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Casey Newton Profile picture
Casey Newton
@CaseyNewton
Writing @platformer. Co-hosting Hard Fork @nytimes. Posting good tweets to Instagram stories @crumbler. casey@platformer.news | https://t.co/9KuJb8XCrr
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Nov 24, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Happy Thanksgiving! I asked three new-ish generative AI models to write a paragraph about what this day means to them.

All of these were generated within 3-4 seconds.

First up, @memdotai • Thanksgiving has always been a time for family, friends, Next up, the new AI writing tool in @NotionHQ Thanksgiving to me means a time to reflect on all that I am
Nov 15, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
NEW: Employees who have criticized Elon Musk in Twitter’s Slack channels were fired overnight over email.

“We regret to inform you that your employment is terminated immediately,” they’re being told over email. “Your recent behavior has violated company policy.” It’s not clear how many people were affected; seems like it’s more than 10 people but I’m working to learn more.

More in @Plaformer today; email me if you know something.
Nov 13, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Getting word that a large number of number of Twitter contractors were just laid off this afternoon with no notice, both in the US and abroad. Functions affected appear to include content moderation, real estate, and marketing, among others Contractors aren’t being notified at all, they’re just losing access to Slack and email. Managers figured it out when their workers just disappeared from the system.

They heard nothing from their leaders
Nov 10, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Looking away from the timeline long enough to write a newsletter today proving to be the hardest challenge @platformer has ever faced From @ZoeSchiffer and I, an account of one of the most chaotic days in Twitter’s history. We’re making it free for everyone to read because we think the whole story needs to be told.

platformer.news/p/inside-the-t…
Nov 10, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
According to messages shared in Twitter Slack, Twitter’s CISO, chief privacy office, and chief compliance officer all resigned last night.

An employee says it will be up to engineers to “self-certify compliance with FTC requirements and other laws.” “All of this is extremely dangerous for our users,” the message says. “Given that the FTC can (and will!) fine Twitter BILLIONS of dollars pursuant to the FTC Consent Order, extremely detrimental to Twitter’s longevity as a platform. Our users deserve so much better than this.”
Nov 6, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Multiple sources and Twitter Blind chats now saying that the company has begun to reach out to some people it laid off yesterday asking them to come back. Whoops! 🥴 From Twitter Slack: “sorry to @- everybody on the weekend but I wanted to pass along that we have the opportunity to ask folks that were left off if they will come back. I need to put together names and rationales by 4PM PST Sunday.
Nov 4, 2022 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
According to the email went out to employees at 5:21P PT: everyone affected will receive an email by 9AM PST Friday. 😞 The company is closing its offices and suspending all badge access while the layoffs unfold. The company asked everyone to go home.
Oct 27, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Twitter employees just received a calendar invitation for an ‘All Birds Check in’ at 7:35PM ET, featuring head of product @jaysullivan. Presumably about the company and not the shoe brand.

East Coast employees not thrilled with the late hour. This meeting has now been canceled “until further notice”! If you know pls let me know
Aug 19, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
A year after I wrote about @dhof’s viral NFT project Loot, I checked back in to see what happened after crypto crashed and the hype cycle died down.

The project still has around 200 developers. Here’s what they’re doing:

platformer.news/p/how-a-viral-… One idea that devs are really excited about is public-domain video games — taking NFT characters licensed under CC0 and smashing them together like Goku in Fortnite

platformer.news/p/how-a-viral-… Image
Jul 12, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Twitter sues Elon Musk, calling his attempts to weasel out of the deal “a model of hypocrisy” and “a model of bad faith.” documentcloud.org/documents/2208… So Musk wants out. Rather t...Musk’s exit strategy is a m...Musk’s strategy is also a m... One of the better exhibits I’ve seen in a legal filing Image
May 16, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I don’t want to make too much of a literal shitpost but what the hell is going on with this cursed acquisition There is a world in which Musk bails and we all look back on this 💩 as the moment it became clear he was just going to disparage his way out of the deal
May 12, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
A huge loss for Twitter. One of the company’s longest-serving heads of product, and a person who deserves a lot of credit for it finally starting to ship features on a faster cadence. I’m just now learning that Parag fired Kayvon while he was on paternity leave, which is truly awful.

Parag is on his way out too. Why is he firing his product leaders during his lame-duck period?
May 10, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Fascinating disconnect between daily headlines about crypto startups raising $25 million A rounds and a user base that is already declining At some point this year I think the No. 1 question for crypto world became “OK, fine, but when are all the users gonna show up?”
Feb 5, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Spotify has apparently now removed about 6 percent of all Joe Rogan episodes without any comment on the matter nytimes.com/2022/02/05/art… Update on this: person familiar with the matter tells me the decision to remove these episodes was Rogan’s. It followed conversations between Spotify and Rogan’s team.
Nov 9, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I wrote about Niantic’s metaverse ambitions and how so many companies are converging on very similar ideas.

Niantic says it hates the metaverse. But does it, really?

platformer.news/p/the-dark-hor… Also in this edition: the official launch of Platformer Jobs.

The goal: to host the best collection of opportunities across tech policy and trust and safety, and to get great people working in some of the most important jobs in tech.

platformer.pallet.xyz
Oct 29, 2021 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
I wrote about why I think the metaverse is coming …
platformer.news/p/facebook-goe… … And also why the metaverse scares me. platformer.news/p/facebook-goe…
Sep 8, 2021 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
It’s true I don’t have an editor most days but I do have a dad who complains when @platformer is 41 minutes late Image I wrote about what ProPublica’s story on WhatsApp left out: user reporting is good for privacy, and for the long-term future of encryption

platformer.news/p/what-propubl… Image
Sep 1, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Do social platforms encourage people to express statements of outrage more over time? And why do online discussions of politics feel so much more hostile than offline ones?

1. Yes; and
2. Platform incentives make them more visible

platformer.news/p/how-platform… Image One challenge I’ve set for myself heading into @platformer year two is to feature more academic research. The two studies I wrote about today are exactly what I hope to write about more: clever experiments examining what platforms are doing to us.
Aug 19, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Walking away from a market it all but invented. Insane So now someone rebuilds it on the blockchain and that’s how crypto payments go mainstream, right?
Jul 22, 2021 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
At the end of June, Mark Zuckerberg told employees he had a new goal: to turn Facebook into “a metaverse company.” I talked to him about what that means theverge.com/22588022/mark-… The VC @ballmatthew has written a series of influential essays in recent years about what a metaverse is. From Fortnite to Roblox to Facebook, executives are paying attention matthewball.vc/all/themetaver…
Jun 28, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Uh WOW The court finds that the FTC failed to prove its case that Facebook had a monopoly on “personal social networking.” Accuses them of extremely sloppy work attempting to define the market (accurately imo) storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…