The Interface By Casey Newton An evening newsletter about Facebook, social networks, and democracy. 4784 subscribers 212 issues Subscribe to my list This thingy has to be empti pwieshh Are you a robot? 🤖
#209 Sep 19, 2018 Facebook takes us inside its election war room – Note: I included the wrong link for yesterday's lead story about YouTube radicalization. The correct
#208 Sep 18, 2018 How white supremacists are thriving on YouTube – What role do major institutions play in the promotion of extremism? Two days into this week, we've al
#207 Sep 17, 2018 danah boyd's lesson for the press — and the platforms – On a rare slow news day, I found myself reading and re-reading this talk given by danah boyd at the O
#206 Sep 14, 2018 How Facebook beat Twitter at fighting fake news, in two charts – Reality has had a tough year. When the president of the United States is denying that thousands of Am
#205 Sep 13, 2018 Zuckerberg delivers a progress report on election security – Since the aftermath of the 2016 election, Facebook has invested millions of dollars in an effort to s
#204 Sep 12, 2018 The leaked Google video that's riling conservatives – It's an unhappy time at Google.Ever since the James Damore controversy last year, Google has faced re
#203 Sep 11, 2018 The fight against Facebook's conservative fact-checker – In December of last year, conservative publisher The Weekly Standard became an approved fact-checker
#202 Sep 10, 2018 The trouble with Mark Zuckerberg profiles – Can Mark Zuckerberg fix Facebook before it breaks democracy? That's the headline on Evan Osnos' 14,00
#201 Sep 5, 2018 Jack and Sheryl go to Washington – Programming note: As I mentioned last week, I'm heading to Portland for XOXO Festival tomorrow. I hea
#200 Sep 4, 2018 The countries who use Facebook against their own citizens – Last month, Facebook discovered evidence of a coordinated influence campaign on its platform led by g
#199 Aug 31, 2018 How Facebook rewards polarizing political ads – Programming note: The Interface is off Monday for Labor Day. I'll also be off Thursday and Friday to
#198 Aug 30, 2018 Donald Trump, Jr. floats a Facebook for conservatives – In the days after the 2016 election, Gizmodo published a much-discussed story that predicted our curr
#197 Aug 29, 2018 Trump escalates his attacks on social media – It was a vexing day.Conversations about social media continued to dominate the capital. "Conversation
#196 Aug 28, 2018 Instagram's surprisingly simple answer to verification – Who deserves a "verified" badge? On Twitter, the issue has been surprisingly contentious. Last Novemb
#195 Aug 27, 2018 United Nations calls Facebook a "useful instrument for those seeking to spread hate” – The United Nations issued a report today alleging that the military in Myanmar had "genocidal intent"
#194 Aug 24, 2018 Who's really being silenced on Twitter – "Social Media Giants are silencing millions of people," the president mentioned today on his Social M
#193 Aug 23, 2018 "What they’re trying to do is to resolve human nature fundamentally" – It's been a big week for tales of content moderation. On Friday, Radiolab posted a fascinating episod
#192 Aug 22, 2018 Critics question the link between Facebook and refugee violence – On Tuesday, The New York Times' investigation of a study into how Facebook promoted anti-refugee viol
#191 Aug 21, 2018 Facebook is the leading cause of attacks on refugees in Germany – The open rate for yesterday's newsletter was about half the usual rate. If you didn't get it, please
#190 Aug 20, 2018 Why Facebook needs a Supreme Court for content moderation – What belongs on Facebook? It's a central question in our current reckoning over social media, and giv
#189 Aug 17, 2018 The tweets that stopped Google in its tracks – On Thursday afternoon, a critical meeting at Google was derailed by a handful of tweets. Employees wh
#188 Aug 16, 2018 The real reason Twitter keeps tripping over itself – Thanks to my hero-friends Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher for the kind tweets on Tuesday, which sent m
#187 Aug 15, 2018 Twitter users protest Alex Jones with a viral block list – Last week, we talked about why Facebook banned Alex Jones — and Twitter didn't. Facebook saw that Jon
#186 Aug 14, 2018 How a wily Californian beat Google and Facebook's influence operation – Amid a national reckoning over the perils of social media, a looming question has been whether — and
#185 Aug 13, 2018 Twitter finally draws a line on extremism – On Friday I wrote about Twitter's seeming paralysis when it came to enforcing its platform rules. Wha
#184 Aug 10, 2018 Why Facebook banned Alex Jones, and Twitter didn't – On one hand, we spent maybe too much time this week on the question of whether one person should lose
