The Unraveling of Social Media's Promised Success

Have clicks, likes, and shares driven media and democracy to the point of disrepair? Sean Illing is joined by Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of Semafor and the author of "Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral." Together, they discuss how newsrooms were transformed by social media and the pursuit of traffic, and what the future of the industry might look like.

Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area

Guest: Ben Smith (@semaforben), editor-in-chief of Semafor, author of Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral

References: 

• Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral by Ben Smith (Penguin Random House, 2023)
• “How corporations got all your data” by The Gray Area (Vox, Mar. 2023)

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This episode was made by: 

• Engineer: Patrick Boyd
• Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall

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