Latest / Never Post / Mailbag #7: On Ads, The RSS Resurgence and More

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Mailbag #7: On Ads, The RSS Resurgence and More · Never Post

• 0:07
  Mike Rugnetta: Friends, hello, and welcome to Never Post. This
• 0:10
  is a mailbag episode. It's the one for, I don't know, spring
• 0:13
  twenty twenty five? How's that sound?
• 0:15
  Jason Oberholtzer: Sounds beautiful. Spring has sprung.
• 0:17
  Georgia Hampton: Yeah. Spring is here.
• 0:18
  Mike Rugnetta: Okay. Great. If you are new here, a mailbag
• 0:21
  episode is where we respond to listener emails, comments,
• 0:24
  voicemails, and voice messages about our segments. Do you want
• 0:29
  to get in touch with us and tell us your thoughts about our
• 0:32
  thoughts? We want to hear your thoughts on our thoughts.
• 0:36
  All the ways that can get ahold of us are in the show notes. You
• 0:38
  can drop us a line. I'm your host, Mike Rugnetta. Joining me
• 0:40
  today in order of how uproarious I assume their go to karaoke
• 0:46
  song is ascending. Hans Buto, never post senior producer.
• 0:52
  Hans Buetow: You've nailed it. Can I tell you something?
• 0:54
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah.
• 0:54
  Sure.
• 0:55
  Hans Buetow: I've never done karaoke, so I don't have Wow. I
• 0:59
  don't have a karaoke song.
• 1:01
  Mike Rugnetta: The maximum on uproarious.
• 1:03
  Hans Buetow: Exactly. Oh my god. First runs. Of the gate.
• 1:07
  Mike Rugnetta: Jason Oberholzer, Never Post executive producer.
• 1:11
  Jason Oberholtzer: The middle's a good spot for me because it
• 1:13
  really depends on how my cover of D'Angelo's Untitled is going
• 1:17
  to go over.
• 1:22
  Mike Rugnetta: I think we should stop the recording because I
• 1:24
  just wanna think about that
• 1:25
  Jason Oberholtzer: for a while. Swings wildly depending on the
• 1:29
  room.
• 1:29
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Right. Georgia Hampton, never post
• 1:31
  producer.
• 1:32
  Georgia Hampton: Yes. Let me be clear about something. I am a
• 1:38
  performer first and a podcaster second.
• 1:42
  Jason Oberholtzer: That's what that is.
• 1:44
  Georgia Hampton: And my performance of I'm With You by
• 1:47
  Avril Lavigne. Oh. We're talking I fall to my knees. I'm crying.
• 1:53
  The whole room is crying.
• 1:55
  It's very emotional.
• 1:56
  Jason Oberholtzer: I believe it. Now quickly, do you believe
• 1:58
  Avril is still with us?
• 2:00
  Georgia Hampton: No comment. Okay. I think I think we need
• 2:03
  more more intel first.
• 2:05
  Mike Rugnetta: Very smart. It's one of those things, know, you
• 2:07
  gotta do your own research.
• 2:09
  Georgia Hampton: So true.
• 2:10
  Hans Buetow: Our perennial question, where do you fit into
• 2:12
  this Mike Rugnetta?
• 2:13
  Mike Rugnetta: I think that I am probably in the mid mid low. My
• 2:16
  go to is Johnny Cash. Oh. I can do a ring of fire, which I like
• 2:20
  because everybody knows the words too. Yeah.
• 2:23
  It's, you know, it can be uproarious, but there's an upper
• 2:26
  limit to how uproarious I think ring of fire can be. Fair.
• 2:29
  Georgia Hampton: Fair enough. Yeah. I've had people come up to
• 2:31
  me after a karaoke performance and shake my hand.
• 2:36
  Jason Oberholtzer: That's what I would have wanted.
• 2:37
  Hans Buetow: Is that is that good?
• 2:40
  Georgia Hampton: I take it as good. That was after a
• 2:42
  performance of Lips of an Angel though by Hinder.
• 2:45
  Jason Oberholtzer: Oh, wow. Okay. So how
• 2:49
  Mike Rugnetta: This is now. We're gonna abandon my bag.
• 2:51
  Actually, this is now just a karaoke roundtable in which Hans
• 2:54
  is unable to participate.
• 2:57
  Georgia Hampton: Hans, you can just you can just log off if
• 2:59
  you'd like.
• 2:59
  Mike Rugnetta: Georgia, are you a singer? Like, do you can you
• 3:03
  sing?
• 3:04
  Georgia Hampton: I think I'm fine. I'm not like I'm not one
• 3:06
  of those people who's gonna show up to karaoke early and be like,
• 3:09
  me
• 3:09
  Mike Rugnetta: me me me me. Like Do those people exist?
• 3:12
  Georgia Hampton: Oh, they super exist. At bar karaoke?
• 3:15
  Mike Rugnetta: Oh, yes. Absolutely.
• 3:17
  Georgia Hampton: You hear the first few notes of At Last by
• 3:19
  Etta James, you're like, oh, Jesus Christ.
• 3:21
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. They're taking this seriously.
• 3:23
  Mike Rugnetta: You there are other rooms for you to do that.
• 3:25
  Georgia Hampton: There's other places. But I mean, I did, like,
• 3:28
  I did musical theater in, like, middle school. So I was never,
• 3:33
  you know Mhmm. I can't read music. I never took voice
• 3:36
  lessons, but I can belt when it is called for.
• 3:39
  Mike Rugnetta: Got it. This is good intel. Let's talk about
• 3:41
  some listener stuff.
• 3:43
  Jason Oberholtzer: It's a beautiful transition.
• 3:45
  Hans Buetow: Oh, that god. Seamless. This
• 3:48
  Jason Oberholtzer: mailbag is also of note because it is our
• 3:50
  first one as a member of Radiotopia. And we got some mail
• 3:56
  as requested from our longtime listeners about what it means
• 3:59
  that we are a part of Radiotopia. And one in
• 4:02
  particular I thought it'd be interesting for us all to weigh
• 4:05
  in on came from Malcolm Toll. Malcolm says, I write now about
• 4:10
  one concern I have about podcast ad networks. It unnerves me to
• 4:14
  hear the hosts read out ads.
• 4:16
  Paragons like The Verge have a deliberate firewall between ads
• 4:19
  in the newsroom. It prevents undue financial influence and
• 4:22
  bias from impacting reporting. Malcolm provides an example of
• 4:26
  this that he thought was particularly odious, says that
• 4:28
  he understands the sort of pressures that places can be
• 4:31
  under when they are parts of organizations. Goes on to say,
• 4:34
  could be wrong. I believe the only ads I've ever heard on the
• 4:37
  member feed are for the show itself.
• 4:39
  That's sensible. But if the producers are going to read ads
• 4:42
  for other companies, I'd like to see a discussion about the
• 4:45
  practice in the audio industry. And that's what you're gonna
• 4:48
  get, Malcolm, right now.
• 4:50
  Georgia Hampton: Let's go. Let's go.
• 4:52
  Mike Rugnetta: I mean, I think this is something that we could
• 4:54
  probably talk about, maybe not in a segment, but in something
• 4:58
  else that we release and record. Just our experience with, you
• 5:01
  know, not just to this show, but other shows that we've worked on
• 5:04
  and been involved in about, like, how advertising works and
• 5:07
  what those pressures are, at least from my perspective as the
• 5:10
  nominal host of the show who, you know, when they come to us
• 5:14
  and they're like, okay. This ad has to be a host read. My name
• 5:17
  is gonna be at the top of the list. I also don't like it.
• 5:21
  I just wanna be right really upfront about that. But I think
• 5:23
  we have a broad remit in our relationship to say no to ads
• 5:27
  just in general. So if we are brought ads for things that we
• 5:30
  don't like, then we can say, oh, no. We don't wanna advertise
• 5:33
  that. We also have broad sort of like permission to it's like
• 5:37
  when they're like, we want you to read this ad and we want you
• 5:39
  to include some of your personal experience with this product.