#183 Aug 9, 2018 Twitter's case for keeping Alex Jones falls apart – On Tuesday, weighing in on the public pressure to ban Alex Jones and Infowars from Twitter, CEO Jack
#182 Aug 8, 2018 Jack Dorsey makes everyone mad — except Sean Hannity – Last night, amid growing pressure to address Alex Jones' presence on Twitter, CEO Jack Dorsey tried t
#181 Aug 7, 2018 Apple crushed Alex Jones — then tossed him a lifeline – Alex Jones' fate was decided over the weekend, when Apple CEO Tim Cook and his vice president of soft
#180 Aug 6, 2018 Alex Jones loses the info war – On Monday, the bottom dropped out for Alex Jones. After a series of tepid disciplinary actions, which
#179 Aug 3, 2018 The 8-year-olds hacking our voting machines – It's been a rather grim week in the social-media-and-democracy cinematic universe, so let's end on a
#178 Aug 2, 2018 Fake events have arrived — and they're worse than fake news – Some days, it seems like any number of topics might lead The Interface. Other days, nearly every majo
#177 Aug 1, 2018 Senate to tech companies: "time is running out" – "Time is running out." That was the message from Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) today at a meeting of the Sena
#176 Jul 31, 2018 Facebook discovers a conspiracy to amplify the left – We are 97 days away from the midterm elections, there's an active campaign to undermine our democracy
#175 Jul 30, 2018 Democrats propose a comprehensive Facebook regulation – As Congress has paid increasing attention to social networks over the past year, a recurring theme in
#174 Jul 27, 2018 How Infowars keeps escaping Facebook's ban hammer – Two weeks ago, CNN's Oliver Darcy put a question to Facebook executives during an event in New York:
#173 Jul 26, 2018 Trump blasts Twitter over nonexistent "shadow bans" – A consequence of covering the intersection of social media and democracy is that sometimes you wind u
#172 Jul 25, 2018 Facebook's stock price collapses along with user growth – Today, for the first time in three years, Facebook failed to meet Wall Street's expectations for reve
#171 Jul 24, 2018 3 unanswered questions about Facebook hoaxes and threats – Another day, another high-profile outrage spreading virally on Facebook. This time around it's our fr
#170 Jul 23, 2018 What YouTube could teach Facebook about conspiracies – Months before critics revisited Facebook's embrace of Holocaust deniers and other conspiracy peddlers
#169 Jul 20, 2018 Facebook says it limits the spread of hoaxes. But does it? – During the briefing with reporters that kicked off Facebook's latest round of soul searching over fak
#168 Jul 19, 2018 "It feels like Facebook is waiting for someone to die" – Thanks to everyone who wrote in yesterday with their thoughts on Facebook and Holocaust denial. I got
#167 Jul 18, 2018 Zuckerberg gets tripped up by the Holocaust – Today we had a very long and vexing debate about free speech. It started when Mark Zuckerberg sat for
#166 Jul 17, 2018 Congress beats up Facebook over Infowars – Yesterday I told you today's tech hearing promised to be another high-profile waste of time. Reader:
#165 Jul 16, 2018 Conservative pages outperform everything on Facebook – Tomorrow the House Judiciary Committee will once again bring together representatives from Facebook,
#164 Jul 13, 2018 A brief history of Infowars promoting violence on Facebook – As Facebook worked to quell unrest around its decision to offer Infowars a platform for its toxic con
#163 Jul 12, 2018 How Facebook's policies protect its worst users – Misinformation on Facebook kills. Hoaxes warning of child traffickers and organ harvesting on WhatsAp
#162 Jul 11, 2018 Facebook gives more away data, but this time it's good – One reason the world was caught unawares by the rise of misinformation on Facebook is that no one cou
#161 Jul 10, 2018 Regulators fine Facebook over Cambridge Analytica – During our long springtime discussion of the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, a key question
#160 Jul 9, 2018 YouTube finally fights back against conspiracy theories – Each time a new national calamity occurs — which is to say, every few days for the past couple years
#159 Jun 22, 2018 The Time Well Spent debate is over. (Time Well Spent won) – Programming note: I'm going on summer vacation! See you back here on July 8th. In the meantime, I'll
#158 Jun 21, 2018 The smartest thing about IGTV – It's been a day now since Instagram introduced IGTV, its new home for watching longform vertical vide
#157 Jun 20, 2018 Twitter blocks the doxxers – Today Splinter News, a remnant of Gawker that is now part of the Gizmodo Media Group, published Steph
#156 Jun 19, 2018 The Cambridge Analytica story keeps getting weirder – Enough time has passed since this spring's Cambridge Analytica scandal that you may find yourself str
