Orkut’s Founder Is Still Dreaming of a Social Media Utopia

Before Orkut launched in January 2004, Büyükkökten warned the team that the platform he’d built it on could handle only 200,000 users. It wouldn’t be able to scale. “They said, let’s just launch and see what happens,” he explains. The rest is online history. “It grew so fast. Before we knew it, we had millions … Read more

Why the EU’s Vice President Isn’t Worried About Moon-Landing Conspiracies on YouTube

When European Union vice president Věra Jourová met with YouTube CEO Neal Mohan in California last week, they fell to talking about the long-running conspiracy theory that the moon landings were fake. YouTube has faced calls from some users and advocacy groups to remove videos that question the historic missions. Like other videos denying accepted … Read more

A Nonprofit Tried to Fix Tech Culture—but Lost Control of Its Own

Allen, a data scientist, and Massachi, a software engineer, worked for nearly four years at Facebook on some of the uglier aspects of social media, combating scams and election meddling. They didn’t know each other but both quit in 2019, frustrated at feeling a lack of support from executives. “The work that teams like the … Read more