Did you buy a smart internet-connected toothbrush? Perhaps even now it’s DDOSing a website somewhere. CC-licensed photo by Electric Teeth on Flickr.

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There’s another post coming this week at the Social Warming Substack on Friday at 0845 UK time. Free signup.

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A selection of 9 links for you. Bright and clean. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. Observations and links welcome.

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The creator economy can’t rely on Patreon • Joan Westenberg

Westenberg does the maths:

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Creators who are burned out by renting space on someone else’s platform and playing the Shopping Channel game, squeezing dollars out of sponsored promotions, eventually shift toward a direct funding patronage model.

The promise of it is certainly attractive.

But it’s just not realistic.

From Ghost to Patreon memberships and everything in between, there are more options than ever for artists, musicians, writers, and video producers to get paid directly by their audience. It’s the 1,000 true fans theory that we’ve all been sold for the past 15 years – that all you need is a strong mailing list of people who give a shit, and a healthy living will follow.

Unfortunately, a theory is all it is.

Put simply, the numbers don’t add up. Data from Patreon and Substack suggests the average conversion rate from follower to paying fan is about 5%. This means a creator would need a total fanbase of 20,000 followers to yield 1,000 paying supporters. And building a core fanbase of 20,000 engaged followers is extremely difficult in today’s crowded creative landscape.

Relying solely on organic user payments rarely provides reliable and adequate income. Creators soon discover building a subscriber base is far easier said than done. Though some succeed due to viral content or niche popularity, creators are more often stranded in the discouraging and disappointing gap between audience reach and monetisable support.

In a crowded market, the supply of content creators hoping to profit from their work directly outstrips demand. The number of YouTube channels, podcasts, Substack newsletters, and other independently produced media has exploded. The signal-to-noise ratio is utterly unhinged. Talented creators struggle to stand out and attract an audience, let alone convince fans to pay up regularly. It is statistically unlikely that any random podcast or YouTube channel will blow up in popularity to the point of replacing the creator’s working salary through direct payments.

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*deep sigh* Did the internet make this harder, or easier?
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Why does journalism seem like it’s collapsing? Call it market failure • Fast Company

Ryan McCarthy:

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Thousands of journalists are losing jobs.

In conversations I’ve had recently, with both execs and workaday journalists like myself, people have started privately whispering two extremely grim words to describe what’s happening: market failure.

This term, normally reserved for economists and policy types, describes what happens when a free market gets so distorted that the normal rules of economics no longer apply—to the point where that market begins to exact a toll on society. Now, in the wake of this terrible year, the journalism world is starting to wonder if its market isn’t just struggling but has outright failed. And if indeed it has, no amount of hustle, innovation, or ingenuity would solve the crisis.

…So why is all of this happening at once? Ezra Klein of The New York Times posits that journalism’s “middle” is collapsing, leaving us only with large news orgs like The Times on one end and entrepreneurial Substackers on the other. Semafor editor-in-chief Ben Smith and CNN’s Oliver Darcy both point to an array of factors, including declining print and digital business and antsy billionaire owners.

None of these are sufficient to explain the sheer size of this year’s cuts. Nor can they explain why money, even large amounts of it, seems to be of no help. At the Los Angeles Times, Soon-Shiong has put nearly $1 billion into the paper since buying it in 2018, according to the company. 

For journalists at these struggling outlets, there’s another explanation. “The private market has failed,” says Matt Pearce, a reporter at the Los Angeles Times and the president of Media Guild of the West. “Part of what’s so scary is that I don’t think you can narrow it down to any one thing. It’s a multitude of things that are kind of failing simultaneously.”

Or falling precipitously. Social media traffic to news sites has been dropping for years, as platforms become actively resistant to news. Google has since become the largest driver of traffic for many big and small digital publishers. But since roughly 2022, thanks to changes in the platform’s algorithm, execs at some sites I spoke to say they’ve seen big drops in Google traffic—as much as a 40% drop almost overnight.

Imagine running a business in which one of your main modes of distribution can fall that quickly. 

