GENERATIVE AI, ALGORITHMIC BIAS & LABOR
The workers on the frontlines of the AI revolution
AI translation is jeopardizing Afghan asylum claims
We tested ChatGPT in Bengali, Kurdish and Tamil. It failed.
Why Silicon Valley’s biggest AI developers are hiring poets
Scale AI is on a hiring spree for speakers of underrepresented languages
AI-generated art sparks backlash from Japan’s anime community
Forget subtitles: YouTube now dubs videos with AI-generated voices
Japan’s new AI rules favor copycats over artists
This Japanese manga artist-turned-politician is taking on AI art
Japan’s anime artists are panicking over Netflix’s new AI experiment
AI content moderation is no match for hate speech in Ethiopian languages
The AI startup outperforming Google Translate in Ethiopian languages
SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES & PLATFORM SAFETY
Signal President Meredith Whittaker on resisting government threats to privacy
How a fringe religious movement in Japan built a pro-Trump social media empire
Illegal gold mining influencers are tearing up the Amazon
Inside the Zenly implosion: Fearing competition Snap decided to shut down the app rather than sell it
Global Twitter employees describe chaos as layoffs gut their teams
This social network in the Philippines paid users to post. What could go wrong?
A million-strong troll army is targeting Iran’s #MeToo activists on Instagram
Russian creators desperately scramble to maintain their followers — and livelihoods
As Western platforms leave Russia, Snap’s Zenly hangs on
Hate speech and disinformation spike on TikTok in run-up to Kenya’s elections
How and when Facebook decides to break its own moderation rules
Kuaishou is chasing novela creators and working-class users in Latin America
”Hostage-taking laws” seem to be fueling a Twitter crackdown in India
INTERNET CULTURE & SUBCULTURES
The Chinese content farms behind Factory TikTok
Vigilante for Views: The YouTube pranksters harassing suspected scam callers in India
How K-pop fans mobilized globally to change Twitter’s policy
Diaspora accounts reframe history, one Instagram post at a time
TikTok creators use AI to rewrite history
Artists across Asia dream of becoming digital sticker millionaires
Facebook’s underground obituary pages
YouTube has created a multimillion-dollar dubbing economy
Apple’s emoji keyboard is reinforcing Western stereotypes
The rise of Japan’s loyalty point hackers [Japanese translation]
Who’s behind the Bible app going viral around the world
What it takes to bring the viral word game Wordle into other languages
QUEER ON THE INTERNET
Where anonymity on Twitter is a matter of life or death
To survive, China’s biggest gay dating app became a pharmacy
China’s biggest gay dating app wants to beat Grindr
An Arabic anti-LGBTQ+ campaign is going viral on Twitter
GLOBAL TECH & ITS DISCONTENTS
Netflix cracks down on password sharing, but early efforts in Peru are a mess
Netflix expands its password-sharing crackdown to Argentina
FTX Japan says it will repay all customers within weeks. Ex-employees are skeptical
The global streaming boom is creating a severe translator shortage
Translators are being left behind in India’s streaming boom
Seeking asylum at the U.S. border? You’d better speak English or Spanish
Substack’s global expansion is risky business
Japan’s SmartNews was growing strong in the U.S. What went wrong?
The Facebook Papers reveal scant research on the effect of Instagram on teens in the Global South
During lockdown, the travel game GeoGuessr went viral, inadvertently highlighting inequalities in Google Maps
TOKYO’S URBAN GEOGRAPHY
What the 1964 Olympics can teach us about 2020
The transformation of Tokyo’s gay district, Shinjuku Nichome
Tokyo’s legacy taxi industry may go driverless
FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI & GREATER JAPAN
The Workers of Fukushima Daiichi
Filmmaking in the grey zone: An interview with Ian Thomas Ash
Ichikawa kagura: Saving the dance of the gods