Mike talks with Stephen Harrison about why authoritarian governments hate Wikipedia and Georgia talks with Kyle Chayka about how to have fun on the internet. Also: Kidpix!
–
Become a Never Post member at https://www.neverpo.st/ for access to extended and bonus segments, and our side shows like “Slow Post”, “Posts from the Field” and “Never Watch”
Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta.
Oh! to be almost loquacious
Rather than fatally over
loquacity’s edge
Excerpt of #36 the-faux-ailing-abacus by Wayne Koestenbuam
Mike talks with Stephen Harrison about why authoritarian governments hate Wikipedia and Georgia talks with Kyle Chayka about how to have fun on the internet. Also: Kidpix!
–
Become a Never Post member at https://www.neverpo.st/ for access to extended and bonus segments, and our side shows like “Slow Post”, “Posts from the Field” and “Never Watch”
Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta.
Oh! to be almost loquacious
Rather than fatally over
loquacity’s edge
Excerpt of #36 the-faux-ailing-abacus by Wayne Koestenbuam
Host of Never Post. Creator of Fun City, Reasonably Sound, Idea Channel and other internet things.
GH
Producer
Georgia Hampton
Producer
Hans Buetow
Independent Senior Audio Producer. Formerly with Terrible, Thanks for Asking and The New York Times
JO
Producer
Jason Oberholzer
What is Never Post?
A podcast about and for the internet, hosted by Mike Rugnetta
Mike Rugnetta:
Friends, hello. And welcome to Never Post, a podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike Rugnetta. This intro was written on Tuesday, 03/11/2025 at 08:39AM Eastern, and we have a luminous show for you this week. First, I talk with journalist and novelist, Stephen Harrison, about Wikipedia, its particular and somewhat peculiar process of knowledge production, and why that makes it a target for authoritarian governments.
Mike Rugnetta:
And then Georgia talks with New Yorker columnist and author Kyle Chayka about how to have fun on the Internet at a moment when everything, kinda sucks. But first, let's talk about a few of the things that have happened since the last time you heard from us. I have five news stories for you this week. Ubuweb is back. The self described, quote, pirate shadow library consisting of hundreds of thousands of freely downloadable avant garde artifacts and, quote, went into read only mode in 2024 after thirty years of collecting, only to return at the February.
Mike Rugnetta:
A statement on the landing page reads, in part, that, quote, archiving reemerges as a strong form of resistance, a way of preserving crucial, subversive, and marginalized forms of expression. We encourage you to do the same. All rivers lead to the same ocean. Find your form of resistance, no matter how small, and go hard. It's now or never.
Mike Rugnetta:
Together, we can prevent the annihilation of the memory of the world. You can see more and browse their collection at UbuWeb, u b u w e b dot com.
Jaap Blonk:
Your ears are whirring. You hear the whirring in your ears.
Mike Rugnetta:
The General Services Administration of the United States, as part of Elon Musk's ongoing effort to remake The US Federal Government into nothing more than a collection of pro private sector rubber stamps, has fired the entirety of eighteen f, a team of highly skilled technologists who advised government agencies on tech and worked as a go between for them and private contractors, assessing the feasibility of contracts, providing accountability, and so on. By all accounts, eighteen f was a solidly money making endeavor, saving the US government bundles by employing smart folks to advise on complex technological matters. This, of course, adds fuel to the already raging fire that whatever Elon is doing, it has nothing to do with government savings.
Jaap Blonk:
It is a timeless
Jaap Blonk:
oosh.
Mike Rugnetta:
Two recent developments on the disinfo front. I'm about to say a lot of words in a row, so get ready. Intrinsic reports that a bot campaign linked to the doppelganger intrusion set was detected en masse on x. Doppelganger was first outed by Meta in 2022 and comprises a set of websites and related media that masquerade as legitimate news sources hosted at typo squatted earls, which look visually similar to the genuine article. Meta, similarly, in their quarterly threat disruptions report from last month, reports on continued doppelganger activity, but reports that their overall influence on their platforms at least remains low.
Mike Rugnetta:
Meta, in 2022, linked doppelganger to Structura National Technology and the Social Design Agency, both headquartered in, let's see if you can guess, Russia.
Jaap Blonk:
After that, it's quiet. You hear nothing.
Mike Rugnetta:
And second, the American Sunlight Project reports a disinformation campaign spearheaded by the, quote, pro Russia content aggregation network Pravda. A report published last month details a 180 some network of websites which spread anti Ukraine sentiment targeted at North America, Africa, the Asia Pacific, and The Middle East. ASP Researchers, the report reads, also believe the network may have been custom built to flood large language models with pro Russia content. The network is unfriendly to human users. Sites within the network boast no search function, poor formatting, and unreliable scrolling, among other usability issues.
Mike Rugnetta:
This final finding poses foundational implications for the intersection of disinformation and artificial intelligence, which threaten to turbocharge highly automated global information operations in the future. End quote. We'll put a link to both of these reports in the show notes. They are fascinating reads.
Jaap Blonk:
A bin could drop.
Mike Rugnetta:
And finally, Dig is back. So many things returning these days. The once influential content aggregation site was split into parts and changed hands multiple times between 2012 and now, with Betaworks, LinkedIn, The Washington Post, and Gannet all at one point holding some portion of its assets according to TechCrunch. But now, it's returned to the hands of Kevin Rose, its original cofounder, partnered with cofounder of Reddit, Alexis Ohanian. The site remains parked at the moment with a landing screen
Georgia Hampton:
to input an email for alerts once access opens, but
Mike Rugnetta:
what will it be like when access does open? The duo's pronouncements are familiarly vague for web two point o wonderkins. Uhanian's press release reads, online communities thrive when there's a balance between technology and human judgment. We're bringing Digg back to ensure that balance exists. Kevin and I are here to build something better than what social platforms are offering today.
