‘Why the fight against online extremism keeps failing’
Tamar Mitts at Time
“Content moderation takedowns have soared on major sites,” so “perhaps the question we should be asking isn’t whether platforms are doing enough in isolation — it’s whether we are addressing a problem that is bigger than any one site,” says Tamar Mitts. The “approach to fighting online hate and extremism focuses too often on individual platforms” and “too little on the fragmentation of content moderation.” Smaller “trust-and-safety teams mean more opportunity to radicalize a dedicated audience.”
‘The lost do-gooders’
Nick Summers at Intelligencer
Trump and Musk “have portrayed federal workers as lazy and wasteful,” but many are “academically ambitious and impeccably credentialed types who have forsworn more lucrative work,” says Nick Summers. The “people I’m talking about are not unicorns.” The “fact that they’re being binned en masse puts the lie to the idea that the DOGE effort is sincerely interested in efficiency.” But “explaining the value of government to those who want to burn it down is useless.”
‘I’m an NFL player, yet malaria nearly killed me. Kids will die without foreign aid.’
Calvin Anderson at USA Today
Malaria “nearly killed me, and I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have survived,” says Calvin Anderson. People “around the world — primarily young children — are not as lucky, and if we as a country continue to halt critical malaria-fighting foreign assistance, the consequences will be devastating.” The “recent freeze on funding for foreign aid programs has jeopardized critical initiatives that support global health and development.” Having “personally experienced the horror of malaria, I am deeply saddened by this decision.”
‘No, “playing dead” is the last thing Democrats should be doing’
Megan Romer at The Guardian
The “rapid-fire destruction of institutions that we’ve seen from the Republicans since Trump’s second inauguration should tell any thinking person that these are not the bumbling incompetents that the pundit class claims,” says Megan Romer. There is “no guaranteed Republican self-destruction coming down the pike; we cannot simply wait this out.” By “abdicating their responsibility to the working class, the Democrats” are “telling on themselves.” They “cannot be credible opposition to a political movement.”