#155 Jun 18, 2018 The Onion tees off on Facebook – After a week away in Los Angeles playing video games for work, I arrived today eager to catch up on a
#154 Jun 8, 2018 Facebook contemplates whether it's too big – Programming note: The Interface will be off next week covering E3 for The Verge. When democracy is in
#153 Jun 7, 2018 Facebook sets the Days Without A Scandal counter back to 0 – Facebook's business works because people are generally willing to give up a healthy amount of their p
#152 Jun 6, 2018 Facebook makes two big moves into video – Until now, 2018 has been the year Facebook ran away from the news. Burned by the Trending Topics scan
#151 Jun 5, 2018 Why the WhatsApp founders really quit – The Interface is a messy newsletter that lives for drama, and so naturally I was excited to read Kirs
#150 Jun 4, 2018 Apple slaps Facebook at WWDC – On Thursday, Facebook was riding high, with its stock near an all-time peak and a group of angry shar
#149 Jun 1, 2018 Facebook puts the end into Trending – In February, a Wired piece on the origins of our reckoning over social media put laid the blame on Fa
#148 May 31, 2018 Facebook's shareholders get their say,twice – Facebook's annual shareholder meeting was held today, and it made for a better spectacle than most su
#147 May 30, 2018 Evan Spiegel turns the tables on Facebook – Last night Code Conference attendees got to see top executives from Snap and Facebook speak back to b
#146 May 29, 2018 Papua New Guinea threatens to block Facebook for a month – Programming note: I'm here at the Code Conference in Southern California, where Snap's Evan Spiegel a
#145 May 25, 2018 Facebook's political ad rules could upend the June 5th primaries – Programming note: The Interface will be taking the Memorial Day holiday off on Monday, and we'll be b
#144 May 24, 2018 Facebook opens up its political advertising archive – Today was a big day for people who like digging through thousands of political ads.Facebook’s new rul
#143 May 23, 2018 Trump's Twitter blocking ruled unconstitutional (plus, our new podcast) – Some of the most interesting entrepreneurs I get to talk to are the ones who scare Facebook. One of t
#142 May 22, 2018 Europe takes a swing at Facebook, and misses – Mark Zuckerberg’s appearance before European Parliament today was designed to give members a chance t
#141 May 21, 2018 The campaign to break up Facebook – Programming note: the premiere episode of my new podcast, Converge, arrives on Wednesday. Find it on
#140 May 18, 2018 Facebook gets squeezed by the Vietnamese – Authoritarian governments love the way the internet grows their economies. But they hate the way diss
#139 May 17, 2018 How Facebook lost the battle for internet.org — and won anyway – Facebook spent the better part of the past half-decade promoting internet.org, its ambitious effort t
#138 May 16, 2018 Why fake Facebook accounts can be real scary – Yesterday, with the release of the Community Standards Enforcement Report, Facebook gave us two numbe
#137 May 15, 2018 Facebook puts its money where its moderation is – Last month I attended a meeting with Monica Bickert, who runs global policy management at Facebook. T
#136 May 14, 2018 Facebook announces 200 more Cambridge Analyticas – On March 21, in response to the Cambridge Analytica data privacy scandal, Facebook said it would inve
#135 May 11, 2018 Snapchat hits the reset button – Snapchat began life as a novel new messaging app. The addition of stories, which allowed you to broad
#134 May 10, 2018 How Google got religion about smartphone addiction – Watching this week's keynote at Google I/O, with its surprise focus on features inspired by the Time
#133 May 9, 2018 Your worst ideas for putting Facebook on the blockchain – Yesterday, we learned of Facebook's surprise decision to create a blockchain division. I asked you fo
#132 May 8, 2018 Facebook blows up its org chart – Among large technology companies, very few have a leadership team as stable as Facebook's. Every time
#131 May 7, 2018 Google I/O is here — and has big implications for social media – In January, I told you that "time well spent" was shaping up to be tech's next big debate. As concern
#130 May 4, 2018 Facebook might ask us to like and subscribe – Programming note: For all but 11 percent of you, yesterday's Interface went to your spam filter. The
#129 May 3, 2018 Twitter makes everyone change their password – After spending the past two months in the angry-media spotlight, Facebook finally caught a breather o
#128 May 2, 2018 Cambridge Analytica is dead. Good riddance – Cambridge Analytica was nothing if not consistent. After nearly two months of scandal, the Trump camp
#127 May 1, 2018 Everything that happened at F8 today (and one thing that didn't) – As expected, the first day of the F8 developer conference had a more muted tone than previous years.