Mike Rugnetta:
AI should handle the grunt work in the background while humans focus on what they do best, building real connections.
Jaap Blonk:
Shh. Do you really hear nothing? No. Yes. There it is.
Jaap Blonk:
That bubbling from just a minute ago, splattering amicably past your inquiringly open hearing. Your wildly open ear perceives sweet drum rolls and rumbling, wanting to get through as well. There's buzzing all around now, and you revel in the soft crunching. A hiss is going to cherish your thirsty ear. Oh, how lovely all that gurgling and grumbling.
Jaap Blonk:
This lightweight beeping is most welcome as are that nicely driveling murmur and the tinkling that tickles your earskin. What about that snorting, though? Can you give it ear? And does that chattering fit in anywhere? Isn't that trumpeting getting out of hand?
Jaap Blonk:
Then block your hearing. You are blocking your ears.
Jaap Blonk:
That is what you're trying.
Jaap Blonk:
But it won't work. Hearing is everywhere, and it knocks at every window of your cochlea. Clatters at the aural gates left and right. Your ears are burning from the balcony.
Mike Rugnetta:
In show news this week, did you know that you can become a free Neverpost member at neverpo.st? And this gets you access to Georgia's stupendous newsletter with its own narrative and lore, with fun links to other news stories not featured in the show, and updates about the other stuff that we get up to besides these here episodes for free? That's $0, folks. $0. You can sign up at neverpo.st.
Mike Rugnetta:
And also, next week, one week from release day, on March 19, I'm gonna be on Matt Silverman's Influence podcast, talking about what it has been like working in content since 02/2009. And how I landed, where I am today, what it has been like having a career, I guess, on the Internet. I say such things as, I love the Internet, I just hate 90% of what's on it. And we gotta abandon the idea of building audience because it is poisonous. Two things that I think I, remain steadfast in my dedication to.
Mike Rugnetta:
It's a good, normal chat. We had a great time. So that's gonna be Influence with Matt Silverman, out next week, 03/19/2025. Okay. That's the news I have for you this week.
Mike Rugnetta:
Next, I'm gonna talk with Stephen Harrison about why authoritarians hate Wikipedia. Georgia is gonna talk with Kyle Chayka about how to have fun online. But first, in our interstitials this week, please listen to the Never Post staff create three visual masterpieces in Kid Pix. Try to guess what each of us is drawing and then go to the link in the show notes to see it for real. Okay.
Mike Rugnetta:
Let's go to archive.org and get kid picks going. Click here to begin. Hold. Windows 3.1 logo.
Mike Rugnetta:
Yes.
Mike Rugnetta:
It's just as good as I remember it. Okay. Here we go.
KidPix:
Uh-oh.
KidPix:
Oh, no.
Mike Rugnetta:
Okay. I am gonna call this finished. Oh, I'm so excited to take a screenshot of this and for you to see it.
Mike Rugnetta:
According to the article, censorship of Wikipedia, Wikipedia is either wholly or partially blocked in the following countries: China, Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. Previously, it has been partially or wholly blocked in Syria, Tunisia, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Venezuela.
Mike Rugnetta:
Some of these places have even formally prosecuted Wikipedia editors. What these places have in common is repressive regimes, authoritarian governments which seek to limit access to accurate information about the world, usually for the fact that that information goes counter to state narratives, which are used to justify violence, oppression, the removal of civil rights, and so on. Elon Musk, on x, has proclaimed, defund Wikipedia until balance is restored, making calls to suspend its funding until it becomes friendlier to him and his ilk. I wanted to know more about this tension. Why is it that the Far Right and authoritarians see Wikipedia as such a threat?
Mike Rugnetta:
Is it really a tool of resistance? And how do we think about it as an information source during The US's current free fall into authoritarianism? So I talked with Stephen Harrison, a journalist, a novelist, and an expert on Wikipedia. Joining me is Stephen Harrison, a journalist and writer who has extensively covered Wikipedia for Vice, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wired, The Columbia Journalism Review, and most regularly for Slate, as well as on his own blog and newsletter, Source Notes. Stephen's also the author of the novel The Editors, published in August of last year, about a global information war waged in and around the ranks of editors of a free online encyclopedia.
Mike Rugnetta:
Taylor Lorenz called The Editors a strikingly relevant and compelling suspense novel. Stephen, thank you so much for joining us.
Stephen Harrison:
Mike, thanks so much for having me.
Mike Rugnetta:
I would love to start, like, really broad, basically. And kinda like set some terms and some stakes and some ground level stuff and just get a sense of the position that Wikipedia occupies in the world of information at the moment. Because when I was growing up in and around the first set of digital panics, my teachers would always say, you know, the classic story, never cite Wikipedia. It's an information source that anybody can edit. It's not fact checked.
Mike Rugnetta:
It's not reliable. And its reputation has very obviously, I think, changed. So I was wondering if you could just give us a sense of how reliable an information source Wikipedia is at the moment, and what is some evidence of that reliability?
Stephen Harrison:
Right. Well, I I grew up in the same era where teachers said not only do not cite Wikipedia, but don't go to Wikipedia. This was sort of a new frontier Internet type thing. And what I find so interesting about it is so many of the principles to Wikipedia, such as the information must be cited to a reliable source. It cannot be self published.
Stephen Harrison:
They don't consider someone's tweets or their TikTok videos or social media to be considered a reliable source. That seems very traditional now, right? It's it's. And so it's been a real change. Wikipedia is a project, an encyclopedia project that anyone can edit, but it's not a free for all.
