T·B·P.31.01
WELCOME TO THE·BY·PRODUCT. A WEEKLY RECAP OF WHAT IS GOING DOWN & WHAT IS COMING UP ON THE INTERNET. FOR FANS OF THE WHITE LOTUS, WE WILL SEE YOU NEXT TIME AROUND. THIS WEEK WE DIVE INTO SHADOWBANNING, DEEP FAKES, MODERN COMMERCE AND THE WAR ON PICKLEBALL IN NEW YORK CITY. LET’S GET INTO THE LINKS
THIS WEEK’S HOT TAKE
YOU GO THIS TANYA.
CATEGORY: DEEP FAKES
If you're one of the billions of people who have posted pictures of themselves on social media over the past decade, it may be time to rethink that behavior. New AI image generation technology allows anyone to save a handful of photos (or video frames) of you, then train AI to create realistic fake photos that show you doing embarrassing or illegal things. Not everyone may be at risk, but everyone should know about it.
Photographs have always been subject to falsifications—first in darkrooms with scissors and paste and then via Adobe Photoshop through pixels. But it took a great deal of skill to pull off convincingly. Today, creating convincing photorealistic fakes has become almost trivial. / Via Ars Technica
CATEGORY: DEEP FEELS
Photographer Garry Winogrand has captured ordinary groups of unknown people in all their beauty, humanity, and radiance. Somehow through his work he is able to make people feel less alone. / Via The Atlantic
CATEGORY: ONLINE RETAIL
Retail after the website, a blueprint for modern commerce. In the West, mobile app users spend an average of 201.8 minutes per month shopping, compared to 10.9 minutes per month for website users. Compared to mobile sites, consumers view 4.2 times more products per session in-apps, and they are also guided further down the purchase funnel, with 3 times higher conversion rates compared to mobile sites and 1.5 times more conversions per session than via desktop. In-app shopping is especially prevalent among Millennials, with 58 percent mentioning it as their preferred mode of purchase. / Via SoB
CATEGORY: ARTIFICIAL AUTHORS
So it’s been fascinating to watch the Twittersphere try to make sense of ChatGPT, a new cutting-edge A.I. chatbot that was opened for testing last week. ChatGPT is, quite simply, the best artificial intelligence chatbot ever released to the general public.
It was built by OpenAI, the San Francisco A.I. company that is also responsible for tools like GPT-3 and DALL-E 2, the breakthrough image generator that came out this year. If your feed has not been clogged with posts on the subject, give this artice by The New York Times a read. / Via NYTimes
CATEGORY: IT’S A PICKLE
Having married into a mid-western family I can tell you the love that exists for the game of pickle ball is real. I was fist introduced a few years back in Milwaukee and played many a game at a prominent Palm Springs resort. I even considered the idea of creating merch for the sport, much like the e-sports category.
Anyhow, around the summer I started noticing games popping up around the city, specifically at the TF West. I thought to myself, this may not end well.
Months of conflict between pickleball players and area parents came to a head last week when a sign was posted on the fence at the 17 Horatio St. playground reading, “Pickleball is no longer allowed in Seravalli Playground. Nearby courts are located at: [James J. Walker] Park." The sign also mentioned new courts at William Passannante Ballfield on Houston Street and Avenue of the Americas as an alternative, along with Gertrude Kelly Playground on West 16th Street, west of 8th Avenue. That backlash was here, and the body rejected the limb. / Via Gothamist
CATEGORY: IT’S A LIVING
Nobody wants to be an art handler and in a sense nobody is. The people who dolly crates and pack paintings for a buck are sculptors and musicians. A few are writers. The majority are white men. They patch walls and bend cardboard until their practice can support them, or that’s the idea for the first few years. Then you’re thirty or forty or fifty and doing the same work because you’ve been doing it, because its irregular schedule allows you “freedom,” because it’s important to rationalize your day-to-day existence in a way that makes it bearable while you maybe still paint on the side. / Via Dirt c/o SIC Weekly.
CATEGORY: ON THE BLOCK
Blockchain technology has truly revolutionized the vision for the future of information and data. At the most fundamental level, blockchain technology enables decentralization of data; that is, it allows for the control of information to move away from a centralized entity (e.g. an individual or organization) to a distributed network. By utilizing a distributed network to control information, society can establish better transparency, trust, and fidelity in that data. So what can it do for healthcare? / Via Forbes
CATEGORY: IN THE SHADOWS
Instagram is telling creators when and why their posts are ‘shadowbanned’. Instagram’s latest update aims to help creators better understand one of the most frustrating aspects of the app: the dreaded “shadowban.” The app is updating its account status feature to help creators “understand if their account’s content is eligible to be recommended to non-followers.” / Via Engadget
CATEGORY: IN THE STREAM
Netflix has had both a great and terrible year, with many of its movies and shows becoming all-time hits for the platform while the company’s financials and growth-predictions stall. The problem may be that Netflix needs to vary its programming more to reduce churn and bring in new users… while also sticking to bonafide hits that will keep advertisers happy with those using the platform’s new ad tier. / Via Future Party
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