Stream of Reading (Prepare to be Forwarded) – An Archive of What I'm Reading
“Data is the new oil” is one of those deceptively simple mantras for the modern world. Whether in The New York Times, The Economist, or WIRED, the wildcatting nature of oil exploration, plus the extractive exploitation of a trapped asset, seems like an apt metaphor for the boom in monetized data. Antonio García Martínez (@antoniogm)…
Millions of smartphone users confess their most intimate secrets to apps, including when they want to work on their belly fat or the price of the house they checked out last weekend. Other apps know users’ body weight, blood pressure, menstrual cycles or pregnancy status. Unbeknown to most people, in many cases that data is…
Harvard Business School invented the “leadership” industry—and produced a generation of corporate monsters. No wonder Sandberg, one of the school’s most prominent graduates, lacks a functioning moral compass. Sandberg arrives for a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on September 5, 2018. By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call. The ongoing three-way public-relations car wreck involving Washington, Facebook, and…
This week, protesters scaled the Arc de Triomphe, burned cars, and clashed with police in the third consecutive weekend of riots in France. More than 300 people were arrested in Paris last weekend alone, and 37,000 law enforcement officers have been deployed around the country to restore order. The “Gilets Jaunes” or “Yellow Jackets” protests…
Photo: Getty Mic, the millennial-focused digital news site, laid off most of its editorial staff on Thursday morning as the company’s top brass works to finalize a sale to Bustle Digital Group, Recode first reported. According to the site, the company’s CEO, Chris Altchek, announced the mass layoffs at a staff meeting this morning. Altchek…
Yesterday outgoing Head of Communications and Policy Elliot Schrage shared more detail with our employees about the work we did with Definers, a Washington, DC PR firm. Many of you have raised questions about our relationship with the Definers consulting firm. We’ve been looking into this and though it is close to a holiday for…
A 16-year-old South Sudanese girl was sold off for marriage to the highest bidder on Facebook in November, raising concerns that the platform has become a “latter-day slave market.” A businessman from South Sudan outbid four others — which included a senior Sudanese government official — after the girl’s family posted a message on Facebook…
A Facebook ad in October urged political conservatives to support the Trump administration’s rollback of fuel emission standards, which it hailed as “our president’s car freedom agenda” and “plan for safer, cheaper cars that WE get to choose.” The ad came from a Facebook page called Energy4US, and it included a disclaimer, required by Facebook,…
Image: Gizmodo Somewhere in the heart of Facebook HQ, a shadowy team toils behind the closed doors of what would appear to be an average conference room. This is Facebook’s War Room, and it’s the thin line standing between us and chaos. Gizmodo did not visit the War Room, but early Thursday morning, almost simultaneously,…
The U.S. digital ad market grew by nearly $12 billion last year, with Google and Facebook collecting 77 cents of each new dollar spent, according to eMarketer. Peter and Maria Hoey June 19, 2017 5:30 a.m. ET Facebook Inc. FB -2.59% and Alphabet Inc.’s GOOGL -0.02% Google tower so far above the rest of the…