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Damon Kiesow

@kiesow.net
5.5K followers 3.8K following 6.7K posts

Knight Chair in Journalism at Mizzou. Authored first textbook for News Product Management. Previously: Director of Product at McClatchy. Big @newsproduct.org fan.

PostsRepliesMedia
Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 4h
Yeah, it is shopping, work from home, social media and probably 5 other things? The pandemic created an incentive for specific services and behaviors and some have stuck.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 4h
Amazon?
Combined bar and line chart, 2004–2025. Red bars show extra minutes per day Americans spent at home compared with 2003: under 35 through 2019, a jump to 135 in 2020, then about 95–115 through 2025. A dark blue line shows Amazon net sales excluding AWS, rising steadily from under $10 billion in 2004 to $245 billion in 2019, $341 billion in 2020 and $588 billion in 2025.
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Reposted by Damon Kiesow
Carrie Brown @brizzyc.bsky.social · 7h
Very cool - shared services for media cooperatives - things like bookkeeping, HR, graphic design, business analysis, ad operations, legal support. defector.com/shared-servi... May we see more cooperatives bloom!
defector.com
Start.coop's Shared Media Services Project | Defector
The Challenge: Facing job loss and declining wages, more journalists are launching local, independent media organizations. They often get bogged down in building operational infrastructure, distractin...
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 8h
Buzzword bingo, from 2006: kiesow.net/the-new-new-...
kiesow.net
The (New) New Media Buzzwords of 2006
It was twenty years ago today... that a bunch of us sat in a meeting room of the Westin Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island to talk about what on the Internet newspapers needed to pay attention to. It ...
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 21h
Is it? Should have looked deeper on basic cable. LiveSoccerTv showed me this and hid TNT after the ad.

fuboTV
Peacock
Telemundo Deportes En Vivo
UNIVERSO
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 21h
So where are the USMNT on air? Basic cable, right? No, FS2 has Aruba v Anguilla Ah ha. Peacock has it. No, that is en Espanol. ESPN? No. Oh of course HBO Max. Obviously.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 22h
static.klipy.com
Believe It Or Not, Jail (Parks and Rec)
ALT: Believe It Or Not, Jail (Parks and Rec)
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 28/09/2026
How does one achieve such numbers and still persist in posting?
A celebrity news account with 17,300 posts and 194 followers.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 28/09/2026
Everything not published on your owned-and-operated platform is marketing with either a temporary or non-existent ROI. And only web, newsletters and maybe apps are owned-and-operated. So that is the foundational truth of where content has to live if it is going to be subsidized by ads or readers.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 28/09/2026
bsky.app/profile/neil...
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 27/09/2026
Poems will be written.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 27/09/2026
Swarming is the right word here. Out-of-state companies imposing beta tests in the form of unrequested and unneeded services with costs on local communities that occur only at the scale required by digital profit seeking.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 26/09/2026
So you are telling me the stories we make up in our heads about strangers we see on TV or social media are not a reliable and objective validation of my click-for-hire worldview? themomoftheyear.substack.com/p/im-the-mom...
themomoftheyear.substack.com
I’m the Mom in That Viral Giants Clip. Let Me Tell You About My Husband.
You saw me carrying our baby and food. There was more happening in our family that night.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 26/09/2026
Weird, that one let me in.
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The rise of Spirit Halloween: How the Spencer Gifts-owned chain took over American strip malls and turned itself into a meme of the Retail Apocalypse
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 26/09/2026
www.businessinsider.com/the-rise-of-...
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 26/09/2026
bsky.app/profile/dlkn...
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 26/09/2026
City needs to be expelled and their titles revoked.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 25/09/2026
Fascinatingly - it is an AI slop content farm living on a subdomain of www.stellantis.com/en
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 25/09/2026
Holy fabricated footnotes, Batman! How much of this garbage does it take to actually destroy the average person's digital footprint?
from https://hub.stellantis.com/article/the-hidden-math-behind-the-0-viral-social-media-code

