A dumping ground for all the research that I happened to note down. I wasn’t trying to put together a research list and I powered through a bunch of stuff and then threw it away, so this is very much not exhaustive, but hopefully valuable to someone.
Research List
| Title | URL | Notes | Video | Relevance | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 📰Article | Ad Tech Could Be the Next Internet Bubble | https://www.wired.com/story/ad-tech-could-be-the-next-internet-bubble/ | Targeted advertising doesn’t work | Advertising | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Buying Consumer Data? Tread Carefully. | https://hbr.org/2020/05/buying-consumer-data-tread-carefully | Consumer data is innaccurate | Advertising | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Coors Light Can’t Beam Ads Into Your Brain | https://gizmodo.com/no-brands-cant-target-ads-at-your-dreams-1847113888?rev=1623886445493 | This story that keeps cropping up about ads in your dreams is so fucking dumb | Advertising | ★ |
| 📰Article | Deconstructing the Disinformation War | https://mediawell.ssrc.org/expert-reflections/deconstructing-the-disinformation-war/ | Exaggerated narratives | Advertising | ★ |
| 📰Article | Digital Marketing’s Last Decade Is Digital Marketing’s Lost Decade | https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/05/16/digital-marketings-lost-decadetime-to-think-different-do-different/ | Programmatic advertising is a waste | Advertising | ★★ |
| 📰Article | How AWS and Other Cloud Providers Became the Internet’s Most Powerful Moderators | https://onezero.medium.com/how-aws-and-other-cloud-providers-became-the-internets-most-powerful-moderators-9b23a954d68a | Amazon is behind the internet | Advertising | ★ |
| 📰Article | How to Start Fixing Social Media. | https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-start-fixing-social-media-196297eb6b71 | What social media could be | Advertising | ★★ |
| 📰Article | ICO’s final report into Cambridge Analytica invites regulatory questions | https://www.ft.com/content/43962679-b1f9-4818-b569-b028a58c8cd2 | CA didn’t do anything | Advertising | ★★★★ |
| 📕Book | In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works & Shapes Our Lives | https://www.worldcat.org/title/in-the-plex-how-google-thinks-works-shapes-our-lives/oclc/1244174326&referer=brief_results | Background on Google/AdWords | Advertising | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Is Using a Data Broker the Most Secure Marketing Strategy? | https://www.cmswire.com/digital-marketing/is-your-data-broker-the-most-secure-marketing-strategy/ | Data brokers worse than random chance | Advertising | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Labour HQ used Facebook ads to deceive Jeremy Corbyn during election campaign | https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/labour-hq-used-facebook-ads-to-deceive-jeremy-corbyn-during-election-campaign-grlx75c27 | A use case for targeted advertising | Advertising | ★★ |
| 📰Article | Large Publishers Buy Incentivized Traffic & Popups Too | https://deepsee.io/blog/large-publishers-buy-incentivized-traffic-too | On incentivised traffic | Advertising | ★ |
| 📰Article | New Zealand’s Stuff newspaper group joins Facebook boycott as ‘experiment’ | https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/06/new-zealands-stuff-newspaper-group-joins-facebook-boycott-as-experiment | Facebook boycott | Advertising | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | News site Stuff left Facebook. Seven months later, traffic is just fine and trust is higher | https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/news-site-stuff-left-facebook-seven-months-later-traffic-just-fine-and-trust-higher | Programmatic advertising doesn’t do anything | Advertising | ★★★ |
| 📕Book | Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet | https://www.worldcat.org/title/subprime-attention-crisis-advertising-and-the-time-bomb-at-the-heart-of-the-internet/oclc/1225234235&referer=brief_results | Programatic advertising doesn’t work/some fun GFC analogies | Advertising | ★★★★★ |
| 📰Article | The Big Lie Behind the “Pivot to Video” | https://slate.com/technology/2018/10/facebook-online-video-pivot-metrics-false.html | On the Pivot to video | Advertising | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | The downfall of adtech means the trust economy is here | https://techcrunch.com/2020/11/23/the-downfall-of-ad-tech-means-the-trust-economy-is-here/ | No-one likes targeted advertising | Advertising | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | The Internet That Was (and Still Could Be) | https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/06/medium-is-the-message-paradise-paved-internet-architecture/396227/ | Internet without perverse incentives | Advertising | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | The Madness of the Crowd | https://logicmag.io/intelligence/the-madness-of-the-crowd/ | Systems don’t work for people | Advertising | ★★ |
