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VOICE ARCHIVE

Zoe Schiffer

@reporterzoe
38 posts
2024-06-14
New from me and @crumbler: The Stanford Internet Observatory is being dismantled following a sustained, right-wing attack on the lab's reports on misinformation & election integrity: https://www.platformer.news/ ...
2024-06-14 View on X
Platformer

Sources: Stanford Internet Observatory is winding down after five years and won't conduct research into any future elections; Stanford may retain SIO's branding

persecutions to deter truth-telling — into vital research on right-wing extremism have paid off for the extremists.  —  In a cowardly but understandable move, Stanford University i...

2024-04-05
When Marissa Mayer's startup launched its photo sharing app last week, people were...confused.  Why was the design so archaic?  Here's the inside story of Sunshine's ongoing struggle to find its footing.  My latest with @crumbler: https://www.platformer.news/ ...
2024-04-05 View on X
Platformer

A look at Marissa Mayer's troubled startup Sunshine, which raised $20M, and its photo-sharing app Shine, which a source says had ~1K downloads on its first day

Behind the rocky launch of a photo-sharing app was a co-founder about to quit and months of employee warnings that its new project wasn't ready

2024-03-29
Inside Grindr's push to monetize — with new details on the company's AI ambitions, and its plans to train models on internal user data, pending user consent: https://www.platformer.news/ ...
2024-03-29 View on X
Platformer

Sources detail Grindr's push to monetize, including plans for an AI chatbot that can engage users in sexual conversations and may be trained on opt-in user data

with new details on the company's AI ambitions, and its plans to train models on internal user data, pending user consent: https://www.platformer.news/ ... Casey Newton / @crumbler...

2024-03-05
NEW: Former Twitter executives including Parag Agrawal (former CEO) and Vijaya Gadde (former head of legal and policy) have filed suit against Elon Musk for failing to pay severance as a result of their firings in October 2022 1/
2024-03-05 View on X
Wall Street Journal

Twitter's former CEO, CFO, legal chief, and general counsel sue Elon Musk over allegedly $128M+ in unpaid severance and Musk's claim he had cause to fire them

with program advice from Cisco and Salesforce Ryan Dinsdale / IGN : Elon Musk and X/Twitter Sued for $128 Million Over Alleged Unpaid Severance Amanda Yeo / Mashable : Former Twitt...

The group of executives — which also includes Ned Segal, the former CFO, and Sean Edgett, the former general counsel — vehemently push back on the for cause firings, noting “'Cause' is not ‘Board-approved business decisions that Musk dislikes’”
2024-03-05 View on X
Wall Street Journal

Twitter's former CEO, CFO, legal chief, and general counsel sue Elon Musk over allegedly $128M+ in unpaid severance and Musk's claim he had cause to fire them

with program advice from Cisco and Salesforce Ryan Dinsdale / IGN : Elon Musk and X/Twitter Sued for $128 Million Over Alleged Unpaid Severance Amanda Yeo / Mashable : Former Twitt...

The complaint alleges: “Because Musk decided he didn't want to pay Plaintiffs' severance benefits, he simply fired them without reason, then made up fake cause and appointed employees of his various companies to uphold his decision. …
2024-03-05 View on X
Wall Street Journal

Twitter's former CEO, CFO, legal chief, and general counsel sue Elon Musk over allegedly $128M+ in unpaid severance and Musk's claim he had cause to fire them

with program advice from Cisco and Salesforce Ryan Dinsdale / IGN : Elon Musk and X/Twitter Sued for $128 Million Over Alleged Unpaid Severance Amanda Yeo / Mashable : Former Twitt...

The complaint specifically quotes Walter Isaacson's biography of Elon Musk, which reported that Musk closed the deal early in order to fire for cause Agrawal before the CEO could resign 2/
2024-03-05 View on X
Wall Street Journal

Twitter's former CEO, CFO, legal chief, and general counsel sue Elon Musk over allegedly $128M+ in unpaid severance and Musk's claim he had cause to fire them

with program advice from Cisco and Salesforce Ryan Dinsdale / IGN : Elon Musk and X/Twitter Sued for $128 Million Over Alleged Unpaid Severance Amanda Yeo / Mashable : Former Twitt...

2024-02-13
I talked to Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko about how the platform is collaborating with Meta and why he still holds out hope that Bluesky will adopt the ActivityPub protocol: https://www.platformer.news/ ...
2024-02-13 View on X
Platformer

Q&A with Mastodon founder Eugen Rochko on the platform, its future, collaborating on ActivityPub with Meta's Threads team, why Bluesky should ditch AT, and more

because they get to control their entire IT infrastructure, and we get to see and subscribe to these important announcements.” … Bluesky: @t1u.bsky.social : Would Bluesky developer...

2024-01-09
Substack is now removing some Nazi publications and this is definitely not a reversal of its previous stance: https://www.platformer.news/ ...
2024-01-09 View on X
Platformer

Substack plans to remove some Nazi publications, but its new policy interpretation won't include proactively removing neo-Nazi and far-right extremism content

Substack is removing some publications that express support for Nazis, the company said today.

OpenAI responds to the New York Times lawsuit, saying the claims are without merit.  “It seems they intentionally manipulated prompts, often including lengthy excerpts of articles, in order to get our model to regurgitate.”
2024-01-09 View on X
OpenAI

OpenAI responds to The New York Times' lawsuit: training is fair use and there is an opt-out, “regurgitation” is a rare bug, and NYT “manipulated” its models

written evidence (LLM0113) Dan Milmo / The Guardian : ‘Impossible’ to create AI tools like ChatGPT without copyrighted material, OpenAI says Ryan Daws / AI News : Copyrighted data...

