Tag Archives: social-networking

Jessamyn West used to describe Metafilter as a social network for non-friends, a description belied in part by the tight-knit camaraderie that emerges in an online group of only a few thousand people. West herself is an example: She met her partner on the site. She also describes the Metafilter …

Anna Kai believes in self-gaslighting. On TikTok, as @itsmaybeboth, she markets beauty products for Garnier, Nivea, and Nexxus Hair Care while dispensing relationship advice to her 1.3 million followers. “If you can gaslight yourself into believing the man that doesn’t love you actually loves you, then why can’t you gaslight …

One night this past February, over drinks and moody bar lighting, Eric Green and his friends were swapping stories of their recent hookups when one mentioned they’d used the app Sniffies to have public sex. A 30-year-old tattoo artist who works in Bushwick, Brooklyn, Green identifies as a bottom, is …

In January, the CEOs of X, TikTok, Meta, Snap, and Discord testified in front of a congressional committee about child exploitation on their platforms. “Mr. Zuckerberg, you and the companies before us, I know you don’t mean it to be so, but you have blood on your hands,” Senator Lindsey …

LinkedIn may or may not be the perfect Twitter replacement, but one thing is for sure: It's a profoundly weird place. Staying active on the platform is basically required for today's knowledge workers to find employment, which is odd. Also, it's a place where a lot of people spend time …

After a year of carefully limiting sign-ups to those with invites, the Twitter-style social app Bluesky this week threw open the doors for anyone to join. It’s a make-or-break moment. Remember when the live-audio app Clubhouse went from the most hyped-up social startup when it was hard to snag an …

In 2024, social media will get small. Not small in influence, of course. As the US weathers an election likely to be both divisive and often divorced from reality, social media will again be a battleground for public opinion and perception. But the platforms on which these conversations will take …

In August, a swarm of hopeless and horny romantics on Reddit disputed the pros and cons of Bumble, the dating app that requires women to make the first move. “Besides barren wastelands like [Plenty of Fish] crawling with bots, scammers, hookers, and psychos, this app has to be the worst,” …

A golden age of connectivity is ending. “I deleted my Facebook years ago, spend at least three to six months off Twitter every year, and Bluesky invites are just sitting in my inbox,” a friend tells me when I ask how her relationship to social media has changed in recent …

X has banned the account of a prominent critic after he published data that he claims exposed the site’s embrace of the far-right after Elon Musk’s takeover last year. Travis Brown, a software developer based in Berlin, alleges his account was first suspended on July 1 this year, several months …