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An interview that I conducted in 2020 with Brad Edwards, a lawyer for Epstein's victims, has always haunted me. It's about a conversation Edwards had with Epstein's bodyguard of five years, Igor Zinoviev, who warned him to back off because of Epstein's shadowy connections to the U.S. government. "[Zinoviev said] â€You don't know who you're messing with and you need to be really careful. You are on Jeffrey's radar and somebody that Jeffrey pays a lot of attention to, which is not good, you don't want to be on Jeffrey's radar,'" Edwards told me for Broken: Jeffrey Epstein, the podcast series I hosted and reported. "And I said, â€Well, give me some examples. I mean, who am I messing with?'" Edwards recalled. "And that's when he looked across the table and whispered three letters, â€C-I-A.'" One of Zinoviev's first assignments during Epstein's brief 2008 detention – just 13 months of overnights at the Palm Beach County jail with so-called work release – was to visit CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. There, he says, he attended classes for a week as the only private citizen in the room. At the end, the director or assistant director – Zinoviev couldn't remember – handed him a book with a handwritten note inside. He was told not to read it and to deliver it directly to Epstein in jail. Edwards later wrote about this encounter in his own book, Relentless Pursuit: My Fight for the Victims of Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein's usefulness to high-ranking officials might also explain why a Freedom of Information Act request of his calendar by The Wall Street Journal revealed multiple meetings with former CIA director Bill Burns when he was Deputy Secretary of State.
Note: This piece was published on Tara Palmeri's Substack. Palmeri is an investigative journalist and former ABC News White House correspondent. US attorney Alexander Acosta was once told Epstein "belonged to intelligence, and to leave it alone." Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations.
Bernadette Spofforth [was] detained for 36 hours in July 2024. Three girls had just been murdered in Southport, England, at a Taylor Swift-themed dance party. But Spofforth was not under suspicion for the crime. Instead, horrified, and in the fog of a developing tragedy, she'd reposted on X another user's content blaming newly arrived migrants for the ghastly crime – clarifying in her retweet, "If this is true." Hours later she realized she may have received bad information and deleted the post – but it had already been seen thousands of times. The murders resulted in widespread civil unrest in the UK, where mass migration is a central issue for citizens. Four police vehicles arrived at her home days later. Spofforth, 56, a successful businesswoman from Chester, was placed under arrest. Her story is one repeated almost hourly in the UK, where data suggests over 30 people a day are arrested for speech crimes, about 12,000 a year, under laws written well before the age of social media that make crimes of sending "grossly offensive" messages or sharing content of an "indecent, obscene or menacing character." Social media continues to be flooded with videos of British cops banging on doors in the middle of the night and hauling parents off to jail–all over mean Facebook posts. On Tuesday, the US State Department's annual Human Rights Report slammed British authorities' "serious restrictions on freedom of expression."
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and censorship.
Staff at a Santa Barbara county jail heard screams coming from one of the cells. A 57-year-old inmate was moaning and hyperventilating. Rather than sending her to the ER, medical staff chalked her pain up to opioid withdrawal, since they had taken a prescription opioid away upon her arrival days before, a grand jury investigation later found. They placed the inmate – referred to as CF in the grand jury's report – on mental health observation. The grand jury determined that CF's stomach had perforated days before her excruciating death. CF would have had a 90% chance of survival if she had received immediate treatment. Wellpath, one of the nation's leading health providers to prisons and jails, was the contractor responsible for healthcare at Santa Barbara county's Northern Branch jail, where CF died. The grand jury's report is the latest in over a decade of government investigations into two behemoths in the prison health industry – Wellpath and Corizon – which are both backed by private equity investors. Both Corizon and Wellpath continued to contract with jails, prisons, immigration and juvenile detention centers around the country until they faced so much liability ... that both landed in bankruptcy court over the last two years. Both companies were still operating in some form while restructuring in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, and had reorganization plans confirmed in bankruptcy court this year that allowed them to ... continue their prison contracts.
Note: According to this Guardian article, "More and more people, especially the relatively poor, may live almost their entire lives in systems owned by one or another private equity firm: financiers are their landlords, their electricity providers, their ride to work, their employers, their doctors, their debt collectors." For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in prisons and in the financial system.
