The Blog Experiment | Technology Nonsense and Internet Tripe

On Jan. 6, 2021, QAnon conspiracy theorists played a significant role in inciting Donald Trump supporters to storm the Capitol building in D.C., hoping to overturn the 2020 election in favor of Trump.Days later, Twitter suspended tens of thousands of QAnon accounts, effectively banning most users who promote the far-right conspiracy theory. Now, a new study from Newsguard has uncovered that since Elon Musk acquired the company, QAnon has had a resurgence on X, formerly Twitter, over the past year.QAnon grows on XTracking commonly used QAnon phrases like “QSentMe,” “TheGreatAwakening,” and “WWG1WGA” (which stands for “Where We Go One, We Go All”), Newsguard found that these QAnon-related slogans and hashtags have increased a whopping 1,283 percent on X under Musk.From May 1, 2023 to May 1, 2024, there were 1.12 million mentions of these QAnon supporter phrases on X. This was a huge uptick from the 81,100 mentions just one year earlier from May 1, 2022 to May 1, 2023.One of the most viral QAnon-related posts of the year, on the “Frazzledrip” conspiracy, has received more than 21.8 million views, according to the report. Most concerning, however, is that it was posted by a right-wing influencer who has specifically received support from Musk.The Jan. 2024 tweet was posted by @dom_lucre, a user with more than 1.2 million followers who commonly posts far-right conspiracy theories. In July 2023, @dom_lucre was suspended on then-Twitter. Responding to @dom_lucre’s supporters, Musk shared at the time that @dom_lucre was “suspended for posting child exploitation pictures.”Sharing child…QAnon conspiracy theories are surging on Elon Musk's X. Here's proof.

On Jan. 6, 2021, QAnon conspiracy theorists played a significant role in inciting Donald Trump supporters to storm the Capitol building in D.C., hoping to overturn the 2020 election in favor of Trump.Days later, Twitter suspended tens of thousands of QAnon accounts, effectively banning most users who promote the far-right conspiracy theory. Now, a new study from Newsguard has uncovered that since Elon Musk acquired the company, QAnon has had a resurgence on X, formerly Twitter, over the past year.QAnon grows on XTracking commonly used QAnon phrases like “QSentMe,” “TheGreatAwakening,” and “WWG1WGA” (which stands for “Where We Go One, We Go All”), Newsguard found that these QAnon-related slogans and hashtags have increased a whopping 1,283 percent on X under Musk.From May 1, 2023 to May 1, 2024, there were 1.12 million mentions of these QAnon supporter phrases on X. This was a huge uptick from the 81,100 mentions just one year earlier from May 1, 2022 to May 1, 2023.One of the most viral QAnon-related posts of the year, on the “Frazzledrip” conspiracy, has received more than 21.8 million views, according to the report. Most concerning, however, is that it was posted by a right-wing influencer who has specifically received support from Musk.The Jan. 2024 tweet was posted by @dom_lucre, a user with more than 1.2 million followers who commonly posts far-right conspiracy theories. In July 2023, @dom_lucre was suspended on then-Twitter. Responding to @dom_lucre’s supporters, Musk shared at the time that @dom_lucre was “suspended for posting child exploitation pictures.”Sharing child…QAnon conspiracy theories are surging on Elon Musk's X. Here's proof.

Decentralized social media platform Bluesky has already racked up some big accomplishments. It’s a rare example of a Twitter / X-competitor that has found success. Most other competitors, aside from the Meta-backed Threads, have since-closed up shop. In addition, Bluesky was able to rack up more than 3 million sign-ups during a period where users could only join the platform via invite. Since opening up to all, Bluesky has amassed more than 5.6 million users.And, Bluesky has been able to do all of this without two major features found on most big social media platforms: direct messages (DMs) and video uploads. But, that won’t be the case for long. SEE ALSO: You came back to Threads. Here’s how it can keep you. In a post published on Tuesday, the Bluesky team shared its upcoming plans for the platform and those plans include DMs and video.DMs, video, and more are on the wayAccording to Bluesky, the team is planning to add a slew of new features in the coming months.DMs, or private messages, appear first on Bluesky’s list of things-to-do. As Bluesky points out, all posts on the platform have been public so far. That will change soon as the team works on “a DM service that will integrate into the Bluesky app.” Bluesky says the first version of the DM feature will allow users to restrict who they can receive messages from. Users will be able to allow DMs only from users that they follow, disable DMs entirely, or have…Bluesky will soon add DMs and videos

