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.
Welcome to the Dark Net
A poacher turned gamekeeper hacker acts as a guide to the clandestine world of the dark net, a home for all sorts of illegal trade.
The Hills Have I.P.s
A issue with the internet’s mechanism for identifying device locations led to millions of devices being incorrectly located in an American couple’s front garden. A funny glitch surely? Perhaps, until the FBI show up.
The story of the internet, as told by Know Your Meme
Tales from the front line of meme documentation. As the Editor of Know Your Meme puts it, the internet is “kind of the anti-Bible. You learn everything terrible about human beings.”
Alan Rusbridger’s Guardian is on a suicide mission
There is more than a whiff of the hatchet job to the piece on The Guardian written by a self-described “friend of the paper” who has had a “falling out” with his erstwhile chum. There’s nothing like a bit of personal animosity to make for an interesting read. Beyond that though, it’s a case study of the dynamics of running one of the world’s largest media groups (and burning $45m a year in cash while doing so.).
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.