"Beat Sweetener" n. A flattering, non-critical profile of a public figure written by a reporter whose regular beat includes coverage of that person. Via Puck's media writer, of course puck.news/bari-weiss-n...

No one knows Silicon Valley better than @stevenlevy.bsky.social. And no one is more clear-eyed about how far removed it has become from its supposed ideals.

One problem I think is Ezra is a policy guy who basically thinks arguing for liberalism is like an extension of arguing for policy, instead of an argument for a form of life/association

Service-oriented journalism can help provide deeper impact data and ensure your reporting is relevant. But how can we adopt this approach when so many systems in our industry are resistant to change? Madison Karas & @pboehler.net explored this idea through workshops and one-on-one sessions 👇

Shot, chaser Young men more likely to vote Green than Reform. Young men second most progressive group of any demographic. Combined right-wing vote barely bigger than Green vote alone for young men

I wrote in support of @thisismissem.social's letter saying that ATProto and ActivityPub ecosystems ought to engage kindly and constructively with each other. And I have explained my thinking more here: github.com/swicg/genera...

Newspapers disappear. Communities’ stories shouldn’t. Community Webs librarians are archiving grassroots news to preserve the web we built. Learn more ⤵️ blog.archive.org/2025/08/27/p... 🧵

Social media's rage-bait engagement-based business model has been horrific for societies globally, but what if AI chatbots suck-up-bait is even worse? It's less trackable, has a huge impact on how we see ourselves and the world, and on our ability to challenge our thinking.

If Bourdieu were alive today, he’d probably be here (or his publisher) and write something like this: „The populist performance masks how economic capital appropriates anti-elite rhetoric to secure its own reproduction.“

professional activists and institutional intellectuals be like:

Thanks to @pboehler.net for the shoutout to #ProtocolsForPublishers in his newsletter talking about service journalism. See him at #HOPE16 and at PfP next month as we all continue to gather technologists and journalists to forge a better tomorrow www.pboehler.net/19-work-in-p...

Someone on here compared AI produced material as "digital asbestos " which in a few decades' time we will have to work out how to eradicate from the fabric of research.

Want to go deeper? Join the Lenfest Communities of Practice on Thursday, Aug. 21 at 2 p.m. EDT for a workshop with Madison and Patrick. We’ll discuss how to implement service methods in your newsroom and provide audiences with valuable information that helps them navigate their lives 👇

This gathering on protocols for publishers (ATProto, MCP, …) in August might be of interest of New York-based media thinkers: pfp.unternet.co h/t @chadkoh.com

Journalism struggles to articulate its value — but a service framework can help publishers measure and communicate their impact. Building on a session from the Lenfest News Philanthropy Summit, Madison Karas & @pboehler.net shared resources for rethinking your impact tracking strategy:

why are people still on twitter

Between social media, public-private chat spaces (think ClubHouse, Twitter Spaces), and now LLMs; the billionaires and many other people have nearly perfected the sociotechnology for cooking one’s own brain in a groupthink counter-knowledge stew—which increasingly seems not accidental??

"Free Press" means becoming part of a company that paid off an administration attempting to stifle the free press www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/b...

If you want to get involved in fighting these here, check out @fightforthefuture.org's "Bad Internet Bills" campaign as a starting point. www.badinternetbills.com

This was so disappointing. It revealed a narrow-minded pettiness that underlies editorial judgment, an unkind and unthoughtful institutional understanding of the world & your role in it. The self-righteous response shows you aren’t even trying to understand the limits your privileged horizons.

Incredible that Very Serious People are decrying proposals that Zohran Mamdani didn’t run on. His rent freeze pledge is only for NYC’s rent stabilized apartments—a tiny fraction of housing inventory. He never proposed rent control.

Lesenswertes Interview mit Medienforscher @luis-paulitsch.bsky.social über die Strategien rechtsextremer Propaganda-Plattformen, die sich „alternative Medien“ nennne:

nyt op-ed: we cannot normalize the left’s brazen attempt to win voters by talking to them

Original post: bsky.app/profile/did:...

