🔗Links etc. 01/25/23

In this issue: DoJ vs Google Ads, NBA & Niantic, Amazon moves: Context Collapse #185

Photo by Josh Redd on Unsplash

US Justice Department wants to break up Google’s ad-tech business (Miles Kruppa & Sam Schechner & Dave Michaels / WSJ)

Amazon launching $5 monthly subscription for prescription drugs (Jess Weatherbed / The Verge)

How small businesses optimize for Amazon (Moira Weigel / Data & Society)

Spotify laying off 6% of workforce (Ryan Browne, CNBC)

Details on OpenAI’s upcoming integration into Azure (Microsoft Blog)

Cory Doctorow on TikTok’s enshittification (Cory Doctorow)

Amazon to staff: Don’t type confidential info into ChatGPT (Eugene Kim / Insider)

On building brand guideline APIs for AI software (Noah Brier / BrXnd Dispatch)

Meta launches WhatsApp public beta for MacOS (Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch)

---

---

NBA launching new geolocated AR game with Niantic (Joe Lemire / Sports Business Journal)

YouTube edvid giant Study Hall enters partnership with ASU for viewers to earn college credits (Study Hall)

PagerDuty layoff letter announces promotions for execs, quotes MLK Jr. (PagerDuty)

CNet AI-written articles plagarized from CNet, others (Jon Christian / Futurism)

Vox Media in talks to raise $200 million (Claire Atkinson & Lucia Moses / Insider)

The best (and worst) things ever said about advertising (Copyranter)

Ron DeSantis’ Twitter influencer network (Jake Lahut / Daily Beast)

RIP Victor Navasky of The Nation (Joseph Berger/NYT)

Tyler Cowen on ChatGPT (Bloomberg)

Danielle Ohl on why reporters are having such a hard time getting quotes from government officials (Twitter thread)

Danielle Ohl @DTOhl

Hello twitter, I want to talk today about the state of the press relations in the United States. You may or may not know, but it is increasingly rare for your local journalist to be able to simply call an official to ask questions.

Noah Chestnut on how to explore the NY Times & Netflix like a newbie with burner accounts (Twitter thread)

Noah Chestnut @noahchestnut

It’s always fascinating to sign up for a free NYT, Netflix, etc account using a burner email just to see their growth marketing content strategies NYT 🗞️ in January: don’t drink 🍷, short people szn, is this word offensive quiz, and omg Noma’s closing?!?

M&M temporarily retires talking CG candies, replaces them with Maya Rudolph (Twitter thread)

M&M'S @mmschocolate

A message from M&M'S.