Get the latest tech news

Social Media Is Getting Smaller—and More Treacherous

Fragmented and focused social platforms might be good for helping you find a knitting community. But extremist groups are also using them to normalize darker content.

Trump lost something precious when he was deplatformed: the ability to speak to the “big room”—a platform that reached a broad swath of the people interested in public affairs. Elon Musk’s compulsive destruction of Twitter is turning it into a smaller room, a safe space for extremists that makes it unsafe for those who don’t share their views. Reddit, long one of the most exciting spaces for informed, topical conversations, is shedding users as it implements unpopular, Muskian policies in hopes of generating much-needed revenue.

Get the Android app