I’ve spent the past several weeks reading the Facebook Papers, a gigantic collection of internal documents from Facebook unlike anything I’ve encountered. A few observations:
(1/8)
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
The sheer amount of material is astonishing and frankly hard to characterize. We’re talking thousands upon thousands of pages of internal chats, research documents, and more. They’re highly technical. I can’t wait for academics to spend time with these documents.
(2/8)
Many of Facebook’s employees believe their company operates without a moral compass, and they are very, very worried about it. (3/8)
Facebook employees are studying the dangers posed by its platform all the time. The depth and sophistication of their knowledge is impressive, and this is visible in the Facebook Papers in a way that the public has never seen.
(4/8)
These documents leave little room for doubt about Facebook’s crucial role in advancing the cause of authoritarianism in America and around the world.
(5/8)
Most of all, these documents prove that the public deserves much greater insight into Facebook’s algorithmic infrastructure, its understanding of its own platforms, and related decision making.
(6/8)
There is so much more to come. You can read my first story on the Facebook Papers here:
theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/… (7/8)
And here’s @elcush’s Facebook Papers story on how America has the best version of Facebook in the world—that’s how not a good thing: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
(8/8)

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More from @AdrienneLaF

16 Jul
Good morning! I’ve been digging into Louisa May Alcott’s history with @TheAtlantic and this story is too good not to share. (1/15)
@TheAtlantic In 1861, Alcott submitted a manuscript to The Atlantic called “How I Went Out to Service,” a fictionalized account of her own (weird, short-lived) experience as a servant. (2/15)
@TheAtlantic The editor at the time, James T. Fields, rejected it.

The Atlantic had previously published her work under the magazine’s founding editor James Russell Lowell. Here’s a modern Cinderella story she wrote for the October 1860 issue, for example:
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… (3/15)
Read 15 tweets
15 Dec 20
The internet is a miracle. But the social web is so badly broken. My latest feature is about the core problem at the center of that brokenness. (1/7)
I’ve been thinking for years about what it would take to mitigate the harm caused by platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Google, and Twitter. (2/7)
I realized only recently that I’ve been thinking far too narrowly about the problem. I used to argue that Facebook should admit that it is a media company, and take responsibility for its product same way that the editor of a magazine would. (3/7)
Read 7 tweets
5 Sep 20
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the people who choose to serve in the military and to run for public office. [1/12]
Senator Daniel Inouye comes to mind. He was the first Japanese American in Congress. He died in 2012, when he was 88 years old. [2/12]
He was only 21 years old when he was very nearly killed leading his platoon against a heavily defended Nazi fortification on the Gothic Line, in Italy, in 1945. Inouye was shot in the stomach and in the leg. His arm was shattered, and later amputated, without anesthesia. [3/12]
Read 12 tweets
24 Aug 20
Hear hear. @TheAtlantic's @zeynep is extremely good at getting the most complicated things right. Just a few examples... (1/6) nytimes.com/2020/08/23/bus…
Her story about mask-wearing in April was so far ahead of so much else out there. “Think of the coronavirus pandemic as a fire... spread by infected people breathing out invisible embers every time they speak, cough, or sneeze.” (2/6) theatlantic.com/health/archive…
This piece on authoritarian blindness and how it is exacerbated in a pandemic is chilling (3/6) theatlantic.com/technology/arc…
Read 6 tweets
14 May 20
I’ve been writing about conspiracy theories and misinformation for more than a decade. But QAnon, which first emerged in 2017, always seemed different. (1/10)
theatlantic.com/magazine/archi…
I set out to report this story because I wanted to understand who really believed in Q, and why. What I learned surprised me. (2/10)
For the uninitiated, the basic premise: Q is a military insider with proof that world leaders are secretly torturing children; the malefactors are embedded in the “deep state”; Trump is working to thwart them. Q posts internet clues called “Q drops” to advance these ideas. (3/10)
Read 10 tweets
11 May 20
Today @TheAtlantic launched a new series about this weird limbo we’re all in. We're taking stock of what we've lost in the world left behind, and imagining the world already being remade in its place. I’ll keep updating this thread.
Here's @JamesFallows on what flying will be like for the next many years. Turns out the last two decades of air travel, which so often seemed undignified and awful, actually represented the golden age of flying: theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
And here’s @megangarber on how handshakes were always bad, and will not be missed.
theatlantic.com/culture/archiv…
Read 5 tweets

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