Sam Liebeskind

When you have a densely connected network like that, not only are the friendships more rewarding, but everyone else also becomes more important to each other for mutual support, like Metcalfe’s Law. A densely layered quilt is much stronger than a seam sewn by a single string.

also think we need to learn to enjoy locality. Culture emerges from the connections between people, and I believe these are always strongest in person. Face-to-face cultural engagement is necessarily participatory, online cultural engagement rarely is. Nearly all of my most fulfilling and exciting experiences, those that have made me feel part of a

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a great prototype is worth 100 meetings.

Bluesky’s approach to curation is based on the idea that people “must have control over

our algorithms if we’re going to trust in our online spaces” (The Bluesky Team, 2022).

The platform’s support for custom feeds supports this mission, offering “essentially a

farmers’ market of algorithms” (Graber quoted in SXSW, 2025, 54:18). Yet custom feeds

exist... See more

Beginning the work of civic renewal in localities rather than at the national level is an easier lift in part because Americans have more trust in democracy the closer it is to them. Sixty-six percent of respondents in a 2022 Pew survey reported a favorable view of their local government, and 54 percent did of their state government, compared to... See more

Facebook Groups also allow moderators to remain anonymous, despite the platform otherwise requiring “real names.” While anonymity is not a panacea for harassment—many harassers in our study used their real names—it makes it possible for public figures to evade responsibility for engaging in hate or harassment.