Society

In the game known as the streaming wars, Disney+ came out swinging, bringing with it a massive library of movies and TV shows—with new ones being added all the time. Watched everything on Netflix? Disney+ has a seemingly endless selection of Marvel movies and plenty of Star Wars and Pixar fare too. Problem is, there’s…

In the days following the presidential election, Riley Wenckus was angry. Specifically, she was angry at billionaire X owner Elon Musk for the role he played in president-elect Donald Trump’s victory. “I was feeling really existential about what I can do,” she says. “You know, he is the richest man on earth.” So Wenckus turned…

Since the election, a number of organizations, journalists, and left-leaning X users have announced their intentions to leave the town square formerly known as Twitter and move over to Threads or Bluesky. Leah talks with WIRED reporters David Gilbert and Vittoria Elliott about what these X-pats will find on the newer platforms, what happens to…

Inside a nondescript brick warehouse on Preston Street in Houston, a crowd gathered with their hopes cast on the future. Assembled among the 60-person flock were Byron Spruell, president of league operations for the NBA, and TikTok food influencer Keith Lee, who stood in the back wearing a Yankees varsity jacket, evading what attention he…

Militias operating along the US–Mexico border plan to continue their vigilante operations once president-elect Donald Trump takes office, and some see themselves as acting in concert with military and federal agents to execute mass deportation plans. It’s unclear how this would work in practice, but Tim Foley, head of Arizona Border Recon, a “civilian patrol…

It’s long been believed that Silicon Valley is a hotbed for libertarian ideals, but where did that idea come from? Aside from some high-profile tech founders and investors who either identify as libertarian or express libertarianesque beliefs, does this set of ideologies really define the Valley? And what is libertarianism anyway? You can follow Michael…

There’s new data released this week confirming much of what I’ve written in this newsletter for the past year: More and more Americans are getting their news from influencers on the internet. The Pew Research Center, in partnership with the Knight Foundation, released a report this week that found that around one in five US…

China has long been a billion-plus-person experiment in total state surveillance, with virtually no legal checks on the government’s ability to physically and digitally monitor its citizens. When so much control of citizens’ private data amasses within a few government agencies, however, it doesn’t stay there. Instead, that bounty of private info has also leaked…

Jaime Teevan joined Microsoft before it was cool again. In 2006, she was completing her doctorate in artificial intelligence at MIT. She had many options but was drawn to the company’s respected, somewhat ivory-tower-ish research division. Teevan remained at Microsoft while the mother ship blundered its way through the mobile era. Then, as the calendar…

To dismantle Google’s illegal monopoly over how Americans search the web, the US Department of Justice wants the tech giant to end its lucrative partnership with Apple, share a trove of proprietary data with competitors and advertisers, and “promptly and fully divest Chrome,” Google’s search engine that controls over half of the US market. The…