Hey everyone, and welcome to Mini Scroll, the daily Internet
culture podcast bringing you the biggest stories from social
media, the creator economy and the digital space every Monday
through Thursday. My name is Annabelle and I'm
your Wednesday Mini Scroll host and also the deputy editor of
the youth digital media brand Centennial World.
If you listen to yesterday's Mini Scroll, if you haven't
already, you definitely should, but you would have heard that we
had some major technical difficulties.
So I am hoping that is all behind us.
And if it's not, but I am very sorry in advance, but I don't
really have much to say at the top of this week's episode.
So if you enjoy this episode, Please remember to rate, review
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We are on the journey to getting 1K Spotify star reviews, so feel
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So the first story for today actually broke a while ago
before Mini Tech Scroll even launched.
But last week I saw an interesting opinion piece
published on The Atlantic, so I thought it would be a good
opportunity to bring it up again.
If you're interested, the piece is called Is this How Reddit
Ends and it was written by Mateo Wong.
If you want to give it a read, the link is in the description
along with all the other sources that I pull from.
And given The Atlantic has a paywall, I have shared the gift
link, so you should be able to read it if you click on that
link. Anyway, the article was talking
all about Reddit's new ish AI tool called Reddit Answers.
For those unfamiliar with Reddit Answers, it was announced on
December 9th last year and it's essentially an AI powered search
engine that pulls from Reddit data.
The Reddit blog described Reddit Answers as Quote, a new AI
powered conversational interface.
Once a question is asked, curated summaries of relevant
conversations and details across Reddit will appear, including
links to related communities and posts.
It is initially rolling out to a number of users in the US, and
then it will extend to other countries around the world as
well as operate in different language.
Wang in his piece, is not so much a fan of Reddit answers.
While he does note how pragmatic the function is, he does note
that it is very sanitized, where he essentially makes the
argument that a tool like this takes away the joys from
trolling through a Reddit thread quote.
The AI responds to questions in bulleted lists along with bold
headings followed by summaries of and brief quotes from actual
Reddit discussions. But these answers lose the messy
and daring excess of any good Reddit thread.
They appear like takeaways instead of teasers, final
answers instead of entry points for further discovery.
You are unlikely to fall down a rabbit hole of posts from here.
Aside from kind of changing up the Reddit experience, he makes
another important point in his article.
Like other generative AI tools, Reddit AI obviously pulls from
existing commentary, so it is not presenting an original
perspective by any means. But with this, one questions
whether more and more users will turn to this feature, leaving
less offering their perspectives on Reddit threads, ultimately
making the feature less useful. As the article concludes, quote
without human answers, there is no Reddit answers.
And so should the feature really take off and Reddit is stop
engaging with one another, the chatbot will be drained of
biological intelligence and soul as well.
I did want to add that Reddit is definitely leaning into AI
beyond producing its own AI search engine.
For instance, last year Reddit and Open AI struck a deal.
The agreement provides Open AI with real time access to Reddit,
its data facilitating the training of ChatGPT and other
models. This arrangement mirrored a
previous deal that Reddit made with Google that was apparently
worth $60 million, and it ultimately permitted Google to
use Reddit Post for training its AI models and improving existing
services within Google Search. The deal was a pivotal moment
for Reddit because the platform has long struggled to be
profitable, even though it is one of the major mainstream
social media platforms. If you want more detail about
this though, we did cover the back story of Reddit last year
in a deep dive, so I would definitely check that out.
But ultimately, one of the conclusions that we came to in
that episode was that the partnerships between Reddit,
Open AI, and Google could help address some of Reddit's
financial woes. I'd also like to add that social
media users do have valid concerns about Reddit using its
forums as AI training data, whether for Open AI or its own
functions. Reddit is obviously home to
amount of personal and sensitive information, much of it shared
under the assumption of relative privacy.
So that is why it is crucial for Reddit to establish transparent
policies on how this data is being used and of course,
implement protections for user consent and data protection.
While some argue that Reddit's culture of anonymity helps
mitigate these privacy risks, I do think there is a difference,
maybe just even on an ethical level, between users reading and
engaging with these posts versus as companies leveraging that
data for innovation and ultimately profit.
Sticking with platform updates. The next story I have is some
news coming out of Meta, specifically around Threads.
