Roundup: Socialist Elon and decentralized Meta

Read to the end for an SF campaign against robotaxis

When I sent last week’s roundup, I was not prepared for how much Threads was going to dominate the conversation this week — even pushing the stupid “cage match” headlines aside for a moment as everyone focused in on the new battleground for Musk and Zuck.

In this week’s issue, I have a few more thoughts on Threads and some comments on Elon’s new commitment to “core socialist values” — it’s not what it sounds like! Plus, plenty of recommended reads, labor updates, and other news you might have missed. Definitely check out the stories by Nitasha Tiku and Shannon Liao!

If you’re not already a paying subscriber, upgrade to get the full roundup each and every week, and support the work that goes into writing Disconnect while you’re at it!

I also spoke to

David Moscrop

this week about Google and Meta’s threats to pull news content from their platforms in Canada in response to a new law that will force them to pay local news publishers. It’s just a preview of what may be coming for California, where a similar law is working its way through the state legislature!

Have a great week!

— Paris

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Is Threads a decentralized revolution?

Remember two years ago when Mark Zuckerberg was working hard to get us to buy into his vision for the metaverse? Well, one of the aspects of that sales pitch was to get us to believe that Zuckerberg wasn’t some kind of controlling monopolist, but would promote shared prosperity by creating open environments that wouldn’t be solely dominated by Meta. We can debate whether that was ever genuine, but it’s a narrative that’s returned with the launch of Threads, and I’m very skeptical.