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Everything old is new again, the saying goes. Despite touting the idea of a press release as a destination being a new idea, it actually dates back about 15 years — and retains all of its value. Neville and Shel explore the idea of defeating paywalls with destination press releases in this monthly long-form episode of “For Immediate Release.” Also in this episode:

• Follow-ups to stories about Artificial Intelligence (AI) interns and facial recognition used for nefarious purposes.
• The 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer — and whether Edelman can claim to be trust experts
• A roundup of news and commentary about ChatGPT
• A decline in Mastodon users
• Dan York’s Tech Report, which looks at some Twitter changes, good news for Mastodon users, a Mastodon instance for Medium users, Getty’s lawsuit targeting the generative AI image tool Stable Diffusion, Wikipedia’s new look-and-feel, and WordPress’s upcoming 20th birthday.

The next monthly, long-form episode of FIR will drop on Monday, February 20.

We host a Communicators Zoom Chat each Thursday at 1 p.m. ET. For credentials needed to participate, contact Shel or Neville directly, request the credentials in our Facebook group, or email fircomments@gmail.com.

Special thanks to Jay Moonah for the opening and closing music.

You can find the stories from which Shel’s FIR content is selected at Shel’s Link Blog. Shel has started a metaverse-focused Flipboard magazine. Neville’s Asides blog is also available.

Links from this report:

• Codeword hires the agency world’s first ‘AI interns’
• Judge blasts James Dolan’s facial recognition bans from MSG: ‘Stupidest thing ever’
• New York Lawmakers Protest Madison Square Garden Over Facial Recognition Controversy
• Lawyers Barred by Madison Square Garden Found a Way Back In
• How press releases can break through paywalled news
• 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer
• The world’s biggest PR firm claims to be an expert on trust – but is it?
• Recruitment team unwittingly recommends ChatGPT for job interview
• Microsoft Plans to Build OpenAI, ChatGPT Features Into All Products
• Opinion | How ChatGPT Hijacks Democracy
• Alarmed by A.I. Chatbots, Universities Start Revamping How They Teach
• Don’t Ban ChatGPT in Schools. Teach With It.
• You’ll Be Seeing ChatGPT’s Influence Everywhere This Year
• For PR, Is ChatGPT An Asset Or Threat?
• People are already trying to get ChatGPT to write malware
• Teachers Are Absolutely Loving The Student Who Made A Tool That Shows If Your Essay Was Written By AI
• ChatGPT-4, the Fined Tuned Version of ChatGPT-3, Might Prompt a Major Shift
• An AI writing tool generates a layoff letter as bad as a real company would write! (Should we worry?)
• CEOs at Davos are using ChatGPT to write work emails
• AI and the future of work: 5 experts on what ChatGPT, DALL-E and other AI tools mean for artists and knowledge workers
• Search & Performance Marketing Daily: Portland Shop Uses ChatGPT To Tell Family Stories On A Startup Budget
• ChatGPT and generative AI are the talk of this year’s Davos forum
• Chatbots belong in our classrooms
• ChatGPT will force school exams out of the dark ages
• Elon Musk drove more than a million people to Mastodon – but many aren’t sticking around
• Mastodon Users Have Started Fleeing the Platform
• Elon Musk drove more than a million people to Mastodon – but many aren’t sticking around
• The decentralized technology inside Mastodon
• Mastodon Users (account that displays number of accounts)

Links from Dan York’s Report

•  You can pin a List and then swipe to it in the Twitter app
• The next Twitter update will remember which view you are in and come back to that
• Twitter’s new developer terms ban third-party clients
• Twitterrific: End of an Era
• Buffer adds Mastodon to its social media management platform
• Medium Embraces Mastodon
• Getty Images is suing the creators of AI art tool Stable Diffusion for scraping its content
• Wikipedia Gets a Fresh New Look: First Desktop Update in a Decade Puts Usability at the Forefront
• Highlight: Exploring Wikipedia’s new user experience (UX) – danyork324 on Twitch
• WordPress turns 20 in 2023

About Shel Holtz

Shel Holtz, ABC (Accredited Business Communicator), is director of Internal Communications at Webcor, a commercial general contractor headquartered in San Francisco. Before joining Webcor, Shel spent 21 years as principal of Holtz Communication + Technology. In addition to integrating technology into communications strategies, his expertise includes strategic communications planning, change management, organizational culture, business initiatives and communications research. Full bio

About Neville Hobson

Neville Hobson is a communicator, social strategist, consultant, digital change agent, writer, and podcaster. He is co-founder and co-host of the 'For Immediate Release' podcast. Since 2000, his career has focused on working with organisations globally to help them leverage his experiences, knowledge and subject-matter expertise of social networks, social media marketing, analytics and insights reporting, to create and build foundations for authentic engagement and to expand online reach and influence. Full bio