KC DEBRIEF WEEK 05, FRIDAY 2024/02/02
DIGITAL TITANS
_We have entered the age of TikTok face. From ‘are you cat pretty, bunny pretty, deer pretty or fox pretty?’ to ‘are you boy pretty or girl pretty?’, viral beauty trends offer us the illusion of variety and choice while encouraging algorithmic sameness IT wasn’t long ago that almost every face online looked the same. You know, the Instagram Face with the smooth skin and FaceTuned features. A single, cyborgian look has been the standard for years, dominating social media feeds with its feline eye flick and dissociative pout – the kind that writer Jia Tolentino once described as looking at you “coyly but blankly, as if its owner has taken half a Klonopin and is considering asking you for a private jet to Coachella”. Well, now it’s getting an upgrade, as we enter the era of TikTok domination. For today’s it-girls, it’s all about creating their own unrealistic beauty standards for them to conform to. “Are you cat pretty, bunny pretty, deer pretty or fox pretty?” goes the viral meme – there’s even a filter that lets you try on each look. Another asks, “Are you high or low visual weight?” None of these categories are necessarily more prized than the others. To see yourself as ‘bunny pretty’ or ‘high visual weight’ isn’t a marker of superiority over your fellow females, but rather the starting point for the steps you must undertake to engineer your own self-improvement journey.
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People on TikTok have developed a specific accent - would you recognise it if you heard it? Before I switch on the ringlight, even before I've loaded my battery into my camera, I already know what I'm going to say. I press record, look at the lens, and deliver my script. In about seven minutes it's all done – a new video for TikTok. Afterwards, I think no more about the words that I've said, and certainly not the way I delivered them. At least, until now. It turns out there may be a "TikTok voice". It apparently includes "uptalk" – a rising intonation on declarative sentences – and "vocal fry": a soft creak as you speak.If you want to know what that sounds like, I explained in this video for TikTok.
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TikTok goes full YouTube/ As it promotes horizontal videos and longer runtimes, TikTok sure is looking more like YouTube these days. Prior to joining The Verge, she covered the intersection between technology, finance, and the economy.Vertical video platform TikTok wants users to turn their phones around and start shooting horizontal videos — long ones, too.TikTok appears to be incentivizing creators to start posting horizontal videos that are more than a minute long, according to a prompt seen by creators @candicedchap and @kenlyealtumbiz. The platform says it will “boost” these videos within 72 hours of posting. Creators who’ve been on TikTok for more than three months will be eligible for the viewership boost, as long as the videos are not ads or from political parties. The Verge reached out to TikTok for additional information but didn’t immediately hear back.
Universal Music is set to pull its millions of songs from TikTok after a breakdown in talks over payments.The move would mean the social media platform would no longer have access to songs by artists including Taylor Swift, The Weeknd and Drake. Universal accused TikTok of "bullying" and said it wanted to pay a "fraction" of the rate other social media sites do for access to its vast catalogue. TikTok said Universal was presenting a "false narrative and rhetoric". Music companies earn royalty payments when their songs are played on streaming and social media platforms. Although TikTok - which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance - has more than one billion users, it accounts for just 1% of Universal's total revenue, the label said. In an "open letter to the artist and songwriter community" Universal - which controls about a third of the world's music - claimed that "ultimately TikTok is trying to build a music-based business, without paying fair value for the music".Universal also said that along with pushing for "appropriate compensation for our artists and songwriters", it was also concerned about "protecting human artists from the harmful effects of AI, and online safety for TikTok's users".
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TikTok goes full YouTube/ As it promotes horizontal videos and longer runtimes, TikTok sure is looking more like YouTube these days. Prior to joining The Verge, she covered the intersection between technology, finance, and the economy.Vertical video platform TikTok wants users to turn their phones around and start shooting horizontal videos — long ones, too.TikTok appears to be incentivizing creators to start posting horizontal videos that are more than a minute long, according to a prompt seen by creators @candicedchap and @kenlyealtumbiz. The platform says it will “boost” these videos within 72 hours of posting. Creators who’ve been on TikTok for more than three months will be eligible for the viewership boost, as long as the videos are not ads or from political parties. The Verge reached out to TikTok for additional information but didn’t immediately hear back.
