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Looksmaxxing: Inside the dangerous trend taking over the feeds of young men | 60 Minutes
Impressionable young men under the spell of a dangerous phenomenon called looksmaxxing.
‘Enshittification’: how we got the internet no one asked for – podcast
Do you ever get the feeling that the internet isn’t what it used to be? Well, tech critic Cory Doctorow thinks you’re right – and he has a term to describe it too: ‘enshittification’. He lays out his three-step theory to Nosheen Iqbal, explaining why sites from Amazon to Google to Instagram seem to offer a worsening experience … and what can be done to stop it.
Is AI the greatest art heist in history?
Generative AI, trained on billions of images scraped from the internet without consent, is seen as a threat to artists and creative industries. The author, an artist, recounts how AI-generated images, resembling their work, began appearing online, leading to job losses and the devaluation of human creativity. The author argues that this is not inevitable progress but a power grab by the tech elite, who view human interaction and creativity as obstacles.
‘It has your name on it, but I don’t think it’s you’: how AI is impersonating musicians on Spotify
Musicians are facing a growing problem of AI-generated impersonation on streaming platforms like Spotify. This issue, which has affected artists across various genres, involves fake albums being uploaded under their names, often with unrelated music. While Spotify acknowledges the problem and is working on solutions, the onus currently falls on artists to monitor and remove these fraudulent tracks.
The Downfall of Skibidi Toilet
Taylor Lorenz examines the growing backlash surrounding Skibidi Toilet after its shift from an internet-native phenomenon into a studio-managed franchise. She explains how DaFuqBoom’s surreal viral series became a massive cultural hit, then lost fan confidence once Invisible Narratives took control and launched Emergence. The video explores the leaked call that deepened the controversy, the #BringBackBoom movement, and the broader tension between online creator culture and Hollywood ownership.
AI influencers are here. Can you spot them?
On this week’s “Galaxy Brain” episode, Charlie Warzel is joined by New York Times technology reporter Tiffany Hsu to discuss the rise of AI influencers—synthetic avatars, often indistinguishable from real people, that are flooding social-media feeds to sell supplements and promote brands. Hsu unpacks her reporting on the combination of forces converging around it, including the wellness industry, a historically fertile ground for scammers. The pair discuss how the volume of synthetic content online is producing a new kind of epistemic exhaustion: a fatigue so deep that many people have simply stopped caring whether what they're seeing is real. So is authenticity already beside the point? And is an audience’s emotional response—rather than the truth behind the image—the only currency that matters?
The enshittification of the internet, explained
Cory Doctorow says the internet is getting worse and he has a theory why. In conversation with The National’s Ian Hanomansing, the Canadian author explains his term ‘enshittification’ and the questions it raises about the power of big tech.
The Gray Area: How capitalism ate the culture
Kalle Lasn has been trying to jam consumer culture for decades. Now he thinks that was only the beginning. The Gray Area talks with the Adbusters founder about advertising, culture jamming, meme warfare, surveillance capitalism, and why he believes the old left-right political script is dead. Lasn argues that consumer culture is not just shallow or manipulative but part of a system pushing us toward collapse. His answer is bigger than protest and weirder than reform. He wants a cultural revolution that starts with new ideas, new language, and maybe an entirely new politics.
Is the UK falling out of love with social media?
The Guardian reports that social media is losing its ‘social aspect’. As the article notes: “In an age of video posts, people are consuming their feed more as entertainment than as interaction. Matt Navarra, a social media consultant, says it is a case of social media now entering into a mature phase with ‘smarter, safer participation’ where people are ‘less willing to perform for a broad audience’. This concentrates content creation in the hands of creators and influencers, says Navarra, while everyone else plays the role of consumer. ‘The gap between who creates and who consumes is widening and that is reshaping what social media actually is.’”
How China fell for a lobster: What an AI assistant tells us about Beijing's ambition
China’s embrace of artificial intelligence, particularly the open-source AI assistant OpenClaw, has sparked both excitement and concern. Driven by government encouragement, OpenClaw’s popularity surged, with users employing it for tasks like e-commerce and stock trading. However, concerns about costs, security risks, and potential job displacement have led to a cooling of the initial hype and government intervention.
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