Today, Meta went to trial in the state of New Mexico for allegedly failing to protect minors from sexual exploitation on its apps, including Facebook and Instagram. The state claims that Meta violated New Mexico's Unfair Practices Act by implementing design features and algorithms that created dangerous conditions for users. Now, more than two years after the case was filed, opening arguments have begun in Santa Fe.
Jeffrey Epstein is alive is simply a much better story than Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Dead is an ending. Alive is a franchise. Epstein's death was narratively unsatisfying to many, many people. There was no trial, no public reckoning, no parade of powerful names under oath. The story cut to black before the audience got what it was promised. Conspiracies rush in to fill that void not because they are persuasive, but because they keep the plot alive.
Even though white supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes is officially banned from Instagram, his fans are reposting clips of his misogynist, racist, and neo-Nazi content, garnering millions of views, according to Media Matters. The media watchdog organization said that a network of Fuentes' fans, who call themselves "groypers," have been uploading clips of Fuentes' videos. While the video-sharing platform TikTok has banned searches for "Nick Fuentes" and "groyper," Instagram allows such searches.
Earlier this week, I detailed how journalism lost its ability to set the terms of public reality—dismantled not by its own failures, but by algorithmic systems that reward emotional intensity over accuracy and affirmation over verification. Editorial judgment, imperfect yet guided by civic purpose, has been replaced by engagement-optimized algorithms. The result is fragmentation severe enough to undermine shared reality itself—or worse, to convince us objective truth no longer exists.
Arguably the most remarkable aspect of the aftermath of the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk's assassination is how irrelevant its actual perpetrator was to the immediate discourse. I saw the finger-pointing online even before I saw the news that Kirk had been shot. At that point, there was hardly any information about the incident-let alone details about the shooter or a motive.