Stephen Harrison:
It's not anarchy, right? Because if someone puts something that's inaccurate, that gets taken down. And I think that's what's so different about Wikipedia. The the false information gets deleted, by the volunteers.
Mike Rugnetta:
Do you have a sense of who those people are just out in the world?
Stephen Harrison:
I always tell the story of I was on a business trip to New York, and I I'm recording here in Dallas, Texas. Grew up in Dallas. Wasn't that familiar with the subway. So I was reading about the history of the subway, the Wikipedia pages about the subway while I was on the subway in New York. I I was then I was like, who has the time to write these?
Stephen Harrison:
These are so I mean, they're really pretty high quality, and they're updated, you know, very regularly, especially with the timetables and things like that. And, I saw two main usernames, reached out to them. And one of them was a high school senior. The other was a college sophomore. They both lived in Queens, and neither of them have ever met each other.
Stephen Harrison:
And, you know, I'm not saying that's representative, but what what I'm saying is that it is often somebody you wouldn't expect. Right? You know, it's it's not a traditional subject matter expert. At least that was not, you know, in that case, a transportation scholar or anything like that. It's a volunteer who's curated a lot of information, but not necessarily someone who has traditional expertise.
Mike Rugnetta:
So for Slate earlier this month, you wrote that the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank behind project twenty twenty five is planning to quote, identify and target Wikipedia editors, through analyzing text patterns, usernames, technical data, and employing social engineering tactics. Heritage has aimed to reveal the identities of anonymous Wikipedia editors it believes are, quote, abusing their position on the platform. And I'm just curious why somewhere like the Heritage Foundation, which is a conservative think tank that was founded in the seventies, it came to prominence through informing the Reagan administration, why they would be interested in Wikipedia and its editors and, like, how it is that they see that those people might be abusing their position? Like, how does that impact them?
Stephen Harrison:
So I I saw it as a real dangerous escalation on behalf of the Heritage Foundation because instead of doing things the Wikipedia way where they were editing on the Wikipedia talk pages saying, Hey, this is not supported by a particular source, or you were not writing from a neutral point of view, instead of fighting things out, and let's say, the court of Wikipedia, they were gonna make a real transition and say, oh, we're going to try to attack the editors themselves. And the reason that bothered me is because it really is similar to something that the CCP did in China and Taiwan and and in Hong Kong, I should say, because what they were trying to do is they did not like how the pro democracy protesters in Hong Kong were describing the conflict with pro democracy in Hong Kong. And so what they did is they said, let's see if we could figure out the IP addresses of the Hong Kong pro democracy Wikipedia editors so that we can disrupt their lives or try to arrest them and things like that. So I just saw that as a real you know, danger to the Wikipedia editors involved, and and I thought that was worth covering.
Mike Rugnetta:
You you kinda took the words out of my mouth. I was surprised to read that they're going after individuals and not not Wikipedia, but the people who who work on it. And is that just because that's an an easier target?
Stephen Harrison:
Well, I think Wikipedia really is the people. It's it's so it's so hard to to describe because, well, anyone could edit Wikipedia and I'm sure, you know, you and I and and a lot of people had maybe tried to edit, you know, over over the years. Very few people get very, very involved with Wikipedia and become sort of super editors. There's some estimates that it's only like 3,000 on English Wikipedia. And that's yeah, that's pretty small compared to like a billion TikTok users.
Stephen Harrison:
Right. You know, so if there is an effort to make editing Wikipedia more dangerous, then then that would only further hurt the site. Right? And and that's why, you know, I do I do feel that we really need to protect, Wikipedia editors and let let them do the work of of curating reliable information, that is so important to this resource that all of us use.
Mike Rugnetta:
And what what does the Heritage Foundation gain in this? What are they trying to make come to pass?
Stephen Harrison:
Well, to the extent they can scare people from editing Wikipedia, then they're kind of succeeding in their goal. That's that's unfortunate. I think that, you know, there were allegations from the Heritage Foundation that the Wikipedia editors were not covering the, conflict that Israel and Gaza war, appropriately. There are areas of Wikipedia where reasonable people can disagree about how it's covered. I think in the best example, Wikipedia is teaching the controversy saying that, you know, giving background on the controversy and helping the reader to understand what is going on with with a topic, whether it's a contentious topic like that or any topic.
Stephen Harrison:
Behind every article, there's a talk page. And that's where you can say, this is a more reliable source for this situation. And and and you have to justify it. Right? You know?
Stephen Harrison:
And so I think that that sort of the democratic norms of Wikipedia were, you know, threatening to the Heritage Foundation, threatening to, I would say the CCP and Hong Kong and, you know, other entities that have challenged Wikipedia around the world.
Mike Rugnetta:
Yeah. It really you know, hearing you describe it, it really reminds me of a lot of the same tactics that a lot of really like far right organizations tend to use against individual journalists, journalistic organizations, journalism sort of as a whole, wanting to disrupt the processes of or call into question the, veracity of anything that can provide accurate documentation of, like, what's happening in the world, which I think, you know, can serve as a source of accountability, which, you know, I read as maybe a kind of implicit admission on their part. Like, what they're doing is or their positions in the world are, like, pretty unpopular, if not maybe, you know, criminal or illegal in some way or another. But it really does it feels very similar to what has happened to or or what they have attempted to do to journalism.
Stephen Harrison:
Right. Well, I think that, you know, Elon Musk, for example, has attacked Wikipedia numerous times and, you know, let let's look at like what those attacks are based on. I think Elon would prefer that. And he said this, that his Wikipedia page does not describe himself as an investor. He wants to be described as an entrepreneur.
