Apps & Websites for News Consumption

[Jeffrey Lebowski]

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The new CEO of Twitter, Linda Yaccarino, aims to build "Twitter 2.0" as the world's most accurate real-time information source. Elon Musk's controversial takeover of Twitter led to layoffs and the ret...

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[Macallik86]

Doubling back to the Artifact app and giving credit where it's due...

They (finally) released a feature which uses a keyword search of the title to preemptively block articles from your feed. Best believe that I have 'Elon', 'Marjorie' and 'Cramer' in there to cut back on the bullshyt

 

[Macallik86]

Personalized news app Artifact becomes a discovery engine for the web with new Links feature | TechCrunch

Artifact, the personalized news aggregator built by Instagram's co-founders, is launching a new feature today that takes the app in a different direction

techcrunch.com

Basically if you find an article that's interesting, you can now share the link inside the app. It is crowdsourcing content now which I think should also expand/improve its recommendation system.

I've admittedly used the app less over the last few weeks but this has potential. The articles shared span more than just news, and have the potential to be more interesting, but can be pretty hit or miss so far. I think they need to get their machine learning systems to more quickly categorize content perhaps. Shows potential either way.

 

[Macallik86]

Grand opening, grand closing:

 

[bnew]

What happened to Artifact? | TechCrunch

Last week, Artifact, a buzzy news app from Instagram's co-founders, announced it was shutting down after failing to gain critical mass. The news came as a

techcrunch.com

What happened to Artifact?​

Sarah Perez @sarahpereztc / 11:11 AM EST•January 18, 2024

Image Credits: Artifact

Last week, Artifact, a buzzy news app from Instagram’s co-founders, announced it was shutting down after failing to gain critical mass. The news came as a surprise, as the app was generally well-received by its core audience; smartly leveraged AI to power recommendations, summarize news, and rewrite clickbait; and featured a clean and modern design that made it easy to use. So what went wrong?

New data indicates that Artifact couldn’t catch up to the competition and struggled to grow its user base outside the U.S. It also saw downloads of the app steeply dropping off after launch, indicating a failure to catch on with a more mainstream audience.

In a company blog post, Instagram and Artifact co-founder Kevin Systrom had explained that the decision to shut down the app came about because they realized the market opportunity wasn’t large enough to warrant continued investment. It was a tough call, he said, but making that call “earlier is better for everyone involved.”

It’s rare to see a startup throw in the towel so soon, but particularly among an app that appeared from the outside to have traction. Posts on the app — generally news articles and links to other interesting finds from around the web — offered social features, allowing users to like and comment. Based on in-app activity, it appeared as if Artifact had built a following, as many posts included active discussions filled with comments and often featured thousands of “reads” (views). In addition, many of the app’s creators — meaning those who contributed content to the app as journalists or curators of links — also had hundreds of followers.

When you participated in Artifact’s community, it didn’t feel like shouting into a void. That’s an experience even larger apps, like X (originally Twitter), can’t always reliably deliver. In Artifact, people were browsing their feeds, reading headlines, socializing, following others, and marking items to read later. Much of this activity was visible to other users, making the community feel alive.

Unfortunately, the reality is that Artifact didn’t gain ongoing interest after its initial debut, so it was this core community keeping it afloat.

According to data from app intelligence provider Appfigures, Artifact saw an estimated 444,000 downloads since its February 2023 launch. However, a large part of those downloads, just under 100,000, arrived around its launch. By October 2023, the app had stalled, with only 12,000 new installs. In late November and early December, there was a brief spike again — perhaps a final push from Artifact’s team before making the decision to shut down. But that didn’t save the app from its fate.

Image Credits: Appfigures

Another issue facing the app was the stiff competition. Though rival news aggregator SmartNews was also losing downloads and active users at the time, in addition to its CEO shake-up, it still managed to pull in far more users than Artifact. During the time that Artifact was on the market, SmartNews saw 2 million downloads. Artifact had less than a quarter of that figure.

The app also had to compete with new ways people are getting their news in the age of AI, where search engines and chatbots are delivering information and answers without the need to click on links or read long news stories. That’s something that’s impacting web publishers’ traffic, leading outlets like The New York Times to sue AI company OpenAI for training on its content. Other publishers, like Axel Springer, are instead licensing their content to OpenAI for a fee, hoping to get ahead of where the market is moving. For consumers, this means there may be lessened demand for a secondary news app to complement their smartphones’ built-in newsreaders, like Apple News or Google News.

Artifact also struggled to gain an international following, which could have helped it thrive even if U.S. downloads stalled. Appfigures found that the U.S. accounted for 44% of all the app’s downloads. Meanwhile, no other country had more than a 4% share. That indicates that the name recognition of Artifact’s famous founders — Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, who created Instagram — may not have had as much draw outside the tech scene within their home market here in the U.S.