• 5:43
  We get to say, I don't have any. And then, you know, just read
• 5:47
  the ad. And I think that over time, we're gonna figure out how
• 5:51
  that works, and we're probably gonna do some stuff that's
• 5:54
  uncomfortable along the way.
• 5:55
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. That seems fair. I think the other
• 5:57
  thing that's important to point out here is that Radio Topia has
• 6:01
  handled this very collaboratively Yeah. Yeah. And
• 6:05
  sent us a huge list of things to sign no on essentially.
• 6:08
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Where we were able
• 6:09
  Jason Oberholtzer: to point out all the places that we might
• 6:11
  have some sort of conflict of interest, things that we are
• 6:14
  going to have to cover, things that are on our beat, things
• 6:17
  that we just don't like. And we have a huge list of those we
• 6:21
  sent over, and they said thanks, and they're not gonna send us
• 6:23
  those things.
• 6:23
  Mike Rugnetta: It's great. I mean, this is maybe one of the
• 6:25
  things we could talk about if we ever explain this at length, but
• 6:27
  it's like a spreadsheet because it's all standardized. So every
• 6:31
  ad has to slot into a basically like type, like a tag type.
• 6:36
  Georgia Hampton: Category.
• 6:36
  Mike Rugnetta: Category. Yeah. That's that's the word. Uh-huh.
• 6:39
  And, yeah, we just went through and we're like, no supplements.
• 6:42
  Just no. Just a blanket. No supplements. No. Thank you.
• 6:45
  Yeah. And, yeah, they were like, cool. Sounds good. You know? And
• 6:49
  then probably dozens of other things that we said no to.
• 6:52
  Georgia Hampton: Oh, I mean, this list, like, imagine a long
• 6:54
  list and then times it by, like, 800 of how specific you can get
• 6:59
  about what kind of ads you don't want.
• 7:01
  Jason Oberholtzer: Think about a list. Now think about a bigger
• 7:04
  list than the list you're thinking of.
• 7:05
  Georgia Hampton: This list is so unimaginably big. But
• 7:09
  Mike Rugnetta: I think, you know, we are trying to be
• 7:10
  thoughtful about it, and we would hope that when we miss,
• 7:14
  you guys will tell us. And, you know, the list of things that we
• 7:17
  don't wanna read ads for, like financial services and health
• 7:20
  insurance Yeah. And just all the stuff that make you feel just
• 7:23
  generally.
• 7:25
  Jason Oberholtzer: The other response we saw a few times to
• 7:27
  our Radiotopia announcement was fear on the part of the
• 7:30
  listeners that we would get rid of what has been described many
• 7:34
  different things, many different ways, the little sonic eye dent
• 7:38
  at the end of every episode. Oh. You know the sound. I'll put it
• 7:42
  Hans Buetow: crack this.
• 7:42
  Jason Oberholtzer: Right here. What would you all call I
• 7:46
  Mike Rugnetta: think of it as the egg crack in my brain.
• 7:48
  Georgia Hampton: That's what it is. Yes. I completely agree
• 7:50
  Jason Oberholtzer: with that.
• 7:51
  Mike Rugnetta: Oh, that's interesting. I I
• 7:51
  Hans Buetow: think of it as the snap.
• 7:52
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. It is it is, I think, mostly described
• 7:55
  as the egg crack and genuine fear from the listeners that the
• 7:59
  egg crack would go away to make room for the dulcet tones of
• 8:02
  Radiotopia. Fear not, they are all there. We are cracking eggs
• 8:06
  and singing opera at the end of every show. I always think of
• 8:10
  that sound as like pulling out a quarter inch plug.
• 8:16
  That's like a little wet.
• 8:17
  Mike Rugnetta: Okay. I was gonna say. From an uncooked hamburger
• 8:20
  patty? Yeah. Like
• 8:21
  Georgia Hampton: oh my god. Anyway,
• 8:24
  Jason Oberholtzer: it's not going anywhere.
• 8:26
  Mike Rugnetta: Jason, you also got a bunch of outreach from
• 8:29
  folks who wanted to let you know that there are in fact podcasts
• 8:33
  of music, and how dare you not know about them?
• 8:36
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yes. People wanted to let me know that I was
• 8:38
  wrong. Can you imagine this? No. This is very helpful.
• 8:44
  This is exactly what I asked for. I wanted people to send me
• 8:46
  things that were podcasts that they thought amounted to a
• 8:50
  musical expression of the form. What if a podcast was music?
• 8:55
  What if music arrived as if it were a podcast? And we're gonna
• 8:58
  list off some of the things I thought were more interesting
• 9:01
  that got sent in.
• 9:02
  So thank you, everybody. One of the ones that seemed more
• 9:04
  interesting was Ultima Thule, an Australian radio show that seems
• 9:10
  to have gone dormant at the end of twenty twenty four. So it
• 9:14
  seems like we just missed the window on that, but let me know
• 9:16
  if I'm wrong about that since you all love to let me know when
• 9:19
  I'm wrong about things. And some other examples people sent in
• 9:22
  were real synthetic audio, a state of trance, song of the day
• 9:27
  from the current, morning becomes eclectic. Turns out
• 9:31
  there's just a lot of stuff out there that people believe to be
• 9:34
  music that arrives via podcast.
• 9:38
  Hans Buetow: I actually got a text, Jason, from my
• 9:40
  brother-in-law, Steven from Brooklyn. Hello, Steven. He's a
• 9:43
  listener and a fan who feels bad that he doesn't write in and
• 9:46
  only text me individually. So now I'm forcing him into the
• 9:49
  show. That's good.
• 9:51
  Mike Rugnetta: That's good. Yeah. You should
• 9:52
  Georgia Hampton: Yeah. Believe in bullying on the show.
• 9:54
  Hans Buetow: Let's let's bully our families. So he suggested a
• 9:58
  couple of VivaRONT Radio by Jeremy Olander and Above and
• 10:01
  Beyond puts out something called group therapy. He said there
• 10:05
  were a lot of these that he has listened to over the years
• 10:08
  because he listens while he works. He listens to ambient
• 10:10
  music while he works.
• 10:11
  Jason Oberholtzer: Okay.
• 10:12
  Hans Buetow: And he pointed me interestingly, what I thought
• 10:15
  was interesting, to the final episode of a podcast called
• 10:19
  Anjuna Deep Edition. And so they publish this in May 2022, and
• 10:22
  they open it by explaining a bit about why they're not doing
• 10:26
  podcasts anymore.
• 10:27
  Clip: As you might have realized, the weekly Anjuna Deep
• 10:30
  Edition mixes haven't been appearing in your podcast feed
• 10:32
  since episode 400 a few weeks ago. Sadly, this isn't a glitch
• 10:36
  in your app, and we are in fact closing down the podcast feed.
• 10:40
  When we first launched the Deep Edition and our other radio
• 10:42
  shows, there were very few options for distributing those
• 10:45
  kind of mixes. And so like many other labels and artists, we
• 10:48
  turned to podcasts. Today, there are a whole host of music
• 10:51
  specific platforms that host our mix content, including YouTube,
• 10:54
  SoundCloud, and Mixcloud, where you can find the Angunity
• 10:57
  petition, along with Apple Music, where you can find our
• 11:00
  new Anguno Mix series, and on Spotify, where we've got various
• 11:03
  other mixes along with all of our new releases.
• 11:05
  These platforms all cater for music in a way that the podcast
• 11:08
  feed sadly doesn't, in that the musicians and creators behind
• 11:11
  the mixes can receive royalties for their music being played. So
• 11:14
  thank you so much for listening.
