Surprising no one, Meta has decided to close down their VR platform Horizon Worlds, after they invested $80 billion into it and encouraged five years of community building within it. Communities, including AA meetings and a church that met there every Sunday, are rightfully devastated.

Former surgeon general Dr. Vivek Murthy, who declared loneliness as a public health crisis, now has a newsletter. We’re excited to see what else this up and comer has to say about human connection and belonging 😁

This is the “cracker barrel effect”, where our collective memory is warped by fabricated online popularity. (Nearly half of the posts about the CB logo “controversy” were from bots)

Our friends at Trust Labs have spent over a decade studying how to build communities of care that not only withstand crises, but also grow sustainably. Tomorrow, 4/15, they’ll be sharing insights from their latest report "Explorations in Relational Grit" at a virtual event @ 4pm EST:

“There is no need to ban social media. We just need it to be too expensive for the companies to keep doing business as usual.” Author and entrepreneur @juliaangwin.com endorses a big tobacco-style movement of suing the pants off Big Tech to reform social media.

Divya Siddarth is curating the Collective Intelligence track at TED2026 this week. We've always appreciated Divya’s reframe on democracy and AI, and we’re excited to hear more from @jayb.bsky.social, @audreyt.org and others. New_ Public's @deeptidoshi.bsky.social will be there -- DM her to connect!

📆 Reminder: applications for the Open Social Awards are due May 1 Seeking MVP products on open protocols! 👉 newpublic.org/OSA

Thursday 4/16, hear directly from game-changing youth who are designing solutions to some of today’s most urgent digital challenges. Builders aged 14 - 23 will present their projects as part of ReThink Citizens’s Youth Coalition Showcase 🚀 luma.com/2evlo3zw

We’re building Roundabout, our local community app, to be as useful as possible, for as many people as possible. But, notably, we’re not here to make a billion dollars. We’re a nonprofit, funded by philanthropy, trying to build Roundabout into a sustainable, resilient org for the long haul. 🧵

👍👍 One of the orgs that defines standards for the internet just gave a BIG thumbs up to AT Protocol, the tech that powers Bluesky. This could be huge for scaling open and independent social apps and websites! More from @dholms.at, head of protocol at Bluesky:

Relational tech is centered around thoughtfully crafted tools that help neighbors care, collaborate, and build trust. Relational Tech Project created an awesome experimental workspace where neighbors can build digital tools to fit their unique community needs. studio.relationaltechproject.org

📢 Call for creative community builders who want to support local bands and musicians! Use our contact form and put “For A.B.B.” at the start of the message to get in touch: newpublic.org/contact

Check out this impressive “database of independent journalism creators across platforms, topics and geographies” from The Independent Journalism Atlas! It’s cool to see journalists building their own discovery tools on their own terms, outside of Big Tech platforms. journalismatlas.com

Communities are not interchangeable or disposable. Break a network and some of those relationships, all that institutional knowledge, are gone forever. @joanwestenberg.com writes eloquently on communities and digital displacement, and how Big Tech is addicted to this cycle of social destruction.

Feedbuilders like @graze.social and @attie.ai are meant for customizing Bluesky feeds. In recent research on something similar, participants were able to focus on their interests, discover relevant content, and engage with social media more intentionally. arxiv.org/abs/2509.10776

The people have spoken – they’re not interested in letting AI companies “move fast and break things” 😤 humanstatement.org

Gitesh Gohel, Chief Product Officer at The Atlantic, explains why the comments section is failing both news orgs and their audiences – and he suggests nine ways that media orgs can reinvigorate meaningful discussion among readers. We’ll share some of our favorites below! youtu.be/Guu-pv6jPR4?...

Social media researcher @jonathanstray.bsky.social shares promising results from the Prosocial Ranking Challenge! After testing five algorithms, two approaches showed statistically significant depolarization effects.

This feels like a watershed moment. Juries are starting to find that a “free speech” defense can’t shield social media companies from their liability for building addictive platforms with features like infinite scroll, auto-play and reinforcing algorithms. It’s a perfect time for alternatives:

Announcing our new awards for prosocial builders working on open protocols!

📢 Announcing the Open Social Awards ✨ Alongside PublicSpaces and Waag Futurelab, we aim to honor the work of independent builders around the world, creating innovative products for the open web! More details below… newpublic.org/OSA

“The next time you use an AI system, ask one question: Is this working for me, or am I working for it? That instinct ... is where sovereignty starts.” Our friends at @projectliberty.io launched their newsletter, and we’re loving this first post on how we can maintain agency when using AI tools:

@susanmcp.bsky.social cuts right to the heart of the matter: "Silicon Valley spent twenty years removing every obstacle to connection and gave us something that looks like it but isn’t."

A healthier internet isn’t just wishful thinking — our friends at the @prosocialdesign.bsky.social have a whole library of research-backed design solutions for building prosocial spaces online, organized by our Civic Signals research! 🧵

Why is @knightfoundation.org investing in Bluesky? “If we care about the First Amendment in practice, we must also care about the architecture that shapes and facilitates speech in our own era. That’s why we believe ATproto was worth investing in.”

