ABC listen, podcasts, radio, news, music, and more. This is your guide to the week in, media, technology, and culture. My name is Mark Fennel and welcome to Download This Show. Yes, indeed it is a brand new episode of Download This Show and a big welcome to our guest this week, Alice Clark, freelance technology journalist, and famous for the press any button substack. Welcome to Download This Show. Thanks so much for having me.
And one of the hosts of the Game for Anything podcast, Anger Radio, welcome back to Download This Show. What am I famous for? Appearing on Download This Show. Good answer, good answer. Also known for many years and beloved as a gamer extraordinaire. Does that work? I thought you were going to have a dig at me but that's very nice. One of us has to be generous. You have a great collection of track fans. Thank you. That's something. All right, let's get through this week.
The very rich new owner of the legendary satirical site, The Onion, has done something very strange. He's asked customers to give him money in return for absolutely nothing but it's the amount of money that is confusing here. A dollar. Rad, can you explain this to me? Yeah, so basically he's saying that he wants to unshackle the onion from a, quote, very traffic driven strategy of page views and programmatic ad impressions.
So essentially if you go to the onion nowadays, it almost looks like a spam site. There are walls and walls of ads surrounding fairly short articles and it's just not a pleasant experience. So in purchasing the onion, he's basically trying to revamp it. And to do that, you need a little bit of revenue to be able to pay for the site and the employees.
So he's asking people to give one dollar as a sort of donation to keep the onion going and in true onion fashion, they're holding it hostage, they say, they say, pay us a dollar or you'll never see the onion again. So the onion was iconic, right? It was famous for these fake headlines and the spinoff fake TV shows and podcasts and stuff like that. It's probably worth noting that there are a whole host of sites now that kind of do the same thing.
And they're not asking for a dollar. So what is it that the onion is not doing that they're doing or that they're doing that the onion is not doing? Let's put them in this position. So basically the onion has name recognition, which a lot of other websites don't. And this really rich guy is hoping that that will pay off for him. And I wish him luck. I love the idea that the onion is like the most trusted satirical news site. That's kind of what it is, right?
Yeah. I totally believe their fake headlines more than I would believe other people's fake headlines. It's just, it's also they have a lot of really iconic articles, the heartbreaking worst man you know just made a great point or whatever that headline is. That's iconic, never clicked on the article. No idea what it says, have a visit at the website in years. But how can you go past content like that? I mean, that's probably a kind of a good point, right?
Because a lot of these satirical headline websites, I'm thinking of your Batuta and the shovel. And even to some extent, the the chases online presence, you do kind of go for the headline, but actually in terms of what you consume beyond that, it can be quite limited. And it does sort of explain why things like Batuta have sort of commercialized and done all kinds of TV spin-offs and whatnot. For these guys, what would difference would a dollar actually make Alice?
Like what would it actually mean for them? So, well, it would mean they'd get a dollar, which that's always nice. But who doesn't love a dollar? I mean, come for the analysis. But it also, it's kind of like how when like I've been having to sell a bunch of stuff recently on Facebook Marketplace. And if you list it for free, you'll get a lot of weird time waste of people who are just awful. But if you list it for five bucks, they'll respect both the item and your time a little bit more.
And so I think they're just Facebook Market placing this. They're wanting you to feel like you have some level of investment in the website. And so you will come back and respect it a little bit more than if you just clicked on for free. Oh, so you got to remember that at scale, a dollar adds up. If you get a dollar from a thousand people, that's a thousand dollars, baby. Which is almost enough to keep the lights on at the onion for maybe an hour. I love the really high level mass.
It's being brought to there on this episode. Really a thousand one dollars. I like, I drop out of apps that you tend, but I think even I could have made that one work. Well, I didn't verify this on a calculator, but I'm pretty confident. I'd say 80% sure. Is this a model that is worth replicating, Brad? Because I take their point that being shackled to page views doesn't necessarily work for something where honestly, it's value is in is in the initial bounce, which is the headline.
So is this something we are likely to see more of? I think that consumers are getting really tired of advertising and they're getting really tired of subscriptions and hard paywalls. And this is just one way to hopefully move out of that. Now, you got to remember Jeff Lawson, the guy, the chairman of the onion now, the guy who bought it. He is, as you said, extremely rich.
