Down the rabbit hole: how QAnon conspiracies thrive on Facebook
A dive into the network of groups on Facebook linked to QAnon promoting a dizzying range of conspiracy theories.
The Golden Age of YouTube is Over
A piece examining a widening rift between YouTube creators and a platform pivoting away from user generated content.
How a 119-Word Local Crime Brief Became Facebook’s Most-Shared Story of 2019
A local news story that became an unexpected viral hit is used as a way to examine the algorithm that influences what people see on Facebook, a place where many people (43% of American adults per the Pew Research Center) continue to get their news.
Facebook’s Crisis Management Algorithm Runs on Outrage
Bloomberg’s cover story provides their take on Facebook’s apology cycles.
Why Some Platforms Thrive and Others Don’t
An analysis of the factors that make marketplace businesses work, and what makes them fail, comparing leading examples such as AirBnB, Uber, Alibaba, and Didi.
The Eternal Return of Buzzfeed
This piece looks at what a highly successful, disruptive organisation like Buzzfeed can learn from its antecedents as disruptors, who are now part of the establishment it is taking on.
He Predicted The 2016 Fake News Crisis. Now HeÕs Worried About An Information Apocalypse.
A piece about warnings of an impending ÒinfocalypseÓ, as tools to falsify video footage, images and the writing of real people become ever more sophisticated, and our ability to control their proliferation remains essentially non-existent.
How Peter Thiel’s Secretive Data Company Pushed Into Policing
A look at how Peter Thiel’s company Palantir is being used in law enforcement – the result of an in-depth investigation involving multiple freedom of information requests.
The Lost Civilization of Dial-Up Bulletin Board Systems
The author revisits the lost world of Bulletin Board Systems, and finds himself “strolling through a community frozen in time, Pompeii-style.” He finds discussions perfectly preserved, and in some cases maintained, since their heyday as an intimate precursor to the internet in the 1980s and 1990s.
You Are the Product
John Lanchester reviews three books on social media, the war for attention, and Silicon Valley giants. His conclusion? “I am scared of Facebook”.