| 📰Article | The Web We Lost | http://anildash.com/2012/12/13/the_web_we_lost/ | Social networks are partly a step backwards | Advertising | ★★ |
| 📰Article | Unredacted Antitrust Complaint Unsealed: Google Internal Documents Show AMP Pages Brought 40% Less Revenue to Publishers | https://wptavern.com/unredacted-antitrust-complaint-unsealed-google-internal-documents-show-amp-pages-brought-40-less-revenue-to-publishers | Google pushed amp. It only makes things worse | Advertising | ★ |
| 📕Book | What Tech Calls Thinking: An Inquiry Into the Intellectual Bedrock of Silicon Valley | https://www.worldcat.org/title/what-tech-calls-thinking-an-inquiry-into-the-intellectual-bedrock-of-silicon-valley/oclc/1136959585&referer=brief_results | Misc ramblings | Advertising | ★ |
| 📰Article | When Big Brands Stopped Spending On Digital Ads, Nothing Happened. Why? | https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustinefou/2021/01/02/when-big-brands-stopped-spending-on-digital-ads-nothing-happened-why/ | Huge companys didn’t suffer for turning off programatic ads | Advertising | ★★★★★ |
| 📃Paper | Why Do People Avoid Advertising On The Internet? | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00913367.2004.10639175 | Banner blindness and inneffectual online advertising | Advertising | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | AI is wrestling with a replication crisis | https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/11/12/1011944/artificial-intelligence-replication-crisis-science-big-tech-google-deepmind-facebook-openai/ | Replication crisis in AI | Algorithms | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | AI: Still Just Curve Fitting, Not Finding a Theory of Everything | https://mindmatters.ai/2020/12/ai-still-just-curve-fitting-not-finding-a-theory-of-everything/ | AI hasn’t moved beyond curve fitting | Algorithms | ★★★★ |
| 📺Video | Andrej Karpathy – AI for Full-Self Driving at Tesla | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hx7BXih7zx8 | So much manual work to do | Algorithms | ★★★★★ |
| 📺Video | Andrej Karpathy: Tesla Autopilot and Multi-Task Learning for Perception and Prediction | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHH47nZ7FZU | Talking through self-driving | Algorithms | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Artificial Intelligence Isn’t an Arms Race With China, and the United States Shouldn’t Treat It Like One | https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/12/11/artificial-intelligence-ai-not-arms-race-china-united-states/ | AI hype and narrative | Algorithms | ★★ |
| 📺Video | Building the Software 2.0 Stack (Andrej Karpathy) | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y57wwucbXR8 | Vast majority still 1.0 code | Algorithms | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Cars in driver-assist mode hit a third of cyclists, all oncoming cars in tests | https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/16/automous_car_ada_system_tests/?s=09 | Self-driving tests | Algorithms | ★★ |
| 📰Article | Deep Learning’s Carbon Emissions Problem | https://www.forbes.com/sites/robtoews/2020/06/17/deep-learnings-climate-change-problem/ | Ecological cost of Machine Learning | Algorithms | ★ |
| 📰Article | Elon Musk Describes the Future of Self-Driving Cars | https://gizmodo.com/elon-musk-describes-the-future-of-self-driving-cars-1692076449 | Stupid bullshit 2015 | Algorithms | ★ |
| 📃Paper | Energy And Policy Considerations For Modern Deep Learning Research | https://ojs.aaai.org/index.php/AAAI/article/view/7123 | The material costs of deep learning | Algorithms | ★ |
| 📰Article | Fear itself is the real threat to democracy, not tall tales of Chinese AI | https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/06/fear-itself-is-the-real-threat-to-democracy-not-tall-tales-of-chinese-ai | AI doomerism is nonsense | Algorithms | ★ |
| 📰Article | Here’s Proof Tesla’s FSD Beta 9.0 Street Testing Is a Calamity Waiting to Happen | https://www.autoevolution.com/news/here-s-proof-tesla-s-fsd-beta-90-street-testing-is-a-calamity-waiting-to-happen-165597.html | General Tesla hate | Algorithms | ★ |
| 📃Paper | Hierarchical Text-Conditional Image Generation With Clip Latents | https://arxiv.org/abs/2204.06125 | Dall-e 2 release paper | Algorithms | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | How Tesla Is Bad For The Earth. An electric car is still a car, and… | https://indi.ca/how-tesla-is-bad-for-the-earth-31e644540a26 | Green growth is the opposite of what’s needed | Algorithms | ★ |
| 📰Article | Is California’s electric car revolution bad for the planet? | https://www.latimes.com/politics/0000017a-c69a-da5f-affa-dfbbb1050001-123 | Electric vehicles aren’t the answer | Algorithms | ★ |