Stephen Harrison:
Now, the problem with that is that numerous sources, including the Wall Street Journal have reported how he, you know, invested and acquired companies, you know, SpaceX, Tesla, and now Twitter, right? He's not just an entrepreneur. He, he acquires and buys these companies. And so I think what it shows is he disputes the worldview where truth or reality is determined by independent media that is disconnected from the topic. He would prefer if the knowledge was created by, you know, his sort of self published view of the world, the things that he puts on X, right?
Stephen Harrison:
And, that aren't vetted independently. And so I think that there's something in both traditional media and in Wikipedia that is anathema to a lot of these billionaires.
Mike Rugnetta:
Yeah. It also occurs to me now that, like, it's probably also threatening that Wikipedia is, like, a place you can go. Like, it is a sort of singular location storehouse of all of this information that is all interconnected, you know, pretty literally, and that is relatively powerful in a information environment that is increasingly atomized.
Stephen Harrison:
Sure. I mean, there is only one Wikipedia article about Elon Musk. Now to be fair, there's a different one in different languages in German and Arabic, etcetera. But, I mean, there there's value in that that we all have to come to the same same page, the same article, and, you know, again, teach the controversy or whatever. And it's not just, you know, someone's press releases about who they are.
Stephen Harrison:
It's a collection that is determined by, you know, I would say grassroots volunteers. And that's another thing about this too, the flow of power, because it's really not top down on Wikipedia. It really is grassroots effort that's built, you know, bottom up by a community of volunteers. And so it's just, it's a really different view of how power could could work on the Internet. And I think there there's a reason that it's people really like it.
Stephen Harrison:
I think the reason is because they're they're almost nostalgic for what the Internet could have been. It didn't have to be these platforms that are owned by billionaires. It could be more the Wikipedia way where it's a nonprofit model, and it's for the public benefit pro bono as opposed to just, you know, a corporate mouthpiece.
Mike Rugnetta:
Yeah. Really community driven. Everybody finding their place in it where they can do the work that they appreciate and, you know, are good at and slowly, like, improve the process of. You wrote about this from the perspective of here's what the Heritage Foundation, Project twenty twenty five, here's what they say is one thing that they're gonna do. Mhmm.
Mike Rugnetta:
And we've seen over the last couple months that they're willing to do a lot of the things that they said that they were gonna do. Do you have a sense of, like, is this starting? Has it started? Like, is Wikipedia, at least in The United States as we understand it now, through this vulnerable avenue of individual editors at risk in any way?
Stephen Harrison:
Well, I can just say that Wikipedia editors themselves are taking it very seriously. I mean, they're they're taking precautions like not using the same user name across multiple platforms. Don't have your, you know, your Reddit link to your Wikipedia. We know so that because the text that you put on the Internet, especially with the AI and other tools can be used to identify you and kind of form a profile of you, and and kind of out you whether you want to or not. And I think that the other change that I've seen happen is when grassroots volunteers are training new Wikipedia editors, they are encouraging them to say, Hey, create a pseudonym.
Stephen Harrison:
Yeah. And then, you know, in terms of the seriousness of it, you know, the other concern is legal challenges, especially in countries that don't have Section two thirty, which largely protects the platforms themselves. Right. You know, and saying, hey, you know, can I get the identity of this editor and this things? And so what Wikipedia has going for it that a lot of platforms don't is they very intentionally don't collect personal information.
Stephen Harrison:
Right? You have a username and you have a password and you log in. It's not tracking, for example, which articles are you reading. Right? There's no profile of
Mike Rugnetta:
Yeah.
Stephen Harrison:
You know, how much are you interacting with Wikipedia. And I I really credit to the nonprofit, Wikipedia model for that.
Mike Rugnetta:
There is something kind of old school Internet about Wikipedia from the pseudonymity to the sort of lack of an incentive structure except for that, which is like sort of completely intrinsic, I guess. Mhmm. I've been making things for the Internet and on the Internet for a long time. And like, I remember I used to we used to do the show about Internet memes and like, we would go on the news and they would be like, why are Internet memes so important? Like, why is this something anybody should care about?
Mike Rugnetta:
And this was in, you know, like 02/2006. And we would say like, well, you know, this is a group of people working together and that's exciting that we can all
Stephen Harrison:
sort
Mike Rugnetta:
of like Yeah. Share meaning and make jokes and, yeah, work on this body of media together and that's exciting and that's cool and, like, is it curing cancer? No. But maybe it's a model for something that's significant in the future of the world, you know, later. And it turns out we were right.
Mike Rugnetta:
It was the bad people are now having a go at that. Yeah. It is a way to cohere a bunch of like minded people to change the world. It's just now we're suffering some negative consequences of that. So I, you know, I look back at my boosterism days and I think like, you know, what was I thinking?
Mike Rugnetta:
But then I look at stuff like Wikipedia and it like I feel that hope again, in a lot of ways. And it's especially heartening to think about it and have it as something to look towards now in the global political climate. I read a statistic recently that was something like 70% of the world currently lives under an authoritarian regime. So it's like, rough times out there. And I read something recently by Mike Brock on TechDirt.
Mike Rugnetta:
He was like, when you're living in these complex oppressive political climates, like, what do you do? First, maintain clarity about basic reality.
Stephen Harrison:
Mhmm.
Mike Rugnetta:
Right? Easier said than done sometimes. Two, have the courage to sound the alarm without hedging or qualification. You have to have courage to name truth even when doing so carries social or professional costs. And three, you have to engage in coordinated action with other people.
Mike Rugnetta:
And I mean, that's Wikipedia.
Stephen Harrison:
Right.
Mike Rugnetta:
That's Mike was not intending to describe Wikipedia, but like, that's it. Right.
