DataDownload: Disney vs. the Aggregators

9 min readOct 21, 2020

DataDownload: Disney vs. the Aggregators A weekly summary of all things Media, Data, Emerging Tech View this email in your browser

Walt Disney’s integration sketch from 1957 is gold. It’s hard to feel sorry for Facebook and Twitter, and yet — this week’s NY Post “exclusive” has them in the unenviable position of only having two choices, wrong and wrong. Deepfakes are in the news because they’re only getting better. Say what you will about Donald Trump’s performance with Savannah Guthrie — at least you’re sure it was him. But, for how much longer?

Clubhouse. If you haven’t signed up on the waiting list — do so, quickly. It’s amazing.

The people behind The Lincoln Project say they’ll never work again. But, as a swan song, it’s pretty impressive. And Baratunde Thurston’s “How To Citizen” is the podcast we’re streaming this week, listen and you’ll know why.

Happy Birthday to Kunal Sood, Jorge Espinel, and Aydin Senkut. Why birthdays? Because who doesn’t like cake and candles.

As always, reach out with ideas, suggestions, or feedback. Steve@nycmedialab.org.

Steve

Steven Rosenbaum
Managing Director
The NYC Media Lab
Steve@NYCMediaLab.org Must-Read Disney and Integrators Versus Aggregators

In a world of Aggregators like Facebook and Google — who absolutely dominate the online ad market — companies that want to capture niches need to focus on integration, writes Ben Thompson. And Disney is the “preeminent example of this approach.” One recent example is the Disney+ exclusive Soul:

“Disney will earn money from Disney+ subscribers, and keep 100% of the margin.”
“Disney will create Soul-derived merchandise, much of which it will sell through its stores and at its theme parks, and keep 100% of the margin.”
“Disney will create Soul-derived features at those theme parks, most of which it fully owns-and-operates, and keep 100% of the margin.”

In fact, Walt Disney was thinking of integration since 1957:

The boxes have changed but the high-level idea hasn’t. Thompson overviews a few main differences between Aggregators and Integrators in his piece:

“Aggregators are content agnostic. Integrators are predicated on differentiation. Facebook reduces all content to similarly sized rectangles in your feed: a deeply reported investigative report is given the same prominence and visual presentation as photos of your classmate’s baby…. Content created by Disney, on the other hand, must be unique to Disney, and memorable, as it is the linchpin for their entire business.”
“Aggregators seek to serve the maximum number of consumers. Integrators seek to monetize consumers to the maximum extent. Google and Facebook are so attractive to content creators precisely because they reach so many consumers…. Disney, meanwhile, particularly as it restricts its content to its own services, is limiting the size of its addressable market, but increasing the amount of money it can make per user in the market that remains.”

16 min read

Hack and leak operations involve stealing sensitive information then publically leaking the data (and possibly manipulating it beforehand). You’re likely familiar with one of the most famous examples — Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails in 2016… and, of course, the Jeff Bezos hack. Given reporters’ — actually, most humans’ — fondness for discovering hidden information, a prominent hack and leak spreads virally. And now we have a dubious story from the New York Post involving Hunter Biden’s supposed laptop.

Surprisingly, both Facebook and Twitter acted quickly to curtail the related posts. (Though, the story was still shared some ~400k times on Facebook). Author Casey Newton (yes, this is on his new Platformer publication) believes that platforms and publications have a role to play in reducing the spread of harmful posts, despite counterarguments that such actions hurt free speech. Take a look at an example from France:

“The French press responded otherwise to a Russian hack in May 2017. Two days before a national election, the Russians posted online thousands of emails from En Marche!, the party of Emmanuel Macron, who was running for president. France, like several other democracies, has a blackout law that bars news coverage of a campaign for the 24 hours before an election and on Election Day. But the emails were available several hours before the blackout began. They were fair game. Yet the French media did not cover them. Le Monde, a major French newspaper, explained that the hack had ‘the obvious purpose of undermining the integrity of the ballot.’ Marine Le Pen, Macron’s far-right opponent, accused the news media of a partisan cover-up. But she had no sympathetic outlet to turn to, because there is no equivalent of Fox News or Breitbart in France.”

13 min read

If you haven’t seen Moon Disaster — where an actor performs the alternative speech Nixon would have given in case the moon landing turned out to be a disaster — check it out here (and their explainer). The vision stems from two multimedia artists, Francesca Panetta — creative director at MIT’s Center for Virtuality — and Halsey Burgund, a fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab. The pair teamed up with Respeecher (who handled the deepfake audio) and Canny AI (who handled the deepfake video) for the unusual project. Unusual because deepfake casting and acting are relatively new (you might remember the State Farm deepfake commercial from April). NY Times describes Panetta and Burgun’s fascinating process. A short overview:

For the audio: “Respeecher, which transmutes one voice into another, said it’d be easier to work with an actor who had a similar register and accent to Nixon’s. Armed with that knowledge, Panetta and Burgund began posting on various acting forums and emailing local acting groups. Their pitch: ‘Want to become Nixon?’”

