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This is also what the internet is becoming: a dark forest.

In response to the ads, the tracking, the trolling, the hype, and other predatory behaviors, we’re retreating to our dark forests of the internet, and away from the mainstream.

This very email is an example of this. This theory is being shared on a private channel sent to 500 people who I kno... See more

Yancey Strickler • The Dark Forest Theory of the Internet

social networking sites because they have pursued a deliberate strategy of trying to persuade you to ‘friend’ as many people as possible, mainly for the commercial benefit of their advertising business model.

Robin Dunbar • Friends: Understanding the Power of our Most Important Relationships

Think Facebook private groups.

Sara Wilson • The Era of Antisocial Social Media

Part of me wonders though if TikTok is helpful in understanding recommendation algorithms and curation, because it’s so blatant. I notice that, especially with younger users, there’s a total understanding that what they’re seeing is not occurring naturally, but is the result of computational choices being made for them.

The Atlantic • How to Leave an Internet That’s Always in Crisis

Google touted the social network’s success—“300 million monthly active users!”—without mentioning how many of them were forced to join. “It was all YouTubers!” recalled the VidCon founder Hank Green. “They could not see what they had. They could only see what they didn’t have.”

Mark Bergen • Like, Comment, Subscribe

I want to insist on an amateur internet; a garage internet; a public library internet; a kitchen table internet. At last, in 2023, I want to tell the tech CEOs and venture capitalists: pipe down. Buzz off. Go fave each other’s tweets.

Robin Sloan • A Year of New Avenues

Inexpensive and user-friendly digital tools for manipulating text, images and sounds — think Photoshop or GarageBand — have dramatically broadened access to the means of cultural production and blurred the lines between amateurs and professionals. But the question is not just how many people engage in cultural production — it’s how people engage.&

ROGERS BRUBAKER • Hyperconnected Culture and Its Discontents

Kids, drug users, political radicals, sex workers and terrorists are all unwelcome in mainstream society. They struggle to use its money, its communications tools, and its media channels. Any attempt to do so comes at a high price: personal risk, plus a high likelihood that some or all of their interactions and transactions will be interdicted — th... See more

Cory Doctorow • The sex industry isn’t technophilic

Opportunistic bad actors — anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers,conspiracy theorists, misogynists, racists, xenophobes, trolls, partisan extremists, scammers, and pedophiles — have taken advantage. Facebook and YouTube continually tweak their algorithms, use machine learning to detect spam and abuse, and spend billions of dollars hiring tens of thousands of... See more