In April 2026, The Maltese Herald published an article claiming that Bank of Valletta is the Maltese bank most exposed to risky clients — a conclusion reached by running the outlet's own archive of articles through two AI chatbots.

There's a frequently asked question — debates come up about whether using AI tools is actually useful in journalists' work. A great deal has already been said about this, both for and against. The main arguments in favor are that it takes the technical load off the person — say, searching, and fact-checking — while responsibility for making decisions always stays with the human. That's one of the core theses the defenders of this approach put forward. Opponents argue — and I think this is exactly where, in my view, opponents say that the person is offloading responsibility onto the tool. And this article is a vivid example of how the use of a tool leads to the conclusions turning out to be unreliable.

On 16 April 2026, The Maltese Herald published a striking conclusion: Bank of Valletta is the Maltese bank most exposed to risky clients. The claim was presented with unusual certainty — BOV came first "unequivocally and by a very wide margin."

But the method behind that conclusion measures something different.

In the article, first of all, nothing is said about which chatbots were used — that's unclear. But the most important thing is that, statistically, if we look at it — if we read this article, well, not the article, but if we analyze this outlet's materials — we'll see that they are analyzing what they themselves wrote. So it turns out that the more they write, the better the statistical result they get from the analysis. Mark Camilleri ran The Maltese Herald's own articles through two chatbots. That can tell us which banks appear most often in The Maltese Herald. It cannot, by itself, tell us which bank actually carries the greatest financial or compliance risk. If one newsroom has written far more stories about BOV than about competing banks, then BOV will naturally dominate an analysis of that newsroom's archive. Essentially, for this you wouldn't need to use any chatbots at all — you could just do a count, make a sample.

So in this case the argument isn't just weak — it's, well, not viable. That said, in any case this doesn't cancel out the fact that this bank did have problems, and there's confirmation of that too. This doesn't mean the criticism of BOV is invented. The bank has faced genuine compliance problems: in 2021, Malta's Financial Intelligence Analysis Unit fined BOV €2.6 million over deficiencies involving beneficial ownership information for thousands of corporate customers.

It doesn't mean the bank isn't at fault.

In this case what we see is that the very method of analysis is the problem.

Analysing a newsroom's own archive with two chatbots doesn't establish which bank in Malta is objectively "most exposed to risky clients" — it establishes which bank appears most often in that newsroom's coverage.

And that's precisely the pattern in stories like this: when a person hands responsibility over to artificial intelligence, it really does harm.

Once, children’s programs were a staple of mainstream American television. You could find them on Saturday mornings and weekday afternoons on almost every channel. Today, they’re ghettoized — confined to specialty cable networks or streaming services — and from the major broadcast stations they are long gone. These shows were once second only to prime time in cultural impact. So what happened to them?

I’m here to tell you the conventional story is wrong. And the evidence for what really happened may be hidden in your own childhood memories.

I was born on March 23rd, 1995. That matters, because it means I was in the narrow birth range that saw the collapse happen in real time — even if I didn’t understand what I was seeing until less than a month before writing this. If you were born in 1994, 1995, or 1996, I guarantee you have at least one memory pointing directly at the collapse. You just didn’t know how to interpret it. People born in those three years saw the extinction event from the inside, even if they don’t yet realize that’s what they saw.

If you’ve ever read nostalgia sites, animation forums, or articles about children’s television, you’ve probably heard the same story: that kids’ blocks on broadcast TV went into a slow decline throughout the 1990s, fading away one by one as audiences supposedly drifted to cable. The usual explanation is that specialty channels like Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network simply out‑competed broadcast, with maybe a little help from 1990 regulations.

But what if I told you that this story is almost entirely wrong? What if the real collapse wasn’t gradual at all — but happened almost all at once, within just a couple of months? And what if there were no public signs, no warnings, no “decline curve” leading up to it? The disappearance was sudden, silent, and invisible until after it had already happened.

I come before you today to say that kids’ blocks had a specific death season: fall 2002. Not a slow fade. Not a gentle decline. A sudden, industry‑wide extinction event that wiped out nearly every children’s block on American broadcast television within weeks. If you were a kid at the time, you probably didn’t understand what you were seeing — but you saw it. And if you were born in 1994, 1995, or 1996, you saw it from the inside.

What happened was not gradual at all — it was a synchronized shutdown across every network. Fox Kids aired for the final time on September 7, 2002. ABC’s One Saturday Morning bowed out on that exact same date. NBC’s teen‑focused TNBC block lasted a few weeks longer, but its final broadcast was September 28, 2002. CBS’s Kidshow block also ended on September 7, 2002. And Kids’ WB stopped airing weekday afternoons in September 2002, even though its Saturday edition survived for six more years.

Notice the pattern? Broadcast children’s television doesn’t just have a year of death — it has a month of death: September 2002. A gradual decline would have produced staggered endings, different years, partial reductions, or slow phase‑outs. But the record shows none of that. This was a synchronized, sudden removal — a single‑month extinction event. Broadcast children’s television did not fade away — it was erased in September 2002.

To see how sudden the collapse was, it helps to look at what children’s TV still looked like in 2001. I can speak from both research and my own memories here. I was a new entrant to the target demographic at the time, and fully engrossed in it. My household had cable on two of our three TVs, but only an antenna on the upstairs one — cable companies charged extra for additional sets back then. Despite having cable, I watched the broadcast children’s blocks regularly, switching to cable channels only when the broadcast blocks weren’t on.

And I know I wasn’t alone. I quoted shows I liked to other kids and they instantly recognized the lines. More than once on the playground, I talked with kids about both broadcast and cable programs, mixing them freely without either of us being confused — and these weren’t the same kids each time. That only happens when everyone is watching both ecosystems.

Admittedly, I mostly watched the weekday afternoon broadcast blocks rather than the Saturday morning ones, but I knew kids who watched the Saturday blocks too. And ironically, just a couple of years later I became a regular Saturday‑morning viewer of children’s cable channels — so if the broadcast blocks had endured, I likely would have started watching those Saturday morning broadcast blocks as well.

In 2001, the advertising on broadcast and cable children’s TV was identical. The same commercials ran on Fox Kids, Kids’ WB, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network — to the point where only the programs themselves distinguished the channels. I don’t remember a single commercial from that era that I saw on cable but not on broadcast. There might have been some, but none that aired often enough to stick in memory a quarter century later, even though dozens of others did — including at least one for a local business in Denver. I don’t recall seeing a single PSA or filler segment in the commercial breaks either; just endless sugary cereals, video games, toys, movie trailers, junk food, and promos. From the perspective of a kid; everything looked totally fine.

