Sep 29, 2020Facebook’s Oversight Board gets some competitionProgramming note: As you may have read, this will be the The Interface’s final week in its current form. Next week, it will evolve into Platformer, a new newsletter by me on Substack that will pick up where this one leaves off. You can read about why I’m making this…11 min read11 min read
Aug 26, 2020Yelp asks for helpHow aggressively should a tech platform be allowed to compete before it becomes anticompetitive? In a summer overflowing with big issues for tech giants, from hate speech to election interference, competition might rank above them all. It was questions about competition that led the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and…10 min read10 min read
Jun 4, 2020Snap takes a standOn Sunday, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel sent employees an unusually personal note reflecting on the events of the past several weeks. Many brands took the occasion of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police, and the global protests that have followed, to signal their solidarity with the black community…11 min read11 min read
Mar 20, 2020Can we fight coronavirus with location data?By now most Americans have gotten the message that, as much as possible, they need to stay away from everyone else. In San Francisco and a growing number of other cities around the world, all non-essential travel has been banned. Even in cases where life more closely resembles normalcy, the…11 min read11 min read
Feb 19, 2020Facebook begs for regulationOver the weekend, a familiar debate broke out over a Facebook policy decision. The company announced that ads made by influencers, on behalf of politicians, would be allowed on the platform so long as they were labeled as ads. The company will not, however, put those ads in its Ads…9 min read9 min read
Nov 27, 2019Four times we were thankful for social networks this yearIt’s the day before Thanksgiving here in the United States, and you know what that means: coasting into the holiday weekend on a corny hack premise that we ought to be able to wrap up by lunchtime. (The Interface will return on Monday.) And so, with that in mind, let’s…7 min read7 min read
Oct 30, 2019A hate speech warning for Facebook in IndiaWe’ve spent the past couple weeks looking at the clash of social networks and democracy in the United States. So let’s turn our attention abroad. Assam is a state in India that is home to a large population of Bengali Muslims. The ruling party of India, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)…7 min read7 min read
Jul 30, 2019Facebook shrugs off the FTCIt was, in retrospect, perhaps not the best two weeks to go on vacation. Each time I checked in with the news, there was some startling new collision between Facebook and democracy. There was that $5 billion settlement with the Federal Trade Commission. There was that $100 million settlement with…15 min read15 min read
Jul 11, 2019The White House whines, and Twitter crashesWith this issue, The Interface is going on its annual summer vacation! My colleagues on The Verge’s policy desk tell me they may want to send out a bulletin or two while I’m away, so you may be hearing from them. I’ll be back July 29th. At the White House…15 min read15 min read
Jun 27, 2019A conservative YouTube sting pays offMy esteemed colleague Russell Brandom leads our policy team. He was struck by the disingenuous response from conservative lawmakers to the most recent video sting from Project Veritas, which presented YouTube employees in an unfair light. Russell asked if he could take over the column today, and I was happy…16 min read16 min read