_A judge in the US state of Delaware has annulled a $55.8bn (£44bn) pay deal awarded to Elon Musk in 2018 by the electric car company Tesla. The lawsuit was filed by a shareholder who argued that it was an overpayment. Judge Kathaleen McCormick found Tesla directors, who negotiated the pay package, were "perhaps starry eyed" due to Mr Musk's "superstar appeal" and did not fully inform shareholders. She said the deal was "unfathomable" and ruled it should be cancelled. The pay deal was the biggest ever in US corporate history, helping to make Mr Musk the richest person in the world. Bloomberg and Forbes estimated his net worth to be between $198bn (£162bn) and $220bn (£180bn), in November 2023.
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Tech billionaire Elon Musk has claimed his Neuralink company has successfully implanted one of its wireless brain chips in a human. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, he said "promising" brain activity had been detected after the procedure and the patient was "recovering well". The company's goal is to connect human brains to computers to help tackle complex neurological conditions. A number of rival firms have already implanted similar devices. "For any company producing medical devices, the first test in humans is a significant milestone," said Professor Anne Vanhoestenberghe of King's College London."For the brain computer interface community, we must place this news in the context that whilst there are many companies working on exciting products, there are only a few other companies who have implanted their devices in humans, so Neuralink has joined a rather small group." However, she also suggested there needed to be a note of caution as "true success" could only be evaluated in the long-term. "We know Elon Musk is very adept at generating publicity for his company," she added.Among the other companies to make similar advances in the field is the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne (EPFL), in Switzerland, which has successfully enabled a paralysed man to walk just by thinking.
_Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has apologised to families who say their children had been harmed by social media, during a fiery hearing in the US Senate. Mr Zuckerberg - who runs Instagram and Facebook - turned to them and said "no-one should go through" what they had. He and the bosses of TikTok, Snap, X and Discord were questioned for almost four hours by senators from both parties. Lawmakers wanted to know what they are doing to protect children online. Legislation is currently going through Congress which aims to hold social media companies to account for material posted on their platforms. Wednesday's hearing was a rare opportunity for the US senators to question tech bosses. Mr Zuckerberg and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew voluntarily agreed to testify - but the heads of Snap, X (formerly Twitter) and messaging platform Discord initially refused and were sent government-issued subpoenas. Behind the five tech bosses sat families who said their children had self-harmed or killed themselves as a result of social media content. They made their feelings known throughout, hissing when the CEOs entered and applauding when lawmakers asked tough questions. While the hearing mostly focused on the protection of children from online sexual exploitation, the questions varied widely as the senators took advantage of having five powerful executives there under oath. TikTok - which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance - CEO Mr Chew was asked whether his company shared US users' data with the Chinese government, which he denied. US Senator Tom Cotton asked Mr Chew, who is from Singapore, if he had ever belonged to the Chinese Communist Party.
PEOPLE, MEDIA, CULTURE
_We're getting disillusioned by overconsumption on TikTok. Emma, 16, used to love watching lifestyle influencers as they started their mornings with fresh-squeezed green juice, in their perfectly lit houses, before heading out to their daily pilates class. The content was aspirational in nature – it felt like she was getting a glimpse into a world in which she could someday live if she worked hard enough. But that was years ago. Now, Emma doesn’t follow any of those influencers, and she’s not alone. On TikTok, there’s a storm brewing around the all-too-curated lifestyle influencers. These creators still rake in millions of views and tons of endorsement deals, but some viewers are getting tired of the pristine representation of daily life. While we've seen a shift away from online perfection in the past, this shift seems somewhat different. It's not just unrealistic expectations of how your body or house or life in general should look that's tiring viewers, it's the money needed to fuel a life like that. Search through the comments of these influencers and you’ll see that thread pulled again and again: it's the rich getting richer, that they’re flexing their wealth amid seemingly constant layoffs and inflation that won’t give people a break, that it’s gauche to show such conspicuous consumption when it can feel like many Americans are struggling to even afford rent.“I used to really like them,” Emma says of these influencers. “Then I realized how unrealistic it is to be able to do things like just go to the gym daily or have all these cute expensive things. I realized that most people around me … struggled with what I thought was simple.”As the King Kylie era of influencing continues to wane, we’re firmly in the era of deinfluencing — a trend that popped up last year, urging people not to fall into the traps of, well, influencing. Diana, the 30-year-old creator behind @depressiondotgov, which has more 115,000 TikTok followers, is part of that trend. She stitches other creators while they take viewers through the ins and outs of their consumerism. “Garbage,” Diana comments, deadpan, as she watches a video of a person buying a plethora of holiday-specific decor at Target. “Just garbage. Garbage. Garbage.” In an interview with Teen Vogue, Diana said her foray into this kind of content creation began when her For You Page was flooded this holiday season with ‘come shopping with me’ videos and what she calls “countless ads.”
