Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
Can Twitter be saved? I’m not talking about last week’s social media stock price plunge. It’s the ritualization of Gamergate-style uproar and dishonest brigading that has me disillusioned with the platform. I know soul-searching about Twitter is a bit of a journalistic trope at this point, since we all seem to be simultaneously enraptured with…
Since announcing her new job with The New York Times, a widespread campaign of harassment has targeted Verge reporter Sarah Jeong for a number of tweets she wrote years ago. Many of those now reacting to these tweets have intentionally taken them out of context, and she has since received an unrelenting stream of abuse…
Photo: AP Yesterday, the New York Times announced that it had hired Sarah Jeong, who is by all accounts an extremely talented tech reporter, as a new member of its editorial board. Today, Jim Hoft, once accurately called the “dumbest man on the internet” by Media Matters, published a collection of Jeong’s tweets which he…
SAN FRANCISCO — Left-leaning political activists accused Facebook of suppressing free speech when the social media giant removed an event listing this week that it said was part of a new disinformation campaign with ties to Russia. Facebook said it had to act quickly to disclose that inauthentic operators were behind an upcoming event in Washington to…
Discovery Channel founder John Hendricks is tweaking the business model for his video streaming startup after falling short of his initial expectations for subscriber growth. When CuriosityStream was launched in 2015, Mr. Hendricks predicted that between five million and seven million people would pay to view the company’s blend of documentaries and other non-fiction content within two…
Image wrap box Free blurb with Takeaway Last fall, on a flight back from China, Evan Spiegel decided to remake Snapchat. Inspired by apps he’d seen in that country, Mr. Spiegel wanted to create a new version separating users’ friends’ content from the professional media. Each category would be sorted by an algorithm rather than…
[if IE 9]>< ![endif][if IE 9]>< ![endif]WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Detective Comics #985 by Bryan Hill, Phillipe Briones, Adriano Lucas and Sal Cipriano, on sale now. ads ninja 2.0 : printing the ad: mid intro It’s not unusual to for Batman to ponder whether his methods help create the very monsters he fights,…
In 2008, Barack Obama held up change as a beacon, attaching to it another word, a word that channeled everything his young and diverse coalition saw in his rise and their newfound political power: hope. An America that would elect a black man president was an America in which a future was being written that…
White supremacists protest at last year’s “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA. Photo: AP On July 11th, Spokane, WA Republican Party chairwoman Cecily Wright introduced the alt-right personality James Allsup at a meeting of Northwest Grassroots, a local tea party organization. Allsup—a 22-year-old elected GOP precinct officer and noted white supremacist—is introduced by Wright…
The story of the plastic bag—the kind that is so ubiquitous in grocery stores, in gutters, in the branches of trees—is a story of persuasion, one that began with a battle between paper and plastic in the hearts of the American people. “People are fond of the old paper bag,” Peter Bunten explained to the…