Sublime

A PR agent from Burson-Marsteller reached out to a tech blogger named Christopher Soghoian and asked him to write a critical op-ed about a Google product. Recounting the story Soghoian says Burson-Marsteller offered to “draft” the op-ed for Soghoian and get it published in a “top-tier” outlet like the Washington Post, Politico, the Hill, Roll Call,

... See more

I tend to be a believer that platforms do create policies. The idea that they are just “enforcing laws” is kind of BS. If that was the case, there’s a very narrow definition of content that’s actually illegal, and there’d be a whole bunch of things that they would allow.

Gondelman’s post, which has received nearly 70,000 likes, resonated because it speaks to a hugely important and rarely discussed aspect of the misinformation problem: the huge consumer demand for it. The rise of social media and parallel decline of mainstream journalism have enabled us to create what researcher Renee DiResta calls “bespoke realitie

... See more

It is alleged that social media fuels polarization, exploits human weaknesses and insecurities, and creates echo chambers where everyone gets their own slice of reality, eroding the public sphere and the understanding of common facts. And, worse still, this is all done intentionally in a relentless pursuit of profit.

Instead of informing the public, journalists are forced to game social media algorithms by spinning stories and writing misleading headlines. One reporter at Vox told me they have to write 10 headlines for every post they write. Vox chooses the headline that attracts the most engagement, depending on the platform. Desperate for clicks, reporters t

... See more

Facebook, again, is the extreme example here: the service got started with user-generated content and has continually retrenched over the last few years to have more user-generated content and less professionally produced content; every time they have done so, publishers have cried foul over all of the traffic they were losing. Google, meanwhile, d... See more