Think Twice Before Creating That ChatGPT Action Figure

At the start of April, an influx of action figure started appearing on social media sites including LinkedIn and X. Each figure depicted the person who had created it with uncanny accuracy, complete with personalized accessories such as reusable coffee cups, yoga mats, and headphones. All this is possible becauseContinue Reading

AI Is Using Your Likes to Get Inside Your Head

What is the future of the like button in the age of artificial intelligence? Max Levchin—the PayPal cofounder and Affirm CEO—sees a new and hugely valuable role for liking data to train AI to arrive at conclusions more in line with those a human decisionmaker would make. It’s a well-knownContinue Reading

The Meta Trial Shows the Dangers of Selling Out

Meta has a lot at stake in the current FTC lawsuit against it. In theory a negative verdict could result in a company breakup. But CEO Mark Zuckerberg once faced an even bigger existential threat. Back in 2006, his investors and even his employees were pressuring him to sell hisContinue Reading

4chan Is Dead. Its Toxic Legacy Is Everywhere

Many of the 4chan users that called me mid-Battletoad attack left messages. I listened to all of them. A pattern quickly emerged: young men, clearly nervous to even leave a message, trying to harass a stranger for, seemingly, the hell of it. Those voice mails have never left me inContinue Reading

Bluesky Is Rolling Out Official Verification

Starting today, Bluesky is rolling out a new verification system, complete with the familiar blue check marks popularized by Twitter. The social platform, which has experienced rapid growth since it opened to the public in early 2024, formerly relied on an unconventional self-verification system where users could “authenticate” themselves byContinue Reading

New Jersey Sues Discord for Allegedly Failing to Protect Children

Discord is facing a new lawsuit from the state of New Jersey, which claims that the chat app is engaged in “deceptive and unconscionable business practices” that put its younger users in danger. The lawsuit, filed on Thursday, comes after a multiyear investigation by the New Jersey Office of AttorneyContinue Reading

SignalGate Is Making People Rethink Who’s in Their Group Chats

Tom Linnemann considered himself a Twitter loyalist until fairly recently. “It was the greatest invention in the world,” he says of the platform, reminiscing on its golden years, which he pinpoints from 2012 to about 2016. “You cast a wide net and found people as crazy as you were.” HisContinue Reading

Bluesky Can’t Take a Joke

But the frustrations around new social platforms isn’t new. Networks will continue to pop up, ideally, and longtime users will continue to be annoyed by newbies. In the early-to-mid-1990s, people often first accessed the internet when they arrived at college. Around September of every year, a bunch of new usersContinue Reading