True Crime Case Files had 150 videos and millions of views, but not a single true story was real.

Also, are we finally seeing real protests thanks to Reddit?

https://www.404media.co/a-true-crime-documentary-series-has-millions-of-views-the-murders-are-all-ai-generated/

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/us/politics/trump-musk-protests-50501-presidents-day.html

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Social media platforms have become the “default” for most of the world’s 5.5 billion Internet users, which means everything we see and post online is controlled by billionaires and squeezed for maximum profit – shredding democracy, mental health, and human rights in the process.

But what if it didn’t have to be this way? In fact, the Web wasn’t this way until very recently. So how did we get here? And how can we claw it back?

The bad news is it will take a LOT of work, investment, and convincing. The good news is, we already know how to do it - and it’s way easier than you think.

This week, activist and public interest technologist Mallory Knodel joins Matt to discuss a huge initiative to reinvent social media and rescue online discourse from billionaire control. Mallory is the executive director and founder of the Social Web Foundation, a non-profit working to build sustainable and fair social network infrastructure.

She’s also a custodian of Free Our Feeds, a coalition proposing new standards and protocols that would make social media open, inter-operable, and free from billionaire control.

In layman’s terms: Imagine if friends on Bluesky could subscribe to your Instagram Reels. Imagine if you decided to leave YouTube and take all your videos with you to Mastodon. Imagine a social media ecosystem where everyone can talk, free from sensationalist algorithms and constant surveillance.

It’s not only possible, but happening now, via federated networks like ActivityPub and AT Protocol. But as Mallory explains, getting your friends to ditch TikTok for Bluesky is a “hearts and minds” battle that’s just getting started.

Mallory and Matt discuss why all of our public discourse has moved onto “private property,” the importance of data portability, the burden of “switching costs,” and why now is the time to free our feeds from the billionaire class.

Plus, some Amish trivia and your questions and voicemails.

Learn more about Free Our Feeds: https://freeourfeeds.com/

The Social Web Foundation: https://socialwebfoundation.org/

And subscribe to Mallory’s newsletter, Internet Exchange: https://internet.exchangepoint.tech/

This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepod

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By day, Jason Kingsley is the CEO of Rebellion, an independent video game developer that’s been cranking out hits since the '90s. But in 2017, he noticed a shift in the media landscape. YouTube - once a bastion of cat videos and reaction vlogs - was emerging as a destination for longform educational content.

Jason’s obsession with medieval history, background in raising horses, and love of fantasy role-playing games compelled him to start Modern History TV, a channel with rigorous and delightful video essays about life in medieval Europe.

But instead of talking into a webcam and cutting in b-roll, Jason actually suits up in real armor, dusts off the jousting lance, and tastes the food that graced the hearths of medieval peasants

His channel has grown to nearly 1 million subscribers, and his wildly popular videos about weapons, taverns, and guilds reach far more. His work has informed countless writers, dungeon masters, and plain ol' curious minds.

Jason joins Matt to discuss why insignificant things become important through the lens of history, his focus on the lives of regular medieval people, YouTube Learning vs. Book Learning, his favorite videos, curfews for pigs, and that time he chatted with King Charles about jousting.

Subscribe to Modern History TV on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ModernKnight/

This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepod

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This week U.S. tech companies lost nearly $1 trillion in "value" after a Chinese startup called DeepSeek released its R1 large language model, which was reportedly developed for WAY less than Silicon Valley is pouring into the AI bubble.

And while it is fun to laugh at tech billionaires losing money, DeepSeek's innovation (if real) could change the model for AI deployment - allowing LLMs to run on local machines (like your home computer) rather than in massive data centers owned by 3 companies.

I also share some details about upcoming guests, and ...maybe fascism is bad???

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Adopting a rescue animal is a noble pursuit, but dogs who live in a stressful, chaotic shelter may not put their best paw forward when potential owners come to visit.

