintroduce the modified version of the bill again next session.
Texas
In Texas, Rep. Giovanni Capriglione first introduced a privacy bill in 2019. He told The Markup he was swiftly confronted by lobbyists from Amazon, Facebook, Google, and industry groups representing tech companies. The state then created a committee to study data privacy, which was populated in large part by industry representatives.
Facebook declined to answer questions on the record for this story.
Capriglione introduced another privacy bill in 2021, but given “Texas’s conservative nature,” he said, and the previous pushback, it doesn’t include any opt-in or opt-out requirement or a private right of action. But he has still received pushback from industry over issues like how clear and understandable website privacy policies have to be.
“The ones that were most interested were primarily the big tech companies,” he said. “I received significant opposition to making any changes” to the status quo.
Washington
The privacy bill furthest along of all pending bills is in Washington, the home state of Microsoft and Amazon. The Washington Privacy Act was first introduced in 2019 and was the inspiration for Virginia’s law. Microsoft, Amazon, and more recently Google, have all testified in favor of the bill. It passed the state Senate 48–1 in March.
A House committee considering the bill has proposed an amendment that would create a private right of action, but it is unclear whether that will survive the rest of the legislative process.
Other States
Other states—Illinois, Kentucky, Alabama, Alaska, and Colorado—have Virgina-like bills under consideration. State representative Michelle Mussman, the sponsor of a privacy bill in Illinois, and state representative Lisa Willner, the sponsor of a bill in Kentucky, told The Markup that they had not consulted with industry or made privacy legislation their priority during 2021, but when working with legislative staff to author the bills they eventually put forward, they looked to other states for inspiration. The framework they settled on was significantly similar to Virginia’s on key points, according to The Markup’s analysis.
The sponsors of bills in Alabama, Alaska, and Colorado did not respond to interview requests, and public hearing testimony or lobbying records in those states were not yet available.
The Campaign Against Tougher Bills
In North Dakota, lawmakers in January introduced a consumer data privacy bill that a coalition of advertising organizations called “the most restrictive privacy law in the United States.” It would have included an opt-in framework, a private right of action, and broad definitions of the kind of data and practices subject to the law.
It failed 75–19 in the House shortly after a public hearing in which only AT&T, data broker RELX, and industry groups like The Internet Association, TechNet, and the State Privacy and Security Coalition showed up to testify—all in opposition. And while the big tech companies didn’t directly testify on the bill, lobbying records suggest they exerted influence in other ways.
The 2020–2021 lobbyist filing period in North Dakota, which coincided with the legislature’s study and hearing on the bill, marked the first time Amazon has registered a lobbyist in the state since 2018 and the first time Apple and Google have registered lobbyists since the state began publishing lobbying disclosures in 2016, according to state lobbying records.
A Mississippi bill containing a private right of action met a similar fate. The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Angela Turner-Ford, did not respond to an interview request.
While in Florida, a bill that was originally modeled after California’s laws has been the subject of intense industry lobbying both in public and behind the scenes. On April 6, a Florida Senate committee voted to remove the private right of action, leaving a bill substantially similar to Virginia’s. State senator Jennifer Bradley, the sponsor of Florida’s bill, did not respond to The Markup’s request for comment.
Several bills that include opt-in frameworks, private rights of action, and other provisions that experts say make for strong consumer protection legislation are beginning to make their way through statehouses in Massachusetts, New York, and New Jersey. It remains to be seen whether those bills’ current protections can survive the influence of an industry keen to set the precedent for expected debate over a federal privacy law.
If the model that passed in Virginia and is moving forward in other states continues to win out, it will “really hamstring federal lawmakers’ ability to do anything stronger, which is really concerning considering how weak [that model] is,” said Jennifer Lee, the technology and liberty project manager for the ACLU of Washington. “I think it really will entrench the status quo in allowing companies to operate under the guise of privacy protections that aren’t actually that protective.”
ProPublica drops a second monumental article based on treasure trove of IRS, SEC & court data
Excellent reporting of tax injustices among the obscenely rich continues with a huge and revelatory piece on Peter Thiel and his “little” Roth IRA scheme. Going well beyond the previous article that detailed how Bezos, Musk, Buffet and others all use loans secured with share holdings to avoid income, and thus avoid paying tax the “Lord of the Roths” is even more explosive.
While the emphasis of the article on Thiel’s Roth IRA takes on the task of trying to somehow compare an “average” investor’s potential gains with the unimaginable magnitude of Thiel’s windfall, this is something that makes sense as a valid perspective, but the obscenity is nearly lost in the opaque fog of numbers beyond comprehension.
