Wall Street Journal

Thasos is at the vanguard of companies trying to help traders get ahead of stock moves like that using so-called alternative data. Such suppliers might examine mine slag heaps from outer space, analyze credit-card spending data or sort through construction permits. Thasos’s specialty is spewing out of your smartphone. “It’s creating this data all the time, even if it’s not ringing,” said Greg Skibiski, Thasos’s 45-year-old founder and chief executive. “It’s a beacon.

As mainstream social-media companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit try to push racist commentary and hate speech off their platforms, those conversations are finding homes in other corners of the web. They are happening on Discord, a chat service for videogamers, and message boards such as 4chan. Gab was founded explicitly to be a haven for free commentary, no holds barred. Discord says its rules prohibit harassment, threatening messages and calls to violence, and it has shut down accounts over those issues. Grappling with such web speech is proving challenging.