All about social networks

Threads is a cool new hangout — if you’re a brand. The app launched backwards compared to other social media apps: Rather than the users finding communities and building spaces before the brands made their grand entrance, the brands appeared on the app in its early days. When users came to the app, they were greeted with a brand playground, like... See more

Global mega-platforms under capitalism are structurally incapable of handling the business of civilization: of governance, of providing genuinely public infrastructure, of making knife-edge decisions about the balance of liberties and securities. It’s not what they do or what they want to do, and in many cases it’s in opposition to their actual... See more

On day one, they define a political institution as “a socially created constraint on human action.” That definition has always stuck with me. This means that we can make them and remake them. But it also means that whatever institution we create, people are going to use those institutions strategically to try to achieve whatever ends they're trying... See more

When popularity is in the driver’s seat without other values that complement and constrain it, we risk falling into what author and neuroscientist Erik Hoel calls a “gossip trap.” In a gossip trap, raw social power takes precedence over other ways of organizing society, returning us to a world of tribes and clans where reputation management and... See more