_Adobe has announced that it will cease further development of Adobe XD, its web and mobile app design tool, in the wake of an unsuccessful attempt to acquire competitor Figma. Figma is known for its cloud-based collaborative design tools, which have made it a significant player in the design productivity arena. Due to regulatory issues, Adobe's plan to acquire Figma for US$20 billion was thwarted, leading to concerns about potential monopolistic outcomes in the digital design market. Adobe XD will enter "maintenance mode," where no new features will be added, and the focus will be on maintaining the current service level for existing customers. Additionally, Adobe XD will no longer be available for individual purchase by new customers. This development is a direct result of the challenges faced by Adobe in its bid to expand its design software portfolio through the acquisition of Figma. Adobe XD To Collect Dust After Figma Acquisition That Fell Apart
_Art collective MSCHF is streaming movies like Barbie in ASCII for freeMSCHF’s latest venture will broadcast an ASCII version of a new full-length movie every day. By Amrita Khalid, one of the authors of audio industry newsletter Hot Pod. Khalid has covered tech, surveillance policy, consumer gadgets, and online communities for more than a decade. The art collective MSCHF is stirring up some trouble on the internet again. For its latest project, ASCII Theater, the group will broadcast a popular new film daily in ASCII format that anyone can watch for free. Just paste the command on your Mac or PC’s terminal, and you can watch films like Barbie exactly as, well, virtually no one has intended. ASCII art films are nothing new and date back to the early days of the internet. They are made by converting a film, frame by frame, into lines of text characters. Instead of pixels, you’ll see text. One of the most famous examples is the ASCII art version of the original 1977 Star Warsmovie, which was completed by New Zealand-based programmer Simon Jansen in 1997 and is still available online. You can also find clips of ASCII films such as The Matrix scattered throughout YouTube. But full-length ASCII films are rare, and MSCHF’s ASCII Theater promises to stream a new title every day. Following Barbie, the theater will screen an ASCII version of the 2018 horror film Hereditary. A look at the site’s trailer reveals ASCII versions of multiple popular films, including Shrek, Pulp Fiction, The Shining, The Lion King, Star Wars, and others.
_Third-party cookies in Chrome are headed for extinction, but you wouldn’t know it from speaking to marketers. Everyone’s got a plan to weather the storm — or perhaps even take advantage of it. That includes in-game advertising companies, who are projecting confidence rather than doubt as the cookiepocalypse moves forward. Some executives in the in-game advertising sector are building the narrative that the cookie collapse might just be the space’s golden ticket, a chance to step out of the ad world’s shadow. While it’s far from the first time in-game advertisers have looked to hitch their wagon to a particularly buzzworthy horse, there’s some truth in these grand claims, given the massive amount of user data generated by gaming environments. Their theory — if you can call it that, given the uncertainty and guesswork of adland — goes something like this: once third-party cookies go kaput in Chrome once and for all, the online ad market beyond walled gardens will split into a big chunk of high-quality ad inventory with first-party identifiers and consent, alongside a long tail of poorly targeted impressions far more prone to fraud and malvertising.No surprise which side of the market in-game ad companies think they’re going to end up on.
_Intentionally poisoning someone else is never morally right. But if someone in the office keeps swiping your lunch, wouldn’t you resort to petty vengeance?For artists, protecting work from being used to train AI models without consent is an uphill battle. Opt-out requests and do-not-scrape codes rely on AI companies to engage in good faith, but those motivated by profit over privacy can easily disregard such measures. Sequestering themselves offline isn’t an option for most artists, who rely on social media exposure for commissions and other work opportunities. Nightshade, a project from the University of Chicago, gives artists some recourse by “poisoning” image data, rendering it useless or disruptive to AI model training. Ben Zhao, a computer science professor who led the project, compared Nightshade to “putting hot sauce in your lunch so it doesn’t get stolen from the workplace fridge.” “We’re showing the fact that generative models in general, no pun intended, are just models. Nightshade itself is not meant as an end-all, extremely powerful weapon to kill these companies,” Zhao said. “Nightshade shows that these models are vulnerable and there are ways to attack. What it means is that there are ways for content owners to provide harder returns than writing Congress or complaining via email or social media.” Zhao and his team aren’t trying to take down Big AI — they’re just trying to force tech giants to pay for licensed work, instead of training AI models on scraped images. “There is a right way of doing this,” he continued. “The real issue here is about consent, is about compensation. We are just giving content creators a way to push back against unauthorized training.”