Stephen Harrison:
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I'm I mean, I love collecting, like, Internet metaphors and specifically metaphors for Wikipedia. And, you know, in the early days, The New York Times was describing it as, like, the hive.
Stephen Harrison:
And it was like, okay. There are all these drones who are working on the site. And like nowadays, you're more likely to hear people describe it as either, you know, a public library or like a public park that we, you know, we're all trying to maintain. It's a collective good, you know, it's a commons, you know, that that's an interesting principle in economics. And, and like you're saying also, it's a last bastion of shared reality.
Stephen Harrison:
This idea that we don't all have this sort of individual view of the world is like, no, you know, even though we don't always get it right, we're gonna aim to have a shared or collective reality that's documented on this shared encyclopedia.
Mike Rugnetta:
Yeah. Do you think that significantly more people like, should we become more familiar with the technical and editorial norms and processes of Wikipedia. Like, there's so much conversation right now online about, like, what do we do? Like, how do we deal with the shifting political realities of the world at the moment? And, like, is learning how to edit Wikipedia, which we appreciate as an ongoing process, one of the things that we can do?
Stephen Harrison:
Well, I think we all in some ways have like a calling. And like for me, I well, I'm happy to edit Wikipedia from time to time. I think that I'm more called towards like journalism, right? Basically investigating stories that become reliable sources that can then be used to support. So I'm supporting Wikipedia that way.
Stephen Harrison:
Right? And so I just wanna do say that I do think that become a Wikipedia super editor or super user might be a little bit of a personality thing, and I'm not sure if everybody, everybody has that personality. They might have something that pulls them in a different direction, but everyone I think should certainly try it. And I think it's so important. There's this term right now that it's media literacy, the idea of understanding that not all sources are created equal and further that knowledge is produced by humans.
Stephen Harrison:
And I think that the Wikipedia way of creating knowledge is so important because it's not which team are you on and did that person put this on their social media today and therefore it's true. It's no, it's like, what is a reliable source? What is it coming from a reputation for fact checking and accuracy? Does that publication issue a correction if they get something wrong? Finding the reliable sources for a topic and putting it on a Wikipedia article.
Stephen Harrison:
That's that's just a very different model of and so so I think for all of us and and, you know, I'd say especially for young people, learning the Wikipedia way of producing knowledge would be really valuable.
Mike Rugnetta:
So, Steven, I mean, I think a lot of this comes to play in the book that you wrote at the that came out at the end of last year. So could you tell us a little bit about the editors? Like, how is this? Because I know that a lot of this is sort of reflected in what what happens.
Stephen Harrison:
Right. I always saw Wikipedia as, like, fertile ground for a suspense novel because you you don't know who these editors are. Right? And there certainly are powerful people, whether it's the think tanks that we're talking about or or governments that are trying to influence what's on the site. And I wrote and pitched, The Editors as a suspense novel.
Stephen Harrison:
There are four main characters. You have Morgan, who's like the freelance journalist who's kind of trying to figure out what's going on in this this world of an Internet encyclopedia. You have the high school student who's trying to rise up in the ranks and become an admin and just feels very strongly about maintaining the credibility of the site. You have a paid consultant. Interesting.
Stephen Harrison:
And he ends up taking on two two main clients, one an American billionaire and two the Chinese Communist Party in China. Right. And so he's working for them. Right. Then you have this sort of old school editor like someone who has been editing since the .com era and in 02/2001.
Stephen Harrison:
And so putting these four main stories together in the editors, I thought that it'd be a really cool way to, like, dramatize what's going on, with Internet information and and kinda just to help people sort of really feel, the story, feel, you know, what we're dealing with when it comes to, you know, creating knowledge and distributing reliable information.
Mike Rugnetta:
Steven, this was great. Thank you so much for joining us.
Stephen Harrison:
Thanks so much for having me, Mike. I really enjoyed it.
Mike Rugnetta:
Yeah. Where can people find you and your work online?
Stephen Harrison:
Yeah. Best for me is my Substack newsletter, which is sourcenotes.blog. Also I'm getting more active on Blue Sky, and you can find me there at Harrison Steven. And I'm speaking about the book at South by Southwest this week, and I'll say hi to anybody who's there.
Mike Rugnetta:
Nice. We'll put some links to those in the show notes.
Georgia Hampton:
I don't even know what paintbrush I'm using. Oh, it does nothing. Oh, that's the eraser. Oh, no.
KidPix:
Oh, no.
Georgia Hampton:
Okay. We don't want that. I just want, like, a solid color.
Georgia Hampton:
What's this? Oh. Oh, no.
Georgia Hampton:
Oh, Jesus.
KidPix:
Oh, no.
Georgia Hampton:
No. Oops.
Georgia Hampton:
Okay. I don't know if I like
Georgia Hampton:
this. Oh.
Mike Rugnetta:
Woah.
Georgia Hampton:
Oh my god. Okay. Yeah. Where's this? Now's a great time to remind everyone that I do have an art degree.
Georgia Hampton:
But you wouldn't know it. Oh, okay.
Mike Rugnetta:
Yikes.
Georgia Hampton:
Incredible. Oh, no. Oh,
Georgia Hampton:
no. Okay. Perfect. My masterpiece.
Georgia Hampton:
One thing to know about me is that I love to have fun, like, actually. And that's also true of my online experience. I am determined to have a good time on the internet, And I found a lot of people online that I really like, who make amazing stuff and whose content I really love watching. But that good stuff is often buried under a lot of, I mean, trash, AI slop or ads or just random content that I don't care about at all. On any algorithmic platform, TikTok, Instagram, what have you, I'm not the one really deciding what I'm looking at.
