Sam Liebeskind

“and when nobody wakes you up in the morning, and when nobody waits for you at night, and when you can do whatever you want. what do you call it, freedom or loneliness?”

Americans no longer have an accurate sense of their own society. For example, a few years ago, a poll showed that Americans, on average, think Muslims are seventeen times as large a portion of the U.S. population as they actually are. Another poll showed that most Americans think a majority of immigrants are in the country illegally (in fact, 77%... See more

For example, Facebook ran an experiment where they sent people less notifications. Over the short term, the findings were pretty intuitive: sending people less notifications increased their satisfaction but decreased their engagement. However, over the long term, sending people less notifications actually increased their engagement, likely because... See more

The two-tower era: efficient but static

The two-tower architecture has been the workhorse of modern recommendation systems, and for good reason: it’s elegant, scalable, and remarkably effective at learning patterns from massive amounts of data. Here’s how it worked for us once we deployed it in early 2024.

The system had two neural networks working... See more

Friction is inevitable in human relationships. It can be uncomfortable, even maddening. Yet friction can be meaningful—as a check on selfish behavior or inflated self-regard; as a spur to look more closely at other people; as a way to better understand the foibles and fears we all share.

While Americans in polls report historically low levels of trust in the media, it could be in large part because much of the press hasn’t been speaking to the concerns of their everyday lives. It would mean incorporating the knowledge and skills of reporters like Heather Bryant, who grew up in rural Missouri, where her lower-income family would buy... See more