#126 Apr 30, 2018 Facebook sets low expectations for F8 – F8 takes place tomorrow and Wednesday in San Jose. I'll be there both days. Say hi if you see me, and
#125 Apr 27, 2018 The Diamond and Silk disaster in Congress – There were plenty of reasons to criticize lawmakers after this month's Facebook hearings: too many of
#124 Apr 20, 2018 Facebook gets invited back to Congress. (It shouldn't go.) – Programming note: The Interface will go dark from Monday through Thursday of next week. I'm traveling
#123 Apr 19, 2018 Facebook's terms of service switcheroo – The day's most important social media-and-democracy story is also extremely weedsy, and its consequen
#122 Apr 18, 2018 Facebook shows off its GDPR designs (and doesn't invite us) – In the weeks leading up to its implementation, Facebook has made many appreciative noises about Europ
#121 Apr 17, 2018 Facebook won't launch military cyberattacks. Will Google? – As our collective faith in government institutions has declined, we've put more pressure on corporati
#120 Apr 16, 2018 The real hard questions about shadow profiles – In January, we wrote about Facebook's Hard Questions blog, in which the company seeks to address some
#119 Apr 13, 2018 How AI fails Facebook — and YouTube and Pinterest – After a long week of hearings, I went on The Vergecast this week to talk at length about Mark Zuckerb
#118 Apr 12, 2018 The data Facebook collects without permission – On Wednesday afternoon, midway through his grilling at the hands of the House of Representatives, Mar
#117 Apr 11, 2018 The House strikes back at Facebook – Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made his second of two appearances before Congress on Wednesday, endurin
#116 Apr 10, 2018 Mark Zuckerberg confuses the Senate – Mark Zuckerberg made his highly anticipated debut before Congress today during a marathon five-hour h
#115 Apr 9, 2018 Mark Zuckerberg arrives in the capital – After an intensive crash course in testifying before Congress, Mark Zuckerberg (and squad) have lande
#114 Apr 6, 2018 Mark Zuckerberg deletes his Facebook messages – At some point in 2015, Facebook executives began noticing a peculiar phenomenon in their Messenger in
#113 Apr 5, 2018 A wild Sheryl Sandberg appears – Yesterday Mark Zuckerberg took an hour's worth of questions from reporters on topics including data p
#112 Apr 4, 2018 Mark Zuckerberg takes our question – Today, YouTube grieved in the aftermath of a shooting that left four injured but — mercifully — no on
#111 Apr 3, 2018 Four shot, suspect dead at YouTube – It was a busy day on the social media and democracy beat, and yet all of the day's developments pale
#110 Apr 2, 2018 Mark Zuckerberg: Facebook needs a Supreme Court – If there's a single theme that dominates Ezra Klein's fascinating interview with Mark Zuckerberg toda
#109 Mar 30, 2018 Return to Boz – Yesterday afternoon, BuzzFeed published a post from June 2016 in which Andrew "Boz" Bosworth, a membe
#108 Mar 29, 2018 Facebook breaks up with the data brokers – Last week, the central story about Facebook and the data privacy scandal was the company's silence. T
#107 Mar 28, 2018 Justin Rosenstein and Chris Cox on fixing Facebook – Last year, when a series of former Facebook executives came forward to reveal misgivings about the wo
#106 Mar 27, 2018 Zuckerberg (probably) agrees to testify – Last week the big question was, will Mark Zuckerberg address the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal?