Georgia Hampton:
It's the algorithm that's deciding. In the way I use the Internet now, I have to just kind of hope that the people I like will filter through and come back onto my feed eventually. But, I mean, that's no way to have fun. So, how do I metaphorically take the wheel of my online experience and get this party back on track? Well, I decided to talk to the person who has written quite a lot about this exact predicament.
Kyle Chayka:
My name is Kyle Ceika. I'm a staff writer at The New Yorker where I write a column about the Internet called Infinite Scroll. And I'm also the author of two books, the most recent of which is called Filter World, How Algorithms Flattened Culture.
Georgia Hampton:
Well, Kyle, I'm very excited to have you here. And I wanna start off talking about a piece that you actually wrote two years ago. You wrote, the social media web as we know it appears to be over, and you asked in that piece if we remember having fun online. So it's been two years since you wrote that. Have you had any fun online?
Kyle Chayka:
Two years goes by real fast. You know, I am always having fun online. Okay. Okay. It's hard it's hard for me to stop having fun online, but I think looking back, I think that period about two years ago was part of a six month to one year trough of, like, the least fun time maybe.
Kyle Chayka:
I mean, the platforms have gotten worse if anything. Like, two years ago, you could have fun pointing out how bad it was. It's kind of like it was fun in a kind of nihilistic way. I think now I'm having more fun in a productive way where we're passing through a transition moment from enthusiasm for those giant platforms to the tide totally turning against them in terms of user sentiment. And we're seeing the construction of new things and, like, new I mean, the the major shifts that we can see is just the shift toward creators, quote, unquote, and this development of, like, small channels and content production based around individual people and their voices.
Kyle Chayka:
And I think that's pretty cool.
Georgia Hampton:
So, I mean, two years is not a ton of time for that shift to happen. Can you kind of dig into that more for me? Because it just seems so intense.
Kyle Chayka:
People should write about this more. But I think it was a tide coming, basically. I mean, I think if you were watching the evolution of Patreon and Substack and YouTube channels and OnlyFans and whatever, like, that was happening for the past five to eight years, probably. Like, you could see that turn happening where more people were making money for themselves by putting out content online and kind of building these little content studios or whatever. So, yeah, I I think you could see it coming, but then I think there was this cataclysm or something where suddenly it was like, oh, the the Instagram dream of getting a lot of followers and then making money was suddenly not working out so well anymore.
Kyle Chayka:
Same thing on TikTok. And so what do you do if you're trying to make content and make money? You're gonna go find your own little road to tell or whatever.
Georgia Hampton:
And then, I mean, if you're just a passive scroller, someone who's consuming this content, it sounds like what you're suggesting is that you also kind of have a reason to leave these platforms.
Kyle Chayka:
For sure. Well, when it sucks too much, you end up leaving. Like like Fair enough. Instagram suddenly decides that it doesn't wanna show you your friends or even the brands you follow or whatever and only wants to show you curated meme accounts and influencer garbage, then you're like, where did my good stuff go? Like and the problem was it's still out there.
Kyle Chayka:
It's still being produced, but those algorithmic feeds were not delivering it in the same way that they used to. And so you go straight to the source. Like, you you start wanting to hear from these creators through their newsletter, through their podcast, on their Patreon, whatever.
Georgia Hampton:
It sounds like what we're discussing is sort of a like a curatorial practice. Because obviously, you know, these platforms are very curatorial, but in a way that is completely outside of our control in a way that feels sort of essential. So I guess my question to you then is like, how how do we, as people who use the Internet, kind of cultivate that kind of curatorial practice in our experience of being online in the hopes of it being fun,
Georgia Hampton:
of the Internet being a fun place?
Kyle Chayka:
Curating your own fun, I think that's that's the next best thing to creating your own fun, I guess. Then we have to do both. Yeah. Like, I think the problem with the feeds through the twenty tens into the early twenty twenties was that they promised to do your curating for you. The whole message was, don't worry about what you like or thinking about your taste.
Kyle Chayka:
Just click on the right stuff, and we'll give you more of it. And we'll kind of approximate what you desire and feed it to you at at infinite volume. And so we lost that skill set, and the Internet decayed around that. Like, the muscles for curation, the muscles for, like, distribution of niche content totally atrophied because the algorithmic feeds were taking care of that. So I think I mean, to me, it's like you need rather than just being on the platform or following accounts, you need to, like, figure out your bespoke curatorial creator or whatever and then follow them and support them.
Kyle Chayka:
And it sounds absurd, but I really think that's how it's working these days. Like, there's so many sub stacks. Right? And many of them make significant amounts of money, and a lot of what that content is is just aggregated links. Like like, people are paying for the equivalent of their Twitter feed, but curated by a human.
Kyle Chayka:
And I think that's that's kinda good.
Georgia Hampton:
You mentioned that you might find someone on one of these big platforms, which then leads me to wonder, can you still have fun on these social platforms?
Kyle Chayka:
Yeah. I think you can have fun, but it's, like, unsustainable. It's like, it's like going on a cruise or something. Like, you know, it might be fun, but, you know, it's bad for the environment, Or it's bad for Venice when you land in Venice and flood it flood the city. The the feeds and the big platforms help you discover fun stuff for sure.
Kyle Chayka:
I mean, for my money or attention, TikTok does that the best these days just because I mean, I'm not a big YouTube user, so I don't have a better way of discovering videos, and TikTok just surfaces incredibly weird stuff often. There's, like, an ecosystem of strange and interesting things on TikTok, and so I definitely have fun with that. And I have to I'm always plugging now, this basically TikTok animation show that comes out every week that's called Titanium Daydream.