For the video: “The visual part of the deepfake was much more straightforward. In the archival footage that would be manipulated, Nixon had delivered the real moon landing address squarely facing the camera. Wheeler needed only to deliver its alternate, start to finish, in the same way, for the production crew to capture his mouth movements at the right angle.”

12 min read Read More What Is Clubhouse, and Why Does Silicon Valley Care?

Everybody is talking about Clubhouse, everyone wants in, but few actually get an invite to the private beta. Let’s start with what the app is, according to a July memo from the Clubhouse team:

“When you open the app you can see ‘rooms’ full of people talking — all open so you can hop in and out, exploring different conversations. You enter each room as an audience member, but if you want to talk you just raise your hand, and the speakers can choose to invite you up.”

According to the founders, the app started out rough, and was shared with a few friends to gather feedback. Now, Jack Dorsey, Marc Andreessen, and even MC Hammer are jumping into conversations. Users say “it’s a much closer approximation to real-world socializing than Twitter or TikTok,” and even “humanizing”. Others have been less impressed — former VC Michelle Tandler estimated that 75% of the conversations she heard were VCs talking about Clubhouse.

6 min read Read More A VR Film/Game With AI Characters Can Be Different Every Time You Watch or Play

“I am super passionate about artificial intelligence because I believe that AI and movies belong together.” — Agence director Pietro Gagliano

Agence falls somewhere between a film and a game — and while dynamic film is a bit of a vague term, it’s appropriate for the first example of a film that uses reinforcement learning to control its animated characters. Director Pietro Gagliano sees Agence as a sort of “silent-era dynamic film. It’s a beginning, not a blockbuster.”

“The basic plot revolves around a group of creatures and their appetite for a mysterious plant that appears on their planet. Can they control their desire, or will they destabilize the planet and get tipped to their doom?”

While we usually think of experiences like Bandersnatch or games like Heavy Rain as being “dynamic”, what Gagliano had in mind was a bit more… autonomous. The reinforcement agents in Agence inject a bit of chaos into the story: “characters carry on with their business around you, seeking their rewards as best they can.”

3 min read

60 Minutes recently profiled The Lincoln Project’s founders and principals. The group has a prolific Twitter presence. “We have founders that are very adept at how Twitter works,” said the project’s communications director Keith Edwards. “And so I think even though that might not have been something that they were thinking about immediately, it was definitely in the DNA of the project.” Watch a short clip here.

“Keith Edwards says the process of operating the Lincoln Project’s social media presence has come with a learning curve. ‘I’ve learned that when you’re a big account you can’t engage with the internet the same way you do when you’re one person,’ he says. ‘Being a big account comes with a responsibility to make sure that you are lifting up people along with you.’”

4 min watch

Watch Now What We’re Listening To Podcast: ‎How To Citizen with Baratunde

“How To Citizen with Baratunde reimagines the word ‘citizen’ as a verb and reminds us how to wield our collective power. So many of us want to do more in response to the problems we hear about constantly, but where and how to participate can leave us feeling overwhelmed and helpless. Voting, while critically important, simply isn’t enough. It takes more to make this experiment in self-governance work!”

Listen Now Virtual Events Virtual Event: Launching on Product Hunt — A Discussion with the founders of Yac
Date: October 19, 1PM-2PM
Curious about launching on Product Hunt? Justin Mitchell & Jordan Walker of Yac discuss and answer your questions live. Register Here.

Virtual Event: NYC meets London Tech & Startups
Date: October 20, 1PM-2PM
Are you a NYC startup, tech or business leader interested in what’s going on in the London tech & startup system? Register Here. A Deeper Look State of AI Report 2020

Since 2018, Air Street Capital founder Nathan Benaich and angel investor Ian Hogarth have released their annual State of AI Report. The 177-slide report is a combination “of the most interesting things we’ve seen with a goal of triggering an informed conversation about the state of AI and its implications for the future,” according to Benaich and Hogarth, and focuses on technology breakthroughs, the movement of industry talent, commercial AI applications, politics, and future predictions. We’ll take take a look at a few interesting insights from the first three sections. Of course, there’s plenty more — especially in the Research section — that you’ll want to investigate in the full slideshow.

Section 1: Research (Starts at Slide 10)