Selling Mark Zuckerberg
Making sense of the CEO’s very public tour of America, which feels like a political campaign minus the politics.
Making sense of the CEO’s very public tour of America, which feels like a political campaign minus the politics.
Nitasha Tiku Buzzfeed Apr 2017 20min Permalink
Computer scientist tycoon Robert Mercer is at the heart of a shockingly well-funded propaganda network.
Carole Cadwalladr The Guardian Feb 2017 20min Permalink
Libertarian, futurist, billionaire: a profile of Peter Thiel.
George Packer New Yorker Nov 2011 35min Permalink
The social network positioned its plan to bring the internet to millions of Indians as a gift. The country saw a catch.
Rahul Bhatia The Guardian May 2016 25min Permalink
On the history of content moderation and what it means for the future of free speech.
Catherine Buni, Soraya Chemaly The Verge Apr 2016 40min Permalink
The humans behind the algorithm.
Will Oremus Slate Jan 2015 25min Permalink
Famous people and the media have always needed each other. It has been a long, mutually beneficial (and mutually profitable) partnership. And it’s over.
John Herrman The Awl Dec 2015 25min Permalink
The search for an Iraq veteran on the brink of suicide.
Zach Baron GQ Aug 2015 25min Permalink
A murder case in Mississippi catches the eye of amateur sleuths on Facebook, who proceed to harass everyone involved in the case.
Katie J.M. Baker Buzzfeed Jun 2015 30min Permalink
A French reporter went undercover as potential “caliphette” and recieved a marriage proposal from a senior ISIS commander.
Margarette Driscoll Sunday Times of London Mar 2015 10min Permalink
How Facebook ‘likes’ landed Jelani Henry in Rikers.
Ben Popper The Verge Dec 2014 20min Permalink
An interactive fiction: a son and the illusion of his dead father; the intersection of technology and real life.
"Once I created his page I tried to return to my life. I was twenty-six years old, a man of inconsistent employment. During the winter I shoveled snow for the elderly. They paid me in germs and butterscotch candy. My landlord, an independently wealthy sexagenarian, accepted the candy as payment. She also insisted I tidy the complex. I changed light bulbs. I dusted the parking lot. I swept cigarette butts into the street. I clubbed the occasional beehive. My life was guarded and lonely, and susceptible, I soon discovered, to the distraction my father provided."
Alex McElroy Passages North Nov 2014 15min Permalink
A troubled wife's obsession with her husband's ex.
"I’d been researching generic articles on divorce for a long time, but never found anything that reminded me of Henry’s. They were young, but they weren’t as stupid as he seemed to say. They seemed to have really been in love. The picture he’d shown me was of them on a boat on a lake—a lake we’d been to, one we’d brought a picnic lunch to. They looked so happy and he looked so young, his hair not yet flecked with stray whites and grays."
Katie Darby Mullins Pithead Chapel Nov 2014 15min Permalink
The grim world of outsourced content moderation.
Adrian Chen Wired Oct 2014 15min Permalink
“There are people who are wired to be skeptics and there are people who are wired to be optimists. And I can tell you, at least from the last 20 years, if you bet on the side of the optimists, generally you’re right.’
Kevin Roose New York Oct 2014 25min Permalink
Privacy, memory, data and advertising—how the modern web has become a Ponzi scheme and how we might be able to fix it.
Maciej Cegłowski Idle Words May 2014 Permalink
Cory Booker, Chris Christie, and Mark Zuckerberg had a plan to reform Newark’s schools. They got an education.
Dale Russakoff New Yorker May 2014 45min Permalink
“I guess what you post on Facebook matters.” An 18-year-old faces 10 years in jail for a sarcastic threat on Facebook.
Craig Malisow Dallas Observer Feb 2014 10min Permalink
The capitalist evangelism of Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In feminist manifesto.
Susan Faludi The Baffler Oct 2013 35min Permalink
The emerging political consciousness of Silicon Valley.
George Packer New Yorker May 2013 40min Permalink
How Wall Street won.
Khadeeja Safdar The Atlantic May 2013 15min Permalink
Marketing research,the pre-Facebook history of ‘likeability,’ and why there will never be a ‘dislike’ button.
Robert W. Gehl The New Inquiry Mar 2013 Permalink
A former Facebook executive critiques Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” movement.
Kate Losse Dissent Mar 2013 15min Permalink
On Ilya Zhitomirskiy, an idealistic young developer who committed suicide 18 months after founding Diaspora, his well-publicized, open-source alternative to Facebook.
Matthew Shaer Fortune Mar 2013 20min Permalink
A profile of Mark Zuckerberg, savvy CEO.
Henry Blodget New York May 2012 20min Permalink