Earlier this week, it was announced that Threads would be
allowing users to share custom feeds that they make with other
users on the platform. Users will also be able to
explore public feeds under a new feeds tab on the platform, as
well as pinning feeds to their home screen to access different
profiles and topics. Custom Feeds is obviously a very
powerful tool in that it allows users to organize their
interests into specific categories, and this has long
been a popular function on different texts for US social
media sites. For instance, X, even when it
was Twitter, had lists. As Sarah Perez reported for
TechCrunch, this update is just another way for Meta to compete
with Blue Sky Quote. While Blue Sky has largely
benefited from an influx of people leaving X for something
that looks and feels similar, it's managed to retain its early
adopters thanks to a variety of tools that allow people to make
the network their own, including custom feeds.
So it's unsurprising that Meta would kind of capitalize on this
platform and this move towards personalization beyond the
algorithm. But I would also say that it's
unsurprising that Meta is rolling out such a feature now.
Over the past few weeks, there has been more and more
conversation around the ethics of using a platform associated
with Meta, specifically since the platform announced its
content moderation overhaul, which included ending its fact
checking program and also increasingly puts marginal
groups at risk. Obviously, I did cover this in
my first mini tech scroll episode, so feel free to check
that out if you want more details on that.
Now, I couldn't find any specific statistics on numbers
around how many users have actually left the platform since
this announcement, but there has definitely been more discourse
around deleting the apps. Pulling from Google Trends, NBC
reported that quote Google searches for deleting Facebook
and Instagram have sharply increased, and I'll include a
graph on the screen if you want to have a look yourself.
Ultimately, while this personalization attempt to may
be part of a broader plan to ensure that people stay on Meta
platforms, I'm not so sure how successful it will be,
especially because recently Mark Zuckerberg positioned a quote
return to OG Facebook as part of his goals for 2025.
At this point, no one really knows what this means, but if
Zuckerberg is hinting at the platform's misogynistic origins
as Facemash, which was a site that ranked his female Harvard
classmates by attractiveness without their consent, I don't
really think that will play well in 2025, and it shouldn't have
played well back then. The last story, I will admit, is
a little bit of a rogue one, and it has been around for a couple
weeks now, but I only just came across it and I thought it was a
little bit fun, so I wanted to include it.
And the story in question is about a new browser game called
Stimulation Clicker. So Stimulation Clicker was
created by Neil Agarwal, who has created other popular browser
games, but this one fully embraces Internet brain rot.
It actually launched about a month ago, but I'll give you a
quick rundown of how it works. So when you open the link, you
are taken to a relatively blank page and you are prompted to
click on a tab. Each click increases your
stimulation number. I know this sounds a little bit
insane and confusing, but think of stimulation as the currency
in the game. The more you click, the higher
your stimulation points get, allowing you to purchase various
tools, some of which end up speeding the rate at which you
gain stimulation points, while others are simply pop ups on the
screen. Everything you can purchase with
stimulation points is quintessential brain right and
Internet culture. For example, you can purchase a
screen recording of Subway Surfers, a man doing a mukbang,
or even the lo fi girl. If you guys aren't familiar with
the lo fi girl, just give her a search on YouTube.
She was a staple for me during uni and I would often play those
videos while studying. But anyway, as you purchase more
and more, they all end up playing simultaneously, creating
a extremely overstimulating experience.
And of course, the more overstimulating it becomes, the
harder it is to continue. I will lie, I did check out this
game obviously before reporting on this story and it was super
addicting at 1st and I remember thinking why can I not stop
clicking like why is this so engaging?
But it did become increasingly difficult as I unlocked more
extras. But I didn't just want to report
on this story to let you guys know that this game exists.
I thought this was really confronting because it really
distills just how overwhelming the digital space is today and
how we are constantly compelled to consume content.
Yaira Rosenberg wrote about this in The Atlantic, where he said
quote with every new feature that is introduced, stimulation
Clicker takes place on the all too familiar journey from This
is neat to This is ruining my life.
What was once novel becomes oppressive because when every
online experience is optimized to monopolize our attention, the
feeling that is ultimately evoked is not elation, but
exhaustion. Rosenberg also chatted to the
game's creator, where he explained that this sentiment is
exactly what inspired him to make the game during COVID-19
lockdown. As he explained, quote, you have
a million different social media feeds and everything's pulling
you in a different direction at once.
It's almost like a feeling of Vertigo.
Anyway, I would definitely recommend you guys check out
this game, especially if you want to be confronted with what
the digital world is really like in one sitting.
That was a little bit of a fun one to end this week's episode,
but that is all I have for you today.
Lauren will speak to you tomorrow and I will see you next
Wednesday. Thanks.
Bye.