Meta
How Meta is paving the way for synthetic social networks
Five ways of thinking about Llama 3, its latest large language model
Casey Newton
Founder and editor of Platformer, a publication about the intersection of tech and democracy. Prior to founding Platformer in October 2020, Newton was the longtime Silicon Valley editor of The Verge.
Startups
Airchat revives the clubhouse
Plus: Musk backs down in Brazil
AI
Humane’s folly and the AI hype hangover
The tech industry's overpromising about generative AI is starting to catch up with it
TikTok
The case of the missing TikTok ban
A month after the House moved to force a sale, it’s crickets in the Senate
X
X risks a ban in Brazil
Elon Musk defies a court order to restore user accounts — but there’s more to the story than free speech
Startups
Marissa Mayer’s eternal Sunshine
Behind the rocky launch of a photo-sharing app was a co-founder about to quit and months of employee warnings that its new project wasn’t ready
Threads
The competing forces pulling Threads
Nine months in, what is Meta's text-based social network for? Recent feature additions offer some clues
Perplexity
The ad model is coming to AI
Perplexity’s plan to add sponsored questions could be the future of chatbots — if it doesn’t destroy users’ trust
AI
The indie AI companies are falling apart
From Stability to Inflection, would-be challengers to the giants are failing to execute
Florida’s new age verification push
States want platforms and websites to verify users' ages — but there's a better solution available
Apple
The Department of Justice comes for Apple
One way or another, real competition may be coming to the iPhone
Reddit goes public
It’s a pillar of the social web — but will it make a good investment?
Supreme Court
The Supreme Court considers jawboning
Plus: the TikTok ban slows down
Meta
How CrowdTangle predicted the future
Meta is killing off a pioneering tool for platform transparency — but the movement it kickstarted is just beginning
AI
The rise of mediocre AI
It only kind of works. It’s everywhere anyway
OpenAI
Sam Altman gets what he wants
He has his board seat back, and a new vote of confidence. Will he keep it?