Reading by adults in America is becoming a fringe pastime, which in turn creates problems for teachers – and society. CC-licensed photo by Ed Yourdon on Flickr.

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A selection of 9 links for you. Not available on video. I’m @charlesarthur on Twitter. On Threads: charles_arthur. On Mastodon: https://newsie.social/@charlesarthur. On Bluesky: @charlesarthur.bsky.social. Observations and links welcome.

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The end of reading is here • The Atlantic

Rose Horowitch:

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Americans, once members of a proudly literate society, read much less than they used to. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, which conducts the most comprehensive survey of the nation’s reading habits, fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022. Only 38% read a novel or short story. A study analyzing 236,000 responses to the American Time Use Survey found that the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023. (The study looked at people who had read a book, magazine, or newspaper; listened to an audiobook; or read an e-book.)

Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book: last year, 57% of Americans placed a bet.

The decline in reading cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels. Even the demographics that traditionally read the most—retirees, women, and college graduates—have seen a collapse.

The books that people do read are simpler than they used to be. New York Times best sellers today have sentences that are about one-third shorter than they were a century ago. Longer sentences aren’t inherently better. But their former ubiquity suggests an age when Americans had the inclination and ability to read serious works of literature. In 1958, the English translation of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago was the best-selling novel of the year, according to Publishers Weekly. Pasternak writes in long, complex sentences: “On that warm gray morning in the mountains, Zhivago felt sorry for the Tsar, was disturbed at the thought that such diffident reserve and shyness could be the essential characteristics of an oppressor, that a man so weak could imprison, hang, or pardon.”

Last year’s top-selling novel was Sunrise on the Reaping, the latest in the Hunger Games young-adult series. Brian Bannon, the chief librarian at the New York Public Library, told me that young-adult fiction is one of the library’s most popular offerings—including among decidedly not-young adults.

…In 2024, in a national test, just 35% of high-school seniors were “proficient” at skills such as analyzing complex fictional themes and evaluating the effectiveness of an author’s argument. About the same number scored below “basic,” meaning that they may struggle to draw conclusions from concepts explicitly included in a text, or to use context clues to determine the meaning of an unknown word. Adult-literacy scores have also dropped: Nearly 30% of American adults cannot paraphrase or make inferences from a multipage text. In 2017, that number was less than 20%.

And yet, strangely, Americans are probably reading more words than ever before. What has changed is what they read, and how. People are bombarded with emails, text messages, X posts, Reddit threads, Instagram captions. This explosion of textual fragments has come at the expense of devoting sustained attention to longer written works that convey rich and complicated information.

…The written word is fundamentally different from oral language. Writing detaches the message from the messenger, allowing for a more dispassionate spread of information than was possible in oral societies.

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That last point in this very insightful piece is crucial. With audio and video it’s easy for the narrator to lie or dissemble without it being immediately obvious. With writing, it’s much harder to hide the gaps.

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Lawsuit: man used Grok to make 7,000 sex images of stepdaughter, then shot himself • Ars Technica

Ashley Belanger:

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One of the most horrific cases of allegedly Grok-generated child sex images was shared in a proposed class action lawsuit that was expanded Tuesday. Now, young girls not only accuse X and xAI of building toxic AI “nudify” tools but also of shielding child predators by obstructing police investigations into Grok-generated child sex abuse materials (CSAM).

In March, a girl’s stepfather took his own life after cops discovered that he had used Grok to create 7,000 sexually explicit images using one photo taken when his stepdaughter was 11 years old, the amended complaint alleged.

Grok allowed the man to generate extreme images depicting incest and rape without flagging any harmful behavior, the complaint said. Seemingly, xAI’s child safety system only intervened after the man input a prompt for “gang rape.” That request sent a CyberTip to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), which alerted law enforcement to the AI CSAM.

Yet the harm was not stopped then, either. Despite mandatory reporting requirements to share information like a user’s IP address when CSAM is flagged, xAI repeatedly refused to help cops or NCMEC identify the user, the complaint alleged. For weeks, xAI allegedly “obstructed this investigation at every turn” and made it harder for “law enforcement efforts to locate, identify, and apprehend the perpetrator.”

Eventually, the stepfather was arrested after cops obtained a warrant to seize his devices. That’s when “a forensic review revealed approximately 7,000 AI-generated images and videos” depicting his stepdaughter, which were allegedly produced using Grok. Without Grok providing users with easy access to “undressing” capabilities, his family doubts he ever would have generated the harmful images, which he allegedly trafficked online in trade for “CSAM produced by other child sex predators.”