#105 Mar 26, 2018 Facebook's data privacy scandal is spiraling – After a week in which it was battered over its handling of user data, Facebook sought to reset the de
#104 Mar 23, 2018 Elon Musk deletes Facebook – This week we saw just how much billionaires enjoy kicking their fellow billionaires in the face. On W
#103 Mar 22, 2018 Mark Zuckerberg asks: "Who chose me?" – Until 9PM ET last night, the world thought we would be getting one interview with Mark Zuckerberg. An
#102 Mar 21, 2018 Zuckerberg breaks his silence – The crisis PR handbook, says Scott Galloway, has three essential steps: The person in charge responds
#101 Mar 20, 2018 Why Mark Zuckerberg isn't talking – After nearly four days of silence from top executives on the unfolding controversy around Cambridge A
#100 Mar 19, 2018 Cambridge Apocalyptica – The longer you consider Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica scandal, the stranger it seems. The basic deta
#99 Mar 8, 2018 On Twitter, lies outrun the truth – Programming note: Standing on the very precipice of ISSUE ONE HUNDRED, The Interface is going on Spri
#98 Mar 7, 2018 The Italian job – A blustery populist takes a hard line on immigration, masters the use of Facebook, and leads his part
#97 Mar 6, 2018 The conservative playbook against Facebook – Today we learned about two ways conservatives hope to put Facebook on the perpetual defensive. After
#96 Mar 5, 2018 Fixing Facebook with a labelmaker – Is misinformation a problem we can label our way out of? Two initiatives announced today promise to m
#95 Mar 2, 2018 Q&A with Cortico, the nonprofit trying to improve Twitter – This week, Twitter asked for help as it tries to promote healthier conversations on the platform. Yes
#94 Mar 1, 2018 Twitter asks for help – The battle over "time well spent," which we first wrote about in January, has arrived at Twitter. It
#93 Feb 28, 2018 Vero and the pop-up restaurant theory of social networks – Every year or so, a promising new social network bubbles up to the surface. You can probably name the
#92 Feb 27, 2018 Why 2020 will be a Facebook election, too – America's longest sustained national conversation about CPMs entered a surprising fifth day on Tuesda
#91 Feb 26, 2018 How Trump gamed Facebook, down to the penny – Did Facebook's ad platform give Donald Trump an unfair advantage in the 2016 election? That's a quest
#90 Feb 23, 2018 From 'leave it up' to 'take it down' – Recently I was talking with someone who works at one of the big platforms we like to talk about in th
#89 Feb 22, 2018 Why Sly Stallone keeps dying on Facebook – In real life, Sylvester Stallone is a healthy 71-year-old. But on Facebook, he keeps dying. If his de
#88 Feb 21, 2018 YouTube tripped up by trending video – Six days ago, in the aftermath of the shooting in Parkland, Fla., we wrote about the information war
#87 Feb 20, 2018 Rob Goldman apologized. Should he have? – Three days after his Twitter thread about the Mueller indictment, Rob Goldman apologized. Goldman, wh
#86 Feb 19, 2018 5 questions for social networks after the Mueller indictment – Over the weekend, the press further digested special counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of 13 Russia
#85 Feb 16, 2018 Mueller indicts a troll farm — and the idea of a 'Facebook community' – A year ago today, Mark Zuckerberg published a lengthy post titled “Building a Global Community.” It o
#84 Feb 15, 2018 A misinformation war in Florida, and on Twitter – The aftermath of any school shooting is terrible, and today was worse than most. After a 19-year-old
#83 Feb 14, 2018 Following the money behind Messenger Kids – Facebook marked Valentine's Day by releasing Messenger for Kids, its controversial app designed for c
#82 Feb 13, 2018 Facebook tells publishers to take it or leave it – Facebook hired Campbell Brown as its head of news partnerships on January 6th, 2017. At the time, Bro
#81 Feb 12, 2018 The real Trending Topics scandal – When did our cultural reckoning over social media begin? In a comprehensive new account of that quest
#80 Feb 9, 2018 My News Feed, revealed – On Monday I'm heading down to Southern California for Code Media, an event where we'll hear from seve
#79 Feb 8, 2018 Mr. Pickles goes to Washington – People tell lies on social media. What, if anything, should social media do about it? Members of the
