Nilay Patel: Welcome to hell, Elon:
The essential truth of every social network is that the product is content moderation, and everyone hates the people who decide how content moderation works. Content moderation is what Twitter makes — it is the thing that defines the user experience. It’s what YouTube makes, it’s what Instagram makes, it’s what TikTok makes. They all try to incentivize good stuff, disincentivize bad stuff, and delete the really bad stuff. Do you know why YouTube videos are all eight to 10 minutes long? Because that’s how long a video has to be to qualify for a second ad slot in the middle. That’s content moderation, baby — YouTube wants a certain kind of video, and it created incentives to get it. That’s the business you’re in now. The longer you fight it or pretend that you can sell something else, the more Twitter will drag you into the deepest possible muck of defending indefensible speech. And if you turn on a dime and accept that growth requires aggressive content moderation and pushing back against government speech regulations around the country and world, well, we’ll see how your fans react to that.
Anyhow, welcome to hell. This was your idea.
Gordon Brander: Imagine a Notebook: “What if this notebook is enchanted? Inhabited by little AI spirits who think with you? They find related thoughts, and help you forge new connections. They collide unrelated thoughts, and help you see new relationships. They provoke creative breakthroughs with generative AI prompts. They go out exploring, bringing back new ideas you might be interested in. Every time you add a page to this magic notebook, it gets a little bit smarter.” Yes please.
The Eclectic Light Company’s explainer on passwords and passkeys is a short, fantastic primer on how WebAuthn works.