Then there was the issue around Artifact’s ever-growing set of features, which began to dilute its sharp focus on delivering a better, AI-powered news reading experience. All of a sudden, the app was allowing users to post their links, similar to Pinterest, followed by an ability to post text content, like on Twitter/X. Soon after, it added an option for sharing places, turning Artifact into a recommendations engine for the real world. That then begged the question as to what Artifact wanted to be — was it a social news reading or just a social network? By adding more functionality, Artifact may have potentially confused users as to when or why they should use it.

The company also continued to dabble with the latest AI tools, like a generative AI feature for adding images to posts or AI summaries in fun styles like “Gen Z speech,” “explain like I’m five,” or even just emojis. It began to seem as if the team wanted to build a new app entirely, like a new social network — perhaps an AI-powered Instagram? An Instagram for news? This also left some wondering if Artifact was now just a playground for the founders to try out the latest tech or if it had a planned roadmap.

Artifact was originally self-funded by the co-founders in the single-digit millions. This could be another reason why they decided to cut their losses earlier than expected. They may not have wanted to get into the position of raising funds from investors that they could fail to deliver returns on.

In any event, Systrom hinted that Artifact’s end may not be the end of his return to the world of tech startups, noting in the blog that he was “personally excited to continue building new things, though only time will tell what that might be.”

Based on Artifact’s progress, it seems like they have plenty of ideas to choose from.

 

[Macallik86]

Google News is becoming unbearable as they push their updated home page. I want to pivot completely to Artifact but the fact that it doesn't have a website is frustrating.

Here's a link to skip the line if anyone wants to check out the app. (I don't get credits or any bonus if you click )

Haven't used Google News in months. I can say that I'm less informed objectively unfortunately, but the UX was becoming a dumpster fire.

Here are some more nails in the coffin:

Google News: The Best Place to Find AI-Generated Ripoffs of Real Journalism

Google’s search results are filling up with AI-generated content, making it harder to find credible answers.

gizmodo.com

The internet is quickly becoming a slurry of AI-generated garbage, and Google has decided to just let us all marinate in it. Anyone online can see that Google Search is getting worse, but now it’s becoming clear why. Google News is boosting AI-generated garbage over real, human journalism, according to a report from 404 Media Thursday.

Google said it does not prioritize articles written by humans over AI-generated content in a statement to 404 Media. So, search results often include AI articles that plagiarize real journalists but are riddled with mistakes that make the content nonsensical. The report highlights one publication, Worldtimetodays.com, which produces AI-generated content and appears in Google News search results. One of its articles reads “war of stars fans,” instead of Star Wars fans, and very clearly reproduces an article from Distractify.

A Google spokesperson said it was “inaccurate” that these sites were prominently featured on Google News, in a statement to Gizmodo.“The sites in question only appeared for narrow queries,” said the spokesperson. However, the queries 404 Media references were not particularly narrow, including “star wars theory” and “midjourney.”

Yesterday, Gizmodo reported that the quality of Google search results was getting worse, largely because of SEO tricks that websites use to rank higher, usually for affiliate marketing purposes. Ultimately, useful information is being crowded out by SEO-optimized, AI-generated nonsense designed to get you to buy something.

A Google spokesperson told 404 Media that its search engine prioritizes “the quality of the content, rather than how it was produced.” One reason Google might be sitting on the fence here is that the company, itself, is a large player in the generative AI world with Google Gemini.

Ideally, Google would like its own AI to answer your queries. They’re experimenting with Search Generative Experience, a pilot AI chatbot that’s built into Google Search. Google’s AI will likely be better than what we’re seeing today, but will also be informed by the work of real, human journalists, just like Worldtimetodays.com.

A new study found that a “shocking” amount of the internet is AI-translated gibberish, making it much harder for search engines and people to sort through the muck, according to Motherboard. Generative AI is highly susceptible to mistakes, and that’s crowding the internet with more unreliable information than ever.

Google is in an uncomfortable position here, stuck between providing good, accurate results for its users and its own AI ambitions. Tech in general is having a power struggle with the news industry at the moment, as The New York Times sues OpenAI for copyright infringement. For now, that means a lesser experience for end users, and that your search results will likely get worse before they get better.

