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.
Branch Magazine Issue 8: Finding beauty in the imperfect
Branch is an online magazine written by and for people who dream of a sustainable and just internet. Issue 8 out now: Finding beauty in the imperfect.
Social Networking Utopia — Matt
In discussing the network topology of social networks — whether centralized like Facebook or federated like ActivityPub — I think the ult...
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…
Virality | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
Decentralized Identity | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
Digital Avatars | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
Marc Andreessen as Avatar for Societal Decay
How one venture capitalist represents everything wrong with social media
Reddit holds the secret to fixing Facebook
News discussion site Reddit offers a model for a fairer internet - if it can overcome its flaws.
Bluesky COO Rose Wang On Building a Better Social Network
Trust — Utopian conspiracy
A network of utopian conspirators, a sandbox for their creative, technical and critical projects, and a site of experimentation for new ways of learning together.
Decentralized Social Media | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
How Facebook got addicted to spreading misinformation
The company’s AI algorithms gave it an insatiable habit for lies and hate speech. Now the man who built them can't fix the problem.
Your intellectual fly is open | The Observation Deck
Note: This was originally published as a LinkedIn post on November 11, 2025. I need to make a painful confession: somehow, LinkedIn has become an important social network to me. This isn’t necessarily due to LinkedIn’s sparkling competence, of course. To the contrary, LinkedIn is the Gerald Ford of social networks: the normal one that was left standing as the Richard Nixons and the Spiro Agnews of social media imploded around them. As with Gerald Ford, with LinkedIn we know that we’re getting something a bit clumsy and boring, but (as with post-Watergate America!), we’re also getting something that isn’t totally crooked — and that’s actually a bit of a relief.
The Internet is Full of Strangers | The Paper Pilot
The Paper Pilot's digital garden of thoughts on philosophy, politics, and sociology
Social Media - Algorithmic Distortions and Polarization
Who Participates in Politics on Social Media, and Why?
We are going to kill “unalive” - Anil Dash
Beyond Misinformation: Social Media and the Sculpting of Epistemic Agency
You’ll do anything for your baby. The algorithm knows how to exploit that.
The Like Button Helped Social Media Put Profit Over People. We Can’t Let AI Do the Same.
Middleware for Feed Recommendation in Practice: How Feed Creators...