The team of 404 had to hide their content so it isn’t easily used by content mills. The AI content mills are starting to become a very big thing. There is a podcast called Gadget Lab by WIRED, and last episode was about an interview made to a guy that owns several of these content mills. The guy claims he understands that what he is doing is bad, since he is churning out this kind of content that is likely to be full of mistakes and false information, and also claims that a team of people review the content before actually publishing it.
This is also being done via domain squatting, in which people buy old domains of blogs that were known, and start a new blog full of AI generated content in it.
And phones don’t indeed replace many other devices. Like camaras too, for example. If you want to do really good photography, you actually need different kinds of lenses. Although lenses exist for smartphones, they are not that widespread, and using a camara is therefore still important.
Also a big point is the ergonomics of it. Handling a camara is much easier for long and complex photography sessions. Same with having a calculator at hand. It’s easier to punch numbers in a physical keyboard. Or to handle a flashlight, or using a real keyboard to write a document. The list goes on and on and on.
It’s especially weird when you see these videos where they put very young people with some tech from the 90s, and the young person won’t know what such a tech is.
Like, the classic is a floppy disk. They fell out of use in the mid 2000s. So someone born in the mid 2000s likely never saw one in use. And why should they? The ironic part is that people being impressed that a 18 year old doesn’t know what a floppy disk is, also doesn’t realize that floppys only become commercially available since the 70s. So a technology that had a lifespan of 30 to 40 years isn’t widely recognize… yeah… super impressive.
I think it does work like that. Companies do spend money to promote heir products in non obvious ways. Nowadays Influencers use products even without stating that they are being sponsored. There were news that gas companies were paying Influencers to make photos cooking over gas stoves. This hangs also on the opinion many seem to have that cooking with gas is much better then induction or similar.
Companies also pay for “news” articles sometimes. Sometimes you see these “news” articles about the super innovative startup in your area that is about to unleash the next big thing into the world. You read and it’s only an article built on promises. No actual thing that is worth reporting as news happened, but the company is now featured in the news papers.
I feel like over the last 20 years landlines become this thing you still had from the past in which you only got spam calls. Like, you’re home, and suddenly you hear a strange noise, you realize it’s the landline ringing. You forgot about it. It’s that thing sitting on some shelves with a cord. You pick it up, and you hear something about your car’s extended warrenty.
Six months in, journalist-owned tech publication 404 Media is profitable (www.niemanlab.org)
of note:...
Gen Z is bringing back landline phones because they think they look ‘cool’: ‘I love to twirl the cord’ (nypost.com)
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/10105454...