“Launch House promised young tech founders community. A Vox investigation found what happens when clout and cash are paramount, and protecting members falls by the wayside.”
Internet
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Twisted Life of Clippy
In the 1990s, Microsoft created a virtual assistant in Microsoft Office that users found annoying — so it was swiftly retired. For Seattle Met, Benjamin Cassidy recounts the history of an unloved and doomed office assistant that has lived on in pop and nerd culture. These days, an annoying Word creature might seem eminently tolerable […]
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Very Online
CJR fellow Karen Maniraho talks with five very online journalists — Ryan Broderick, Jason Parham, Taylor Lorenz, Rebecca Jennings, and Rusty Foster — about what it’s like to cover tech and internet culture today, how they navigate through viral moments and algorithms, and how they look for meaning in a constantly noise-polluted, chaotic space. Because […]
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The Loneliness of the Junior College Esports Coach
“He tried to save his wife through the video game they loved—and nearly lost himself. Then he signed up to lead a fledgling team of gamers in Cheyenne, Wyoming.”
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The Woes of Being Addicted to Streaming
“After a decade under the influence of music algorithms, a look at what streaming services afford the most engaged fans and what lingers below the surface.”
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In the Dark
This is an in-depth look at the rise of government-led internet blackouts around the world over the past decade, since the Mubarak regime’s shutdown of the internet in Egypt during the Arab Spring of 2011. Whole countries, including Sudan, Uganda, and Myanmar, have gone offline for days on end, as leaders try to cripple their […]
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Taking Stock
Rob Horning explores the term “creator” in this essay on labor, exploitation, and content production and consumption on the internet. “Creator,” like “creativity,” is essentially a null term that signifies nothing about one’s activity but instead marks one’s limitless availability — a willingness to make anything at all in one’s life into content for sale.
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“Take Her Down”: Inside eBay’s Stalking Campaign Against a Natick Couple
“Amazon. Etsy. eBay. Lots of companies appeared in David and Ina Steiner’s E-commerce newsletter. Only one tried to take them out.”
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The Great Beyond
“While it is not new for technology to mediate our relationship to death, the interactivity and public-ness of in-memoriam profiles is distinctly novel.”
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On the Internet, We’re Always Famous
“Never before in history have so many people been under the gaze of so many strangers.”