Related articles:

Google News Is Boosting Garbage AI-Generated Articles

404 Media reviewed multiple examples of AI rip-offs making their way into Google News. Google said it doesn't focus on how an article was produced—by an AI or human—opening the way for more AI-generated articles.

www.404media.co

Google Responds To Claims Of Garbage AI Content In Google News

Danny Sullivan, the Google Search Liaison, responded to the article from 404 Media titled Google News Is Boosting Garbage AI-Generated Articles. In short, Sullivan said that the way they filtered Google News was by date and not relevancy (relevancy filtering is the default) and that Google can...

www.seroundtable.com

 

[bnew]

Instagram co-founders' AI-powered news app Artifact may not be shutting down after all | TechCrunch

Artifact, the well-received AI-powered news app from Instagram's co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, may not be shutting down as planned. The

techcrunch.com

Instagram co-founders’ AI-powered news app Artifact may not be shutting down after all​

Sarah Perez@sarahpereztc / 12:42 PM EDT•March 26, 2024
Comment

Image Credits: Artifact
Artifact, the well-received AI-powered news app from Instagram’s co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, may not be shutting down as planned. The company announced in January the award-winning app would be winding down operations as the market opportunity wasn’t “big enough to warrant continued investment.” However, despite an end-of-life date of February 2024, the app has continued to function in the many weeks since.

As it turns out, that’s not by mistake.

Systrom tells us that he and Krieger are continuing to keep Artifact alive for the time being and have not yet given up on a plan to maintain the app in the future — news that will likely give fans of the news discovery app a bit of hope.

“It takes a lot less to run it than we had imagined,” Systrom confirmed to TechCrunch, adding that it’s just himself and Krieger running Artifact right now. “It will still likely go away, but we’re exploring all possible routes for it going forward.” (Perhaps an exit deal is at hand?)

Artifact made a splash at launch, not only because it was the first major effort at a new social app from Instagram’s co-founders, but also because of its clever use of AI. The personalized news reading app leveraged AI to help users discover the news they were most interested in from a variety of pre-vetted sources, and offered up features to summarize news in various styles (like “Gen Z” or “Explain Like I’m Five”). It could also rewrite clickbait headlines for better clarity, among other things.

artifact’s “gen z summary” feature is so deeply out of pocket. i’ll miss it when the app goes down. pic.twitter.com/5PaMavJbNS

— @samhenrigold@hachyderm.io (@samhenrigold) March 16, 2024

Following Artifact’s announcement of its impending closure, interest in using AI to summarize the news has heated up.

Browser startup Arc implemented an AI-powered “pinch to summarize” feature ahead of its $50 million fundraise. Other startups have also turned to AI to improve the news reading experience, like RSS reader Feeeed, AI-powered news reader Bulletin, and Particle, an AI news reader built by former Twitter engineers, including the Senior Director of Product Management at Twitter, Sara Beykpour, and former senior engineer at both Twitter and Tesla, Marcel Molina. The latter recently raised $4.4 million in seed funding, indicating investor interest in this space is growing, too.

Artifact, meanwhile, had been self-funded by the founders to the tune of “single-digit millions,” and it seems they have the funds to continue to run the app — at least in the near term.

Unfortunately for Artificat’s early adopters, the app has been stripped of its social features, like commenting and posting, but it continues to offer news reading and AI summarization features in the version that remains live today.

Instagram co-founders’ news aggregation startup Artifact to shut down

Artifact takes on X and Threads with new Posts feature

 

[Macallik86]

Didn't know that. Deleted the app once the news came out of its pending demise.

The tracking on the website was crazy in retrospect, I had to disable my tracker-blocker for like 65% of the articles in the app. From here on out, I just visit Boring Report and save articles to read later in my self-hosted wallabag instance

 

[Macallik86]

Instagram co-founders' AI-powered news app Artifact may not be shutting down after all | TechCrunch

Artifact, the well-received AI-powered news app from Instagram's co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, may not be shutting down as planned. The

techcrunch.com

Instagram co-founders’ AI-powered news app Artifact may not be shutting down after all​

Sarah Perez@sarahpereztc / 12:42 PM EDT•March 26, 2024
Comment

Image Credits: Artifact
Artifact, the well-received AI-powered news app from Instagram’s co-founders, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, may not be shutting down as planned. The company announced in January the award-winning app would be winding down operations as the market opportunity wasn’t “big enough to warrant continued investment.” However, despite an end-of-life date of February 2024, the app has continued to function in the many weeks since.

As it turns out, that’s not by mistake.

Systrom tells us that he and Krieger are continuing to keep Artifact alive for the time being and have not yet given up on a plan to maintain the app in the future — news that will likely give fans of the news discovery app a bit of hope.

“It takes a lot less to run it than we had imagined,” Systrom confirmed to TechCrunch, adding that it’s just himself and Krieger running Artifact right now. “It will still likely go away, but we’re exploring all possible routes for it going forward.” (Perhaps an exit deal is at hand?)

Artifact made a splash at launch, not only because it was the first major effort at a new social app from Instagram’s co-founders, but also because of its clever use of AI. The personalized news reading app leveraged AI to help users discover the news they were most interested in from a variety of pre-vetted sources, and offered up features to summarize news in various styles (like “Gen Z” or “Explain Like I’m Five”). It could also rewrite clickbait headlines for better clarity, among other things.





Following Artifact’s announcement of its impending closure, interest in using AI to summarize the news has heated up.

