An alliance of heretics is making an end run around the mainstream conversation. Should we be listening?
What Kind of Literature Lives on the Dark Web?
Depending on who you ask, the “Dark Web”—the Internet’s mysterious undercurrent accessible only through specialized software—is either a libertarian utopia or a criminal hellscape…
The Master takes on new meaning in the age of the Intellectual Dark Web
A story of troubled men takes a new shape under the political veil of 2019
The Voice of the ‘Intellectual Dark Web’
Claire Lehmann’s online magazine, Quillette, prides itself on publishing “dangerous” ideas other outlets won’t touch. How far is it willing to go?
FediForum | Growing the Open Social Web un-workshop, 2026/03/02
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Artists, raison d'être: Can we re-think tech that works for people, & not just corporations? Can we improve the world our children inherit? Deliberate, discuss, develop. This is DARKSHAPES. We build
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The Internet spaces I tend to inhabit have more polarisation than at many other recent times, and little explication of the worldviews that lead to different premises for discussion, that in turn...
Two months ago, the internet tried to banish Nazis. No one knows if it worked
The Verge is about technology and how it makes us feel. Founded in 2011, we offer our audience everything from breaking news to reviews to award-winning features and investigations, on our site, in video, and in podcasts.
Long Live the Web: A Call for Continued Open Standards and Neutrality
The Web is critical not merely to the digital revolution but to our continued prosperity—and even our liberty. Like democracy itself, it needs defending
Trust and Faith in Our Web
I’m not Brennan, but I’m very interested in decentralization and a fan of AtProto specifically, so I’d like to weigh in. First I should mention I’ve personally never been able to get into microblogging, so I haven’t touched bluesky myself, despite having an account for ATProto reasons. But I agree it’s concerning that the company chooses to continue to host the content of harmful individuals and calling that act “neutral”. I’m certainly against the idea of the “marketplace of ideas” as it’s cle...
Data Feminism for AI
Attacks on women and trans people are not happening in a vacuum. Communications scholars W. Lance Bennett and Marianne Kneuer recently argued that we are witnessing the intensification of "illiberal public spheres" around the world (Bennett and Kneuer, 2023). These are characterized by a set of anti-democratic communications tactics that include the denigration and exclusion of minoritized people, targeted attacks on the press and political institutions, and transgression of norms of civil discourse. Such tactics are enabled and amplified by the social media platforms owned by Big Tech, whose business model elevates attention above all other metrics, such that they profit richly off extremism, threats, spectacle, and lies. The success of this corporate partnership with right-wing extremism is evident in the proliferation of book bans (Magnusson, 2024), the demonization of DEI and critical race theory (Crenshaw, 2022), and mob tactics to doxx, intimidate, misrepresent, and otherwise silence people that study misinformation, speak out against racial and gender violence, or rule against insurrectionists (Edmonds, 2024). At the same time, we have seen the continued work of feminists, including Latin American, Indigenous, and abolitionist feminists in the US and globally, doing the work of imagining alternate worlds (Cullors, 2021; Davis, 2022; Ricaurte, 2019; Simpson, 2017). This paper represents our own first attempt to imagine a more equitable, sustainable, feminist world for AI research.
Please Let the Internet Die
Online spaces are captured by oligarchs and saturated with slop—and they’re exacerbating humanity’s worst impulses. It’s time to start over.
Influencers, Bullshitters, and How We Lost a Shared Reality
A new book explores the ambiguous dominion of those who feign expertise online for clout.
How the mysterious dark net is going mainstream | Jamie Bartlett
We’re in the middle of a perfect storm for rollback of the “open web” and burgeoning online surveillance
Looking at fallout of the KOSA hearings today — and subsequent commentary — I remain optimistic for the development of social technology & communication but I’m beginning to think the ope…
The rise of AI ‘civilizations’ and the fall of corporate responsibility
The internet fights over anthropomorphism around the Hugging Face hack.
