Quora-owned AI chatbot platform Poe is providing users with downloadable HTML files of paywalled articles from outlets including NYT, Forbes, and The Atlantic (Tim Marchman/Wired)

Mediagazer: Quora-owned AI chatbot platform Poe is providing users with downloadable HTML files of paywalled articles from outlets including NYT, Forbes, and The Atlantic (Tim Marchman/Wired)

Top News:

Variety:

Nielsen: the Biden-Trump debate drew an average audience of 51.3M viewers across 17 networks in the US, down from 2020's first debate, with nearly 73.1M— Networks include CNN, which originated the debate, as well as ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, Scripps News, Telemundo, Univision, BET …
Discussion:

Wayne Friedman /
MediaPost: First Presidential Debate Earns 51.3M Viewers, Down 30%: Nielsen

Matthew Keys /
The Desk: Fox News grabs highest ratings for CNN Presidential Debate

Ariel Zilber /
New York Post: CNN says Biden-Trump debate draws nearly 48M viewers — most in network's history

Stephen Battaglio /
Los Angeles Times: CNN Biden-Trump debate draws 51.3 million TV viewers, a major drop from 2020

Antone Johnson /
@antonej@threads.net: So 85% of Americans didn't watch it.

Parker Ortolani /
@parkerortolani@threads.net: oh hey nobody watches debates no one cares no one will remember, said a delusional person

Matthew Keys /
Matthew Keys on LinkedIn: CNN initially published an article claiming it had the highest-rated coverage of the presidential debate on Thursday. …

Jared Mitovich /
Politico: 47.9 million people watched Biden and Trump debate, a steep decline from 2020

Ross O'Keefe /
Washington Examiner: Biden's nightmare debate brought in 48 million viewers — 25 million fewer than 2020's first matchup

Ted Johnson /
Deadline: CNN Says 47.9 Million Watched Presidential Debate; TV Viewership Drops Considerably From 2020

Dylan Byers /
@dylanbyers: CNN Debate *fast national* (not final) ratings in detail: Fox News: 8.82 million CNN: 8.75 million ABC: 8.70 million NBC: 5.17 million CBS: 4.81 million MSNBC: 3.94 million FOX: 3.48 million Fox Business: 372,000 HLN: 251,000 CNN Espanol: 46,000

Brian Stelter /
@brianstelter: This just in from CNN: “A combined 47.9 million total viewers watched the CNN Presidential Debate on television last night” across all the networks where it appeared.

Wired:

Quora-owned AI chatbot platform Poe is providing users with downloadable HTML files of paywalled articles from outlets including NYT, Forbes, and The Atlantic— WIRED was able to download stories from publishers like The New York Times and The Atlantic using Poe's Assistant bot.

Nieman Lab:

Spain's El Pais launched a digital edition to cover the US in Spanish in May with 11 bilingual correspondents; as of April, the outlet had ~366K subscribers— “The best reader is the one who reads you a lot.” — For years and with various levels of success, U.S. news outlets have tried …

Discussion:
LatAm Journalism Review

Discussion:

Semafor:

The Wall Street Journal EIC Emma Tucker says she felt vindicated by the debate, after previously facing criticism for coverage of Biden's age and mental acuity— The News — Prominent liberal columnists are calling for President Joe Biden to step aside following a widely-panned debate performance …

Discussion:

Jeremy Barr /
Washington Post: CNN debate moderators didn't fact-check. Not everyone is happy about it.

Zachary Faria /
Washington Examiner: Liberal media lied to voters and themselves over Biden mental state

Max Tani /
@maxwelltani: I asked WSJ EIC Emma Tucker if she felt vindicated after tonight by the publication's recent piece about Biden's age, which was the subject of a lot of partisan complaints https://www.semafor.com/... [image]

Mark Leibovich /
The Atlantic: Time to Go, Joe — Biden needs to step aside—for the sake of his own dignity …

Steven Nelson /
New York Post: Biden admits 'I don't debate as well as I used to' but ‘I can do this job’ in NC rally

Ben Smith /
@semaforben: Remember how much shit WSJ took for the Biden age story? https://www.semafor.com/... [image]

Robert Kuttner /
American Prospect: A Tarnished Silver Lining Fox News: ABC's ‘The View’ erupts with calls for Biden to step aside after debate: ‘Maybe he needs to go’

Dave Goldiner /
New York Daily News: Democrats openly panic over Biden's debate versus Trump, though some allies insist he's still up to job Associated Press: Biden tries to quell concerns after an unsteady debate showing as he and Trump head to swing states

Ben Smith /
@semaforben: Media wrap from @maxwelltani -Liberal media turns on Biden -WSJ EIC Emma Tucker takes a victory lap -Interview with CNN chief Mark Thompson https://www.semafor.com/...

