Digital Works Podcast

Episode 043 - Ash & Katie, Bytes #6 - a conversation about platform ethics, highlighting the work of the National Gallery, and looking at the failed collab between Punchdrunk and Niantic

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The sixth in our new series, Bytes, where Ash and Katie discuss 3 things from the latest Digital Works Newsletter.

In this episode we'll be discussing some of the links in the newsletter that went out on January 29th.

We talk about:

You can sign up for the newsletter at thedigital.works.

Ash:

Hello and welcome to the Digital Works podcast, the podcast about digital stuff in the cultural sector. My name's Ash and in today's episode, episode six of Bites, which is our regular short form series where we look at three interesting things from our most recent Digital Works newsletter. You can sign up for the newsletter on our website, which you can find at thedigitalworks, and joining me today and for all episodes in this series is the person who puts the newsletter together, my colleague Katie. Today we're going to talk about some of the things which were in the newsletter which was sent on the 29th of January, and there is a link to that edition in the show notes. Our first thing is, in fact, a bundling of things because thematically, they feel like they are related, and I would like us to discuss the fact that the Association of Cultural Enterprises has decided to leave X.

Ash:

I would like to talk about the article that Hugh Wallace wrote about being thoughtful about where you're active on social media, and I would also like to talk about sub-stack and the fact that a number of writers and newsletters have left the platform, because it feels like all three of those things that you shared are speaking to the fact that no digital platform, product or service is neutral, and I think, particularly for cultural organisations, there is a real need to be thoughtful and sort of evaluative is that a word? You need to be evaluative in your approach to which platforms you're active on, and Hugh's article is a long read, a brilliant read, talking about his journey through the early days of social media and to where he is now, and he's really talking or imploring people to be more thoughtful about why are you on these platforms specifically and is your presence on those platforms actually meeting those goals? As I said, association of Cultural Enterprises have decided to leave X, and I'd be fascinated him or about that from you, katie and Casey Newton and others have decided to leave sub-stack because, in short, sub-stack has, as the Atlantic headline said, a Nazi problem in inverted commas, and Casey Newton and others raised this with sub-stack CEO and his response was somewhat lacking, shall we say, in terms of actually seeming like they would do anything about the Nazi problem. So, katie, it feels like all of these things, as I said, are linked and related. What are they telling us about the sort of state of platform ethics at the start of 2024?

Katie:

Yeah, it's tricky, isn't it? Because when social media first arrived, there was debates around are these companies media companies or are they essentially kind of online communities who are gathering together user-generated content, so they're not overly responsible for it? And there's always been this debate about where is the line drawn between what Facebook or X or whatever where they're responsible for the content, and where there's a kind of freedom of speech issue, and we don't seem to, as a society, have figured that out yet. So at various times, you know, Facebook and Twitter, as it was, have sort of dialed up or down the moderation, and yet we're still in a situation where these things keep happening. And I think that is because, fundamentally, if you are a media owner so if you're the Guardian or the New York Times not only are you bound by certain sort of regulations, you know there are laws that surround what you publish on your own platform. But it is tricky and of course, you know, with the sub-stack issue, what happens is this as soon as you get into a debate about there are bad people on this platform saying bad things, a bunch of other people will say what about free speech? We can't just shut it down. If we shut it down, then it just goes away somewhere else, but it still exists. At least if it's there we can debate it in the open.

Katie:

And I have to say I don't envy any of these platforms. Really. It's pretty obvious, with X as it is now, that Elon Musk is. You know he's a free speech absolutist, he well. So he says he is.

Katie:

So it is clear, I think, that X is in a slightly different realm to perhaps some of the other platforms and that's why organizations like the Association of Cultural Enterprises and others are leaving. But it's funny because you know, if you say, oh well, I'm leaving X because you know ethically it's a bad platform, there is just as much of an argument to say well, you know, there's all sorts of horrendous things happening on Facebook internationally. So if you have, you know, if you as an organization has these clear ethics like why is one thing okay and the other thing isn't? So all of that is to say I don't know, there is a clear answer. But I do think it's good to be considerate of these things and be thinking about them and not just carry on blindly, particularly for arts and cultural organizations who, possibly more than many other sectors, consider themselves to be very ethically driven, values driven, and so we do have to think about what we're using and you know who we're supporting in that sense.

