@NBCNews correspondent, former @PopSci editor-in-chief, and author of “The Loop: How AI is Creating a World without Choices and How to Fight Back”
May 10, 2021 • 14 tweets • 5 min read
We spoke with Americans estranged from one another — sisters from brothers, daughters from mothers, 25-year friendships ruined — after a deep dive into social media. Why do we end up in separate realities? Experts say it's our brains, and the industry built to grab them. (Thread)
First, the intensity with which you and I respond to tribalism, fear, perceived attacks on social cohesion, is a fundamental part of who we are. Those are ancient instincts. And the modern world is built to manipulate them.
Nov 16, 2020 • 29 tweets • 13 min read
On Saturday, during a hike with my family, I found out that @realDonaldTrump had tweeted my work. “Making sure you saw this,” @SallyShin wrote me. Wow! Was it something about climate change? My reporting on the pandemic? Systemic bias? Nope, it was this:
So that was the end of my weekend, and I spent Sunday going back to the event’s founders and to outside experts to ask: does what I’d seen at the event — people easily breaking into common voting machines purchased off eBay — mean the president’s insinuation was accurate?
Oct 10, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Dense, damning stuff. 250 interviews. Tax documents. A vast social-media review. It’s overwhelming how many paths money takes from people looking for partnership, policy, or government contracts into the president’s personal businesses, according to NYT. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
“If there was ever a territory where there’s an open heaven, and pregnant with divine appointments, it’s the lobby of the Trump Hotel,” Mr. Wallnau said in a video. “Every time I go there I have a divine appointment with somebody.”
Oct 6, 2020 • 13 tweets • 4 min read
The @HouseJudiciary antitrust report is out, and it's jammed with recommendations that would fundamentally reshape the way the biz/tech/media economy works. judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/…
Lots of people reading it at this moment, so I'm going to focus on imagining a world in which certain recommendations take form in our lives.
Jun 30, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Wow, @TheOfficialACM, THE powerhouse association for computer science, just called for a ban on public and private use of facial recognition. acm.org/binaries/conte…
Its technology policy committee writes "the technology too
often produces results demonstrating clear bias," which can do "profound injury" to "the fundamental rights of individuals in specific demographic groups, including some of the most vulnerable populations in our society."
May 28, 2020 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
Here’s Trump’s Executive Order. The gist of it is that it tries to strip social media platforms of protection under Section 230(c) when they “edit” content with labels like Twitter did to Trump’s tweets today. kateklonick.com/wp-content/upl…
Specifically, the Executive Order...
…stipulates that any removal or restriction of content outside the scope of being lewd, violent, or otherwise objectionable disqualifies the platform in question from protection under Section 230 (c)...
Oct 29, 2019 • 17 tweets • 5 min read
A report out today in Nature finds that we've been underestimating the effects of climate-change-related flooding, and that major cities across the globe will be inundated and essentially unlivable by 2050. nature.com/articles/s4146…
Bombay, Jakarta, Bangkok, some of the most densely populated cities in the world, literally filling with water at each high tide.
Oct 9, 2019 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
@CASottile spoke to the manager of a mobile home community in Sonoma this afternoon that will, alongside nearly a million Californians, have their power shut off by @PGE4Me at midnight.
The typical resident there is elderly, and he estimated half of them need refrigerated medications like insulin or powered devices like oxygen regulators to stay alive.
Sep 26, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
Facebook is the #1 platform for political disinformation, says a new Oxford study out today. “Are social media platforms really creating a space for...democracy? Or are they amplifying content that keeps citizens addicted, disinformed, and angry?” comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/upl…
The line between state-sponsored trolls, random citizens, and for-hire outfits is disappearing.
Jan 30, 2019 • 15 tweets • 3 min read
It is one of my greatest hopes as a journalist to get across a fundamental idea: your individual privacy is not the thing under greatest threat. (1/15)
Your privacy has been largely traded away already. It’s your individuality and autonomy within a system built on data that is really in danger, and really worth worrying about. (2/15)