For example: your Peter is basically gifted 1.7 million shares by the company he was one of the founders of (along with Elon Musk and the rest of the so called “PayPal Mafia). That “purchase” costing less than $2000 based on the ridiculous price of $0.001 per share was used to found a Roth IRA.
The engineered numbers were no accident: at the time, in 1999, a Roth IRA account had a maximum allowable contribution amount of $2,000. Since the shares were “below fair value”, the fact of which was admitted by PayPal in an SEC filing from the time just before the company went public, the value increased massively, by 227,490% in the first year. Which increased the value of the paltry $2k up to $3.8 million.
Though obviously not enforced, regulations at the time forbade this kind of “stuffing”. Meaning, the initial trade that launched this scheme was possibly illegitimate, if not unlawful. Or, as ProPublica more kindly phrased it: “Investors aren’t allowed to buy assets for less than their true value through an IRA. “
As a matter of fact, according to the article, the “stuffing” was so successful that no further contributions were ever made into the account after that initial 1999 sum.
Since a Roth IRA allows a person to trade stocks within the account tax free, as long as no withdrawals are made, this large but still comprehensible sum was the start of a 20 year use of the tax statutes to build a fortune of over $5 billion without paying a single penny in tax.
Hitting $870 million in value by 2008, by 2019 the tax free enterprise, built on the less than $2000 initial contribution (stock “purchase”), ultimately ballooned to 96 sub-accounts with holdings of $5 billion.
Ok, so that’s the short summary of the mind blowing numbers. For a more detailed account, by all means visit the original article.
The numbers are outrageous, but the entitlement and arrogance is on a whole other level
The part of the story that should spark outrage is not in the numbers but begins where the almost inhuman greed, hubris and hypocrisy at this good fortune grows apace with the size of the tax free bonanza. Because Peter Tiel is not just any run-of-the-mill untaxed billionaire.
The endlessly expanding windfall he received, tax free, did not engender a mindset of charity or gratefulness at his miraculous providence.
Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic
Instead Thiel, once the wealth lent him a position of power, preached and pushed the idea that the US government, the same one that he was able to avoid paying taxes to, was guilty of over-taxing people like him (and poor people too).
He spent millions of dollars in an effort to influence Republican politicians and groups that have anti-tax agendas, to change the laws in ways that would add even more advantages to his already preposterously privileged position. Then this: as per ProPublica: “In 2016, he became the rare Silicon Valley titan to endorse Donald Trump.”
And, in an arrogance that is as incomprehensible as the size his effortlessly expanding fortune, he espouses the belief that people like him are entitled to these kind of spoils because, after all, without him we might have to live without PayPal and….wait for it…. Facebook.
Yes, you heard that right. In 2004, Thiel used his IRA to buy $500,000 worth of shares in a, then private, company called Facebook, which was the first big outside investment in Zuckerberg’s soon to be massive monstrosity.
By using his IRA funds to buy shares of the start-up he was able to avoid tax on all the future gains of those shares. (ProPublica, in excellent investigative reporting, uncovered this tidbit by combing though Facebook court documents).
So, again, ostensibly, based on his well known statements, we are not only to congratulate him on his clever method of avoiding any taxation whatsoever on the first gambit with the PayPal shares, but we ought to effusively thank him for helping Facebook to become the dangerous purveyor of surveillance and phantom tollbooth Ponzi empire that is it today?
In perhaps one of the greatest illustrations of how power corrupts, this idea that because he was able to amass a fortune on such a massive scale without the burden of any tax whatsoever, he is somehow a hero to be emulated, is the real reason for us to be outraged.
That an average person might be lucky to turn $2000 into $250,000 over two decades, as was illustrated in detail in the article, while Thiel easily turned it into $5 billion, is outrageous, yes.
But the real “crime” is that it was done with zero benefit to anyone except him and other Silicon Valley insiders at companies like PayPal and Facebook.
Could it be argued that Facebook is a gift to humanity? Well, in 2021 that would be a tough argument to put forth without being laughed out of the room. And PayPal? It’s doubtful that Satoshi Nakamoto has to fear competition from any of the PayPal Mafia (including Mr. Musk) when the crown for greatest financial innovator of the century is awarded.
In a revelation that could have received more page inches, the article also exposes a second, possibly more plausible reason, regarding why Thiel went to great lengths to bankrupt Gawker Media, which he blamed for outing him as Gay. That politically convenient motivation could very well have covered up the real reason:
Again, as per ProPublica:
“In a story headlined, “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Taxpayer Money,” Gawker Media, citing anonymous sources, revealed that Thiel held his Facebook investment in a tax-free Roth.”
