Cory Doctorow has regularly referenced this book (most notably, the anecdote about people letting Mark Zuckerberg win at Catan) several times since reading it himself, so I decided it was time to take a look myself. It was an enjoyable (by which I mean horrifying) read, though I think I would have enjoyed it more if the same stories had been collected as part of a journalistic project rather than as a tell-all memoir.

Ugh, this article makes it sound even worse.

What a depressing story.

Personally, I’m not sure why anyone needs to be this rich.

Love this framing of using Meta as “making donations to Mark Zuckerberg.” It nicely describes the idea of digital labor that’s been on my mind for a couple of years now.

This was one of the dumbest parts of all Meta’s announcements and now it’s… basically nothing, too?

Not the headline I would have chosen, but very interesting argument here.

Moderating employees but not users seems telling to me.

Personally, I’ve come around to the idea that fewer restrictions, “Community Notes”-style responses, and lots of personal control over what one sees could work better as content moderation. It’s interesting to see Bluesky take some of these approaches, for example!

Here, though, this seems like it’s bending the knee to the Trump administration, and I can’t imagine any of this being done in good faith. What a disappointment Meta continues to be.

This is one of these stories where I’ve been waiting to get Masnick’s take on it, and he does not disappoint.

I think this is two weeks in a row that I’ve shared Casey Newton’s Platformer column, but that’s because it’s two weeks in a row he’s written something important.