ChatGPT

[Niya]

Hardly...it is the most watched cable news in the US and they really attacked Budweiser. Now they are attacking Target stores. And I thought Twitter was going by the wayside with the younger folks? Your funny, you say I should get into social media, and you told me that on social media. I do get your point, the younger folks aren't watching TV like us older folks. But we have a lot of money to spend.

Ok, you're still not understanding. Fox News is reacting to this, they aren't driving it. Twitter is driving this. I mean do you have any idea how much activity there is on Twitter behind these boycotts? You know how many arguments there are on Twitter over this? You know how many memes and videos are getting posted by the hour? Then on top if this you have the hundreds if not thousands of YouTube commentary channels and independent journalist that pick up on this Twitter activity and comment on them to milk views. This alerts segments of their respective audiences who in turn respond by going on Twitter themselves to argue, meme etc so now you have this massive feedback loop that just gets bigger and bigger. Fox News is not relevant here. This has a life of it's own without them doing anything.

Every time I go on Twitter and YouTube there is something new. Some video of someone doing something crazy or saying something interesting, some new meme etc. I'm not seeing Fox News anywhere here. Look at this. I just opened my Twitter just now and this is what greets me:-

https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/sta...57847452356611

https://twitter.com/CollinRugg/statu...65667971387393

https://twitter.com/GrahamAllen_1/st...90984509075458

https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status...58870221361152

https://twitter.com/hodgetwins/statu...44167512498178

https://twitter.com/TexasRepublic71/...42048747167744

I could keep probably keep going for hours posting links. Fox News is irrelevant. I could get endless hours of content on this story just from Twitter alone. We don't need Fox News!

[TysonLPrice]

You are the one the just doesn't get it. I'll concede that other outlets may be the main driver of the movement and are more massive but they are definitely NOT "driving Fox". Fox has been driving crap like that for years. CRT, WOKE, and now this.

This kind of thing is their narrative and they were "driving" things like this way before Twitter and all the social media was even massive like it is.

Has it crossed you mind maybe some of the 2.2 million Fox viewers also get on Twitter and propagate what they saw on Fox. And that helps fuel many other posts around the world.

[Niya]

Has it crossed you mind maybe some of the 2.2 million Fox viewers also get on Twitter and propagate what they saw on Fox.

2.2 million? That's laughable. Elon Musk has 140.9 million followers on Twitter. What this means is that if you are I tweet something and by some miracle he retweets it, it shows up in the feeds of all 140.9 million of his followers and then it becomes a story instantly.

Now Elon Musk has nothing to do with this, I just used him as an example to show you just how insignificant 2.2 million is. Let's look at the follower counts of people I follow on Twitter, some of which themselves are driving this conversation:-

• Libs of TikTok - 2.2 million followers
• Babylon Bee - 2.6 million followers
• Candace Owens - 3.7 million followers
• Jordan Peterson - 4.2 million followers
• Matt Walsh - 1.9 million followers

Any one of these people tweet or retweet a single thing about this instantly reach millions. 2.2 million people watching Fox News is nothing. Jordan Peterson by himself on Twitter can reach twice that amount of people in an instant.

Here's an interesting thing to note, Fox News also has a Twitter account which boasts 23.8 million followers but when I scroll through their feed, it contains almost nothing about the boycotts. They don't even really care about this. I mean you can see for yourself:-
https://twitter.com/FoxNews

Look, I'm not saying Fox News doesn't have some part to play, but you are vastly over-estimating their influence. They are a drop in an ocean. I mean even with their 23.8 million followers on Twitter, they are still dwarfed by the likes of Elon Musk, Kim Kardashian, Barack Obama etc. They are also dwarfed the by the combined reach of smaller celebrities like those I listed.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I wasn't going to get into this, but the math you just used is clearly faulty. 2.2 million isn't nothing, even by your own examples. It's as much as one that you listed, more than another, almost as much as a third, and then you had to round up to claim that one person had just twice as many. You're trying to make the case that 2.2 million is nothing, and yet you used a series of examples where 2.2 million would certainly NOT be nothing. The argument for Musk would be reasonable, as 2.2 million is a fairly small percentage of 140.9 million, but those other points just don't make the case.