President Trump on Friday accused Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal of defaming him in an article about a lewd birthday greeting that the publication said Mr. Trump had sent to the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein decades ago. In a suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Mr. Trump said the article "falsely claimed that he authored, drew and signed" the note to Mr. Epstein. It asked for awarded damages "not to be less than $10 billion." The Journal published the article about the note on Thursday under the headline: "Jeffrey Epstein's Friends Sent Him Bawdy Letters for a 50th Birthday Album. One Was From Donald Trump." The article described a letter that appeared to be from Mr. Trump in a 2003 birthday album compiled for Mr. Epstein. The letter, which The Journal said it had reviewed, had a drawing of a naked woman on it with Mr. Trump's signature below her waist, alluding to pubic hair, the article said. "Happy Birthday – and may every day be another wonderful secret," The Journal said the note read. Mr. Trump has faced mounting criticism and pressure from his supporters over whether to release documents related to investigations into Mr. Epstein, who was charged with running a vast sex-trafficking scheme. Many of Mr. Trump's supporters were upset because they believed that Attorney General Pam Bondi was holding back some files related to the Epstein investigation.
Note: Internal US Bureau of Prison (BOP) documents suggest a possible cover-up, while a 60 Minutes 2020 investigation uncovered compelling evidence that challenges the official suicide ruling in Jeffrey Epstein's death–including suspicious neck fractures, missing surveillance footage, and a series of unexplained security failures. Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations.
Loneliness not only affects how we feel in the moment but can leave lasting imprints on our personality, physiology, and even the way our brains process the social world. A large study of older adults [found] that persistent loneliness predicted declines in extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness–traits associated with sociability, kindness, and self-discipline. At the same time, higher levels of neuroticism predicted greater loneliness in the future, suggesting a self-reinforcing cycle. Although social media promises connection, a large-scale study published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin suggests that it may actually fuel feelings of loneliness over time. Researchers found that both passive (scrolling) and active (posting and commenting) forms of social media use predicted increases in loneliness. Surprisingly, even active engagement–often believed to foster interaction–was associated with growing disconnection. Even more concerning was the feedback loop uncovered in the data: loneliness also predicted increased social media use over time, suggesting that people may turn to these platforms for relief, only to find themselves feeling even more isolated. Lonely individuals also showed greater activation in areas tied to negative emotions, such as the insula and amygdala. This pattern suggests that lonely people may be more sensitive to social threat or negativity, which could contribute to feeling misunderstood or excluded.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on mental health and Big Tech.
Children highly exposed to an insecticide prior to birth showed signs of impaired brain development and motor function, according to a new study of chlorpyrifos – a pesticide still used on US crops despite decades of warnings about its impact on children's health. The study ... is the first to tie prenatal exposure to the pesticide to "enduring and widespread molecular, cellular, and metabolic effects in the brain," the authors wrote. The study ... comes months after the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its plans to partially ban chlorpyrifos but allow continued use on 11 crops. The EPA ... banned chlorpyrifos in 2021 after a federal court ordered the agency to take action amid litigation and a wealth of evidence of the risks it poses to children. But the agency reversed course again after a different federal court sided with farm groups in opposition. MRI scans showed that kids with the highest levels of exposure were more likely to have reduced blood flow to the brain, thickening of the brain cortex, abnormal brain pathways, impaired nerve insulation and other problems. Chlorpyrifos was the 11th most frequently found pesticide in food samples in the most recent Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pesticide residue monitoring report, and a 2023 US Department of Agriculture pesticide residue report found traces of the chemical in baby food made with pears, as well as in samples of blackberries, celery and tomatoes.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on government corruption and toxic chemicals.
A long-suppressed oversight report by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) concluded that the January 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA), which claimed Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump, had been manipulated under the direction of then-CIA Director John Brennan. The HPSCI report revealed that Brennan created a special Fusion Cell, excluded independent reviewers, and used a tightly controlled team of hand-picked CIA analysts to reverse what the underlying intelligence actually said. According to a CIA whistleblower who co-authored the ICA, Brennan put the team "under duress" to reach a conclusion that Putin supported Trump. The evidence did not show that the Russians favored Trump. According to someone close to the report, the raw intelligence showed that Russian officials saw Hillary Clinton as "more stable and more manageable" – and thus preferable to Trump. But Brennan's hand-picked team reversed that. Meanwhile, those responsible have faced no consequences. There was a time when if you abused your power in office, whether or not it rose to the level of a crime, you were exiled from D.C. Instead, Comey gets a teaching job in ethics, and Clapper and Brennan get TV contracts. The picture is less incomplete and, finally, clear. The Intelligence Community did not merely misread Russian intentions. It reversed its own analysts. It misled Congress.
