![]() This wasn’t always true in 2007 I thought it was basically a MySpace also-ran. Which of these do you think the Facebook Story™ circa 2019 falls into, and has that changed since you’ve been covering them?įor the most part, in 2019 Facebook strikes me as a “we haven’t seen this before” story. I often refer back to a notion that there are two kinds of interesting stories: “We’ve seen this before” and “We haven’t seen this before”. And so while I write a lot of company criticism, I try to do it with a light touch. The newsletter also has to be good company - no one wants to be screamed at in their inbox every day, even when their company is screwing up. I read many more articles than I ever link to, and now regularly turn down pitches from talented reporters whose work falls outside my coverage area or doesn’t seem like it would interest the average social network product manager. It has to be useful to some of the smartest people in the world, which makes me take the role of curator really seriously. Writing The Interface with platform employees in mind has shaped every aspect of the product. And two, they’re an influential group! The fact that I have their attention helps attract the eyeballs of the other people I really want to reach: other tech workers, policy makers, journalists, and anyone else interested in the subject matter. ![]() One, employees are often in the best position to address the problems I’m exploring in the newsletter - and to tell me things I don’t already know. It’s aimed at current and former employees of the companies I cover the closest: Facebook, Google, Twitter, and Snap. In the fall of 2017 I started a newsletter, The Interface, which covers the intersection of social networks and democracy. When I’m publishing a big feature, I’m hoping that it will land in front of all those people and then some.Īt the same time, I’ve become increasingly focused on building a direct distribution channel to readers who share my interests. That means writing for a handful of big, loosely connected audiences: readers of The Verge, tech workers, policy makers, other journalists, and whoever platform recommendation algorithms serves my links to. Well thank you! Like most reporters, at a high level I want to reach as many people as possible. Who do you think of as your target audience, and who are they among Facebook’s sphere of influence? How has that influenced the work you’ve done, which has been phenomenal? Facebook is such an enormous, multifaceted phenomenon – it’s one thing for us, quite another for our parents’ generation, and a whole different company entirely for people in other parts of the world for whom it is practically the entire internet. You cover a lot of interesting stories about tech and social media, and you’ve recently emerged as one of the most insightful and must-read people covering Facebook. Thank you so much to Casey for coming on, and I hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I did. The Interface: a daily newsletter about Facebook and democracy | Casey Newton, The Verge ![]() The Trauma Floor: the secret lives of Facebook moderators in America | Casey Newton, The Verge, February 25 2019īodies in Seats: At Facebook’s worst-performing Content Moderation site in North America, one contractor has died, and others say they fear for their lives | Casey Newton, The Verge, June 19 2019Īnother great way to read Casey’s writing is to subscribe to his newsletter The Interface, which comes out every Monday through Thursday at 5 pm Pacific: And if they ought to be doing so, as they are currently, who are the people carrying out this work, and what kind of human cost is getting shunted out of sight, away from public consciousness?Ĭasey’s two pieces to date on the human toll of content moderation have been stunners, and if you haven’t read them yet I urge you to do so: ![]() This past year, his work led him to one of the thorniest issues at the fault line between tech, policy and human nature: the question of how, if at all, Facebook ought to be moderating the content that gets shared on their platform. Please enjoy this interview with Casey Newton ! It originally came out in my weekly newsletter you can subscribe here if you haven’t already.Ĭasey is one of my favourite people to follow on Twitter, read from, and learn from – both in his position as a journalist and editor at The Verge and also just as a generally astute observer of Silicon Valley society.Ĭasey has been writing at The Verge for the past six years, and in that time he has established himself as one of the most-read people covering Silicon Valley, particularly among people inside trying to make sense of it all. ![]()
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