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Welcome to the Age of Privacy Nihilism

Google and Facebook are easy scapegoats, but companies have been collecting, selling, and reusing your personal data for decades, and now that the public has finally noticed, it’s too late. The personal-data privacy war is long over, and you lost.

A barista gets burned at work, buys first-aid cream at Target, and later that day sees a Facebook ad for the same product. In another Target, someone shouts down the aisle to a companion to pick up some Red Bull; on the ride home, Instagram serves a sponsored post for the beverage. A home baker wishes aloud for a KitchenAid… read more

What Petty Nextdoor Posts Reveal About America

The hyperlocal social-media platform highlights small grievances—and proves that neighbors have more in common than they think.

Here are some of the things I heard about in my neighborhood over the past year: A thunderstorm downed a tree, blocking a central road; a shadowy agent called “the night clipper” arose, surreptitiously cutting overhanging bushes while unsuspecting property owners slept; several dogs and cats were lost, found, or “on the loose,” whatever that means for a cat; a… read more

Silicon Valley ‘Has No Words’

After a shooting at YouTube’s corporate campus, technology CEOs offer platitudes. Shouldn’t they have more to say?

I always wince when I see someone lament that “there are no words” to express something. Words: These are the tools humans possess, before all others, for expression. To claim that they have no power is to forsake the mutual compassion that communication affords. And so I winced on Tuesday, upon seeing nearly identical responses to the YouTube shooting from… read more

All Followers Are Fake Followers

A New York Times exposé of a “black market” for online fame diagnoses the symptom of social-media despair, but misses its cause.

In the summer of 2015, the game designer Bennett Foddy and I were sloshing down cocktails while waiting for prime dry-aged rib-eye steaks in Midtown Manhattan. We weren’t living large, exactly, but we did pause to assess our rising professional fortunes. Among them, both of us seemed to be blowing up on Twitter. “Where did all these followers come from?”… read more

Network Neutrality Can’t Fix the Internet

The FCC is poised to dismantle common carriage for broadband and wireless providers. That’s bad, but the internet itself is worse.

In a new video advocating for network neutrality—a name for regulating internet providers like public utilities—the American Civil Liberties Union declares that “giant internet companies shouldn’t have the power to mess with what we read, watch, and explore online.” The ACLU is referring to broadband and wireless carriers like Comcast and AT&T, who would have the power to throttle, charge… read more

Even Trump Is Vulnerable to Internet Chaos

In the same day, the president of the United States and many local journalists both suffered the precariousness of life online.

Yesterday evening, two different faces of internet power and caprice grimaced at the public. First, Joe Ricketts, the billionaire CEO of the local-news publications DNAinfo and Gothamist shut down their websites. The decision came less than a week after writers at the publications had voted to organize. The DNAinfo and Gothamistwebsites, along with those of other local affiliates like DCist,… read more

You Are Already Living Inside a Computer

Futurists predict a rapture of machines, but reality beat them to it by turning computing into a way of life.

Suddenly, everything is a computer. Phones, of course, and televisions. Also toasters and door locks, baby monitors and juicers, doorbells and gas grills. Even faucets. Even garden hoses. Even fidget spinners. Supposedly “smart” gadgets are everywhere, spreading the gospel of computation to everyday objects. It’s enough to make the mundane seem new—for a time anyway. But quickly, doubts arise. Nobody… read more

Why Zuckerberg and Musk Are Fighting About the Robot Future

It looks like the two tech titans are arguing about AI’s impact on humanity. Really they’re protecting their personal brands.

Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg are having a spat about whether or not artificial intelligence is going to kill us all. Musk, the chief of Tesla and SpaceX who has longstanding worries about the potentially apocalyptic future of AI, recently returned to that soapbox, making an appeal for proactive regulations on AI. “I keep sounding the alarm bell,” he told… read more

The App That Does Nothing

A fake social network might be the only thing your smartphone needs.

Binky is an app that does everything an app is expected to do. It’s got posts. It’s got likes. It’s got comments. It’s got the infinitely scrolling timeline found in all social apps, from Facebook to Twitter, Instagram to Snapchat. I open it and start scrolling. Images of people, foods, and objects appear on and then vanish off the screen.… read more

The Nomad Who’s Exploding the Internet Into Pieces

Could decentralizing online life make it more compatible with human life?

Dominic Tarr is a computer programmer who grew up on a remote farm in New Zealand. Down in the antipodes, isolation is even more isolating. Getting goods, people, and information to and from Australasia for families like Tarr’s has always been difficult. Bad, unreliable internet service is a particular challenge. Australia and New Zealand are first-world countries with third-world latency.… read more