That’s where fostering comes in. It’s the often-overlooked step between rescue and adoption, and it can be transformative for many dogs. Even while young and broke in New York City, Isabel Klee took up this calling, and it changed her life forever.

Today, she educates her enormous online audience about the foster process through heartwarming videos of the pups that come in and out of her life. And while it’s not always glamorous, Isabel dispels the myth that aggressive or traumatized dogs can’t be rehabilitated. Often, it just takes a few calm days, lots of love, and a little ham(!) to get a sad or injured dog frolicking again.

Her big “foster fail” of course, is that she loved one of her guests so much, she had to keep him. Simon (now of @‌SimonSits fame) was the key that unlocked Isabel’s solo social media career.

Isabel joins Matt to discuss her work as an animal welfare advocate, why her videos are unique in a sea of cute Internet doggos, the surprising lessons she’s learned from fostering dogs in NYC, the messages she gets from families who are inspired to foster, and the complicated emotional baggage around the shelter system.

Follow Isabel’s work: https://www.instagram.com/simonsits

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Gary Arndt ignored all the advice for new podcasters. Instead of focusing on a specific topic, he made a show about literally everything he could think of: history, geography, quantum physics, games, technology, and more. Instead of pacing out episodes weekly or monthly, he decided to publish every single day. 1,600 episodes later, his show “Everything Everywhere” has a community of 1.5 million monthly listeners.

This success story leaves out that Gary is uniquely (and perhaps exclusively?) qualified to make this specific show. He’s been working on the Internet since the dawn of the World Wide Web, and his success during the first dot-com boom allowed him to travel the world as a self-taught photographer. He’s visited more than 200 countries and every U.S. state. He’s won major photography awards and had a wildly popular travel blog long before social media was a thing.

That is until ALL travel ceased in March 2020. Knowing he needed to reinvent himself (again), he started the podcast. Slowly but surely, Gary’s daily “mini audiobooks” cut through the algorithmic noise where everything else is hyper-targeted to your existing interests.

Gary sits down with Matt to discuss his world travels, the power podcasts (and other RSS-powered media) have that social media never will, why he DOESN’T want you to follow him on Instagram, his process for producing a show every single day, and the lessons from the dot-com implosion of the early 2000s that feel so ominous for the modern social Web.

Subscribe to the Everything Everywhere Daily Podcast wherever you listen: https://everything-everywhere.com/

This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepod

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When Sky Burkson was a kid, he had two obsessions: drawing and video games. He went on to pursue a career in set design, but his love of games never faded. And when life threw his family a curveball, he knew it was time to recombine his passions.

These days, his painstaking recreations of video game architecture and environments delight thousands of fans around the world, including some of YouTube's biggest gaming influencers, who regularly commission new work.

His sculptures, which are made mostly of paper, are incredibly detailed, impressionistic miniatures of our favorite moments from Super Mario 64, Bloodborne, Elden Ring, Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, The Legend of Zelda, and more. They often take months to create, but Sky credits that slowness for their popularity among online fandoms.

This week, Sky joins Matt to discuss how he documents virtual spaces, why 1:1 re-creation doesn't always work, the hidden details players can't see, the reason he dumped 3D modeling software for good-old-fashioned pencils, and how to take that ONE perfect shot for social media.

Check out Sky's website: https://www.skyburkson.com/

Follow him on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/skyburkson/

This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepod

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Happy Nude Year, one and all! I'm still on holiday break, but wanted to check in with out about the YouTuber(s) who exposed the Honey browser extension (owned by PayPal) as a massive scam, my upcoming guests, and sharing an encore episode from my other show, Colette & Matt Have Entered the Chat, about a small but mighty video game community that did the impossible, just in the nick of time!

Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam, by MegaLag: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc4yL3YTwWk

Original Show Notes from May 3, 2024

Since 2017, a small collective of "Super Mario Maker" enthusiasts have been trying to complete every single player-created level — a quest to truly "beat" a game with hundreds of thousands of uncleared stages.

