Ryan Broderick

So it's creating a lot of moments where everyone's talking about something, but they're, like, confused as to why.

So you're getting a lot of incendiary, offensive, very polarizing content rising to the top right now.

It's also making people very paranoid, which is what caused the whole geese thing this month, which sort of culminated in, I thought, a fairly boneheaded take from Wired this week about it.

For those who didn't read Garbage Day.

Yeah, basically Wired...

Picked up a story from this musician on Substack who had discovered that this shadowy digital marketing company called Chaotic Good Projects was using bots and, well, maybe not bots, but fake user-generated content to promote bands.

Alex Warren, Somber, Geese were all listed as artists they'd worked with.

My major problem with any company like this is, okay, so you've manipulated the algorithm.

Show me how you did it.

Show me proof that you did it.

There is no proof they did it.

This is why I don't believe Cambridge Analytica caused Brexit.

I don't believe that any of these companies that claim they can manipulate what you see are doing it because if they were doing it...

The platforms themselves have problems doing it.

The platforms that own the algorithms can't get you to watch Tony Shalhoub's home improvement show on Facebook Watch.

So I doubt that two guys in lower Manhattan are going to figure out how to make geese sell out stadiums via TikTok clips that come from random accounts.

I think it's a fine take that like, oh, this is just how marketing works.

But I have friends in the ad world and sort of the marketing world.

And like, I get in fights with them all the time where I'm like, you're describing fraud.

And they're like, yes, we know.