• 11:15
  Mike Rugnetta: Suck. I mean, hard to argue. Do you guys know
• 11:19
  Camp? Mm-mm. No.
• 11:20
  It's like a French, like, artist residency for electronic
• 11:24
  musicians, and they have a radio show sort of radio station,
• 11:28
  really just a website that collects mixes that people do.
• 11:31
  And it's all hosted on Mixcloud, which I've never encountered
• 11:34
  before, you know, like, a couple weeks ago when I found out about
• 11:37
  this. Mixcloud rules. Okay. So just hearing this now.
• 11:41
  It's like this I'm sure this is frequency illusion. You know
• 11:43
  what I mean? Like, suddenly, this is everywhere, but I'm sure
• 11:46
  I just never encountered it before. But yeah. I mean, it's
• 11:48
  compelling.
• 11:49
  It's a compelling reason.
• 11:50
  Hans Buetow: Yeah. It makes some sense.
• 11:52
  Jason Oberholtzer: One email I wanted to spend a little bit of
• 11:54
  time on was one from Jam, who suggested that they're a casual
• 11:59
  music listener, but the first thing that jumped to mind were
• 12:01
  DJ sets and playlists, such as Isaac Varzim's Groovy sets,
• 12:06
  Humano Studios guest sets, Boiler Room sets, made me want
• 12:09
  to ask the question in the other direction. Rather than what
• 12:13
  podcast might be music, what music might actually be a
• 12:19
  podcast and I nominate DJ sets.
• 12:22
  Mike Rugnetta: Interesting. Yeah. Okay. In a way, opera.
• 12:29
  Jason Oberholtzer: You're right. The original podcast is
• 12:32
  Mike Rugnetta: talk people talking about their problems.
• 12:33
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Sorry. The second podcast. First, had
• 12:35
  cereal, then we had opera.
• 12:38
  Georgia Hampton: Traditional Italian opera.
• 12:41
  Jason Oberholtzer: That's actually the perfect answer. Oh,
• 12:43
  my god.
• 12:44
  Georgia Hampton: So up next, in response to an email from Thales
• 12:49
  Baretto in our last mailbag regarding our segment from last
• 12:53
  year's live show at xoxo, which is about TikTok shop. We
• 12:57
  attempted to identify which online business might be the
• 13:00
  most parasitic. And in Talis's words, the question was, which
• 13:05
  online business is able to profit while being the least it
• 13:09
  can be? Jason Mehmel writes in with his contender, which is
• 13:17
  PayPal. Jason writes, I'm sure there was some level of work to
• 13:21
  make initial bank connections and such.
• 13:24
  But at this point, it's just a middle stop between whatever
• 13:27
  banks are involved in the transaction. Maybe that initial
• 13:30
  work deserves credit, but it's devolved into being just a
• 13:34
  membrane skimming from the transactions moving through it.
• 13:37
  I'd love to know if there are better methods now. I feel like
• 13:42
  PayPal is an an entity that seems vaguely evil to me, but I
• 13:46
  know so little about.
• 13:48
  Mike Rugnetta: PayPal, don't listen. PayPal, if you're
• 13:49
  listening, just just fast forward. PayPal sucks. And
• 13:53
  PayPal
• 13:54
  Georgia Hampton: All my homies hate PayPal.
• 13:56
  Mike Rugnetta: Can only exist because payment infrastructure
• 13:59
  in The United States is so atrophied and at under the
• 14:03
  control of, like, corporate interests and doesn't actually
• 14:06
  benefit people. Whenever you, like, talk to someone who
• 14:08
  doesn't live in The United States about just, like, sending
• 14:10
  small bits of money back and forth to your friends, they're
• 14:12
  like, just use your bank. And our answer is, oh, you can't.
• 14:18
  Well, yeah. We got PayPal, a third service that is like the
• 14:21
  money mafia.
• 14:22
  Georgia Hampton: It really feels like that. Like, as someone I
• 14:25
  don't feel like I interface that much with PayPal. I don't know
• 14:28
  why that is. Maybe just the transactions I'm doing. But
• 14:31
  usually, in my experience, the methods that are used are like
• 14:34
  Venmo or Zelle.
• 14:38
  PayPal kinda doesn't exist in my life. So I I sort of defer to to
• 14:42
  you guys.
• 14:43
  Mike Rugnetta: Well, Venmo is just is owned by PayPal. So it's
• 14:45
  just it's just another scan on it. It's just a yeah. It's just
• 14:49
  one level on top of PayPal.
• 14:50
  Georgia Hampton: Also, isn't there just they have like a
• 14:53
  really easy backdoor to get into or something? I feel like I've
• 14:56
  heard so many stories of people having like, their identity
• 14:59
  stolen through PayPal, or like their bank information stolen
• 15:03
  through PayPal. Something horrible happening. The main
• 15:06
  thing that
• 15:06
  Mike Rugnetta: they do is they they have an even more sensitive
• 15:10
  tripwire than, say, Visa does as far as just saying, well, you
• 15:14
  can't do that anymore. And that they are well known for if they
• 15:18
  don't like something that you're doing or just mildly suspicious
• 15:21
  of you, just shutting your account down and taking all your
• 15:23
  money, which, of course, is in their interest
• 15:25
  Georgia Hampton: to So what I'm hearing is maybe this is
• 15:28
  actually exactly the most parasitic. It's pretty bad.
• 15:31
  Maybe we just got it. Like, maybe this is it.
• 15:33
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Okay. PayPal, you can start listening
• 15:34
  again. And that's why I love PayPal. And that's why the
• 15:37
  Georgia Hampton: sponsor, PayPal.
• 15:39
  Mike Rugnetta: It's it's just it's extremely convenient. And
• 15:42
  honestly, their trust and safety team, I feel like they go out of
• 15:45
  their way Above and beyond. Sure. Yeah. To make sure that
• 15:47
  everybody who uses the service, like, really knows what they're
• 15:49
  doing.
• 15:50
  Jason Oberholtzer: So to rewind to the beginning of this
• 15:51
  mailbag, we're gonna get no advertisers. Okay.
• 15:58
  Mike Rugnetta: Good news. In our last mailbag, Toby called in,
• 16:03
  and the voicemail got cut off. And then Toby called in again.
• 16:07
  Jason Oberholtzer: Hell, yeah.
• 16:07
  Georgia Hampton: Yes, Toby.
• 16:09
  Toby: Hey, Never Post. I'm so sorry about whatever happened. I
• 16:11
  think what I was getting at is my social media algorithm in
• 16:14
  terms of specifically ads has changed significantly since I,
• 16:17
  like, medically transitioned. And so basically what happened
• 16:20
  is I started noticing I was getting a lot more gun oriented
• 16:24
  things, a lot more fitness. I was getting more ads for shitty
• 16:28
  supplements.
• 16:29
  And I was just curious about, like, the sort of gender
• 16:33
  assigned at social media algorithm idea.
• 16:36
  What do you all think?
• 16:37
  Is this, like, a legitimate
• 16:38
  thing in terms of, like, your ads predicting sort of, like,
• 16:42
  your gender?
• 16:43
  Mike Rugnetta: So I would like to just remind everyone that we
• 16:46
  accept pitches.
• 16:47
  Georgia Hampton: Yes. Toby.
• 16:49
  Mike Rugnetta: And that we pay people to make segments and that
• 16:52
  this is interesting.
• 16:53
  Georgia Hampton: Fascinating. So interesting.
• 16:55
  Hans Buetow: Toby, call us back again.
• 17:00
  Jason Oberholtzer: Just call Hans. Just call Hans.
• 17:02
  Mike Rugnetta: Just give me a
• 17:02
  Hans Buetow: raise time.
• 17:03
  Mike Rugnetta: Hans' phone number is Hi. Next up, in
• 17:08
  response to our segment about section two thirty with Mike
• 17:11
  Masnik, my pal Guy, and Hans' pal Guy
• 17:14
  Hans Buetow: Oh, Guy.
