Wired

Society Wired

It’s the (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech

A special issue of Wired contains several strong pieces looking at the complex freedom of speech trade-offs required in the new information era. Pieces include – the web infrastructure company Cloudflare being embroiled in a free speech debate when offering services to far-right extremists, Reddit as a case study for civil discourse online, a startup making smartphone-neutralising pouches, six stories of censorship, and a look at a database of extremists called Whack-a-Mole.

Society Wired

Inside China’s Vast New Experiment in Social Ranking

A look at the new credit scoring tools available in China, made possible by deep integration of services around a small handful of companies, and reaching into almost every part of daily life. As one user succinctly puts it – “If your friends are all high-score people, it’s good for you. If you have some bad-credit people as friends, it’s not nice.”

Science Wired

Process of Elimination

A look at the work and mission of scientists and conservationists proposing gene editing techniques to control animal population, and the potential ramifications of adopting their methods outside the laboratory.