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VOICE ARCHIVE

Ben Smith

@benyt
93 posts
2022-02-04
Just a huge media story https://twitter.com/...
2022-02-04 View on X
Amazon

Amazon reports Q4 revenue up 9% YoY to $137.4B, net income up 98% to $14.3B, AWS revenue up 40% to $17.8B, and FY 2021 revenue up 22% to $469.8B; stock up 10%+

SEATTLE—(BUSINESS WIRE) February 3, 2022—Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced financial results for its fourth quarter ended December 31, 2021.

Just a huge media story https://twitter.com/...
2022-02-04 View on X
CNBC

Amazon breaks out advertising services revenue for the first time: $9.7B for Q4, up 32% YoY, and $31.2B for FY 2021; subscription services grew 15% to $8.1B

arguably a coop fee/tax on 3rd party merchants who sell on Amazon — accounted for a third of all revenue. And by itself ads is a $30B/yr business $amzn https://twitter.com/... Matt...

2022-01-10
“This might suggest that decentralization itself is not actually of immediate practical or pressing importance to the majority of people downstream...” https://twitter.com/...
2022-01-10 View on X
r/ethereum on Reddit

Ethereum co-founder responds: “the properly authenticated decentralized blockchain world is coming”, but is slowed by “limited technical resources and funding”

I've been thinking about Matt Mullenweg's response to Brian Armstrong's response … Rick Webb / Webb Chatham Report : Good morning. Hello. How are you? #562 Cooper Midroni / Future ...

“This might suggest that decentralization itself is not actually of immediate practical or pressing importance to the majority of people downstream...” https://twitter.com/...
2022-01-10 View on X
Moxie Marlinspike

How Web3 apps and wallets inevitably depend on centralized services like OpenSea, Infura, and Alchemy, which don't even provide authenticated responses

2022-01-09
“This might suggest that decentralization itself is not actually of immediate practical or pressing importance to the majority of people downstream...” https://twitter.com/...
2022-01-09 View on X
r/ethereum on Reddit

Ethereum co-founder responds: “the properly authenticated decentralized blockchain world is coming”, but is slowed by “limited technical resources and funding”

The word “server” imo is not very useful in the blockchain context; it combines together a bundle of concepts that are best treated separately.

2022-01-03
A Former Facebook Executive Pushes to Open Social Media's ‘Black Boxes’ https://www.nytimes.com/...
2022-01-03 View on X
New York Times

After leaving Meta, Brandon Silverman, co-founder of Facebook-acquired CrowdTangle, has helped craft a bipartisan bill to boost social networks' transparency

The co-founder of CrowdTangle has been working with Congress on legislation to make tech companies disclose their inner workings. Tweets: @benyt , @lauraedelson2 , @apmckay , @elip...

2021-11-16
.@broderick on the crypto culture wars https://www.garbageday.email/ ...
2021-11-16 View on X
Garbage Day

As some Twitter users mock NFTs and Web3 believers retaliate, a16z, Meta, and others are investing in the crypto industry to remake the internet in their image

Read to the end for a really good supercut  —  Who Will Win The Web3 Culture War?  —  On Friday, I wrote about how furries …

2021-10-20
A normal company in this kind of rolling crisis swaps out the CEO. Facebook can't do that, so.... https://twitter.com/...
2021-10-20 View on X
The Verge

Source: Facebook is planning to change its company name to reflect its focus on the metaverse as soon as next week at Connect, its annual AR/VR conference

Mark Zuckerberg wants to be known for building the metaverse  —  Facebook is planning to change its company name next week to reflect …

2021-10-16
Bit of a treasure hunt for the sponsored-content disclosure on this one! https://www.vice.com/...
2021-10-16 View on X
VICE

Some indie game developers say connecting with fans on Discord is helping humanize developer teams, shielding them from backlash and abuse

Ian Birnbaum / VICE : Tweets: @benyt , @sullydish , and @clarknova1 Tweets: Ben Smith / @benyt : Bit of a treasure hunt for the sponsored-content disclosure on this one! https://w...

2021-10-08
@MikeIsaac The Times is in business with Facebook too...
2021-10-08 View on X
NPR

Facebook's research on teens and mental health is not as conclusive as it appears, relying on teens' self-reported views and a small sample size

With each Facebook crisis, we become savvier … Jean Twenge / The Conversation : Facebook's own internal documents offer a blueprint for making social media safer for teens Maxwell ...