• 17:15
  Mike Rugnetta: Called in.
• 17:16
  Guy: Section two thirty is a US law. Laws have jurisdiction, and
• 17:21
  I wondered how section two thirty sort of related to the
• 17:24
  Internet and the the global entity. And I know you guys have
• 17:30
  talked about, you know, this in other shows about, you know,
• 17:33
  it's hard to know the Internet from other perspectives other
• 17:36
  than The US. But I wondered if, you know, if there was anything
• 17:40
  to say about if section two thirty does go away, how does
• 17:44
  that impact the Internet in other places? Do other countries
• 17:47
  follow it?
• 17:48
  That would that make The US an outlier, or would then they join
• 17:53
  more countries that also don't have anything like section two
• 17:57
  thirty?
• 17:59
  Hans Buetow: So Guy yes. Guy lives in Canada. Mike, I have a
• 18:02
  question for you. I I wanna predict your answer just a
• 18:05
  little bit and actually see if I'm at all right about this.
• 18:08
  Jason Oberholtzer: Alright.
• 18:08
  Hans Buetow: That the torch is being passed. Two thirty does
• 18:11
  affect it at the moment because so many places have to deal
• 18:16
  with, do business in, and be subject to American laws.
• 18:20
  However, that source of power has been shifting over the last
• 18:26
  ten years maybe to the European Union who is coming and being
• 18:31
  much more strict with all sorts of places that The US is
• 18:35
  currently choosing not to be strict at all, especially with
• 18:38
  the demise of net neutrality. Like, the European Union is the
• 18:40
  only one who is actually doing this and are shaping
• 18:42
  Mike Rugnetta: the Internet for the rest of us.
• 18:43
  Hans Buetow: Am I sort of right?
• 18:44
  Mike Rugnetta: So, I mean, the important thing to remember
• 18:46
  about net neutrality is that that is not a content level
• 18:48
  decision. Right? That is or or it is content level insofar as
• 18:52
  its content that goes through infrastructure, which the EU is
• 18:55
  trying to regulate both both of those things. But the
• 18:59
  infrastructure is like a completely different thing.
• 19:01
  Right?
• 19:01
  The cables are where the cables are, but the information is
• 19:05
  everywhere. So I think there is a way to think about this where
• 19:09
  we get two Internets, essentially, and we see a larger
• 19:13
  version of what already exists with, say, the right to be
• 19:15
  forgotten, where every year I think it's every year. The EU
• 19:20
  gets, like, 50,000,000 requests for results on Google to be
• 19:26
  removed or to be downranked, and Google adheres to or accepts,
• 19:32
  like, half of them. I think it is. But that only happens in the
• 19:35
  EU.
• 19:36
  Right? There's no right to be forgotten in The United States.
• 19:38
  There's just the Internet works in two different ways in two
• 19:41
  different places. There's a chance that that happens. I
• 19:44
  think it's probably really unlikely.
• 19:47
  The, like, bigger thing to consider is that most of the
• 19:50
  largest Internet players right? And really, we're talking about,
• 19:53
  like, social media is really what is what is to be considered
• 19:56
  here. They're all US companies. They will have to abide by US
• 20:00
  law. And so in their if section two thirty goes away, right,
• 20:04
  they have basically two choices.
• 20:06
  They can moderate everything. They take the path of, like,
• 20:11
  we're gonna look at everything. We're gonna approve it before it
• 20:12
  all goes up, where everything's gonna get the green check mark.
• 20:15
  Everything's treated very, very equally that way. The things
• 20:19
  that I've seen written about this is that other countries,
• 20:22
  especially other authoritarian countries, look at that and they
• 20:25
  say, oh, so you are looking at every post.
• 20:29
  Great. When you come across posts that say Erdogan is bad,
• 20:33
  could you take all those down? Like, you you're already doing
• 20:35
  it. You're already looking at everything. Like, why don't you
• 20:37
  just don't take it all down?
• 20:38
  What happens then? Do they agree? Do they stop offering
• 20:42
  their services in those countries because they don't
• 20:44
  wanna get involved in that situation? Do they offer a
• 20:47
  different version of the Internet in those countries? You
• 20:50
  sort of end up at the two Internets again.
• 20:53
  The other outcome is they say, okay, two thirty goes away.
• 20:56
  Okay. We can't moderate anything. We don't moderate
• 20:58
  anything. We're not gonna look at anything.
• 20:59
  That means the Internet, as Mike Masnik described it, becomes a
• 21:02
  cesspit for everybody who engages with it. Until the EU
• 21:07
  then says, well, you can't there are certain uses or posts. There
• 21:11
  are certain kinds of content that just cannot be seen here,
• 21:15
  and so fix it. Does that then mean, you know, there's now two
• 21:20
  versions of the Internet again? There's the one in The US that's
• 21:23
  not at all moderated, and there's the one in The EU that
• 21:26
  is moderated to their regulations.
• 21:28
  You know? There's so many things that have to happen before we
• 21:31
  know what happens, but those are the two sort of, like, branching
• 21:36
  paths that I've seen other people talk about as far as what
• 21:40
  is the rest of the world like if section two thirty goes away in
• 21:43
  The United States?
• 21:44
  Jason Oberholtzer: Well, our most recent relevant example is
• 21:45
  GDPR, which is now fairly old. Yeah. But American companies
• 21:51
  ended up just by and large becoming GDPR compliant across
• 21:55
  the board because it's more of a hassle not to have been. So that
• 21:59
  was EU taking the lead and everyone just opting into the
• 22:03
  ease of just following along.
• 22:04
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. Yeah. So I think the answer here is
• 22:12
  Hans Buetow: no.
• 22:15
  Georgia Hampton: Up next, Jay wrote in about my conversation
• 22:19
  about having fun on the Internet with Kyle Chaeka. And Jay said,
• 22:23
  I gave some thought into the ways that I combat algorithmic
• 22:27
  fun. And this is what I've come up with. And here's a fabulous
• 22:32
  list of options. Disable auto play or auto preview.
• 22:36
  I always manually select the next thing. Yes. I do this too.
• 22:40
  It's amazing. Click on the subscriptions tab on YouTube.
• 22:45
  I also do this. Very smart. Whenever possible, sort only by
• 22:51
  chronology. Yep. Which interesting.
• 22:53
  I hadn't even thought of that. Whenever possible, use RSS in
• 22:57
  quote unquote quiet apps. Subscribe to newsletters when
• 23:01
  it's important to me, and RSS is unavailable. I often find cool
• 23:06
  stuff tag surfing on Mastodon, Tumblr, Bandcamp, maybe soon on
• 23:11
  Blue Sky. Whenever I go to the library weekly, which wow.
• 23:15
  Nice. Thank you. I will grab one comic, one jazz CD, and one
• 23:21
  movie I've never heard of.
• 23:23
  Jason Oberholtzer: And do them all at the same time,
• 23:24
  Clip: I assume?
• 23:25
  Georgia Hampton: Multiple screens, full While
• 23:28
  Mike Rugnetta: watching a Subway Surfers video.
• 23:30
  Georgia Hampton: That's a really beautiful practice. I really
• 23:35
  love this. And then finally, they say, anthologies. I enjoy
• 23:39
  buying things in bundles on itch.io. We're supporting
• 23:43
  anthologies on Kickstarter, and that's a fun way to discover new
• 23:46
  creators.
• 23:47
  This is a wonderful list.
• 23:49
  Jason Oberholtzer: It's beautiful, Jasmine. It's
• 23:50
  Mike Rugnetta: Tag surfing on Bandcamp rules. I cannot
• 23:52
  recommend it highly enough. I do it almost every day.
• 23:55
  Jason Oberholtzer: I want more of these. Where else are people
• 23:58
  finding intentional interactions with their media and attention?