Companies built on greed and hubris create nothing and, in the end, die
Thiel believes he will live to be 120 years old. Based on his comments and writings he appears to believe that the world would benefit from that eventuality.
But when looking at the companies he helped to build, and the obscene fortune he was rewarded with for binging them into being, it seems like most of us, after accessing his life’s works and “accomplishments”, would be more thankful for the improbability of that dream coming true.
2087? That will be the year that either Utopia or Oblivion will have arrived for humanity and the planet earth. If by a miracle an earthly Utopia comes to be, it is highly unlikely that PayPal, Facebook or Mr. Thiel will have had any hand in bringing it about.
Three and a half million likes in less than 24 hours? Sure, if you are Jason Stratham on TikTok. And it’s the first video on a brand new account. The only video on the account so far. And you are dancing while you divulge your stats.
Looking at the comments, however, nearly 70,000 of them, a large number are asking “is this real”. Deep-fakes are most definitely real. Several accounts used Tom Cruise Deep-fake video to try to spoof an official TikTok account for the star. And a few stray clips of Brad Pit at a script reading spawned a series of fake accounts trying to look like Brad’s personal “rogue” account.
But, wait, there’s also Billie Eilish who started a “secret” personal account in November 2020 and posted some fascinatingly bizarre ukulele footage, apparently just for kicks, as she surely has no need for more publicity. The account was so unique and, well, strange, that it was hard to imagine that it could be fake.
Sure enough, yesterday what appears to be an outtake from her recent music video with some hilarious captions and stickers popped up on the, mostly dormant, account and has since gone viral. All of which pretty much cements the “it’s definitely real” theory.
As for Jason Statham? We are going to go out on a limb here and say that he is following Billie Eilish’s lead and this is a real account. The fact that there is a single video with a full body dance clip of what absolutely appears to be the star is a tip-off. Secondly if this is his head deep-faked onto someone else’s body, that’s a pretty perfect body double.
Also, the original sound mix seems to indicate that there was method that went the extra mile.
What’s your take? Send us comments or your detective results and let us know if you think this is real, like we do, or if this is just some amazing wizardry at a next level of deep-fake-ness, which thousands of comment writers on TikTok seem to believe…
Above: Official Trailer for “Wrath of Man” Credit: MGM
In addition to Statham, he is joined by a slew of actors including: Alex Ferns, Holt McCallany, Scott Eastwood, Jeffrey Donovan, Laz Alonso, Josh Hartnett, Niamh Algar, Raúl Castillo, Post Malone, Lyne Renee, Anthony Molinari, Deobia Oparei, Tadhg Murphy, Babs Olusanmokun, Darrell D’Silva, Chris Reilly, Matthew Illesley, Rebecca Calder, Jason Wong, Alessandro Babalola, Cameron Jack, Montana Manning, Rocci Williams, Josh Cowdery, and Eve Macklin.
The evolution of content continues at warp speed due to pure individual creativity
By now, the open algorithm, where a new account can blow-up in the first week because videos are not pre-judged by past performance or prior stats is well known and a huge draw to creators.
The apps and filters and tricks that are provided by the software are also extremely enticing. There are many videos (“TikToks”) that feature how-to and DIY tips for using various hacks to get SFX into your clip.
But, by far, the biggest draw and quality that most sets TikTok apart from virtually all other social media is the character of the creators themselves. And the diverse and unique spectrum of what can be perceived as successful and popular on the app is a creation of the creator and user community itself.
The contrast with Instagram and Facebook couldn’t be more extreme
After sampling 20 hours of TikToks a year ago and comparing those to today, what stands out most is how the same qualities that seemed like a blast into a different universe a year ago, compared to what came before, are now much more developed and refined, if a concept like refinement can be applied to absolute quirky free expression.
What stands out is the level that creators are embracing the platform, not just to get seen and build stats, and possibly influence earning potential, but to communicate. With sometimes almost shocking honesty what they really believe in and and especially who, exactly, they are. That confidence is contagious and gives the experience an addicting quality, and yet, it’s a more positive addiction than any other social media experience.
Most intriguing, from a journalists point of view, is how highly intelligent, mostly self-educated creators are devoting enormous energy toward propagating highly valuable, yet often overlooked, insights about society, finance, internet business, wealth and, well, life itself. All without concern for an immediate reward.
There’s an electric feeling that, once given a platform and a megaphone, the chance exists for a world of information and constantly changing ideas to be rescued from the bland pit of ignorance and convention that is the weakness with most of media product.