Irie Sentner /
Politico: 'This can't continue': Biden-sympathizing columnists urge him to step aside

The Guardian:

Three journalists were turned away from an Azerbaijan energy conference earlier in June, prompting concern over media access ahead of UN climate talks there— Incident reignites concerns over crackdown on media before crucial UN climate talks in Baku later this year

Discussion:
@glynmoody@mastodon.social

Reuters:

In a parliamentary hearing, Meta says it is considering blocking news content from Facebook in Australia if the government makes it pay licensing fees— Facebook owner Meta (META.O) is considering blocking news content from the platform in Australia if the government makes it pay licensing fees …

TechCrunch:

The White House will host the first-ever White House Creator Economy Conference in August to “emphasize the Administration's commitment to creators”— President Joe Biden's administration is doubling down on its interest in the creator economy.

Discussion:
Fast Company, MediaPost and Gizmodo

Discussion:

Sarah Bregel /
Fast Company: White House to expand its influencer engagement efforts with its first-ever Creator Economy Conference

Colin Kirkland /
MediaPost: White House To Host First ‘Creator Economy Conference’

Advanced Television:

JustWatch: Netflix led the UK streaming market in Q2 with a 28% share; Prime Video had 27%, Disney+ had 20%, Apple TV+ had 8%, ITVX had 6%, and Now TV had 6%— Netflix continues to hold the reins of the UK streaming market in Q2 2024 with Prime Video closely following behind a 1 per cent gap …

Nieman Lab:

Tests show that ChatGPT is hallucinating URLs in some citations, directing users to broken links for at least 10 news publications with OpenAI licensing deals— Nieman Lab's tests show ChatGPT is directing users to broken URLs for at least 10 publications with OpenAI licensing deals.

Discussion:

David Whelan /
@davidpwhelan@mastodon.world: Interesting read @niemanlab on results of media platform content partnerships with AI companies: fake URLs and 404s. When it generated relevant URLs, they were NOT to the media partner. So partnership does not seem to result in any better outcome than the AI-generated summary cards (that also inhibit referrer traffic). …

Jared Holt /
@jaredlholt: For all the fears and talks of an “AI-powered future” around the tech industry, the crux of the issue here is that the tech sucks and is being forced out of production anyway, making it the consumer's problem

Andrew Deck /
@decka227: ChatGPT is hallucinating fake URLs for at least 10 publications that have OpenAI licensing deals. I tested the chatbot's ability to cite its news sources for @NiemanLab. It regularly generated broken links to even its partners' biggest investigations. https://www.niemanlab.org/...

Adam Johnson /
@adamjohnsonchi: We must PAUSE this tech imminently, it is mere months from becoming a god-like entity

Pranav Dixit /
Engadget: Please don't get your news from AI chatbots

Andrew Deck /
TVNewsCheck: ChatGPT Is Hallucinating Fake Links To Its News Partners' Biggest Investigations @researchbuzz@researchbuzz.masto.host: Well this is absolutely fucknuts — ‘In my testing, I repeatedly prompted ChatGPT to link out to these publications’ marquee articles, including Pulitzer Prize-winning stories and years-long investigations.... All together, my tests show that ChatGPT is currently unable to reliably link out to even these most noteworthy stories by partner publications.' …

New York Times:

Sources: Tom Ortenberg and Briarcliff Entertainment are pushing to acquire The Apprentice for US release, negotiating with Kinematics, backed by Dan Snyder— “The Apprentice,” a dramatized origin story about Donald J. Trump, has faced fierce criticism from the former president and his allies.

Discussion:
Slate, The Wrap, Washington Post and Deadline

Discussion:

Mary Harris /
Slate: Why No Hollywood Studio Wants to Touch the Trump Biopic

Umberto Gonzalez /
The Wrap: ‘The Apprentice’ Close to Deal for Pre-Election Release as Producers Pay Out Pro-Trump Investor | Exclusive

Jada Yuan /
Washington Post: Inside the battle to release controversial Trump movie ‘The Apprentice’

Wired:

Amazon is investigating Perplexity over whether the AI search startup is violating AWS rules by scraping websites that attempted to prevent it from doing so— AWS hosted a server linked to the Bezos family- and Nvidia-backed search startup that appears to have been used to scrape the sites …

Discussion:

Sharveya Parasnis /
MEDIANAMA: Amazon Investigating Perplexity for Terms of Service Violations: Report

Mariella Moon /
Engadget: Amazon reportedly investigating Perplexity AI after accusations it scrapes websites without consent

Thomas Barrabi /
New York Post: Amazon probing AI startup Perplexity for ‘scraping’ websites without permission: report

Robert Hof /
SiliconANGLE: Generative AI's big copyright battle commences, and chip upstarts target AI workloads

Chris Harihar /
@chrisharihar: Perplexity is basically saying they follow the robots.txt protocol in relation to “normal” web crawling, but they make an exception when there's a direct user request to access a URL. Is there anything to really do here, especially if no technical enforcement for the publisher?

Noah Shachtman /
@noahshachtman: Should be a pretty quick investigation. RTFA, Amazon.

Robb Knight /
@robb@social.lol: ⭐ Amazon Is Investigating Perplexity Over Claims of Scraping Abuse https://www.wired.com/... “Amazon's cloud division has launched an investigation into Perplexity AI. At issue is whether the AI search startup is violating Amazon Web Services rules by scraping websites that attempted to prevent it from doing so” …

Tim Marchman /
@timmarchman: NEW from @AndrewCouts and @dmehro: Amazon Web Services is investigating Perplexity following a WIRED investigation into the “answer engine.” Clients must, Amazon tells WIRED, respect robots.txt: https://www.wired.com/...

Sarah Emerson /
@sarahnemerson: “The machine associated with Perplexity appears to be engaged in widespread crawling of news websites that forbid bots from accessing its content. Spokespeople for the Guardian, Forbes, and The New York Times also say they detected the IP address on its servers multiple times.”

Lauren Goode /
@laurengoode: Amazon's cloud division has launched an investigation into Perplexity AI, to determine whether the AI search startup is violating AWS rules by scraping websites that tried to prevent it from doing so https://www.wired.com/... via @AndrewCouts @dmehro

Dhruv Mehrotra /
@dmehro: NEW: Perplexity was using a secret AWS-hosted virtual machine to scrape the web. Major newsroom we spoke to observed its IP address in their server logs. Now Amazon is investigating. w/ @AndrewCouts https://www.wired.com/...

Casey Newton /
@crumbler@threads.net: Should be a quick investigation!

Elizabeth Lopatto /
The Verge: Perplexity's grand theft AI

Los Angeles Times:

The California State Senate passes SB 1327, a bill aimed at imposing a “data extraction mitigation fee” on Big Tech to help fund local journalism— The California state Senate on Thursday passed legislation aimed at helping the news industry by imposing a new tax on some of the biggest tech companies in the world.

Discussion:

Jeff Jarvis /
BuzzMachine: The two California bills to help fund local journalism would penalize Google and Meta for news' decline and benefit hedge funds that are destroying newspapers California State Legislature: Bill Text — SB-1327 Income taxation: credits: local news media: data extraction transactions.

Rebekah Entralgo /
The NewsGuild: Newsletter: Journalism Legislation Advances in California!

Steven Waldman /
@stevenwaldman: WOW. The California Senate just voted to approved, by 2/3 vote, SB1327, Sen. Glazers bill to provide $500 million for local news, paid for by a tax on the big tech companies. Huge breakthrough.

Senator Catherine Blakespear /
@senblakespear: I am proud to be a co-author of #SB1327, by @Steve_Glazer. Journalism is critical to our democracy. As a former journalist, I know the value of news and an informed public, and we need it for democracy to work. Glad to see it pass the Senate today! @AsmBuffyWicks @CNPAservices [image]

Matt Pearce /
@mattdpearce: It's officially JOURNALISM POLICY SUMMER in California with Assemblymember @BuffyWicks' CJPA and Senator @Steve_Glazer's SB 1327 both advancing this week! We have not seen American journalism policy this ambitious since the creation of Corporation for Public Broadcasting. 👏

Matt Pearce /
@mattdpearce: Pardon my language, but holy shit: The California Senate just voted 27-7 to advance Senator @Steve_Glazer's SB 1327, which would tax big tech to fund hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of journalist employment tax credits in California. https://mattdpearce.substack.com/ ... @progresschamber: Surprise! The California Senate just pushed a digital ad tax through at the last minute. In a vote today without notice, the CA Senate rushed SB 1327 to the floor despite concerns it will raise costs for small businesses and consumers. Our statement: https://progresschamber.org/ ... [image] Matt Pearce: Breaking news: California Senate advances a major data mining tax to fund journalism jobs