The Follower Factory (Published 2018)

Social Media is a stage, and I'm sick of performing

I've realized lately that I don't actually want followers. I want an online neighborhood of sorts.

[Draft] Follow anyone — Open Indie

I just wanna keep track of people I care for and find interesting. The type of feed(s) available for subscription (blog, micro-blog, chat...

A Marketplace of Girl Influencers Managed by Moms and Stalked by Men (Published 2024)

Seeking social media stardom for their underage daughters, mothers post images of them on Instagram. The accounts draw men sexually attracted to children, and they sometimes pay to see more.

WTF: the who to follow service at Twitter | Request PDF

Request PDF | WTF: the who to follow service at Twitter | WTF ("Who to Follow") is Twitter's user recommendation service, which is responsible for creating millions of connections daily between users... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

🔭🖤🚀 Social media’s next evolution: decentralized, open-source, and scalable

How Blacksky grew to millions of users without spending a dollar

WTF: The Who to Follow Service at Twitter

This describes the architectural overview including the technologies used behind, building and running the popular service known as “Who To…

Death by a thousand likes: How Facebook and Twitter are killing the open web

Here’s one way to understand the symbiotic relationship between publications and platforms in the digital age. Publications depend on advertising dollars to keep producing content, so they need to hold readers’ attention. Big platforms like Facebook and Twitter already have plenty of attention, but they need vast quantities of content to fill up their newsfeeds. It seems natural, then, that publications have started relying on platforms to drive readership.

Death by a thousand likes: How Facebook and Twitter are killing the open web

Here’s one way to understand the symbiotic relationship between publications and platforms in the digital age. Publications depend on advertising dollars to keep producing content, so they need to hold readers’ attention. Big platforms like Facebook and Twitter already have plenty of attention, but they need vast quantities of content to fill up their newsfeeds. It seems natural, then, that publications have started relying on platforms to drive readership.

Custodians of the Internet

A revealing and gripping investigation into how social media platforms police what we post online—and the large societal impact of these decisions Most use...

Social Media Is Now Parasocial Media

When practitioners used the term “social media” to describe the internet tools that emerged in the mid-aughts, they were giving a name to the kinds of platforms and protocols that allowed people to socialize with friends and communities of interest by using digital technologies. Twenty years later, users of social media are far more likely to scroll than post – and the content that they consume is often strategically produced and algorithmically curated. In this essay, I argue that the very essence of social media has changed. To more effectively interrogate what we are witnessing, we need to stop presuming that these tools are “social media” and begin recognizing that they are now “parasocial media.” Doing so raises new questions about digitally mediated sociality, not to mention the politics and governance of these platforms.

Can “Indie” Social Media Save Us?

Artisanal versions of Twitter and Facebook hope to keep the good while jettisoning the bad.

WTF: the who to follow service at Twitter

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Why Influencers Suddenly Love Facebook. (No Joke.) “It’s My Biggest Source of Income”

A quiet overhaul of the 21-year-old platform’s monetization formula is winning over a new class of content makers.

The Nightmare of Eternal Spring: Why Social Media Can't Survive on "Niceness" Alone - Nightflight