Note: The security firm CrowdStrike was hired to investigate the alleged Russian hack of DNC servers in 2016 and found no proof that any emails from the system had been exfiltrated. All they found was inconclusive circumstantial evidence, which was presented as proof in media to the public. This deflected from the DNC and Clinton campaign's sabotage of Bernie Sanders and the damaging content of leaked DNC emails. In 2022, the DNC and Clinton campaign were fined by the FEC for obscuring their role in funding the debunked Steele dossier. Clinton also personally approved sharing another unverified claim with the press that alleged a secret Trump-Russia server connection, which helped trigger an FBI investigation later found to be baseless. Why are we not connecting the dots?
Amid escalating anti-immigrant rhetoric ... private prison corporations are once again expanding their grip on U.S. detention policy. In fact, today roughly 90 percent of detained immigrants are held in privately operated facilities, the highest share in history. The industry is instead preparing for explosive growth. On recent earnings calls, CoreCivic executives announced plans to triple the number of beds in their facilities within a few months. That would mean an additional $1.5 billion in revenue for the corporation, more than doubling its annual earnings. Meanwhile, growing scrutiny of immigration detention practices has led to reports of abuse, medical neglect, and deaths in custody. Privatization, with the cost-cutting practices that define it, is the structural driver of human rights violations at these facilities. Private prisons corporations are just one piece of the sprawling prison industry. The U.S. carceral system is comprised of a vast and deeply entrenched network of public-private partnerships that make billions from incarceration and detention. Commissary corporations mark-up basic hygiene items like toothpaste or tampons by 300 percent or more. Private healthcare providers routinely deny or delay treatment, contributing to suffering and preventable deaths behind bars. Private food vendors serve meals that are frequently expired or nutritionally inadequate, all in the name of cutting costs and maximizing returns.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on immigration enforcement corruption.
In women's prisons across Texas, tear gas–which includes agents such as pepper spray–has become the go-to response for minor infractions. Guards deploy it at close range in enclosed spaces, against policy, against humanity. They gas entire housing units to punish one person's "noncompliance." What they don't tell you is how this chemical weapon–which is banned in warfare ... affects women's bodies differently than men's. Studies have found that women experience more serious reactions to tear gas exposure, particularly impacting reproductive health. In 2021, a study on the effects of tear gas on reproductive health found that nearly 900 people reported abnormal menstrual changes after exposure to tear gas. Other studies have linked tear gas exposure to miscarriage and fetal harm. Criminal justice advocates have decried the growing use of tear gas and pepper spray in prisons, saying that they should only be used as a last resort when there's a serious threat to safety. But I've seen guards deploy it for cursing, for walking too slowly, for asking too many questions. It's not about safety; it's about control, about breaking our spirits through chemical warfare. The solution isn't better ventilation or more careful deployment, though both would help. The solution is recognizing that the use of chemical weapons against the incarcerated–many of whom are trauma survivors–is inherently sadistic and unnecessary. Tear gas is even used in Texas juvenile facilities.
Note: This article was written by Kwaneta Harris, an incarcerated journalist from Detroit. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on prison system corruption and non-lethal weapons.