He doesn't technically need this to be a money making venture for him, but I'm also sure that he wants to make it at least pay for itself. So he's kind of in a unique position where he can explore different ways of doing things. And I think asking for donations is becoming kind of bigger in the culture of the internet. If you remember Wikipedia is constantly asking for donations, they don't have any ads and they'll come up with their little pop-up that said,
if everyone uses Wikipedia gave one dollar, guess what? That's like a thousand dollars. I'm not going to make fun of you again. I'm not. It also reminds me of platforms like Patreon and Twitch, which also run on more of a donation basis. And people are becoming more and more comfortable with that. And they see it more, I guess, favorably than having to have a full subscription or a paywall. But also, is Rich Guy owns media outlet really a unique position to be in?
Because I feel like most media, like big media outlets are owned by rich people, but that they want them for profit rather than fun. Is there something that you think we'll see more about us? Publications asking for money? Yes. Sure. I think they would love some money. Probably that's for a bit more than a dollar, but we've already seen the Guardian be like, hey, can you toss up a couple of bucks? A little bit of desperation at the bottom of the video. Yeah, but then again...
Please, could we have some more? Is that also what the weekly fee my parents pay the age for their subscription is as well? It's just more organized? Yeah, and I think also it says a little bit about value proposition, right? I think we've spent a good decade creating or having to recreate the dynamic that journalism is important for society, please pay. What I find intriguing about this is easily consumed satire is important, please pay.
Is a slightly different value... And I would argue just as valuable, at times more valuable. But it is a different value proposition. I'm curious about how you think they're going to go with that. Well, they've already gone well. They haven't disclosed numbers, but it does sound like from what they have disclosed, they have raked in a fair amount of money, not everyone has only given a dollar.
Apparently, quite a few people have given the maximum that you can give on the platform that they've set up, which is $100. And if you have 100 people give... You go on. Go on. What do you get? I think it's $1,000. $10,000. Okay. You know what? $40,000. And then there's $21,000. I'll get the 4 divided by 6. Anyway, download the show is for better for worse. What you're listening to, it is your guide to the week in media, technology culture, and definitely not basic maths.
The voices you're listening to are the brilliant Ungherudjo, the host of the Game for Anything Podcast. That's right, I made you brilliant. Not brilliant at adding. An Alice Clark, freelance technology journalist, and from the press anything substack, Mark Fennel is my name. Now, can Instagram compete for TikTok stars?
TikTok has of course been the subject of much debate over in the US. It may potentially even be banned in the US, but it does have a thriving culture of stars, people that make content. Can Instagram, which is not a totally different platform, can it drag them from the much put upon TikTok? And drag them back to the old, green pasties of Instagram. Instagram certainly thinks so Alice. What are they doing?
So Instagram, shockingly, is going to remake the algorithm once more in the image of another app. They have a habit of doing this. When Snapchat became popular, Instagram decided that it was also Snapchat. And then when TikTok became popular, Instagram decided that not only was it a photo app, but actually it was a video app, and maybe it was more of a video app than a photo app. And also the people you follow are meaningless, and only the people they want to show you matter.
Which I thought was great. Anyway, they're changing the algorithm to now surface different people who had surfaced before, because Instagram has always favored people who are already popular, kind of like high school. And now it's also going to want to try and show you some new people who are not yet popular, who you might like. But also I assume have some level of bias because it's Instagram.
Yeah, because yeah, they're really hoping to get all the creators over on to Instagram, except all the reals I already see on Instagram are just reposted TikToks. So I think it's worked. Yes, this is what I find intriguing about this, because I have this conversation with people who I know who are content creators all the time. But it's like, if you're going to the effort of making content for TikTok, most of the time you end up just reposting it to Instagram anyway, or the other way around.
Like is it going to be that much of a difference, Rad? I think it is because there is still a completely different ecosystem that exists within the two. Like you said, a lot of people are reposting TikToks to Instagram, but you're missing this whole subsection of like stitches and memes and replies and things like that. So what you're getting on Instagram is kind of as you mentioned. It's a secondary market. Yeah, yeah, and it's a particular part of TikTok.
It's the kind of more crafted videos that are going up. You're not getting the conversation at the same time. And that's something that you can't just shift over. However, with the US potentially looking to ban TikTok, it may become the only option. And therefore, I think it will go very well for Instagram. You make a really good point though.
I mean, some of those structures, if you haven't heard it, a stitch is when somebody posts a video, but you kind of post a response video inside the video. If you ever come across another video and it starts with a word stitch and coming, that's what that means. There is this culture around video storytelling on TikTok that has sort of permeated the rest of the web, but what you don't get on Instagram is some of the technological functionality.
Anybody that's kind of made content for both knows your ability to go viral, and it's an overused phrase, but your ability to reach a big audience on TikTok is significantly different. Something can go off a lot faster, a lot easier on TikTok than a cam on Instagram. If you're trying to pitch to creators, you're trying to move them, the sender of gravity from one to the other.
