Anti-Social Media

Real Life
Why Can’t We Be Friends — Real Life~11 min read · Jul 1st · Podcasts and other forms of “parasocial” media reframe friendship as monetized self-care
relationships
The New York Times
The ‘Ugly Truth’ About Facebook5 min read · Jul 9th · A new, deeply reported book by the Times reporters Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang recounts the full story of the social media company’s foibles.
digital life
media
social media
Most highlighted
The social media behemoth does as little as possible to prevent disasters from happening, then feebly attempts to avoid blame and manage public appearances. The same series of events — an unheeded warning from an employee or an outsider, followed by executives’ inaction, followed by crisis — repeats with regard to users’ data privacy, Russia’s influence in American elections, ethnic violence in Myanmar and on and on.
This is a book intended to make you outraged at Facebook. But if you’ve read anything about the company in recent years, you probably already are.
TechCrunch
TikTok just gave itself permission to collect biometric data on US users, including ‘faceprints and voiceprints’5 min read · Jun 3rd · A change to TikTok’s U.S. privacy policy on Wednesday introduced a new section that says the social video app “may collect biometric identifiers and biometric information” from its users’ content.…
privacy
digital life
social media
Most highlighted
The policy also notes this part of the data collection is for enabling “special video effects, for content moderation, for demographic classification, for content and ad recommendations, and for other non-personally-identifying operations
The New York Times
We Worked Together on the Internet. Last Week, He Stormed the Capitol.7 min read · Jan 11th · At BuzzFeed, we followed the signals of social media. A young employee followed them all the way to Charlottesville and Capitol Hill.
social media
digital life
The New Republic
Making Sense of the Facebook Menace~18 min read · 2020-12-31 · Can the largest media platform in the world ever be made safe for democracy?
facebook
social media
social networks
The Atlantic
Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine~16 min read · 2020-12-15 · The architecture of the modern web poses grave threats to humanity. It’s not too late to save ourselves.
facebook
social media
society
Most highlighted
anthropologist Robin Dunbar, who argued that 148 is the maximum number of stable social connections a person can maintain.
magic number” for start-ups, and how after a company surpasses 150 employees,
Fast Company
The ‘Coded Bias’ documentary is ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ for Big Tech algorithms2 min read · 2020-11-12 · Director Shalini Kantayya’s documentary ‘Coded Bias’ unravels how inherent gender and racial biases get embedded in the algorithms that run our lives.
equality
tv
Aeon+Psyche
How smartphones silence what the urban landscape tries to say10 min read · 2019-10-03 · When you stare at your phone or use Uber to navigate your neighbourhood, you flatten the rich texture of urban life
society
Guardian Books
Give up Google, don't hit 'accept all': how to fight for your privacy7 min read · 2020-09-28 · In Privacy Is Power, professor Carissa Véliz has made a shocking survey of how much intimate data we are surrendering. But she has a plan to fight back
privacy
digital life
POLITICO
Why the right-wing has a massive advantage on Facebook6 min read · 2020-09-26 · A company executive responds to claims of bias.
politics
social media
facebook
The New York Times
Mark Zuckerberg Is the Most Powerful Unelected Man in America5 min read · 2020-09-03 · Facebook is too big for democracy.
society
politics
facebook
Fast Company
Facebook is quietly pressuring its independent fact-checkers to change their rulings~13 min read · 2020-08-20 · As Facebook struggles with waves of misinformation, the company’s political and business concerns are influencing its fact-checking policies.
facebook
social media
Slate
Illiberalism Isn’t to Blame for the Death of Good-Faith Debate8 min read · 2020-07-12 · Bad faith is the condition of the modern internet.
society
culture
The Atlantic
Even Facebook Is Pining for the Internet It Destroyed4 min read · 2020-07-30 · The tech giant’s new oddball social-media app is a testament to its power.
Fast Company
‘Mark Zuckerberg is the biggest oligarch in the history of mankind’6 min read · 2020-06-26 · The outspoken NYU professor Scott Galloway doesn’t mince words about our favorite social network and the government’s failure to regulate it.
facebook
technology
WIRED
Facebook Groups Are Destroying America3 min read · 2020-06-17 · They're built for privacy and community—and that's just what makes them dangerous.
digital life
facebook
Anti-Social Media

The 5 most relevant links from around the web + key takeaways, every day.

Welcome back

Share Anti-Social Media
