Thanks for your unprecedented response to my last newsletter highlighting parallels between Napoleon’s control of media and the Meta/Trump dramas.
And thanks also to those who corrected my error in referring to the WWI bombing of London as The Blitz, when the term was not coined until WWII.
Being proud to be a journalist means that I care a very great deal about what I write, which means I care very much when I get it wrong.
Substackers alerted me to this slip with authority and grace, and I amended it. Trust between writers and readers is essential if we are to chart a path forward.
So, thank you for being there… 🙏
Today, more on Meta as it comes under unprecedented pressure to clean up its act with a slew of court cases attacking its monopoly, addictive products and lax data protections.
There’s $134 billion in ad revenue, the fate of a $1.6 trillion market darling, and the habits of 3.3 billion Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp users at stake.
In my latest experimental podcast using Notebook LM, I’ve tried something new.
Instead of taking my article and posting it to be transformed into audio, I have uploaded dozens of articles, and thousands of pages of court papers.
That included four lengthy PDFs, nine articles from Future Media, dozens more articles from curated publishers, plus stock performance and analyst reports, and more.
In all, nearly 100,000 words across differing documents, in different formats, providing differing analyses and opinions from multiple authors and sources.
And then I tasked Notebook LM to make sense of it all.
I told it to focus on the court cases in order of priority and to go into detail.
To create the pod with a style that appeals to savvy media, tech and ad execs, and
To consider the repercussions for news media and Meta’s 3.3 billion global users.
I know many of you are following the developments of these AI podcasts. The AI seems to be getting better every time. You can find them all in my podcast channel.
My experience to date has been that the AI-produced pods get the same number of listens and attract the same level of feedback. It’s an interesting phenomenon.
So, over to Notebook LM then, to tell you what 2025 holds for Meta, and its analysis of what it means for social and the digital economy as a whole…
You can also follow the upcoming trials in Meta’s tumultuous 2025 by bookmarking this link. It’s just 91 days to go until Meta’s first case opens…
Hey there.
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