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26 votes
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Elliott Management’s Paul Singer seeks to replace Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey
9 votes -
It’s not ‘One Million’ — it’s One Meddling Mom
11 votes -
Twitter starts testing its own version of Stories, called "Fleets," which disappear after twenty-four hours and can't receive likes, retweets, or replies
10 votes -
The American restaurant is on life support
10 votes -
Facebook files lawsuit against Namecheap
9 votes -
Book recommendation: Anti-Social by Andrew Marantz
I just finished Andrew Marantz's Anti-Social: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation, and I think it's a book that would interest a lot of the people on...
I just finished Andrew Marantz's Anti-Social: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation, and I think it's a book that would interest a lot of the people on this site. Marantz is a journalist for the New Yorker who embedded himself with alt-right influencers and social media companies. This book is a compilation of all of those stories; part memoir, part retelling, part observation, part commentary.
Despite its title, the book is not a one-dimensional hit piece. I actually strongly dislike the title as I feel it's a bit too barbed for a book that's rooted in extensive, thoughtful contemplation. The author is honest, open-minded, and critical. I hate the word "balanced" for all of the baggage it brings to the table, but it really feels like the best word to use, especially as an antonym for "unbalanced". He deftly handles a lot of different subjects here. He doesn't shy away from giving criticism where its due, but he's also not quick to judge, trying to understand the broader picture first before casting any judgments about it.
I mention it here because I think it has a lot of relevance to Tildes as a site, as well as the type of people that have congregated here. It covers a lot of ground of direct interest to Tildes: the role of social media platforms to police speech and ideology; how the structure of social media creates influence; how bad faith actors can manipulate systems; how noxious ideologies continue to appeal and propagate. I also know that Tildes trends toward the left, and as someone far on that side myself, I appreciated this book for giving me what I feel was a fair and thoughtful window into the lives of certain high-profile people on the right. It's easy to think of them as a monolith, but I was surprised by the differences between all of his various character portraits. Marantz never loses the individual humanity of his subjects, even when some of them are abjectly abhorrent people.
I should mention that the book is very US-centric, as that was where he focused his journalistic efforts. As such, readers outside the US might not appreciate it as much, but I still think a lot of what he shares is relevant no matter where you are located since we all share space together online.
6 votes -
WeChat, China’s most popular messaging app, has been censoring keywords relating to the COVID-19 outbreak since at least Jan. 1, according to a new report
10 votes -
What do we actually know about modern disinformation?
This is an intentionally broad question with a lot of different angles. It's also a question that's naturally hard to get solid grounding on now that nearly everything gets painted as false,...
This is an intentionally broad question with a lot of different angles. It's also a question that's naturally hard to get solid grounding on now that nearly everything gets painted as false, misleading, or disingenuous by at least someone.
Normally in my ask threads I throw out a lot of potential talking points, but in this case I want to leave the question open, for people to take it in whichever direction they wish: What do we actually know about modern disinformation, especially related to (but not limited to) online spaces? What are some real, genuine takeaways we can hang our hats on?
Also, a point of clarity: disinformation here does NOT strictly refer to high-level government propaganda and can include something as low-level as, say, an influencer not disclosing product sponsorship to their followers. I'm interested in distributed falsehoods of any caliber.
21 votes -
Censored contagion - How information on the coronavirus is managed on Chinese social media
9 votes -
Hank Green - The "38% of Americans wouldn't buy Corona beer" reported by CNN is misleading
10 votes -
Arrest warrant issued in the Philippines for Fredrick Brennan, founder of 8chan, under cyberlibel charges brought by the site's current owner
17 votes -
Cameo is the logical endpoint of modern celebrity-obsessed culture and interaction—a perfect storm of convenience, access, and affordability
13 votes -
Are social networks polarizing? A Q&A with Ezra Klein | The Interface with Casey Newton, Issue #464, Feb 27
5 votes -
Reddit's 2019 Transparency Report
15 votes -
/r/WallStreetBets and how it came to be a force in the stock market
19 votes -
She wanted a 'freebirth' with no doctors. Online groups convinced her it would be OK.