• 24:03
  Georgia Hampton: And then Sam also called in with message
• 24:06
  about this segment.
• 24:07
  Sam: I have to say, I have gone back to using RSS feeds for
• 24:13
  pretty much all of my Internet consumption. And I actually spun
• 24:20
  up my own RSS server on a web server that I have. And since
• 24:28
  then, I have been using that and it is so much better. Oh, I know
• 24:35
  exactly what's there. I want exactly what's there.
• 24:39
  And I don't have to deal with some algorithm getting in my
• 24:44
  way. And it's great.
• 24:46
  Georgia Hampton: Mike, I want you to go first.
• 24:47
  Hans Buetow: Mike's Alright. Punching the air that rules so
• 24:51
  hard. Yes.
• 24:52
  Georgia Hampton: All time. Mike, I see the floor to you.
• 24:55
  Mike Rugnetta: That's it. That's I mean, that's all I have to say
• 24:57
  is punching the air. Sam, that rules. I I fully I think I don't
• 25:03
  wanna call it a resurgence because it never really went
• 25:05
  anywhere, but the refocusing, let's say, on RSS has been a
• 25:09
  long time in the making, and I think it's only going to
• 25:11
  continue in focus as people realize what the current way of
• 25:16
  getting information has done to the information environment and
• 25:19
  to our brains. And we're gonna go back to calm, as the last
• 25:23
  comment said, quiet ways of getting information in organized
• 25:28
  streams in particular places and not having to just sort of,
• 25:31
  like, live underneath the waterfall.
• 25:35
  Georgia Hampton: God. Yeah.
• 25:36
  Hans Buetow: It's real simple. It's real simple.
• 25:39
  Jason Oberholtzer: One other email I wanted to take a look at
• 25:41
  here for your sake, Georgia, The payment about this piece
• 25:45
  involves pretty much exclusively Titanium Daydream.
• 25:50
  Georgia Hampton: Let's go. Yes.
• 25:53
  Jason Oberholtzer: You wanna tell the folks what Ethan wrote
• 25:54
  in to say?
• 25:55
  Georgia Hampton: Absolutely. It would be my pleasure. Ethan
• 25:58
  writes in that they are also a huge fan of Titanium Daydream,
• 26:01
  which is fabulous news for me. Ethan, get in touch. Would love
• 26:05
  to talk to someone else who's watching.
• 26:07
  But they also write that what's interesting is that I think it
• 26:11
  both shows what's incredible about TikTok and the problem
• 26:14
  with algorithmic content feeds. I'm thrilled that an equation
• 26:18
  somehow produced the numbers that served this incredibly
• 26:21
  niche and esoteric video series to me. But the big caveat is
• 26:25
  that its weekly output schedule doesn't work well with the
• 26:28
  platform. You either have to diligently check-in on the
• 26:31
  account every Tuesday, which I sometimes do, or pray the
• 26:35
  algorithm brings you the next episode. So far, I haven't
• 26:39
  missed any episodes.
• 26:40
  But this randomness gives the completionist in me a bit of
• 26:44
  anxiety. They go on to say that this is true for a lot of other
• 26:49
  serialized content on TikTok, which this is exactly how I feel
• 26:53
  about Titanium Daydream.
• 26:55
  Jason Oberholtzer: So do you are you a Tuesday viewer? How do you
• 26:57
  engage?
• 26:58
  Georgia Hampton: I kind of have the the other approach, which is
• 27:01
  just that I regularly use TikTok and kind of hope Yeah. That it
• 27:05
  will bring Titanium Daydream to me. I also do I will say this. I
• 27:10
  follow that account on Instagram as well. And so that account
• 27:15
  will post on their story like, hey, the next episode is up.
• 27:20
  So that I can be like, oh, right. And maybe go on TikTok.
• 27:23
  TikTok's algorithm knows I like Titanium Daydream, and I will
• 27:27
  Mhmm. Always see it. I I also have not skipped an episode.
• 27:30
  Jason Oberholtzer: It is funny as a counterpoint to the
• 27:31
  intentional Internet we were just championing a moment ago. I
• 27:35
  have stopped following new accounts on TikTok even. I am
• 27:38
  just entirely to the algorithm behold them. I I don't even like
• 27:41
  things anymore. I forget to heart them.
• 27:43
  I just watch something and I'm like, for sure, more of this
• 27:46
  will get back to me because I have watched it, and I let the
• 27:49
  numbers do their thing. I have nothing in the middle anymore.
• 27:51
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. I think a lot of this speaks to the kind
• 27:54
  of fundamental dishonesty of the algorithm whose promise was,
• 27:57
  hey, don't worry about it. We're gonna bring you the stuff that
• 28:00
  you like. And then it just doesn't. It just simply doesn't.
• 28:03
  It just brings you stuff that's close to the thing that you
• 28:05
  like, so that you spend more time letting content happen to
• 28:08
  you as you turn into a puddle on your couch. And I think it
• 28:11
  speaks to the intentionality and the specificity of RSS where you
• 28:16
  get to say, I like this. Bring more of it to me. And RSS just
• 28:19
  says, okay.
• 28:22
  Georgia Hampton: Done. I love you.
• 28:26
  Mike Rugnetta: Alright. On that, we're gonna take a break. We're
• 28:28
  gonna listen to some ads. For PayPal. Okay.
• 28:54
  We are back. Hans, we had some people write in about the just
• 28:59
  unbelievable number of cameras in the world.
• 29:01
  Hans Buetow: It is a shocking number of cameras, and I
• 29:03
  appreciate that everybody gets that. Pat wrote in. Pat Reddick
• 29:06
  wrote in to say that they really appreciated the AP footage that
• 29:11
  I referenced from April 2006. I found this video of how how
• 29:16
  amazing it was that there were three traffic cameras being put
• 29:18
  up in New York City, and they did whole these whole cloth
• 29:20
  things. And Pat says a little over three years later in
• 29:23
  02/2009, I was in a first year computer science studies
• 29:26
  lecture.
• 29:27
  And even by that point, the surveillance state felt like a
• 29:30
  given. So my jaw nearly hit the floor when the professor told an
• 29:33
  anecdote about how he had led a push to stop the administration
• 29:37
  from installing cameras all around the university. I
• 29:39
  remember him telling the story like his view that the idea of
• 29:42
  cameras everywhere was a creepy prospect with little upside was
• 29:45
  obviously correct and, like, everyone in the room would
• 29:47
  agree. Meanwhile, I'm sitting there like, you mean we have a
• 29:50
  choice in this matter? We can opt out of this?
• 29:52
  Honestly, I hadn't even noticed that the university lacked
• 29:54
  cameras. I had just assumed that they were like everywhere else.
• 29:58
  I remained involved in university life until 2016, and
• 30:01
  they did not install any cameras I was aware of during that time.
• 30:05
  And I think that timeline makes a ton of sense. So in the
• 30:08
  research for the piece that I did, I had written an entire
• 30:12
  section that I wanted to put in that I thought I was gonna put
• 30:15
  in using the research of Shoshana Zuboff, who's a
• 30:18
  sociologist from Harvard.
• 30:21
  And she has this whole thing about surveillance capitalism
• 30:23
  that she does, which is about the industry, the money that
• 30:27
  gets put into surveillance all over the place. And she actually
• 30:32
  puts the rise of cameras into the late nineties, mid to late
• 30:36
  nineties with Gore. And there's a we'll put a link to it in the
• 30:40
  show notes, but she's got this really great talk where she
• 30:43
  tells these anecdotes of being right around that time and being
• 30:46
  in conferences and having people be like, the information is
• 30:48
  everything. We need to surveil. We need to surveil.
• 30:51
  And so, like, you're exactly right to have noticed it at that
• 30:54
  moment that that was really what the ascendancy was. And a lot of
• 30:57
  it was in response to to nine eleven, but it started even
• 31:02
  before then.
