Inside UnitedHealth’s Playbook for Limiting Mental Health Coverage
[Annie Waldman at ProPublica]UnitedHealth Group has been using an algorithm to determine whether patients have been receiving "too much" therapy and then cutting them off:"Around 2016, government...
View ArticleSF tech layoffs: Tales of post-pink-slip reinvention
[Jillian D'Onfro at The San Francisco Standard]On one level, this piece about tech workers leaving the industry behind and doing something more culturally meaningful is quite nice:"Andrew Wasilewski,...
View ArticleDon't call it a Substack.
[Anil Dash]Anil Dash on Substack's attempt to brand "writing in a newsletter":"We constrain our imaginations when we subordinate our creations to names owned by fascist tycoons. Imagine the author of...
View ArticleThe global growth rate for mobile internet subscribers has stalled
[Khadija Alam and Russell Brandom at Rest of World]Mobile internet subscriber growth is significantly slowing globally:"From 2015 to 2021, the survey consistently found over 200 million coming online...
View ArticleHow Rappler Is Building Its Own Communities to Counter AI and Big Tech
[Lucinda Jordaan at Global Investigative Journalism Network]I'd missed this story from back in July. Rappler is building its own end-to-end encrypted, decentralized communities on the Matrix...
View ArticleThe Right Triumphed Over Social Media and Helped Elect Trump
[Julia Angwin at The New York Times]In an op-ed for The New York Times, Julia Angwin makes a strong argument for the open social web:"If we want a quality information environment, we have to build a...
View ArticleUndergraduates with family income below $200,000 can expect to attend MIT...
[Massachusetts Institute of Technology]Changes to financial aid at MIT:"Undergraduates with family income below $200,000 can expect to attend MIT tuition-free starting next fall, thanks to newly...
View ArticleGoogle must sell Chrome to end search monopoly, says US justice department
[Dan Milmo at The Guardian]The Department of Justice has filed its proposed remedies to Google's illegal monopoly over search services:"The proposals filed to a Washington federal court include the...
View ArticleDecentralised social media ‘increases citizen empowerment’, says Oxford study
[Oxford Martin School]The Oxford Martin School is a multidisciplinary research institution at the University of Oxford focused on tackling global challenges and shaping a sustainable future through...
View ArticleProPublica is a big part of the future of news
In the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin discusses my workplace, the journalism it undertakes, and why it's important (gift link). I lead technology, and while I sit on the business side of the...
View ArticleAn Interview with Boots Riley
[Annalee Newitz at The Believer]Boots Riley is a national treasure. I loved this interview with him in The Believer:"BLVR: Do you think that all expression is propaganda?BR: The word propaganda got...
View ArticleHow decentralized is Bluesky really?
[Christine Lemmer-Webber]Christine Lemmer-Webber has written a superb post that sets out to ask how decentralized Bluesky is but goes far deeper into the different models at play in decentralized...
View ArticleWith Trump alliance, Elon Musk became exactly what he vowed to expose
[Mike Masnick at MSNBC]As Mike Masnick points out here, the hypocrisy from Elon Musk about collusion between tech and government is staggering:"Before, we were told that White House officials’ merely...
View ArticleBluesky is breaking the rules in the EU
[Wes Davis at The Verge]Interesting announcement from the European Commission:"The European Union says Twitter alternative Bluesky violates the EU Digital Services Act rules around information...
View ArticleElon Musk floats buying MSNBC, but he’s not the only billionaire who may be...
[Brian Stelter at CNN]CNN's Chief Media Analyst Brian Stelter reports that multiple very wealthy individuals, including Elon Musk, have enquired about buying MSNBC:"I spent Sunday on the phone with...
View ArticleImmigrants’ Resentment Over New Arrivals Helped Boost Trump’s Popularity With...
[Melissa Sanchez and Mica Rosenberg at ProPublica]Important resentments coming to the surface here: "Her anger is largely directed at President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party for failing to...
View ArticleIntroducing Sill
[Tyler Fisher]Tyler Fisher has built a Nuzzel-like service for Bluesky:"Sill connects to your Bluesky and Mastodon accounts and aggregates the most popular links in your network. (Yes, a little like...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bluesky, AI, and the battle for consent on the open web
Daniel van Strien, a machine learning librarian at Hugging Face, took a million Bluesky posts and turned them into a dataset expressly for training AI models:“This dataset could be used for “training...
View ArticleFor Love of God, Make Your Own Website
[Gita Jackson at Aftermath]I love a good treatise in favor of the indie web:"Unfortunately, this is what all of the internet is right now: social media, owned by large corporations that make changes...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Thanksgiving is about belonging
I think Thanksgiving is mostly about belonging.I was raised in a culture other than that of either of my parents or my nationality: what they call a Third Culture Kid. With that sort of profile,...
View ArticleThe Twitter Board made a historic mistake and the World will pay the price.
[Ricardo Mendes]Ricardo argues that Twitter's sale to Elon Musk was one major factor that led to the rise of extremism worldwide, and that it should never have been allowed:The sale of Twitter to Musk...
View ArticleFourteen years
[Joel Gascoigne]I always appreciate Joel's updates."Early on, my dream was just to create a tool that made it easy to Tweet consistently, build it for myself and others, and make enough money to cover...
View ArticleClik here to view.
My OKRs for 2025
It’s December, somehow; the tail end of a stressful year, but also the precursor to another one that (and I’m sorry this isn’t the cheeriest prediction) somehow promises to be worse. Good times.How do...
View ArticleThese Tech Firms Won’t Tell Us If They Will Help Trump Deport Immigrants
[Sam Biddle at The Intercept]In the face of Trump's promise to conduct mass deportations, The Intercept set out to find out who in tech would be collaborators:"To see whether corporate America will...
View ArticleFTC Bans Location Data Company That Powers the Surveillance Ecosystem
[Joseph Cox at 404 Media]This is good to see:"The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced sweeping action against some of the most important companies in the location data industry on Tuesday,...
View Article