Media Bits and Bytes – December 24, 2024
- Trump 2.0 Lowers the Boom
- Goliath vs Goliath
- Crypto Crisis Coming?
- Carding Pornhub Users
- Rightist Podcasting: From Rush to Rogan
- Trump’s FCC Pick
- Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence
- What to Know About Bluesky
- The Murdoch Mob: “Succession” IRL
- Upper Class Twit of the Year
By Asawin Suebsaeng and Andrew Perez
Rolling Stone
Coming soon: More media subpoenas, communications seizures, whistleblower prosecutions, and legal threats against news outlets.
By Marc Edge
Canadian Dimension
A new form of media convergence is intensifying the rivalry between Canada’s dominant telecoms and global digital giants.
Recent reports from federal regulators warning about crypto’s volatility and lack of regulation echo alerts about the subprime mortgage industry before the 2008 financial crisis.
By Douglas Soul
Tallahassee Democrat
A Florida law requires pornographic websites to have age verification by New Year’s Day, but a new federal lawsuit is trying to get that struck down. Free Speech Coalition, a trade association for the adult entertainment industry, accuses the law of being unconstitutionally vague and counter to the First Amendment.
Rightist Podcasting: From Rush to Rogan
By Luke Winnie
Slate
Talk radio might not be as important to American psychology as it once was, but that’s only because conservatives have taken their talents elsewhere: to radio’s heir, podcasting. Scroll through Spotify’s Top Podcasts chart these days, and, at any given moment, at least half of the most popular shows are hosted by figures friendly to the MAGA cause.
By Kyle Paulette
Columbia Journalism Review
Brendan Carr’s term as FCC chairman may have less to do with executing structural changes at the agency than fostering an environment of selective “public interest” enforcement that makes media companies and the journalists who work for them second-guess their coverage of the Trump administration.
Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence
By Michael Timothy Bennett and Elija Perrier
The Conversation
A new artificial intelligence (AI) model has just achieved human-level results on a test designed to measure “general intelligence”. While scepticism remains, many AI researchers and developers feel something just changed. For many, the prospect of artificial general intelligence now seems more real, urgent and closer than anticipated. Are they right?
• Rethinking Social Media By Rory Mir, Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Internet Utopia? By Mark Sinker, London Review of Books
The Murdoch Mob: “Succession” IRL
By Binoy Kampmark
CounterPunch
The case that began on September 17 concerning the control of the Murdoch family trust has been decided. It saw a dicey attempt by one of the most ruthless newspaper and media moguls in history to limit the influence and control of his publishing and broadcasting empire after his death. The relevant parties? The children, of course.
By Ken Silverstein
Washington Babylon
Even by the lofty standards established by top competitors like Thomas Friedman, Nicholas Kristof, and David Brooks, Bret Stephens reigns supreme as the biggest idiot and intellectual fraud among New York Times op-ed writers.