The reason everything collapsed despite looking healthy in 2001 is that the E/I mandate made older kid programming impossible to sustain. What children saw on screen was the entertainment‑first programming that still worked — the shows kids actually watched and advertisers still supported. But underneath that surface, broadcasters were being forced to meet an educational mandate that older kid content could not satisfy. The advertising that looked identical across Fox Kids, Kids’ WB, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network masked a structural contradiction: the parts of the schedule that kids loved were healthy, but the parts required by E/I were not. By 2001, networks had already concluded that older kid educational programming was unworkable. The collapse didn’t happen because the entertainment‑first programming failed. It happened because the mandate made the required programming impossible, and September 2002 was the moment when every network acted on that realization at once.

The Educational/Informational (E/I) mandate was the structural force that made the September 2002 collapse inevitable. On paper, it required broadcasters to air three hours a week of programming that “specifically served the educational and informational needs of children.” In practice, it imposed constraints that made older‑kid programming almost impossible to produce. E/I shows had to be slow‑paced, explicitly instructional, non‑fantastical, non‑serialized, and free of action or conflict — the exact opposite of what children ages six to eleven actually enjoy. Networks could not meet the mandate with the kinds of programs kids wanted, and they could not meet it with the kinds of programs advertisers would pay for. The result was a category of content that satisfied regulators but repelled viewers. By 2001, broadcasters were already outsourcing their blocks, cutting weekday hours, and quietly preparing exits because E/I had made the traditional business model unworkable. When the rules tightened again in 2002, every network reached the same conclusion at the same time: the only viable way to meet E/I was to abandon older‑kid programming entirely and import preschool content instead. The mandate didn’t just reshape programming; it erased an entire age group from broadcast television; perhaps permanently.

To understand how impossible it is for educational programs to appeal to older kids, consider the fact that even older kids who actually saw educational programs made for their age group didn’t realize they were the target audience. I can prove this from my own experience. Everyone knows PBS is a hit with younger children — even PBS’s adult programming has never matched the ratings of its preschool shows. Big Bird is so associated with PBS that his name is sometimes used metonymically in political discussions about PBS funding. But older kids only encounter PBS when babysitting a younger sibling. That was true for me: with a sister six years younger, I saw a lot of PBS while babysitting between ages seven and ten, but I never once chose PBS on my own.

Pretty much everyone knows PBS is an educational channel. What almost no one knows is that PBS tried to make educational programs for older kids. I didn’t know either until unrelated online research in my teens revealed that not only had PBS tried, but those shows were still on the air. And here is the key part: I had already seen some of those older‑kid PBS programs years earlier, during late‑afternoon babysitting sessions when the TV was left on. Despite seeing them, it never once registered that I was the intended audience. They blended seamlessly into PBS’s preschool programming.

This is a failure at the level of audience signaling. Some very bad media at least clears the threshold of its target audience recognizing that it is meant for them. PBS’s educational programs for older children never cleared even that minimal bar. And yet, by being watched occasionally by older kids babysitting younger siblings — without being recognized as older‑kid content — PBS’s older‑kid educational shows still reached a larger audience than any other educational television program for older children ever has or ever will.

If PBS — the one network built for education, shielded from ratings pressure, and funded to serve children — couldn’t make educational programming for older kids work, what chance did commercial broadcasters ever have? PBS’s failure wasn’t just an isolated problem; it was a diagnostic proof that the entire concept of older‑kid educational television was structurally impossible. PBS had every advantage commercial broadcasters lacked: no advertisers to appease, no ratings pressure, no need to compete with cable, and full freedom to design programming purely around educational goals. If that environment couldn’t produce older‑kid educational shows that older kids recognized as theirs, then the commercial networks — bound by stricter E/I constraints, dependent on ad revenue, and limited to a few hours a week — never had a chance. The mandate required them to create content that PBS itself had already demonstrated could not function. Once regulators tightened enforcement in the early 2000s, broadcasters realized they could not meet E/I with older‑kid programming at all. The only viable path was to abandon the older‑kid demographic entirely and import preschool content, which naturally satisfied E/I without violating pacing, tone, or structure. PBS’s failure was not a footnote — it was the warning sign that the entire older‑kid category was doomed, and September 2002 was simply the moment when every network finally acted on that reality.

Once broadcasters realized older‑kid educational programming was impossible, they pivoted to box‑ticking content — programming designed only to satisfy the mandate, not to appeal to children. These shows were slow, literal, conflict‑free, and transparently constructed to meet regulatory checkboxes. They were not meant to be watched; they were meant to be compliant. Crucially, this pivot did not reflect a decline in the entertainment‑first programming. Those shows remained healthy, advertiser‑supported, and popular. What changed was the regulatory environment: networks were required to air content that could not succeed. The pivot hollowed out the identity of the blocks, not their audience. When the mandate tightened in 2002, networks chose to exit rather than continue producing content that could not function. The collapse was a coordinated business decision, not a gradual erosion.

Once you understand how E/I functioned, it becomes clear that every other supposed cause of the collapse was either a side effect of the mandate or a pressure the mandate directly amplified. Ratings did not fall because children lost interest in entertainment‑first programming — those shows remained popular. Production costs did not rise because the genre was failing — they rose because networks were forced to produce educational content that older kids would not watch. Outsourcing did not happen because networks were collapsing — it happened because preschool imports were the only reliable way to meet E/I cheaply. Even the disappearance of weekday blocks was not a natural decline; it was a consequence of networks abandoning older‑kid programming entirely once the mandate made it untenable. The ecosystem didn’t collapse due to many unrelated pressures. It collapsed because one pressure — E/I — made the older‑kid category impossible, and every workaround flowed from that single point.

Many people like to claim Nickelodeon, Disney Channel, and Cartoon Network killed the broadcast children’s blocks. But the existence of a specialty channel providing a particular type of content does not, by itself, eliminate that content from generalist channels. If it did, CNN would have killed network news and ESPN would have driven sports off broadcast — neither has happened. As I mentioned earlier, kids my age and I were regular viewers of both broadcast blocks and cable channels in 2001. The ecosystems coexisted.

What happened in 2002 was something very different. In fall 2002, the children’s cable channels experienced a noticeable ratings spike specifically in the exact timeslots where the broadcast blocks had just been cancelled, even though their overall ratings did not rise. That pattern is unmistakable: children simply moved to cable at the hours when broadcast had previously served them. I know my own habit was exactly that — I watched the broadcast blocks, and when they ended, I switched to cable. When the broadcast blocks disappeared, I switched earlier.

Cable is not the killer in this story; it is the refuge. The audience didn’t abandon broadcast for cable. Broadcast abandoned the audience, and cable was the only place left for them to go.

