The Atlantic: “The Horseshoe Theory of Google Search”

Earlier today, Google presented a new vision for its flagship search engine, one that is uniquely tailored to the generative-AI moment. With advanced technology at its disposal, Google will do the Googling for you, Liz Reid, the company’s head of search, declared onstage at the company’s annual software conference.

Googling something rarely yields an immediate, definitive answer. You enter a query, confront a wall of blue links, open a zillion tabs, and wade through them to find the most relevant information. If that doesn’t work, you refine the search and start again. Now Google is rolling out “AI overviews” that might compile a map of “anniversary worthy” restaurants in Dallas sorted by ambience (live music, rooftop patios, and the like), comb recipe websites to create meal plans, structure an introduction to an unfamiliar topic, and so on.

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Generative AI, then, is in some ways providing a return to what Google Search was before the company infused it with product marketing and snippets and sidebars and Wikipedia extracts—all of which have arguably contributed to the degradation of the product. The AI-powered searches that Google executives described didn’t seem like going to an oracle so much as a more pleasant version of Google: pulling together the relevant tabs, pointing you to the most useful links, and perhaps even encouraging you to click on them.

Matteo Wong

My gut reaction to AI Overviews was: welp, so rather than rooting out listicles and low-grade content farms, Google has embraced them, featuring its own aggregated AI-answers on its front page!

Pirate Wires: “The End of Social Media: An Interview with Jack Dorsey”

And then, as you know, Elon backed off [on the acquisition], and that disaster happened [laughs], until he finally bought it, which was the worst timeline ever. But throughout all that, it became more and more evident that Bluesky had a lot of great ideas. And they’re ideas I believe in. I think the internet needs a decentralized protocol for social media. I think Elon needs it. I think X needs it. I think it removes liability for the company, to separate those layers.

But what happened is, people started seeing Bluesky as something to run to, away from Twitter. It’s the thing that’s not Twitter, and therefore it’s great. And Bluesky saw this exodus of people from Twitter show up, and it was a very, very common crowd.

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I’m impressed with the iterations of the algorithm that they’re doing. I think it’s generally really good work. My only ask is to open it up even more and let people choose what algorithm they want to use, even write their own algorithms to filter all the conversations. To me, that would give users ultimate agency, and ultimate freedom. Because this whole ‘freedom of speech, not reach’, is yet another tool of censorship in the end, because the algorithm is determining reach. If you truly believe in the freedom of speech, you gotta go to the heart of where it’s now being decided. And that’s not the policy, it’s the actual algorithm itself.

Mike Solana

On some level, I admire Jack’s commitment to decentralization and his idealism around freedom of speech. Alas, we live in the real world, not in some abstract, platonic realm of ideas, and thus we need to compromise and accept constraints in most situations – any ideal can devolve into delusion if it becomes mired by absolutism and does not recognize its inherent limitations.

XDA: “3 reasons people are moving from Windows 11 back to Windows 10”

Recently, StatCounter posted a chart showing that Windows 10’s market share is growing, while Windows 11’s is shrinking. This flies in the face of what Microsoft has planned, especially given how Windows 10’s end-of-life date is looming in the distance. As such, I wanted to do some research into the topic; did StatCounter’s statistics get things wrong? Or are people downgrading from Windows 11 to Windows 10? While there’s no way to state without a doubt that people are downgrading, I did find people with pain points with Windows 11 that might be contributing to the system’s downfall.

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Again, this is speculation on my part, but I can’t help but notice that the Windows 11 adoption rate began reversing in January 2024, when Microsoft began introducing and announcing new Copilot features. There’s a chance that people are turning back to Windows 10 to dodge the 24H2 update, either as individuals who dislike the tools or as businesses that don’t want to entrust their private data with artificial intelligence.

Simon Batt

Pretty embarrassing for Microsoft to be losing market share on their most recent OS – then again, Windows 11 has been a pretty embarrassing upgrade from Windows 10. In the three years since its release things have barely improved, while Microsoft seems completely oblivious to these challenges faced by consumers and focused on chasing wild AI dreams instead of polishing the OS and expanding hardware support. I expect adoption problems will only worsen as Microsoft adds more AI features, as these will require hardware upgrades many will be reluctant to perform – including corporate customers.

Mashable: “The new iPad ad essentially flips AI-weary creatives the bird”

Almost exactly 40 years ago, Apple released its most famous ad, “1984”, in which a monochrome society of shambling drones is under the spell of some kind of computerized dictator. The prisoners of this terrible society are then liberated from their monotony by a hammer-throwing savior representing the Macintosh computer, and a glorious, colorful future is unleashed.

Fast forward 40 years, and Apple is the most valuable company in the world, releasing a commercial in which symbols of creativity, color, joy, human passion, and playfulness are piled into the center of a grey concrete void, and crushed by an industrial machine until they become a little Apple-branded rectangle.

The message is not playing well.

Mike Pearl

I remain forever perplexed at how much attention some people pay to Apple’s advertisements. This one is a rare case of a negative, visceral reaction so strong the company actually felt the need to release an apology – quite a rare occurrence on Apple’s part. I don’t share the sense of esteem and almost mystical reverence towards Apple that I see displayed by others, but even so this commercial felt like a pretty low point from them. It’s nearly impossible not to notice the parallels between this ad and generative AI gathering individual creative works, crushing them together, and throwing out a mass-produced generic product that’s supposed to replace the source material.

The Verge: “Instagram’s updated algorithm prioritizes original content instead of rip-offs”

Instagram is making significant changes to how its system recommends content, with a focus on original content and increased distribution for smaller accounts. The slew of changes were announced by the company in a blog post today.

The biggest change deals with aggregators — accounts that download or screenshot other users’ videos and photos and repost them. Sometimes aggregators will credit the original poster by tagging them in the post or caption, but often, content is wholesale ripped off with no acknowledgment, and engagement is siphoned off from the person who created the content in the first place.

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Instagram is going a step further than just cutting off repost accounts: the platform will replace the reposted content with the original creator’s post in recommendations. The company says it will only replace reposts when the original is “relatively new” and when the system is confident that the posts are identical “based on audio and visual signals”. Creators will get a notification when their original content takes the place of reposts and is recommended on the platform. These changes only apply to recommendations — if you follow an aggregation account, you’ll still see their reposted content on their profile or in feeds.

Mia Sato

Wonderful change for original creators – on paper at least. I am rather skeptical that in practice this will bring about meaningful changes for recommendations and significant boosts for the reach of smaller creators. Notice the if we can find it qualification in Adam Mosseri’s post about this on Threads (the craters typo is quite funny as well; I suppose Threads doesn’t have a way to edit posts yet) – I expect that whatever algorithmic system they put in place to detect original work will have a low confidence and few clear hits. After all, if the posts should be identical to be flagged, all an aggregator has to do is crop the original, maybe apply a light filter before reposting, and they are back in business.