| 📰Article | It’s disturbingly easy to trick AI into doing something deadly | https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/8/18297410/ai-tesla-self-driving-cars-adversarial-machine-learning | Adversarial attacks | Algorithms | ★★★ |
| 📃Paper | Jukebox: A Generative Model For Music | https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.00341 | JukeBox release paper | Algorithms | ★★ |
| 📃Paper | Language Models Are Few-Shot Learners | https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.14165 | GPT-3 release paper | Algorithms | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Lines of Sight | https://logicmag.io/commons/lines-of-sight/ | Run-down of self-driving tech | Algorithms | ★★★★ |
| 📃Paper | MIT Advanced Vehicle Technology Study: Large-Scale Naturalistic Driving Study of Driver Behavior and Interaction with Automation | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8751968/ | Full self driving is a ways off | Algorithms | ★★ |
| 📰Article | Notes on the Turing Test | https://yeetgenstein.substack.com/p/notes-on-the-turing-test | Deep learning sucess vs full intelligence | Algorithms | ★★★ |
| 📺Video | PyTorch at Tesla – Andrej Karpathy, Tesla | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBklltKXtDE | Talking through self-driving | Algorithms | ★★ |
| 📃Paper | Release Strategies And The Social Impacts Of Language Models | https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.09203 | GPT-2 release paper | Algorithms | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | The Double Exploitation of Deepfake Porn | https://thewalrus.ca/the-double-exploitation-of-deepfake-porn/ | Everyones freaking out about politics when its really only good for porn | Algorithms | ★ |
| 📺Video | The Lighthill Debate (1973) | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yReDbeY7ZMU | Beginning of the first major AI winter | Algorithms | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Waymo is dropping the term ‘self-driving,’ but not everyone in the industry is on board | https://techcrunch.com/2021/01/07/waymo-is-dropping-the-term-self-driving-but-not-everyone-in-the-industry-is-on-board/ | It’s not “self-driving” | Algorithms | ★★ |
| 📰Article | What Full Autonomy Means for the Waymo Driver | https://spectrum.ieee.org/full-autonomy-waymo-driver | Current Waymo tech | Algorithms | ★ |
| 📰Article | Why deep learning won’t give us level 5 self-driving cars | https://bdtechtalks.com/2020/07/29/self-driving-tesla-car-deep-learning/ | Title | Algorithms | ★★ |
| 📃Paper | Zero-Shot Text-To-Image Generation | https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.12092 | Dall-e release paper | Algorithms | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Amazon Recruited Twitter Army to Defend Company and CEO Jeff Bezos, Leaked Document Reveals | https://www.ign.com/articles/amazon-twitter-army-defend-company-ceo-jeff-bezos-leaked-document-reveals | Amazon’s in-house astroturfing campaign | Astroturfing | ★★ |
| 📃Paper | An Examination of the Impact of Astroturfing on Nationalism: A Persuasion Knowledge Perspective | https://www.mdpi.com/402650 | Actual research into astroturfing | Astroturfing | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Bird Box challenge: How Netflix made a few tweets into a global trend | https://inews.co.uk/news/bird-box-challenge-netflix-twitter-warning-explained-241879 | Faked “Bird Box Challenge” | Astroturfing | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Bird Box: How Netflix Harnesses It’s Memeing-ful Relationship with Fans | Research World | https://www.researchworld.com/bird-box-how-netflix-harnesses-its-memeing-ful-relationship-with-fans/ | Bird Box campaign overview | Astroturfing | ★★★ |
| 📃Paper | Characterizing Retweet Bots: The Case of Black Market Accounts | https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.02366 | “Bot checkers” don’t catch retweet bots | Astroturfing | ★★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Data Against Democracy | https://logicmag.io/failure/data-against-democracy/ | Platforms warping politics | Astroturfing | ★★ |
| 📰Article | Elon Musk’s not-so-secret weapon: An army of Twitter bots touting Tesla | https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/elon-musk-s-not-so-secret-weapon-an-army-of-twitter-bots-touting-tesla/ | Tesla astroturfing | Astroturfing | ★★ |
| 📃Paper | Ephemeral Astroturfing Attacks: The Case of Fake Twitter Trends | https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.07783 | How to fake a twitter trend | Astroturfing | ★★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Facebook Campaign Nets Big Returns For ‘Bird Box’ | https://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/330557/facebook-campaign-nets-big-returns-for-bird-box.html | No trace of official Twitter Bird Box ad spend beyond hashflag | Astroturfing | ★★★ |