Data brokers are required by California law to provide ways for consumers to request their data be deleted. But good luck finding them. More than 30 of the companies, which collect and sell consumers' personal information, hid their deletion instructions from Google. This creates one more obstacle for consumers who want to delete their data. Data brokers nationwide must register in California under the state's Consumer Privacy Act, which allows Californians to request that their information be removed, that it not be sold, or that they get access to it. After reviewing the websites of all 499 data brokers registered with the state, we found 35 had code to stop certain pages from showing up in searches. While those companies might be fulfilling the letter of the law by providing a page consumers can use to delete their data, it means little if those consumers can't find the page, according to Matthew Schwartz, a policy analyst. "This sounds to me like a clever work-around to make it as hard as possible for consumers to find it," Schwartz said. Some companies that hid their privacy instructions from search engines included a small link at the bottom of their homepage. Accessing it often required scrolling multiple screens, dismissing pop-ups for cookie permissions and newsletter sign-ups, then finding a link that was a fraction the size of other text on the page. So consumers still faced a serious hurdle when trying to get their information deleted.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
In Silicon Valley, AI tech giants are in a bidding war, competing to hire the best and brightest computer programmers. But a different hiring spree is underway in D.C. AI firms are on an influence-peddling spree, hiring hundreds of former government officials and retaining former members of Congress as consultants and lobbyists. The latest disclosure filings show over 500 entities lobbying on AI policy–from federal rules designed to preempt state and local safety regulations to water and energy-intensive data centers and integration into government contracting and certifications. Lawmakers are increasingly making the jump from serving constituents as elected officials to working directly as influence peddlers for AI interests. Former Sen. Laphonza Butler, D-Calif., a former lobbyist appointed to the U.S. Senate to fill the seat of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, left Congress last year and returned to her former profession. She is now working as a consultant to OpenAI, the firm behind ChatGPT. Former Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., recently registered for the first time as a lobbyist. Among his initial clients is Lazarus AI, which sells AI products to the Defense Department. The expanding reach of artificial intelligence is rapidly reshaping hundreds of professions, weapons of war, and the ways we connect with one another. What's clear is that the AI firms set to benefit most from these changes are taking control of the policymaking apparatus to write the laws and regulations during the transition.
Note: For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on AI and Big Tech.
The Trump administration is evaluating plans that would establish a "Domestic Civil Disturbance Quick Reaction Force" composed of hundreds of National Guard troops tasked with rapidly deploying into American cities facing protests or other unrest, according to internal Pentagon documents reviewed by The Washington Post. The plan calls for 600 troops to be on standby at all times so they can deploy in as little as one hour, the documents say. They would be split into two groups of 300 and be stationed at military bases in Alabama and Arizona, with purview of regions east and west of the Mississippi River, respectively. Cost projections outlined in the documents indicate that such a mission, if the proposal is adopted, could stretch into the hundreds of millions of dollars. Trump has summoned the military for domestic purposes like few of his predecessors have. He did so most recently Monday, authorizing the mobilization of 800 D.C. National Guard troops to bolster enhanced law enforcement activity in Washington. The proposal represents a major departure in how the National Guard traditionally has been used, said Lindsay P. Cohn, an associate professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College. While it is not unusual for National Guard units to be deployed for domestic emergencies within their states, including for civil disturbances, this "is really strange because essentially nothing is happening," she said.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on military corruption and the erosion of civil liberties.
Collaborating with robotics engineers and Italian 3D printer manufacturers, a Japanese company is building "homes of earth" made primarily from soil. Lib Work, Ltd. completed their first 3D-printed earth home in Yamaga, Kumamoto on July 22, calling their creative process "uncharted territory where tradition and convention offered no guide". With an eye toward recycling, sustainability, and reduced carbon emissions, Lib Work focused on combining 3D-printing with natural materials enhanced for strength, constructibility, and design quality. The walls of the completed Lib Earth House Model B use no cement (which produces industrial waste). Instead, they utilized only naturally derived materials with soil as the primary component to create sustainable earthen walls. Compared to the previous model (Model A) that used some cement, the building's strength has improved approximately fivefold while significantly reducing CO2 emissions from the manufacturing process itself. The walls contain cutting-edge sensors as part of a wall condensation monitoring system that monitors in real-time the temperature and humidity inside the walls. This system enables the house to manage its own condition by detecting condensation in advance to maintain a long-lasting, comfortable living environment. Additionally, the homes include remote operation of air conditioning, lighting, and bath controls via smartphone or dedicated monitor. It also features an off-grid energy system.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.