23 votes -
Twitter is suspending 70 pro-Bloomberg accounts, citing ‘platform manipulation’
19 votes -
The story of how Saudia Arabia influenced two well-liked Twitter employees to access thousands of users' private information and pass it to the Saudi Royal Family
10 votes -
How to make a Kurzgesagt vídeo in 1200 hours or more
15 votes -
The YouTube copyright metagame part 1: The history of Copyright on YouTube and How YouTubers deal with it
7 votes -
After a TikTok user in Brazil live-streamed his suicide, TikTok took over an hour to notice and then spent three more hours figuring out a PR strategy before informing police
16 votes -
How Twitter's default settings enabled a security researcher to discover phone numbers for over seventeen million accounts
10 votes -
The internet of beefs
11 votes -
Facebook’s Clear History tool is now available to everyone
15 votes -
Facebook to pay $550 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over its use of facial recognition technology in Illinois
9 votes -
YouTube: bad? - Shannon Strucci's musing on YouTube, fan toxicity, issues with takedowns, and the ups and downs of a YouTube career
5 votes -
A Guardian investigation of 218,100 Facebook ads reveals how the Trump campaign’s sophisticated social media machine targets conservative voters
12 votes -
Product Hunt has launched YourStack, a social network for people to share products they use and love
4 votes -
Mastodon, my saviour: Why the left should ditch ad-verse social media
13 votes -
YouTube moderators are being required to sign a statement acknowledging the job could give them PTSD
26 votes -
Competition between video game streaming platforms is heating up as Mixer, YouTube, and Facebook Gaming lure away high-profile Twitch streamers with multi-million-dollar offers
11 votes -
Tildes users on the fediverse
It's been a while since we've had a thread like this and our active users have cycled around a bit (plus there's a lot of dead links in the old threads), so who here is on the fediverse?...
It's been a while since we've had a thread like this and our active users have cycled around a bit (plus there's a lot of dead links in the old threads), so who here is on the fediverse?
Connecting with some more people from here sounds nice :)
13 votes -
The Yang Gang and its bots
14 votes -
A software engineer's advice for saving social media: keep it small
29 votes -
Biden wants to get rid of law that shields companies like Facebook from liability for what their users post
17 votes -
DWeb SF Meet Up-- January
4 votes -
When we give in to manufactured internet wars
7 votes -
The Fediverse in 2019
15 votes -
Facebook's Ad Library, one of its main tools for election transparency, is riddled with issues and lost 74,000 ads just before the UK election
7 votes -
A top YouTube makeup artist revealed she’s transgender. She said she was blackmailed into it.
19 votes -
Twitter will put options to limit replies directly on the compose screen
5 votes -
Australia's bushfire emergency is being exploited on social media, as misinformation is spread through cyberspace via hundreds of thousands of posts.
News article: Fires misinformation being spread through social media This includes a prominent local billionaire, Andrew Forrest, who has pledged $70 million for bushfire relief: "I think there's...
News article: Fires misinformation being spread through social media
This includes a prominent local billionaire, Andrew Forrest, who has pledged $70 million for bushfire relief: "I think there's a multitude of reasons why the fire extent has bene so devastating. I think a warming planet would be part of that — [but] the biggest part of that is arsonists," he said.
13 votes -
The bot scare
5 votes -
Release of over 100,000 leaked documents from Cambridge Analytica has started, showing the company's work in sixty-eight countries
14 votes -
Sweet Anita on Tourette's racial slur controversy
11 votes -
Alienated, alone and angry: What the digital revolution really did to us
15 votes -
JK Rowling's Maya Forstater tweets support hostile work environments, not free speech
27 votes -
"Link in bio": it seems like a harmless phrase, but it represents a strategy of controlling users and keeping them away from the open web
15 votes -
YouTube star PewDiePie has announced he is taking a break from the platform, saying he is "feeling very tired"
24 votes