That's your special source, right? So is there any sense that Instagram can replicate or offer something equivalent to creators on their platform? I think Instagram can tell creators that they're going to do that. But I don't think you can replicate what TikTok has going on. Social media sites are like different countries and they've all got their own separate cultures.
And what Instagram is trying to do is go, well, our country is not poor, but we would like to have a lot more tourism from the other countries and then maybe also massively increase migration. What if we completely destroyed our entire culture to then bring in a new culture? But then the people who are already at Instagram are like, well, I don't really want that. This is not my culture.
And the people who are at TikTok are like, well, I already have TikTok. Why would I go to this place when I've already kind of half there? And I don't really want to do the things. It's a different purpose. It's stupid. It's like, no, it's mixing angry. The urgency here is that TikTok may well be banned for Americans. So that creates a destabilizing force here. And I clearly Instagram see possibilities and opportunities within that.
But are they ever actually going to be able to replicate that culture? Or do they need to? Does it actually matter ours? It does matter and know they won't. So if we kind of we have to go back in social media history. So like you start with Myspace where the emails are all very sad. And then Myspace is kind of killed by the popularity of Facebook. But Facebook was never Myspace. You never got all the sad emails on Myspace. You got your mom posting weird memes of like minions.
Then you have like live journal where everybody is writing long form fan fiction and essays about how much they hate their mom. Which then kind of is supposed to transform like take every to Tumblr. But Tumblr has this whole different unhinged fandom vibe. And it never had the same vibe as live journal. And it still has that beautiful unhinged vibe. That has never been replicated anywhere else. I don't know. There's some pretty unhinged vibes on TikTok. Different unhinged.
Like I watch most of my TikToks peer reviewed on Tumblr. Entirely different vibes. Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. Peer reviewed as in a whole bunch of people have gone through their TikToks and then reposted the Montaumpla as like a filtration. Correct. Correct. It means you only get the best quality. That's what I use Instagram for though. Like I'm an aging millennial for the until quite recently. I waited for TikToks to get popular and TikTok enough that somebody would repost the monies.
I don't do it anymore. But that I have learnt and grown. That only shows you that the popular stuff. And also Instagram has its like algorithm where it just keeps showing me pictures of people falling off their bike. Which as a cyclist, I really don't want to say it looks very painful. I think you do want to say it because Instagram knows you well enough. Instagram does not know me. It has no idea. Whereas Tumblr, you're following specific people. It's what Instagram used to be.
You pick the people you want to follow and then you get shown their content and the content that they have curated to show you. So I know it's quality. But this is where TikTok always beat the game. And it's why it's blown up in the way that it has. Every other social media until kind of TikToks started changing things was focused on who you followed. So it didn't widen your circle. Whereas TikTok nailed just feeding you new random things.
Which was very addictive because you never know what you're going to get. And it always felt fresh and novel. And they figured out how to do that in a way that didn't feel like it was ruining something that you loved. Which is the problem with every other social media. They made changes that made you go, I don't want to see these randoms. I'm following people for a reason. Yeah. But then now it's made it so, so many people don't know how to curate their own online experience.
And that has upset me even more. And that takes me to my old person rant. And I'm too young to have an old person rant. But I don't like that people aren't curating their own experiences anymore. And they're now just expecting an algorithm to feed it to them. And I don't like what that's doing for how information is disseminated or how people become popular or what narratives become the driving narrative. I think that's a much, much, much deeper conversation.
But like I love TikTok and I love its algorithm. But I also don't necessarily think that's something that should be replicated across the internet. I think it should have it in its own beautiful pockets. And you should also have place where you can curate your own experience more specifically. And I will die on this hill. It's funny that you say that because I've never really thought about it in those terms before. But you're right.
It is a disturbing development that we have sort of surrendered our agency, surrendered our taste even to some extent. To an algorithm. For me, it's less of a TikTok thing. It's very much a Spotify thing. So much. I've sacrificed my desire to chase new music, to find new things. And I've sort of surrendered it to Spotify's radio function where you pick a song you like.
And then it creates these radio playlists that are just like a weird combination of things they already know and things that sound like I already know them. As much as you do discover new music through that, well, I do feel like I've lost my ability to chase and look for things. But funnily enough, I feel like that often happens on TikTok because it has this really raw vibe of almost like FaceTiming a friend and people will recommend things that they've heard that they say,
Hey, you might enjoy this and you're more inclined to go listen to it because there is a feeling of trust and friendship that is a little bit more inherent on TikTok. I mean, I did that just today. I saw a TikTok from that girl that reads out court transcripts saying I heard this song on my recommended on Spotify. But I really liked it. And then not a huge artist go listen to it. And I did. And it was fine.
