AI
Falling in and out of love with Moltbot
Maybe someday you’ll have a genie in your laptop working for you 24/7. Today is not that day
Casey Newton
Founder and editor of Platformer, a publication about the intersection of tech and democracy. Prior to founding Platformer in October 2020, Newton was the longtime Silicon Valley editor of The Verge.
Child Safety
What a big study of teens says about social media — and what it can’t
The “moral panic” framing misses how platforms actually harm kids. PLUS: Newsom investigates TikTok over Trump, and the Clawdbot frenzy
Trump
When murder becomes a meme
Truth and terror in Minneapolis. PLUS: TikTok conspiracy theories, and Dario Amodei's Oppenheimer moment
AI
The AI productivity paradox
Managers say it makes them more productive. Workers don't. What gives?
Meta
Meta’s scam problem, UK edition
Plus: Writers react to Claude Code for writers; Elon Musk vs. OpenAI; and ChatGPT gets ads
Anthropic
Claude Code for writers
Five useful things I’ve built so far. Plus: Grok caves, and Thinking Machines implodes
AI
What I learned while cloning my own voice
Announcing Platformer+, a new way to listen to our columns
Grok
Grok gets blocked
More than a week into a deepfake scandal, a handful of foreign governments have found the strength to do what Apple, Google, and the United States will not
AI
The project that turned me into a Claude Code believer
I feel great about the website I’m building — and terrible for professional website builders. PLUS: Who will stop Grok? And ChatGPT will see you now
Deepfakes
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 crisis, and the rapture over Claude Opus 4.5
AI
11 predictions for 2026
PLUS: What I got right (and wrong) about 2025
Regulation
Spotify is part of the trade war now
The US is retaliating against the EU after it fined X — and now some of Europe's biggest companies are caught in the crossfire
Meta
Meta's scam problem may trigger a legal reckoning
A fresh investigation reveals the scope of Meta's problem in China. Will a pending court case force the company to crack down — or destroy Section 230?
OpenAI
OpenAI is a normal company now
A decade years in, what started as a sci-fi lab is now focused on engagement and growth. What does that mean for building AI safely?
Child Safety
Australia kicks the kids off social media
How social networks lost the argument. PLUS: All worked up over Nvidia's H200
X
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 moratorium is back, and the Paramount-Netflix fight