Ben Werdmuller
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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

One year after Dobbs leak: Looking back at the summer that changed abortion

“The 19th spoke with people from across the country about those historic days: lawmakers, physicians, organizers on both sides of the abortion fight and pregnant people navigating a new world.” What a newsroom.  #Democracy [Link]

02 May 2023

AI in the newsroom

I’m focusing on the intersection of technology, media, and democracy. Subscribe by email to get every update. By now, you’ve been exposed to Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, DALL-E 2, and GPT-4. It seems a lot like magic: a bot that seems

02 May 2023

Elon Musk thinks he’s got a “major win-win” for news publishers with…micropayments.

“In a digital universe where every news story is behind a hard paywall — one impenetrable to the non-paying reader — then a micropayments model might make sense. But that’s not the digital universe we live in.”  #Media [Link]

02 May 2023

The web's most important decision

“But also, and this is important to mention, they believed in the web and in Berners-Lee. The folks making these decisions understood its potential and wanted the web to flourish. This wasn’t a decision driven by profit. It was a generous and enthusiastic vote of confidence in the global

01 May 2023

The Real Difference Between European and American Butter

“Simply put, American regulations for butter production are quite different from those of Europe. The USDA defines butter as having at least 80% fat, while the EU defines butter as having between 82 and 90% butterfat and a maximum of 16% water. The higher butterfat percentage in European butter is

01 May 2023

Economists Warn That AI Like ChatGPT Will Increase Inequality

“Most empirical studies find that AI technology will not reduce overall employment. However, it is likely to reduce the relative amount of income going to low-skilled labour, which will increase inequality across society. Moreover, AI-induced productivity growth would cause employment redistribution and trade restructuring, which would tend to further increase

01 May 2023

Blue skies over Mastodon

“One of big things I’ve come to believe in my couple of decades working on internet stuff is that great product design is always holistic: Always working in relation to a whole system of interconnected parts, never concerned only with atomic decisions. And this perspective just straight-up cannot emerge

01 May 2023

The notable list: May 2023

I’m focusing on the intersection of technology, media, and democracy. Subscribe by email to get every update. This is my monthly roundup of the links, books, and media I found interesting. Do you have suggestions? Let me know! Books Nonfiction Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond. More of a

01 May 2023

Online Ads Are Serving Us Lousy, Overpriced Goods

“The products shown in targeted ads were, on average, roughly 10 percent more expensive than what users could find by searching online. And the products were more than twice as likely to be sold by lower-quality vendors as measured by their ratings by the Better Business Bureau.”  #Business [Link]

06 Apr 2023

ChatGPT is making up fake Guardian articles. Here’s how we’re responding

“But the question for responsible news organisations is simple, and urgent: what can this technology do right now, and how can it benefit responsible reporting at a time when the wider information ecosystem is already under pressure from misinformation, polarisation and bad actors.” #AI [Link]

06 Apr 2023

Clarence Thomas Secretly Accepted Luxury Trips From GOP Donor

“These trips appeared nowhere on Thomas’ financial disclosures. His failure to report the flights appears to violate a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress and federal officials to disclose most gifts, two ethics law experts said. He also should have disclosed his trips on the

06 Apr 2023

Why journalists can't quit Twitter

“For the moment, though, Musk has learned the same lesson Jack Dorsey did: Twitter is extremely hard to kill. And for the journalists who have come to rely on it, there is almost no indignity they won’t suffer to get their fix.”  #Media [Link]

05 Apr 2023
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Ben Werdmuller

Ben Werdmuller

Writing at the intersection of technology, journalism, and community.

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Ben Werdmuller explores the intersection of technology, democracy, and society. Always independently published, reader-supported, and free to read.