Dateline: Woking, 7th May 2024.On 23rd May at 8.30pm London, 12.30pm San Francisco and 24th May 5.30am Sydney time, there will be a special 45 minute Zoom chat with Victoria Richardson and I talking about our new book “Money in the Metaverse”, that was launched at Money20/20 Asia in Bangkok last month.We will be discussing some of the key conclusions from the book and answering your questions on the confluence of spatial computing, digital identity and tokenisation in a next-generation financial infrastructure.You don’t have to do anything except mark the date in your diary and all paid subscribers will receive a Zoom link via this Substack on the morning of the event. I hope you will join us to take part in the discussion and help us to learn more too!Subscribe nowWhat’s Up?The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) report on “The Economic Implications of the Metaverse” (BIS Paper 144, February 2024) looks at a Metaverse economy, built in VR/AR immersive environments, where avatars can can engage in a broad range of activities. It notes that as their users spend more time (and attention) in metaverses there will undoubtedly be business opportunities from new services. Remember that the BIS is owned by the world’s central banks, so we take their output pretty seriously. And when their new report goes on to say that “an important foundation for such services is the ability to make instant payments, ideally across borders and currencies, and to create digital representations of assets (tokenisation)”, we could…Subscriber Special Event

Over the last six months, young, digitally active people have been using any means necessary to show their support for victims of Israel’s bombardment on Gaza, from filter fundraising to online takeovers. Many have also adopted the decades-old Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS), and anti-colonial movements on behalf of the Palestinians. While they’re implementing standard algorithm-gaming techniques to keep Palestine trending, some have co-opted the movement, using it to validate which celebrities they stan and which should be recipients of a cancellation barrage in the name of human rights. Examples of unhelpful fan response to the bombardment of Palestine include Swifties claiming ex-boyfriend Joe Alwyn’s Artists for Ceasefire pin is a performative response to the recently released Tortured Poet’s Department, as well as criticisms of Billie Eilish for shopping at Starbucks, a grassroots boycott target unsanctioned by the BDS movement. Just last month, Twitter users were using the term “divest” to call for the firing of Scooter Braun from entertainment company HYBE, reportedly because of his pro-Israel ties.  SEE ALSO: How ‘blue comments’ turned the TikTok algorithm into a protest tool Meanwhile, as fandom’s “keyboard warriors” take to the timeline, students across the country are taking over their campuses and demanding their universities divest from Israel. Student unions are galvanizing for widespread protests and possibly strikes. Celebrities, for the most part, stay mum. TikTok, a hub for information sharing, faces a government ban if its Chinese parent company doesn’t divest from the platform in the next year. Can we turn the fandom fervor…Why fandom wars aren't helping pro-Palestine organizing

Dateline: Woking, 4th May 2023.I read with interest that Venezuela’s national cryptocurrency, the Petro (PTR), ceased operations earlier this year. It was introduced with the goal of helping the country evade United States sanctions but failed to gain traction. The story caught my eye because Venezuela used to come up in talks about cryptocurrency all the time, with an underlying assumption that Venezuelans would prefer Bitcoin over their own hyperinflated currency or would adopt President Maduro’s Petro, created in 2017 and (supposedly) backed by Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. A fascinating cryptocurrency case study of a country trying to sidestep the might Dollar.ShareWhat the Zelle?The Petro didn’t get off to a good start and began trading for half its official value on the streets of Caracas. Meanwhile, as anyone could see, on those streets the restaurants, shops, supermarkets and even the street vendors not only accepted but preferred dollars in cash or by bank transfer. I wrote about this at the time when I was surprised to discover that shoppers could pay by Zelle in supermarkets in Venezuela but not in America! In fact Ecoanalítica, a macroeconomic analysis company that tracked 15,000 transactions in 10 different Venezuelan cities at the time, discovered that more than half were conducted in dollars and around one in eight were processed through Zelle. The sentiment on the streets in Venezuela and elsewhere seems unambiguous: people want dollars. Period.Subscribe nowI remember seeing in several places that bitcoin “number go up” on the back of the appointment of Javier Milei, a pro-bitcoin candidate, as…A Digital Dollar is Soft Power