#78 Feb 7, 2018 The comedian and the social network – The internet created fertile new ground for comedians, just as it had for so many other creative type
#77 Feb 6, 2018 Q&A with Mark Zuckerberg's personal pollster – Tavis McGinn applied for a job at Facebook last year hoping to work in market research. He had previo
#76 Feb 5, 2018 The $50 million ad campaign against Facebook addiction – The loose collection of former social media executives sounding an alarm about its unintended consequ
#75 Feb 2, 2018 An ex-YouTube engineer has a warning for democracy – This summer, I wrote a cheerful piece called How YouTube perfected the feed. In the dark months follo
#74 Feb 1, 2018 How WhatsApp is roiling Indian families — and predicting our future – The release of Facebook earnings yesterday gave us a fresh opportunity to ask: what is a meaningful i
#73 Jan 31, 2018 Facebook shrinks in North America – Facebook reported its fourth quarter earnings today, and they showcased both the enormous strength of
#72 Jan 30, 2018 The backlash against Messenger Kids – In retrospect, the weirdest thing about Messenger Kids was the timing. With trust in the company decl
#71 Jan 29, 2018 How Europe is shaping privacy on Facebook — and what comes next – On May 25th, the 28-member European Union will begin enforcing the General Data Protection Regulation
#70 Jan 26, 2018 Why the News Feed should explain itself – One reason Facebook struggles to earn our trust is because at the individual level, no one at the com
#69 Jan 25, 2018 Facebook's corporate blog looks dangerous, but plays it safe – Hard Questions is a series of blog posts that Facebook began publishing to talk about the thornier qu
#68 Jan 24, 2018 Another former Facebook employee sounds the alarm – Dipayan Ghosh once worked to improve Facebook from the inside. According to his biography at the New
#67 Jan 23, 2018 Facebook asks us who we can trust – On Friday, Facebook announced two key changes to the News Feed: one, it would reduce the amount of ne
#66 Jan 22, 2018 5 ways Facebook hurts democracy — according to Facebook – I started writing The Interface in October. Fallout from the 2016 election had resulted in a daily de
#65 Jan 17, 2018 The battle over Time Well Spent – Programming note: The Interface is taking Thursday and Friday off.In 2016, Tristan Harris, whose job
#64 Jan 16, 2018 Four questions Facebook won't answer – One benefit of writing a newsletter every day is that you get to look at the same set of facts so lon
#63 Jan 15, 2018 The curious case of the missing Instagram likes – Last week, I mentioned in passing this story in Canada's Globe and Mail, a high-level look at smartph
#62 Jan 12, 2018 Facebook moves slow and fixes things – A day after Facebook announced major changes to the News Feed, I found myself thinking about Mark Zuc
#61 Jan 11, 2018 Facebook rips up the News Feed – Today's top story: Facebook is rewriting the rules of the News Feed, and nobody can say for certain h
#60 Jan 10, 2018 How Facebook is fighting fake news with local news – A prime reason fake news stories gain wide traction these days is that there are fewer gatekeepers to
#59 Jan 9, 2018 Snap's internal metrics leak – It feels like a make-or-break year for Snap, Inc., but tracking the company's performance day to day
#58 Jan 8, 2018 "Who the #$@% is Roger McNamee?" – Mark Zuckerberg's nine-point plan to fix Facebook now has an eight-point companion piece from a highl
#57 Jan 5, 2018 Twitter says it won't ban Trump – Today's top story: It took long enough, but Twitter finally has a coherent statement about its stance
#56 Jan 4, 2018 Mark Zuckerberg's New Year's resolution – Every year, Mark Zuckerberg sets a personal challenge. In 2009, to stress Facebook's need to focus on
#55 Jan 3, 2018 The case against banning Trump from Twitter – Last night in San Francisco, protesters turned the Twitter building against itself. A group calling i
#54 Jan 2, 2018 Snap's big night, and everything you missed over the break – Every good new year begins with a party, and so too does our first newsletter of 2018. It seems that
#53 Dec 22, 2017 My 2018 predictions for Facebook, Twitter, and Snap – 2018 predictions. This is the Interface's final edition of 2017, as I spend next week with family and
