David Zaslav was paid $51.9 million last year for "running" Warner Bros. Discovery (into a ditch).
Meritocracy is a lie.
#cmonson
It is really obnoxious that Google is so desperate to push Gemini into everything that, when I disabled it months ago, I also lost the ability to filter my Gmail to unread email only, which had been a basic feature for ages.
I'm slowly shifting email to my owned domain and using Thunderbird, but I still get a lot of important email via Gmail and can't cut the cord just yet. 🤬
The headline and actual text of PW's coverage of their own US Book Show suggests they expected AI to be a big deal across the program, but it was actually kind of dud, when it came up at all. 🙃
Maybe it's time to stop trying to make Fetch happen?
"More importantly, it’s an insult to readers."
Maris Kreizman nails the heart of the problem with the (latest) "AI-generated" newspaper supplement fiasco.
The executives who thought this was a great revenue idea — from Hearst/King to the individual papers who blindly took it on without vetting it — don't care about readers.
Practically every objectively boneheaded business decision publishers make is rooted in that fact: a disdain for readers.
https://lithub.com/you-see-generative-ai-is-bad-at-doing-my-job/
Someone finally convinced me to "Google myself" on Perplexity, and I understand its appeal now; the ultimate ego stroke for anyone with a decent online presence over several years.
I know the handful of articles and interviews that helped generate Perplexity's hyperbolic summaries, which suggest the publishing industry should be very different right now. 🤔
Since I'm apparently a pretty big deal, though, shouldn't I be making a lot more money and have a lot more influence than I do? #cmonson
Would people still play around with these tools if they understood how they actually work and the resources they consume?
Or maybe they just don't care and attention is more important than anything else?
#cmonson 😞
Substack has convinced so many people that they're independent creators who own their newsletters and audiences, but every single reference to them is framed as either "their Substack" or "on Substack."
Even worse, many of them use this framing themselves.
When you unsubscribe. they note you'll lose access to personalized recommendations, as if those "recommendations" would be a reason to change my mind.
If you had kids, they were useless before they launched profiles (the second time), and afterwards, they were still useless because their over-hyped categorization and algorithm wasn't nearly as sophisticated as they (and so many tech pundits) claimed it was.
There is no timeline where The Electric State is of interest to me. #cmonson
"At Amazon, we assumed that size and visibility would be enough to attract customers, but we underestimated the power of existing user habits. We never validated our core assumptions before investing heavily in solutions."
The company that claims to put customers first didn't bother to learn about those customers when they thought they could Bigfoot their way into #gaming.
Walter's unequivocal response will surely ensure future reporting by other journalists will be more nuanced. Right? Right? 🤨
Bonus points for acknowledging B&N's underrated "influence" on those sales, too!
Meanwhile, it's 2025 and there's still not a single industry organization that has prioritized figuring out how to measure libraries' impact on book sales — other than the whispered accusations of digital lending hurting those sales. 🙃
"But the Veilguard team was already climbing uphill for years before hitting the market." @polygon
Gaming has a management problem, not a sales problem.
When a long-delayed sequel in an up--and-down franchise launches to mostly positive feedback and sells 1.5m copies in its first two months is considered a failure, it's the executives who should be laid off, not the people who made the game.
Because I want no part of Google's Beta Bullshit Machine, I turned off Gmail's Smart features and personalization options in Settings.
In response, these jerks turned off the custom folders for Social, Updates, and Promotions, so now all of my email goes to my main Inbox.
👀
Is that supposed to make me change my mind, or will it just push me further away from relying on Google products for anything anymore?
Google has shoved its beta bullshit machine into the day job's Workspace account with no way to opt out individually.
Since AI's Inevitability isn't happening organically, I guess it's just going to be forced down everyone's throats until inflated valuations allow investors to cash out before the bubble bursts.
Somehow, most mainstream coverage picked up on Zuckerberg's cynical capitulation, but the @eff rushed out a bizarre statement praising his announcement for bringing "more freedom of expression and transparency to platforms—regardless of their political motivation."
After getting ratioed here, they added a disclaimer claiming they were unaware of the specifics of the changes, but have left the post up for now. 🤡💩
This would be funny if it wasn't yet another glaring example of the predictable downsides of forcing "AI" into every service, especially when you can't guarantee the quality of the output, nor afford to have an approval layer before you expose that output to users.
https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2025/01/fables-reader-summary-features-racism-and-probably-ai/
The resistance to leave Subs!ack from the free crowd (most of whom know and/or admit they'll never be able monetize their newsletter) is bizarre, because there are free alternatives.
Like, what are you clinging to exactly that hanging in the Nazi Bar is a necessary compromise? I suspect the Venn diagram of these people and the last to leave Twitter is an almost perfect circle?
So the Bookseller just publishes any nonsense as an opinion column if you're the CEO of a company with something to sell the industry? #cmonson
This is literally the "flood the zone with shit" strategy that has proven so effective over the past several years. The main goal is sow mistrust and confusion, and clumsy analyses like this feed right into it. #cmonson
"To our surprise, there was no deceptive intent in 39 of the 78 cases in the database."
What a weird way to frame a story that shows 50% of AI use *WAS* deceptive and is an obvious accelerant for creating and distributing misinformation — for which there is A LOT of demand. #cmonson
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