As I said in On writing as an obligation,
A few days ago I realized something. I don’t like writing. I don't know if I will continue writing.
Which results in a blog being a strange format for me to entertain. I suspect I live ever-hopeful that one day I'll wake up and furiously churn out insightful articles, although that has yet to happen.
I will explain what this means in a moment, but first: Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha hahahhahahahahahahahahahahaha. It is, as many have already pointed out, incredibly ironic that OpenAI, a company that has been obtaining large amounts of data from all of humankind largely in an “unauthorized manner,” and, in some cases, in violation of the terms of service of those from whom they have been taking from, is now complaining about the very practices by which it has built its company.
OpenAI Furious DeepSeek Might Have Stolen All the Data OpenAI Stole From Us
As a result, the markets are panicking, because the entire narrative of the AI bubble has been that these models have to be expensive because they're the future, and that's why hyperscalers had to burn $200 billion in capital expenditures for infrastructure to support generative AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. The idea that there was another way to do this — that, in fact, we didn't need to spend all that money, had any of the hyperscalers considered a different approach beyond "throw as much money at the problem as possible" — simply wasn’t considered.
This too seems fine. Let people spout what they want to spout. The problem has never been about whether users should be allowed to express opinion A about topic Z. The problem has always been about which opinions algorithmic platforms choose to promote. I can frame this specifically about Twitter/X. Under Elon Musk’s ownership, you can express pretty much whatever political opinions you want. That’s great. But, also, in my experience during the Musk era — and I’m not sure anyone would disagree with this — the political opinions that tend to get algorithmically boosted are those that align with the Musk/Trump agenda.
Is maintaining a personal blog still worth it?
For those still maintaining personal blogs: How do you find readers? Where do you share your content? And most importantly - why do you keep writing?
To simmer this down, the price of everything has kept increasing as wages stagnated. Simultaneously, businesses spent several years telling workers they were asking for too much and doing too little, telling people they were “quiet quitting” in 2022 (a grotesque term that means “doing the job you are paid to do”), and, a year later, insisting that years of remote work was actually bad because profits didn’t reach the unrealistic expectations set by the post-lockdown boom of 2021. While the majority of people don't work remotely, from talking to the people I know outside of tech or business, there is a genuine sense that the media has allied itself with the bosses, and I imagine it's because of the many articles that literally call workers lazy.
Which leads, I think, to the other important function of Zuck’s new look. I think Roose is right that Zuck is “has clearly been studying Mr. Musk’s playbook”--not just in his rhetorical choices, but in his efforts to become more of a social-media main character in the same manner as Musk. (Note that Zuck is on Threads doing an uncanny imitation of Musk spamming single-emoji responses to Tweets thing.) For most of his career, Zuck has followed the general conventional wisdom around being a C.E.O. and attempted to appear generally nonpartisan (and when partisanship was unavoidable, to express it in the blandest ways possible). But Musk has, over the last few years, demonstrated that there are distinct advantages to aggressive and committed partisanship--specifically, the ability to command and direct swarms of protectors and apologists online.
This year, that was reconnecting with 'unproductive' hobbies like guitar, reading fiction, playing board games and daydreaming in nature. Doing things and spending time with people who make me feel me. I hosted friends more, moved my body more, tried new things and built community.
I would love to see Zuckerberg actually lean into free expression on his platform while providing users with more robust audience controls and mass blocking features to ensure users can remain safe. Instagram and Threads could be thriving places for journalism and free and open dialogue about important topics and events, but significant changes would have to be made.
I assume proper right-wing users will start showing up on Bluesky soon because X is going to get very boring for them, very quickly. One of the ideas I’ve repeated the most often in Garbage Day over the years is my firm belief that conservative-only social networks don’t work in the long term. The online right, post-2014, is completely powered by cyberbullying and cruelty and without an easily accessible Other to torment, they either devolve into irrelevant spam or start fighting with each other. This is why Gab, Parler, and even Truth Social have never materialized into anything other than unofficial directories for the FBI of would-be domestic terrorists.