Journalism's Death by a Thousand Tweets Perhaps journalists don’t in fact like using Twitter any more than the average person, and their heavy use of the platform is simply a reflection of professional pressure coupled with its highly addictive nature. Thomas Moller-Nielsen 31 Jul 2020 · 12 min read
The Ever-Shrinking Transistor and the Invention of Google The developments of the search engine and social media follow the usual path of innovation: incremental, gradual, serendipitous, and inexorable; few eureka moments or sudden breakthroughs. Matt Ridley 15 Jun 2020 · 14 min read
Behind the Great Firewall For the most part, the Great Firewall (GFW) is irrelevant for the average Chinese citizen, mostly irrelevant for most Chinese netizens, and for many of the rest it protects their ability to make money. Thomas Brown 24 Jan 2020 · 11 min read
Streaming Will Never Be as Bad as Cable Some of these services will offer really good value to consumers, and those that don’t will quickly become irrelevant. Daniel Friedman 23 Jan 2020 · 7 min read
Glassdoor Is Broken In every instance there were detailed discussions about what’s missing and how to do better, delivered in a spirit of “hey, we’re not on a good path here.” Peter L. Levin 16 Jan 2020 · 12 min read
It’s Time to Pay for Social Media Breaking up the tech giants would interrupt the network effects that make their products so valuable in the first place. Tristan Flock 11 Jan 2020 · 8 min read
YouTube Censored My Interview With Posie Parker The subliminal message behind this is obvious: “Censor yourself so we don’t have to.” Konstantin Kisin 22 Nov 2019 · 5 min read
Sheep and Mirrors: On Being Social What is it about other people that bestows such joy, such comfort, such indispensable meaning on our lives? Emma Wilkins 8 Nov 2019 · 13 min read
Facebook Already Controls Our Information. Don’t Let It Control Our Commerce But while other cryptocurrencies can serve to increase our personal freedom and privacy, Libra, which is scheduled for launch in 2020, likely would have the opposite effect. Nadim Kobeissi 20 Aug 2019 · 7 min read
Knitting's Infinity War, Part III: Showdown at Yarningham The post brought out the worst of the knitting world’s anti-racism mobs Kathrine Jebsen Moore 28 Jul 2019 · 9 min read
Culture War Churn and the YouTube Rabbit-Hole The YouTube-rabbit-hole phenomenon will undoubtedly continue to radicalize certain individuals. But give it time, let the churn machine keep churning. Peter Clarke 17 Jul 2019 · 7 min read
Deplatforming Won't Work An even more fundamental reason why social media companies shouldn’t try to suppress controversial ideas is that they are very bad at determining who and what is wrong or dangerous. Nathan Cofnas 8 Jul 2019 · 6 min read
How Free Speech Dies Online Political speech is the most important category of speech and it is the first category of speech authoritarians will seek to constrain as they consolidate power. Daniel Friedman 23 Jun 2019 · 14 min read
What Do the Oligarchs Have in Mind for Us? What has not been discussed nearly as much is the end game of the oligarchs. Joel Kotkin 19 Jun 2019 · 10 min read
A Black Eye for the Columbia Journalism Review Essays attacking the left- or right-wing bias of this or that media outlet are, of course, old hat in my business. Jonathan Kay 18 Jun 2019 · 9 min read
