Attention bankruptcy

With the inauguration still 11 days away, it’s already clear we are in a new era. Resistance has given way to accommodation in media and tech. I missed Stagwell CEO Mark Penn’s CES talk with Elon Musk. What was noteworthy was the contrast to when Penn and WPP CEO Mark Reed met with Musk in Cannes in June 2024. Then, Adweek reported on anonymous staffers upset at the “platforming” of Musk.

That’s now in the past, as media and tech figures make accommodations to the new reality. I suspect brands will begin to spend again on X, not to mention other conservative outlets, if only to avoid getting pilloried by Jim Jordan. Zuckerberg’s politically adept discarding of the content moderation apparatus he built will put pressure on its cousin, brand safety. As Penn knows, election have consequences. More thoughts on Zuckerberg’s, evolution/capitulation below. In addition:

Feedback on the end of affiliate arbitrage

For members: The coming focus on the attention crisis perpetuated by digital media

Reminder: Take out a TRB membership for full access to all content. My top goal for the year is to make memberships as valuable as possible.

Notes from PvA: Zuckerberg follows the vibes

This is an excerpt from the refreshed People vs Algorithms newsletter that we are doing as a conversational companion to the podcast. Sign up for it here.

It’s time to call it: Free speech has won over misinformation. Mark Zuckerberg is dismantling Meta’s expansive content moderation apparatus. His announcement of this makes clear he is casting his lot with the current vibe following the election, while trying to rewrite history that he was a victim. He was the guy who controls the board and instituted these policies. New haircut and chain, same slipperiness. 

Probably not a coincidence that this shift came immediately after Nick Clegg departed Meta and was replaced by Joel Kaplan, who has lots of Republican ties. Meta has also donated $1 million to the Trump inauguration. Zuckerberg has made the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago too. And he added UFC head and Trump pal Dana White to the Meta board. He also wore a $900,000 watch in the video. 

This could mark the close to a chapter that began after Trump’s election in 2016 through Covid where platforms were in the impossible position of policing content. Facebook hired 40,000 content moderators. Inevitably, it suppressed normal debate over hot-button issues like the origins of Covid and the validity of the Hunter Biden laptop. There are just going to be too many false positives. I agree with Semafor’s Reed Albergotti that free societies need to accept some degree of “viral load flowing through the discourse.” 

Give Elon Musk credit. Community Notes are imperfect, but perhaps the best compromise. The alternative is the factchecking industrial complex. I give Zuckerberg credit for being practical in adopting others innovations, like when he ripped off Snapchat Stories with Instagram Reels. 

It’s also noteworthy that Zuckerberg mentioned that Meta would need to align with the U.S. government to fight foreign government’s efforts to suppress speech. Ultimately, however, if tech companies want to do business in the EU, Brazil or anywhere else, they’ll need to abide by the laws of those places. It can’t hurt to have the leverage of the U.S. government on your side.

Feedback on The end of affiliate arb 

I got several notes back on the last newsletter and podcast. One of my goals for this year is to make this newsletter more conversational. I feel like most media is better in the conversational format. So please send feedback by hitting reply. 

“The publishers who can pivot to acquire users with paid channels, monetize quickly via affiliate offers, and then keep people around with their content will be the winners here. Will never have the margins that SEO-driven model had, but more predictable, can scale higher, and will be more sustainable.”

This is a great point and a big miss on my part for not addressing it. Everyone loves free stuff. I once ran a half-marathon in the winter, and people lined up for over an hour to get a free bagel with lox because it was the Norwegian run. Same goes for media. The social traffic era was great because it provided free distribution. Google has long been the primary source of free distribution. The bargain was always that Google would scrape publisher sites and then be the monetization engine with its ad tech stack. Well, the US might be taking over Greenland, the Panama Canal and Canada, so things change. Google is always going to want a taste, so publishers can buy search ads and take a hit to margins. And if it hasn’t been obvious enough, the answer is always to diversify.

Send me a note with feedback you have by hitting reply or emailing me at bmorrissey@therebooting.com.

Attention bankruptcy

Something I think a lot about improving is my attention. I feel both lucky and cursed to have grown up in the analog era. I didn’t have cable TV until high school and the Internet only after college. That’s a big reason I believe Gen X is the greatest generation, because we remember the before times but aren’t Boomers.

Yet I also wonder if my brain was formed without the onslaught of the Information Space. We have never been bombarded with as much information and content. My own resolution is to cut down, if not completely cut out, my time on X. I stayed around through the takeover. I don’t post much anymore, but I’m fascinated and repelled by this form of media. It’s getting at the raw material, not the refined product. 

And it’s completely addictive. I set a screentime limit of two hours on X that I blew past nearly every day. The algorithm has weaponized the war to steal our attention. You bounce from rabbit hole to rabbit hole. Should I be concerned about or have an opinion about grooming gangs in the UK? The FBI agent has a nose ring, the Tesla bomber and New Orleans attacker both were at Ft Bragg. What’s with this fog?  We still don’t know about those drones? Here’s another fight video. H1B makes America great or is a total scam. Property taxes are a scam. Another fight video. This week everything changed in AI. Lots of posts ask, “What do you notice?” to lure people into engagement.