Haken dran – das Social-Media-Update der c't · Gavin Karlmeier

Knietief im Slop (mit Mats Schönauer)

·1 hr 4 min·5 clips

Leaked court documents show Zuckerberg texted Musk at 10pm on February 3, 2025 to offer help removing doxxing content targeting Doge employees — Musk responded with a heart emoji and asked if Zuckerberg wanted to invest in OpenAI.

1. Haken dran, the social media update podcast of the German technology magazine c't, covers platform developments from April 1, 2025 with guest Mats Schönauer. 2. Host and Mats Schönauer note they have known each other for almost ten years; Mats runs a YouTube channel focused on fake and disinformation debunking. 3. The episode's central argument is that AI slop — low-quality, AI-generated or AI-manipulated fake content — is systemically degrading social media platforms and eroding trust in digital information. 4. Mats Schönauer says he has quit using Instagram personally after finding every other reel was AI slop, propaganda, or staged fakes, and that even he, as an experienced fake-debunker, often failed to identify them on first viewing. 5. The host describes a contrasting personal experience: a deliberately trained Instagram algorithm that serves Special Interest content with under-20-like videos, meaning he sees minimal AI slop but a highly unusual and non-representative feed. 6. Both hosts argue that platforms' short-term revenue incentives mean they are actively promoting the engagement-driving slop rather than suppressing it, potentially harming their own long-term user base. 7. Mats argues that the countermeasure against AI slop for creators is not perfectionism but 'Nahbarkeit' — human proximity, fallibility, and personal anecdote — as a non-synthetic differentiator that algorithms cannot replicate. 8. The host notes that journalism formats that were already 'LLM-like' in their formulaic nature — such as match report football writing full of stock phrases — are already being replaced by AI without meaningful loss. 9. The April 1 recording date prompts the hosts to criticise news outlets that still run April Fools' stories, which they argue damages trust in an information environment already struggling with credibility. 10. Leaked internal messages published in the Musk v. OpenAI lawsuit show Zuckerberg texting Musk at 10pm on February 3, 2025 to offer help removing content doxxing Doge employees — a personal, direct intervention that contradicts his public free-speech framing. 11. Musk responded to Zuckerberg's offer with a heart emoji and immediately asked whether Zuckerberg would consider investing in OpenAI; Zuckerberg suggested they meet in person the following day. 12. The host contextualises this as demonstrating that platform content moderation decisions are personally directed by founders for political and financial alignment, not by principled policies. 13. Meta announced shopping links directly embeddable in Instagram and Facebook Reels, starting with Amazon and expanding to Temu and eBay, allowing up to 30 product tags per reel. 14. The hosts are concerned this will flood feeds with affiliate-driven content and enable hackers to link non-product content through shopping portals, further degrading content quality. 15. Verbraucherzentrale Bayern won a judgment at OLG Bamberg requiring TikTok to make its non-personalised feed and content reporting functions more accessible under the Digital Services Act. 16. The hosts note that TikTok does have a non-algorithmic feed but it is effectively hidden in submenus and inaccessible to most users — a pattern they argue is deliberate. 17. Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott filed the first US city lawsuit against xAI over Grok's generation of sexual deepfakes of real people without consent, calling it 'enabling child sexual exploitation' in a CNBC statement. 18. The host explicitly asks why no German chancellor has made equivalent public statements, criticising what he sees as political inaction on AI-generated abuse material. 19. The episode is a fast-paced, conversational format with two hosts trading takes on six or seven news items with frequent interruptions and shared commentary, delivered in colloquial German. 20. German-speaking listeners who work in tech journalism, digital rights, platform policy, or social media will find dense coverage of current legal and platform news; casual social media users may find the insider-industry perspective assumes significant prior knowledge.

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