Casey Newton

The author of a viral Reddit thread alleging fraud at a food delivery company tried to back up his claim by sending me AI-generated documents. Today I'm publishing those documents in the hopes that it helps other reporter see what we're up against in the age of AI

Platformer

Debunking the AI food delivery hoax that fooled Reddit

A “whistleblower” tried to corroborate his viral post with AI-generated evidence. This is how I caught him. PLUS: Grok's image-generation crisi...

When X banned the European Commission's ad account in retaliation for a fine, it demonstrated the exact sort of capricious behavior the DSA is designed to stop

Platformer

How X made the EU's case for it

By banning an ad account on a flimsy pretext, X demonstrated the exact behavior that led the European Union to fine it. PLUS: The state AI law mora...

Today is Platformer's fifth birthday! I wrote about the state of the newsletter economy, how the business is going, and what we're planning for year six

Platformer

What I learned in the first five years of Platformer

And where we go from here

I tried to capture everything that's strange about the TikTok deal. A giveaway to Trump's allies and another step toward US media being controlled by his allies

Platformer

Everything that's weird about the deal to spin out TikTok

PLUS: What LLMs say when they think no one’s looking, and Trump’s visa chaos

The chatbot mental health crisis is here. No one is ready for it

Platformer

A ChatGPT tragedy is only the beginning

The chatbot mental health crisis is here

A new Pew study offers data to back up what we have suspected for a while now: AI answers are draining all the traffic out of the web

Platformer

The Google study that told us what we already suspected

When users see AI overviews, clicks fall in half. How does the web survive?

Pay to boost your newsletter in Substack Notes! Pre-roll ads on your podcasts and videos! Your writing licensed to train new AI models! I wrote about how Substack can live up to its new billion-dollar valuation

Platformer

Let’s all try to help Substack live up to its new valuation

The company's new unicorn status has already led its founders to reverse their position on advertising. What other compromises are they prepared to...

The dream of the Fediverse is alive on Threads (and Mastodon)

Platformer

The dream of the Fediverse is alive on Threads

Decentralized media is off to an agonizingly slow start — but there are glimmers of progress