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One can only hope that Elon Musk is somehow made to pay for his dereliction of duty towards everyone in the blast radius of his stupid ideas.
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Outcry as Meta lets users make AI images from public Instagram profile pics • BBC News

Laura Cress:

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Meta is facing a backlash over its new AI tool Muse Image, which can generate pictures using other people’s profile pictures without telling them.

It is one of many text-to-image tools publicly available, which as the name suggests can create pictures from a few lines of simple written text. Muse Image is available through the Meta AI app and web browser, as well as on WhatsApp and in Instagram Stories for US users.

While Meta says users can opt out of their image being used even with a public account, Donald Campbell, advocacy director at tech justice non-profit Foxglove told the BBC it was an “obvious recipe for disaster”.

“We’ve already seen a catalogue of harms from non-consensual AI-altered images on social platforms just in the past year,” he said. “It is hard to see why Mark Zuckerberg thinks facilitating yet more of this creepy image manipulation is a good idea.”

The feature is likely to face heightened scrutiny as regulators and campaigners raise concerns about AI-generated images, with Ofcom currently investigating X over Grok’s role in creating and sharing non-consensual AI-altered images of real people.

Privacy International also criticised the feature, telling the BBC it was “the latest sign AI companies see people’s images and data as raw material to be exploited”.

“Pulling real users into generated photos without explicit consent is a privacy landmine waiting to detonate,” one user wrote on X.

Meta said a dedicated setting, separate from account privacy controls, allows users to opt out even if they have a public account. To do so, users must go to Instagram’s settings menu, select “Sharing and Reuse” and switch off “Allow people to reuse your content on Instagram and with AI features at Meta” for posts and reels. These settings only appear if you have a public account – if your account is private, it will already be unable to be shared

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Always the same: Meta makes any potentially exploitative new setting into an opt-out, there’s an outcry, it pauses the rollout for a little while, then continues again with the same mode. From News Feed to everything else. The scorpion never changes.
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BBC and Channel 4 in talks to create British streaming champion • Financial Times

Daniel Thomas:

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The BBC and Channel 4 are in talks about combining their streaming services, according to the corporation’s new director-general Matt Brittin, who called for a British “sovereign platform” to compete with US tech giants such as Netflix. 

In his first grilling by MPs on parliament’s culture committee, Brittin said on Wednesday that the BBC had “an approach and a conversation” with Channel 4 over the plan, which could see the smaller public service broadcaster join forces with the BBC’s iPlayer.

The UK’s public service broadcasters are facing existential threats as their younger audiences shift to global digital platforms and streaming services, forcing them to cut costs and seek greater scale to compete.

“We have had an approach and have had a discussion with Channel 4,” said Brittin. “In the world of the ITV-Sky merger, Channel 4 looks very sub-scale. All of these mergers are driven by the need to have scale. One opportunity for them would be in partnership with the BBC, having content on iPlayer, but continuing to be ad-funded.”

Channel 4 was approached for comment.

Brittin said there was “an array of commercial, audience, public service and technical issues” but that the prospect of this tie-up would be explored “as quickly as we’re able, because I think that’s something that’s going to be important for public service media”.

He added: “This is a moment of real jeopardy, because of the scale and because of the influence of a handful of US and Chinese tech players [which] will dominate the creation and distribution of content.”

Brittin also said that there was a “compelling” argument for making UK viewers of streaming services pay the licence fee to help raise money for the corporation, criticising the existing regime as “yesterday’s model, it’s a busted flush, it’s no longer fit for purpose”.

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He really did put a lot out there. The streaming service is an obvious move; ITV being bought by Sky (owned by US company Comcast) means it probably won’t want to play, and Channel 5 being owned by Paramount (also American) also won’t want to be in it.

Brittin might also get the ear of the government, because they’ll trust his prior work at Google.
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Netflix dabbles in shorter video content with its new set of publisher deals with Variety, others • TechCrunch

Sarah Perez:

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Netflix is again experimenting with new types of content on its streaming service, as the binge model has grown dated. After expanding its service to include live content, video games, and, more recently, video podcasts, the streamer is now adding video content from publishers such as BuzzFeed Studios, Condé Nast, Hearst Magazines, People Inc., Tastemade, and various Penske Media PMX brands, like Variety, THR, Billboard, Eater, Rolling Stone, and IndieWire.

