AI & Emerging Technology
Social Media Platforms
307 Articles
Tweets, Trans, and the American Military
On the morning of July 26, President Donald Trump turned out a triptych of tweets taking a policy position banning transgender people from serving openly in the U.S. military.…
Trump’s Trans Ban is Bad for Military Readiness
An Army staff sergeant with multiple combat deployments, in charge of an infantry squad. A West Point grad innovating forward-based personnel support in a combat zone. A Lieutenant…
Your Tweet is My Command
My friend Phil Carter has written an excellent piece for Slate, pointing out the institutional dangers of disregarding President Trump’s recent series of tweets that…
Norms Watch: Democracy, the Trump Administration, and Reactions to It (June 23-June 30)
Editor’s Note: Welcome to the latest installment of Norms Watch, our series tracking both the flouting of democratic norms by the Trump administration and the erosion of…
Norms Watch: Democracy, the Trump Administration, and Reactions to It (June 2-June 9)
Editor’s Note: Welcome to the latest installment of Norms Watch, our series tracking both the flouting of democratic norms by the Trump administration and the erosion of…
Norms Watch: Tracking the Erosion of Democratic Traditions (Feb. 17-24)
Editor’s Note: Welcome to the latest installment of Norms Watch, our series tracking both the flouting of democratic norms by the Trump administration and the erosion of…
Investigating Surveillance Around Standing Rock
An anonymous Facebook plea recently went viral, asking people to check in to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation to thwart police surveillance of the Dakota Access pipeline protesters.…
#RemoveBannon
Trump’s win is mobilizing thousands of citizens around the country to take to the streets under an “anti-Trump” banner. At this nascent stage that banner obscures divergent…
Bye-Bye Birdie: reddit’s Warrant Canary Disappears
Sometimes, saying nothing says quite a lot. At the end of January 2015, the online bulletin board reddit issued a “transparency report” that informed its users, and the broader…
America’s Muddled Approach to Fighting ISIS
Last month, the Los Angeles Times ran a story that helped highlight one facet of the muddled thinking afflicting the US government’s campaign against ISIS: While the military…
“Ideating” on ISIS and Silicon Valley
In a lot of Silicon Valley meetings, participants “iterate,” “ideate,” and “sync,” and do other buzzwordy things. Every once in a while something innovative and impactful…
Social Media Companies Should Decline the Government’s Invitation to Join the National Security State
The pressure on social media companies to limit or take down content in the name of national security has never been greater. Resolving any ambiguity about the how much the Obama…