| 📃Paper | Group topic-author model for efficient discovery of latent social astroturfing groups in tourism domain | https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s42400-019-0029-8 | Actual research into astroturfing | Astroturfing | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | How Custom Emojis Crowned Twitter the Hashtag Registrar | https://medium.com/@justinogarrity/how-custom-emojis-crowned-twitter-the-hashtag-registrar-43e5fa60c557 | History of hashflags | Astroturfing | ★★ |
| 📰Article | Lil Nas X Was A Popular Twitter User Before ‘Old Town Road’ | https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/04/lil-nas-x-was-a-popular-twitter-user-before-old-town-road.html | Lil Nas X, the tweetdecker | Astroturfing | ★★★ |
| 📃Paper | Misleading Repurposing on Twitter | https://arxiv.org/abs/2010.10600 | Sockpuppets start as real accounts | Astroturfing | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Netflix apologizes for using actors to meet press at Canadian launch | https://www.theglobeandmail.com/technology/netflix-apologizes-for-using-actors-to-meet-press-at-canadian-launch/article4326706/ | Netflix doing good old irl astroturfing | Astroturfing | ★★ |
| 📰Article | Netflix denies spreading ‘Bird Box’ memes with Twitter bots | https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/bird-box-memes-fake-netflix/ | Bird Box wasn’t astroturfed, but why are all these links dead | Astroturfing | ★★ |
| 📃Paper | Political Astroturfing on Twitter: How to Coordinate a Disinformation Campaign | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10584609.2019.1661888 | Actual research into astroturfing | Astroturfing | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Power of Suggestion | https://www.chronicle.com/article/power-of-suggestion/ | Many priming studies can’t be replicated | Astroturfing | ★★★ |
| 📕Book | Public Relations and Participatory Culture: Fandom, social media and community engagement | https://www.worldcat.org/title/public-relations-and-participatory-culture-fandom-social-media-and-community-engagement/oclc/1127300821&referer=brief_results | PR and fandoms | Astroturfing | ★★★ |
| 📕Book | Social Media and Public Relations: Fake friends and powerful publics | https://www.worldcat.org/title/social-media-and-public-relations-fake-friends-and-powerful-publics/oclc/1089492876&referer=brief_results | General new media PR textbook | Astroturfing | ★★★ |
| 📕Book | Strategic Communication, Social Media and Democracy: The Challenge of the Digital Naturals | https://www.worldcat.org/title/strategic-communication-social-media-and-democracy-the-challenge-of-the-digital-naturals/oclc/1064560421&referer=brief_results | General new media PR textbook | Astroturfing | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Survive Reddit And Make An Impact | https://wearesocial.com/uk/blog/2019/10/survive-reddit-and-make-an-impact/ | How to infiltrate Reddit | Astroturfing | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | The Bird Box Effect: How Memes Drive Users to Netflix | https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/1/3/18167278/bird-box-memes-netflix-bots-marketing | Bird Box wasn’t astroturfed, but whats all this bot activity | Astroturfing | ★★ |
| 📃Paper | The disconcerting potential of online disinformation: Persuasive effects of astroturfing comments and three strategies for inoculation against them | https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444820908530 | Actual research into astroturfing | Astroturfing | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | The lesson of the dust-up over Trump’s fake Twitter followers. | https://slate.com/technology/2017/06/the-lesson-of-the-dust-up-over-trumps-fake-twitter-followers.html | We only have conjecture but there is manipulation happening | Astroturfing | ★★ |
| 📰Article | The Stans Who Post So Much, Twitter Thinks They’re Bots — And Shuts Them Down | https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/the-stans-who-post-so-much-twitter-thinks-theyre-bots-and-shuts-them-down | Stans and “harmless bots, including ones that promoted Netflix shows” | Astroturfing | ★ |
| 📃Paper | There’s Nothing Social About Social Priming: Derailing The “Train Wreck” | https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1047840X.2021.1889312 | On “priming” post replication crisis | Astroturfing | ★★★ |
| 📃Paper | Thinking Taxonomically about Fake Accounts: Classification, False Dichotomies, and the Need for Nuance | https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.04959 | “Bots” encompasses so much | Astroturfing | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | TikTok “Deeply Concerned” by Facebook’s Paid Campaign to Promote Negative Coverage of Social App | https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/digital/tiktok-facebook-meta-targeted-victory-1235122641/ | Facebook shady anti-competitive campaign | Astroturfing | ★ |