#52 Dec 21, 2017 Another former Facebook employee speaks out – Today's top story: Another former Facebook employee distances herself from the company — this time, o
#51 Dec 20, 2017 The Interface - Issue #51 – This week my bosses asked me to reflect on Facebook's year. It was a year in which almost too much we
#50 Dec 19, 2017 Twitter's free speech era is officially over – The free speech wing of the free speech party has officially closed. Sinead McSweeney, Twitter's vice
#49 Dec 18, 2017 How Russia learned to regram – In the past year of discussions about how Russia uses social media, Instagram has largely escaped not
#48 Dec 15, 2017 How the News Feed can ruin your day – Today Facebook published what might be the most extraordinary blog post in the history of the company
#47 Dec 14, 2017 An obituary for net neutrality (2015-17) – Net neutrality is dead, and Ajit Pai killed it. In a 3-2 vote — amid a bomb scare, and Republican opp
#46 Dec 13, 2017 Facebook wrestles with Brexit (and also with wrestlers) – We spend a lot of time around here blaming tech platforms for the unintended consequences of the tool
#45 Dec 12, 2017 Facebook confronts its billionaire defector – When you're a fast-growing, world-beating tech giant, it can be easy to dismiss your critics as crank
#44 Dec 11, 2017 Why you can't fix culture with technology – The Interface is, in part, a journal of unintended consequences. Tech platforms build tools that are
#43 Dec 8, 2017 The Burmese monk rallying vigilantes on Facebook – As crises of weaponized misinformation spread to more countries, it often falls to journalists to pla
#42 Dec 7, 2017 What Facebook did to the Philippines – Yesterday we told you about how a single firm created 40,000 fake accounts in Poland to advocate for
#41 Dec 6, 2017 Why 40,000 fake Poles should worry Facebook – Here's a report from the University of Oxford about what the authors call "computational propaganda":
#40 Dec 5, 2017 Evan Spiegel quotes de Tocqueville – Snap is looking to grow in Europe, and so today we find Evan Spiegel sitting for a profile with the G
#39 Dec 4, 2017 Facebook comes for the children – In 1998, as the internet began to spread across the country, Congress passed the Children's Online Pr
#38 Dec 1, 2017 The more Twitter explains, the less we understand – I often compare Twitter to the Bluth Company — that fictional family business from Arrested Developme
#37 Nov 30, 2017 The FCC chairman deletes his Facebook account – On Tuesday, as part of his crusade against net neutrality, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai went on an offensive
#36 Nov 29, 2017 Evan Spiegel tells us what we want to hear – Is Snap our savior from fake news? Snap would like us to think so. Here's Evan Spiegel writing in Axi
#35 Nov 28, 2017 The FCC turns Twitter's argument for net neutrality against it – The Federal Communications Commission is expected to end net neutrality on December 14th, and the deb
#34 Nov 27, 2017 What is political propaganda doing in this Facebook Messenger propaganda? – What does Facebook Messenger mean for the future of political propaganda? That's the somewhat provoca
#33 Nov 22, 2017 Russia sees a turkey in YouTube, and maybe Facebook [The Interface] – Yesterday, we talked about Google's plan to down-rank search results for RT and Sputnik in an effort
#32 Nov 21, 2017 Russians: If you can't beat 'em, rank 'em lower in search – Generally, platforms strive to avoid making decisions that appear editorial in nature. Beyond enforci
#31 Nov 20, 2017 What we mean we talk about community [The Interface] – What does Mark Zuckerberg means when he talks about "community"? The Facebook CEO has used the word i
#30 Nov 17, 2017 The FEC moves to regulate Facebook after all [The Interface] – The total lack of movement on the high-profile Honest Ads Act has made your humble newsletter writer
#29 Nov 16, 2017 Twitter says it's going to start monitoring our offline behavior [The Interface] – When Twitter verified the account of a white supremacist, it triggered a public-relations crisis that
#28 Nov 15, 2017 The Facebook experiment that's rocking Serbia [The Interface] – In issue 11 of this newsletter, I told you about Facebook's move to imagine a News Feed free of news.