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As I said yesterday: journalism in the US is in a bad place. Not sure how things look for the UK ones, either.
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Taylor Swift demands Jack Sweeney stop tracking her jet • The Washington Post

Drew Harwell:

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Taylor Swift’s attorneys have threatened legal action against a Florida college student who runs social media accounts tracking the flights of her and other celebrities’ private jets.

Jack Sweeney, a junior at the University of Central Florida, has for years run accounts that log the takeoffs and landings of planes and helicopters owned by hundreds of billionaires, politicians, Russian oligarchs and other public figures, along with estimates of their planet-warming emissions. The accounts use publicly available data from the Federal Aviation Administration and volunteer hobbyists who can track the aircraft via the signals they broadcast.

Sweeney’s accounts fueled a free-speech debate in late 2022 when X, formerly Twitter, banned Sweeney for sharing what the platform’s owner, Elon Musk, said were his “assassination coordinates.” The accounts don’t say who travels on the aircraft or where they go once the planes land.

In December, Swift’s attorney at the Washington law firm Venable wrote Sweeney a cease-and-desist letter saying Swift would “have no choice but to pursue any and all legal remedies” if he did not stop his “stalking and harassing behavior.”

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Can’t see Swift winning this one. She doesn’t own a social network, apart from anything.
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Three million malware-infected smart toothbrushes used in Swiss DDoS attacks, causing millions in damages • Tom’s Hardware

Mark Tyson:

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A recent report published by the Aargauer Zeitung (h/t Golem.de) says around three million smart toothbrushes have been infected by hackers and enslaved into botnets. The source report says this sizable army of connected dental cleansing tools was used in a DDoS attack on a Swiss company’s website. The firm’s site collapsed under the strain of the attack, reportedly resulting in the loss of millions of Euros of business.

In this particular case, the toothbrush botnet was thought to have been vulnerable due to its Java-based OS. No particular toothbrush brand was mentioned in the source report. Normally, the toothbrushes would have used their connectivity for tracking and improving user oral hygiene habits, but after a malware infection, these toothbrushes were press-ganged into a botnet.

Stefan Züger from the Swiss branch of the global cybersecurity firm Fortinet provided the publication with a few tips on what people could do to protect their own toothbrushes – or other connected gadgetry like routers, set-top boxes, surveillance cameras, doorbells, baby monitors, washing machines, and so on.

“Every device that is connected to the Internet is a potential target – or can be misused for an attack,” Züger told the Swiss newspaper. The security expert also explained that every connected device was being continually probed for vulnerabilities by hackers, so there is a real arms race between device software/firmware makers and cyber criminals. Fortinet recently connected an ‘unprotected’ PC to the internet and found it took only 20 minutes before it became malware-ridden.

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Google Maps: new Generative AI feature coming to Local Guides • Google Blog

Miriam Daniel is VP and general manager of Google Maps:

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Today, we’re introducing a new way to discover places with generative AI to help you do just that — no matter how specific, niche or broad your needs might be. Simply say what you’re looking for and our large-language models (LLMs) will analyze Maps’ detailed information about more than 250 million places and trusted insights from our community of over 300 million contributors to quickly make suggestions for where to go.

Starting in the U.S., this early access experiment launches this week to select Local Guides, who are some of the most active and passionate members of the Maps community. Their insights and valuable feedback will help us shape this feature so we can bring it to everyone over time.

Let’s say you’re visiting San Francisco and want to plan a few hours of thrifting for unique vintage finds. Just ask Maps what you’re looking for, like “places with a vintage vibe in SF.” Our AI models will analyze Maps’ rich information about nearby businesses and places along with photos, ratings and reviews from the Maps community to give you trustworthy suggestions.

You’ll see results organized into helpful categories — like clothing stores, vinyl shops and flea markets — along with photo carousels and review summaries that highlight why a place might be interesting for you to visit.