Georgia Hampton:
I knew you were going I love Titanium Daydream. That's so
Kyle Chayka:
great. Like, it feels like a hallucination
Georgia Hampton:
It does.
Kyle Chayka:
That I was just, like, scrolling TikTok one day, and I was, like, came upon this PS one level Polygon animation of this noir anime
Georgia Hampton:
Yes.
Kyle Chayka:
Film cut up into one minute segments. And I think it's the most genius thing I've seen online in forever.
Georgia Hampton:
And honestly, to me, I'm like that kind of I kind of want that to be on TikTok. I want For sure. I want it to be able to be seen by as many people as possible, and I it it's frustrating because I don't know that it could survive off of that. I don't know. Maybe that's wrong.
Kyle Chayka:
Yeah. Well, so that show particularly, like, it's part of its genius is its existence in the TikTok feed.
Georgia Hampton:
Yes. Agreed.
Kyle Chayka:
Because it's like you're scrolling through random stuff. It's as if you're flipping through late night TV channels, and you just come upon this thing that you're like, woah. What the fuck is this?
Georgia Hampton:
Yes.
Kyle Chayka:
And you get dragged into it. And so it fits. The work is adapted to that context, and so it doesn't work quite as well outside of it, I think. Same thing because it's in, like, what, two minute segments or something. It finds an audience through TikTok, and it finds its context in TikTok as, like, an artwork finds a context in a gallery or something.
Kyle Chayka:
So if I'm that creator who I have not talked to and don't know who it is, but I'm really curious. Like, he's selling t shirts.
Georgia Hampton:
Yes.
Kyle Chayka:
He's trying to do to, like, build up more of a presence. And that's what you have to do. But I do wonder, you know, that this is a niche thing. Like, this is not this is not even 10,000 likes level. This is, like, 2,000 likes and a devout commenting community who's, like, well versed in the memes of the show.
Kyle Chayka:
Cult like, fascinating cool culture that is thriving right now creatively.
Georgia Hampton:
Does this idea of kinda spreading out, looking at lots of different places on the Internet. How does that work, like, economically, especially for the people making that content? Like, is that viable?
Kyle Chayka:
Posting is is always a losing game. I feel like posting posting is a loss leader. That's what I'm trying to say. Like, your posting on social media is the way to attract attention and find an audience and, like, riff and develop your thing, which is exactly what happened in the 20 times with writing and journalism. Like, it was a bunch of people riffing on Twitter, like, posting their asses off for free, and eventually finding a voice and developing a whole language that that dominates the Internet.
Kyle Chayka:
So I think that's still happening, and you're still, like, figuring your creative thing out online and then translating it into money in whatever way you want to. But the that question of, like, there's so many different spaces and platforms, where do I post, I think is really a problem. Because, like, the platforms are so not monolithic anymore or there's everyone's attention is spread across so many spaces. You're either a crazy hustler and can post everything everywhere, or you're trying to focus in one place or another.
Georgia Hampton:
Right.
Kyle Chayka:
I mean, one of my big theories in this zone is that, like, culture requires labor, and labor is not necessarily bad for the cultural output or the consumption. Like, it should be hard to find some stuff. It should be high friction. You should have to work to understand something or engage with something. Like, as with Titanium Daydream, we can say, go watch this.
Kyle Chayka:
It's so sick. And you have to go search for it. You have to find the account on TikTok. You have to kind of start from the beginning. You might be attracted to it by one video, but to really get it to
Georgia Hampton:
You have to go to the start.
Kyle Chayka:
The, you know, deep cuts or whatever, you need to go back. And so that's labor, and I don't find that to be bad. Like, as long as the labor is rewarded on either side, I think it's okay. As a consumer, I don't mind when I have to work to find something.
Georgia Hampton:
I mean, that's kind of the essential tension here. Right? Because how how do we navigate an online space that so often overvalue scale?
Kyle Chayka:
I mean, I think we're moving away from scale, period.
Georgia Hampton:
Okay.
Georgia Hampton:
Great news.
Kyle Chayka:
Yeah. I think we've passed peak scale. And I think scale was always kind of a lie. Like, for a long time, we have this cultural bubble of, like, if you get a hundred thousand followers somewhere, you will be pretty well off. Like, you
Georgia Hampton:
Right.
Kyle Chayka:
You have won the culture game. And now, we're returning to this model of the, like, thousand true fans model, where what you need to find is not a massive audience, but a committed, engaged, valuable audience. And that's what will sustain your career.
Georgia Hampton:
Well, that actually reminds me. You had you had tweeted about this around one of your pieces in New Yorker that was exploring new culture creators online, and you liken this to a kind of, like, dark social media. Can you can you explain, like, what does that mean?
Kyle Chayka:
This is the short memory of the Internet because dark social is actually a phrase coined by Alexis Madrigal in the Atlantic in, like, the early twenty tens, I wanna say. Like, not long after The Atlantic first started having blogs by writers like Ta Nehisi Coates. And dark social was this term that referred to, like, the distribution of content online out of the public view. So not posting links on Twitter, but instead, like, distribution through the group chats and the Slacks and, you know, the the blog link dumps or something. So it wasn't as easily graspable or viewable as, you know, searching for a link on the Twitter feed.
Georgia Hampton:
So then does there kind of need to be an if you know you know quality? Does there need to be this kind of barrier to entry to make the labor worthwhile?
Kyle Chayka:
I think so. I mean, the clout. I am I am a self avowed cultural elitist, unfortunately. Like like, not everything is for everyone, and that is how it should be. Like, what I like is not what you like.
Kyle Chayka:
Everyone has their own tastes. It's okay that we are not all obsessed with one monolithic entity. Culture is given meaning in a community. A community can only exist if it's not everyone on the planet or everyone on TikTok. And you need to, like, sustain that community, which also sustains the culture.