#27 Nov 14, 2017 In which the core principles of this newsletter are revealed – This newsletter has three core principles:1. I don't understand how social media platforms are changi
#26 Nov 13, 2017 Check your DMs ... for Wikileaks [The Interface] – Democracy: it's going down in the DMs! That's the takeaway in the day's biggest social media-and-gove
#25 Nov 10, 2017 This newsletter was designed to be addictive [The Interface] – Hmm let's see, what other sorts of misinformation are spreading on Facebook? Aha: abortion. Of course
#24 Nov 9, 2017 Twitter finds something new to apologize for [The Interface] – Jason Kessler is a white supremacist who organized the United the Right rally in Charlottesville this
#23 Nov 8, 2017 The bots that crawled into the statehouse [The Interface] – Until now, The Interface has focused on how social media has been an attack surface for bad actors lo
#22 Nov 7, 2017 Snap back to reality — oops, there goes gravity [The Interface] – Let's say you're Facebook, and you have a fake news problem. Something you have observed is that your
#21 Nov 6, 2017 YouTube takes heat over conspiracies, and disturbing videos for kids – One of this newsletter's chief preoccupations is with how information spreads today. Each national ca
#20 Nov 3, 2017 The most insane Twitter story ever? [The Interface] – At press time yesterday, the only thing I knew about Donald Trump's Twitter account was that it had b
#19 Nov 2, 2017 The Trolls Are Coming From Inside the House [The Interface] – Yesterday, at an Intelligence Committee hearing, Sen. Mark Warner decried Facebook's use by Russian t
#18 Nov 1, 2017 Both Sides Against the Meddle [The Interface] – Yesterday, I described tech companies' initial appearance before a Senate subcommittee as political t
#17 Oct 31, 2017 Mr. Face books to Washington [The Interface] – The first big hearing of the week played more as political theater than the first step toward a massi
#16 Oct 30, 2017 Facebook's testimony leaks ahead of time [The Interface] – A big week on the ol' tech-and-democracy beat kicked off with a huge series of leaked announcements f
#15 Oct 27, 2017 Congress is fast approaching. Facebook looks busy [The Interface] – A mercifully slow Friday found Facebook preparing for next week's hearing before the Senate Judiciary
#14 Oct 26, 2017 Twitter gets medieval on RT's ass [The Interface] – Just days ahead of its scheduled hearings before Congress, Twitter said today that it would no longer
#13 Oct 25, 2017 Fake news turns politics upside down from here to Slovakia [The Interface] – I've thought more about Slovakia in the past week than I have in the past 10 years. For one thing, it
#12 Oct 24, 2017 Facebook reassures publishers, as traffic falls off a cliff [The Interface] – On Monday, Facebook said that in six countries it would banish publishers to a separate feed, away fr
#11 Oct 23, 2017 Facebook imagines a News Feed without the news [The Interface] – Over the past 18 months, the news has given Facebook nothing but trouble. The problems began in May 2
#10 Oct 20, 2017 The Interface - Issue #10 – Are political ads the problem — or is the problem Facebook itself? A growing number of commentators t
#9 Oct 19, 2017 The Interface - Issue #9 – Today was a milestone in the story of Facebook and democracy, as a bipartisan group of senators intro
#8 Oct 18, 2017 The Interface - Issue #8 – Here's where growing unease over Facebook's role in democracy starts turning into policy. On Thursday
#7 Oct 17, 2017 The Interface - Issue #7 – One of the chief problems about covering Russia's election meddling, at least for the native English
#6 Oct 16, 2017 The Interface - Issue #6 – All these daily stories — newsletters, even! — about social media's growing, ill-defined, possibly pe
#5 Oct 13, 2017 The Interface - Issue #5 – Yesterday I wrote about Facebook's decision to delete thousands of posts from Russia-linked web pages
#4 Oct 12, 2017 The Interface - Issue #4 – The biggest story in social media today was Sheryl Sandberg's live interview with Mike Allen from Axi
#3 Oct 11, 2017 The Interface - Issue #3 – It was a big news day for Facebook on two fronts. Lawmakers agreed to release the Facebook ads bought
#2 Oct 10, 2017 The Interface - Issue #2 – An unusually slow day on the Facebook front left room for its rivals to grab some news-cycle oxygen.
#1 Oct 9, 2017 The Interface - Issue #1 – Facebook is my beat, and it can be an overwhelming one. That feels particularly true in this moment,