Starting August 3, Netflix will offer video content from these publishers to subscribers in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, according to Netflix and other reports released on Tuesday by Netflix’s deal partners like Variety, Billboard, THR, Rolling Stone, and others.

The new videos will vary widely in length — some run just two to three minutes, while others stretch past 20, the partners said.

For Netflix, the deal is a low-risk way to test whether its audience has an appetite for the kind of content that’s typically native to the web, such as news, lifestyle, how-tos, and other short-form formats that tend to be cheaper and faster to produce than a scripted series. If it works, Netflix could eventually build similar content in-house, though the company hasn’t said that’s the plan.

The lineup will include both licensed archival and ongoing series coming to Netflix, including BuzzFeed Celeb’s “30 Questions” and “Tasty”; Vanity Fair’s “Lie Detector Test” and “How Well Do They Know Each Other?”; AD’s “Walking Tour”; Elle’s “Where Is the Lie?”; Harper’s Bazaar’s “Burning Questions”; Billboard’s “24 Hours”; People’s “My Life in Pictures”; Travel + Leisure’s “Travel Unfiltered”; Tastemade’s “Struggle Meals”; and more.

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This feels very desperate. Is this really going to increase retention?
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Netflix and the value of streaming shovelware • Garbage Day

Ryan Broderick:

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According to Bloomberg, both dramas and comedies are suffering equally. But comedian Adam Conover put out a great video essay last week that went deeper into how comedies, in particular, are suffering in the streaming age. Conover highlights a bunch of problems — lack of studio audiences, bloated over-arching plotlines meant for binging, smaller writers’ rooms — but basically comes to the same conclusion as everyone else. You can’t get to know characters if you have to wait years to watch another season. Even newer streaming sitcoms, like FX’s Adults, which will, this year, put out its second season in as many years, and is not on Netflix, will still have only run for 12 episodes total.

But there’s also the issue of Netflix’s season three curse, or the oft-repeated gripe from viewers that the streamer tends to cancel the majority of their shows before the third season. Which may be training viewers to not even bother getting invested until a show is popular enough to last. There are a lot of theories as to why this happens, but I think this 2019 Deadline report sounds the most plausible. Basically, Netflix pays upfront production costs for both originals and outside productions, owns the international distribution, and offers a massive pay bump if the show makes it to season three. This makes sense if your business model is based on gaining new subscriptions. You’re not buying long-running audience-sustaining properties to reliably run ads against. You’re buying newness. So there’s very little incentive in, say, building a solid audience for your live action Avatar: The Last Airbender adaptation, but there’s a huge incentive in announcing you have one.

But what’s fascinating about this is how closely it mirrors the problems happening across the digital media landscape right now. Even though a Netflix show isn’t supported by the same revenue model as a YouTuber like MrBeast, the (losing) formula for producing content appears to be the same. They’re both using historical data to iterate and pump out videos that are, at first, equally popular, but eventually less sticky culturally and then eventually less popular.

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The question of why Netflix is seeing people give up on second seasons of series is exercising large chunks of the internet, though everyone has the same answer: the ability to binge reduces the long-term value of a series, and everyone then knows there will be a loooong wait between series. Both are avoidable, and used to be avoided by networks which commissioned multiple series and many episodes of them.

Very few series can survive both bingeing and long pauses. Notice how Apple, Amazon and now also Netflix are doing weekly episodes for various new series.
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Microsoft Xbox is the new burning platform • GamesBeat

Jon Kimmich worked at Microsoft for 16 years, and is now CEO of Software Illuminati, a games consultancy:

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Tl;dr: this feels like the sequel to situation Microsoft has already lived through once, memorialized in a memo called “The Burning Platform.”

That memo came from Stephen Elop at Nokia in 2011, when Nokia was watching Apple and Android turn the mobile phone business into a platform war it was no longer winning. Elop told the story of a worker on an oil platform in the North Sea that had caught fire. The choice was to stay on the platform and be consumed, or jump into freezing water and hope to survive. His point was that a burning platform forces behaviour that would otherwise seem unthinkable.

It was not technically a Microsoft memo, but it became part of Microsoft’s mobile story almost immediately because Nokia’s answer was Windows Phone; Microsoft eventually bought Nokia’s handset business; and the whole episode became a case study in how quickly a dominant position can evaporate when the platform underneath the business shifts.