The most striking estimate comes from former Facebook data scientist Damon Kiesow, who in a 2019 interview with The Atlantic suggested that the platform’s algorithm penalizes "slow burns"—content that gains traction over days or weeks—in favor of "instant gratification loops." This aligns with the broader trend of platforms rewarding content that exploits FOMO (fear of missing out), even if that content is shallow or ephemeral.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 25/09/2026
EPL champions since 2018: Liverpool Liverpool Man United Liverpool Arsenal Arsenal Liverpool Arsenal
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 25/09/2026
Spokesman enters stage left as the Harley roars off. “This tech is too powerful to be left to just ANY tech company, especially those foreigners. But common sense moats I mean regulations will keep America safe and profitable.”
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 25/09/2026
*Screen fades in to an OpenAI logo* Man smoking a cigarette, riding a Harley, wearing a cowboy hat rides into scene. “Our models are so advanced that standard human controls can barely contain it. You think you are man enough?”
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 24/09/2026
Oh. My.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 24/09/2026
Like - I don't believe in 'user error' but some people do threaten my beliefs.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 24/09/2026
If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a noise? If a newsroom publishes a daily report no one reads it, does it make a news desert?
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 24/09/2026
Insert Yosemite Park joke about “the overlap between the intelligence of the smartest bear and dumbest tourist.”
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 24/09/2026
This is direct path to businesses blocking incoming calls and requiring an online appointment and security deposit for a call back.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 24/09/2026
I have not done the math and it varies greatly but overall the meters are a lot lower than they used to be and there are more “none free” than 5 years ago. I don’t think I have seen a study on that and the balance of profit/public good that results.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 24/09/2026
And one assumes the solution to the subscription-access asymmetry is the same as it was in print - assuring the barrier is porous enough to allow casual and pass-along readership. Some are going too far to try and drive direct revenues and not considering the harms.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 24/09/2026
Are we being Punk’d here? Did Ashton Kutcher write this? www.science.org/content/arti...
science.org
Can an AI feel pain? It can at least act like it does
Study reignites debate over what, if anything, machines can feel
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 24/09/2026
This is a news story not a history piece but worth noting both the canal and railroad boom led to massive fraud and stock market crashes. Famously so.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 24/09/2026
Great gif.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 24/09/2026
More on “cutting to profitability” from @dicktofel.bsky.social dicktofel.substack.com/p/mcclatchy-...
Discovering that less is not more
While thus offering substantially less to readers, they had somehow expected, they say, that
"continued investment in our journalism would strengthen our relationship with subscribers."
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 23/09/2026
Objection: it was 3 p.m.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 23/09/2026
Can you imagine actually believing this and still going back in the office the next morning?
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 23/09/2026
And AWS is people. Not like in the Soylent Green sense, one assumes.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 23/09/2026
Literally they have recreated the mechanical Turk www.404media.co/meta-tests-m...
404media.co
Meta Tests Muse AI Agent Calls That Are Actually Made By Humans in a Call Center
"This has potential for so much negative PR. It could portray us as ‘their AI is not good enough so they still need humans’ kind of coverage for this launch."
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 22/09/2026
*subtweet = trademark dilution FTW.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 22/09/2026
This is a subtweet of bsky.app/profile/werd...
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 22/09/2026
At this point arguing about micropayments for news is like arguing for flying unicorns. Sure, a few people might want them, but the laws of physics and nature and economics don’t care what you want.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 22/09/2026
AI promises to do for the Web what autodial and mail merge did for phone calls and phone calls: make it socially permissible to avoid and ignore.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 22/09/2026
The consolidation of local/regional newsrooms was a solution for “how do we increase revenues to prop up our stock price.” Unsurprisingly the solution has failed to improve local outcomes and so doubling down on tech and centralization is to rename that path and call it “change.”
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 22/09/2026
There was a “golden age of profits” not a “golden age of journalism. “You glorify the past when the future dries up.” - Bono
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 22/09/2026
What was the confusing part? That it is just the latest in a series of disasters? Sure, ture. But "dead for 15+ years" is hyperbole. There have been journalists in all of those markets doing good work the entire time - with few/any local options for locals to turn to in many cases.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 22/09/2026
Two primary mistakes above all the others here: 1) Believing that scale “outside our local markets” is the path to save journalism. 2) Believing that the wholesale use of AI to create slop is the path to compete with the overabundance of AI slop on the internet.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 22/09/2026
What a disaster: san.com/cc/inside-a-...
san.com
Inside a newspaper chain’s transformation from local news to AI-generated ‘content’
McClatchy Media didn’t wait a week after firing journalists before announcing hires for its new AI-powered “Content Innovation Lab.”
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 22/09/2026
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha hahaha ha ha ha ha hahahahahaha a a a
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Reposted by Damon Kiesow
Tony Elkins @tonyelkins.com · 21/09/2026
Who needs real Indigenous voices when you can just have AI create them? This is truly, truly, fucked. I don't have a better way to say it. www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...
cbc.ca
‘Very harmful’: website uses AI to generate northern Indigenous news ‘correspondents’ | CBC News
The website WE NEWS has three northern Indigenous 'AI correspondents.' Their profiles say they are 'a member of Yukon First Nation,' 'of Dene heritage,' and 'an Inuk raised in the North.' Experts in t...
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 21/09/2026
And 1000% inevitable once journalism became corporatized.
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Damon Kiesow @kiesow.net · 21/09/2026
If you are explaining, you are losing.
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