Media on Big Muddy

Social media is a freak show

Mon, 06 Apr 2026 13:31:00 -0400

I quite enjoyed Nate Silver’s recent Substack post “Social media has become a freak show” (curiously, the title element of the page is “Social media is turning into a freak show”—I think the transformation has already occurred).

Nate Silver is still a Twitter power user, and yet even he acknowledges the increasing uselessness of Twitter for driving traffic to his newsletter or even just providing a forum for thoughtful engagement. I myself abandoned the platform a few years ago, having seen the direction it was heading under Elon Musk. My impression is that the utility of Twitter in most domains is asymptotically approaching zero, with a handful of exceptions (I will occasionally lurk for AI news, as the discussion is still robust, if polluted with a ton of low-quality bot or bot-like replies).

The rest of the social media ecosystem isn’t much better. Bluesky has declining engagement, probably because it has replicated Twitter’s old schoolyard dynamics on steroids. Facebook hasn’t been relevant for years, and I have no idea what it’s even for anymore if not connecting with your friends (I haven’t had an account in many years). Instagram might still be fun, though I have no idea because I’ve never used it. But it’s certainly not a place where “the discourse” happens.

It's incredibly easy to game Twitter's trending news algorithm

Fri, 27 Feb 2026 20:30:00 -0500

Twitter’s “Today’s News” section is a mix of real news, very minor stories (usually discussion of a random AI-related post), nonsense trends, and barely disguised marketing.

The algorithm behind it seems pretty easy to manipulate.

This trending topic revolves around an explosive DM warning of imminent 25% layoffs at a FAANG company:

Here is the original post, which comes from an account called Tech Layoff Tracker (@TechLayoffLover):

There is no reason to believe this post is real. The account, created this month (February 2026), made its first post 7 hours ago. The post in question was made 5 hours ago, or 2 hours after the account’s very first post. Of course, the account carries an utterly meaningless blue “verified” checkmark.

But despite all this, the news summary puts “Tech Layoff Tracker” right in the headline, as if it’s a known reliable source and not an account (most likely) created the same day as the summary itself!

Oral texts

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 13:18:00 -0500

A major intellectual current in the post-social media age is the rediscovery of media theorists like Marshall McLuhan, Walter Ong, and Neil Postman, whose works seem incredibly prescient in the age of the Internet and the instantaneous and omnipresent mass communication it enables.

A particular sub-current of this trend is the return to orality, a culture rooted in the spoken rather than written word. Indeed, the vast majority of human history is defined by oral culture, and the world’s brief sojourn to the written tradition may have finally ended thanks to the Internet.

One of the most impressive projects to come out of this domain is Havelock.AI, a tool created by journalist Joe Weisenthal and entirely vibe coded with Claude. The tool analyzes text to give an “orality score” with supporting analysis. For example, qualified assertions are considered literate, whereas categorical statements are considered oral. The tool defines 68 oral/literate markers based on the framework of Walter Ong. It really is an impressive tool that I recommend checking out.

I plugged a few of my old articles into the tool and apparently my writing is very much rooted in the written tradition! (This post also scores as strongly literate.)

The increasingly inevitable social media ban for kids

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 23:57:00 -0500

Jon Haidt writes on his Substack about the increasingly popular movement to ban social media for kids, following the implementation of Australia’s under-16 social media ban a few months ago.

Why a Canadian news site just launched an AI publishing tool

Mon, 09 Feb 2026 19:49:00 -0500

It’s no secret that Canadian journalism (like journalism everywhere) is in trouble. Newsrooms face a steady stream of layoffs despite a couple hundred million Canadian dollars of direct and indirect government subsidies every year. The vast majority of outlets eligible for these subsidies take advantage of them, and combined they can subsidize half of a journalist’s salary. News organizations are desperate to diversify their revenue streams.

The Hub is a right-leaning publication launched in 2021 with a focus on policy and politics. Notably, the outlet declines or donates their subsidies, citing a valid concern that the scale of such subsidies threaten the perceived trustworthiness and independence of the media.

In late January 2026, The Hub launched NewsBox, an AI-powered publishing tool. NewsBox aims to make it easier for creators to transform their content (written, audio, or video) into other formats, such as speeches, essays, or talking points, while maintaining the author’s distinct voice. You can see examples of the tool’s output on new articles in The Hub, each of which is accompanied by an AI-generated summary and list of quotes at the top of the page. There is also a “Hub AI” chatbot in the sidebar of every article.

The app very much uses The Hub’s branding, prominently featuring the outlet’s co-creators, who also created NewsBox. While their pitch talks about preserving creators’ voices to avoid the “soulless prose” and “slop” outputted by ChatGPT and similar tools, I have to wonder if tighter integration of AI into the news and opinion side of the operation will raise its own issues with trust. The Hub has always been fairly tech-friendly, including a longstanding sponsorship by Meta.