Are you trying to argue that a Twitter follower is somehow a higher value than a TV viewer, and therefore should have a multiplier? If so, I might agree with you, as I don't feel they are equivalent, but I'm not sure that the multiplier is greater or less than 1, so make your case.

[TysonLPrice]

I wasn't going to get into this, but the math you just used is clearly faulty. 2.2 million isn't nothing, even by your own examples. It's as much as one that you listed, more than another, almost as much as a third, and then you had to round up to claim that one person had just twice as many. You're trying to make the case that 2.2 million is nothing, and yet you used a series of examples where 2.2 million would certainly NOT be nothing. The argument for Musk would be reasonable, as 2.2 million is a fairly small percentage of 140.9 million, but those other points just don't make the case.

Are you trying to argue that a Twitter follower is somehow a higher value than a TV viewer, and therefore should have a multiplier? If so, I might agree with you, as I don't feel they are equivalent, but I'm not sure that the multiplier is greater or less than 1, so make your case.

I'm not sure which 2.2 million you are referring to but if it was my post what I was thinking is the 2.2 million Fox viewers may also have Twitter accounts. Some of those can have hard to count followers but hypothetically hundreds of thousands posts that turn into other hundreds of thousands posts. So Fox news' influence and narrative are expanded exponentially with untold Twitter accounts making that media, Fox, potent. Versus the "hardly worth mentioning" argument.

[Niya]

I wasn't going to get into this, but the math you just used is clearly faulty. 2.2 million isn't nothing, even by your own examples. It's as much as one that you listed, more than another, almost as much as a third, and then you had to round up to claim that one person had just twice as many. You're trying to make the case that 2.2 million is nothing, and yet you used a series of examples where 2.2 million would certainly NOT be nothing. The argument for Musk would be reasonable, as 2.2 million is a fairly small percentage of 140.9 million, but those other points just don't make the case.

I understand the point you're making. However, what I am trying to say is that Fox News with their 2.2 million viewers aren't special because there are literally hundreds if not thousands of people on Twitter with that that kind of reach but I only listed a handful just off my own Twitter account. If just 50 of those people catch wind of a story and started re-tweeting, their reach will far exceed those 2.2 million Fox News viewers.

Lets do some math. Lets say some event happened and 50 Twitter users with an average of say, 1.1 million followers took interest in it. 50 x 1.1 = 55 million. Now lets assume some overlap, say 20% of that 55 million is shared between those 50 Twitter users. 20% of 55 million = 11 million. 55 - 11 = 44 million. So these 50 people would be reaching 44 million unique individuals. That's way in excess of 2.2 million viewers on Fox News.

Are you trying to argue that a Twitter follower is somehow a higher value than a TV viewer

Oh yes very much so but I would not go so far as to say we should apply a multiplier. You think Elon Musk spent 40+ billion dollars for Twitter for his amusement? Twitter is very serious business. I don't think many of you truly realize just how important social media has become. "Old guard" TV news networks like Fox News and CNN are no longer the primary portals to current events. They are too slow, un-interactive and their coverage is too limited. They have no advantage over social media except being able to reach that older audience like all the grandmas and grandpas who haven't caught up with the times.

[Niya]

I'm not sure which 2.2 million you are referring to but if it was my post what I was thinking is the 2.2 million Fox viewers may also have Twitter accounts. Some of those can have hard to count followers but hypothetically hundreds of thousands posts that turn into other hundreds of thousands posts. So Fox news' influence and narrative are expanded exponentially with untold Twitter accounts making that media, Fox, potent. Versus the "hardly worth mentioning" argument.

I get what you're trying to say but what I am saying, traditional media is way too slow. These things go super viral on social media very very quickly. When something happens and Twitter gets a hold over it, it spreads like wild-fire and by the time traditional media catches on, it already has a life of it's own. If you found about anything through Fox News, I can guarantee, you've arrived late to the party. So those paltry 2.2 million viewers who found out on Fox News and decide to jump on Twitter, are coming behind many times that number who were already in on the action before them.

[TysonLPrice]

If you found about anything through Fox News, I can guarantee, you've arrived late to the party.

