The Great Fiber-Optic Fraudster of Alaska By Krista Stevens Highlight To this day, only Elizabeth Pierce knows why she defrauded partners and investors by forging contract signatures.
‘I’m Incredulous That People Do This Repeatedly. The Second Book Thing Is So Real.’ By Zan Romanoff Feature Mary H.K. Choi discusses her latest novel, which examines how “holograms and digital envoys” represent us online, and why it feels like her “second book signals the death of my first.”
How Google Discovered the Value of Surveillance By Longreads Feature In 2002, still reeling from the dot-com crash, Google realized they’d been harvesting a very valuable raw material — your behavior.
Why “Florida Man” Really Isn’t All that Funny By Krista Stevens Highlight “Is Florida Man a hero, a villain or a victim? And is it still okay to laugh along?” (No, it’s not.)
How the Cosby Story Finally Went Viral — And Why It Took So Long By Longreads Feature A journalist who reported on the accusations long before they went viral wonders, “What kind of profession am I in, where stories have no logical reason for unfolding?”
Twitter Won’t Miss You: A Digital Detox Reading List (and Roadmap) By Sara Benincasa Reading List Maybe it’s time for an internet break… after you read this.
‘What Would Social Media Be Like As the World Is Ending?’ By Jacob Silverman Feature In Mark Doten’s “Trump Sky Alpha,” a journalist who has survived Trump’s nuclear apocalypse gets an assignment from what’s left of the New York Times Magazine: find out what people were tweeting as the bombs fell.
“Welcome to the House of Horrors”: When IP Address Mapping Goes Wrong By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight John and his mother Ann, who live in a house in Pretoria, South Africa, were two victims of faulty IP address mapping — and the U.S. government played a big role in the mess.
The Promise of Passive Income from Amazon: Too Good To Be True? By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight Two self-proclaimed “Amazon coaches” say they can train you in their business models so you can make thousands of dollars reselling cheap Chinese products on the world’s largest ecommerce store.
They Wanted Her Body By Rafia Zakaria Feature Thinking of Qandeel Baloch’s murder as an honor killing doesn’t capture the whole truth. She was silenced for revealing men’s hypocrisy.
Re: Hate Mail By Amy Kurzweil Feature After receiving a string of menacing emails, Amy Kurzweil wonders: Can she safely extend a writer’s empathy to men who harass her on the internet?
The Gilded Age of (Unpaid) Internet Writing By Rebecca Schuman Feature How ’90s webzines heralded the best — and worst — of today’s online media landscape.
Not Quite Democracy: Lucie Greene on the Civic Aspirations of Tech Giants By Bradley Babendir Feature Lucie Greene’s new book “Silicon States” is about the danger of concentrating so much power in so few hands.
Army of Me By Longreads Feature A woman who doesn’t feel like going to work today stays in bed and looks at the internet instead. She finds a blog by a fed-up call center employee who complains about the customers.
Accountability for the Algorithms By Krista Stevens Highlight Tim Berners-Lee: “For people who want to make sure the Web serves humanity, we have to concern ourselves with what people are building on top of it.”
Meet the New Mormons By Sarah Scoles Feature Is it possible to be queer, lefty, and a Latter-Day Saint? After leaving the church, Sarah Scoles sets out to understand liberal Mormons.
The Last Place Where No One Is Looking: Embracing the End Times of Snapchat By Cheri Lucas Rowlands Highlight As once-popular Snapchat becomes an increasingly irrelevant platform, Helena Fitzgerald finds beauty in its uselessness.
Wild At Heart By Longreads Feature They perform daring escapes from slaughterhouses, zoos, and laboratories. But animals on the run are only as free as we want them to be.
Digital Media and the Case of the Missing Archives By Danielle Tcholakian Commentary The more work that journalists create for the internet, the more work is rendered obsolete.
We’ve Always Hated Girls Online: A Wayback Machine Investigation By Julianne Aguilar Feature Searching for a teen girl who was once internet famous for her coding skills, a former fan uncovers a story of harassment.
The Internet Isn’t Forever By Maria Bustillos Feature When an online news outlet goes out of business, its archives can disappear as well. The new battle over journalism’s digital legacy.
The Fight to Escape “A World of Anonymous Abuse” By Em Perper Highlight Online harassment is as serious as offline harassment, and it rarely stays “only” online.
What Happened to eBay? By Em Perper Highlight I haven’t peeked at eBay in years, and apparently I’m not the only one who’s forgotten it exists.
The Creator of Bitcoin Comes Clean, Only to Disappear Again By Longreads Feature The mysterious creator of bitcoin asks a journalist to help reveal his identity.
Tech Companies Are (Maybe) Ready to Punch Nazis Now By Danielle Tcholakian Commentary Some tech companies are taking a stand against neo-Nazi users, but claim it’s a still dangerous decision to make.
How Do Words Get Added to the Dictionary? By Danielle Tcholakian Commentary Four times a year, lexicographers update and add words to the OED. Katherine Connor Martin helps decide what makes the cut.
(Re)Merchandising NASA as a Feminist Act By Pam Mandel Highlight “I took the NASA shirts from the ‘boys’ section from where they were prominently displayed, and put them little kid eye level next to tank tops in the ‘girls’ section 20 feet away.”
