The Best Articles in Digital Life
The most useful articles and videos in Digital Life from around the web—beginners to advanced—curated by thought leaders and our community. We focus on timeless pieces and update the list whenever we discover new, must-read articles or videos—make sure to bookmark and revisit this page.
Top 5 Digital Life Articles
At a glance: these are the articles that have been most read, shared, and saved in Digital Life by Refind users in 2023.
Videos
Watch a video to get a quick overview.
why Japan's internet is weirdly designed
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The Dead Internet Theory
The internet is ever changing, but over the past couple of years things have started to change. The proportion of bots in increasing. A theory dubbed “The De...
Everything is a Remix (Complete Updated 2023 Edition)
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How Cell Phones Impact Our Relationships
Are you making others feel less important than a device? + + +Simon is an unshakable optimist. He believes in a bright future and our ability to build it tog...
What is ...?
New to Digital Life? These articles make an excellent introduction.
How to Use Discord: A Beginner’s Guide
Confused by the buzzy social platform? Here’s everything you need to know.
What is Technology Doing to Us?
In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with Tristan Harris about the arms race for human attention, the ethics of persuasion, the consequences of having an ad-based economy, the dynamics of regret, and other topics.
How to ...?
How to talk to conspiracy theorists—and still be kind
Experts and r/ChangeMyView subreddit moderators offer 10 tips to debunk conspiracy theories convincingly—and kindly.
How to make your offline self harder to find online
Keep your personal information personal
«Our goal in this article is to help you condense your attack surface as much as possible.»
How to Check Your Devices for Stalkerware
You deserve privacy. Here's how to check your phone, laptop, and online accounts to make sure no one's looking over your shoulder.
How to avoid Amazon: the definitive guide to online shopping
Amazon is now making up to £8,800 a second, while concerns persist about its tax affairs, treatment of staff and effect on small retailers. Here’s how to buy everything from technology to beauty to…
How to Dox Yourself on the Internet
A step-by-step guide to finding and removing your personal information from the internet.
Trending
These links are currently making the rounds in Digital Life on Refind.
How China took over the world’s online shopping carts
Chinese e-commerce platforms like Shein, Temu, and TikTok Shop are going global with big ambitions.
Your phone is the key to your digital life. Make sure you know what to do if…
Preparing yourself for the worst is easier than you might think — and it’s never been more important.
Yes, There Is a Science to Shopping
Five tips to help you navigate the holiday craze with cunning and skill.
The people who ruined the internet
SEO experts got very rich filling the web full of garbage. But are they to blame or is Google?
«Soon, he said, Google results would be even worse, dominated entirely by AI-generated crap designed to please the algorithms, produced and published at volumes far beyond anything humans could create, far beyond anything we’d ever seen before.»
Short Articles
Short on time? Check out these useful short articles in Digital Life—all under 10 minutes.
An Apocalyptic Meditation on Doomscrolling
The next time you catch yourself doomscrolling, take it as an invitation to own your own horror.
«Compulsion is key to doomscrolling, which means that, whatever else is going on, we enjoy it.»
Time-warped: how modern life shortens our perspectives
Many of us feel the anxiety of living in a time of ‘polycrisis’, but taking a long view will help you cope
«polycrisis, a cluster of related global risks and their effects, and of a permacrisis, the Collins Dictionary’s 2022 word of the year, defined as “an extended period of instability and insecurity”.»
TikTok is confusing by design
TikTok isn’t the way I want the internet to work, but it’s where the internet is going.
The messy art of posting through it
Social media is our public diary — and it’s only getting more intimate.
Long Articles
These are some of the most-read long-form articles in Digital Life.
Why note-taking apps don’t make us smarter
Their big promise has fizzled out.
«I have so much information at hand that I feel paralyzed.»
The end of the Googleverse
The last 25 years of Google’s history can be boiled down to a battle against the Google bomb. Is the search engine finally losing to its hijackers?
The Tinder car heist was a mess — and the revenge plot even messier
He swiped right, they swiped his car, and then, he tried to get even.
Fish doorbells! Historic sandwiches! 50 of the weirdest, most wonderful corners of the web
Can’t face another minute thinking about war, inflation or the climate catastrophe? Give your brain a break in a strange, surprising or entrancing corner of the internet. We’ve got riddles, we’ve got…
The Strangely Beautiful Experience of Google Reviews
Glimpses of humanity in an unlikely corner of the internet.
Thought Leaders
We monitor hundreds of thought leaders, influencers, and newsletters in Digital Life, including:
OM
Partner Emeritus @TrueVentures. Founder of GigaOM. I write about technology! ✍🏼+ 📸 + 🌐 = http://Om.co (Sign-up for my free newsletter http://om.co/newsletters/ )
Seth Godin
Author, blogger, a lifetime of projects. This is a retweet of my blog.
Mark Manson
3x #1 NYTimes bestselling author of "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" and others. Giving life advice that doesn't suck since 2008.
zeynep tufekci
Complex systems, wicked problems. Society, technology, science and more. @Columbia professor. @NYTimes columnist. My newsletter @insight http://www.theinsight.org
Nir Eyal
Bestselling author of "Hooked" and "Indistractable"
What is Refind?
Every day Refind picks the most relevant links from around the web for you. Picking only a handful of links means focusing on what’s relevant and useful. We favor timeless pieces—links with long shelf-lives, articles that are still relevant one month, one year, or even ten years from now. These lists of the best resources on any topic are the result of years of careful curation.
How does Refind curate?
It’s a mix of human and algorithmic curation, following a number of steps:
- We monitor 10k+ sources and 1k+ thought leaders on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
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The result: lists of the best and most useful articles on hundreds of topics.
How does Refind detect «timeless» pieces?
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How many sources does Refind monitor?
We monitor 10k+ content sources on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
Who are the thought leaders in Digital Life?
We follow dozens of thought leaders in Digital Life, including OM, Seth Godin, Mark Manson, zeynep tufekci, Nir Eyal.
Missing a thought leader? Submit them here
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