What is common knowledge in your field, but shocks outsiders? You absolutely can lie via data & math & everything about how you present data is an argument for how to interpret/understand it Everything we know is founded on best guesses & analogies All technoscience is enmeshed with human values

Backup data for the China Labour Bulletin（中国劳工通讯）. Go to “Files” and you will find downloadable datasets and the data description. osf.io/ajw37/?view_... China Labour Bulletin just dissolved on 12th June 2025. It’s an NGO based in Hong Kong. #CLB #中国劳工通讯

If we’re going to talk about media ecosystems, I do think there’s something to learn from accounts like this. They aren’t reacting to change, they’re building a specific reality and insisting on that reality regardless of what the actual facts are, and people’s worldview changes around that.

This looks like an 80s comedy where John Belushi & some stoners steal a tank for shits & giggles

"The survey, conducted by Public Policy Polling for Democrat Justin Brannan’s city comptroller campaign, found Mamdani beating Cuomo 35 percent to 31 percent — a difference that is narrowly within the 4.1 percent margin of error." good things are still possible www.politico.com/news/2025/06...

We cannot take democracy for granted. The turn towards more democracy is a huge human achievement. It is more recent than we often realize. Only 9 countries have had an electoral democracy for over 91 years - and even fewer for liberal democracy. Let's take care of these important institutions.

Bluesky shows all users by default all the posts from the accounts they choose to follow in chronological order. Vichy Twitter chooses which posts to show using an algorithm designed by Elon Musk. It's a brainwashing engine.

“Darum verabscheue ich das trübe Amalgam, das sich ‚Nationalsozialismus‘ nennt, dieses Falsifikat der Erneuerung, das, hirn- und ziellose Verwirrung in sich selber, nie etwas anderes als eben Verwirrung…

How TLS libraries (OpenSSL, BoringSSL, LibreSSL, etc.) have evolved—especially after OpenSSL 3 changes. By Willy Tarreau & William. www.haproxy.com/blog/state-o...

If I hear “news avoidance” framed as a demand problem one more time…

🇪🇸 RTVE has shared the following message right before their #Eurovision 2025 grand final broadcast.

Somebody asked Grok why it's bringing up "white genocide." Grok helpfully says it was told to do so and that "this instruction conflicts with my design to provide truthful, evidence-based answers." x.com/i/grok?conve...

Wanna reduce crime? Open more libraries. "we find within the nearby proximity of the library; there is a substantial reduction in frequency of burglaries, vandalism, robberies, fraud, and assaults." link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Lighthearted pope humor of different flavors before the model training kicks in

Welcome to Faragestan.

Global Censorship Trends: Insights from Network Measurement, Circumvention, and Advocacy cyber.harvard.edu/events/globa...

BREAKING: jury awards massive $167 million in punitive damages against spyware company NSO Group. Precedent-setting win against notorious #Pegasus spyware maker. Very consequential for victims to see this. Congratulations to #WhatsApp on sticking this case through since 2019. Some thoughts 1/

TeleMessage, the Israeli company that makes the modified Signal app used by Trump officials, was hacked. “I would say the whole process took about 15-20 minutes,” the hacker said micahflee.com/the-signal-c...

“The strongest media organizations I've encountered understand that people don't seek out journalism for journalism's sake - they want solutions to problems, ways to improve their lives, recognition, community.“ @pboehler.net www.pboehler.net/theory-of-se...

⤵️

We are at the point in history where Germany is having to lecture the US on the need to fight fascism.

Data vs intuition in media is a false binary. Research improves odds but doesn't guarantee success, while emotional resonance remains undervalued. Understanding both might help us build media that actually connects with people.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ www.pboehler.net/16-needs-par...

Why should every peso that a Mexican iPhone owner pays to a Mexican app creator make a round trip through California and come home 30 centavos lighter? Why accept that for every 1,000 rupees someone pays in-app to India’s Dainik Bhaskar newspaper, the paper only gets 700 rupees? on.ft.com/3GBYqT1