Ash:

Yeah, and I think it's exactly that.

Ash:

I think there is a need, perhaps, or a strong enough rationale for many organizations to exist on some of these platforms, but I think probably the shift that needs to happen is a more honest conversation about the compromises or the problematic parts of these platforms.

Ash:

If you know, just a quicker side, if people wanna maybe look into some of the history of why these platforms exist in the way they do, there was a piece of legislation in the States, which is primarily what most of these organizations care about, called Section 230, which essentially absolves any of these platforms of being seen as a publisher, and it says no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider, which is a bit of a get out of jail free card and does remove incentives to have effective moderation in place. And then, as you say, you add a sort of somewhat with the perspective of Elon Musk into the mix. Things like the Taylor Swift deepfakes going viral last week are not a surprise, because there isn't that legislative incentive to guard against those things, and nor does he really care.

Katie:

No, and he got rid of all the trust and safety people at Twitter anyway, like he wasn't apologetic about it. He doesn't think it's needed it. I think the other thing it's interesting recording this today and yesterday, zuckerberg and TikTok CEO and the Snap CEO they were all testifying before the Senate about social media and the harms of social media and Zuckerberg actually apologized to families who say that their children have been harmed by social media. And that is quite interesting, that obviously it made the headlines everywhere. And the reason it made the headlines is because the fact that he would actually apologize is an acknowledgement of the responsibility that these platforms have, which is self-evident, but the fact that they would actually come out and say that is a bit of a change in stance, I would say.

Ash:

The second thing that I would like to pull out of your most recent newsletter is the work that the national gallery social media team are doing. Me specifically cited their work on threads and on tick tock, so what do you like about it? What can other people learn from the way they're approaching this?

Katie:

It's ironic, isn't it? We talking about the harms of social media and then we like, hey, this is really good. I will caveat this by saying that often large organizations like national gallery or the national theater, if you hold them up as examples of good practice, people will sometimes say well, it's easy for them, they are a large organization, they have big teams, and that is absolutely fair to say that. But the reason for sort of highlighting what they're doing is because it's very clear that the people running those social media accounts really understand how to use social media well and effectively, and it is one of those things that kind of seems easy until you have to do it yourself. Specifically, they show a real understanding of current memes and they're not doing it in a sort of cheesy way. They are piggybacking on those memes and using the artworks in the gallery to you know, to. I mean, they're having fun and that's the other thing.

Katie:

You know, humor always works on social media. I think it just shows it's very difficult for organizations on social media because you always have this challenge of how you're not a person, you're an institution. So how do you be personable and kind of show personality Whilst also being an institution, and I think national gallery really hit the mark on that. I think their tone of voice and everything is spot on. And I mean with threads, which obviously is a relatively new platform, they've grown it massively, really quickly. I think they've got around 300,000 followers.

Ash:

You know, that's impressive, it's good work and I think there's a lot that kind of other organizations could learn from it yeah, it feels like, if you look at other examples over the years, of sort of great social media presence is both in the sector and outside the sector. The things that you've mentioned are present in all of them. You know of real understanding of internet culture and sort of your activity on those platforms being Not just aware of what people are talking about, how they're talking about it, but completely fluent in the sort of shape and tone and rhythms of internet culture. And that, being specific to each of the platforms that you're on, and I think as well, this idea of being playful but also being clear about why your institution is present on these platforms to heart, back to our first point, feels really important that's a really good point actually, because that's the other risk with social media, isn't it?

Katie:

that you get so kind of caught up in the memes that what you actually are as an organization gets lost and you're just making fun jokes and banter, and again the national gallery always bring it back to the artworks, to the place. So it's clever. It's really well done.