Above: 3 TikTok Creators / Photos from TikTok
A faint echo of hope, bouncing back from the dream of a better future
News and media web sites, that bend and contort content choices out of fear of revenue reductions, are rightfully lambasted and called-out for lack of coverage in areas that are critically important and yet given scant or negative coverage.
The ethos of being yourself, with or without glamor, and still be accepted, or even rising to the top echelons of stat-killing influencers, is not just a theoretical fairytale but is a visible reality all across the community.
You just have to look at what is popular, or even just showing viewer interest generally, and you’ll see incredibly creative people who made the choice to double-down on their uniqueness, rather than trying to conform to some social standard of bland attractiveness or fake charisma.
Because of the emphasis on the “content” of the content, for the most part, rather than slick visuals and production values, or a fake self-aggrandizing fantasy image bolstered by props like mansions, hot cars, make-up and wardrobe, etc. there’s a feeling that great clips will be rewarded for authenticity, more often than not.
The ethos and attitude that pervades the experience as a passive user is an organic outgrowth, in part, of the openness of the algorithm, and appears to be a more honest reflection of what people will “like” if not manipulated with dark patterns and all of ‘Zuckerbergian’ tricks.
Above: 3 TikTok Creators / Photos from TikTok
Don’t mess with the recipe: just let it grow and evolve
Of course, no app or community is perfect and the best of what is happening on TikTok could disappear at any time. On the whole, however, it seems like the app is now locked into a situation where if TikTok were to lose that “magic”; the magic created by the community of creators themselves, it would destroy the actual formula that built the success of the platform.
And, hopefully, that reality will therefore prevail and will continue and allow millions of creators to grow, share insights and evolve together into a force that could, one day, make the rest of social media adopt at least some of those positive qualities, in order to maintain their own fan base and popularity. Or they will just disappear, to be replaced by a new type of online exchange that has not yet been conceived.
The TikTok indicator is saying crypto is here to stay…
It was, astoundingly, less than a month ago, May 8th, 2021, that Ethereum reached an all time high of $4,169. That was two days after Dogecoin, full of Musk momentum, hit .69 cents, after starting the year around .10 cents. Bitcoin had peaked about a month earlier at $63,674 on April 12th.
As is so often seen in manias, bubbles and feeding frenzies, at the time you could not find a person in America who was not talking about crypto. The proverbial shoe-shine boy was now your cousin, your uncle even your grandmother and they were all bursting with FOMO after reading the articles, especially the ones about the Dogecoin millionaires, who had made fortunes starting with a tiny sum.
Now, many of those same people are seeing a typical reversal, correction, bear phase, whatever you want to call it, and they are just as convinced of crypto’s demise today as they were that it was a sure-thing less than a month ago.
The kids get it and are not backing down
Much like TikTok itself, the later arrivals to the huge phenomena that is Crypto are the old and out-of-touch, not the young and fast. Interestingly, an anecdotal survey of young and successful crypto “influencers” on TikTok and other social media are not shocked about the downturn. They get it.
Many have been learning about and actively involved with the crypto world for years. There is a real sense that the corrupt events that led to the financial crisis and near collapse in 2008 shaped their thinking and hardened their resolve to search for a better way. Crypto’s ideals and independent foundations have provided that in a real, tangible way, it seems.
While the mainstream of the media and the bulk of the financial establishment swing from an almost grudging respect to complete derision and rejection, it appears to be the underlying concepts and ideologies that present such a stark contrast in the perspective of up and coming generations.
While perhaps no less vulnerable to the excitement of 20,000 % gains and other sensational enticements, there is a somewhat surprising depth and resolve that is demonstrated in a level headed and clear thinking allegiance to the reasons crypto was created in the first place.
The outlandish price gains (and drops) are only window dressing
At the core of the question of crypto’s eventual widespread adoption and long term success lies a simple truth: fiat currencies and the governments that print them are a big problem for the world’s future. And, naturally, the new generations of the future will be those that are most affected.
What Elon Musk recently called “The true battle… between fiat & crypto” is one that Gen-Z appear to understand in ways that 100-year-old billionaires like Warren Buffet and his side-kick Charlie Munger do not. Or maybe they just side with the financial establishment they helped build, to the bitter end.
For any reading this that also “get it”, it would be wise to understand that, even at this early phase in the future of “the true battle” there is an army rising. It is not one of suicidal fossil fuels and battlefield tanks but one of ideology and belief in the possibility of a better way.
The army that will stand up for the survival and continued development of cryptocurrencies and blockchain and “DeFi” are not a few random conscripts, they are the generations of the future and they have chosen a side.
