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10 posts total
Ben Werdmuller

The folks at @19thnews are committed to covering voting rights in this very important election - as they should. It's worth your time to take a look. If you have the means, consider supporting their work. 19thnews.org/2024/05/voting-ri

6 May at 16:58 | Open on werd.social
Ben Werdmuller

Buried here: "Vox Media’s technology news publication The Verge says it also has plans to federate its own site to have more ownership over its content and audience." #Media digiday.com/marketing/as-tikto

24 April at 15:44 | Open on werd.social
Ben Werdmuller

The investigative newsroom I work for, @ProPublica, is raising money right now. We report on abuses of power in the public interest - stories like corruption on the Supreme Court. It was the first outlet to win a Pulitzer for web-first journalism. And if you donate through this link, you'll let our team know that Mastodon is an audience to pay attention to. give.propublica.org/give/34652 #journalism #fediverse #mastodon

12 March at 0:08 | Open on werd.social
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Arlenecw

@ben @ProPublica I have donated. Unfortunately, Mastodon is not one of the social media choices to share that.

12 March at 15:25 | Open on federate.social
Ben Werdmuller

Holy wow - the Mastodon community really came through. This is huge, and makes a massive difference for our reporting. Thank you everyone - and thank you for showing how active and engaged this network is!

#fediverse #journalism #mastodon

12 March at 16:00 | Open on werd.social
Jared White

@ben @ProPublica Pay no attention to the trolls! 🙄

We need to normalize people asking for money for journalism on Mastodon. Period. End of story. No additional preamble or context required. The End.

Thanks for all you do! 👏

12 March at 16:08 | Open on indieweb.social
Ben Werdmuller

"It would not be worth all that to make a game that is a single stupid joke. And I like games that are single stupid jokes, and so I guess I have spent a few years in the hopes that I can let more people make more of them." This is lovely. #Technology v21.io/blog/downpour?utm_sourc

9 March at 1:03 | Open on werd.social
Ben Werdmuller

Flipboard is making its entire platform fediverse-compatible, allowing anyone on any fediverse platform (eg Mastodon, Pixelfed, and eventually Threads) to follow content shared there. #Technology theverge.com/2023/12/18/240060

18 Dec 2023 at 17:18 | Open on werd.social
Ben Werdmuller
Ben Werdmuller

Reuven Lerner was banned from advertising on Meta products for life because he offers Python and Pandas training - and the company's automated system thought he was dealing in live snakes and bears. #AI lerner.co.il/2023/10/19/im-ban

20 Oct 2023 at 0:46 | Open on werd.social
Johannes Ernst

@ben there are some other reasons why we should be really afraid of our new #ai overlords. Incomprehension of the world, for example.

20 Oct 2023 at 0:59 | Open on social.coop
Ben Werdmuller

The thing that bugs me the most about Spotify’s podcast implosion is all those people who thought it would be better to partner with them than publish on their own terms. You’re always better off publishing on the web independently. Always. It’s more lucrative, more sustainable, and far less risky for your organization overall.

5 Sep 2023 at 23:57 | Open on werd.social
Ben Werdmuller

“Moreover, researchers have also discovered that it’s probably mathematically impossible to secure the training data for a large language model like GPT-4 or PaLM 2. This was outlined in a research paper that Google themselves tried to censor, an act that eventually led the Google-employed author, El Mahdi El Mhamdi, to leave the company. The paper has now been updated to say what the authors wanted it to say all along, and it’s a doozy.” #AI softwarecrisis.dev/letters/goo

“Moreover, researchers have also discovered that it’s probably mathematically impossible to secure the training data for a large language model like GPT-4 or PaLM 2. This was outlined in a research paper that Google themselves tried to censor, an act that eventually led the Google-employed author, El Mahdi El Mhamdi, to leave the company. The paper has now been updated to say what the authors wanted it to say all along, and it’s a doozy.” #AI softwarecrisis.dev/letters/goo

15 May 2023 at 17:41 | Open on werd.social
Ben Werdmuller

Every newsroom that publishes on the web should have an RSS feed. It's quick and cheap to support, and not doing it is reader-hostile. werd.io/2023/every-news-publis

5 May 2023 at 17:53 | Open on werd.social
Larry Felton Johnson

@ben Not only is it good for readers who directly access the RSS feed, it's good for pushing out to social media. We have a feed that sends out every article on a schedule, plus it's used to assemble the article list for our newsletter. Far from being obsolete, RSS is a powerful tool.

5 May 2023 at 17:59 | Open on journa.host
mcg

@ben Or a Mastodon instance that also provides RSS.

5 May 2023 at 18:04 | Open on social.lol
Micah

@ben I agree with you that RSS feed support would be very welcome.

That said, let's say you're talking to someone at a major news outlet. They raise a point about tracking engagement. They raise another point about revenue incentives. They raise another point about syndication control, their archive model, and the disruption to their business model.

I've heard all of these at various times from various stakeholders. It's case by case, obviously, but hard to provide answers for everything

5 May 2023 at 18:17 | Open on mastodon.social
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