AI griefbots are controversial and could conceivably change how we mourn.

Aimed at increasing user engagement, social media algorithms will intentionally show content in feeds that is misaligned with users' beliefs because such content is more likely to be commented on.

A major dopamine hit from social media use comes from unpredictability—not knowing if the content users post or share will get the 'like' from other users, triggering cycles of anticipation similar to those experienced with a slot machine.

Experiments involving AI agents operating in virtual societies for 15 days produced diverse outcomes, ranging from every agent dying to the creation of a functioning democracy, depending on the AI model used.

Social media algorithms are shaping real-life language through memes

The evolution of the internet in the early 2000s supercharged the creation and spread of memetic content. Now, highly tuned algorithms on platforms like TikTok and YouTube influence the language, phrasing, and content of creators, which shapes how we use language in the real world.

Governments are now using generative AI to manipulate public opinion

A Freedom House report found that AI-powered disinformation campaigns and censorship tactics are spreading, with 16 countries utilizing the technology to shape online narratives or suppress dissent, as of 2023. In Venezuela, deepfake software was used to push pro-government propaganda with fake news anchors.

In China, deepfaking a dead loved one has become a growing industry

Digital replicas of the deceased provide individuals with another way to process grief in a culture with long-standing traditions of communicating with ancestors. The emotional and ethical implications of "digital immortality" are complicated further by cases of actors impersonating deceased relatives during deepfake video calls to hide their deaths.

The first social media platforms date back to the late 1990s, and their algorithms were typically chronological, with entities like MySpace and Facebook feeding users content from the most recent posts to the oldest.

Social media platforms benefit not just from ensuring they have satisfied users, but also from the personal data they scoop up and can then sell to online advertisers.

True crime fans can sometimes disregard the real people and trauma behind cases

True crime content has become a social gathering place. In addition to content generated by creators, consumer-driven true crime spaces have blossomed on social media. In these spaces, consumers track developments and share theories as if criminal cases are sports. Citizen sleuths can sometimes inspire new leads but often add to survivors' suffering and sling speculation that can clog tip lines and hit innocent bystanders.

An online presence provides a means of grieving and honoring individuals after death

Shifting perspectives toward the increasing importance of digital profiles of the dead have made anticipatory management of one's digital legacy more critical. Experts suggest choosing a tech-savvy relative—such as a cousin—over a spouse to reduce confusion about what to preserve or discard, as well as how to access password-protected content.

Why this artist staged a satirical romance with Mark Zuckerberg

Internet performance artist Harriet Richardson is using AI and Meta's social media tools to make it appear as though she's in a serious romantic relationship with Mark Zuckerberg. While the images generate laughs, Richardson also says they're part of a larger satirical project aiming to highlight the larger societal impact of Meta's decision to discontinue fact-checking content across its platforms.

Balancing free speech while curbing misinformation has destroyed content moderation

Accusations of censorship and bias have led social media companies like Meta and X to scale back or abandon moderation tools—just as foreign propaganda surges. Researchers say their ability to track manipulation online has become severely limited.

The deep web accounts for 90-95% of the internet

Within the Deep Web is the small and hidden Dark Web, which is inaccessible via traditional web browsers. Dark Web inhabitants are anonymous and use special software to access encrypted websites that can assist with both free speech and criminal activity.

Pretend to be an AI chatbot and answer real prompts

This site, which allows people to answer prompts in real time, has millions of visitors. Join the crowd of people tired of AI chatbots and seeking human connection. You can ask questions, answer questions, and draw for each other.

Individuals have been convicted of ordering assassinations from the dark web

Researchers have uncovered online storefronts allegedly run by members of various mafia or hitmen that offer to harm or murder individuals in exchange for monetary payment. However, no known murder has been attributed to any of them, and cybercrime task forces believe them to be scams (warning—sensitive content).

'Birds Aren't Real' parodies the way memes traffic conspiracy theories

Peter McIndoe claims the US government killed 12 billion birds only to replace them with drones. These statements have powered protests—and McIndoe's fictional campaign that highlights how conspiracies and their theorists are treated.

Visualizing the growth of botnets

Botnets are a network of computers that have been infected with a variant of malware that coordinates and leverages them for automated mass attacks such as data theft and crashing servers. This interactive map highlights where botnets have been located between 2014-2020.

Deepfakes are media created using generative AI tools that intentionally misrepresent real people or events—often for malicious purposes—at the cost of public trust, security, and privacy.

