The web gets what it wants

Is there anything on earth quite so baldly thirst-inducing as a change to a social network's home feed ranking? I mean look, Instagram hasn't even intro-ed its algorithm yet, and its bottom-shelf celebs are already quaking. Pro tip: Don't turn on ANY notifications, unless you care so much about the meals of some past Bachelor contestant that you want your phone to alert every time she eats. Personally I'm looking forward to LESS of that in my IG feed...

1. How we unwittingly let robots censor the Web. It's the big open secret of the copyright system: When it comes to leaving content up or taking it down, algorithms make the crucial decisions. Some bots send takedown requests; other bots approve them. Which leaves a narrow, contested strip of ground for we Internet-using humans.

2. Maybe an Internet hoax can be art, but can it be "a modern myth"? Either way, the artist Zardulu is going to roll with it. She's the elusive character behind selfie rat and the three-eyed Gowanus catfish. She's also very hurt that some have called her works hoaxes.

3. In praise of food blogs, the people's medium. Food writing has always been an elite pursuit -- until the Internet opened it up to the plebeians.

DON'T PANIC, guys, I did not just send you a GIF of a dead dog
... just a dog playing dead for a v. long time so as to not leave the park
(link) (full video)

Pocketable: How ISIS is winning the social media war. (7150 words/29 minutes)

Postscripts: Girl crew. Wine can. First-century Twitter. What porn did to millennials and how tech can help you sleep better. Learning a language from a refugee on Skype is ... apparently a thing you can do! Amazingly, the Post still reads okay wth ll th vwls rmvd. Why Mr. Robot looks so weird. How teachers use Snapchat. Too hungover to order food? There's emoji for that! Working out with YouTube's worst fitness guru and learning from Facebook taunts. In this new video, as in all things, the web gets what it wants.

See you soon!
@caitlindewey

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