mastodon 4.5.18UMass Amherst, Global Voices, Berkman Klein Center. Formerly MIT Media Lab, Geekcorps, Tripod.com
"The loyal client" is a concept that's been important to our lab over the past five years as we've tried to make social media better: it's the idea that the tools you use to access social media should meet your needs, not those of the platform owner. Spencer Lane wrote a great paper on this as part of his dissertation, which the journal Internet Histories has just published. Very proud of him and happy to be a coauthor on this:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24701475.2026.2662718
I have the cover story this month in Prospect, titled "Social Media in the Dock". It's an examination of recent court decisions in California and New Mexico and their implications. https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/technology/information-technology/73382/meta-google-social-network-in-the-dock
The TL;DR: it's good news that we've found ways to hold social networks responsible for bad product design and bad behavior without overturning Section 230. Big thanks to Nate Matias and Evelyn Douek for their help getting up to speed on the complex issues involved.
I'm co-leading a "teach in" with leaders of Surveillance Watch, a terrific project fighting against corporate and government surveillance, tomorrow at 1:30pm. It's online, and you're welcome to sign up here: https://umass-amherst.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_JJykcOXnSQivlwcwpnMTvQ#/registration
Why do tech billionaires want server farms in orbit? So that they don't have to deal with communities trying to defend their energy grids, water supplies and well being: https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/technology/72162/why-tech-billionaires-dream-of-servers-in-the-sky
I gave a new talk on AI, cultural hegemony and the importance of the digital survival of "small" languages online this past Tuesday at University of Copenhagen. Notes and partial slides now online: https://ethanzuckerman.com/2025/12/05/gramscis-nightmare-ai-platform-power-and-the-automation-of-cultural-hegemony/
There's lots of hot takes on Zuckerberg's content moderation decision, and then there's Julia Angwin's, who uses it to explain that Meta is no longer growing through innovation and is reduced to political groveling. https://buttondown.com/JuliaAngwin/archive/heavy-lies-mark-zuckerbergs-crown/
Had a great time talking with Zachey Kliger about Meta's failed Metaverse bet, why Gen Z is suspicious of social media, and why XR is more interesting than VR: https://kligerscorner.com/blog/ethan-zuckerman-metaverse-ai/
Australia has so much solar generation capacity that it's offering customers free electricity for three hours in the middle of the day: https://electrek.co/2025/11/04/australia-has-so-much-solar-that-its-offering-everyone-free-electricity-3h-day/
"If, however, Trump is a fascist president, that does not mean that America is a fascist country." Excellent Jonathan Rausch essay, "Yes, It's Fascism" https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/01/america-fascism-trump-maga-ice/685751/
Howard French on his new book, "The Second Emancipation", speaking at UMass Amherst: https://ethanzuckerman.com/2026/03/24/howard-french-the-second-emancipation/
Enjoyed this interview with InnovEU about the possibility of taxpayer-supported social media platforms and digital public infrastructure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K_M7cU_8ofk&list=PLhPsYe80-Wq1bOuVZmZGso_Kr3W8biIpx&index=5
Giving a somewhat unusual talk for me tomorrow - it's on what Antonio Gramsci might have thought about large language models, leading off a new series at University of Copenhagen on AI and Democracy. On zoom at 9am Boston time: https://cpai.ku.dk/events/gramscis-nightmare--ai-platform-power-and-the-automation-of-cultural-hegemony/
My friend Isaac Brickman and I have a new article out on middleware in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science: https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/JMYZ3GJKPE7UTCN8ZR3K/full
This is work that came directly out of Isaac's undergrad thesis at UMass Amherst - it's always cool to collaborate with students, but to have this work shared at the highest levels of scholarship is something I'm very proud of.
New course, new blog post: "Where Should We Live?" - Will Climate Change Alter Where Americans Choose to Live? https://ethanzuckerman.com/2026/01/21/where-should-we-live-a-new-class-on-cities-migration-and-climate-change/
Liveblogging from BU MISI: Communicating Climate. Cass Sunstein believes we need to communicate about climate with emotion, but with less blame and shame: https://ethanzuckerman.com/2025/11/07/how-do-we-communicate-about-climate-without-shaming-audiences/
Small social networks like Strava are having a moment, according to Aidan Ryan in the Boston Globe: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/11/01/business/strava-letterboxd-niche-social-media/
Had such a good time with Dexter and The Kill Switch podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=wbCtoLvgc4Q So appreciate getting to talk about internet economics in detail with a smart, thoughtful journalist.
