Social Media

Discover the best articles, videos, and resources on social media. How social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok shape our lives. Follow along on Refind to get the most relevant new links picked for you.
9 Best Articles in 2021
medium.com
How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds — from a Magician and Google’s Design Ethicist — Mediummedium.com
~16 min read · From 2016 · When using technology, we often focus optimistically on all the things it does for us. But I want you to show you where it might do the opposite.
technology
digital life
startups
WIRED
Inside Facebook's Hellish Two Years—and Mark Zuckerberg's Struggle to Fix it AllWIRED
20+ min read · From 2018 · How a confused, defensive social media giant steered itself into a disaster, and how Mark Zuckerberg is trying to fix it all.
facebook
history
russia
Guardian Tech
'Our minds can be hijacked': the tech insiders who fear a smartphone dystopiaGuardian Tech
20+ min read · From 2017 · The Google, Apple and Facebook workers who helped make technology so addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet. Paul Lewis reports on the Silicon Valley refuseniks who worry the race…
addiction
fbchange
digital life
Facebook Newsroom
It’s Facebook Official, Dating Is HereFacebook Newsroom
2019-09-05 · Facebook Dating makes it easier to find love through what you like.
relationships
social media
facebook
MIT Technology Review
He got Facebook hooked on AI. Now he can't fix its misinformation addictionMIT Technology Review
20+ min read · Mar 11th · Three years ago, the company began building "responsible AI." This is the story of how it failed.
facebook
technology
social media
Highlights
Zuckerberg’s obsession with getting the whole world to use Facebook had found a powerful new weapon. Teams had previously used design tactics, like experimenting with the content and frequency of notifications, to try to hook users more effectively
The researcher’s team also found that users with a tendency to post or engage with melancholy content—a possible sign of depression—could easily spiral into consuming increasingly negative material that risked further worsening their mental health. The team proposed tweaking the content-ranking models for these users to stop maximizing engagement alone, so they would be shown less of the depressing stuff.
The New York Times
Designed to Deceive: Do These People Look Real to You?The New York Times
4 min read · 2020-11-21 · The people in this story may look familiar, like ones you’ve seen on Facebook or Twitter or Tinder. But they don’t exist. They were born from the mind of a computer, and the technology behind them is…
deepfakes
technology
social media
Buffer
The 20 Best New Social Media Tools to Try in 2017 (And How to Use Them)Buffer
~20 min read · From 2016 · The social media world is a fascinating one. Every so often, a new social media platform emerges to capture our attention (Peach) or become part of our daily lives (Snapchat). The social media tools landscape can be just as fascinating — and robust! Every week, people build and launch new social media tools, empowering us marketers in […]
social media
tools
social media tools
The Economist Data Team
How heavy use of social media is linked to mental illnessThe Economist Data Team
5 min read · From 2018 · Youngsters report problems with anxiety, depression, sleep and “FoMO”
social media
mental health
health
The Verge
The Trauma FloorThe Verge
20+ min read · From 2019
social media
technology
facebook
New this week
Timeline: Looking Back at 10 Years of Snapchat
Visual Capitalist
Investigation: How TikTok's Algorithm Figures Out Your Deepest Desires
The Wall Street Journal
Job-Hunters, Have You Posted Your Résumé on TikTok?
The New York Times
Outrage As A Business Model: How Ben Shapiro Is Using Facebook To Build An Empire
NPR
Facebook Got Rid of Racial Ad Categories. Or Did It?
The Markup
The next big social network trend? Shortform audio
The Verge
Facebook Tells Biden: ‘Facebook Is Not the Reason’ Vaccination Goal Was Missed
The New York Times
Instagram’s new test shows you stuff you’ve seen lately and lets you reshare it to Stories
TechCrunch
The foreigners in China’s disinformation drive
BBC News (World)
Is Social Media Making Us … Better People?
WIRED
Opinion | Why We Crave Internet Justice
The New York Times
TikTok Becomes the First Non-Facebook Mobile App to Reach 3 Billion Downloads Globally
sensortower.com
I can’t quit you, Facebook, but I should. We all should.
The Washington Post
I’m a Twitter addict and I don’t care
Financial Times
A People’s History of Black Twitter, Part I
WIRED
Take a deep dive
Recently popular
The Atlantic
My Twitter RehabThe Atlantic
8 min read · Jul 5th · I’d rather have gone out on a champagne bender or bet the house on a poker game than let myself be undone by an addiction to social media.
twitter
social media
digital life
Highlights
You know what finally took me down? Fucking Twitter.
The simplest definition of an addiction is a habit that you can’t quit, even though it poses obvious danger. How many people have lost their jobs over ill-considered tweets?
The New York Times
Inside Facebook’s Data WarsThe New York Times
~11 min read · Jul 14th · Executives at the social network have clashed over CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned data tool that revealed users’ high engagement levels with right-wing media sources.
facebook
social media
The New York Times
Opinion | Why We Crave Internet JusticeThe New York Times
5 min read · Jul 17th · On social media, we are all hammers seeking nails.
digital life
social media
Highlights
Something fundamental has changed since then. I don’t enjoy most social media anymore. I’ve felt this way for a while, but I’m loath to admit it.
In real life, we are fearful Davids staring down seemingly omnipotent Goliaths: a Supreme Court poised to undermine abortion and civil rights; a patch of sea on fire from a gas leak; an incoherent but surprisingly effective attack on teaching children America’s real history; the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act; a man whom dozens of women have accused of sexual assault walking free on a technicality. At least online, we can tell ourselves that the power imbalances between us flatten. Suddenly, we are all Goliaths in the Valley of Elah.
The New York Times
The ‘Ugly Truth’ About FacebookThe New York Times
5 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
Highlights
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.
The Verge
The next big social network trend? Shortform audioThe Verge
5 min read · Jul 16th · Voice notes with viral dreams
social media
startups
media
The New York Times
Inside Facebook’s Data WarsThe New York Times
~11 min read · Jul 14th · Executives at the social network have clashed over CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned data tool that revealed users’ high engagement levels with right-wing media sources.
facebook
social media
Stratechery
Instagram’s EvolutionStratechery
~12 min read · Jul 7th · Instagram’s shift away from being a photo-sharing app is very much inline with the service’s continuous evolution.
social media
facebook
instagram
MIT Sloan School of Management
Social media is broken. A new report offers 25 ways to fix itMIT Sloan School of Management
4 min read · Jul 1st · A new report offers solutions to the problems that hound social media, from the spread of misinformation to the lack of competition.
social media
Highlights
“Social media is rewiring the central nervous system of humanity in real time,” said MIT Sloan professor who led the event. “We’re now at a crossroads between its promise and its peril.”
The Wall Street Journal
Investigation: How TikTok's Algorithm Figures Out Your Deepest DesiresThe Wall Street Journal
Jul 21st · A Wall Street Journal investigation found that TikTok only needs one important piece of information to figure out what you want: the amount of time you linger o
social media
WIRED
What If Regulating Facebook Fails?WIRED
3 min read · Jul 2nd · It seems increasingly likely that antitrust and content moderation tools aren’t up to the task. Here’s what we do next.
facebook
social media
Social Media

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