| 📰Article | Weekly Nielsen Streaming Charts – Archive | https://www.spoilertv.com/2020/11/weekly-nielsen-streaming-charts-updated.html | Viewership numbers | Astroturfing | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Who Really Writes Twitter’s ‘Trending’ Summaries | https://onezero.medium.com/who-really-writes-twitters-trending-summaries-89e819255599 | On the new team behind the twitter trends | Astroturfing | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Automaton | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automaton | Automatons! | Automation | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Doctors turn to imperfect AI to spend more quality time with patients | https://www.protocol.com/enterprise/doctor-burnout-ai-patient-risk | AI causing medical harm | Automation | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | From Manchester to Barcelona | https://logicmag.io/nature/from-manchester-to-barcelona/ | Techlash ignores capital | Automation | ★★★ |
| 📕Book | Greek and Roman Technology: A Sourcebook: Annotated Translations of Greek and Latin Texts and Documents | https://www.worldcat.org/title/greek-and-roman-technology-a-sourcebook-annotated-translations-of-greek-and-latin-texts-and-documents/oclc/1243344417&referer=brief_results | Ancient technophobia | Automation | ★★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Hundreds of AI tools have been built to catch covid. None of them helped. | https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/07/30/1030329/machine-learning-ai-failed-covid-hospital-diagnosis-pandemic/ | AI didn’t help with COVID | Automation | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Maelzel’s Chess Player | https://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/maelzel.htm | Edgar Allen Poe grappling with the Mechanical Turk | Automation | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Of Flying Cars and the Declining Rate of Profit | https://thebaffler.com/salvos/of-flying-cars-and-the-declining-rate-of-profit | Technological change has stalled | Automation | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Once billed as a revolution in medicine, IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts | https://www.statnews.com/2022/01/21/ibm-watson-health-sale-equity/ | AI failure | Automation | ★★ |
| 📰Article | Robots: what do they mean for jobs and incomes? | https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2018/02/26/robots-what-do-they-mean-for-jobs-and-incomes/ | Economic argument against automation discourse | Automation | ★★ |
| 📕Book | Smart Machines and Service Work: Automation in an Age of Stagnation | https://www.worldcat.org/title/smart-machines-and-service-work-automation-in-an-age-of-stagnation/oclc/1266189478&referer=brief_results | I didn’t really enjoy this but I think I’ve entirely ripped it off | Automation | ★★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Tellers, toil and technology | https://www.atmmarketplace.com/articles/tellers-technology-and-atms/ | ATMs doubled the amount of bank tellers | Automation | ★★★ |
| 📺Video | Tesla AI Day | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0z4FweCy4M | Stupid Elon bullshit | Automation | ★★ |
| 📰Article | The Automation Charade | https://logicmag.io/failure/the-automation-charade/ | The illusion of automation | Automation | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | The Mechanical Chess Player That Unsettled the World | https://slate.com/human-interest/2015/08/the-turk-a-chess-playing-robot-was-a-hoax-that-started-an-early-conversation-about-ai.html | On the Mechanical Turk | Automation | ★★ |
| 📰Article | The Modern World Has Finally Become Too Complex for Any of Us to Understand | https://onezero.medium.com/the-modern-world-has-finally-become-too-complex-for-any-of-us-to-understand-1a0b46fbc292 | Nodes in networks | Automation | ★ |
| 📰Article | The Smart, the Stupid, and the Catastrophically Scary: An Interview with an Anonymous Data Scientist | https://logicmag.io/intelligence/interview-with-an-anonymous-data-scientist/ | AI hype vs reality | Automation | ★★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Uber’s algorithm and the mirage of the marketplace. | https://slate.com/technology/2015/07/ubers-algorithm-and-the-mirage-of-the-marketplace.html | Uber designed to maximise worker exploitation | Automation | ★★ |
| 📰Article | Why algorithms beat experts (even in shipping) | https://splash247.com/why-algorithms-beat-experts-even-in-shipping/ | Math has use cases | Automation | ★ |
| 📰Article | Despair Fatigue | https://thebaffler.com/salvos/despair-fatigue-david-graeber | Art, welfare, future | Creators | ★★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Don’t be a creator if you can’t do it for free | https://marker.medium.com/if-you-cant-afford-to-do-it-for-free-don-t-be-a-creator-569488f3ef72 | There’s no money in creating | Creators | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Ed Sheeran’s Vinyls | https://dadadrummer.substack.com/p/ed-sheerans-vinyls | Big artists stifling others | Creators | ★★ |