That was Nokia’s moment. This is Xbox’s.

First, the human part: this is tragic for the employees impacted. These are talented people, many of whom did exactly what they were asked to do. But as a business event, it is hardly shocking. People I know inside and around Xbox have been talking about the state of things for years. This platform has been smoldering for a long time.

Xbox did not come into being because Microsoft wanted to dabble in consumer electronics. It was born out of strategic necessity. The concern was that another company could use the living room as a wedge into Microsoft’s dominance in the home office. If Sony, AOL, cable companies, or some other consumer platform became the place where families networked, communicated, bought media, and eventually worked, Windows’ centrality could erode. Xbox was Microsoft planting a flag in the living room before someone else turned it into the next platform layer.

… ‘Every screen is an Xbox’ was the later expression of the same desire: stop being trapped by the console cycle and become a services platform. But Game Pass subscriptions flattened out. And if you’re not expanding, you’re contracting. Slowly, and then increasingly faster, until the big crunch at the end.

And here Microsoft is again, standing on another burning platform.

The console installed base is smaller than it needed to be. Sony owns the premium console mindshare. Nintendo owns the premium mobile console mindshare. Steam owns PC distribution. Mobile is controlled by Apple and Google. Cloud has not become a mass-market replacement for local play. And Xbox carries a cost structure built for a growth curve that did not arrive.

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None of this looks good. As a reminder, Microsoft eventually wrote down the entire Nokia purchase price and gave up on Windows Phone.
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Waymo reports teen riders for bad behavior and delivers them to the police • Los Angeles Times

Caroline Petrow-Cohen:

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A self-driving Waymo reported two teens to San Mateo, Calif., police on Monday after they were found drinking alcohol and shooting toy guns in the back of the vehicle.

According to a social media post from the San Mateo Police Department, officers detained two 15-year-olds after the Waymo they were riding in contacted the department and stopped in a parking lot until law enforcement arrived.

“Parents do you know where your teens are?” the San Mateo Police Department wrote on Facebook following the incident. “Waymo does!”

Officers removed both teens from the vehicle and determined they were using toy guns to shoot Orbeez out the windows. Orbeez are small, water-absorbing beads sold at toy stores. “Toy guns, water guns, and BB guns all pose real dangers, especially to an untrained eye,” the Police Department said. “The simple handling of them can cause fear in [passersby].””

A video posted on Facebook shows at least five officers and a police dog responding to the scene and approaching the Waymo with their weapons raised.

Waymo did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Waymo vehicles have internal cameras and microphones that may be used in an emergency or to “promote safety and security,” according to Waymo’s online support page. The cameras are also used to ensure the vehicles are clean and to help find lost items, according to the support page.

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Wonderful way to almost get the children killed. Well done, Waymo. (Thanks Joe S for the link.)
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Zombie ‘who owns Unix?’ lawsuit comes alive again • The Register

Simon Sharwood:

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The ancient dispute over ownership of UNIX, and perhaps Linux too, has returned to court. Again.

As The Register has explained many, many, times since this matter first went to court in 2003, the roots of the case are the 1998 alliance between IBM and a company called the Santa Cruz Operation which sold a version of UNIX for x86 CPUs. Those two companies, plus Intel and Sequent, created “Project Monterey” – an effort to create a unified version of UNIX that could run on multiple processors.

By 2001, Project Monterey was close to delivering a unified UNIX, an achievement made possible by blending code from IBM and SCO.

By then, a little project called “Linux” already ran on multiple processors. Big Blue decided Linux was the future and bailed from Project Monterey – then allegedly contributed some Monterey code to the open-source project and to its own AIX and Z operating systems. SCO felt it owned some of that code, so sued IBM.

SCO and its successors struggled to survive, but interested parties kept the lawsuit alive because the chance to emerge as owner of parts of the Linux codebase, and IBM’s code, had the potential to turn into a colossal payday.

The case and its successors ended in 2021, with a settlement that saw litigants agree to end the matter without IBM admitting fault.

But by then, SCO had sold its software to a biz called Xinuos that decided to fight on.

The Xinuos case has burbled along quietly since, and on June 22nd reached the milestone of a hearing.

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Oh no. It just will not die. This will probably go on until the Unix clocks turns over, in January 2038. It’s the tech world’s Gradgrind v Gradgrind. (Thanks Wendy G for the link.)
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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