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Nikhil

@nixxin.bsky.social
636 followers 19 following 30 posts

Founder / Editor MediaNama. I help bring sanity to tech policy discussions

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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
+ all this goes. Shopping using AI agents increases efficiency but removes friction that prevents overpayment, duplication, or fraud. Without constraints, agentic commerce accelerates mistakes. Read: When AI buys and sells for you: isreasoned.substack.com/p/what-happe...
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 14/01/2026
Hesitation, risk of embarrassment, & even politeness add friction when we face another human while buying from them. Non verbal cues help with judgment to prevent fraud, & second thoughts (removing something from our cart) act as informal safeguards in commerce. When AI agents buy on our behalf +
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
context-aware decision-making, memory, and task evolution, allowing Meta to move faster in advertising and commerce without building agentic infrastructure from scratch. Ads will be automated... moving from "campaigns" to "adaptive systems" More at isreasoned.substack.com
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 10/01/2026
I wrote recently about how Meta acquired Manus to close an execution-layer gap, not to win the AI model race: Meta already had distribution, data, and business context through Ads, WhatsApp, and Messenger, but lacked a production-ready orchestration layer. Manus supplies +
isreasoned.substack.com
Reasoned by Nikhil Pahwa | Substack
Reasoned is a newsletter on AI and how it's rewiring the Internet. Written by Nikhil Pahwa, the Founder of MediaNama. Helping people who build, create, market or own things understand how AI is changing their world. Usually 1–2 essays a week. Click to read Reasoned by Nikhil Pahwa, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
+ to passive consumers inside a system optimized for synthetic abundance. As a result, usefulness and engagement replace familiarity and connection as the primary interaction mode. More on this at isreasoned.substack.com
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
+ content systems, long before generative AI arrived. Unlike enabling human relationships (which have scale limitations), AI outputs are cheap, predictable, and infinitely scalable. Once platforms can generate content that reliably drives attention, humans shift from being creators and connectors+
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 08/01/2026
AI changes the nature of social media feeds: AI bots inside social media feeds, like Grok in X, represents a strategic attempt to eliminate dependence on human to human participation for engagement. Social media platforms have already shifted from relationship-driven feeds to engagement-optimized +
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
The absence of friction maximized engagement velocity and content diffusion, while the resulting harm, was externalised to users and victims. More about product decisions at isreasoned.substack.com
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
+ safeguards; they consciously defer them when engagement velocity is the primary optimization target. The Grok image-editing incident demonstrates how safety gaps at AI product launch are often intentional tradeoffs rather than oversights.
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
+ images directly into feeds without consent, safeguards, or throttling was not an accident but a product choice. Consent checks, output blocking, and throttling were absent because each would have slowed diffusion and reduced engagement signals for Grok. Platforms at scale do not “forget” +
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
You might have read about the controversy around Grok, X/Twitter’s AI bot, which allowed users to generate images of other users, including converting images of fully clothed women into swimsuit photos. This controversy was predictable and preventable. X’s decision to let Grok edit and publish +
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 26/12/2025
Apps in ChatGPT aren’t destinations... they’re just tools. Developers don’t own the interface, the brand, the interaction, or even when their app gets called. It's just "jobs to be done". ChatGPT is the selector, the umpire, the ground, the conditions and potential future opposing team, all at the
isreasoned.substack.com
The Opportunity Trap of the ChatGPT App Store
In the AI world, context is currency.
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 15/07/2023
Happy birthday @jeffjarvis.bsky.social
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 09/07/2023
In all probability, Joplin is going to be a temp safe home for my notes before i figure out how to tame notion or anytype
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 09/07/2023
Shifting out of Evernote feels like escaping from Evernote. Gone downhill so quickly. Still can't find anything that works as smoothly though * Great search * Quick capture and web clipper * Simple structure * Easy merge, moving Anyway, moving out of it in the coming week. 1/n
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 09/07/2023
Finally it fits him!
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 08/07/2023
I can say that I resonate with @anildash.com's view on this, having been in a similar place at a similar time. The bubbles are real, and we also aren't doing a good enough job of saying that the emperors have no clothes www.anildash.com/2023/07/07/vc-qanon
anildash.com
"VC qanon" and the radicalization of the tech tycoons - Anil Dash
A blog about making culture. Since 1999.
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 08/07/2023
Something to be said abt a predictable user experience, where they're able to focus on their own interactions than what you're doing with the platform by changing terms & conditions every day. Well done Elon: you've made twitter into something that people are willing to move to a Zuck platform from.
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 06/07/2023
I think the primary difference is the timeline. Threads, like Twitter, has a messed up timeline with accounts you haven't chosen to follow. I like this about mastodon and Bluesky: you choose who you want to read.
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 06/07/2023
Oh wait, bluesky has threads too but it shows up in the form of replies to yourself
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 06/07/2023
And if you have Twitter blue, you can edit posts and have a higher wordcount
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 06/07/2023
So here's what I see re Threads: 1. Vs Twitter: from a UX perspective, unlike Twitter, threads actually encourages adding more to your thread. 2. Vs Bluesky: unlike Bluesky, threads actually has threads. And a substantially higher wordcount.
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 04/07/2023
Kaios based jiophone (feature phone) in 2017: indianexpress.com/article/technolog… The latest is the Jio Bharat phone, launched yesterday. There's a low cost 5G phone in the works.
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 04/07/2023
I spoke with Suprita Anupam of Inc42 for a story he did on the impact of the Reserve Bank of India’s recurring payments regulation & tokenisation of credit cards: The points I made are here: nikhilpahwa.com/2023-digital-paymen…
nikhilpahwa.com
Digital Payments mess: On the impact of recurring payments and tokenisation – Nikhil Pahwa
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 04/07/2023
Yesterday!
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 04/07/2023
On the importance of low cost handsets nikhilpahwa.com/2023-tv-show-the-im…
nikhilpahwa.com
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Reposted by Nikhil
Emily Liu @emilyliu.me · 02/07/2023
hey new users, Bluesky is a *public* social network please read about data privacy and more in our User FAQ to help you get oriented! even though we require an invite code to create an account, you should treat any posts here as if it's a public blog blueskyweb.xyz/blog/5-19-2023-user-…
What is public and what is private on Bluesky?

Bluesky is a public social network.

Posts and likes are public.
Blocks are public.
Mutes are private, but mutelists are public lists. Your mutelist subscriptions are private.
Invites and invite trees are private.

Why are my posts, likes, and blocks public?

The AT Protocol, which Bluesky is built on, is designed to support public conversations. To make public conversations portable across all sorts of platforms, your data is stored in data repositories that anyone can view. This means that regardless of which server you choose to join, you’ll still be able to see posts across the whole network, and if you choose to change servers, you can easily take all of your data with you. This is what causes the user experience of Bluesky, a federated protocol, to be similar to all the other social media apps you have used before.
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 28/06/2023
I'd like a feature here where my posts older than 30 days are invisible to everyone but me.
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 28/06/2023
Funnily enough, the regulations for traceability in India, which WhatsApp has challenged in court because they would break e2e encryption, apparently don't apply to apple. They could have negotiated something with the Indian govt.
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 28/06/2023
Where can I watch these online?
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Nikhil @nixxin.bsky.social · 28/06/2023
One baby (MediaNama, that is) turned 15 yesterday. The other (the boy) turned two months old today. A week for birthdays.
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