| 📰Article | HBO Max Might Have Outsmarted the Streaming Wars | https://www.wired.com/story/hbo-max-outsmart-streaming-wars/ | HBO burning millions to make a dent | Creators | ★★ |
| 📰Article | Hollywood is quietly using AI to help decide which movies to make | https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/28/18637135/hollywood-ai-film-decision-script-analysis-data-machine-learning | AI for script reading and casting and stuff | Creators | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | How Can We Pay for Creativity in the Digital Age? | https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/14/how-can-we-pay-for-creativity-in-the-digital-age | Money in art | Creators | ★★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Is Spotify’s Model Wiping Out Music’s Middle Class? | https://www.theringer.com/tech/2019/1/16/18184314/spotify-music-streaming-service-royalty-payout-model | No money in streaming | Creators | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Jobless, Selling Nudes Online and Still Struggling | https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/13/business/onlyfans-pandemic-users.html | Coronavirus and OnlyFans | Creators | ★★ |
| 📰Article | Netflix loses subscribers for first time in 10 years. | https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/19/business/netflix-earnings-q1.html | How could this happen | Creators | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Netflix will consider buybacks as it returns to positive cash flow after 2021 | https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/19/netflix-says-cash-flow-positive-after-2021-no-more-external-financing.html | Whoops | Creators | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Netflix’s subscriber growth has slowed dramatically. Blame competition and the pandemic | https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2021-07-20/netflixs-subscriber-growth-has-slowed-dramatically | Oh dear | Creators | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | No One Makes A Living On Patreon | https://theoutline.com/post/2571/no-one-makes-a-living-on-patreon | No One Makes A Living On Patreon | Creators | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Tears in Rain | https://dadadrummer.substack.com/p/tears-in-rain | Spotify fraud | Creators | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | The creator economy is failing to spread the wealth | https://www.axios.com/2021/10/11/creator-economy-revenue-content?utm_campaign=organic&utm_medium=socialshare&utm_source=twitter | Title | Creators | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | The Data Journalism That Wasn’t | http://futureofmusic.org/blog/2015/08/21/data-journalism-wasnt | Some weird internet beef and also a good overview of the money in streaming | Creators | ★ |
| 📰Article | The Death Of Subculture part 3: The role of poverty and social class | https://gravityglobal.com/news/the-death-of-subculture-part-3/ | The working class has been priced out of art | Creators | ★★★ |
| 📕Book | The Death of the Artist | https://www.worldcat.org/title/death-of-the-artist-how-creators-are-struggling-to-survive-in-the-age-of-billionaires-and-big-tech/oclc/1246727096&referer=brief_results | Easier to create, harder to make money, a social issue | Creators | ★★★★★ |
| 📰Article | The Economics of OnlyFans | https://xsrus.com/the-economics-of-onlyfans | Losing money from creating | Creators | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | The Gig Economy is failing, enter the hustle economy | https://onezero.medium.com/the-gig-economy-is-failing-say-hello-to-the-hustle-economy-13ae3aa91954 | Work is increasingly atomised | Creators | ★★ |
| 📰Article | The Year Sex Work Came Home | https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/style/camsoda-onlyfans-streaming-sex-coronavirus.html | Coronavirus and OnlyFans | Creators | ★ |
| 📰Article | ‘Stan Twitter, do you know this song’ is the unifying meme we need right now | https://www.polygon.com/2018/8/22/17768546/stan-twitter-do-you-remember-this-song-meme | Nostalgia of stan twitter | Nostalgia | ★★ |
| 📰Article | “I’m Not Interested in Cinema”: Adam Curtis on Bitter Lake | https://filmmakermagazine.com/93080-im-not-interested-in-cinema-adam-curtis-on-bitter-lake/ | Conflating our current moment with Brezhnevian stagnation | Nostalgia | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Boris Johnson: The Brezhnev Years | https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/boris-johnson-the-brezhnev-years/ | Conflating our current moment with Brezhnevian stagnation | Nostalgia | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | Chapter 1: The Politics of Kpop | http://www.moonrok.com/history-k-pop-chapter-1-politics-k-pop/ | The start of K-pop | Nostalgia | ★★ |