FIRE! FIRE! FIRE! 🔥🥵🌶️ Okay, now that we’ve got the algorithm’s (& hopefully your) attention: Our latest Bulletin Board newsletter has great internet finds like upcoming prosocial tech events, new research, & ways to connect! (Sorry if we scared you 😅 but the internet is probably on fire somewhere)

Big tech doesn’t know what tech tools your neighbors need — but your neighbors do. Thanks to changing forces and capacities in tech, communities might have the power to finally build what they need for themselves. And we want to be part of that shift in power 👏

“The real value is not in the single piece of content but in you getting addicted to the algorithm.” A fascinating (and a little unsettling) feature-by-feature breakdown from Enrico Tartarotti on how short-form video content is meticulously designed to control your attention.

Have a request for our community of 16k+ newsletter readers? We’d love to share it! Whether you’re looking for collaborators or amplifying an event, we’re gathering community asks and announcements on our “bulletin board” newsletter every month. Share in the comments or on our contact form below:

A day in the life of an enshittificator … Norwegian Consumer Council really nailed it 👏😂 www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4Up...

What happens when a digital space is shaped with prosocial design at its foundation? Join New_ Public’s @clockwerks.bsky.social, @blaine.bsky.social, @adit.bsky.social & @sammy.bsky.social for a talk hosted by @prosocialdesign.bsky.social about Roundabout, our local community app! luma.com/5vzxn9vn

@blaine.bsky.social was there at the start of Twitter, over twenty years ago. Now, for the last six months, he’s been building Roundabout, our new local community app. He shares his thinking on where LLMs can fit with open web protocols to empower communities with prosocial tech products and tools.

Welcome to the prosocial, futurist, human side of the internet! 🖥️🌱 As our bio says, we’re “a nonprofit product studio focused on reimagining community, connection, and conversation online.” But what does that mean? If you’re new to us or want a refresher, here’s what New_ Public is all about ⬇️🧵

Tell us about a platform you *LOVED* before it got … well, 💩

We’re proud to be partnering with PublicSpaces to present The Next Socials — sessions on developing new platforms and products for the open web — at their conference in Amsterdam on June 4-6. Please save the date! More info to come very soon.

@baratunde.com in conversation with Esther Perel, on how Big Tech platforms are not neutral “town squares”... they’re malls 😬

Have we been thinking about news deserts all wrong? @medillschool.bsky.social shares how people living in news deserts *really* feel about their access to local news and info. www.niemanlab.org/2026/02/many...

@jay.bsky.team is stepping down as CEO of Bluesky, but what I think is arguably her greatest accomplishment is missing from much of the reporting … Her part in successfully scaling AT Protocol, the decentralized system that powers Bluesky for over 43 million users.

How does AI fit into building better social media? Forget what you think it’s good for: we’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible. We need to throw out the Big Tech rule book and enable communities to build their own tools.

Why is Nextdoor showing me horrific headlines from the Bronx? Because an algorithm is prioritizing my engagement over my neighborhood. This matters: platforms like this erode trust, and trust has never been lower. From my talk at @creativemornings.bsky.social:

New_ Public’s own @absp.bsky.social, a UX Researcher and sociolinguist, has a really useful piece on how researchers should be thinking about AI-based fraud, and what to do about it. Go Abby! 💪🦾

The call is coming from INSIDE the house 🏠📢 A former researcher at OpenAI shares about leaving the company because of the plan to introduce ads on ChatGPT. (gift link!) www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/o...

Cleveland’s 184-year-old daily paper, The Plain Dealer, is using AI to get into the field, make deeper connections, and cover more counties. www.cleveland.com/news/2026/02...

Just … wow. 🤯 This is a big reason why we’re building Roundabout, our local community app. We need better ways of finding out what’s going on in the neighborhood.

This is a small study, but they’re asking the right questions: How are habitual AI chatbot users in the US and India actually using AI to learn what's happening in the world and in their communities? cnti.org/reports/chat... [@cnti.bsky.social]

Our Co-directors, @eli.bsky.social and @deeptidoshi.bsky.social, are proud to sign on New Civic Future’s open letter calling for a deeply rooted, high trust movement of civic renewal. They ask… “What kind of shared civic life are we called to grow together?” www.newcivicfuture.org/letter

TOMORROW: watch or join in-person as New_ Public Co-Director @eli.bsky.social gives a breakfast talk at @creativemornings.bsky.social NYC! ☀️☕ Register here ⬇️

“A subscription to news outlets doesn’t just have to provide access to journalism, it can feature participation in journalism.” 👏👏👏 @techdirt.com’s @karlbode.com notes that online comment sections can actually help bring new life to a news organization.

Here's to all the well-designed apps and websites out there (and to the unsung heroes like designer and writer @aresluna.org who gather these resources for our benefit)! There’s so much creativity and expression to explore outside of the walled gardens of Big Tech’s apps…

Why would a fitbit buzz to tell you something you already know? How did we end up with all these “enshittified” tech products? @kentbeck.com lays out how this happens. His solution? “At some point, you have to have principles. Not metrics. Principles.” tidyfirst.substack.com/p/my-fitbit-...