The New Yorker

Reddit is made up of more than a million individual communities, or subreddits, some of which have three subscribers, some twenty million. But, no matter how neutral a platform may seem, there’s always a person behind the curtain. Is it possible to facilitate a space for open dialogue without also facilitating hoaxes, harassment, and threats of violence? Where is the line between authenticity and toxicity? What if, after technology allows us to reveal our inner voices, what we learn is that many of us are authentically toxic?

[Commentary] Professing shock at Fox News’ sophistry is hardly a hot take. But shilling for President Donald Trump, who has no discernible ethos beyond self-regard, is something new, requiring Baryshnikovian levels of ideological flexibility. President Barack Obama was easy—the “Fox & Friends” co-hosts simply denounced everything about him, from his terrorist fist-jabs to his choice of paper clips.

“One of the greatest of all terms I’ve come up with is ‘fake,’ ” President Donald Trump said on Mike Huckabee’s talk show, in October. (In fact, the phrase “fake news” has been around for more than a century.) The President’s strategy has been successful, however, in at least one respect: he has appropriated a term that had often been used to describe the propaganda and the lies masquerading as news, emanating from Russia and elsewhere, which proliferated on Facebook, YouTube, and other social-media platforms during the 2016 election campaign.