In the last couple years I’ve noticed that vtubing is on its way to becoming mainstream. If you haven’t encountered this in your content consumption, then it’s only a matter of time. We’re seeing new tools for a non-technical person to create a synthetic persona every day, driving the cost down significantly.
I’m less interested in the cautionary tales of such technology and more interested in the norms that will emerge from them. A day is coming where we won’t think twice about a digital persona appearing in our zoom meetings. What technology will we need when we stop caring if we’re looking at the real person or not?
Overwatch 2 will require a phone number to play
At my previous role at Twitch, we endured an attack where attackers were spamming our service with ToS-violating content (mostly porn but also grotesque, violent stuff) to an insane degree. The decision was made to temporarily require a phone number on all accounts in order to stream. I argued that phone numbers were easy to get, making this measure unhelpful, but we did it anyway. To my complete surprise, the attackers didn't bother the obviously surmountable hurdle of getting burner numbers.
Yes, phone numbers won't stop determined people, but in practice they're surprisingly effective. After my experiences, I believe that's because there's a difference between determined attackers trying to penetrate your system and people "just out for the lulz"
The outrage about this feels awfully synthetic. Overwatch has a toxicity problem, and would only get worse once the cost of entry is nil. Until we get better, less invasive ways of mapping online identities to real ones, this is the best middle ground.
Someone is pretending to be me
About 12 years ago, I attended a barcamp where someone gave an SEO talk about how to hack search and adwords to provide no value but capture eyeballs and trick people into clicking on things to make money. It was the first Barcamp in the area, and I don’t think the speaker realized the kind of audience normally attended Barcamps. The talk didn’t go over well. However, there were many references to a wider community they were a part of that traded tips and tricks and generally evolved their trade of grifting at scale.
I can't help but feel there's a whole community of people out there with few morals who are trading tips on how to set up scams like this. The "web of lies" seems so deep and complicated I can't imagine this whole thing was built in a vacuum by one person.
DALL-E now available without a waitlist
When VR started taking off, I recall Valve mentioning they were less concerned by competition from Oculus, but instead from Google Cardboard. Their rationale was that if someone’s first taste of VR is a bargain basement experience, then they’ll likely never consider trying the luxury version that has a higher barrier to entry. I don’t have any metrics to back up whether users who first onboarded to cardboard didn’t progress to an Oculus or Vive, but it has the ring of truth to me.
DALL-E is well on its way to becoming the Betamax of media synthesis. While the concensus is that it’s the best of its class, the lack of access meant people got their first taste of a new breed of technology elsewhere. It proves that the wrong marketing model means losing mindshare to competitors with worse products.