Browser startup Arc implemented an AI-powered “pinch to summarize” feature ahead of its $50 million fundraise. Other startups have also turned to AI to improve the news reading experience, like RSS reader Feeeed, AI-powered news reader Bulletin, and Particle, an AI news reader built by former Twitter engineers, including the Senior Director of Product Management at Twitter, Sara Beykpour, and former senior engineer at both Twitter and Tesla, Marcel Molina. The latter recently raised $4.4 million in seed funding, indicating investor interest in this space is growing, too.

Artifact, meanwhile, had been self-funded by the founders to the tune of “single-digit millions,” and it seems they have the funds to continue to run the app — at least in the near term.

Unfortunately for Artificat’s early adopters, the app has been stripped of its social features, like commenting and posting, but it continues to offer news reading and AI summarization features in the version that remains live today.

Yahoo is buying Artifact, the AI news app from the Instagram co-founders

Yahoo News is bigger than you’d think — and it’s getting a big dose of AI.

www.theverge.com

Yahoo haven't had a good tech investment in like 20 years. It's as good as dead now.

 

[bnew]

Yahoo resurrects Artifact inside a new AI-powered News app

Artifact will live on after all.

www.theverge.com

Yahoo resurrects Artifact inside a new AI-powered News app​

After acquiring the technology behind the Artifact app, Yahoo is launching an AI-powered personalized news app of its own.​

By Umar Shakir, a news writer fond of the electric vehicle lifestyle and things that plug in via USB-C. He spent over 15 years in IT support before joining The Verge.

Jun 13, 2024, 8:12 PM EDT

Share this story​

Why read the article when you can just AI-generate takeaways? Image: Yahoo

Artifact is dead, long live Yahoo’s version of Artifact. The architecture behind Artifact, the news aggregation app built by Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, will live on inside the body of a brand-new Yahoo News app.

Available to download today on iOS and Android, the new Yahoo News app brings an AI-powered personalized news feed for users based on their interests, while a feature called Key Takeaways can give a bullet summary of a news article when a reader is feeling TL;DR.

Other features of the Yahoo News app include Top Stories, which picks up on trending stories for users to read and will soon include key takeaway summaries. You can block stories with undesired keywords as well as filter out certain publishers to your preference. And just like Artifact, Yahoo News also lets you flag content like clickbait-y headlines, then lets AI write something better.

Yahoo purchased Artifact in April for an undisclosed amount, saving it from total demise. Artifact had sort of lost itself in the final stretch of its life after it had tried making it into a Twitter-like social media platform — although its original goal was to be like a “TikTok for Text.” Yahoo hasn’t said it’s bringing all of the social features of Artifact back, but the new app allows you to share article excerpts with your friends. It also has a gamified “streak” feature and badges you can show to others for being a heavy reader.

Yahoo is also taking some of what it’s building in the News app to the Yahoo News online homepage. Starting today, the website has a new layout that highlights top news, gives personalized recommendations, and shows trending topics. The new homepage experience is opt in.

 

[Rice N Beans]

I've been using Ground News lately on my tablet and phone.

Ground News

Top Stories from around you and around the world. Compare how different news publishers frame the same news

ground.news

Ground News - Apps on Google Play

Daily News for Freethinkers

play.google.com

 

[Macallik86]

I've been using Ground News lately on my tablet and phone.

Ground News

Top Stories from around you and around the world. Compare how different news publishers frame the same news

ground.news

Ground News - Apps on Google Play

Daily News for Freethinkers

play.google.com

Played around w/ this a bit and thought about it longer than I anticipated.

I like the web layout and the concept of showing both sides to stories. As a very progressive voter, I can admit that I have blindspots re: bad looks for Dems that aren't always covered in mainstream outlets in the same way that Fox News avoided anything negative about Trump and his audiences were completely in the dark.

I really like that they label the news sources based on their typical political bias, but while they seem to realize the value towards pointing out bad-faith actors in journalism, by continually including them as sources after labeling them low-quality, they appear to actually be platforming and signal boosting stuff that they admit is basically bullshyt. They have election-denial sources like OAN along w/ gov't fronts like RT.

Also, I think that their definitions are skewed in a way... I think that it's easy to conflate views from the 'Center' as being unbiased perspectives, but it's really about highlighting news outlets that have a subtler bias relative to the extremes. A right-leaning publication in a metro area is going to appear center when compared to Fox News, but that doesn't mean that most of their articles aren't consistently about backing the blue, being anti-union, pro tax cuts, etc.

Personally, I like the idea of stripping bias out of articles as much as possible a la Reuters.. just providing a context and assuming the audience is smart enough to do the work themselves. Ground News is generally good though and I do like their 'blindspot' labels to show the alternative perspective on hot button issues. I'd say they are probably a net positive impact on journalism but that they also have some room for improvement.