But when Nintendo announced that the servers for Wii U games would be taken offline in April 2024, the urgency reached new heights. Team 0% began to grow from its humble beginnings of about 500 members, to 15,000+ players, committed to identifying and clearing the remaining levels before they were lost to time.

Playing the levels was only half the battle. Finding and cataloging the unbeaten stages using Nintendo's arcane databases was no simple task. But through some clever reverse-engineering and lots of spreadsheets, they had whittled it down to a handful of levels with just days until oblivion.

What remained were some of the hardest, most obtuse Mario monstrosities ever created. And one level in particular could only be beaten by a robot — until...

This week, we talk with MagicMason1000, a long time member of Team 0% who now manages the community's YouTube and social media. Mason walks us through the fascinating history of this monumental undertaking, the Team's massive popularity boom amid global headlines, what happens when Nintendo patches glitches in Mario Maker, the exciting (and then somewhat anti-climactic) final victory for the team, and the mysterious fate of all those levels now that the servers are gone.

If you'd like to pitch in to beat every uncleared level of "Super Mario Maker 2," you can join the Team 0% Discord here: https://discord.gg/team0percent

Check out the Team's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@TeamZeroPercent

And watch henryst's The History of Mario Maker's Last 100 Levels video, as discussed in this episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUqUUXDmk40

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In 1984, a German teenager recorded a moody new wave song from the radio. The mystery song, with crunchy guitars and English lyrics, was preserved on a cassette and forgotten. That is until 2007, when his sister discovered the tape, and began a 17-year quest to identify it.

From Usenet groups, to music identification forums, a Discord server, a popular YouTuber, and a dedicated subreddit called r/TheMysteriousSong, thousands of Internet sleuths have been decoding clues and comparing notes for nearly two decades, in the hope that someone, SOMEWHERE would recognize the song.

Finally, in November 2024, one Redditor found the final piece of the 17-year-long puzzle. "The Most Mysterious Song on the Internet" is now a passionate music fandom that has reunited the band after 40 years, and sparked media coverage around the world.

This week on INFLUENCE, Brandon, a moderator from the subreddit r/TheMysteriousSong, and Hans-Reimer Sievers, the drummer from the band FEX, join Matt to discuss this epic musical quest, how the puzzle was solved, what the members of the band were doing all this time, their reunification and newfound fandom, and the strange "discomfort" of unidentified media in a world where everything is Google-able.

Join the community: https://www.reddit.com/r/TheMysteriousSong/

Listen to the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPGf4liO-KQ

The FEX Official YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@FEXband-official

This show is made possible by listener support: https://www.patreon.com/influencepod

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Wikipedia continues to be a modern miracle. Unlike social media platforms — which are rife with misinformation and grift — Wikipedia's openness and non-profit status are key to its two+ decades of value and accuracy.

But a new threat is looming. Generative AI now touches everything we read, watch, and listen to on the Web. And some Wiki editors have begun experimenting with it, with mixed results. Where do large language models fit into the pursuit of accurate, reliable knowledge, if at all? And what is the Wiki community doing about generative articles when they go horribly wrong?

This week, the president of Wikimedia New York City Richard Knipel joins Matt to discuss WikiProject AI Cleanup, a volunteer effort to identify AI-generated content on Wikipedia and assess its value as community standards rapidly evolve. The solution to this challenge, as with most things, is way more complicated than we initially thought.

Richard explains how AI tools have been used for years to make Wikipedia richer and more inclusive, why humans and bots make different kinds of mistakes, the standards for accuracy that both must aspire to, why hot-button Wikipedia articles about politicians and current events are often MORE accurate than niche topics, and how you can contribute knowledge to Wikipedia in small but powerful ways.

Learn more about WikiProject AI Cleanup: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_AI_Cleanup

Connect with Richard: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardknipel/

This show is supported on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/influencepod

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