| 📰Article | Chapter 10: The Downside of the Debut | http://www.moonrok.com/history-k-pop-chapter-10-downside-debut/ | Exploitation | Nostalgia | ★ |
| 📰Article | Chapter 6: How the Internet Almost Killed Kpop, and How Idol Advertising and Acting Saved It | http://www.moonrok.com/history-k-pop-chapter-6-how-internet-almost-killed-k-pop-and-how-idol-advertising-and/ | K-pop and internet marketing | Nostalgia | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Covid and fictitious capital | https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2021/01/25/covid-and-fictitious-capital/ | Markets decoupled from reality | Nostalgia | ★★ |
| 📕Book | Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More | https://www.worldcat.org/title/everything-was-forever-until-it-was-no-more-the-last-soviet-generation/oclc/941080827&referer=brief_results | Anthropological study of the mood of pre-dissolution Soviet Russia | Nostalgia | ★★★★★ |
| 📕Book | Ghosts of My Life | https://www.worldcat.org/title/ghosts-of-my-life-writings-on-depression-hauntology-and-lost-futures/oclc/936416159&referer=brief_results | misc hauntology ramblings | Nostalgia | ★ |
| 📰Article | How K-pop became a global phenomenon | https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/2/16/16915672/what-is-kpop-history-explained | On K-pop production and reception | Nostalgia | ★★ |
| 📰Article | Op-Ed: How the streaming wars are changing what you watch | https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-07-18/netflix-amazon-hulu-streaming-competition-hollywood-content | Streamers monopolising | Nostalgia | ★★★ |
| 📕Book | Protocol | https://www.worldcat.org/title/protocol-how-control-exists-after-decentralization/oclc/982668932&referer=brief_results | The Net exerts power | Nostalgia | ★ |
| 📕Book | The Circle of the Snake: Nostalgia and Utopia in the Age of Big Tech | https://www.worldcat.org/title/circle-of-the-snake-nostalgia-and-utopia-in-the-age-of-big-tech/oclc/1140683049&referer=brief_results | Prediction feedback loops | Nostalgia | ★★★★★ |
| 📕Book | The End of Forgetting: Growing Up with Social Media | https://www.worldcat.org/title/end-of-forgetting-growing-up-with-social-media/oclc/1109928854&referer=brief_results | You can’t escape your past | Nostalgia | ★★★ |
| 📕Book | The End of the End of History | https://www.worldcat.org/title/end-of-the-end-of-history-politics-in-the-twenty-first-century/oclc/1252422521&referer=brief_results | misc end of history ramblings | Nostalgia | ★ |
| 📰Article | The stock market is detached from economic reality. A reckoning is coming. | https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/stock-market-unemployment-disconnect/2020/09/09/087374ca-f306-11ea-bc45-e5d48ab44b9f_story.html | Markets propped up by bullshit | Nostalgia | ★ |
| 📰Article | Twenty Years Ago, ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Lord of the Rings’ Changed the Future of Hollywood | https://www.theringer.com/movies/2021/12/17/22840267/lord-of-the-rings-harry-potter-anniversaries-fandom-ip-hollywood | Post-00’s nostalgic blockbusters | Nostalgia | ★★★ |
| 📃Paper | A Review Of The Data Broker Industry: Collection, Use, And Sale Of Consumer Data For Marketing Purposes | http://educationnewyork.com/files/rockefeller_databroker.pdf | 2013 US Senate investigation into data brokers | Surveillance | ★★ |
| 📰Article | Austerity is an Algorithm | https://logicmag.io/justice/austerity-is-an-algorithm/ | Australian failure to automate social services | Surveillance | ★★ |
| 📃Paper | Behind the One-Way Mirror: A Deep Dive Into the Technology of Corporate Surveillance | https://www.cag.edu.tr/uploads/site/lecturer-files/behind-the-one-way-mirror-a-deep-dive-into-the-technology-of-corporate-surveillance-electronic-frontier-foundation-dCqr.pdf | Data collection overview | Surveillance | ★★ |
| 📰Article | BUGGER | https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460 | Spies aren’t good at their jobs | Surveillance | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Catching Or Creating Terrorists? | https://www.brandeis.edu/investigate/government-corporate-wrong-doing/catching-or-creating-terrorists.html | Manufactured terror | Surveillance | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Classroom Management: Simon Sinek, ClassDojo, and the Nostalgia Industry | https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/classroom-management-simon-sinek-classdojo-and-the-nostalgia-industry/ | Surveillance deployed against schoolkids | Surveillance | ★ |
| 📰Article | Data Broker Errors | https://www.brennanlaw.com/practice-areas/identity-theft/data-broker-errors/ | Data brokers fucking up | Surveillance | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Data Brokers Are a Threat to Democracy | https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-data-brokers-are-a-threat-to-democracy/ | Innacurrate data used evilly | Surveillance | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Data Relations | https://logicmag.io/distribution/data-relations/ | Data production as work and stuff like that | Surveillance | ★ |