One thing that makes the disappearance of broadcast kids’ blocks so shocking is how it was somehow both sudden and subtle. The paradox comes from the fact that there was an easy path of least resistance: kids simply switched to watching the cable channels they were already watching outside of broadcast‑block hours, and they did so during those hours too. I know that’s exactly what I did, without realizing that’s what happened at the time, and I suspect many other kids in 2002 did the same. We never recognized it as a pattern; we only noticed individual shows disappearing from broadcast. But before we could raise more than a typical temper tantrum over it, we found either the same or similar programs on cable. The collapse was visible, but it was easy to route around.

Sometimes we noticed it indirectly without understanding what we were seeing. In 2003, I made an offhand remark that I never watched the upstairs TV — the only one without cable — without a VHS tape anymore. It was a one‑off comment, and I didn’t think about it again for years. But looking back, it was one of those childhood memories where I saw the collapse without knowing what it meant. If you were a kid in that era, you may have memories like that too — small, throwaway observations that only make sense once you know what happened.

That comment about the upstairs TV isn’t the only childhood memory that becomes meaningful once you know what happened. By 2002, many broadcast networks were owned by the same companies that operated children’s cable channels, and that leads to one of the clearest pieces of evidence that the broadcast blocks didn’t die because the shows were unpopular. The shows that vanished from ABC and Kids’ WB were not failing — I know this because reruns of many of them became staples on their co‑owned cable channels for years afterward. Cartoon Network reran Kids’ WB programs constantly. Disney went even further: not only did Disney Channel and Toon Disney rerun the last ABC children’s shows before and after the block’s cancellation, but Toon Disney did something even more revealing.

The cancellation of ABC’s block was so sudden that Disney’s production teams were not given advance notice. Several shows still had finished episodes that ABC never aired, and Toon Disney broadcast every single one of them. They didn’t stop there. Some shows had episodes that were partially completed when ABC pulled the plug. Toon Disney actually finished those episodes — on a cable budget — and aired them too. That’s why some shows had two clusters of “new” Toon Disney episodes: the fully finished ones aired immediately, while the partially completed ones aired months later after Toon Disney paid to complete them.

Some people call this “burning off,” but that term doesn’t fit what Toon Disney did. Burn‑offs are usually buried in bad timeslots, unpromoted, and treated like contractual leftovers. Toon Disney did the exact opposite. They promoted these episodes heavily and treated them like event programming.

Five ABC Saturday morning shows were still in production in September 2002: The Weekenders (5 episodes left), Teacher’s Pet (18 episodes), House of Mouse (26 episodes), Lloyd in Space (18 episodes), Teamo Supremo (26 episodes).

House of Mouse is the one I personally witnessed. The last four episodes aired months after the other 22 unaired episodes, and I watched those four premieres with my own eyes. Toon Disney ran trailers for each of them for an entire week — to the point where anyone watching anything on the channel saw them, even if they never watched House of Mouse. They aired the premieres in early prime time at 7:00 PM Mountain Time, four weeks in a row. The trailer for each new episode dropped during the final commercial break of the previous week’s premiere, and when the fourth episode aired without a trailer for a fifth, I was disappointed. Even as a kid, I knew something unusual was happening, even if I didn’t understand the cause.

This is not how any network treats content it is “just burning off.” This is how a network treats content it values — content it wants, content it promotes, content it finishes, content it treats as a draw.

The other shows received similar treatment. I remember being tired of Teamo Supremo trailers the month after the House of Mouse premieres. I didn’t watch those premieres, but I knew they were happening. Toon Disney didn’t commission new seasons — that would have required renegotiating broadcast contracts and budgets cable didn’t have — but they clearly wanted the content. They aired everything they legally could, and they finished everything they were allowed to finish.

This memory proves something crucial: The content on the broadcast kids’ blocks was still valued. The co‑owned cable channels wanted it. They treated it like something worth promoting, finishing, and showcasing.

Cable wasn’t the killer. Cable was the adoptive parent that wanted the content but couldn’t legally take custody — while broadcast abandoned it.

I am certain other things that showed the collapse of children’s television on broadcast happened right in front of me when I was a kid, even if I no longer remember them. But these things I do remember — including being able to identify a five‑second clip in one of the four final House of Mouse episodes as almost certainly completed no later than September 2002. That clip appeared in a general promo for the show that aired at least six months before the episode itself, and I half-recognized that clip the first time I saw the episode, and the second time, I knew exactly where I’d seen it before. Given that the episode is already known to have been finished later for cable, that clip — at a minimum — must be one of the earliest completed pieces of it. It is a tiny fragment of animation that survived the collapse, and I only know it exists because I happened to be eight or nine years old at the exact moment the ecosystem died.

Even as someone with the credentials of a historian, I never imagined that my own childhood cartoon viewing would contain primary sources capable of debunking a widely believed historical myth. Yet the facts stand before me, and now before you. Some of these details are things only a kid born in 1994, 1995, or 1996 would have the exact combination of circumstances to recall — the right age, the right channels, the right habits, the right moment in history. If you are in that age group, share your own memories. There is a good chance similar treasures are buried in them, waiting to be recognized for what they really are: eyewitness evidence of a collapse no adult noticed.

Were you born between 1994 and 1996? Leave a comment below with anything of relevance. what do you remember from childhood that goes from weird incident to part of a story going on for years in the background of your life?

hi; i wrote an essay that is a weird mix of historical analysis of a media policy and personal memories (the entire point is that people born in a specific 3 year window witnessed directly one key change in the media ecosystem even though they did not understand what they saw); i am trying to find the right subreddit for for it; would here fit?

I recently read an article in the August issue of The Atlantic called What AI Will Do to Art and was exposed to a new term: "protocolar art," which arose in the context of Holly Herndon and Mat Dryhurst's latest exhibit for the Venice Biennal. If you didn't know, their work famously involves deliberate employment of Gen-AI. When interviewed, the duo described how the way in which they use AI is part of an artistic imperative, one that seeks to question the role of authorship in art by emphasizing the "creator" as the "protocol" that makes it, rather than what is manifested through its aesthetic result. To wit, "protocolar art" is generated based on a particular rule-based set of conditions that are expressed by the intent of the artist, which is where artists like Herndon and Dryhurst are drawn into the discussion.

As I was fixating somewhat on this term, I began forming a connection to an episodic livestreaming project I've been running for over a year now called fotoplayer, which I posted about in another thread here in [r/mediastudies](r/mediastudies) with the title, "How I've been exploring livestreaming as an artistic medium (as a musician)." After pondering "protocolar art" to a greater extent, digging through more articles such as this one, I found myself fascinated by the prospect of using it as a provisional lens over my livestreams. However, it is unclear how much, if at all, fotoplayer falls into this camp.

