Elon Musk is failing to convince people that Twitter is a town square, telling users what they can and can't say for a laugh and charging $8 for the privilege
Recently, comedy clubs have begun doing this thing that seemed, when I first encountered it, both wildly hypocritical and more than a little sad. Tweets: @theatlantic , @yappelbaum , @bhumikatharoor ,...
GIF, once called “the file format of the internet generation”, is declining in use as young users say GIFs are “cringe” and MP4 videos make the format outdated
The internet's file format has been diagnosed as “cringe,” but there are other threats to its existence. Tweets: @apollozac , @ianbetteridge , @cooksipgo , @kendallbaker , @laurenshippen , @mangmangma...
A look at link rot, and projects like Perma, which are trying to give authors of enduring documents like scholarly papers a way to preserve links permanently
Sixty years ago the futurist Arthur C. Clarke observed that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Tweets: @lanceulanoff , @ethanz , @heghoulian , @drewsthatdude , @samv...
A look at Covid Tracking Project, a website run mostly by volunteers, which has become one of the most trusted sources on the spread of COVID-19 in the US
At the start of 2020, Amanda French was in between academic jobs. Her mother had died about a year earlier, and she'd taken time off to help settle her affairs. Tweets: @alexismadrigal , @armstrongdr...
A look at teen TikTok stars like “Mooptopia”, who achieved sudden viral fame and found it hard to contend with the devotion and nonstop attention of fans
Teens are making it big overnight, but that kind of fame can be a mixed bag. — A girl sits alone on an ugly couch … Tweets: @mattnavarra , @mikeelgan , @adriennelaf , @justinbrookman , @kait_tiffany...
In an attempt to open during the pandemic, many US universities are forcing students to download location-tracking apps, sometimes as a condition of enrollment
In Michigan, a small liberal-arts college is requiring students to install an app called Aura, which tracks their location in real time, before they come to campus. Facebook: Zeynep Tufekci . Tweets: ...
US election security responses against Russian interference in 2016 remain inadequate as Russian tactics continue to evolve in the run up to the 2020 election
Jack Cable sat down at the desk in his cramped dorm room to become an adult in the eyes of democracy. Tweets: @sifill_ldf , @jennycohn1 , @anneapplebaum , @theatlantic , @adriennelaf , @arictoler , @o...
Instagram's Close Friends feature proves controversial as both an influencer revenue stream and superficial gateway to intimacy
Gabi Abrao, better known as @sighswoon on Instagram, is “developing a language with the invisible.” Her page is half memes, half photos of her—eating fresh fruit … Tweets: @jake_meador , @jennyearnes...
Businesses have been collecting, selling, and reusing personal data for decades; Google and Facebook only made the process more visible via better ad targeting
Google and Facebook are easy scapegoats, but companies have been collecting, selling, and reusing your personal data for decades … Tweets: @patrickmoorhead , @william_partin , @ibogost , @markbartholo...