| 📃Paper | Estimating The Prevalence Of Entrapment In Post-9/11 Terrorism Cases | https://heinonline.org/hol-cgi-bin/get_pdf.cgi?handle=hein.journals/jclc105§ion=24 | More sympathetic towards counterterrorism | Surveillance | ★★ |
| 📰Article | How The Lapd And Palantir Use Data To Justify Racist Policing | https://theintercept.com/2021/01/30/lapd-palantir-data-driven-policing/ | Tech won’t help policing | Surveillance | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Inside the Whale: An Interview with an Anonymous Amazonian | https://logicmag.io/commons/inside-the-whale-an-interview-with-an-anonymous-amazonian/ | Amazon relationships with law/Corporate perspective | Surveillance | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Logistics Workers of the World: A Conversation with Agnieszka Mróz of Amazon Workers International | https://logicmag.io/care/logistics-workers-of-the-world-a-conversation-with-agnieszka-mroz-of-amazon/ | How Amazon workers are surveilled/Worker perspective | Surveillance | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Only 1 percent of “terrorists” caught by the FBI are real | https://www.salon.com/2013/07/10/only_1_percent_of_terrorists_caught_by_fbi_are_real_partner/ | Manufactured terror | Surveillance | ★★★ |
| 📕Book | Predict and Surveil | https://www.worldcat.org/title/predict-and-surveil-data-discretion-and-the-future-of-policing/oclc/1239321544&referer=brief_results | LAPD data use | Surveillance | ★★★ |
| 📃Paper | Radicalization Theory: An Imminent Threat | https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/9k41zd97f | Counterterrorism is harmful busywork | Surveillance | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Ring gave LAPD officers free cameras, pushed product promos | https://www.latimes.com/business/technology/story/2021-06-17/ring-influencer-marketing-los-angeles-police-department | Amazon <3 the police | Surveillance | ★★ |
| 📰Article | Safe or Just Surveilled?: Tawana Petty on the Fight Against Facial Recognition Surveillance | https://logicmag.io/security/safe-or-just-surveilled-tawana-petty-on-facial-recognition/ | Increasing use of facial recogntion | Surveillance | ★★★ |
| 📃Paper | Separate And Unequal: The Law Of “Domestic” And “International” Terrorism | https://search.informit.org/doi/abs/10.3316/agispt.20190828016173 | Counterterrorism is harmful busywork | Surveillance | ★★★ |
| 📃Paper | Social Media Privacy: A Dozen Myths And Facts | https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm?abstractid=2298891 | Weird privacy hot takes | Surveillance | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | The data brokers quietly buying and selling your personal information | https://www.fastcompany.com/90310803/here-are-the-data-brokers-quietly-buying-and-selling-your-personal-information | Overview of data brokers | Surveillance | ★★★★ |
| 📰Article | The Data Is Ours! | https://logicmag.io/scale/the-data-is-ours/ | Data vibes overview | Surveillance | ★★ |
| 📰Article | The Informants | https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/07/fbi-terrorist-informants/ | FBI entrapment | Surveillance | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | The Popular Family Safety App Life360 Is Selling Precise Location Data on Its Tens of Millions of Users | https://themarkup.org/privacy/2021/12/06/the-popular-family-safety-app-life360-is-selling-precise-location-data-on-its-tens-of-millions-of-user | Underhanded data trading | Surveillance | ★★ |
| 📰Article | The secret police: Cops built a shadowy surveillance machine in Minnesota after George Floyd’s murder | https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/03/03/1046676/police-surveillance-minnesota-george-floyd/ | Recent expansion of surv. tech | Surveillance | ★★★ |
| 📰Article | Woke AI Won’t Save Us | https://logicmag.io/bodies/woke-ai-wont-save-us/ | This stuff doesnt work. Why keep going | Surveillance | ★★★★ |
| 📕Book | Automation and the Future of Work | https://www.worldcat.org/title/automation-and-the-future-of-work/oclc/1316769061&referer=brief_results | Stagnant economy vs automation hype | Automation | ★★★ |
| 📕Book | Platform Capitalism | https://www.worldcat.org/title/platform-capitalism/oclc/1236075764&referer=brief_results | Platforms amassing monopoly power | Creators | ★★★ |
| 📃Paper | This Person (Probably) Exists. Identity Membership Attacks Against GAN Generated Faces | https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.06018 | Algorithms just show us copies of the past | Algorithms | ★★★ |
| 📃Paper | Predictive Inequity in Object Detection | https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.11097 | Object detection racial bias | Algorithms | ★★ |