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Shacknews Direct: Introducing Cortex Shouts short-form social media platform

We are kicking off our Shacknews E7 stream with a very special announcement about a new feature on Cortex.

Asif Khan

June 15, 2023 10:30 AM

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It's time for another Shacknews Direct. Today, we are announcing a new short-form social media platform called Cortex Shouts. Please take a look at this very special video presentation to learn more.

Due to the short lead time in the production of the Shacknews Direct, we were unable to include subtitles, but please read my prepared remarks in the transcription below.

Hi, I am Shacknews CEO Asif Khan. Welcome to our Shacknews Direct. I am going to kick off today's day-long E7 stream with the reveal of a new Shacknews Cortex experience for our users, but before we get to the fireworks, let's take stock of the state of our industry and the company as things sit in June 2023.

As an independent website that finds itself competing with sites that are subsidiaries of bloated conglomerates, Shacknews has been able to navigate around some of the problems that face other companies. Billion dollar media corporations are going belly up, and we are not immune to the macro trends causing this games media-wide contraction.

We don't run programmatic advertisements on our website, so our cash flow is not as dependent on traffic trends. Many of our largest competitors still run massively large takeover ads for many of the same companies they cover. This inherent conflict of interest is not present at Shacknews, but lately it really doesn't appear that many people care. The ones who do probably appreciate our website's load times and overall reading experience.

There is not a whole lot of loyalty on the part of readers, viewers, or those who engage with outlets on social media platforms. The recent proliferation of machine learning, large language models, neural networks, computer vision, and a bunch of other AI-like technologies has begun to make matters worse. It was already hard enough to get a reader to click a link in search results or social media posts, but tools like ChatGPT are scraping our content and repackaging it in a way that takes readers even further away from the source.

Even more concerning is that these trends have amplified the spread of misinformation. With Chatbots hallucinating and verified Twitter users tweeting false information with their blue checkmark amplification. It's truly a darker time for online journalism as a whole, and at times it does feel somewhat impossible for Shacknews to make much of a difference in the future of the web.

We launched the Shacknews Cortex gamification engine in 2020, giving users the ability to post articles with the same domain authority of shacknews.com. Through our own internal mistakes with development, launch, and management of the platform, the feature largely sits dormant on the website outside of the autogenerated posts declaring winners of Shacknews, Shackpets, and Chatty for each day, week, month, and year.

I personally have withdrawn from posting to social media since October of 2022. For the last three years, I have been battling an increasingly bad series of health-related issues stemming from what my doctors currently believe to be multiple autoimmune diseases. Between the treatments, the misdiagnoses, the side effects of the treatments, the repeated failed treatments, and the new one I am on, I have simply not had much energy. It's hurt every single company that I am a part of, including Shacknews.

This June marks 10 years since I invested in Gamerhub Content Network, the company that would go on to acquire Shacknews later that year. We're still here.

We are going to attempt yet another pivot today. Shacknews Cortex 2.0.0 is dropping today, and it includes a new short-form posting format called Shouts.

I do not believe that trillion or billion dollar companies should be trusted to provide forums for online speech in the 21st century. Elon Musk’s Twitter and Facebook have made it hard to share hyperlinks on their platforms.

Cortex Shouts are inspired by MySpace, GeoCities, and AOL Instant Messenger Away messages.

If you're someone who might need a new unresponsive void to shout into on the Internet, Shacknews Cortex is there for you. Let's try to bring some sort of joy to a new timeline.

This is not the digital town square that Elon Musk is trying to build. This is a place to share interesting pictures, random thoughts, funny gifs, and video content. There are no politicians on Shacknews Cortex, brands haven’t popped up yet, and we aren’t decentralized. We are launching the Shouts update with what we had working to ship at Shacknews E7.

Try out Shacknews Cortex Shouts now, and have a great rest of your E7!

Asif Khan

CEO/EIC/EIEIO

Asif Khan is the CEO, EIC, and majority shareholder of Shacknews. He began his career in video game journalism as a freelancer in 2001 for Tendobox.com. Asif is a CPA and was formerly an investment adviser representative. After much success in his own personal investments, he retired from his day job in financial services and is currently focused on new private investments. His favorite PC game of all time is Duke Nukem 3D, and he is an unapologetic fan of most things Nintendo. Asif first frequented the Shack when it was sCary's Shugashack to find all things Quake. When he is not immersed in investments or gaming he is a purveyor of fine electronic music. Asif also has an irrational love of Cleveland sports.