Kyle Chayka:
So with a podcast or a creator or Titanium Daydream, like like, you don't need that to belong to everyone. These are specific things for specific groups, and that should be just fine. Like, not everything needs to be McDonald's.
Georgia Hampton:
I mean, you're right. But it also it because to me, I'm like, we live in a world that has social media now. We kind of can't meaningfully return to, you know, pre social media Internet. But I do I do agree with you that there there is this sort of departure. So I guess how how do you parse that?
Kyle Chayka:
We're in a rebuilding phase. Like, we hit peak centralization and peak massive feeds. And that we've, like, gone down the slope to, like, being very dissatisfied with that and thinking about how much it sucks. I think I don't know who said this. They said there's only, like, two modes of media.
Kyle Chayka:
There's only centralization and decentralization, and those just go up and down and up and down. So it's like things bundle up and then they fall apart, and then they bundle up again, then they fall apart again.
Georgia Hampton:
Is there a way that you kind of can only survive this endless up and down, up and down, up and down by kind of maintaining something under the radar?
Kyle Chayka:
Yeah. You have to be disciplined. Like, you have to not care about quote, unquote selling out
Kyle Chayka:
or
Kyle Chayka:
cashing out on your IP or whatever or rely on yourself enough to to the point where you're like, okay, I'm gonna sell out this round, but I'll start again the next round. It's like
Georgia Hampton:
Well, it also sounds like as a person on the Internet, as just a passive scroller, you kind of have to be entrepreneurial. You have to be very intentional.
Kyle Chayka:
For sure. I mean,
Kyle Chayka:
now if you don't want your view of culture and the world to just be dictated by an algorithmic feed like x. Like, you're gonna need to assemble your own viewpoint at this point. And if you don't I mean, whether it's x or, like, the New York Times app, like, those are limited viewpoints that curate in a specific direction. And if you wanna go beyond them, you're gonna have to work for it.
Georgia Hampton:
So, I mean, if you were to give our listeners some kind of road map to be like, oh god, I'm, I don't know, relying so much just on Instagram or just on TikTok, and I wanna stop doing that. Like, how how do you change this behavior?
Kyle Chayka:
What I would do, how I would go about this is you're you're on Instagram. You're looking at a bunch of stuff. Cool. Write down everything you're looking at. Like, figure out the realms of culture you're interested in.
Kyle Chayka:
Map them out in a way. Then figure out which accounts are good for those things. And then go to the accounts page and figure out what they how they're making money. Like, is it a Substack? Is it a Patreon?
Kyle Chayka:
Are they actually making money from a podcast? And then, like, go down the rabbit hole and get off of that feed and instead, like, get closer to the source of what you're actually interested in. I keep coming back to this metaphor of, like, a farmer's market for culture. This has been the model in my mind for a long time online now. It's like, we should be shopping boutique to boutique, stand to stand online for the culture that we want.
Kyle Chayka:
The same way we, like, go buy the kale at one stand and, like, green garlic at another stand in the farmer's market. And you know when you're, like, paying the money, you are going as direct to the farmer as you possibly can. But instead, you're going to the musician or the whatever.
Georgia Hampton:
Yeah. You're talking to the person who actually, you know, pulled that carrot out of the ground. Thank you so much, Kyle. I feel like we could keep talking about at least Titanium Daydream for
Georgia Hampton:
far longer than this.
Kyle Chayka:
We've got podcasts.
Georgia Hampton:
Yeah. Maybe maybe we'll talk offline about that. But,
Georgia Hampton:
where can people find more of your work?
Kyle Chayka:
I am still on social media despite despite this entire conversation. I mean, I'm on Instagram, at Chika k and on Blue Sky, not so much on x these days. My my, like, contribution to this discourse or whatever is, a Substack newsletter called One Thing, which is 1thingnewsletter.Substack.com. And I and my, like, writing partner, Nate, basically write about, like, lifestyle bullshit. Like, I wrote a post about a ladle that I bought in Paris that I really like, and we write about stuff in our houses and restaurants and, like, how cultural consumption works now.
Kyle Chayka:
And so that's my little sand castle and the New Yorker. Oh
Georgia Hampton:
my god.
Kyle Chayka:
So every every Wednesday, I write a column and it goes up on the New Yorker and that that's definitely where my most serious real thoughts are.
Georgia Hampton:
Thank you so much again to Kyle Chayka for an amazing conversation. Now I've genuinely had a pretty hard time reminding myself to be intentional in what I consume online instead of just kind of succumbing to the algorithm. So, I wanna hear from you about what you have done to break out of the algorithmic idea of fun and to make your own. Call us, email us, all the information about how to reach us is in the show notes.
Hans Buetow:
Okay. Here we go. Ugh. So good. So good.
Hans Buetow:
Save a picture. Save a picture. Kid Pix files on the c drive. Let's just take a screenshot. That's great.
Mike Rugnetta:
That is the show we have for you this week. We're gonna be back here in the main feed on Wednesday, March 26. The following is a list of things that cost $4 on Timoo. One, fast and dry, super absorbent one piece bath mat, soft and comfortable, non slip absorbent floor mat suitable for bathroom, shower, laundry room, bedroom, living room, doorway mat, kitchen mat. Two.
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Mike Rugnetta:
Our senior producer is Hans Buto. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer, the show's host. That's me. Is Mike Rugniva. Oh, to be almost loquacious rather than fatally over.
Mike Rugnetta:
Loquacity's edge. Excerpt of number 36, the faux ailing abacus by Wayne Kestenbaum. Neverpost is a production of Charts and Leisure.