Once limited to expert studios, automated tools can create convincing deepfakes

Although the best deepfakes are engineered using generative adversarial networks where systems compete to create and assess fake data until the two cannot be distinguished, simpler tools have allowed nonexperts to develop deepfakes for financial scams, political deception, and nonconsensual pornography.

As thousands of lawsuits proceed against social media companies for alleged harm, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt lays out the seven main arguments for holding social media companies legally responsible.

The dark web makes up about 0.01% of all the data on the internet

The surface web (5%-10%) consists of indexed sites—those traditional search engines have visited and stored so users can discover them via web search. The remaining 90%-95% makes up the deep web, which is not indexed and includes email and banking portals that require login credentials. The dark web is unindexed and requires anonymizing software to visit.

Web scrapers extract data from a webpage's underlying HTML code and have been used to generate sales leads, collect competitor information, identify counterfeit products, and optimize sites for search engines.

Logic bomb viruses can awaken from a dormant phase without human input

Theoretically, computer viruses can remain idle indefinitely while awaiting specific user actions, as instructed by their code. However, logic bombs—embedded code that triggers when specific conditions are met—can automatically execute viruses, such as when a certain date or time is reached.

A 2020 study suggests just 6.7% of Tor network users visit sites on the dark web

It did not distinguish between visits to malicious sites and traffic to legitimate institutions with .onion domains, such as the BBC or Buzzfeed, and thus claimed that 6.7% of anonymized users engage in nefarious activity. The low percentage still highlights that most users of the technology underlying the dark web do not use it to browse the hidden portion of the internet.

Conspiracy theories today are often born from online radicalization

New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose examines how individuals become radicalized while using platforms like YouTube. Hate crimes that took place before the COVID-19 pandemic inspired the podcast, which looks at online commentators, algorithms, and isolation, and possible explanations for how increased online activity can sometimes lead to violent crime.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation, contends that children are losing the ability to pay attention as they spend half their lives perusing social media content designed to hook them.

Why TikTok's algorithm is likely driven by what you linger on

While the inner workings of the engine driving the vast majority of the app's engagement remain a secret, it is understood to rely heavily on what content users spend the most time watching rather than swipe past. Experts believe the app can develop user profiles robust enough for its algorithm to consistently match engaging content to in as little as two hours.

Some attorneys are using true crime fans to their advantage

True crime fans are notorious for falling down rabbit holes. Now that passionate interest is being exploited by attorneys marshaling influencers to serve as informal public relations representatives, a trend that's blurring the lines between fan theories and reality.

How memes create in-groups

Memes can hop offline, inspiring IRL events ranging from planking to shootings. By nature, memes contribute to the formation of in-groups, ones who are privy to meanings that escape content moderators who don't necessarily recognize what's hidden within layers of references.

The ease of deepfakes creation may soon overwhelm our sense of digital truth

Shortly after the public release of related technology in 2017, some experts saw the technical limitations of deepfakes as preventing them from becoming widespread tools of disinformation. Since then, the neural networks behind diffusion models and generative AI have eliminated the barriers to creating convincing synthetic media for propaganda.

Computer systems create artificial voices by stitching together phonemes—individual sounds that make up speech, such as 't,' 'long a,' and 'k' to say 'take.'

A Grateful Dead online bulletin board system inspired the early internet and counted some of tech's biggest names, like Apple's Steve Wozniak, as users.

Explore internet usage data, including how humans consume 1.2 billion years of content yearly

About half this time consists of content from social media platforms, where the average user spends about 18.5 hours weekly. An estimated $3.66T was spent on consumer goods by online shoppers in 2025, though nonconsumer goods, such as flights and hotel stays, greatly increase this estimate.

Because they are built on content produced by humans, who possess biases, generative AI tools inherit prejudices and stereotypes from training data, which later appear in their outputs.

Deepfake videos impersonating real doctors are spreading false medical advice

More than 100 videos, found primarily on Instagram and TikTok in August 2025, promoted products related to beauty, wellness and weight loss. While TikTok removed 94% of content violating its policies on AI-generated content, these deepfakes were watched and shared before removal, undermining public trust in medicine.

Malicious use of deepfakes can be found in scams, misinformation, and disinformation

Artificial neural networks can identify an individual's physical characteristics when provided with training data, such as real footage of the person speaking. Graphics techniques overlay these with matching characteristics from another real or generated person to create novel footage of things that have never taken place in reality.

Trudging through the dark web to expose child abuse

A computer expert who created a system to track down sources of revenge porn and an investigative journalist joined forces to investigate digital abuse. Their investigations focused on so-called clear nets, websites that make up the web most users surf. Then, they turned their investigation toward the dark web, where they found a child abuse website with more than 1 million registered users.