Ben Werdmuller helps leaders at newsrooms, non-profits, and mission-driven organizations to navigate their biggest technology challenges.
Daniel van Strien, a machine learning librarian at Hugging Face, took a million Bluesky posts and turned them into a dataset expressly for training AI models: “This dataset could be used for “training and testing language models on social media content, analyzing social media posting patterns, studying conversation structures and
Technology
[Tyler Fisher] Tyler Fisher has built a Nuzzel-like service for Bluesky: "Sill connects to your Bluesky and Mastodon accounts and aggregates the most popular links in your network. (Yes, a little like Nuzzel.)" It's a personal project for now but there's more to come:
Notable links
[Melissa Sanchez and Mica Rosenberg at ProPublica] Important resentments coming to the surface here: "Her anger is largely directed at President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party for failing to produce meaningful reforms to the immigration system that could benefit people like her. In our reporting on the new
Media
[Brian Stelter at CNN] CNN's Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter reports that multiple very wealthy individuals, including Elon Musk, have enquired about buying MSNBC: "I spent Sunday on the phone with sources to gauge what might be going on. I learned that more than one benevolent billionaire
Technology
[Wes Davis at The Verge] Interesting announcement from the European Commission: "The European Union says Twitter alternative Bluesky violates the EU Digital Services Act rules around information disclosure, reports Reuters. But since Bluesky isn’t yet big enough to be considered a “very large online platform” under the DSA,
Notable links
[Mike Masnick at MSNBC] As Mike Masnick points out here, the hypocrisy from Elon Musk about collusion between tech and government is staggering: "Before, we were told that White House officials’ merely reaching out to social media companies about election misinformation was a democracy-ending threat. Now, the world’s
Fediverse
[Christine Lemmer-Webber] Christine Lemmer-Webber has written a superb post that sets out to ask how decentralized Bluesky is but goes far deeper into the different models at play in decentralized social networking. It's required reading for anyone who cares about the space. "What many users fleeing X-Twitter
Culture
[Annalee Newitz at The Believer] Boots Riley is a national treasure. I loved this interview with him in The Believer: "BLVR: Do you think that all expression is propaganda? BR: The word propaganda got popularized in different ways at different times. But our generation knows it as a derogatory
In the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin discusses my workplace, the journalism it undertakes, and why it's important (gift link). I lead technology, and while I sit on the business side of the operation, it's an absolute privilege to support these journalists. This is on point: “The
Fediverse
[Oxford Martin School] The Oxford Martin School is a multidisciplinary research institution at the University of Oxford focused on tackling global challenges and shaping a sustainable future through innovation and collaboration. It ran a study on the societal implications of decentralized social media and found that "such platforms offer
Technology
[Dan Milmo at The Guardian] The Department of Justice has filed its proposed remedies to Google's illegal monopoly over search services: "The proposals filed to a Washington federal court include the forced sale of the Chrome browser and a five-year ban from entering the browser market; a
Education
[Massachusetts Institute of Technology] Changes to financial aid at MIT: "Undergraduates with family income below $200,000 can expect to attend MIT tuition-free starting next fall, thanks to newly expanded financial aid. Eighty percent of American households meet this income threshold." If your family makes less than $100,