Dispatch from the Front Line: Asshole Nation, Assemble!
What would the most uber-competitive and productive version of Canada look like if we thoroughly abandoned any desire to be nice?
Welcome, Line readers. We were going to tell you that it’s been quite a week, but then we thought about it for a minute. We suspect all our weeks are just going to be like this from now on.
Before we get into anything else, we wanted to issue something of a statement in response to information that has been brought to our attention. A Line reader has informed us that some of our content is being boosted on social media by “bots.” Bots are social-media accounts that claim (often absurdly) to be operated by real people, that churn out content on demand and for pay. Bots can be run by anyone but are often run by owners of so-called bot farms, which are online content factories that churn out content on command. A savvy social media user, to the extent such a thing exists, can normally spot a bot. But a lot of people don’t read that closely or aren’t that savvy and can’t tell the difference between a bot and a real person. Your Line editors themselves have no doubt been fooled in the past.
The bots that are boosting our content are doing so favourably — they seem to like us. Thanks, we guess? But to be clear, and for the record, neither The Line itself, nor Matt Gurney or Jen Gerson, or any organization or person operating on their behalf, is responsible for these bots. Full stop. And we’d like the person or persons funding these bots to desist and never do it again.
The Line is a business. We are here to make money. But we do so transparently. We sell subscriptions and commercials on our podcasts, with our advertising partners clearly disclosed. We sell the odd bit of merchandise and tickets to our occasional live events. Our costs are paying ourselves, our writers, and the various professional services and service providers that help run this business. We have purchased ads on social media for in-person events. Everything we do, we do above board.
We don’t do bots. We’ve never done bots. And we won’t do bots. While not every bot farm is nefarious, a good many of them are, and can often be linked back to criminal enterprises. This isn’t how we’re going to grow our business. We’re going to grow it by providing our readers, viewers and listeners with good content and our advertisers access to the highly engaged audience that values that content.
We could probably make more money if we didn’t insist on keeping it simple, but that’s not how The Line rolls. We are sticking to our plan. Thanks for riding along.
Speaking of content, check out the latest episode of The Line Podcast.
We make our usual requests of you! Please like, subscribe and share widely. That means here at the main site, of course, but also on our distribution channels: Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and all the others. A nice review helps, too!
And now, with our pro forma grovelling out of the way, on with the dispatch.