Twitter: “A Honeypot for Assholes”

Twitter

Charlie Warzel, writing for Buzzfeed, with a massive condemnation of Twitter and their handling of trolls and abuse on their platform:

According to 10 high-level former employees, the social network’s long history with abuse has been fraught with inaction and organizational disarray. Taken together, these interviews tell the story of a company that’s been ill-equipped to handle harassment since its beginnings. Fenced in by an abiding commitment to free speech above all else and a unique product that makes moderation difficult and trolling almost effortless, Twitter has, over a chaotic first decade marked by shifting business priorities and institutional confusion, allowed abuse and harassment to continue to grow as a chronic problem and perpetual secondary internal priority. On Twitter, abuse is not just a bug, but — to use the Silicon Valley term of art — a fundamental feature.

If I had to venture a guess, I think an outside company buys Twitter within the next 8 months. I see the amount of fly-by bullshit in my @replies on a weekly basis and I know for a fact it’s not anywhere near what other people are getting. I hope someone buys them and makes a better community. Twitter could be, should be, a fantastic place online. It’s not.

Albums in Stores – August 12th, 2016

Today brings us the first volume of the Stranger Things soundtrack, so I’m gonna be playing that a whole lot. There’s also the release of the new Young the Giant album, which I think is really solid and worth a listen. If you hit read more you can see all the releases we have in our calendar for the week. Hit the quote bubble to access our forums and talk about what came out today, what albums you picked up, and to make mention of anything we may have missed.

Read More “Albums in Stores – August 12th, 2016”

Inside the Mind of Steven Spielberg

Jon Mooallem, writing at Wired, with a giant profile on Steven Spielberg:

That’s just how it is: all your feelings bound up together. You are scared of so many things but simultaneously drawn to them. You are infatuated with airplanes but terrified of flying. You love Disney films but later describe the shooting of Bambi’s mother as giving you PTSD. Outside of your bedroom window in New Jersey, across a long, empty field, is a tremendous tree. “I was terrified by the tree. It was a huge tree,” you’ll later remember, and at night you watch its dark silhouette morph into horrible, demonic things. “Every single night my imagination would find something else to fear.” And still, you stare at the tree every single night. You revisit the things that scare you until they don’t scare you anymore. You love that cycle of tension and resolution; it will become another trademark of your films.