Ash:

And the third and final thing that I would like us to discuss is an article you shared about the, the failed collaboration between immersive theater company punch drunk and the games company Neantic, who made games such as Pokemon go, and it's a really, really brilliant article.

Ash:

They've clearly done interviews with a lot of people that were involved in the failed collaboration and you know by line is the untick and punch drunk spent years designing a gamified theatrical experience. That never happened and I think it's a really interesting depiction of a total clash of working styles, a total clash how you put work out into the world. You know, niantic and puncher obviously to extremely creative artistic companies that work in totally different ways that it just reads like oil and water trying to make you know. It's just such an interesting and jarring account of two sets of people, that sort of Adjust it sounds like they just misunderstanding each other from the from the outset, from the moment that sort of rubber needed to hit the road and things needed to start actually happening. That feels like where all of the misalignment suddenly exploded into being. But what's your take on this?

Katie:

yeah, it's a great article. There's so much about this that's fascinating to me, as you say, all the stuff about the clash of kind of structurally, how these teams work, what they prioritize, you know, it's one thing, coming up with a creative idea but then realizing that On a massive scale, just logistically, the challenges of that is fascinating. I will say that I really want someone to succeed in this because the vision for it is genuinely like amazing, like if they achieved it I think it would have been cool, lots of fun. But it sort of shows the incredible difficulty in combining genuine, immersive, in person experiences with technology at scale. For all the reasons that are in this article and that source sort of self evident.

Katie:

What is fascinating to me is that the idea is so Appealing and yet trying to realize it is so hard and you know, I think this was something that they worked on for years before finally kind of giving up. So you wonder, you know, going forward in the future, things like I, will that really help as a scaffolding to sort of make this stuff easier? Maybe? But, as you saying, that some of the challenge was clearly that they are different types of organizations that work in different ways and, historically, the arts and culture sector hasn't always worked brilliantly with other sectors, particularly tech sectors.

Katie:

That's a massive generalization, but as a sort of baseline point and I think this bears that out as well and also there are some other interesting strands in it as well just the fact of how hard it is to create something that is both truly innovative but accessible and safe. You know, some of these things that they tried out such like quite risky just meeting random strangers, taking things off them, giving them. You know all of that, you know. So again, you've you've layering on top of it not only the Creative and technical challenges but the safety challenges. It feels insurmountable will. Obviously, it ended up being so.

Ash:

Yeah, actually, when I was reading it reminded me of some of the things that I talked about on podcast with an at me's and with a little bit over, where they were talking about the Virtual reality opera that they produced at the royal house, and they talk in quite a lot of detail about how you get creative technologists and technology teams and, you know, I suppose, practitioners in more traditional forms of culture to understand each other and to be able to work together on something that is actually Deliverable.

Ash:

And it feels like there's this constant translation required and re explanation of actually this is really important, but I have to explain it to you in terms that Going to land with you and it feels like maybe that's the big thing that was missing here is an understanding on both sides or an ability on both sides to speak really in the language and the priorities of the other side. Because, as you said, it feels like you know me and take with very focused on how do we scale this, how do we put safeguarding into it and, you know, punch drunk, really interested in sort of like artistically, how do we make this gripping and immersive and interesting and valuable, and it just feels like they were just talking across purposes for years, as you say, but it is an absolutely fascinating depiction of a really ambitious attempted collaboration that you know. I think both you and I would say we hope to see more of these types of collaborations, but this was a failure hundred percent.

Katie:

I mean all credit to them and I just hope that somebody will make something like this work quite soon, because it sounds fun.

Ash:

Thanks for listening to this episode of bites. You can find all episodes of the podcast on our website at the digital dot works, where you can also find more information about our events and sign up to the newsletter. Our theme tune is Vienna, beat by blue dot sessions. And, last but not least, thanks to Mark cotton for his editing support on this episode. See you again soon.

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