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Today, Dog Jail brings you a special mid-week issue on attention economy activism. Just by reading this, you’re already braver than the 9/11 hijackers.
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The Beatdown
When does watching a commercial make you an activist? If it’s on TV, maybe never. But online, people increasingly understand their media consumption as a political act — or at least a form of charity, one where their attention is a kind of stipend to be doled out (through ad-viewing) to worthy causes.
Look at the news business. Five years ago, The Washington Post slapped the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” on the top of every webpage — a subtle update on the National Lampoon cover that promised: “If You Don’t Buy This Magazine, We’ll Kill This Dog.” And liberal readers of The New York Times (the Target, if not the Walmart, of journalism) will flaunt the website they go to for recipes and phone games like it’s an ACLU tote bag.
There’s certainly a logic to it. Living in a world ruled by the profit motive, we’re repeatedly told that "voting with your wallet” is one of the only ways to make a difference. And on an ad-supported internet, our eyeballs act as the dollars in our wallets. (Gross!)
Naturally, the kids who were raised in this media environment are the ones most comfortable with the arrangement. In The New York Times, Max Read recently wrote about MrBeast, the “Willy Wonka of YouTube” who performs grandiose acts of charity documented in videos like “1,000 Blind People See for the First Time,” “Giving a Random Homeless Man $10,000,” and “Tipping Waitresses With Real Gold Bars.”
MrBeast’s young fans deliver hundreds of millions of views to these videos, resulting in millions of dollars in ad revenue, a fraction of which MrBeast then gives away:
[MrBeast] pitches subscribing to his channel as an act of charity, sometimes literally: “From now until the end of the year, every single time someone subscribes, I will give away 10 cents,” he says in a video from February 2021. “By literally hitting that subscribe button, you are taking 10 cents out of my pocket and giving it to people like we had in the video.”
This attention economy activism can go both ways. Users of the internet mega-forum Reddit have long bristled at attempts (by Buzzfeed and others) to make a buck off the content they provide free of charge, understanding the website through the lens of community contribution. Of course, it’s Reddit itself that does the most to monetize these contributions, a bargain users seemed to find mostly acceptable — until this week.
On Monday, more than 7,000 communities on Reddit went dark, protesting revenue-juicing changes the website announced ahead of its delayed IPO. Trying to head off the revolt, CEO Steve Huffman held a Q&A session with users last week — and totally ate shit. Asked to address concerns that Reddit is “increasingly profit-driven and less focused on community engagement,” Huffman replied, “We’ll continue to be profit-driven until profits arrive,” which people did not like!
Of course, boycotts themselves are nothing new, but in the past people had to, y’know, stop buying something. Recognizing the value of their views to advertisers, today’s consumer activists can simply withhold web traffic if they feel like taking a stand.
We shouldn’t judge this slacktivism too harshly. After all, traditional mechanisms of political expression (like voting or burning a cop car) don’t seem to spur much change in America. Is it any wonder that people treat what coffee they drink, shopping bags they use, and websites they visit as the most significant ethical choices in their lives? At least when you watch a video titled “I Helped 2000 Amputees Walk Again” you can be sure your actions mean something, even if it’s just some counter, somewhere, ticking up from 13 million to 13 million and one.
Arrest Report
💀 DEATH ROW: Workers’ tenuous mental health. According to a new study, interacting with AI systems at work is linked to greater loneliness, insomnia, and after-work drinking. Is it just correlation or also causation? We’ll all find out soon enough!
🚔 IN CUSTODY: The reckless children and cyclists menacing our Teslas. Citing US safety data, The Washington Post reports there have been at least 736 crashes and 17 fatalities involving Tesla’s “Autopilot” mode, many more than previously reported. The federal agency that oversees traffic safety told the newspaper that their investigation into the matter is ongoing.
🐑 AT LARGE: Crypto-supported scientific research. It’s still crypto summer somewhere: North Korea, which is reportedly using cybercrime to fund as much as 50 percent of its ballistic missile program. Just this month, North Korean hackers are believed to have stolen $100 million in cryptocurrency from users of the (aptly named) Atomic Wallet.
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