See, I don't trust the algorithm or see it as a friend. This is why I go back to Tumblr where people who I kind of half know because they also really like supergirl recommend things for me. And I feel like that is a recommendation from a friend or rather than a recommendation from an algorithm. We've had all of these years of complaining about how the YouTube algorithm is radicalizing people. And now we're saying, but yeah, the TikTok algorithm is good.
And it is, but I still feel weary about again. I don't want to ban it. Love TikTok. I just think it's a larger conversation that we should also be having. You know what? He's an open-ended one. Algorithms have shaped our tastes, shaped our behavior, shaped our attention. And there are multiple algorithms that play on us. Even if you just take online media, right? So you mentioned YouTube, TikTok, Spotify.
What's the biggest change you think an algorithm has made on your life, your behavior, how you see the world? Is there something that stands out? Because I mentioned before, you know, my inability to locate and keep track of new music. And that sounds, it's a very first-world winch, let's be honest. Right, but I do think that there is something where I've sort of sacrificed taste to some degree where I've, you know, I'm old. I'm an agey millennial.
I'm like, just tell me what I should be listening to. And I realize now that that, as opposed to, I used to be a film critic for 15 years. I used to kind of feel like I was on top of things. And again, very first-world rent. But I have noticed that algorithms have changed my sense of ownership over my taste. For you, Radis, is there something that stands out? I think community and conversation is the big one, because I used to be on forums like a mad woman.
That was where I spent most of my time on the internet, and you'd get to know people, and you would have conversations with them. And that was often how you found new things to listen to, right? You literally are talking to your friends. I think that because it's been given over to the algorithm and you're more talking to strangers, there isn't that back and forth.
There's the feeling that you're having a conversation, but you're not truly. And I think that lack of actual community building is something that I quite miss. And I also think my attention span is so short now. I cannot pay attention for very long whatsoever. I completely agree. It is the loss of community. And I will say that I know that this is not the same for everyone. And I know that there are kids these days making amazing friends on TikTok and flying across the country to meet them.
But the algorithm for me has made it. So I don't feel like I'm making friends on the internet anymore. I'm just consuming whereas, yeah, as Rob is saying, I grew up on forums when I was 16 years old and I had been expelled from my second high school. I traveled to Sydney to stay with friends who I'd only met on the internet and had never met before in real life. And had the most amazing experiences. And one, mom, if you're listening, that was probably a bit negligent.
But two. It was amazing. And it made me who I am today. Nothing but like using the national broadcast stuff and layering a family girl. Don't worry, I've done the same. Download this show is what you're listening to. It is your guide to the week in media, technology and culture. We are talking about the future of what happens to us as filtered through different social media services.
And one thing that's worth talking about, particularly in light of TikTok, is what happens when TikTok is actually banned from a country. This is of course on the table at the moment in the US. But it has happened before. About four years ago, India was TikTok's biggest market. A growing base at the time of about 200 million users. All the things we sort of now recognize now, thriving subcultures, sometimes life changing careers, creators, influencers.
It was in fact one of India's most popular apps until 2020 when it was banned. So if we're looking down the barrel of this happening in the US, it's worth looking at where it's happened before. Let's talk about a little bit how we got there. Why? Rad was TikTok banned in India in the first place. Yeah, so there's an ongoing border dispute between China and India, which got to a head in the Galwan Valley battle, which led to several dead on both sides.
And after that, India implemented the band, saying very similar things that the US said about national security. So essentially because they've got this ongoing conflict and tensions had continually been rising after it led to a deadly skirmish. They decided to ban not only TikTok, but 59 other Chinese-made apps. And it's obviously also a slightly different case to the US, given that they don't have this active conflict.
But it does tell us a lot about how I guess these kinds of tensions play out, not only about how these kinds of tensions play out in things like technology and social media. So when it actually happened, Alice, how did it play out? Did everybody's apps suddenly stop working? Did people get VPNs and use it anyway? How did it all play? Pretty much yes. The apps stopped working. People use VPNs and a bunch of copycats rose up in its place.
And I am going to butcher the pronunciation of all these because I've only read them. But Shingari, Moj and MX Tucketuck rose up. And people are like, yeah, these are going to be the next TikTok. And people kind of use them. People still do kind of use them much in the same way. My space still exists and people still kind of use Tumblr. And then Instagram and YouTube made the changes and everyone's like, yeah, these will be the next TikTok with YouTube shorts and Instagram reels.
