The Long Tail Election

Impossible Tradeoffs with Katie Harbath

Twenty years ago, Wired editor Chris Anderson wrote “The Long Tail” - a story about how “the future of entertainment is in the millions of niche markets at the shallow end of the bitstream.” Also, twenty years ago, the term “podcasting” was coined thanks to the introduction of the iPod and RSS feeds that could carry audio files.

Today, in these final days before the election, we can confidently say that this prediction has become a reality—not just for entertainment but also for news and politics.

I’ve been pondering this newsletter for a while, and Chris’s piece popped into my mind as I was thinking about how 2024 is being called the TikTok/Influencer/Podcast/Clipping/Shards of Glass election. What these all have in common is the theme that our information environment is more fractured than ever before, and influencers/creators across numerous platforms have proven their power to reach voters. I won’t be shocked if, for the 2028 cycle, we have a candidate announce for president on a podcast (DeSantis did technically announce on Twitter spaces, but that’s different.)

Ben Thompson makes this point in his excellent column from Monday, “I think, though, that the ability to hold one’s own on a podcast is, in the long run, going to be a greater selection effect for President than people might expect.”

The ground is shifting beneath our feet and will continue to do so as we increasingly use artificial intelligence to help us create and curate the information we consume.

I will have much more to say on this as I try to figure out how to recap these last two years. Since January 2020, I’ve been talking about this historic year of elections around the globe, and it is almost over. The amount we’ve all gone through during this time is massive—and it’s only accelerating.

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With only a week left until Election Day, I wanted to share five things to remember as we enter this new phase.

* The information environment is shifting, which presents an excellent opportunity to shape this new reality. I’ve talked to a few folks wondering if their work since 2016 has been for naught because of the amount of disinformation online. It most certainly has not, but this work will need to change. I’m excited about digging into this new ecosystem and how we can mold how it evolves. What strikes me in re-reading Chris’ article 20 years later is that we can predict where things will go; it just takes us a long time for the technology and people to adapt, to accept the new reality, and to grieve the loss of the old one. Where we are today will not be where we will be in four years, as AI will do much more to curate the information we consume. We know this will happen, just not exactly how. That presents a lot of opportunity to start helping shape the future we want. Just look at this paper about how AI is helping to prebunk election misinformation.

* A side thing to watch here is where people go to follow along as results start to come in. Cable channels usually shine here, but Amazon is doing its own Election Night special, as are TikTok users like V Spehar from Under the Desk News. Will people go there instead?

* The tech CEO election. A side story of this election will inevitably be the role of the tech CEO. From Zuckerberg trying to pull back on politics and news to Elon leaning in and Bezos killing the Washington Post editorial, these CEOs are now political players whether they want it or not. Podcasting and newsletter platforms - and thus their CEOs - will become more critical. These CEOs are not the enemy, nor will they save us, but we must work with them - and hold them accountable. We can lament that they operate first and foremost as a business, or we can accept that and figure out how to impact them through those incentives.

* AI isn’t as bad as feared, but this is just the start. I’m very nervous that people are going to take away from this election that AI isn’t as bad as we thought and then drop the ball going into 2026 and 2028. We need to have less fear around AI overall, but this is only the beginning of its entry into our political sphere. Over the next four years, this is another area of great opportunity to shape what these guardrails should be for how campaigns use these tools to communicate with voters.

* Panic responsibly. This is the time I created this phrase for. Anxiety, nerves, and tension are getting very high. It doesn’t help when you feel like all you can do is sit and wait. Take care of yourself. Touch grass. Drink water. Just keep in mind that now is a nerve-wracking time, and that might impact how you are reacting to things. It will be okay. We will get through this. The merch store is here if you need a t-shirt, sticker, or wine glass to remind you of this.

* Vote. The number one thing you need to do is vote. I don’t care if it is absentee, early, or in-person. Visit turbovote.org for all the information you need on how to do this. I got my vote in via absentee. Ensure you are also up to speed on how votes are counted and certified, as there will likely be a lot of chaos and confusion around that. You can also watch this webinar I did this week with the Aspen Institute and other experts discussing the post-election time frame.

I’m going into this final week nervous but excited. I’m anxious about what a tight election will do to us as a collective. I’m excited because I can already think of many projects I want to work on to shape this new information environment. There’s a lot of opportunity in chaos if you know how to harness it.

But we’ll have time for that later. For now, vote, tell your friends and family to vote, and take care of yourselves. And for those working on elections, whether as an official, poll worker, tech employee, journalist, researcher, campaigner, or volunteer - don’t forget, you got this.

Side note: It’s not good I’m making this a side note, but one of the things I feared would happen with the U.S. election is that it would suck all of the attention away from other global elections happening at the same time. Admittedly, I’ve fallen into that trap, but keep an eye on what is happening in Japan and the country of Georgia after their elections this past weekend. Both are seeing unrest and shock by results. There were also elections in Kiribati (an island in the South Pacific), Bulgaria and Uruguay (which is headed to a second round). Moldova’s recent election on a referendum to join the EU was also a nail-biter. All of this is to say, while there’s a lot happening here we also need to keep an eye on the globe as a whole.

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