For that reason, all signs point to an unlikely permanent collapse of cryptocurrencies and an impossibility of banning or stopping them. It is already too late to prevent their eventual rise.
Singer Grimes made a cameo and was present alongside partner Elon Musk on the recent Saturday Night Live episode. The artist posted photos taken backstage, including with musical guest Miley Cyrus, a few days later, adding that she was recently hospitalized due to a panic attack.
This isn’t the first time Grimes has been open and shared information about her mental health issues, explaining in a 2012 interview she struggled with bad social anxiety and sometimes experienced panic attacks.
Grimes played Princess Peach in a Super Mario type themed sketch. It was also revealed the two went to a crypto-themed after party. Its not exactly clear if social anxiety or other factors played into those situations.
The artist also posted the following on her Instagram page:
Forgot to post these cuz I somehow caused myself to have a panic attack and went to the hospital yesterday which tbh was quite scary and I suppose it’s a good time to start therapy 😑😑😑. But nonetheless – wowwwww @mileycyrus is good live and so chill! So grateful to the SNL team for being so kind and letting me sneak in as princess peach snd so proud of my beautiful E (which I know will upset the grimes fans so I apologize in advance) but he killed it
National Alliance on Mental Health
Grimes sharing her struggles only helps to highlight the reality that millions of Americans face daily with mental health issues. The month of May also happens to be mental health awareness month. Now you are not alone. If you are struggling and need support. The NAMI HelpLine can be reached Monday through Friday, 10 a.m.–8 p.m., ET. 1-800-950-NAMI (6264) or info@nami.org
A secretive algorithm that’s constantly being tweaked can turn influencers’ accounts, and their prospects, upside down
By: Dara Kerr
It was the middle of the pandemic, and Mason McClellan had just started his first semester of college in Georgia. He was stuck at home, learning remotely, and had more time than expected on his hands. So, one night he made a few short videos loosely based on small-town news stories and posted them to TikTok.
“I made five videos in the first day, went to sleep, and then ended up with 50,000 followers out of nowhere,” McClellan said. “Then I was like, ‘I gotta make more videos now.’ ”
He kept going. Over the next three days, he made several more videos and amassed one million followers—a major milestone in the world of TikTok. Views on his videos continued to tick up throughout the fall, and several million more followers streamed in. McClellan began to make money off his account, roughly $500 a week, but then, in January, it took an unexpected turn—he started hemorrhaging followers, losing roughly 200,000 in a matter of weeks.
“Since Jan. 18, I haven’t had a day that I’ve gained followers,” McClellan said. “Before late February, even my followers weren’t seeing my videos.”
McClellan hadn’t taken time off, posted taboo content, or altered the style of his videos. On his side of things, nothing had changed. And he isn’t alone: Jan. 18 was a pivotal day for many TikTok creators who say they saw inexplicable drops in followers.
No other platform can provide the explosive virality that TikTok is known for—Charli D’Amelio became famous for casual dance routines on the app and now has her own TV show, and rapper Lil Nas X credits TikTok for the meteoric rise of his song “Old Town Road.” Who goes viral is largely dictated by a discovery-based system in which TikTok’s algorithm puts together an endless “For You” feed where viewers spend most of their time picking and choosing who to follow.
Unlike YouTube, Instagram, and Snapchat, which depend on creators building a network of followers, TikTok’s algorithm can put videos at the top of the For You scroll and turn people into overnight sensations. But similarly, if videos suddenly disappear from that feed, creators’ prospects can evaporate. Those people who’ve centered their lives around performing on the app can be left trying to figure out how to stay relevant on an impenetrable, constantly changing platform. The growing industry around TikTok resembles the promise and callousness of early Hollywood—burgeoning creativity, swift fame, and little by way of worker protections—except that instead of studios creating stars, it’s a faceless, inscrutable machine.
“What is so incredibly precarious is often the [algorithmic] tweaks that are unannounced. They can wreak havoc on a creator’s livelihood,” said Brooke Erin Duffy, associate professor of communication at Cornell University, who studies social media and digital labor. “There’s always been this unpredictability, and creators have little to no recourse.”
TikTok spokesperson Hilary McQuaide declined to comment on questions about the company’s algorithm, specifically how often it’s changed and if creators are told about such changes.
The private company, which is owned by China’s ByteDance, arrived in the U.S. in 2018 and is estimated to be valued at around $50 billion. TikTok has acknowledged the mystery around its algorithm. Last June, it wrote a blog post about how the For You page generally works, saying it shows people videos based on their stated interests, such as pets or travel, and how they engage with certain videos and accounts.
