This is an essay about technology, power relations and basic dignity. It is about the commercialization of online platforms and the difficulties of retaining individual power and autonomy online. It is about the gentrification of the internet. When I call the internet gentrified, I’m describing shifts in power and control that limit what we can do online. I’m […]
President Trump’s tweets charging that Google search results are biased, against him and against conservatives, are the loudest and latest version of a growing attack on search engines and social media platforms. It is potent, and it’s almost certainly wrong. But it comes at an unfortunate time, just as a more thoughtful and substantive challenge […]
I’m thrilled to say that my new book, Custodians of the Internet, is now available for purchase from Yale University Press, and your favorite book retailer. Those of you who know me know that I’ve been working on this book for a long time, and have cared about the issues it addresses for a while […]
[Note: This is a lightly edited re-post of a blog-post originally published on Work in Progress, a public sociology blog created by the American Sociological Association to disseminate research results. It summarizes findings from “Engineering a platform: The construction of interfaces, users, organizational roles, and the division of labor” in New Media and Society, first published online in […]
What do we expect of content moderation? And what do we expect of platforms? There is an undeniable need, now more than ever, to reconsider the public responsibilities of social media platforms. For too long, platforms have enjoyed generous legal protections and an equally generous cultural allowance, to be “mere conduits” not liable for what […]