2023-12-19
One interesting aspect of this: Figma continued granting RSUs while the merger was pending, but for tax purposes vesting was contingent on continued employment.  This put employees who wanted to leave in an awkward position as the deal stretched on. …
2023-12-19 View on X
Reuters

Adobe and Figma end their $20B merger, announced in September 2022, over “no clear path” to EU and UK antitrust approval; Adobe owes Figma a $1B termination fee

Adobe (ADBE.O) on Monday shelved its $20 billion cash-and-stock deal for cloud-based designer platform Figma …

2023-12-14
I wrote about Twitter's culture pre Elon Musk when the company cared about the free speech of employees and embraced work life balance: https://www.theverge.com/...
2023-12-14 View on X
The Verge

A look at Twitter's culture before Elon Musk's takeover, when employees focused on improving the health of online conversations rather than growth at all costs

2023-12-13
I wrote about Twitter's culture pre Elon Musk when the company cared about the free speech of employees and embraced work life balance: https://www.theverge.com/...
2023-12-13 View on X
The Verge

A look at Twitter's culture before Elon Musk's takeover, when employees focused on improving the health of online conversations rather than growth at all costs

the early '10s, Twitter was at the height of its power.  The company had yet to turn a profit, but it had played a crucial role …

2023-12-02
Here's how one employee described the issue on Slack: “Expect the Q team to be very, very busy for a while.  I've also seen apparent Q hallucinations I'd expect to potentially induce cardiac incidents in Legal.”
2023-12-02 View on X
Platformer

Internal documents: Amazon's AI chatbot Q, out in preview, experiences “severe hallucinations” and leaks “confidential data” like AWS data center locations

Some hallucinations could ‘potentially induce cardiac incidents in Legal,’ according to internal documents

NEW from me and @crumbler: Three days after Amazon announced its AI chatbot Q, the service appears to be “experiencing severe hallucinations and leaking confidential data,” according to internal documents.  Some hallucinations could “potentially induce cardiac incidents in Legal” according to employees discussing the issue on Slack: https://www.platformer.news/ ...
2023-12-02 View on X
Platformer

Internal documents: Amazon's AI chatbot Q, out in preview, experiences “severe hallucinations” and leaks “confidential data” like AWS data center locations

Some hallucinations could ‘potentially induce cardiac incidents in Legal,’ according to internal documents

2023-11-28
This all seems like so much more work than just finding actual women to speak
2023-11-28 View on X
404 Media

Big names like Kelsey Hightower pull out of the DevTernity conference after allegations its founder made fake profiles of female speakers to boost diversity

Anna Boyko, listed as a staff engineer at Coinbase, and Natalie Stadler, a “software craftswoman” at Coinbase—were included on the site as speakers but appear to not exist in real ...

2023-11-08
NEW from me and @crumbler: X employees are increasingly being asked to spend time on xAI initiatives, and xAI code is sitting on Tesla servers that operate in a data center that (stay with me here) was previously leased by Twitter: https://substack.com/...
2023-11-08 View on X
Platformer

Sources: X employees are increasingly being asked to spend time on xAI initiatives; xAI is using a data center once leased by Twitter, but now leased by Tesla

Tesla is fast running out of early adopters, but its cars are still too expensive for most buyers Threads: Parker Thompson / @parkert : Elon has always had a disregard for sharehol...

2023-10-31
Here's the part I found the most interesting, particularly in light of the fact that Elon Musk quickly cut much of the technical staff.  The section is about why Musk believes Twitter did not reach its full potential before the takeover: “[W]e believe that X's code base has historically been overly complex and requires significant …
2023-10-31 View on X
Fortune

Source: X is giving employees RSUs at $45 per share, implying a $19B valuation; in March 2023, X offered stock at a $20B valuation; Musk bought Twitter for $44B

i mean to be fair it was probably only worth 20-25 when he bought it, so he only erased 1-6 billion in value personally  —  also not for nothing it's encouraging to see that rule 7...

Elon Musk's X Corp. emailed employees today with new equity awards.  RSUs are priced at $45 per share (kudos to @kylie.robison for getting this first).  Here are some interesting details from the paperwork 1/
2023-10-31 View on X
Fortune

Source: X is giving employees RSUs at $45 per share, implying a $19B valuation; in March 2023, X offered stock at a $20B valuation; Musk bought Twitter for $44B

i mean to be fair it was probably only worth 20-25 when he bought it, so he only erased 1-6 billion in value personally  —  also not for nothing it's encouraging to see that rule 7...

And here is Elon Musk's new business strategy for X, per internal (and accidentally external) documents. 1) serve “as the de facto public town square,” promoting healthy discourse on our platform, making X more enjoyable for users, driving engagement and user growth, thereby increasing mDAU. 2) …
2023-10-31 View on X
Fortune

Source: X is giving employees RSUs at $45 per share, implying a $19B valuation; in March 2023, X offered stock at a $20B valuation; Musk bought Twitter for $44B

i mean to be fair it was probably only worth 20-25 when he bought it, so he only erased 1-6 billion in value personally  —  also not for nothing it's encouraging to see that rule 7...