







I still can't quite believe this story, but I've researched it first hand and yeah, it's true. I don't know what was going on in that executive's head to make them believe they wouldn't be caught doctoring engagement numbers on their homepage. blog.elenarossini.com/w-social-fictional-metrics-an…
W Social, Fictional Metrics and the Beauty of Open Data
blog.elenarossini.comJun 25, 2026 at 12:24 PM
Elena Rossini 🌈 (@_elena@mastodon.social)
🚨 New post alert 📝 A deep dive into #WSocial with some fascinating findings: candid statements about their motives, a Greta Thunberg connection, potential AI plans (!!!) Why write about it again? I still had so many questions after publishing my first article. I spent 3 weeks watching every interview I could find and connecting the dots. I hope you'll enjoy this piece: 🔗 : https://blog.elenarossini.com/the-untold-story-about-w-social-unconventional-beginnings-strategic-pitches-conflicting-signals/ #blog #longread #privacy #DataMining #Europe
The saga of 'Pizzagate': The fake story that shows how conspiracy theories spread
Thousands of people are spreading a false rumour about a Washington pizza restaurant and a child sex ring. But why?

Fact-Checking False Claims about our Gender Identity Coverage | The New York Times Company
A recent post from Trans News Network included numerous falsehoods about New York Times stories on gender identity and maligned some of the journalists involved in the work. Our coverage is guided by…

The Media Can't Stop Propping Up Elon Musk's Phony Supergenius Engineer Mythology
"CEO said a thing!" journalism is now utterly pervasive, and includes parroting billionaire and CEO claims with a total disregard for whether or not anything being said is actually true.

Do links hurt news publishers on Twitter? Our analysis suggests yes
Engagement for tweets from @nytimes (53 million followers) is dwarfed by engagement for tweets from @GlobeEyeNews (866,000 followers).

Cas (Stephen Casper) on Twitter / X
It is hard to overstate how disappointing I think this new paper from Oxford, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google (et al) is. I can't take it seriously as academic work, just as propaganda. It also has some very bad scholarship and questionable adherence to research ethics. Having… pic.twitter.com/Z5fBx360ya— Cas (Stephen Casper) (@StephenLCasper) May 13, 2026

We found a website you can’t leave
W Social, Fictional Metrics and the Beauty of Open Data
W Social's tagline is "Trust Your Feed" but the company's landing page displays inflated engagement metrics - a misrepresentation that contradicts its own promise.

Employee Slowly Realizes Boss Attempting To Have Normal Conversation With Her
ACWORTH, GA—Taking several minutes to fully process what was occurring, Sinclair Group, Inc. employee Carolyn Belk, 27, slowly and gradually realized this morning that her boss, Doug Fletcher, 48, was attempting to conduct a normal conversation with her. “He came in and asked me how everything was going, and then he started talking about his family’s plans for the holidays and whether I had made plans yet too and I’m thinking ‘Okay, what’s happening here? Where is this going?’” said Belk, who confirmed that it dawned on her only incrementally that Fletcher was not giving her a performance review or assigning her a task or gently reprimanding her for something she had done wrong, but was in fact trying to initiate a casual coworker-to-coworker chat. “It took me a solid five minutes to figure out what was going on, and by that time the conversation was basically over. I pretty much just stared at him.” At press time, Belk was praying that would never, ever happen again.

Is Anthropic's Claude Mythos A Big Stunt, Or A Real Security Threat? What The Experts Say
The federal government summoned financial leaders to an emergency meeting over Claude Mythos last week.

The Real Story Of How I Sold Two Startups, The Chaos Afterwards, And What’s Next – The Health Care Blog
Today we’re starting a series of more personal stories, looking at what makes interesting people in health care tick. Alex Carmichael is a rare multiple time CEO in health technology, and she has a very interesting tale to tell–Matthew Holt

Can Puck reinvent the news business for the influencer age?
CEO Sarah Personette’s risky bet on journalists as influencers

✨New paper out @nature.com ✨ For 8 weeks around the 2024 US election, we randomly assigned 2,000 people to use social media algos we built ourselves. Do engagement-based algorithms amplify intergroup, moral & emotional (IME) content—and does that distort how we see political norms? 🧵🔗 👇
🚨 REPLICATION REPORT UPDATE: One year ago, a tweet by John Holbein alerted me, @ollefolke.bsky.social, and @jopieboy.bsky.social to a paper with a shocking result about Sweden’s law criminalizing the purchase of sex.🧵
Forbes is gamifying news about the horrific mass shooting in Shreveport, LA this weekend, encouraging readers to bet on the likelihood of gun regulation with fake money via its "ForbesPredict" feature. Eight children were murdered in the shooting. futurism.com/future-society/forbes-mass-sh…
In Article About Horrific Shooting That Killed Eight Children, Forbes Lets Readers Place Bets About Gun Control
futurism.comThis is crazy! The data from the study show patterns that make it nearly impossible for it to be legit. But we can learn a lot from the tone of the comments. "We have concerns about [x], please clarify." Out in the wild, this would be THESE IDIOTS FAKED THEIR STUDY!!
Health Nerd
This is one of the most remarkable academic debacles I've ever seen. A large RCT got published in BMJ. There are currently 44 Pubpeer comments, mostly about the data, including...well. Read for yourself. pubpeer.com/publications/C08779C45DB6E407…