Maybe you also want to grab a bite to eat somewhere that keeps those vintage vibes going. Continue the conversation with a follow-up question like “How about lunch?” Maps will suggest places that match the vintage vibe you’re looking for, like an old-school diner nearby. From there, you can save the places to a list to stay organized, share with friends or revisit in the future.

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How much would you trust this, though? (I suppose you’d have to.) Also, orthogonally: Miriam Daniel is VP *and* GM of Maps. A couple of years ago someone else was just VP. Daniel joined in 2021 with both job titles. Does she now parlay one out when someone ascends to be good enough as GM?
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How AI is remodelling the fantasy home • The New York Times

Amanda Hess:

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In recent years, a whole AI dream-house economy has materialized. Search Pinterest for décor inspiration, and you’ll find it clogged with artificial bedrooms that lead off to websites hawking cheap home accessories. “House porn” accounts on TikTok and X churn out antiseptic loft renderings and impossible views from nonexistent Parisian apartments. The website “This House Does Not Exist” generates random new homes upon command. And dozens of AI-powered design services and apps — among them SofaBrain and RoomGPT — churn out slick images tuned to your specifications.

A jangling set of house keys was once synonymous with American success: the striver’s ultimate prize. The misery produced by this idea (see: the Great Recession) has not dampened its allure. Now, thanks to elevated interest rates, insufficient supply and corporate landlords snapping up that limited housing stock, homeownership is more unrealistic than ever. AI houses just make that unreality explicit. In the virtual market, the supply is endless, and the key is always in the lock.

Housing voyeurism has always encouraged a measure of psychic projection. On TV, the celebrity house tour and the home-improvement program are older than I am. Magazines of aspirational domesticity are older still. In the 1970s, Architectural Digest transformed from a trade publication into a showcase for publicizing the private spaces of what it called “men and women of taste, discrimination and personal achievement.” In the 1980s, viewers of “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” were prompted to imagine how they might spend their millions if they had them.

This was the lousy trade-off of American inequality: The rich got lavish homes, and everyone else got to see the pictures, and experience the release that comes from judging all of their choices up close.

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Now, though, they just look at AI versions.
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23andMe’s fall from $6bn valuation to nearly $0 • WSJ

Rolfe Winkler:

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With so many [about nine million] DNA samples banked, 23andMe dialled up drug development, splitting costs and future profits in a deal with pharmaceutical giant GSK for therapies discovered inside 23andMe’s database. 

Unlike most small biotechs, which focus on a few areas, 23andMe investigated treatments for dozens of diseases. The payoff could be big, but any one drug can cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take 10 years to get through clinical trials. 23andMe says it has found more than 50 “drug candidates.” So far two have made it to early-stage human trials. Later this year, data could be released that will show whether one of them works.

By 2022, the drug development effort grew to a 150-person outpost in South San Francisco, one that would carry forward research after GSK’s deal to share costs ended. Wojcicki said that she assumed she would be able to raise additional capital to support her development effort. But when that time came this year, interest rates were high and small drug-company stocks were out of favor. Unable to raise money, Wojcicki cut half the development team last summer. 

To create a recurring revenue stream from the tests, [CEO and founder Anne] Wojcicki has pivoted to subscriptions. As media companies launched streaming “+” channels, Wojcicki rolled out 23andMe+, offering personalized health reports, lifestyle advice and unspecified “new reports and features as discoveries are made” for an initial $229, with annual renewals of $69.

When the company last disclosed the number of subscribers a year ago, it had 640,000—less than half the number it had projected it would have by then. 

Asked about the projection, Wojcicki first denied having given one. Shown the investor presentation that included it, she studied the page and after a pause said, “There’s nothing else to say other than that we were wrong.” 

The idea behind 23andMe’s health data is that there may be worrisome information locked inside your genetic code that you’re better off knowing about. A small percentage of customers have a rare genetic variant increasing their risk of breast cancer, for example, and 23andMe’s test is a reliable screen that can lead to lifesaving doctor follow-ups. But most people don’t have a life-changing disease lurking in their genetic code. It’s not clear 23andMe has a compelling product worth $69 annually for either group.