A new study has found that Gen Z may value AI and authenticity on social media differently than older generations. Analytics firm Sprout Social’s 2024 Influencer Marketing Report gathered feedback from 2,000 respondents across the US and UK about their experience consuming social content. SEE ALSO: Gen Z is apparently reviving the Facebook ‘Poke’ Even as governments grapple with the regulation and roll out of AI, survey respondents were evenly split in their feelings about a brand working with an AI influencer. While 27 percent of respondents said they would be “indifferent” to it, 37 percent said it would make them more interested in the brand and 37 percent said it would make them distrustful of the brand. The report notes that 46 percent of Gen Z respondents, specifically, said they would be more interested in a brand that worked with an influencer generated with AI.The report also underscored a generational divide in perception around “authentic” marketing, which is of less value to Gen Z. While the report says that “about half” of Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers said they valued influencer authenticity, only 35 percent of Gen Z said they did. So what do Gen Z care about? For them, it’s actually more of a numbers game. The report notes that 47 percent of Gen Z respondents said that they valued an influencer’s follower count.Gen Z mostly doesn't care if influencers are actual humans, new study shows

A new study has found that Gen Z may value AI and authenticity on social media differently than older generations. Analytics firm Sprout Social’s 2024 Influencer Marketing Report gathered feedback from 2,000 respondents across the US and UK about their experience consuming social content. SEE ALSO: Gen Z is apparently reviving the Facebook ‘Poke’ Even as governments grapple with the regulation and roll out of AI, survey respondents were evenly split in their feelings about a brand working with an AI influencer. While 27 percent of respondents said they would be “indifferent” to it, 37 percent said it would make them more interested in the brand and 37 percent said it would make them distrustful of the brand. The report notes that 46 percent of Gen Z respondents, specifically, said they would be more interested in a brand that worked with an influencer generated with AI.The report also underscored a generational divide in perception around “authentic” marketing, which is of less value to Gen Z. While the report says that “about half” of Millennials, Gen X, and Baby Boomers said they valued influencer authenticity, only 35 percent of Gen Z said they did. So what do Gen Z care about? For them, it’s actually more of a numbers game. The report notes that 47 percent of Gen Z respondents said that they valued an influencer’s follower count.Gen Z mostly doesn't care if influencers are actual humans, new study shows

The history of technology is the story of human progress. Every big advance opens up wonderful possibilities and poses pivotal questions. We all sense what a leap forward artificial intelligence (AI) could be. We’re optimistic about its potential but wary of any unintended consequences. At first glance, music may not be the obvious place to look for signposts of AI’s future. But think of the new worlds unlocked by the inventions like the printing press, phonograph, radio and internet. Each pushed music further and faster as an art form, and proved its power to drive the adoption of new technology. Music has often been the canary in the coal mine.  AI is no different. Music has already given us glimpses of what this incredible technology can do when artists are on board — whether it’s musicians permitting fans to create new songs using replicas of their voices, artists’ estates empowering posthumous biopics featuring perfect replicas of late stars, or singers who have lost their voice to illness miraculously recording again.  At the same time, we’ve witnessed the specter of AI’s possible downside for artists: vast scraping and copying of creative works, and the rise of deep fakes where artists’ voices, faces and identities are appropriated without their consent, to depict them doing, saying, and singing things that never happened. The starkly different positive and negative uses of AI that music is grappling with today represent two alternate versions of the future — with artists at the tip of the spear. …Four rules to make artificial intelligence work for humans

World IP Day is typically a moment each April when authors and publishers around the globe celebrate the importance of copyright law to the creative economy and long-term public interest. But this year we are fighting policy battles that are unprecedented if not existential in scope, as big tech companies double down on their refusal to pay for the scores of creative works that fuel their highly profitable, consumer-facing Generative AI tools.  These big tech companies and their investors—the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful companies in the world— have blatantly copied, scraped and otherwise appropriated troves of protected literature, news media publications, and other original authorship—without transparency or apology—to accelerate their own commercial interests. As reported by CNN, some companies pillaged the Books3 database, a pirate collection, which contains some 183,000 in-copyright works. Others have been secretive about the sources they used, but researchers have deduced that they downloaded massive numbers of books from other notorious pirate sites. Indisputably, they copied proprietary content from media and news services, including scraping millions of articles from behind the New York Times paywall. Generative AI tools are exciting, but they also pose serious risks that require entirely new levels of legal and ethical safeguards. Europe has approached this exercise with an urgency that is appropriate but still unfolding as to implementation of the 2024 EU AI Act by member states. Here in the United States, discussions are underway, but the development, use, and deployment of AI remain woefully under-regulated. Copyright is a key part of regulation, as neither the tools nor corresponding profits of big…Generative AI is generating astronomical profits by trampling authors and publishers