Clickbait’s destructive legacy

The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Vox Media Podcast Network

Society & Culture, News, Politics, News Commentary, Philosophy

4.6 • 10.8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 June 2023

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Have clicks, likes, and shares driven media and democracy to the point of disrepair? Sean Illing is joined by Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of Semafor and the author of "Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral." Together, they discuss how newsrooms were transformed by social media and the pursuit of traffic, and what the future of the industry might look like. Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area Guest: Ben Smith (@semaforben), editor-in-chief of Semafor, author of Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral References: Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral by Ben Smith (Penguin Random House, 2023) “How corporations got all your data” by The Gray Area (Vox, Mar. 2023) Enjoyed this episode? Rate The Gray Area ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear the next episode of The Gray Area. Subscribe in your favorite podcast app. Support The Gray Area by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts This episode was made by: Engineer: Patrick Boyd Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	First, sweet tarts dare to combine sweet and tart, but they didn't stop there.
0:06.0	Now they've combined soft and bouncy to bring you new sweet tarts, gummy fruity splits.
0:12.0	A uniquely delicious dual-sided gummy with one side that's sweet, and the other side that's tart.
0:19.0	But entirely smooth and squishy.
0:22.0	A powerfully perfect combo.
0:24.0	Sweet tarts dare to combine.
0:28.0	When you drive a Chevy electric vehicle, you're getting more than a way to get from point A to point B.
0:33.0	You're saying goodbye to gas stations and hello to open roads.
0:37.0	With the growing network of public charging stations, you'll be able to charge your EV while you shop, work, or do whatever you want to be doing with your time.
0:44.0	Chevy is making EVs for everyone, everywhere. Go to chevrelay.com slash electric to learn more.
0:51.0	Mark, if somebody was to put the question to you about the magnitude of what you think you've launched, how big do you think your product or your service is?
1:04.0	Well, it's impossible to tell.
1:07.0	Facebook was created in 2004.
1:09.0	And how did Twitter get started?
1:11.0	Twitter has a long story.
1:12.0	Twitter launched in 2006.
1:15.0	We got the iPhone in 2007.
1:18.0	Today, Apple is going to reinvent the phone.
1:24.0	In historical time, that's a blink.
1:27.0	And yet, these technologies have revolutionized how we live and communicate.
1:32.0	They've also upended the media business.
1:36.0	I don't know what it was like to be a journalist in the before times, but I started in 2015.
	...

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