2021-08-18
An key part of this is that “misinformation” can also serve as a back door for the return of total journalistic confidence about our own objectivity. https://harpers.org/...
2021-08-18 View on X
Harper's

A look at the focus on disinformation by media, tech, and academic leaders, and how assumptions about disinfo effectiveness echo old media and advertising myths

In the beginning, there were ABC, NBC, and CBS, and they were good.  Midcentury American man could come home after eight hours … Tweets: @karlbode , @karlbode , @daveyalba , @daphn...

A really important @Bernstein corrective to the current obsession with “disinformation” https://harpers.org/...
2021-08-18 View on X
Harper's

A look at the focus on disinformation by media, tech, and academic leaders, and how assumptions about disinfo effectiveness echo old media and advertising myths

In the beginning, there were ABC, NBC, and CBS, and they were good.  Midcentury American man could come home after eight hours … Tweets: @karlbode , @karlbode , @daveyalba , @daphn...

2021-06-16
! https://twitter.com/...
2021-06-16 View on X
Adweek

The Oversight Board accepts its first policy advisory opinion request from Facebook, on the sharing of private residential info, issues call for public comments

It involves how it should handle private residential information Source: About Facebook .

In retrospect, the media panic over VC efforts to counter independent journalism with Clubhouse (remember that?) and a new website of essays and pods about the future seems a bit overblown https://www.axios.com/...
2021-06-16 View on X
TechCrunch

Andreessen Horowitz launches Future, a media property that will focus on informational and editorial content created by full-time staff and outside contributors

2021-06-15
An unprecedented look inside Amazon from @jodikantor @KYWeise & @gr_ashford https://www.nytimes.com/...
2021-06-15 View on X
New York Times

Interviews with ~200 people show how Amazon's warehouse employment system, under strain before the pandemic, burned through workers and created huge confusion

Each year, hundreds of thousands of workers churn through a vast mechanism that hires and monitors, disciplines and fires.

2021-06-12
This was much discussed in the packed, maskless room https://twitter.com/...
2021-06-12 View on X
Gizmodo

Some attendees of Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami, which had no mask or proof of vaccine requirements for its 12K guests, say they tested positive for COVID-19

I'm guessing a lot of them were anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers/denialists. https://twitter.com/... Kevin Sekniqi / @kevinsekniqi : The absolute craziest thing I'm finding out is that pe...

2021-05-25
So many high level conversations at tech companies start with a random person emailing the CEO https://twitter.com/...
2021-05-25 View on X
Protocol

On final day of the Epic vs Apple trial, many topics were revisited including how to define the market in question; judge could now take months to reach verdict

Epic v. Apple came to a close on Monday with a series of contentious back-and-forth debates in place of traditional closing arguments.

2021-05-15
@BenMullin @keachhagey This was always the issue with his building a media company — he wants cash flow, not long term value
2021-05-15 View on X
Wall Street Journal

Sources: CloutHub and FreeSpace are among the apps vying to be next platform of Trump, who “wants cash money up front” in exchange for followers he would bring

he wants cash flow, not long term value Ben Mullin / @benmullin : Donald Trump wants an up-front licensing fee to bring his brand (and presumably tons of followers) to a new social...

2021-05-06
Incredible story of how Jeff Bezos used his ownership of The Post and Jamal Khashoggi's totally unrelated murder to beat back tabloid coverage of his personal life. Really one of the most cynical (and brilliant) bits of PR I've ever seen. https://www.bloomberg.com/...
2021-05-06 View on X
Bloomberg

Jeff Bezos beat the National Enquirer by bypassing media and appealing directly to regular people, retaliating with the brutal efficiency used to build Amazon

Brad Stone / Bloomberg : Tweets: @bradstone , @ashleevance , @jackposobiec , @nkulw , @stevekopack , @ritholtz , @gregotto , @tomgara , @benyt , @jbarro , and @bradstone Tweets: B...

2021-04-12
@AthertonKD FWIW, my feeling was I didn't want to get into the details in passing in a way that was going to wind up drawing attention to a troll, and that this was a particularly disgusting thing to do
2021-04-12 View on X
New York Times

Substack strikes deals with trans writers, amid claims it supports allegedly anti-trans writers and is a kind of lucrative off ramp for “cancel culture” victims

A company that makes it easy to charge for newsletters has captivated an anxious industry because it embodies larger forces and contradictions.