Platformer is an independent publication devoted to exploring the intersection of technology platforms and society. It was founded in 2020 by me, technology journalist Casey Newton.
Platformer arrives Monday through Thursday at 5PM PT, and sometimes on particularly newsy Fridays. You can subscribe here. Offering a mix of original reporting, analysis, commentary, and curated links, the newsletter effectively serves as a daily live blog for a tumultuous period in the history of technology and governance.
More than 100,000 people trust Platformer to keep them informed on the day’s most important developments. Subscribers include executives at Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Apple, and Snap, along with their counterparts in academia, government, and journalism.
What does Platformer cover?
My focus evolves with the news, and I intend to update this list at least quarterly. Here’s what I’m obsessed with right now:
- How will governments regulate tech platforms, and what are the effects of those regulations?
- How will differing approaches to tech regulation by country fragment the internet, and what will be the effects of that fragmentation?
- What levers will authoritarian governments use to influence platform decisions? How will platforms resist them?
- How do social networks affect human behavior and politics?
- How will artificial intelligence reshape tech platforms, productivity, and broader society?
- How will content moderation evolve as platforms attempt to balance free speech with security? What are the best ways to strike that balance?
- How will social networks, governments, and activists act to reduce the spread of misinformation, disinformation, hate speech, and coordinated influence campaigns? How will their adversaries respond?
- Should platforms make efforts to create a shared sense of reality among their users? If they choose not to, what consequences will that have?
- What are potential solutions to the sharp decline in trust in government, platforms, the media, and other institutions?
- What new products and services are social platforms building, and what consequences will they have?
- What innovations can blockchain-based platforms enable in creativity, business, and platform governance? What governance and moderation challenges will arise from the way they organize their work and store their data?
- What is the near-term future of augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality, and the metaverse? What innovation can it enable? What governance and moderation challenges will come with it?
How do you see the world?