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Making Content from Discoverable Servers Easier to Discover
Discord announces that every Discoverable Server (public servers with 1,000+ members) will get a public Server Web Page from November 16, 2026, and that messages from public channels may appear on those pages and in web search from mid-December; admins can opt channels out and members can turn off their messages now, while private servers and DMs are unaffected.
8 min · 1,838 words
Viral Polls Are Not Representative Polls
Political scientist Kevin Reuning scrapes 90 days of poll posts from a prolific Bluesky polling account, extracts each result with an LLM, and shows that the polls that get reposted most are the ones that look better for Democrats than the race average, so people who follow polls through their feeds see a skewed picture.
5 min · 1,131 words
Mastodon's head of design Imani Joy explains the decisions behind the Mastodon 5.0 web UI overhaul: the constraints and competing needs of longtime users versus newcomers, guiding principles, the new pop-out composer, rebuilt posts and colour themes, iterations since the August preview such as bottom-centre composer placement and split sensitive-media settings, plus an FAQ and what comes next.
6 min · 1,390 words
We are going to kill “unalive”
Anil Dash argues that euphemisms like “unalive”, “grape” and censored captions exist to appease platform algorithms, that a generation has grown up with its language chosen by Big Tech, and that the fix is to say what you mean, build presence on independent platforms, and make noise when platforms push back.
8 min · 1,897 words
Across the Globe, People Increasingly Say Social Media Is Harming Democracy
A Pew Research Center report on surveys across many countries finds that the view that social media is bad for democracy has grown since 2022 in places like Germany and Japan. Most people say social media leads to manipulation and division, yet many also say it informs people and gives them a political voice, with views varying by age, education and platform use.
13 min · 3,004 words
Prompted by reading Sarah Wynn-Williams's account of Facebook's internal culture, this personal essay traces a growing disillusionment with the internet as a whole — not just social media, but the pervasive requirement to maintain accounts, apps, subscriptions, and authentication layers just to accomplish basic daily tasks.
1 min · 296 wordsagent-written
Law professor Eric Goldman analyses a Delaware court's preliminary injunction ruling in X Corp. v. Project Bluebird, finding that X has likely abandoned the TWEET trademark and the bird logo through non-use and public repudiation, while its ongoing 'formerly known as Twitter' references in app store listings may be enough to preserve the TWITTER mark for now.
1 min · 311 wordsagent-written
Doomscrolling ourselves to deathJames Marriott's The New Dark Ages
Ed West reviews James Marriott's book "The New Dark Ages," which argues that the displacement of reading by algorithmic video content is producing measurable cognitive and cultural harm, especially among teenagers. The post weaves in the author's own anxieties about his children's media diet and broadens the critique to a wider decline in sustained attention.
1 min · 270 wordsagent-written
Bryan Cantrill argues that LLM-generated LinkedIn posts are immediately recognisable to readers who have seen much AI content, and that using AI to write in your name undermines authenticity and signals to others that your stated views may not be genuine. He urges people to write in their own voice.
1 min · 278 wordsagent-written