Recommended: At 404 Media, Jason Koehler fumes about the media compulsion to chase whatever ball Elon Musk has thrown so as to appease The Algorithms.
It is not good that large swaths of the remaining humans who still have jobs in tech journalism continue to have to write articles every time Elon Musk tweets anything. One reason for this is because “Elon Musk tweets thing” is a type of blog post that is written primarily for the purpose of winning a Google lottery for the huge number of people who search things like “Elon Musk” or who heard that Elon Musk tweeted something about Apple and are searching for something like “Elon Musk Apple ban.” This type of post has historically “worked” for these outlets, in that lots of people do—or used to—read these sorts of articles because they happened to come across it on Google. They are articles written in hopes of appeasing a search algorithm at Google, a company that is looking to replace this type of coverage with AI answers that keep people on their own platform and discourage them from clicking through.
Read it at 404 Media.
Elon Musk Tweeted a Thing
Dozens of human journalists are writing the same blog to appease a search algorithm that wants to automate their jobs out of existence.
Jason Koebler
Fellow Travelers highlights the best ideas and writing from across the web, with an emphasis on independent journalism and outside-the-beltway takes. Some links may require subscriptions.
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