The countdown to election day is on, and although my interest has dipped following an announcement speech that must have taken inspiration from The Thick Of It (today’s politics make it look like a walk in the park), one thing that has caught my attention is the Be the Chancellor tool from the Institute of Fiscal Studies. I must have spent the better part of an hour creating a fictional budget that stuck two fingers up to fiscal policy. It won’t surprise you to know my name won’t be appearing on a ballot paper any time soon.
From spam to slop
The surge in AI-created content is creating the latest version of inbox spam, AI slop. But instead of taking over the inbox, it’s leading to a new zombie internet full of unverified content vying for the attention of search engines over humans. It took email providers time to catch up with junk mail filters. Are the search engines up to the challenge of filtering through the quagmire?
Fewer than one in ten arts workers have working-class roots
In news that can only shock those who have never looked at the salaries or locations of jobs in the arts, The Guardian has reported that the UK arts sector is failing when it comes to diversity. 90% of those working in the sector are white, and only one in ten has working-class roots.
There’s been a pattern of governments and cultural organisations failing to tackle the problems that prevent underrepresented people accessing arts careers. These include a lack of fair and reliable wages and access to industry networks, but the solutions presented are often one-off workshops or schemes. “Creativity and culture are not like other industries. The power of networks and connections is multiplied. And you can’t talk about diversity if you’re not making the workers secure.”
Is B-corp all it seems?
The question of B-corp certification keeps emerging, so I welcome this deep dive from The Eco Well. A B-corp company is said to be held to the highest environmental standards, and the kudos attributed to those who qualify give it huge value to companies who apply. However, the assessment is largely self-reported, and the scoring system allows companies that perform poorly in some areas (known as pillars) to pass without penalty. There’s no question that the level of examination required is a useful tool, but does it need closer scrutiny given the level of trust consumers place in this highly marketable asset?
A new way to share content on LinkedIn
The option to share a feed of website content directly to a company page appeared to us earlier this week. Quietly launched under a ‘new’ banner on settings this appears to let you link your RSS feed to your LinkedIn page. Many companies already repurpose their blog content using the newsletters feature, is this set to replace it? And could it equal that engagement? If you try it or see anyone using it, I’d love to see it in action. At the moment, this help page is all the information I can find. You can find the option under your page settings by navigating to ‘manage content sharing’ and then ‘add source’.