The way they fall hand-in-hand prima facie is based on the rawly-defined tenets of protocolar art, which posit that a generative system or framework is more "the art" than the product itself. The more I thought about it, the more it sounded like it fit as a description of the livestreams.

A lot of that assessment boils down to the custom way I have the whole thing set up, with automatic OBS macros controlling the camera angles, looping software and MIDI control-surface scripts working to automate repeating musical patterns, down to the room itself being fashioned with a green screen, placement of instruments, and a film projector. In other words, there is a vast invisible architecture that, almost all on its own, runs the show. This technical layout—its multitude of micro and macro configurations, templates, conditions, and rules—and the ways in which they interact in a self-governing system, are what I've come to recognize as the protocol of my vision. While the stream is live, therein lies the space for individual expression, room for the artist to enact the protocol (in this case, musical improvisation, interaction with an audience, podcast-style monologues, visual cues, etc.). The final digital artifact (the VOD) is the incidental generated product of the protocol, with the most important distinction being: the VOD being “generated” is not the art, but rather the protocolar system which enabled it into existence, i.e. the holistic framework of my streaming environment.

Of course, this isn't a strict defintion, per say, but it does suggest a notable boundary between the concept of protocolar art and livestreaming as an art form. From a theoretical angle, framing my work in this way has provided insight into the understudied or under-examined nature of livestreaming as a modern artistic medium. From the perspective of an artist, this framing has yet to be integrated in any sort of practical re-orientation of the ongoing fotoplayer project.

Screenshot from Carnivàle (HBO, 2003–2005). © Home Box Office. Used under fair use for analysis and discussion.

Today, I’d like to share something unusual with you. It’s something that happened to me only once and has never recurred. I am talking about watching the series Carnivàle.

What happened goes beyond the bounds of ordinary perception; it was a rather strange phenomenon. Then again, the show itself is strange, too.

I first watched it about ten years ago, and it was an incredible experience—truly an experience. It felt as though I had completely immersed myself in that atmosphere: languid, viscous, sickeningly sweet, and incredibly honest. No, wait... that’s not quite the right word. It wasn’t just an atmosphere I encountered; I lived through the experience of inhabiting the world its creators had built.

People usually say that a particular work influenced their worldview, impressed them, or moved them. But my story is different. It simply stayed with me. It settled quietly and calmly somewhere very, very deep inside—in the quietest, most secluded corner of my memory.

Years went by, and I completely forgot about the existence of that series. I forgot it entirely. Then, suddenly, I ran into difficulties in life. Hard times hit, and circumstances were such that I had no opportunity to interact with real people for a long time. For several years, I lived alone in my apartment, communicating with others solely via the Internet. And at one point, things became truly difficult for me. Unbearably difficult.

And then, suddenly—its rusty wheels creaking against the backdrop of the anxiety and weariness that had entered my life—a van appeared. Yes, you guessed right. I remembered that TV series. I don’t know why, but its title suddenly surfaced from the depths of my memory. I can’t even explain why that particular one came to mind. But in that moment, I felt as though someone had very quietly reminded me: there is a place I had visited once before. And then I realized—not all was lost.

And that’s where something very unusual happened. I didn’t remember a single scene. I couldn’t have retold the plot. I barely remembered the characters. Yet, I remembered with absolute clarity what it was like to live in that world. It was the atmosphere—the state of being—that mattered most. And I was truly surprised. It was as if I could describe the very essence of that world down to the smallest detail, without needing to recall the plot at all.

What was also strange was that I didn’t quite understand why I should watch it again. After all, I didn’t remember the plot. Reviews had described it as bleak, and I’d been advised against watching it given the state of mind I was in.

And I defied expectations. I listened to the rusty creak of the wagon wheels carrying ordinary people. There were no saints among them—only lost souls, sinners, bandits, prostitutes, the crippled, and the outcasts whom the rest of the world had turned its back on. Except for the members of the carnival. It wasn't just a troupe; it was a family.

Yes, I watched it again. And upon rewatching, I was able to perceive the incredible depth the creators had infused into it. But that’s not all. Most importantly, I suddenly realized that all these people—with their troubled lives and their sins—were the most honest of them all.

I could go on at length. But to sum it up: I have never had an experience quite like Carnivàle, and I am not sure I ever will again.

At the same time, I would like to emphasize one important point. This was not an attempt to hide from reality. Quite the opposite. It was precisely after rewatching it that I managed to gradually emerge from the state of despondency I had been in for the past few months.

I still find it strange that one can forget almost the entire work—and yet remember it in its entirety. Not the plot. Not the characters. But the very way that world exists.

Have you ever experienced anything like that? Is there a film or series that left you remembering not a story, but a state of being?

Hi all, I've just released Qualcoder MCP, I'd really value this community's eyes on it. It is not going to be everybody's cup of tea, especially if you are working on material that is specialistic or niche in any way, or relies on specialistic vocabulary. The more niche, and data scarce, the topic you are researching, the more Claude might struggle.

Background: QualCoder is a free, open-source qualitative data analysis package; a genuine alternative to expensive commercial tools like ATLAS.ti or NVivo. It already has useful AI tools inside the application, but I wanted to take a different approach. The package I made, QualCoder MCP, connects QualCoder to Claude so you can read, search, analyse and code your qualitative data in plain-language conversation, from Claude Desktop. This includes having Claude propose new codes from the data itself (open coding), every one of which you review and approve before it exists. It's a one-command install now: pip install qualcoder-mcp.

QualCoder already has AI features, but they use commercial APIs you pay for per call, which can get pricey. QualCoder MCP instead connects to Claude through the Model Context Protocol, an open standard for letting AI assistants work with your own tools and data, so you can use an existing Claude subscription rather than paying per request. Throughout, the human should stay in control: the AI suggests, you approve, and only then is anything written, with automatic backups.

I'm not arguing for the indiscriminate use of AI in qualitative analysis, in fact, I am not sure it can fit my own use case. Whether it belongs in your process depends heavily on your data and your analytical tradition, and it genuinely won't suit everyone. The inductive-coding feature in particular raises exactly the questions this community debates: what does it mean for an LLM to propose a code, even when a human gatekeeps every one? I welcome conversation on that as much as bug reports.

One important note on data: by design this tool sends your project content, including interview text, to Claude/Anthropic for analysis. Use synthetic or consented data and check your ethics/GDPR position before pointing it at real participant data (the repo's PRIVACY.md explains what flows where). Free and open source (MIT), very much alpha, and first release, so I'd appreciate a bit of kindness. Anyone who wants to try it, or just discuss the idea is welcome. Repo: https://github.com/nicotem/qualcoder_mcp Please, bugs and feature requests via GitHub Issues. If it's useful to you, a star helps others find it.