A few months earlier, TikTok announced the launch of its Transparency and Accountability Center, saying experts would be able to observe its moderation policies in real time and examine the code that drives its algorithm.
McQuaide declined to comment on questions about the center but pointed The Markup to a September blog post that says nearly two dozen experts and lawmakers virtually visited the center and were guided through various demonstrations on TikTok’s safety and security practices.
Meanwhile, creators say they still feel largely left on their own.
“The TikTok algorithm is very opaque,” McClellan said. “You have to post O.K. content, but after that it’s really just random chance that your videos are going to blow up.”
Shadow Bans, Algorithm Tweaks, and Censorship
Jan. 18—the day many TikTok creators reported a sudden drop in followers—has gained some infamy in the networks creators use to trade complaints and insights into the mysteries of the algorithm. One Reddit forum directly discusses the “myths and questions about the Jan 18 suppression” with theories about a possible unannounced tweak to the algorithm.
Speculation also points to what creators call “shadow banning,” which is the belief that TikTok silences accounts without explanation. With shadow banning, nothing changes in what creators see, but they’re invisible to most everyone else.
Rumors around shadow banning are rife on TikTok, with nearly six billion videos hashtagged with #shadowbanned and more than 300 million with #unshadowbanme. YouTube tutorials, Quora forums, and entire websites are filled with tips and tricks for people hoping to get rid of TikTok shadow bans. The “Tiktokhelp” subreddit even has a popular topic tag titled “algorithm question/shadowbanned,” which is filled with thousands of comments about supposed shadow bans and advice on how to avoid them.
Cameron Hickey, project director for algorithmic transparency at the National Conference on Citizenship, studies the spread of disinformation on TikTok and other social media platforms and believes all of these sites do some sort of algorithmic downgrading. Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube have also been accused of shadow bans.
“Are they shadow-banning? I’m sure of it,” Hickey said. “How do we prove it? We don’t know.”
One of the reasons shadow-banning myths have especially taken off on TikTok could be that the company appears to be more proactive in content moderation than other social media platforms.
“They are taking down individual content from creators, and we see creators constantly complaining about that. It says to me that they’re much more aggressive and they seem less beholden to a very strict set of criteria,” Hickey said. “Facebook’s default is to let stuff stay on the platform. TikTok seems to be the opposite.”
TikTok bans violent extremism, hateful behavior, adult nudity, and more. In its community guidelines, it says it enforces its rules “using a mix of technology and human moderation.” Additionally, for videos that “could be considered upsetting or depict things that may be shocking to a general audience—we may reduce discoverability, including by redirecting search results or limiting distribution in the For You feed.”
TikTok’s McQuaide declined to comment on questions about content moderation, Jan. 18, or shadow banning.
Last May, Black TikTok creators organized a protest against the company, saying their content was being shadow-banned and censored. TikTok denied those claims. Then, in late May, just after the killing of George Floyd and the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter surged across all social media, TikTok admitted to a glitch in its system and made a rare apology.
“At the height of a raw and painful time, last week a technical glitch made it temporarily appear as if posts uploaded using #BlackLivesMatter and #GeorgeFloyd would receive 0 views,” TikTok’s U.S. general manager Vanessa Pappas and director of creator community Kudzi Chikumbu wrote in a June 1 blog post. They explained the glitch was a display issue, and the posts still generated billions of views. “Nevertheless, we understand that many assumed this bug to be an intentional act.”
The incident happened just months after The Intercept got hold of internal documents from TikTok that outlined what seems to be a clear example of shadow banning. The documents instructed moderators to exclude creators with “ugly facial looks,” “abnormal body shape,” “too many wrinkles,” and other physical features from the For You feed because they could “decrease the short-term new user retention rate.” TikTok responded to The Intercept saying those guidelines were an attempt to prevent bullying and were no longer in use.
Dopamine Hits and Trying to Make It
Tinuade Oyelowo watched the conversations around Black creators feeling marginalized at the same time she was starting to get into TikTok herself. The Brooklyn-based artist’s goal was to promote her work and to come off as a body-positive Black woman and spread that vibe to others. Her first video shows her skateboarding along a river waterfront, and when she loses her balance, she flashes a thumbs up. But Oyelowo hasn’t experienced the same rapid success as McClellan.
“It felt like crawling up on my bare hands to get 500 [followers],” Oyelowo said. “To get to 500 was really really difficult. I was posting and posting videos.”