And then it wasn't because as we said before, the culture was different. And it surfaced different kinds of subcultures. And so the rural subcultures and other minority subcultures that had thrived on TikTok did not find their proper home on these other apps. They weren't surfaced again properly. And so those subcultures kind of died, which is really sad because social media is such an important place for minorities and small subcultures to find their people.
I think it's important to remember two things. Number one, TikTok lives on its excellent algorithm. They didn't come up with that overnight and having a locally made app trying to step in sounds really good. But at the end of the day, they don't have the robust algorithm that TikTok does. In fact, no one does. Insta Reels don't. And they have a lot of money to try and get there. So you're fighting an uphill battle in that regard. And then what was my other point?
This is what the algorithm has done to your brain. OK, no, remember, remember. And then you also need critical mass to get any of these to take off. And we saw the same when the whole Twitter change happened. It went over to Elon Musk. A lot of people were like, I'm leaving the platform. And there was this kind of fracturing of Twitter users. Some going to Blue Sky, some going to Macedon, but none of them really seemed to take off. And instead, Twitter just kind of started to dwindle a bit.
I mean, I used to be on Twitter obsessively. And now I barely open the app. I'm still there obsessively. It's bad. Don't come back. I just can't leave. That's part of why I stopped using it because it just simply stopped being fun. But having that critical mass anywhere is very, very difficult. I'm 20 seasons degrees in the out of me. I'm not good at Twitter things, even when they get that. Where you're the one still watching? I am the one still watching station 19. The spin off. What about us?
Yes, people do say that. But I digress. OK, so we know that it died in India, but a whole host of different apps came up. Is that what you anticipate is likely to play out in the US in the event that it is actually bad, which remains sort of in the air at the moment because there is a way in which they could retain it. Yeah, 100%. If there's one thing Americans like doing, it's building apps, putting a bunch of money into them and then Washington Go bankrupt like a year later.
Like it's like a hobby for them. I recommend that's going to be what happens. And then people will kind of trudge back to reels and YouTube shorts until the next big thing happens. I don't think we're going to see anything significant. You pop up at this stage. I think, yeah, people are going to try. But at the moment you've got Instagram reels. They have probably that critical mass that I mentioned.
And that's really, really hard to build. So yeah, I hate to say it because I don't really like it. But I think it's going to be insta reels. Oh, I hate it. It's the closest thing we thought blue sky was going to be the Twitter. No, no one thought that. Like at least one person thought that it was going to because like Jack started it. There was like, there were bones, but then they had it closed for too long.
And I'm hoping that whoever tries to be the next tick-tock learns from Jack's mistakes and then makes brand new ones that the next step can learn from. Do you know what I just, I just realized that I very quickly went, no one thought that. And I went, I definitely think we have a whole 15 minute discussion on this show about it.
And I'm getting needed to produce this not a go mark your need. The real possibility that blue sky social bastard on and threads would likely take over the center of gravity that is Twitter. And look at me pretending like I knew all along because I didn't. But that's what we all do. We're commentators. Mark, we always pretend that we knew what was going on back in 2007. I wrote that Facebook would fail because people valued their privacy too much. We're all wrong sometimes.
I just want to point out that I called that Quibi would not take off. I think everyone called that Quibi would not take off. That is not truth. I did the download the show episode and I was sat in the room with Quibi lovers. I will just take this opportunity to remind everyone what Quibi was because it was so successful.
Quibi was an online streaming service where instead of watching on a normal, you know, like a wide screen TV, everything was designed so that it could be watched on portrait mode. Like the way you watch TikTok and Instagram Reels. But everything could also, but you would turn your phone around. It could then be watched on a on white screen. And it was designed for a generation of people to watch everything on their phones. And no one remembers it.
And then remember when Samsung released that TV that could either be portrait or landscape and it rotated itself. Yeah, I want to bring that back. I love it just because I like pressing the button that made it rotate. But I really don't think it's going to take off in a mainstream way. But I love it. I love stupid ideas. We shall just have to wait and find out we are out of time. Huge thank you to our guests this week. Angeradio, the host of the game for anything podcast. Thanks so much.
Thanks so much. And freelance tech journalists and from the press any button substack. Alice Clark, thank you again. Thanks so much for having me. And please, if you enjoyed the show, leave a review on whichever podcasting app and say, hey, did good. Feel free to expand on that if you wish. And of course, don't forget you can listen to this show and all your other favourite ABC podcasts on ABC Listen. Mark Vannell and I'll catch you next week for a brand new episode of Download This Show.
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