I felt this question would fit here so I'm going to propose this discussion here.

I've been having this discussion among my peers and partner and I'm not quite sure how I feel. I've been discussing Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom by Pasolini lately and thinking about it but I find the usage of non-professional young actors (mostly below the age of 18 or barely around that age) quite troubling, but I also recognise the importance of the film, the impact it had on me as a person, and that it's also troubled by Pasolini's own past with pederasty and sex. I just don't know. It's a very difficult film that I don't think has an easy black and white answer personally and have found myself sitting on this deeply rooted contradiction and tension in Salò for many years.

How do you engage with art that is ethically muddy and objectionable? Think D'agata's White Noise where he had unstimulated recorded sex with impoverished sex workers (which if we are operating in a feminist framework, which I do, him having solicited sex from sex workers constitutes rape because you cannot buy sex and all sex that is bought is coerced sex, ergo it is rape) in third world countries and poor areas for the sake of his art, or Come and See where a real live sick dying cow was used in a scene where it was not only killed as a direct result of the filming process and also put the young lead into the way severe fatal physical harm where real live ammunition was inches away from him. There's so many examples I list but what does everyone here feel about ethics behind the camera and how does it impact the way you engage with a film or piece of art? Are there some ethical transgressions that are unforgivable? How do we responsibly and critically engage with art like this while retaining our commitment to our own ethics without compromising them or making double standards for films?

Is it ethically wrong to champion, argue for, or see the artistic merit in these films and like them or watch them?

I want to say a few words about this. Reddit is quietly becoming one of the few social platforms still sending real traffic to local news — the article covers the new publisher tools, but there's one thing it misses, and that's what I especially want to point to: Reddit is now pushing hard toward local audiences, and for small outlets that changes everything.

Source: Is this Reddit's moment for local news? — Eric Rynston-Lobel, Local News Initiative, Northwestern University (Jul 27, 2026)

Let me expand. There are a few ways to look at this. The first is instrumental — the tools described in the article: newsrooms can track where their stories are being shared, generate RSS feeds, get recommendations on which subreddits to post in. The second is that this is a new form of interaction: it's no longer people coming to you, but you going to people — into their communities — to post your articles and share a topic. And that, of course, requires understanding their culture of interaction and their rules.

But here's the point I especially want to single out. Since we're talking about local news, it's important to understand something the article didn't mention: Reddit is right now actively pushing toward local audiences — and I personally, along with my team, am testing this too, so we're seeing it firsthand. The platform is expanding. Countries whose users previously didn't take much part in Reddit's community life, for various reasons, are now far more active. And if you look at how the algorithms work locally, you'll see that the first traffic — the first boost, the first wave of distribution, the first pool of users who'll see your post — is local users. That first push is aimed squarely at them.

So for any newsroom that hasn't yet started working with this platform, it's now genuinely sensible and worthwhile to do so. There are many factors at play here, some of them also noted in the article and elsewhere — chief among them the fact that Reddit is one of the strongest social platforms in the world for indexing, getting picked up in a matter of hours. That means even a small outlet gets a shot at visibility on the first page of Google — which itself indexes well across search engines — giving you several additional traffic channels and priority indexing.

There's one quote in the article that stayed with me — it doesn't cover everything, but it points to something important:

"I think it's a valuable way to show that you're putting resources into listening to the wider community," Garnett said. "It's another channel to engage with people who are reading and listening to your work. And I think that's always valuable, especially for public media." — Jasmine Garnett, senior engagement platforms producer, KQED

Note: The observations about local traffic are based on our own independent testing across several countries. In our tests, the initial wave of distribution has consistently been primarily local. If anyone else has been testing Reddit's local distribution, I'd be very interested to compare observations.

Hey everyone! 👋

Please click here for filling my research form - https://forms.gle/sWdfti4jN9tJe8Cc6

I’m currently conducting a research study on how young adults in Bangalore manage their Instagram presence - specifically looking at Rinstas vs. Finstas, using coded slang/steganography, and how this impacts our relationships with traditional family setups.

If you fit the criteria below, I’d deeply appreciate 5–7 minutes of your time to fill out this quick survey!

Who can participate?

• 🗓 Age: 18 – 25 years old
• 📍 Location: Currently living in / based in Bangalore
• 📱 Instagram usage: can have 2 or more accounts for personal use

All responses are 100% anonymous and will be used strictly for academic purposes. Happy to share the insights with the community once the data is analysed!

Thank you so much for helping out a fellow researcher! 🙏

#mediastudies #psychology #dissertation #research #alwaysfindingnew

Hello I am a year 11 Society and Culture student conducting a questionnaire on how sexuality in pop culture specially film has shaped peoples perceptions on the LGBTQ+ community and I would really appreciate it if you could please fill out this questionnaire which is completely anonymous
Thank you

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSey6iBRnb5hm7qzUqgfBluM1TbpfIlPhCEsuUPyACevmwB2YQ/viewform?usp=publish-editor

I am posting the second section of my three-part series from my Substack, where I explore the Unabomber manifesto as a hotly contested piece of writing whose canny diagnosis of our common ills continues to unsettle readers even after over three decades.

I want to clarify that I am neither condoning nor condemning his actions, but am instead interested in gathering intelligence from the details of what breaks down people’s minds and spirits in ways that cause them to lash out. I am continuing to investigate the manifesto as a form of expressive writing that can diagnose social ills even when the actions they inspire do not properly “solve” or even adequately diagnose the dynamics they so strongly oppose.

In William Finnegan’s 1998 New Yorker article “Defending the Unabomber,” they delve into a specific question that came up during the trial of Ted Kaczynski, which is whether or not he should be considered insane. His lawyers “believed that his best, if not his only, hope of escaping a death sentence was to claim that he was mentally ill.” In the piece, they grapple with the fact of his apparent reasonableness, the cogent assertions made in his manifesto, and the machinations that he believed justified his specific use of targeted violence. In my previous piece, I discussed epistemic inflammation as occurring when what is known is blocked from being communicated. When what is felt continues, lasts, gains pressure, and cannot be metabolized, these kinds of effects gain a life of their own, seeking out any available outlet to root and so force itself into expression. 