Equipped with her own tailored bee suit and a hood to cover her floppy ears, Maple – a former police dog – has an important retirement task: helping save thousands of honeybee hives. The canine has spent the past five months sniffing Michigan bee colonies for American foulbrood, a highly contagious bacteria that's fatal to the insects. Maple, an English springer spaniel, uses her extraordinary sense of smell as a "high-speed screening tool" to prevent beekeepers from having to manually inspect every hive. American foulbrood only becomes detectable to humans by smell when it reaches severe infection, at which point the colony risks death, said Meghan Milbrath, a researcher and assistant professor of entomology at Michigan State University. The ultimate goal is for Maple's work to serve as a blueprint for teaching canines to detect honeybee diseases. It's part of a larger bee conservation effort in a record-breaking year for colony death in the United States ... primarily driven by pesticides, pathogens, poor nutrition and pests. Although Maple's new "target odor" is distinct from her previous job ... the fundamentals remain the same. Handlers expose the canines to a scent, offer a reward and teach the dog to conduct an action that means they've found the odor they're looking for. In Maple's case, she sits when she detects the smell. [Handler, Sue] Stejskal said she has to train Maple to be familiar and comfortable with the new environment so the pup can focus on the target odor.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth.
While trying to come up with a pesticide solution to kill off bollworms, Dr Robert Mensah had his eureka moment. It was the 90s, and in Australia bollworms were devastating cotton farms. He experimented and eventually came up with a simple food spray, "a mixture of food ingredients, yeast and sugar-based, diluted in water and applied to crops. It emits an odour which is picked up by beneficial predatory insects and attracts them to the fields where they kill pests." It was the beginning of an international grassroots campaign, in which Mensah has worked with various charities to teach people about this sustainable farming method. Ever since the dangerous side effects of pesticides became widely known, alternatives have been sought. This approach to farming, which reduces our reliance on pesticides, is called integrated pest management. In 2005, Mensah took food sprays to Benin, where the Pesticide Action Network (PAN UK) was helping farmers transition to organic farming. There, the misuse of chemical pesticides was seriously damaging people's health. The food sprays – cheap, safe and effective – caught on with farmers in Benin where thousands now use the technique. From there, Mensah took food sprays to southern Ethiopia, where they were also trialled successfully on vegetables ... and then to Vietnam where they were used successfully on maize. Another charity, Better Cotton, is now trialling food sprays in India ... where they've trained 214,000 farmers to use sprays.
Note: Explore more positive stories like this on technology for good and healing the Earth.
Jeffrey Epstein "loved life too much" to kill himself and was confident of securing bail before he died, his butler for 18 years has told The Telegraph. Valdson Vieira Cotrin, who ran Epstein's Paris home, [said] he could not accept the official verdict of suicide and feared that his own life was in danger. He also said he believed that Virginia Giuffre, the Epstein victim who accused Prince Andrew of rape and died by suicide in April, was a victim of foul play. Mr Cotrin also made the extraordinary claim ... that Epstein told him he had been offered a job by Donald Trump. There is no evidence that the allegation is true. But Mr Cotrin's recollection of a conversation with his boss will fuel a growing demand for the full Epstein files – the trove of documents from the criminal investigations into the financier that allegedly name high-profile celebrities and politicians, possibly including Mr Trump – to be released. Mr Cotrin remains in possession of a number of photographs taken with friends of Epstein, including a photo of himself with Bill Clinton on the so-called Lolita Express, Epstein's private plane that he used to traffic underage girls and women for sex. The existence of the photo showing Mr Clinton on board Epstein's jet will also fuel demands for the former president to reveal his full dealings with Epstein. Mr Clinton was issued with a subpoena on Tuesday, demanding he give evidence to a congressional committee investigating the financier.
Note: Read our comprehensive Substack investigation covering the connection between Epstein's child sex trafficking ring and intelligence agency sexual blackmail operations. For more, read our concise summaries of news articles on Jeffrey Epstein's criminal enterprise.