This is where you are so wrong and you just don't understand. Their narrative (Fox), their drive, is to find/enhance/and super charge on a 24/7 the very stories that feed the media you think drives them. I just have to disagree if you insist Fox news is hardly worth mentioning when it comes to the Bud Lite boycott.

[Niya]

The FDA recently granted Neuralink approval for human clinical studies. This was posted by the company on Twitter May 25th, 2023 at 6:10 PM. As of this post that was 20 hours ago:-
https://twitter.com/neuralink/status...57379460468736

It has 25 million views as of now.

If you search for this story in Google you find these:-
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-65717487

That was 4 hours ago, 16 hours late

https://www.reuters.com/science/elon...ts-2023-05-25/

This one was 9 hours ago, 11 hours late.

I tried to find any clips of this being talked about by a major traditional news network, the best I found was this:-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXW6OV-qryI

Which as best as I could tell is some backwater branch of CNN and even then they were 16 hours late.

25+ million people have already been made aware of this and I can't find a single piece of evidence that a major news network devoted even single 5 minute segment towards informing the public. By modern standards, this is already old news so even if a major news network picks it up tomorrow, all they would really be doing is picking up a little bit of slack. They far too slow to have the kind of influence you believe they have.

[dilettante]

As far as I can tell that's a tentacle of CNN in India, designed to use local broadcasters to reach beyond the big cities where highly subsidized cable TV can be made available for token rates.

It seems odd so little coverage has occurred elsewhere, but that's the tip of the iceberg when it comes to suppressed stories. For example the Congressional hearings on whistleblower persecution and what the whistleblowers revealed about the FBI's illegal January 6th activities gets very slim coverage as well. The Durham Report on the Russiagate hoax gets just as little coverage.

They seem to be back to thumping the drum of Trump Derangement Syndrome again in the west.

[Niya]

It seems odd so little coverage has occurred elsewhere, but that's the tip of the iceberg when it comes to suppressed stories. For example the Congressional hearings on whistleblower persecution and what the whistleblowers revealed about the FBI's illegal January 6th activities gets very slim coverage as well. The Durham Report on the Russiagate hoax gets just as little coverage.

They seem to be back to thumping the drum of Trump Derangement Syndrome again in the west.

Haha don't even get me started on this.

[dilettante]

Haha don't even get me started on this.

Yeah, there isn't any point.

[Niya]

Yeah, there isn't any point.

Yep!

[Niya]

Target stocks collapsed to it's lowest trading value in a year. This is on Twitter as of 6 hours ago:-
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/sta...97288741650435

It already has 5.6 million views.....Lets just wait for Fox News to arrive late to the party with their paltry 2 million viewers.......

[wes4dbt]

I'd say this whole Fox Vs Social Media is Apples and Oranges.

The average age of a Fox news viewer is 68. That's the demographic that Fox has to entertain. What the 30yr olds on Twitter are talking about doesn't drive Fox. Social media is a different demographic.

[Niya]

I'd say this whole Fox Vs Social Media is Apples and Oranges.

The average age of a Fox news viewer is 68. That's the demographic that Fox has to entertain. What the 30yr olds on Twitter are talking about doesn't drive Fox. Social media is a different demographic.

Yea, kinda my point. You're right in that Fox isn't really concerned with "30yr olds on Twitter" however, with regards to the boycott, it just so happens that both Fox's demographic and the "30yr olds on Twitter" are caught up in it but only one of these demographics is actually driving this particular narrative and it's not Fox's demographic.

[dilettante]

I'm just trying to figure out who all of these hard drinking 68 year olds are. Most people that age who I know can make a 6-pack last months if they buy one at all.

[Niya]

lol

[wes4dbt]

I'm just trying to figure out who all of these hard drinking 68 year olds are. Most people that age who I know can make a 6-pack last months if they buy one at all.

Well, a six pack certainly doesn't last long at my house but i don't watch Fox news so I guess it doesn't count. lol

[Shaggy Hiker]

. You think Elon Musk spent 40+ billion dollars for Twitter for his amusement?

Yeah, I do.

