Platforms Are Not Publishers
The essential value of the internet is conversation, not content—and journalists need to embrace it.
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Projects
Metropolis Now
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Jonathan Bachman / Reuters The Hurricane in My Backyard
An environmental philosopher reflects on his experience enduring Hurricane Harvey, and what it teaches cities and their citizens about living with global warming.
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Ian Bogost The Mopeds Are Coming
Shared, electric motor scooters are racing to catch up with Bird, Lime, and other kick-scooter brands, as tech companies attempt to reinvent urban mobility. But can these vehicles ever find a place in America?
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Rebecca Cook / Reuters The Most Powerful Publishers in the World Don’t Give a Damn
Twitter’s Jack Dorsey is protecting Alex Jones’s publishing power in the name of “what serves the public conversation best.” His reasoning is absurd.
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Ulrich Marx / Getty Is AI Ready to Prevent School Shootings?
Facing a project with no room for mistakes, companies are striving to ensure the technology is up to the task.
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Nicolas Ortega What It’s Like to Wallow in Your Own Facebook Data
For the past 13 years, I’ve given the platform my photos, my videos, my likes, and untold hours of my time. Sifting through it all was amusing and surprising—and weirdly sad.
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Joe Skipper / Reuters Of Course Twitter Loves Elon Musk
Tesla’s billionaire CEO is revealing exactly what the social platform is truly optimized for—the amplification of powerful voices.
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Oli Scarff / Getty What Does It Mean to Ban Alex Jones?
The inconsistent embargo on Infowars demonstrates the breadth of tools tech companies have to police speech.
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Wikipedia / The Atlantic Wikipedia, the Last Bastion of Shared Reality
The culture wars are coming for the best utopian project of the early internet. Can it survive the informational anarchy that’s disrupted the rest of media?
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Irene Rinaldi What Your Boss Could Learn by Reading the Whole Company’s Emails
Employee emails contain valuable insights into company morale—and might even serve as an early-warning system for uncovering malfeasance.
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Adam Butler / AP The Draconian Dictionary Is Back
Since the 1960s, the reference book has cataloged how people actually use language, not how they should. That might be changing. An Object Lesson.
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How Video Can Create a Just Society
Filming bystander footage can help protect human rights.
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Andrew Wong / Getty Apple Is Worth One Trillion Dollars
This is what it really looks like to “change the world.”
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Matt Whittaker / Reuters Can Philanthropy Save a City?
The cash-strapped city of Stockton is hoping so, courting millions of dollars from private investors to solve a whole host of social problems.
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NASA / MSFC / Sergey Peterman / Shutterstock ... Too Much of a Good Thing at NASA
The agency’s culture of optimism is essential for launching people and robots into space. But it can lead to problems with budgets and deadlines.
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Shutterstock / Taylor Lorenz / The Atlantic As Memes Evolve, Apps Are Struggling to Keep Up
Everyone is racing to build a killer meme-making tool.
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Mandel Ngan / Getty Facebook’s Big Disinformation Bust Is Cold Comfort
The company found, and removed, possible election interference on its platforms. But the government, and the world, is too reliant on the company to protect democracy.
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Instagram / Thanh Do / The Atlantic Teens Are Debating the News on Instagram
More teenagers are getting their information from so-called flop accounts.
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Justin Sullivan / Getty Something Is Wrong at Facebook
But that doesn’t mean the company is doomed.
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Adam Hunger / Reuters How Software Ate the Point of Sale
Or, why paying for stuff is so complicated now
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Dado Ruvic / Reuters Tech’s Fractal Irresponsibility Problem
Each new scandal reflects in miniature the shape of the industry’s big problems.
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Reuters The Deleted WeChat Post That Fueled China's Vaccine Scandal
It alleged a complex web of corruption going back decades.
