The Verge’s Internet Culture section is the home for daily coverage of how our online lives influence and are influenced by pop culture and the world around us. The ways in which we communicate, create, and live with each other have been radically altered by the internet’s powerful connective tissues, from the platforms we inhabit, like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram; to the policies, laws and guidelines that govern them (or don’t); to the subcultures, communities, and memes that bring us together there — for better or worse. Here you’ll find our coverage of life on the web, with an eye on what’s next.
Erin Kissane’s take on “the dark forest” idea of the internet suggests that context collapse is what makes the internet deranging. So how do you build a network where people matter?
[wreckage/salvage]
After days of explosive growth on the platform, the Bluesky Safety team posted Friday that it received 42,000 moderation reports in the preceding 24 hours (versus 360,000 in all of 2023).
The team added that it’s working to bring on new members and asks users to help by reporting troll, spam, and scam accounts. Bluesky has also implemented email verification for new signups.
A live-updating tracker using Bluesky’s API puts the site at over 14,980,000 users right now.
The site has been growing fast lately, possibly spurred most recently by the US presidential election.
Verge staffers review election.omg.lol: “Both horrifying and kinda helpful.” “This is a hell site.” “This rules.”
[election.omg.lol]
Mariah Carey has once again emerged from the Halloween cobwebs with an elaborately produced video reminding us the holiday season — and nonstop replays of “All I Want for Christmas is You” — is upon us.
As far as celebrity memes and bits go, I respect the dedication and raw capitalism with this one.
[YouTube]
New fear unlocked: that even death will not release me from the Zoom meetings.
That’s XOXO organizer Andy Baio reflecting back on the speaker lineup he put together for this year’s conference, which was the last. I encourage you to read his blog post about this year’s talks, which were all amazing. (Including one from The Verge’s Sarah Jeong!)
You can watch all of the talks on YouTube.
[Waxy.org]
So The Bear Cave, a newsletter popular among shortsellers, is claiming the short-sellers at Hindenburg Research are ripping it off. “This is the essence of plagiarism: taking the heart of someone else’s work without acknowledgement and repurposing it for your own audience.” Nate Anderson of Hindenburg has responded on Twitter, Edwin Dorsey, of The Bear Cave, isn’t having it.
[thebearcave.substack.com]
The world we live in is, in so many ways, 20 years old. Let’s go back and see how we got here.
If you have FOMO about missing out on the very last XOXO festival, the official video recordings have begun rolling out one by one.
Here’s my own talk, mostly about the harassment campaign that upended my life. I previously wrote about the experience as part of The Verge’s The Year Twitter Died package.
Think Shot Spotter, but for songs. There’s a “crappy Android phone” that’s set up in the Mission in San Francisco that’s just on Shazam all day. “This is culture surveillance. No one notices, no one consents. But it’s not about catching criminals. It’s about catching vibes.”
[walzr.com]
Tegan and Sara (pop stars, iykyk) were known for their online presence and cultivating a fan community. But a catfish hacked Tegan’s accounts, and clearly had access to an awful lot of her personal information... turning her life upside down.
PBS News spent a few minutes with GeoGuessr superstar Trevor Rainbolt, who made a name for himself on TikTok by being really good at the game of guessing where a random Google Maps Street View photo was taken, based on small clues and the occasional “vibe guess.”
We do love it when a news segment digs into a niche internet subculture.
Former US President Donald Trump, who posted AI-generated images of Taylor Swift implying that she had endorsed him for President, now says he hates her, in a post on Truth Social.
(Swift has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for the office.)
Debates over AI’s artistic value have focused on its generative output. But so far, interactive systems have proved far more interesting.
In an interview with The New York Times, former model Leticia Sarda — better known to some as “Celebrity Number Six” — revealed she had no idea that thousands of people online have spent years trying to identify her because of some unusual curtains.
“I never expected this would show up 20 years later,” Sarda said.
In January 2020, a Reddit user requested help identifying the celebrities illustrated on some decade-old curtains, and the internet quickly matched all but one to their original photograph.
That remaining figure, dubbed “Celebrity Number Six,” remained a complete mystery until yesterday when the reference image of Spanish model Leticia Sardá was finally uncovered. Guess it’s time to retire the subreddit?