Tor is mostly known as the Dark Web or Dark Net, seen as an online Wild West where crime runs rampant. Yet it's partly funded by the U.S. government, and the BBC and Facebook both have Tor-only versions to allow users in authoritarian countries to reach them. At its simplest, Tor is a distributed digital infrastructure that makes you anonymous online. It is a network of servers spread around the world, accessed using a browser called the Tor Browser, which you can download for free from the Tor Project website. When you use the Tor Browser, your signals are encrypted and bounced around the world before they reach the service you're trying to access. This makes it difficult for governments to trace your activity or block access, as the network just routes you through a country where that access isn't restricted. But, because you can't protect yourself from digital crime without also protecting yourself from mass surveillance by the state, these technologies are the site of constant battles between security and law enforcement interests. The state's claim to protect the vulnerable often masks efforts to exert control. In fact, robust, well-funded, value-driven and democratically accountable content moderation – by well-paid workers with good conditions – is a far better solution than magical tech fixes to social problems ... or surveillance tools. As more of our online lives are funneled into the centralized AI infrastructures ... tools like Tor are becoming ever more important.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and the disappearance of privacy.
French MPs gave themselves a round of applause for approving legislation to reintroduce a banned pesticide last month. A figure rose from the public gallery to shout: "You are supporters of cancer ... and we will make it known." Fleur Breteau made it known. Her outburst and appearance – she lost her hair during chemotherapy for breast cancer – boosted a petition against the "Duplomb law" to well over 2m signatures. On Thursday, France's constitutional court struck down the government's attempt to reintroduce the pesticide acetamiprid – a neonicotinoid banned in France in 2018 but still used as an insecticide in other EU countries as well as the UK – in a judgment that took everyone by surprise. The ruling said the legislature had undermined "the right to live in a balanced and healthy environment" enshrined in France's environmental charter. For Breteau, 50, a battle is won but the struggle goes on. "The law is a symptom of a sick system that poisons us. The Duplomb law isn't the real problem. It's aggravating an already catastrophic system," she said. "We are living in a toxic world and need a revolution to break the chain of contamination in everything ... If people don't react we'll find ourselves in a world where we cannot drink water or eat food that is uncontaminated, where a slice of buttered bread or a cup of tea poisons us. It will be a silent world, without animals, without insects, without birds."
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on health and toxic chemicals.
Was George Floyd killed by a police officer? The official answer, according to a newly revealed set of federal government records, is no. Under the federal Death in Custody Reporting Act, anyone who dies in law enforcement custody, like during an arrest, must be reported to the Department of Justice. If the death resulted from police use of force, as Floyd's did, it is labeled "use of force by a law enforcement or corrections officer." But, when an unredacted copy of four years of data was inadvertently posted on a government website late last year, Floyd's case was listed under a different category, "homicide" – which refers to deaths at the hands of another civilian, not law enforcement. The error shows how even one of the most notorious cases of police violence, one that led to a murder conviction for the officer, can be hidden in the official statistics. A Marshall Project review ... identified hundreds of people who died in custody but weren't listed, and entire states that failed to report almost any deaths in their prisons or in their jails. We found at least 681 deaths missing from the federal count – a number that would almost certainly rise if more complete data were available nationwide. More than 5,000 people likely died in state and federal prisons in 2021, over 1,000 in local jails in 2019 and over 1,000 in arrest-related interactions with police in 2024. The actual toll is unknown because no one, including the federal government, bothers keeping track.
Note: For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on corruption in policing and in the prison system.
A series of corporate leaks over the past few years provides a remarkable window in the hidden engines powering social media. In January 2021, a few Facebook employees posted an article on the company's engineering blog purporting to explain the news feed algorithm that determines which of the countless posts available each user will see and the order in which they will see them. Eight months later ... a Facebook product manager turned whistleblower snuck over ten thousand pages of documents and internal messages out of Facebook headquarters. She leaked these to a handful of media outlets. Internal studies documented Instagram's harmful impact on the mental health of vulnerable teen girls. A secret whitelist program exempted VIP users from the moderation system the rest of us face. It turns out Facebook engineers have assigned a point value to each type of engagement users can perform on a post (liking, commenting, resharing, etc.). For each post you could be shown, these point values are multiplied by the probability that the algorithm thinks you'll perform that form of engagement. These multiplied pairs of numbers are added up, and the total is the post's personalized score for you. Facebook, TikTok, and Twitter all run on essentially the same simple math formula. Once we start clicking the social media equivalent of junk food, we're going to be served up a lot more of it–which makes it harder to resist. It's a vicious cycle
Note: Read our latest Substack focused on a social media platform that is harnessing technology as a listening tool for the radical purpose of bringing people together across differences. For more along these lines, read our concise summaries of news articles on Big Tech and media manipulation.
Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.