At first, she tried all the tricks to get views and followers, like a 30-day video challenge and “follow trains” in which creators promise to follow whoever follows them. She even joined a private Facebook group led by a marketer who promised to reveal the secret to success on TikTok. “And then things just naturally started to pick up without me doing anything,” Oyelowo said.
She said seeing those pings roll in on her videos gave her the dopamine hits that social media is known for. “It is definitely addictive,” Oyelowo said. “I would argue it’s not even the likes that are the addiction, it’s the validation and the feeling of being seen.”
Duffy, the associate professor at Cornell, said this idea of being seen is hardwired into the way TikTok works. “For content creators, their livelihoods depend upon their ability to get visibility,” Duffy said. “With this entire system, it extracts labor. And more specifically, it extracts labor to direct attention to the platform.”
Christian Barnes, of St. Louis, has steadily grown his TikTok audience since last summer and now has 1.5 million followers. Many of his videos involve comical skits in which a quiet school kid surprises his teacher and classmates with unexpected dance moves or musical skills. He posts about four times a week, and each video takes roughly three hours to create and upload. He shoots and edits the videos at night once he comes home from his day job waiting tables. It can be exhausting, he said. So, a couple of months ago he decided to take a three-day break.
“You definitely get tired sometimes and lose motivation,” Barnes said. “That’s why I decided to take a break that one time. I was like, ‘This is too much for me.’ ”
When he started uploading videos again, he noticed they were getting fewer views than normal. Trying everything he could think of, such as interacting with his followers and posting consistently, he got his audience back. But it took weeks. To this day, Barnes has no idea what happened.
“There are a lot of times I go out of town and I’m scared I’ll lose views if I’m not uploading videos all the time,” he said.
Despite that, Barnes said he enjoys making videos and hopes to one day parlay his work on TikTok into a full-time job. On a good week, he’ll make a couple hundred dollars from TikTok’s creator fund, which the company set up last July as a way for popular creators to earn money from video views. He’s also sponsored by a water bottle company and color contact lens maker and uses their products as props in his videos.
Chasing the Pot of Gold
Barnes doesn’t yet have an agent, but over the past year, it’s become common for Hollywood talent agencies to sign TikTok stars. They promote creators and act as middlemen in making deals with brands. D’Amelio, for example, is repped by United Talent Agency, which has managed actors like Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. A3 Artists Agency’s roster lists around 200 digital creators, including Avani Gregg, who has 33 million followers and Larray, who has 23 million. With such massive audiences, TikTok creators can be good at bringing in money.
“As an agency, we get paid when they get paid,” said Keith Bielory, an A3 partner in alternative programming, digital media, licensing, and branding. “This could be a lucrative industry for years and years to come.”
A3 helps influencers in every area except growing their TikTok fanbase. In the instances when the algorithm seems to be causing a drop in followers, Bielory said, he’ll reach out to his TikTok contacts for insight into what’s happening. Ultimately, however, it’s up to the influencers to keep up engagement.
“A lot of people can go viral, but can they back that up?” Bielory said. “The folks that we work with create content for a living. It’s a lot of pressure to keep that going.”
Tha Lights Global, a smaller talent agency that focuses on hip-hop artists, has represented influencers for years. One of the first dance memes to go viral on social media was from two Detroit rappers the agency represented, Zay Hilfigerrr and Zayion McCal, who came out with “Juju on That Beat” in 2016. Jordan Tugrul, co-owner of Tha Lights Global, said influencers he works with can spend hours a day creating TikTok videos. One of the agency’s goals is get them to think beyond the social media platform.
“They’re going against thousands of other people their age who want to be in the spotlight as well,” Tugrul said. “TikTok might not be around forever, and you cannot rely on that.”
“The influencer space is still often referred to as the ‘wild wild west’, and it’s a place where creators can be taken advantage of,” Gabrielle Carteris, the union’s president, wrote in an email to The Markup. “This agreement is there to help empower and give self-determination to influencers, who are oftentimes trying to navigate their professional careers without much guidance—they’re true pioneers in this space.”
For now, SAG-AFTRA is focused on helping creators negotiate with brands and doesn’t yet assist in dealings with TikTok or other social media platforms. But, Carteris said, “This agreement is just a first step; we’re always exploring what is needed in this community.”
Despite their ups and downs on TikTok, McClellan and Barnes still regularly make videos and don’t plan to stop anytime soon. For Oyelowo, the novelty has worn off.
She has more than 1,000 followers and still likes making videos for fun but posts just once a week, at best. Spending hours trying to tap into what’s trending and scouring her Facebook group for advice is tiring, she said, especially given the whims of TikTok’s algorithm.