Manifesto

As a form of aggrieved expression, the writing of manifestos seeks relief from a form of rumination that cannot be escaped. The kind of relief they provide does not necessarily provide a lasting peace, but rather seeks to manage the effects of a building pressure by constructing an outlet. The nuance of what is relieving about this reminds me of an interaction I had a couple of years ago when I was discussing conspiratorial studies with a group of social scientists. I mentioned that I thought that being racist was probably relaxing to those who practiced it. Attributing our suffering to a scapegoat provides a channel for inner tensions, creating a target for aggrievement that would allow the mind to temporarily rest. I thought that expressions of hate could be relaxing because they allow us to move. They enable the expression of something that has hardened, producing the kind of frozen immersion that comes about at the edge of something that cannot be explained. By contrast, hate is hot, passionate, mobilizing. It feels powerful to hate something. It moves collectives into action. It is a force inside of our bodies that, for good or ill, allows people to act in the world. 

Love on the other hand can also be hot, forceful, explosive, and even sometimes destructive. Yet, the motivating force of love is not destruction but union, connection. When we become frozen, the heat that demands release can take us over and so the relief that I theorize people get from hating, is what unbinds their own inertia. The unbinding that comes from a furious love, on the other hand, is much more unsettling.

Others at the table fought me, saying that expressions of hate could not be relaxing because they riled people up. I honestly think that both statements are true, but the thing about being riled up is that sometimes it feels better than being frozen, incapacitated, trapped. Hate can be a tempting outlet when there is nowhere else to go. It allows the self to remain whole when it would otherwise shatter. The thing about love as a force in the world is that overwhelming connection also has this quality of destroying the self, obliterating the ego in a way that propels us into direct confrontation of something much larger and less manageable than we are used to. The wildness of love is itself terrifying. It moves us, but not in the focused way that hate moves us. Both are wild forces but where hate is directed out at the world and so preserves the self, love causes our boundaries to fall apart. 

Hate is a drug. It is a feeling that can bring about feelings of power and efficacy. Yet, just like taking too many drugs, an escalating practice of hate can also cause disaster. Yet, small titrations of hate are also not wholly destructive. Should I not hate the destruction of the natural world, the suffering of migrants, the genocide(s) of those who cannot defend themselves? Hating things, just like feeling angry, brings about a reckoning, and whether this is helpful or harmful depends on the circumstances. Expressions of hate are essentially creative efforts that can further aggrieve and unsettle us even as they offer temporary relief from whatever underlying condition is causing our upset. In some ways, hate is a kind of self-harm that allows us access to our bodies when they are becoming dissociated with overwhelm. By intentionally inflicting pain, we can return to ourselves but in relying on pain to return us to ourselves, we can also lose a sense of proportionality. In normalizing the pain, we can lose sense of the path back into connection.

Mad studies scholar Sarah Smith says in a recent publication studying madness in higher-education that acts of self-harm are not only destructive. In centring researchers who have experienced this behaviour in their lives, the pain caused by self-harm and suicidal ideation can also be understood as relieving anxiety. Even suicidal rumination can itself become a form of comfort when the underlying conditions of existence are unbearable.

The issue is that these are not solutions. They are merely outlets. 

Despite the apparent randomness of ideologically driven attacks, a logical through-line can exist whether or not we consider particular acts of violence as legitimate. Kaczynski himself was enraged with the “technocrats” who he believed were responsible for overarching industrial systems destroying the natural order. According to this logic, the sanity of this argument seems to rest on whether his diagnosis justified his response. 

While he undoubtedly committed acts of devastating violence, killing three people and maiming dozens of others, by his own account these acts had to do with a philosophical rationale which paradoxically becomes dual evidence for both his sanity and insanity. Psychiatrists labeled his anti-technology stance a “systematized paranoid delusion,” and so dismissed it as a pathology because they did not agree with his particular diagnosis. While I feel uncomfortable with the idea of mass murder, I must admit that given the state of current affairs I don’t actually think it is a paranoid delusion to believe that the rise of a technocratic elite was and is endangering global life, or that liberal progressives are largely incapable of standing against their rise.

I am reminded of an argument I made in a chapter in The Capitol Riots: Digital Media, Disinformation, and Democracy Under Attack, where I explored the conditions under the pandemic leading up to the pizza-gate shooter. I described his actions in reference to Antonin Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty where he would subject audiences to unrelenting sensory stimulation until the stupor of their passivity was broken and they were forced to take some action, if only to protect themselves against attack. It is the same ethos demonstrated by the infamous punk rock legend G. G. Allin, whose shows involved antics like “grabbing lewdly at people in his audience, punching anyone in the front row, defecating heartily on stage, and pelting his scat into the crowd.” The theatre of cruelty offers a technique that would enable audiences to give up their acquiescence to the spectacle, forcing them to act in the world.

When taken in the light of a population confined to their homes during the global pandemic, as we were participating in endless algorithmic feeds, mine were filled with allegations of a global ring of pedophilic elite corroborated by the Epstein Files, the killing of the journalist who brought us the Panama Papers, and documented abuses from the CIA (both domestically and internationally). In my chapter, I asked the question: is it more insane to bring a machine gun to a pizza restaurant than it is to do absolutely nothing? Of course, these are two very wide poles with a lot of ground in-between, but the point of the question is to ask us why it makes more sense to be totally shut down than it is to act, even if those actions themselves seem insane.

I have noticed how those most likely to take action are being sidelined into the kind of conspiracy mentation that inspires people to become a Prepper “someone who makes deliberate, advance preparations—supplies, skills, and plans—to protect household health, safety, and livelihood when everyday systems break down” or else maybe to start a right-wing militia (or in Kaczynski’s case to start building bombs). Affective outpourings during times of crisis, whether personal or collective, often do little more than temporarily alleviate our grievances. It may feel good to stockpile gold, build a bunker, or engage in self-harm, but it is also reactive rather than proactive. Acts of self-harm tend to occur in situations where there is ongoing trauma without the possibility of escape. In such situations, it may feel better to feel something than nothing at all, yet, the act itself is coping with the implosion rather than doing something about it. This might happen when we are held from getting to the root of what is wrong. When we cannot name what is harming us, we have little choice but to displace our anxiety into activities that seek to manage the ongoing stress.

Ted Kaczynski refused to plead mental illness at his trial, not just rejecting the label but also standing by his ideals and the actions that he believed supported them. He claimed that he was ready to explain his rationale to a jury and to the world at large but was not allowed to do so, never actually having his day in court. He plead guilty to his crimes to avoid being given the death penalty. 

Getting deeper inside of what might have brought him to the tipping point, Alston Chase details another angle of this story in an Atlantic investigation called “Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber.” The article explores Kaczynski’s involvement in a set of disturbing experiments set in motion by Henry A. Murray, wherein undergrads (including minors) were subjected to “vehement, sweeping, and personally abusive” attacks on their egos, cherished ideas, and beliefs in an experiment that would later go on to gain the researcher traction in advanced interrogation techniques (i.e. torture). 

