Erin Kissane, Writer/Researcher - XOXO Festival (2024)
Erin Kissane's small internet website
The latest entries posted on Erin Kissane's small internet website
Facebook Destroys Everything: Part 1 - Faine Greenwood
In Southeast Asia in the early 2010s, I watched as Facebook began to destroy Myanmar from the inside out. Here's why I'm never using Threads.
Facebook's failure in Myanmar is the work of a blundering toddler
The social network ploughs its way through the world and deals with the consequences later. In Myanmar, that strategy has had deadly consequences
XOXO - Erin Kissane's small internet website
This post annotates a talk I gave on August 24, 2024 at the final XOXO Festival in Portland, Oregon, about the gifts and terrors of the social internet and why fixing it is essential to our ability to respond to collective crisis and institutional failure.
Gradients of intimacy and creating shelter: An interview with Erin Kissane
How might we use nature as an inspiration for creating online communities?
Xodus
...Building a movement away from toxic social media platforms, towards alternative open social media...
“Nothing Is Ever Over” - AT Protocol
Writer, speaker, and researcher Erin Kissane joins Jim to trace how the social internet got here, what’s worth salvaging, and how we can do better by listening to people.
How a Chinese marketing network quietly injects political narratives into Taiwanese lifestyle content
A new investigation by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) reveals how certain Facebook pages posing as lifestyle hubs for hobbies and health tips inject Beijing’s political narratives into their feeds to influence public opinion in Taiwan. These pages are tied to the China-based digital marketing company Wubianjie, which blends entertainment, disinformation and political messaging in cognitive warfare campaigns that are difficult to detect.
Tracking Suspicious Facebook Accounts After Takaichi’s Taiwan Remarks
Inauthentic Facebook accounts amplified anti-Japan narratives in Malaysian media after PM Takaichi’s Taiwan contingency remarks.
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…
FediForum | Growing the Open Social Web un-workshop, 2026/03/02
Shifts in U.S. Social Media Use, 2020–2024: Decline, Fragmentation, and Enduring Polarization
The social media ecosystem appears to be in flux. Twitter’s rebranding to X has come to symbolize a broader reorganization of online publics – political reshuffling, user attrition, and uncertainty over the role of legacy platforms. Simultaneously, the shift from text-based, networked feeds toward algorithmically curated, short-form video has accelerated, with TikTok setting the pace for the wider ecosystem [18, 14, 16]. At the same time, everyday communication increasingly migrates from large, open networks to semi-private spaces such as group chats and messaging apps. Commentators describe a digital public sphere in transition: smaller, more fragmented, less dominated by traditional social networking sites, and rise of more broadcast-oriented forms of media – with some even suggesting that we are seeing the beginning of the end of the social media era.
The Cloister Web: Reshaping the Political Maidan
The advent of the "Cloister Web," a conceptual space where individuals leverage Large Language Models (LLMs) to cultivate novel ideas and commit them to a persistent public memory, heralds a profound shift in our intellectual and political landscapes.
Latest ChatGPT model uses Elon Musk’s Grokipedia as source, tests reveal
Guardian found OpenAI’s platform cited Grokipedia on topics including Iran and Holocaust deniers
Writer/researcher Erin Kissane is working to build better and safer networks for collective survival, with efforts including the COVID Tracking Project, a powerful 40,000 word analysis of Meta’s role in the Rohingya genocide in Myanmar, and current research into the culture and governance of the next wave of social networks.