• 31:02
  Mike Rugnetta: And I feel like we're only just now starting to
• 31:06
  see what the people who wanted the cameras might want to and be
• 31:11
  able to use them for. Yeah. Twenty years ago, they were
• 31:13
  like, we should install. We should build a horrible machine.
• 31:18
  Yeah.
• 31:18
  And in 2025, they're like, we should turn the machine on.
• 31:22
  Yeah. For
• 31:24
  Hans Buetow: that 02/2006 AP article, I found a New York
• 31:26
  Times article also that was talking about that same event
• 31:30
  from February. And in that, they basically were like, yeah. It's
• 31:34
  kinda weird, I guess, but, like, the quality of them is so low,
• 31:37
  and the data is so big, and you have to actually go to, like,
• 31:40
  pull the data out of the camera. So I don't think it'll ever get
• 31:43
  big. We laid the groundwork back then, and all we had to do is
• 31:47
  fix those small.
• 31:48
  You really didn't think cameras were gonna get better? You
• 31:51
  really didn't think connectivity was gonna improve? Like, that
• 31:54
  was the only way it was gonna be limited, and now here we are
• 31:57
  exactly like Mike says. Chris also wrote in, and I really I
• 32:01
  think this is a really striking comment. Chris works at Walmart
• 32:05
  and says that there are cameras everywhere.
• 32:08
  The self checkout area alone has at least two cameras per
• 32:11
  checkout spot. One is to look at your face as a customer, and the
• 32:15
  other is to watch your scanning technique waiting for when you
• 32:17
  make a mistake or you might be trying to steal like the carrot
• 32:20
  technique. There are very few spots where there is not a
• 32:24
  camera of some kind. In fact, I tend to take notice of where
• 32:26
  there is a blind spot or a weird lack of cameras. I feel
• 32:30
  constantly watched because I'm being constantly watched.
• 32:33
  That's true. But I also know from talking to coworkers and
• 32:36
  customers that they do not really feel this way, which is
• 32:41
  very interesting. But also, like, I can't say that. That's
• 32:44
  deeply relatable. Like, that's what my whole piece was about.
• 32:46
  Like Yeah.
• 32:48
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Yeah. You normalize it. Yeah. I know
• 32:50
  I'm constantly being watched, but I rarely engage with that
• 32:53
  knowledge.
• 32:53
  Hans Buetow: Yeah. I don't have feelings about it. And and it
• 32:56
  took me a lot of looking at it to actually have have any
• 32:59
  feeling.
• 32:59
  Georgia Hampton: I wanna briefly return to this self checkout
• 33:03
  thing. Because just the fact of the normalization of of watching
• 33:11
  yourself. Because I even think of this at Target. Right? Like,
• 33:13
  the self checkout camera is showing you yourself.
• 33:18
  Like, you can look at it. You're watching yourself there. And
• 33:21
  what's interesting to me is, like, I have a lot of friends
• 33:23
  whose impulse when they see that is to, like, take a picture of
• 33:26
  themselves, like, with their phone of the self checkout
• 33:30
  screen that's showing them. Yeah. And it's I don't I just
• 33:34
  find that's, like, such an interesting reaction in the
• 33:37
  conversation of this normalization of just like, yep.
• 33:39
  That's me, and here's me, and here's my phone, and here's the
• 33:41
  screen.
• 33:42
  Jason Oberholtzer: Taking the power back. And now I'm the
• 33:44
  you're I'm making content out of you. So yeah. You're the
• 33:48
  commodity.
• 33:49
  Mike Rugnetta: Have you guys tried to buy a power tool at a
• 33:51
  like a Home Depot recently?
• 33:54
  Georgia Hampton: Oh, you know, haven't.
• 33:55
  Mike Rugnetta: In the in the hardware aisle where, like, you
• 33:58
  know, the angle grinders or whatever are in the Home Depot,
• 34:01
  there are cameras now and then small little screens that again
• 34:05
  show you what camera what the camera that you're on. And that
• 34:09
  picture is sent to a building somewhere else. I don't I don't
• 34:13
  know where in another state where there are people who just
• 34:16
  sit there and watch.
• 34:17
  Clip: Woah.
• 34:17
  Mike Rugnetta: It is an outsourced company that looks
• 34:20
  specifically at the tools in Home Depot to make sure that no
• 34:23
  one steals them. And I once heard a man, like, talk to
• 34:26
  someone through the camera to, like, explain because someone
• 34:30
  was, like, trying to pick up something, and they was like,
• 34:32
  hey. You can't you're not gonna be able to pick that up. You
• 34:34
  gotta go get someone.
• 34:36
  Georgia Hampton: If you
• 34:36
  Mike Rugnetta: pull harder, you're gonna set the alarm off.
• 34:39
  Georgia Hampton: Woah. Oh my god. This actually transitions
• 34:42
  perfectly into the voicemail that Carl sent us about an
• 34:48
  experience that he had at a local restaurant regarding
• 34:51
  cameras.
• 34:52
  Carl: I was just in New Haven last weekend and I went to a
• 34:55
  really great vegan restaurant or vegetarian restaurant called
• 34:58
  Claire's Corner Copia, which I've been to a couple of times.
• 35:01
  And it's this really homey, really cute little restaurant
• 35:04
  with like drawings of farms on the walls. And really, I mean, I
• 35:09
  think kitsch in a fun way decor. And as I was kind of looking
• 35:15
  around enjoying my vegan French toast and taking in the
• 35:19
  environment, I noticed the camera. I was like, okay,
• 35:22
  that's, I guess, normal.
• 35:23
  Normal for a little restaurant to have a camera. As I was
• 35:27
  looking around enjoying more of the decor, I noticed another
• 35:30
  camera and another camera and then two more cameras. And by
• 35:35
  the end of my sort of aesthetic scan, I've identified 11 cameras
• 35:42
  in a small dining room
• 35:43
  Mike Rugnetta: Too many.
• 35:44
  Carl: Of a small restaurant in the middle of New Haven. Mean, I
• 35:49
  was bothered, obviously, by all these cameras. But the biggest
• 35:51
  question for me was how can there be this many cameras
• 35:55
  covering so small a space? And this sort of like surveillance
• 36:00
  ideology is so invisible that the owner of, like, a homey
• 36:05
  vegetarian restaurant in New Haven can think it's good and
• 36:09
  appropriate to to surveil from every angle possible everybody
• 36:13
  in the restaurant at once.
• 36:15
  Mike Rugnetta: I saw this happen on my block with Ring cameras.
• 36:17
  The exact same thing. When people ins people install a Ring
• 36:20
  camera, and they're like, I can I can finally see all of the
• 36:24
  horrible nonsense? They become Batman. And they're like, you
• 36:27
  know, I must surveil Gotham from the rooftops.
• 36:30
  And then they install another camera to get this angle, and
• 36:33
  then a third camera to get the other angle, and then a fourth.
• 36:35
  And then they're just watching it all day long to be like,
• 36:38
  who's that person that walked by in this? And I like I had to
• 36:41
  leave. My block had a group text, and I was like, I had to
• 36:44
  leave. I left it because everybody was going insane about
• 36:47
  just, like, normal city shit that happens on every block.
• 36:52
  And I think I think it is surveillance ideology. I think
• 36:55
  people get addicted to it.
• 36:57
  Georgia Hampton: Yeah. Once you pop, you can't stop.
• 36:59
  Mike Rugnetta: I can just one more camera. Just one more. But
• 37:06
  agree. Yeah. Jason.
• 37:09
  Jason Oberholtzer: I just back to this rest how many different
• 37:11
  types of behavior are you policing in that restaurant?
• 37:14
  Like, I don't know. Put one by the door. If someone ditches,
• 37:18
  you'll be able to, like, see their face and make this is the
• 37:21
  guy who ditched. Don't let them back in.
