This minute-long clip of a Will Smith concert is blowing up online for all the wrong reasons, with people accusing him of using AI to generate fake crowds filled with fake fans carrying fake signs. In the last day, the story’s been covered by Rolling Stone, VIBE, NME, Cosmopolitan, The Daily Mail, The Independent, Mashable, and Consequence of Sound.

And it definitely looks terrible! The faces have all the characteristics of AI slop, with familiar artifacts like uncanny features, smeared faces, multiple fingers/limbs, and nonsensical signage. “From West Philly to West Swig̴̙̕g̷̤̔͜y”?

But here’s where things get complicated.

The crowds are real. Every person you see in the video above started out as real footage of real fans, sourced from multiple Will Smith concerts during his recent European tour.

For the third year, the Tiny Awards have released their list of finalists that represent “the best of the small, poetic, creative, handmade web.” Voting is now open and runs until the end of this month, closing on September 1.

I was on the judging committee this year, returning after a year away to focus on the final XOXO, and helped narrow down the finalists from 176 nominated websites.

I love this little low-stakes contest, and the experience of being bombarded with so many great weird experimental projects is an honor for me.

Like my roundup two years ago, here’s a little about each of this year’s 11 finalists to help inform your vote.

Last week, we released the talks from the final XOXO.

In the eight years that Andy McMillan and I put on XOXO, we had so many wonderful talks—you can peruse the featured tag for some of our favorites from the full archive—but I think we both agreed this was the single best day of talks we ever had.

The consistency was so high, it was clear every speaker understood the assignment. Every talk is worth watching.

The Talks

“We can build the web we want to see.” Molly White kicked off XOXO 2024’s conference with a hopeful talk about building Web3 Is Going Just Great and how we can “push the web back towards the wonderful, joyful, beautiful place it used to be.”

15 years ago this week, Kind of Bloop: An 8-Bit Tribute to Miles Davis came out on the 50th anniversary of the release of Kind of Blue, the bestselling jazz album of all time.

I started the project as a bit of a goof, launching on Kickstarter on May 12, 2009, only 14 days after Kickstarter itself launched. I wanted to test out the platform I’d helped to build, to see what the experience was like as a creator. For years, I’d also wondered what “chiptune jazz” might sound like, and figured this was a good way to do both.

Ello launched on August 7, 2014 with big dreams and big promises, a new social network defined by what it wouldn’t do.

They laid it all out in a manifesto, right on their homepage:

Your social network is owned by advertisers.

Every post you share, every friend you make and every link you follow is tracked, recorded and converted into data. Advertisers buy your data so they can show you more ads. You are the product that’s bought and sold.

We believe there is a better way. We believe in audacity. We believe in beauty, simplicity and transparency. We believe that the people who make things and the people who use them should be in partnership.

We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce and manipulate — but a place to connect, create and celebrate life.

You are not a product.

From its launch, Ello defined itself as an alternative to ad-driven social networks like Twitter and Facebook. “You are not a product.” (The “I Disagree” button linked to Facebook’s privacy page.)

I’d link to that manifesto on Ello’s site, but I can’t, because Ello is dead.

In June 2023, the servers just started returning errors, making nine years of member contributions inaccessible, apparently forever — every post, artwork, song, portfolio, and the community built there was gone in an instant.

How did this happen? What happened between the idealistic manifesto above and the sudden shutdown?

It’s a story so old and familiar, I predicted it shortly after Ello launched.