[wes4dbt]

Yea, kinda my point. You're right in that Fox isn't really concerned with "30yr olds on Twitter" however, with regards to the boycott, it just so happens that both Fox's demographic and the "30yr olds on Twitter" are caught up in it but only one of these demographics is actually driving this particular narrative and it's not Fox's demographic.

I agree, the current biggest driving force for anger and negativity is social media. But the news media is a major contributor.

[TysonLPrice]

Target stocks collapsed to it's lowest trading value in a year. This is on Twitter as of 6 hours ago:-
https://twitter.com/bennyjohnson/sta...97288741650435

It already has 5.6 million views.....Lets just wait for Fox News to arrive late to the party with their paltry 2 million viewers.......

You don't want to seem to believe there is more than a one to one of a Fox viewer to a Twitter user. One Fox personality, the now fired Tucker Carlson, had close to 7,000,000 Twitter followers, they then twitter other people.

And I NEVER once said Fox has a bigger media footprint then Twitter. I said you cannot dismiss Fox news influence on the Bud Lite fiasco as meaningless.

[wes4dbt]

To get back on topic. Don Jr. released an AI doctored clip showing DeSantis on the Office wearing a women suit. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b2346581.html

This was an obvious hoax. Does make me wonder how much of a weapon AI will become in politics. If legislation will try and control it, and how timely that could possibly be.

[Niya]

Did you see the Twitter spaces one? It was a fake Twitter spaces session with AI generated voices of DeSantis, the devil, Trump and a couple others. I've been seeing it floating around Twitter since yesterday. It was hilarious.

[wes4dbt]

Did you see the Twitter spaces one? It was a fake Twitter spaces session with AI generated voices of DeSantis, the devil, Trump and a couple others. I've been seeing it floating around Twitter since yesterday. It was hilarious.

Hell, I don't even know what Twitter spaces is. lol

I expect we're going to see a flood of this type of stuff. It sounds pretty easy to produce.

[Niya]

I can't seem to find a video of the parody in full on YouTube or Rumble. All I can find on it are pieces of it along with a bunch of garbage commentary I don't care to listen to or subject anyone else to. I guess I'll have to wait till someone retweets it and it shows up in my Twitter feed again.

[Niya]

Hell, I don't even know what Twitter spaces is. lol

OMG are you serious? You guys need to get with the times man. Twitter spaces is all the rage these days and a lot of important conversations will be happening there.

Basically it's like an online panel where people can get together and discuss things and the public can listen in. It's kinda like what the Lapeef network does on YouTube where they have panels of people come up to discuss whatever interesting things are happening.

[Niya]

I expect we're going to see a flood of this type of stuff. It sounds pretty easy to produce.

Oh yes, this has already been happening. The Twitter Spaces one I mentioned was actually an attack on DeSantis by Trump according to the rumors. I can't confirm if this is true though. It may have been commissioned by Trump or perhaps a random person made it for fun and he just found it. I don't really know yet.

[Niya]

Ok I found it on Twitter in full:-
https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/stat...42033884958723

That's a fake Twitter Spaces session created with the aid of AI. It's meant to be satirical and funny though Trump has weaponized it against DeSantis.

[dilettante]

Yeah, people are yukking it up over that all over the place. I think the biggest missed opportunity there was in making so little use of the faceless FBI drone character. While not way down there with the Devil, Schwab, Hitler, that undisclosed apparatchik ought to be ranked with Cheney at the least. Come to think of it, Cheney could have been used more too. That good pal of Joe and Hillary could be used by Trump to distance himself from the globalist wing of the GOP.

But did I watch the wrong video there? Nothing smells very "AI" about that to me. Sounded like something one could make from a bank of clips and a program that can filter them to remove background sounds and splice pops and even out levels. Or maybe just two or three guys doing impressions.

[Niya]

But did I watch the wrong video there? Nothing smells very "AI" about that to me. Sounded like something one could make from a bank of clips and a program that can filter them to remove background sounds and splice pops and even out levels. Or maybe just two or three guys doing impressions.

No, it's AI 100%

Since AI made a big splash onto the scene with release of ChatGPT, this form of entertainment has been on the rise. There are a few YouTube channels that started making funny content like this for the gaming community. They would take a clip of a video game session and put voice-overs of famous people generated by AI to make it seem as if it was them actually playing the game.

