Scam culture is everywhere

Just looking a recent news and how much of it is about surprisingly low-reputation decisions by surprisingly high-status business decision-makers. The big-picture trend that helps explain a lot of technology trends news is the ongoing collapse of business norms. Scam culture is getting mainstreamed faster than ever. Lots of related stories…

Online advertising is a…well, you knew that already. Brand safety a ‘con’ costing news industry billions, new research says How breaking up Google could lower your online shopping bill The Sleazy World of Reddit Marketing, Everything is Fake

Robot lawyers are fake. DoNotPay Has To Pay, After FTC Dings It For Lying About Its Non-Existent AI Lawyer

Academic publishing is a racket. Gates Foundation Shows That ‘Gold Open Access’ Was A Mistake, And ‘Diamond Open Access’ Is The Future

Other kinds of publishing are a racket, too. CNN and USA Today Have Fake Websites, I Believe Forbes Marketplace Runs Them Gannett’s ‘AI’ Scandals Result In Closure Of Wirecutter-esque Review Website, Layoffs

Pro sports are a racket. Legalizing Sports Gambling Was a Huge Mistake Want Access To Every NFL Game? It’ll Cost You, Thanks To Fractured Streaming Deals

Arrogant programmers and Enshittification - A New Understanding (read the whole thing. What happens when your self-worth is tied to work, but your boss is a growth hacker?)

Diseconomies of scale in fraud, spam, support, and moderation I don’t think it’s controversial to say that in general, a lot of things get worse as platforms get bigger.

The hate speech landscape on Facebook is worse than you thought. Here’s why In recent years, a growing number of politicians, human rights groups, and watchdogs have claimed that not only is Meta doing a poor job of removing harmful content, but its process for making enforcement decisions is happening in what they see as a black box. (There has always been some overlap between direct/database/online marketing, fraud, and right-wing politics in the USA. Goes back at least to the 1920s KKK boom. But today the connection is particularly strong. Maybe the national security Republicans were helping to keep that party from going into full growth hacker mode?) The return of Jacob Wohl! Yeah, he’s into AI now Trump’s $100,000 Watch Likely Made in China, Vastly Overpriced

Is Your Rent an Antitrust Violation? (Maybe we need a Lina Khan Signal, like the Batsignal but for Lina Khan?)

Anyway, it’s time to revise a lot of assumptions that were originally made in the higher-trust business environment of the early, legit Web in its create more value than you capture days. Now that more devices, products, and services reflect scam culture settings by default, the rewards to tweaking, blocking, and other growth hacking avoidance are similar to the rewards for PC power user skills back when those were a thing. More: Return of the power user