Careless people: a cautionary tale of power, greed, and lost idealism

Pluralistic: Sarah Wynn-Williams’s ‘Careless People’ (23 Apr 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

I never would have read Careless People, Sarah Wynn-Williams's tell-all memoir about her years running global policy for Facebook, but then Meta's lawyer tried to get the book suppressed and secured an injunction to prevent her from promoting it:

Perfectly Imperfect is the ‘social magazine’ (and nerd’s paradise) remodelling the online sphere

Split between a platform to profile figures from Charli XCX to Francis Ford Coppola, and a social network that refuses to serve the algorithm overlords, this magazine is breaking necks.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg

A young woman walks into a laboratory. Over the past two years, she has transformed almost every ...

(PDF) Facebook confessions: Corporate abdication and Silicon Valley dystopianism

PDF | This article investigates the public confessions of a small group of ex-Facebook employees, investors, and founders who express regret helping to... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

Field Notes: The Architecture of Rationalization - Aaron Ross Powell

Marginalia on the internet turning bad, platform extraction, and existential restlessness.

The Joy of Becoming Worthless…except to each other — Douglas Rushkoff

My last piece, The Intentional Collapse, seems to have agitated a few people. I know it came off a bit dark. I talked about how the Uber wealthy believe the world as we know it is ending and that there won’t be enough essential resources to go around, so they need to take control of as much money and stuff and land as possible in order to position themselves for the end of days.

Thoughts on Cyberpositionality: The Construction of Digital Communities in Digital Spaces, Damien Patrick Williams

I found Rebecca Monteleone, Martin Perez Comisso, and Elma Hajric’s “Cyberpositionality: Sociotechnical Location in the Digital Age” (2024) to be an extremely timely and important article which can…

More Everything Forever

This "smart and wonderfully readable" (New York Times) exposé shows why Silicon Valley’s heartless, baseless, and foolish obsessions—with escaping death...

How dupes took over the world

The Verge’s Mia Sato explains the appeal and big business of dupes.

W Social is a textbook case for everything wrong with digital sovereignty

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results. This saying is attributed to the famous socialist (and theoretical physicist) Albert Einstein but actually traces back to novelist Rita Mae Brown. I have been thinking about this saying a lot lately. The reason is

Ephemeral Identities

The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology. Reading time: ~5 minute read | Published: Sep 16, 2026 | Updated: Sep 17, 2026

The Case for a Public Social Media Platform - JSTOR Daily

Artist and writer Joshua Citarella explores why corporate platforms corrode democracy—and what a postal-service-style digital commons could do differently.

Digital Locality

The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology. Reading time: ~10 minute read | Published: Nov 21, 2024 | Updated: Aug 3, 2026

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

How the Tech World Turned Evil

Once upon a time, they were counterculture idealists bringing power to the people. Today they’re greedy monopolists who’d sooner destroy our democracy than be reined in by government in any way—and they have to be stopped.