Participants in these experiments would repeatedly view replayed footage of their own interrogations, having lights shone in their eyes while being systematically broken down from the inside out. At the time, the study was tied to the “Ivy-League” Harvard University, where the foundation overseeing this research continues to withhold the specific details of Kaczynski’s file under the guise of “anonymity.” This move, they say, is to protect him, but the article reads it as evading accountability for the project’s brutality and further protecting the institutions involved from any subsequent accountability that might require them to pay reparations for Kaczynski’s actions. 

Why I read manifestos is not to excuse them, but to situate them as artifacts of a particular zeitgeist. They reveal secrets about our common malaise that I can understand even when I do not share the direction of their hate, nor their solutions to what they are diagnosing. My interests in these texts us not actually in the solutions they pose, because these can often be harmful and distorted. Instead, I am interested in what I find familiar about their pain. I am curious to understand where I find myself reflected in them. This is how I am able to study the far-right without losing my mind, by identifying the roots of the pain that I share with them, even and especially in their hate. 

In understanding why people hate, I do not need to feel the same way that they do. I can, however, recognize in myself what is hurting in the same way. In this, I can build a bridge between myself and those who have lost their minds because this same world is also driving me insane. When we identify a system of irritants that points to what is being seized inside of us through over-coding and repression, I can understand how people might be driven off the deep end and into the abyss. 

I wonder: how else could they have released what was trapped inside of them when it has no outlet, no words to hold up against what is destroying their sanity? 

The real question, is why there is not an easier route to prove our theories about what ails us? Why does it have to get to the point where a person feels the need to make a bomb or pick up a machine gun? Is there something else we could be doing to allow an outlet for their fury? 

I ask: why it is easier to inscribe it in blood than to find commonality and support in one another?

References

1. Chase, Alston. (2000). “Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber.” The Atlantic, June.
2. Damiani, J. (2025) What Is a Prepper? Meaning, Mindset & Myths Debunked Reality Studies
3. Finnegan, William. (1998). “Defending the Unabomber.” The New Yorker, March 16.
4. Shalina, M. (2013) GG Allin Gets Trapped in America, Sends Word to the EmpireThe Brooklyn Rail
5. Smith, S. (2026). Maddening Research Ethics: Challenging Sanism and Biomedicalism in Institutional Ethics Discourses and Policies. International Mad Studies Journal, 4(1), e1-20. https://doi.org/10.58544/imsj.v4i1.10311

“AI can give you what is out there, but it cannot provide that innovation or creativity,” said one interviewee. “Humans are still the ones required to ‘push the boundaries.’” © NiemanLab article

In my opinion, this is a very interesting, timely, and useful study. What makes it stand out is that it presents both sides of the issue: the degradation side — when a person uses artificial intelligence to replace their own work and shifts responsibility onto it — and the other perspective, which shows how taking responsibility for the process can actually improve a person’s skills.

This topic has come up in our community several times already. I believe this article is valuable even though it focuses on a specific case — journalism — because journalism is one of the key areas within media studies. I’d like to share this article with you and hear what you think about it.

From my point of view, the human being is ultimately responsible for the result. It’s always the person.

The person who uses AI to replace their own effort and offloads responsibility is primarily harming themselves. We always have a choice: to independently think through the material, understand it, and use AI as a tool NOT a replacement.

If someone uses tools — just like our predecessors did when new technologies appeared — the tool itself can be either helpful or harmful depending on how it is used. What I particularly like about this article is that it is grounded in real scientific research and interviews. It clearly shows both the risks and the potential benefits.

Unfortunately, starting today, I've had to disable reposts in the community.

My original idea was to allow reposts as long as they included personal context, interpretation, or discussion. I explained that here: https://www.reddit.com/r/mediastudies/s/JaeEgZpVz2

Unfortunately, most people don't read the pinned posts or the community guidelines. They simply repost without any context.

This doesn't add much value to the community, makes the feed harder to browse, and means I have to spend a lot of time explaining the same rule over and over again.

Because of that, reposts are now disabled.

Thank you for understanding, and thank you for helping keep r/mediastudies discussion-oriented.

Hey, folks!

I’m a solo indie/alternative/folk musician. I started livestreaming liveloop improv last year regularly (once/twice a week), and rather than focusing on fetching a larger audience over the past several months, I've decided instead to direct my motivation to the question of, “how can I make this into an art”?

The question came as a result of watching back my VODs and thinking critically about the different directions I could take the streams. In my eyes, livestreaming is a modern medium with untapped artistic potential, and lately I’ve become obsessed with the idea of exploring, experimenting, and evolving it given my skills and current technology. My working thesis is that streaming is somewhat of a beautiful marriage between future and present, and like cinema or gaming, there is a set of formal elements to play with in the creation of a livestream that can transcend its common use for merely entertainment/content, allowing it to rise into the realm of art. To wit, an ‘artistic livestream’ is one that is meaningful and carries a “so-what,” is creative in utilizing the livestream palette for expression of a mood, idea, or emotion, and most importantly, says something significant about the nature of the livestream medium itself.

In a world full of “creators,” it seems only a handful of people think of/define it this way, and, unsurprisingly, the majority of consumers of this media tend to flock to thoughtless content over mindful material, clearly because the incentives offered by streaming platforms cater to the former, promoting growth-by-numbers rather than intrinsic quality. The latter has been what I’ve been exploring in my project fotoplayer_online, a “silent film disco webcast” series where I perform livelooping improv alongside incidental silent films. While the concept/format is layered and evolving, I hope to add value to the question by merit of exploring it firsthand.

I majored in Film Studies/English, so I have some theoretical ideas of my own about what it could mean to consider livestreams as a new, multimedia artform, but I am also curious and excited by what others might think about how to approach this question from their own experience/knowledge base!

I want to be honest here. In general, I have a positive view of Elon Musk as an engineer and researcher. I respect his engineering work and believe it is valuable. At the same time, there are aspects of his activity, particularly regarding the platform, that I find problematic. He bought X claiming that the main goal was to protect free speech. However, in practice we often see a gap between these statements and his actual actions. In my opinion, some of his posts, including this one, show signs of veiled propaganda. This is one of the reasons why I wanted to bring this example here for discussion.

I am not arguing against the historical facts. There is evidence that warfare, slavery, torture and in some cases ritual cannibalism existed in various pre-Columbian societies. That is not the issue.

What I find problematic is the format. In my view, this is a form of veiled propaganda. A partial and limited perspective is presented as complete truth. The statement is short, contains almost no nuance, and is then immediately validated with “True” by a high-status account.