“You invest time in it because it’s this odd mystery puzzle,” Oyelowo said. “With algorithms, in theory, there is a potential solution, there is a way to figure it out—everybody is chasing that pot of gold in some way. But it’s a moving target.”
Platform wars are heating up and influencers may be prime beneficiaries…
Something strange is happening in social media: influencers are getting paid, sometimes directly by platforms.
To clarify; there have always been ways for creators with a large following to monetize their stats. Mainly, however, until recently that mostly involved sponsorships and affiliate merchandise, and the like.
On top of the efforts required to create winning content, getting paid for it was an additional job and creators got little assistance from the greatest beneficiaries of the work: the host platforms themselves.
Suddenly, it seems, the value of creators in bringing and keeping traffic for the platforms is so high, as a war rages between platforms for that traffic, that some have gone as far as initiating new programs to pay influential content makers directly.
Naturally, YouTube has had a monetization program that requires elevated status to qualify for and then takes a more than 30% cut of the proceeds, but on the whole payment for creative content production has been minimal for all but the most massive stars in the social media firmament. Now, that appears to be changing, and fast.
Snap, a once hot destination, is trying to boost its attractiveness by paying out $1 million per day for popular posts. TikTok, the fastest growing platform recently, has also set up a fund to pay out to creators and says it will increase the fund to $1 billion.
All of this is not going unnoticed by the platforms with the most traffic, Facebook and its owned entity Instagram, and, in an unprecedented move, payments are beginning to flow on those platforms also. Twitter, Clubhouse and others have various plans in the works as well.
There’s a massive shift toward coveting creators as a result of competition for traffic and members
What this all boils down to is two things. There’s a war going on (in reality battles left and right in many areas of internet dominance) and the spoils are traffic growth, and that growth is only possible for the platforms if creators migrate in and stick around.
As long as Facebook, Instagram and Google’s YouTube were untouchable monopolies they did not need to admit that they needed the allegiance of creators and influencers.
As the only game in town, each in a different monopolized neighborhood, there was literally no where for the creators to run to. No more. Mainly TikTok and now upstarts like Clubhouse are changing the landscape and that is scary to the legacy platforms.
Anecdotal evidence points to the ability for talent to garner views and followers, via the algorithm settings that either promote or hide content from prospective consumers, as the prime mover, at least initially, for the creators to favor TikTok.
Stories abound of creators that, within days or weeks, were able to get millions of views due to the “democratic” openness of the TikTok system for featuring content based on less restrictive algorithms than the entrenched platforms.
The once invincible behemoths at Facebook and Google let greed get the best of them. It has been literally years since organic reach, the ability to get views and traffic just on the quality of the content, was possible on facebook and the price to reach an audience, with paid posts, just kept going higher and higher.
Now, due to this tectonic shift in power, from the platforms to the influencers and users, there is, unbelievably, a situation emerging where Facebook must appease the talent and creativity of the content creators if they want to remain relevant.
Pending antitrust actions and privacy issues are just adding to the shifting status and uncertain future of social media
In a sense, there was always a kind of unwritten rule of social media: the owners and creators of the platforms retained all the money and power with none of the liability or labor requirements.
That relationship, which is like slaves who built the great pyramids, but without the allowance for food or shelter, was doomed from the start as it is based on a lie.
Ultimately the platform has very little to offer, technological and software designs are easily replicated theses days, and these platforms are not in the business of generating any of content, yet they expect that content to be created for free by users.
This ridiculous valueless and vampiric scam has been lionized and worshiped as the ultimate internet success formula for more than a decade.
Facebook, and Mark Zuckerberg, have stood as the ultimate arbiters of how to become obscenely rich by enticing the world to work and create content for your platform for zero renumeration.
Once a company, coincidentally one that originated in China, came along and decided not to worship the Zuckerberg formula, but to undercut it by giving creators an ever-so-slightly less terrible deal, the spell was broken.
Next, it was only a matter of time before the war over the real value began: the content itself that users and particularly top creators on each platform provide.
Not to say that TikTok is heroic or intentionally upset the apple cart as a result of any foresight or altruism, this is just the inevitable outcome of a failed and corrupt system eventually becoming mature and collapsing (slowly) under its own stupidity.
For now, this slight reprieve from endless exploitation is an extremely hopeful sign. Let’s hope that creator payouts and the competition for content, real content that has value regardless of which platform hosts it, will continue to rise in stature.
Any creators or influencers out there who are listening, do what you do best which is create, and now add the option to sell your services to the highest bidder to your toolkit and keep your eyes and ears open for the next, even more accommodative platform to emerge from the muck. Then go there.
