In this issue: Twitter-X’s war fake information nightmare / Cannes Lions to be acquired? / OpenAI changes “core values” / How Epoch Times got so big / Netflix IRL / Why Microsoft’s buying Activision / Adobe text commands for AI / + more.
Welcome to Context Collapse, the world’s best comms newsletter. I’m Neal Ungerleider. I run Ungerleider Works and used to work as a reporter for Fast Company, write op-eds for the LA Times, and work as a senior copywriter for R/GA. This newsletter helps readers navigate the weird new world of media and gleefully ignores all the conventional wisdom about journalism, public relations, marketing, and advertising.
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“In the wake of Hamas’ deadly attacks on Israel this weekend—and the Israeli military’s response—journalists, researchers, open source intelligence (OSINT) experts, and fact-checkers rushed to verify the deluge of raw video footage and images being shared online by people on the ground. But users of X (formerly Twitter) seeking information on the conflict faced a flood of disinformation.
While all major world events are now accompanied almost instantly by a deluge of disinformation aimed at controlling the narrative, the scale and speed at which disinformation was being seeded about the Israel-Hamas conflict is unprecedented—particularly on X.”
“A consortium of strategic and financial investors has approached Ascential, the FTSE 250 data and technology group, with a bid to take over its Cannes Lions and other events operations.”
”ChatGPT creator OpenAI quietly revised all of the “Core values” listed on its website in recent weeks, putting a greater emphasis on the development of AGI — artificial general intelligence. CEO Sam Altman has described AGI as “the equivalent of a median human that you could hire as a co-worker.” OpenAI’s careers page previously listed six core values for its employees, according to a September 25 screenshot from the Internet Archive. They were Audacious, Thoughtful, Unpretentious, Impact-driven, Collaborative, and Growth-oriented. The same page now lists five values, with “AGI focus” being the first. “Anything that doesn’t help with that is out of scope,” the website reads.”
“Today, The Epoch Times is one of the country’s most successful and influential conservative news organizations. It’s powered by Falun Gong, a religious group persecuted in China, which launched The Epoch Times as a free propaganda newsletter more than two decades ago to oppose the Chinese Communist Party. Funded through aggressive online and real-world marketing campaigns and big-money conservative donors, The Epoch Times now boasts to be the country’s fourth-largest newspaper by subscriber count.”
”Netflix is making some long-term plans that will reinvent its content marketing strategy. The streaming giant plans to build permanent IRL destinations that will feature attractions inspired by its original programming. The first of these locations is slated to open in 2025. Netflix VP of Consumer Products Josh Simon said that the spaces will be dubbed Netflix House and will feature a mix of shops, eateries, and experiential installations.”
”Activision’s stable of bestselling franchises, including Call of Duty and Candy Crush, will strengthen Microsoft’s videogame business by more than half to above $24 billion. The additions also will move the business further away from Xbox consoles and toward gaming content that lives across platforms and devices. It is the largest in a series of major moves by Nadella, who has used Microsoft’s financial strength to push the company into new areas, from cloud computing to social media to AI.”
”Adobe has launched new #AI-powered features that lets users submit text prompts to add, remove or replace items, people and other aspects of images".”
“Jason Feifer is the editor in chief of Entrepreneur magazine and a former editor at Fast Company. He’s also a podcast host, book author, keynote speaker, and startup advisor. Every week, he shares tips in his newsletter, One Thing Better, to help people become happier and more effective at work. In today’s episode, Jason draws upon his wealth of experience in media to share tactical insights on how to get press coverage.”
”For months, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Discord Inc. have run an invitation-only chat for heavy users of Bard, Google’s artificial intelligence-powered chatbot. Google product managers, designers and engineers are using the forum to openly debate the AI tool's effectiveness and utility, with some questioning whether the enormous resources going into development are worth it.”
”Chan was responsible for posting 12 to 15 articles a day, many of them about politics. (It was the run-up to the 2012 election.) In addition to writing her own stories, she oversaw an ad hoc team of freelancers, many of whom lacked previous reporting experience and whom she was supposed to edit with only the lightest touch. Errors were frequent, she said, but leadership didn’t care. “Everything was about hit counts,” Chan says. “It was just eyeballs, eyeballs, eyeballs.” The job paid in the mid $40,000 range and didn’t include health benefits.”