How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. For a period of time in 2013, the Timesreported this year, a full half of YouTube traffic was “bots masquerading as people,” a portion so high that employees feared an inflection point after which YouTube’s systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would begin to regard bot traffic as real and human traffic as fake. – New York Magazine
Category: media
Here’s What Happens When Two MIT Folks Teach AI Software To Generate Christmas Movies
Karen Hao and Will Knight “fed plot summaries of 360 Christmas movies, courtesy of Wikipedia, into a machine-learning algorithm to see if we could get it to spit out the next big holiday blockbuster. Suffice it to say I now empathize with researchers who describe training neural nets as more of an art than a science. As I also discovered, getting them to be funny is actually pretty damn hard.” — MIT Technology Review
The Biggest Streamers In Europe Brace For Content Quota Regulations
Here it comes, specifically for Netflix and Amazon, but others will be affected too: “The crucial clause in the E.U.’s audiovisual media services directive states that member states ‘shall ensure that media service providers of on-demand audiovisual media services under their jurisdiction secure at least a 30% share of European works in their catalogues and ensure prominence of those works.'” – Variety
The ‘Girl Power’ Movies Of 2018 Aren’t Really About Women, Or Their Power
At least, most of them aren’t. Here’s an in-depth look at everything from Ruth Bader Ginsberg action figures to Ocean’s 8 to Halloween to Suspiria, with a final stop at Widows and Destroyer. – BuzzFeed
Why Are Moviemakers Obsessed With 1962?
Some see it as the year before the end of the innocence in the U.S. – the year before JFK was assassinated. For others, that “innocence” was built on an entire system that kept Black people down, that wielded sexism openly, and that was focused on the Cold War. – Los Angeles Times
Yes, International Audiences Can Appreciate – And Spend Money On – ‘Minority’ Actors And Movies
Though Tyler Perry movies aren’t popular overseas, three movies from this year of U.S. cinema have shown that it’s time for a Hollywood industry shift on actors of color. Check the numbers for Black Panther, Crazy Rich Asians, and BlackKlansman, and it’s all too obvious that “conventional wisdom” is about as unwise as you can get. – The New York Times
Three Recent Shows All Depict Drag Queens In Positive Ways – But Also As Inspirational Props
And that’s really not OK. “Because all of these projects are about straight women, the way they depict drag queens feels little more progressive than the convention of the gay best friend, popular in 1990s romantic comedies like My Best Friend’s Wedding.” – The New York Times
‘The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ Isn’t Perfect, But It Made A Perfect Decision About The Idea Of Having It All
Sometimes, it’s not possible to be devoted to art and to have love and a family. [Spoiler alert for the end of Season 2 ahead.] “‘I can’t go back to Jell-O molds,’ Midge tells her soon-to-be-ex-husband, Joel. ‘There won’t be three [kids] before 30 for me. I just made a choice. I am gonna be all alone for the rest of my life.'” – The Atlantic
The True Winner Of This Truly Great Movie Year Was Netflix
Of course it was. That’s long been the plan – and 2018 was the year it finally went into effect. – The Guardian (UK)
The Semi-Secret Bootleg Video Vans Of The Soviet Union
Elmar Hashimov writes about how he and his peers, the last generation of kids to grow up in the USSR, watched still-illegal American films (and learned English) on VHS tapes, dubbed on the down-low, inside parked transit vans tricked out with a TV and VCR. — The Atlantic