Here's one of my favorites from a month ago:-


League of Legends is one of my time-wasters so I'm familiar with the culture of that community enough to understand the humor. But that isn't the only game I've seen people do this kind of thing for.

That Twitter Spaces parody is just a natural progression of that type of content. Somebody was eventually going to take it outside of just video games.

[Niya]

And yea, when I first started seeing those YouTube videos, I thought the same thing, that it was made from a bank of clips. I didn't want to believe that AI was that good at faking voices. But as I listened, being familiar with the game myself, they were using a lot of terms specific to the culture of that game. Terms like "ganking" or "ff 15" are things ONLY League players would ever say so they definitely didn't find a clip somewhere of Biden, Trump or Andrew Tate using those terms.

I also later saw in the description of another video by another YouTuber doing the same thing where he said the voices were AI generated.

[wes4dbt]

OMG are you serious? You guys need to get with the times man. Twitter spaces is all the rage these days and a lot of important conversations will be happening there.

Basically it's like an online panel where people can get together and discuss things and the public can listen in. It's kinda like what the Lapeef network does on YouTube where they have panels of people come up to discuss whatever interesting things are happening.

I'd say we have major differences in what we consider important.

But, I don't think that comes as a big surprised to either of us. lol

[dilettante]

So, do you think AI is involved in this issue? "Robot voice" script reading videos have been a bane for a while now.

[Niya]

I'd say we have major differences in what we consider important.

Errr...Perhaps that is true or it's probably just the generational gap between us. My generation was partially raised on social media so it's only natural we'd know about things like Twitter Spaces. We live on social media in a way that the older generation cannot understand. You remind me of my father in that way. He is into tech and programming like us so it's not like he is completely out of touch with technological advancements but some of the social changes brought about by these advancements, like social media, still go over his head. He barely acknowledges the existence of social media despite how central it is to life now. I doubt he knows what Twitter spaces is either.

[Niya]

So, do you think AI is involved in this issue? "Robot voice" script reading videos have been a bane for a while now.

I know of these. I'm subscribed to a few science channels like Veratasium and the various offshoots of the PBS Studios brand so I get recommended these low effort videos a lot. This content style has been around a long time and is far less sophisticated than AI voice content we see now. I believe those "robot voice" channels are just using really good text-to-speech software whereas AI generated speech in the post-ChatGPT era, such as in the Twitter Spaces parody, uses actual AI which is why they are so difficult to tell apart from real human speech.

[wes4dbt]

Errr...Perhaps that is true or it's probably just the generational gap between us. My generation was partially raised on social media so it's only natural we'd know about things like Twitter Spaces. We live on social media in a way that the older generation cannot understand. You remind me of my father in that way. He is into tech and programming like us so it's not like he is completely out of touch with technological advancements but some of the social changes brought about by these advancements, like social media, still go over his head. He barely acknowledges the existence of social media despite how central it is to life now. I doubt he knows what Twitter spaces is either.

No, your really off base. What's important to me has nothing to do with technology. Nothing to do with politics or social media. Those are things I pass some time with. I often wonder how these people spent so much time online. I sure didn't have that kind of free time until I retired. Work, wife, kids, family, friends and an occasional vacation filled up my free time. But instead of accepting the fact that we have different views of what's important. You want to frame it as I'm ignorant of what's going on in the world, or what effect social media has today. Oh well, it's not important.

[Niya]

But instead of excepting the fact that we have different views of what's important. You want to frame it as I'm ignorant of what's going on in the world, or what effect social media has today.

No. What I'm saying is knowing about things like Twitter Spaces is as natural for my generation as someone from the 1980s knowing what a rotary dial is. It's just the world we grew up in. That's what I'm saying. No need to get so defensive.

[dilettante]

Now to be fair, when I got married in 1980 we never had a rotary phone. Somewhere around 1978 or so there was no cost savings any more.

But yeah, we'd both grown up with them.

[dilettante]

That was about the time when you began taking ownership of your phones. There was even a phone company "store" where you picked them out.

Before that an installer brought them to you. That seems to have persisted until modular jacks were considered ubiquitous after many years of transition from hard wiring.