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Likely acquisition target in the next few months or so as the cash runs short.
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13 Years Later • The Critic Magazine

Robert Hutton writes the Parliamentary sketch:

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Imagine for a moment that in early 2009, crossing Westminster Bridge, you had been hit by Gordon Brown’s motorcade and put into a coma. Waking 15 years later in St Thomas’ Hospital, you wandered out and, seeing a crowd of people in tweed jackets and mustard trousers, followed them into a hall for what turned out to be the launch of the Popular Conservatives movement. 

Who, you might have thought, are these dynamic politicians? There was a comedy turn from a chap called Rees-Mogg — looks like double-breasted suits have made a comeback — and a punchy speech from someone called Liz Truss. There is an MP with a big future ahead of her, you might have told yourself. 

And they certainly had a compelling story to tell. Why, it seems that, while you were unconscious, some bunch of complete chancers had been running Britain into the ground! As speaker after speaker explained, you’d woken up in a country in which nothing worked, where taxes were too high, the government intervened in every aspect of people’s lives, and where no one could afford to pay their bills. Thank goodness, you would have thought to yourself, there was a general election around the corner, so that this rotten government could be chucked out and replaced by somebody halfway competent. You wouldn’t be surprised if that Truss got a big job. 

For those of us who arrived at the Popular Conservatives launch with the doubtful advantage of having been awake for much of the past decade, things were a little more confusing. Popular Conservatism is certainly exciting new direction for a party which has mastered the alternative. But some vital piece of the narrative was missing. 

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Hutton always takes an acid rinse to the absurdities of the current crop of politicians, but this one was particularly abrasive about the delusions of these idiots. Truss, as a reminder, crashed the markets (and nearly destabilised the UK’s pension system) and had to resign as prime minister after 49 days, outlasted by a lettuce.
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Why Quora isn’t useful anymore: AI came for the best site on the internet • Slate

Nitish Pahwa:

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A smart and passionate community dedicated to maintaining a positive and affirmative space where the most curious netizens could gather—what sounded more ideal than that? No wonder Quora had such a growth spurt in the 2010s.

Today’s Quora, however, hardly meshes with those utopian aims. The once-beloved forum is now home to a never-ending avalanche of meaningless, repetitive sludge, filled with bizarre, nonsensical, straight-up hateful, and A.I.–generated entries along with a slurry of all-caps non-questions like “OMG! KING CHARLES SHOCK the WORLD with ROYAL BAN ON PRINCE HARRY AND MEGHAN MARKLE. SAD?” (The answer to this “question,” which garnered about 7 million views, links to a bizarre, barely functional royals-watching website called red-carpett.com.) Whereas once you could Google a question about current events and find links to thoughtful Quora answers near the top of the results, you’re now more likely to come upon, say, a bunch of folks asking in the year of our Lord 2024 whether the consistently racist Donald Trump is, in fact, racist. Or, maybe, the featured Google snippet will tell you that eggs can melt, thanks to a nonsense Quora answer caught in the search crawler.

…Quora’s shrinking utility isn’t due entirely to A.I.: Longtime writers cite issues with moderation and functionality that started well before the ChatGPT era. But its decline has been accelerating—much to the chagrin of the uniquely attached and now-fraying community—with the rise of this new knowledge broker. Earlier this month, the A.I.–accelerationist venture capital hub Andreessen Horowitz blessed Quora with a much-needed $75m investment—but only for the sake of developing its on-site generative-text chatbot, Poe.

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Thanks for nothing, a16z. Quora has indeed become a weird place, where the good content is thinly sprinkled among the newer junk. Like the broader internet, really.
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• Why do social networks drive us a little mad? • Why does angry content seem to dominate what we see? • How much of a role do algorithms play in affecting what we see and do online? • What can we do about it? • Did Facebook have any inkling of what was coming in Myanmar in 2016? Read Social Warming, my latest book, and find answers – and more.

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Errata, corrigenda and ai no corrida: none notified