Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
For a platform that likes to keep reminding us over and over and over again that it prizes our individual privacy, Facebook’s done a pretty piss-poor job of actually following through. Over the past few months, we’ve seen the company purposefully prevent any of us from opting out of this sort of data-mining machine, while…
When theologian Martin Luther debuted his Ninety-five Theses in 16th-century Germany, he triggered a religious Reformation — and also a media revolution. 1630 map of the Maluku Archipelago (Moluccas, or Spice Islands) The printing press, invented approximately 50 years before the 95 Theses, extended Luther’s reach from the door of the cathedral to the entirety…
You can’t really blame journalist and activist Lauren Duca for being a little nervous about agreeing to an interview. When I first asked to profile her in advance of her new book, How to Start a Revolution: Young People and the Future of American Politics, I did it over Twitter DM. She agreed, but seemed…
In a memo he sent before leaving the company, a former Google employee criticized the internet giant and its employees, noting that he regularly encountered racism during his experience as a Black worker at the company. The memo, obtained by Motherboard, is titled “The Weight of Silence,” and argues that Google is lacking in diversity,…
Is adding “From Facebook” to the branding for the social media giant’s Instagram photo- and video-sharing network and WhatsApp messaging application a good move, a bad move or inconsequential? Writer and business coach Jason Aten opted for the second, saying in his post on Inc., “Let’s put this in context: This branding move would be like…
ImageFacebook, under its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, is making changes to deal with antitrust scrutiny.CreditCreditTom Brenner/The New York Times SAN FRANCISCO — Senator Elizabeth Warren has called for the breakup of big tech companies like Facebook. Regulators have opened investigations into Facebook’s power in social networking. Even one of Facebook’s own founders has laid…
It appears the Trump administration is drafting an executive order that has the potential to radically change how the content posted on social networks are governed, stripping crucial protections from tech companies and inserting much more government oversight. This is being done under the guise of a popular political talking point claiming that social media…
ABC News was among the news outlets that received a pitch from Facebook to license their content. Photo: Kena Betancur/Getty Images Updated Aug. 8, 2019 4:31 pm ET Facebook Inc. FB 2.71% is offering news outlets millions of dollars for the rights to put their content in a news section that the company hopes to…
Over the past few years, Mastodon has become the model for a friendlier kind of social network, promising to keep out the hateful or ugly content that proliferates on larger and more centralized networks. Journalists hailed it as “Twitter without Nazis” and for years, it’s generally lived up to that promise. But last week, the…
Facebook has just announced the full details of its Libra cryptocurrency venture, including details of the founder members of the Libra Association, among them Visa, Mastercard, Uber and Spotify. Its mission, it says, is to make payments cheaper and more accessible. Whether we can trust them about that is another matter. Libra could be a social-good venture…