[Remembering a pathbreaker for free media]
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MEDIA BITS AND BYTES – JANUARY 24, 2023
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January 24, 2023
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_ Remembering a pathbreaker for free media _
Programmer and activist Aaron Swartz. Credit, Wendy Maeda/The Boston
Globe via Getty Images
* Big Tech Firings by the Thousands
* DOJ vs Google
* ChatGBT is a Mirror of Our Times
* Social Media and Jan 6
* NYT Defends Metadata
* China’s Digital Corporations
* In Search of a Media Model for Movements
* Independent TV Service Leader Sally Jo Fifer Steps Down
* Disability and Hollywood
* A Tribute to Aaron Swartz
BIG TECH FIRINGS BY THE THOUSANDS
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By Kiara Alfonseca
ABC News
Companies across the tech industry have announced layoffs, affecting
thousands of workers in the first few weeks of 2023. Company officials
have often cited economic uncertainty and fears of a recession in
their job-cutting, cost-cutting decisions. It follows a volatile
2022, which was also marred with layoffs by the thousands across
major tech brands.
DOJ VS GOOGLE
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By Jessica Corbett
Common Dreams
Anti-monopoly advocates praised the Biden administration and eight
states for launching a federal antitrust lawsuit that could break up
Google, which is accused of illegally dominating the digital
advertising market.
CHATGBT IS A MIRROR OF OUR TIMES
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By Philip Ball
Nautilus
It is hard to see how a language model could ever truly innovate, for
that is antithetical to what it is designed to do, which is simply to
ape, mimic, and, as a statistician would put it, regress to the mean,
which tends toward the mind-numbingly drab. Language use is the
opposite of that.
SOCIAL MEDIA AND JAN 6
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By Chris Lehmann
The Nation
The House select committee on January 6 final report was strikingly
silent on the role of the news itself in fomenting the insurrection at
the US Capitol—especially as that news was filtered, customized, and
willfully distorted by social media platforms catering to the militant
wing of the Trumpian right.
NYT DEFENDS METADATA
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By Dorothee Benz
FAIR
Times op-ed makes the case _for_ corporate and government
surveillance, by demonizing freedom from such surveillance as a
dangerous plot by unnamed “technologists” who are “developing
and deploying applications of their technologies for explicitly
ideological reasons.” Their ideological agenda? Privacy. The horror!
CHINA’S DIGITAL CORPORATIONS
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By Timo Daum
Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung
The Chinese digital economy, originally created as a copy of the
Californian model, has since developed into an independent pillar of
modern Chinese society. When it comes to user numbers, market
dominance, or the amount of data generated, it can now more than hold
its own against the originals from Silicon Valley.
IN SEARCH OF A MEDIA MODEL FOR MOVEMENTS
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By Todd Wolfson and Malav Kanuga
Logic
A visionary, graspable, commonsense alternative to neoliberalism seems
out of reach. Why was the antiwar movement of 2003 more unified in its
opposition, more coordinated and connected, and more coherent in its
analysis than today? One part of the answer is that movements are no
longer reported on, and sustained by, a vibrant grassroots media
network like Indymedia.
INDEPENDENT TV SERVICE LEADER SALLY JO FIFER STEPS DOWN
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By Katie Reul
Variety
The nonprofit organization is an incubator for indie filmmakers that
both co-produces documentary films and raises funding for
production. During her tenure, Fifer tripled the ITVS operating
budget and executive produced over 1,000 films and docuseries,
including director Raoul Peck’s “I Am Not Your Negro” and Bing
Liu’s feature directorial debut, “Minding the Gap.”
SHADOWBANNING AND THE TWITTER FILES
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By Nitish Pahwa
Slate
By all accounts, the revelations from Bari Weiss and co. _still do
not demonstrate any shadowbanning_, either by its Reddit-era context
or its Twitter definition. Perhaps the continued use of the word,
then, reveals less about any real-life shadowbanning and more about
some defining aspects of the modern social media experience.
DISABILITY AND HOLLYWOOD
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By Slava Greenberg
Film Quarterly
In the documentary _Code of the Freaks_ (2020), thirteen disabled
activists, artists, and scholars respond to hundreds of movie clips
stereotypically portraying disability. The film marks a shift from
educating the general audience to addressing their own community
members as desired, even privileged, spectators.
A TRIBUTE TO AARON SWARTZ
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By Maximillian Alvarez
The Real News
Throughout his life, Swartz remained a fierce opponent to the
enclosure of knowledge for the sake of profit and control. He was a
generation-defining advocate for the democratization of information
and access to that information, and for the not yet fulfilled promise
of the digital age to bring humanity closer than we’ve ever been to
realizing that goal.
* Big Tech
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* Layoffs
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* ChatGBT
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* January 6 2021
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* social media
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* new york times
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* Digital Surveillance
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* privacy
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* China
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* Alibaba
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* Tencent
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* Baidu
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* TikTok
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* Indymedia
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* Independent Television Service
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* Sally Jo Fifer
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* disability representation
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* Code of the Freaks
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* Aaron Swartz
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* Department of Justice
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* Google
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