• 37:23
  Like, are they eating weird? What do you need to know?
• 37:27
  Georgia Hampton: Well, that's my thing is that I'm like like, to
• 37:29
  Carl's point, who's watching? Like, what are they why do they
• 37:34
  need this? It's too much. It's just undeniably too much.
• 37:40
  Jason Oberholtzer: Noah Hertz writes in in response to
• 37:42
  George's piece on the impending once and future never resolves
• 37:48
  TikTok ban Yes. To brag that he deleted TikTok off his phone.
• 37:54
  Well well well.
• 37:56
  Georgia Hampton: Well well, Noah.
• 37:58
  Mike Rugnetta: Noah, who you all might remember from the David
• 38:01
  Social segment.
• 38:02
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yes. Right. And so interestingly, Noah
• 38:06
  remarks that he doesn't really think his average screen time
• 38:09
  has come down all that much since he deleted TikTok off the
• 38:12
  phone. Oh. He was hoping that that would be the case.
• 38:15
  He just replaced it with using Instagram more. But he finds
• 38:18
  that the average scrolling session on Instagram is far far
• 38:21
  shorter than it was on TikTok.
• 38:24
  Mike Rugnetta: Mhmm. Because it sucks.
• 38:26
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Because it's bad. Yeah. But your body
• 38:28
  still needs the same amount of raw
• 38:30
  Georgia Hampton: feed. Scrolling.
• 38:32
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Now it says they learned a lot of cool
• 38:35
  stuff, saw lots of cute funny videos. Thanks to TikTok, but
• 38:38
  also felt like they spend a lot of their time watching whatever
• 38:41
  slop was being fed to them. Now they think they're getting more
• 38:45
  out of Instagram than it's getting out of them, which they
• 38:49
  stopped feeling like with TikTok. So I guess that's
• 38:53
  progress.
• 38:54
  Congratulations, Noah. Thank you for bragging, and I hope that
• 38:58
  you continue to love what Instagram is giving you. But
• 39:02
  it's a post script, which I found particularly interesting
• 39:04
  here. In light of some other emails that came in, Noah
• 39:07
  included a picture of him listening to Never Post on a
• 39:14
  classic iPod.
• 39:15
  Georgia Hampton: Oh my god.
• 39:16
  Mike Rugnetta: I'm seeing more and more classic iPods, pictures
• 39:20
  of them refurbished and modified and jailbroken and whatever in
• 39:25
  the feed, and I support it. I fully support. Yeah. I think it
• 39:30
  rules.
• 39:30
  Georgia Hampton: Oh my god.
• 39:31
  Jason Oberholtzer: And this leads me to some emails we got
• 39:33
  harkening back to last summer's Sound Files of Summer episode,
• 39:37
  where we talked about our evolving strategies of music
• 39:40
  curation and how we stored and streamed and lost and deleted
• 39:44
  and refound files of music in our lives. We got an email from
• 39:47
  Lenny who might not be using the iPod Classic still, but is
• 39:51
  trading USBs with their friends. Living in Canada where music
• 39:55
  streaming services and phone data plans cost a lot more than
• 39:58
  The US, it's common to drive or visit places where you lose cell
• 40:00
  service and there are no radio stations. Old phones, ancient
• 40:03
  iPods, and visor holders full of CDs are our friends during these
• 40:07
  stretches. I often wonder if other places have similar
• 40:10
  experiences, especially with the rise of cheap Android phones and
• 40:13
  SD cards for storage.
• 40:16
  This is basically becoming our reject modernity use old gear
• 40:20
  and old protocols episode.
• 40:23
  Georgia Hampton: Yeah. Really is. I love
• 40:24
  Mike Rugnetta: the idea of a like a file swap. Yeah. Like you
• 40:27
  go to a place and you bring your USB, your thumb drive, you swap
• 40:32
  files. Sounds great.
• 40:34
  Jason Oberholtzer: Lenny's final contribution to the Sound Files
• 40:36
  of Summer discourse is to tell me for the second time in this
• 40:40
  podcast that I was wrong about something.
• 40:42
  Mike Rugnetta: You should reconsider being wrong so much.
• 40:47
  Jason Oberholtzer: I went on the record as a person who used the
• 40:49
  star ratings on iTunes. My favorite songs were five stars.
• 40:52
  My least favorite were one star. Lenny tells me that this is
• 40:54
  wrong, and that the on the go music management system that
• 40:58
  works the best is one star for your best music, five stars for
• 41:01
  the ones you wanna delete so that you can quickly mark a song
• 41:03
  to delete without taking your iPod out of your pocket, which
• 41:06
  is some next level behavior, Lenny. You keep up literally
• 41:10
  everything you're doing up there.
• 41:14
  Mike Rugnetta: Ronald wrote in in response to the segment that
• 41:17
  I made about real photos that look like AI and what this does
• 41:23
  to sort of like our sense of being able to know things and
• 41:27
  what the truth is and what is real. Ronald wrote, thought you
• 41:30
  might want to know that AI is already well and truly
• 41:33
  contributing to the erosion of the foundations of modern
• 41:35
  scientific inquiry. Academic watchdog blog Retraction Watch
• 41:39
  recently published an article on vegetative electron microscopy,
• 41:44
  a borderline nonsense phrase that began making its way into
• 41:47
  publications apparently because an AI algorithm spliced together
• 41:51
  words across the gap between two justified columns in an article
• 41:56
  from 1959. Holy shit. Regardless of its origins, the phrase is
• 42:02
  almost always an indicator that a paper was produced by a
• 42:05
  publication mill.
• 42:06
  One set of authors claims to use the phrase to define a specific
• 42:09
  analytic technique, but I'm not enough of an expert in
• 42:12
  microscopy to adjudicate this claim. If you're trained in the
• 42:15
  STEM fields, searching Google Scholar for vegetative electron
• 42:18
  microscopy with the quotation marks is good for a chuckle or
• 42:22
  maybe a looming sense of dread as one of humanity's best tools
• 42:25
  for fashioning truth from falsehoods falls into
• 42:27
  fabrications. One of my favorite results, this article, and we'll
• 42:31
  put a link in the show notes from 2022, which was low key
• 42:34
  corrected in June 2024 to remove the offending phrase and to
• 42:38
  renumber most of the citations, which were apparently wrong.
• 42:42
  See? Hilarious.
• 42:45
  Please help. I'm scared. Ronald,
• 42:47
  Georgia Hampton: right there
• 42:48
  Mike Rugnetta: with you. I think, you know, it's you wanna
• 42:52
  believe that this sort of technology is used for fun, you
• 42:56
  know, in with a bunch of quotes around it to make weird silly
• 42:59
  pictures that you couldn't make otherwise, you know, and maybe
• 43:02
  people don't know what the cost of that is. But, yeah, it's
• 43:06
  everywhere.
• 43:07
  Jason Oberholtzer: Yeah. Yeah.
• 43:07
  Mike Rugnetta: Whoops.
• 43:08
  Hans Buetow: Whoops.
• 43:08
  Mike Rugnetta: Whoops. Some folks also wrote in about my
• 43:11
  segment on blocking, where I spoke with Caroline Cinders
• 43:14
  about what it feels like to block people and what the
• 43:17
  technology is for and its usefulness and the kind of
• 43:21
  ambivalence that you can feel around blocking. Alex Posten
• 43:24
  says, please forgive the following tortured metaphors. I
• 43:27
  will. Like a lot of people, I began the process of jumping
• 43:30
  ship from Twitter after the Elon takeover and finally permanently
• 43:34
  deleted my account after the changes to the block function
• 43:36
  were announced.