_AI AI LA LA LAND
//X blocks searches for Taylor Swift after explicit AI images of her go viral. Social media platform X has blocked searches for Taylor Swift after explicit AI-generated images of the singer began circulating on the site. In a statement to the BBC, X's head of business operations Joe Benarroch said it was a "temporary action" to prioritise safety.When searching for Swift on the site, a message appears that says: "Something went wrong. Try reloading." Make graphic images of the singer appeared on the site earlier this week.Some went viral and were viewed millions of times, prompting alarm from US officials and fans of the singer.Posts and accounts sharing the fake images were flagged by her fans, who populated the platform with real images and videos of her, using the words "protect Taylor Swift". The photos prompted X, formerly Twitter, to release a statement on Friday, saying that posting non-consensual nudity on the platform is "strictly prohibited".
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Inside the Taylor Swift deepfake scandal: ‘It’s men telling a powerful woman to get back in her box’AI-generated porn, fuelled by misogyny, is flooding the internet, with Taylor Swift the latest high-profile casualty. Victims say social media platforms are failing to take it down – will they now start taking it seriously? For almost a whole day last week, deepfake pornographic images of Taylor Swift rapidly spread through X. The social media platform, formerly Twitter, was so slow to react that one image racked up 47m views before it was taken down. It was largely Swift’s fans who mobilised and mass-reported the images, and there was a sense of public anger, with even the White House calling it “alarming”. X eventually removed the images and blocked searches to the pop star’s name on Sunday evening. For women who have been victims of the creation and sharing of nonconsensual deepfake pornography, the events of the past week will have been a horrible reminder of their own abuse, even if they may also hope that the spotlight will force legislators into action. But because the pictures were removed, Swift’s experience is far from the norm. Most victims, even those who are famous, are less fortunate. The 17-year-old Marvel actor Xochitl Gomez spoke this month about X failing to remove pornographic deepfakes of her. “This has nothing to do with me. And yet it’s on here with my face,” she said.
BRANDS
_Today, Burberry launches its takeover of Harrods on the immersive online platform, Roblox. This launch invites Roblox’s global community to explore the digital extension of Burberry at Harrods, which celebrates Burberry’s heritage of exploration and the outdoors. For the first time, the iconic Harrods facade is recreated into a Burberry branded virtual storefront. Overhanging awnings and window displays are reimagined using the house’s new brand signifiers, including the Knight blue colour and the Burberry Check in a seasonal colourway. A virtual pop-up store features colours and prints inspired by the interior of the physical takeover. Tent materials, camping chairs and check platforms become trampolines that visitors can use to explore the pop-up. Users can style their avatars by purchasing digital Burberry items influenced by the physical capsule collection, including scarves, hot water bottles and horse-shaped carabiners, for use on the platform. The virtual store is surrounded by four outdoor park scenes: the garden, pond, Equestrian Knight Design maze and forest. The park space hosts a variety of weekly scavenger hunts and obstacle courses, where users can participate to unlock free items in the virtual store. We are thrilled to launch our Harrods takeover experience in Roblox. Following the success of our previous experiences on the platform, we have created a new, exciting way to tell Burberry’s story of exploration and the great outdoors. We look forward to inviting our global community to explore our brand and takeover of one of London’s iconic department stores in an immersive experience.’
MMM OF THE WEEK
_Gen Z workers have given Manhattan the nickname “Work Island.” / NYP
_Millennials Don’t Know What to Wear. Gen Z Has Thoughts.All of a sudden, the world is full of wide-leg jeans and pointy-toe boots. Stylists Millennial fashion standbys — skinny jeans, infinity scarves, wide-brim hats — are now firmly out of date, according to Gen Z and stylists. What do we wear instead? Remy Tumin is a millennial who still has two pairs of skinny jeans (and wears them).Something about my outfit just wasn’t right.Was it the height of my socks? The cut of my jeans or sweater?If you, like me, find yourself asking these questions, there’s a good chance you’re a millennial trying to wade through TikToks that shame your choice of jeans.We’re not just getting dragged for our skinny jeans. Gen Z is letting us know our choices in socks, shirt cuts, neutral colors, and even buying new instead of used, are tired, outdated — and sometimes even offensive.Every generation has a hard time keeping up with fashion trends, but Gen Z became the generation to define cool in the era of TikTok, when trends moved faster than ever.
_Gen Z loves self-checkout because it makes shoplifting easy—and retailers are flailing as they scramble to undo it l