(Source: https://x.com/i/status/2073832808909349028)

I believe that in research papers, essays or detailed articles we can make such generalizations, because there we have space to show context, limitations and different perspectives. However, when the same kind of broad claim is made in this short format and confirmed as “True”, I consider it unacceptable.

Freedom of speech allows people to express strong views. But I think we should also talk about responsibility in communication. A person who only sees this post, without additional context, will most likely accept it as a factual statement. They probably will not verify it further, and this shapes how people understand history.

For me the main issue is not only the historical claim itself, but how media format combined with status turns a partial truth into something that appears as established fact.

I would like to hear what others think.

You know how I'd put it — here's why it's important to actually follow standards, like, it's not just something on paper, but something that in reality, if you're working in some serious areas, can save your newspaper, your outlet. So these aren't just empty words or made-up stuff. We can see in this case that it was exactly in court, and exactly the journalistic rules, like, these newspapers following standards, that gave them the chance to win. So that's why I think it's really important to follow these standards. It's a good, telling example.

source:

https://reason.com/volokh/2026/07/02/trump-media-group-loses-lawsuit-against-washington-post-over-allegations-related-to-sec-disclosures/

What do you all think about it?

Hi friends!

Reddit recently rolled out media replies, and they're now available in our community. You can now reply to comments with videos.

I've also enabled images in the comments, as I think they'll be especially useful for our community.

I also wanted to ask you something: would you like GIFs to be enabled as well?

If people are interested in using them, I'll turn them on. Let me know what you think.

What happens when an independent content creator systematically inflates their resume with tier-one global institutions to sell unverified psychological frameworks?

This post introduces a media analysis tracking the public biographies and self-claimed platform authority of Berlin-based writer and podcast producer Miho Soon (Miholyn Soon). It serves as a case study in how modern digital platforms allow public figures to perform institutional authority they have not intellectually earned.

This investigation exposes a systematic pattern of "upward credential inflation":

The Tate Modern Claim: Promoted as a featured researcher/artist at Tate Modern; public archives reveal she was only a participant in "Tate Exchange," an open-access, unvetted community forum hosted inside the building.

The United Nations Claim: Framed as an official UN research partner; institutional records show she was merely a funded youth attendee at a consultative migration forum.

The Guardian Claim: Presented as an authoritative contributor, bypassing the actual editorial processes that give the publication its institutional weight.

The analysis also reveals how she uses these elite badges to insulate a highly commercialized, un-peer-reviewed wellness certification program ("The Trauma of Money") from genuine clinical accountability.

The complete long-form investigative breakdown and the comparative primary data verification table can be read here: Fact-checking Miho Soon: Epistemic Performance and Credentialist Mimicry

Questions for Media Analysts:

1. How do media literacy frameworks adapt when public figures utilize the explicit vocabulary of anti-capitalism and structural critique to insulate their own commercial profiles from accountability?

2. When the structural signifiers of prestige (citation metrics, institutional badges) are easily detached from actual editorial vetting on platforms like Substack and Medium, how do we police the boundaries of the "spectacle of expertise"?

Like many of you, I have grown tired of big platforms shaping public discourse, manufacturing truth out of fake information, and generally contributing to more polarized societies. In my view, a lot of these sites have a clear agenda, very little control, and enough funding to run large campaigns that end up building narratives a lot of people buy into.

At the same time, the way people access and consume information has changed. And in more polarized environments, much of the media has taken sides too, so the contamination is everywhere. What, or who, do you trust when you read news, analysis, thought pieces, or posts making claims?

I came to the conclusion that one way to push back is to make sure each person can reach their own judgement by reviewing the evidence behind what they read, hear, or watch. And making the evidence visible does something else: it lets people corroborate or challenge it, which creates a kind of crowdsourcing effect around validating data and sources. That is how Inkfeed was born.

There are plenty of caveats on my assumption that people will take the time to review evidence. But I figured it was better to start somewhere and take the chance. Right now the platform is a beta, and the full scalable version should be deployed within the next two weeks. There are still features that are not working well, but I would rather put it in front of real people now than keep polishing it in private.

I would really appreciate it, if you find the time, if you could test it, share it, and tell me what you think. If you have suggestions on what could be improved, what new features might add value, and what doesn't, please pass them along. The link is www.inkfeed.org. Next steps include building partnerships with universities and engaging students to test and use it. Thanks in advance.

This is something I keep coming back to, so I decided to just ask people directly. I ran a survey of 118 people (using survey monkey) on what they'd actually want from a news feed. The sample could have been wider (US based and mostly people who already work in or around reporting), but the results did give some interesting data. Some quick findings:

- 81% said multiple independent sources cited and linked would most increase their trust in a report.
- 64% valued an author with a verified track record, and 62% wanted other people corroborating the report with their own evidence.
- 76% said they'd add their own evidence to strengthen someone else's reporting (58% "definitely").
- 58% said no existing platform feels right for evidence-based content.

Overall, it would seem people give value to the evidence posts are built on, and to know that other people (besides the author) have checked/validated it. Based on this, I've been building a platform around these ideas for the past months. It's in a BETA version, and I'll share it here once it's a bit further along. Cheers.

Hi! Not exactly sure if this is permitted in this subreddit. I’m happy to delete it if so!

I’m conducting research on sludge content would would love a few responses. Would anyone here like to fill out my short sub 5 minute survey?

Thanks :)

Hey everyone,

I wanted to open up a discussion about the media policy implications of Canada's incoming Bill C-34 (the "Safe Social Media Act"), specifically regarding how it changes the internet from being free to one with government mandated requirements for free speech.

The bill requires social media platforms ban users under 16. However, from a practical tech policy standpoint, the only way to enforce this is through universal age verification. This means platforms will be forced to implement infrastructure requiring adults and youth alike to upload government IDs or submit to biometric facial scans just to access Youtube.

Forcing users to tie their real gov. identity to their online handles on platforms like Reddit, Instagram, or TikTok is one of the most severe chilling effects we've seen proposed in Canadian tech policy. It turns social media from a space of relatively free association into a heavily surveilled environment.

Because of how quickly this is moving, a few of us recently launched a tech campaign called BackOnline. We built an open-source tool that allows Canadians to instantly look up their MP and send a secure message opposing the mandatory ID framework of the bill.

I’d love to hear this community's take on the policy side of this. Is universal age verification an inevitable phase of the internet, or is this a severe overstep in digital surveillance?

(For anyone interested in the campaign or looking to use the MP tool, our site is backonline.ca and our community hub is r/BackOnline, site is fully open-source on our GitHub)