• 43:37
  Blocking, IMO, is the most important safety feature for a
• 43:41
  social platform, and when safety features don't function
• 43:43
  properly, people get hurt. If Kia pushed an update to my car
• 43:46
  telling me that going forward, my airbags would only sort of
• 43:49
  work, I'm shopping for a new car that day. To paraphrase a line
• 43:53
  from doctor who, blocking isn't self care, it's pest control.
• 43:57
  And so far, as I'm aware, nobody has built a better mousetrap
• 44:00
  than blue sky. The nuclear block should be the standard for
• 44:03
  social media.
• 44:04
  I'm sure the of blue sky will come eventually, but for now,
• 44:08
  I'll just sit back and enjoy the sound of my own voice and the
• 44:10
  voices of folks I actually wanna hear instead of listening to all
• 44:13
  the rats skittering behind the walls. I mean, I will say the
• 44:17
  blue sky block is incredible. It's really great. One wonders
• 44:21
  whether or not it will eventually be nerfed in some way
• 44:25
  or another as brands show up because, you know, if Blue Sky
• 44:29
  wants to make money from brand presence and they want if they
• 44:32
  end up wanting to do in line advertising, you're right. They
• 44:35
  almost certainly will not allow you to block as effectively
• 44:39
  those accounts as they do, you know, other posters because
• 44:43
  that's gonna be part of their business model.
• 44:46
  But fingers crossed, you know, whatever solution comes along,
• 44:49
  it doesn't detract from what is yeah. Like, a really, really
• 44:53
  just incredibly effective moderation tool. Ellie also
• 44:57
  wrote in on a difficult decision to block or to not block someone
• 45:02
  that she knows in meatspace.
• 45:04
  Elli: You know, I think often we think about blocking as a tool
• 45:07
  that we can use for harassment, like you like you mentioned on
• 45:12
  the show. But the only reason I haven't blocked this particular
• 45:16
  person that I'm thinking about is that they are, to some
• 45:19
  extent, still within my existing IRL social network. Right? And
• 45:26
  this is somebody that had sort of career power over me for a
• 45:30
  while and is still, to my knowledge, relatively well
• 45:35
  regarded. And so, you know, I the the thing that's kept me
• 45:40
  from blocking her for so long is like, what if she finds out?
• 45:45
  And then she's like, what beef does Ellie have with me? And,
• 45:50
  you know, could that have consequences in my career or in
• 45:55
  or or could that be a reason that I don't get an opportunity
• 45:59
  later? What does it mean to block someone when you can't
• 46:02
  block them in real life also, you know?
• 46:06
  Mike Rugnetta: Yeah. This is extremely
• 46:08
  Jason Oberholtzer: relatable. We're all staring at each other
• 46:11
  uneasily right
• 46:13
  Mike Rugnetta: Jason doesn't know I have him muted on
• 46:15
  everything.
• 46:16
  Jason Oberholtzer: I was gonna say, is this is the case for
• 46:19
  mute. Right?
• 46:20
  Mike Rugnetta: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Unless you don't
• 46:23
  like, it depends upon, I think, how well you know the person and
• 46:25
  how likely it is in conversation. They're gonna be
• 46:27
  like, oh, you saw that thing I put.
• 46:28
  Right? Like, whatever whatever. Sure. Like, you can always say,
• 46:31
  like, oh, no. Like, I haven't signed in in a couple days, and
• 46:33
  there's some, you know, plausible deniability.
• 46:36
  But, yeah, there's the case for mute. I also like there are
• 46:38
  people who I haven't unfollowed because I'm like, I don't I feel
• 46:42
  some pressure to be, like, continuing to follow this person
• 46:45
  that I like, you know, really have no interest in seeing
• 46:48
  anything that goes on with them. Mhmm. But I justify it to myself
• 46:52
  where I'm like, well, I'm like, think the creepiest way to put
• 46:54
  it is, like, keeping tabs on them. See what they're up to.
• 46:57
  Georgia Hampton: Yeah.
• 46:58
  Mike Rugnetta: Make sure I'm not where they are.
• 46:59
  Jason Oberholtzer: Is this your version of a vegetarian
• 47:02
  restaurant full of cameras? And finally, as a tradition rounding
• 47:08
  out the mailbag and update to cool graffiti that people have
• 47:11
  sent us. I
• 47:13
  Mike Rugnetta: think isn't it funny graffiti? I think it's
• 47:15
  funny tags.
• 47:15
  Georgia Hampton: Right? Okay. Yeah.
• 47:17
  Jason Oberholtzer: It used to be single word graffiti. Its purest
• 47:19
  state is single word graffiti that you found funny. And Hans,
• 47:25
  I think there's a name in here you might recognize.
• 47:27
  Hans Buetow: Oh, Steven Heil.
• 47:29
  Jason Oberholtzer: Eagle eared listeners might recognize from
• 47:30
  earlier in the program, Steven Heil. Yeah. Who spotted in
• 47:34
  Brooklyn, a purist's one word answer, which is okra.
• 47:39
  Georgia Hampton: Yes. Scrolled on just a regular brick wall.
• 47:43
  Yes.
• 47:44
  Jason Oberholtzer: And then for those of us who are allowing
• 47:46
  more words in these things, a beautiful bathroom wall that
• 47:48
  says watch Star Trek the next generation.
• 47:53
  Toby: Solid advice.
• 47:54
  Mike Rugnetta: I didn't get a picture of it, but I will. And
• 47:56
  then I will formally submit it for the next. But I saw a tag
• 47:59
  also in Brooklyn yesterday. Very artfully. Clearly, someone spent
• 48:03
  a lot of time on it.
• 48:04
  It said, oh boy, enema.
• 48:09
  Georgia Hampton: Oh boy.
• 48:11
  Jason Oberholtzer: That's great. That's great. There's a lot more
• 48:14
  graffiti in the mailbag. I'm gonna save some of it for next
• 48:16
  week because we are running out of time that we have for this
• 48:18
  week to talk. But there's one more graffiti I wanna talk about
• 48:21
  before send us all home.
• 48:23
  And that is friend of the show Talia has found us another
• 48:28
  Garfies.
• 48:29
  Hans Buetow: Woo. Oh, no. Woo.
• 48:31
  Mike Rugnetta: It looks like it looks like this is forever. This
• 48:34
  is a big titty Garfies.
• 48:35
  Georgia Hampton: It sure is.
• 48:36
  Mike Rugnetta: A big titty Garfie holding a bomb? A bomb?
• 48:39
  Yes. Absolutely.
• 48:39
  Jason Oberholtzer: I did
• 48:40
  Mike Rugnetta: a little bit
• 48:40
  Jason Oberholtzer: of research. Now that there's two Garfies.
• 48:43
  This is apparently a thing in Melbourne. Most specifically,
• 48:47
  there are Garfies everywhere. Garfies across Say right.
• 48:52
  Melbourne. Sorry, everyone. For those of you who are new to
• 48:57
  Garfies, it is Garfield with tits doing things.
• 49:01
  Georgia Hampton: Big tittie Garfield.
• 49:04
  Jason Oberholtzer: They're apparently all over Melbourne,
• 49:06
  and I have no idea why. And no one else does.
• 49:09
  Georgia Hampton: I actually like it less when you do that.
• 49:10
  Mike Rugnetta: But to remind our listeners that we do accept
• 49:14
  pitches. Yes.
• 49:17
  Georgia Hampton: We the line is open, and we're ready to listen
• 49:20
  to you.
• 49:21
  Jason Oberholtzer: Toby. Toby.
• 49:24
  Mike Rugnetta: Okay. That's what we got for you in mailbag. Thank
• 49:27
  you everybody for writing in, calling in, sending us your
• 49:30
  voice memos, sending us your emails. Thank you friends for
• 49:33
  the conversation. We're gonna be back in the feed one week from
• 49:36
  today on April 9.
• 49:39
  We'll see you then.
• 49:41
  Hans Buetow: Bye.