Sunday read: For a long time, people like me who were foreign correspondents saw Facebook as a tool that would *help* democracy, not hurt it. I asked @sheeraf about this: ckarchive.com/b/68ueh8h84wpr
Sheera, the author, with @ceciliakang, of a new best-selling book about how Facebook became so dangerous to democracy, told me how she witnessed the shift from “Facebook will spread democracy” to “Facebook helps authoritarians” in real time while based in Cairo.
She also talked about how no one in Facebook’s executive ranks anticipated this because they all come from similar, sheltered backgrounds. It is another point in why diversity at the top matters.
And buy Sheera's and Cecilia's AMAZING book here. I never thought a book about Facebook would be such a gripping page-turner, but wow, it really, really is. bookshop.org/books/an-ugly-…
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"There are so many fucking Trump books," says one book editor, wondering what we're learning from any of them. Or as one industry insider quipped, “What are we going to find out in these books? That Trump threw a banana at John Kelly?” My latest:
So about that Guardian story about that document Putin allegedly signed authorizing an operation to put Trump in the White House? I spoke to a fmr intelligence officer who handled that intel in real time and they were…skeptical. (My latest: ckarchive.com/b/68ueh8h8md7z)
The other thing that should make you skeptical: the byline on that story.
And it’s not just that Manafort/Assange story that Luke got wrong. He was known for stories that sounded amazing and sensational—but were thinly sourced.
“Everything seems more buttoned up than the streaking convention that was the Trump White House,” says @Olivianuzzi.
“The truth is the Biden White House is very opaque,” said @sbg1.
“The mechanics of reporting have changed so much,” another reporter said. “It was just this really aberrant period in which you could almost guarantee that, with enough effort, you could find out what’s going on in the Situation Room. Now you can’t—and it’s infuriating.”
For Jews like myself who have lived anti-Semitism and carry the intimate details of our families’ trauma—pogroms, the Holocaust, the Pale of Settlement, the Doctors’ Plot—the fear that this peace is just a temporary blip is always right under the skin. nytimes.com/2021/05/26/us/…
What frustrates me about the discourse on the left is the assumption that because Jews have assimilated into whiteness in the last three generations in America, that Jews have always been white and powerful, as if discrimination by skin tone weren’t a uniquely American creation.
Ignoring the history of Jews as the underclass of Christian Europe, for a good 2000 years, constantly slaughtered and discriminated against, as second-class dimi in the Muslim world (where they were also subjected to religious violence) is in and of itself anti-Semitic.
While you weren't looking, the Kremlin has turbocharged its campaign to kill what's left of independent Russian media. Journalists, including college students running a college publication, are facing jail times. cnn.com/2021/04/15/eur…
Other publications, like @meduzaproject, which publishes an excellent English-language newsletter, has been labeled a "foreign agent," which is likely to drive away all its advertisers.
Alexey @navalny has declared an end to his 24-day hunger strike. On April 20–the day before yesterday’s protests—he was transferred to a civilian hospital and examined by doctors. He tells his supporters: “This is entirely your doing.” instagram.com/p/COAeBxIFNpL/…
He didn’t seem to have gotten everything he wanted but he cites the open letter of his doctors, published yesterday, asking him to stop the hunger strike, “or soon, there won’t be anyone left to treat.” It seems the letter gave him cover to stop striking and avoid impending death
The symmetry is fascinating: yesterday, Putin announced a drawdown of the (inexplicable) massing of troops on the Ukrainian border after his big state of the nation address. Today, Navalny announces an end to his hunger strike after thousands protest on his behalf across Russia.