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In this excerpt from "Governing Babel," John Wihbey explores how AI is reshaping online moderation by offering tools that can help human moderators, but also raises the risk of disinformation and digital chaos.
Will platforms continue to offer the like button as an all-purpose tool — or will each of the button’s various functions exist in new forms?
Welcome to The Nightcrawler — a weekly newsletter from Eric Markowitz covering tech, innovation, and long-term thinking.
"Personhood" credentials could cleanse the internet of bots — but are the costs worth it?
"The evolution of digital media makes stricter regulation of online behavior not only feasible but inevitable," writes media ecologist Andrey Mir.
In "Not Born Yesterday," author and cognitive scientist Hugo Mercier makes the case that misinformation is overrated — and other human foibles are underrated.
Should social media platforms have the right to decide what speech to allow online? Should the government?
Philosopher Lee McIntyre discusses the dangers of disinformation, how such falsehoods spread, and what we can do about it.
Cyberattacks are growing in number and sophistication.
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No one is teaching us how to be online. That’s a problem.
The danger posed by conversational AI isn't that it can say weird or dark things; it's personalized manipulation for nefarious purposes.
People naturally judge fact from fiction in offline social settings, so why is it so hard online?
You open an app and start scrolling, then suddenly it's an hour later. Sound familiar?
It is through speaking and listening that human beings become who they are.
Anxieties about being identified will be superseded by fears of being analyzed.
To reap the benefits of digital technologies, we must contend with their addictive designs.
What responsibility do social media companies like Twitter have to free speech? It depends on whether they are "landlords" or "publishers."
Social media distorts the reality of the public sphere.
The problems that Americans face are often too complex for fact-checking alone.
Someone breaks into a mailbox that stores letters waiting to be sent and grabs some of them in hopes they’ll contain a check that’s been filled in. That's just the start.
“To be ignorant of causes is to be frustrated in action.” So wrote Francis Bacon, counsel to Queen Elizabeth I of England and key architect of the scientific method. In […]