David Roberts on the Sydney Sweeney episode
I want to do a 🧵 about the Sidney Sweeney thing, because it’s *extremely* revealing & educational.
First, to be clear: I could not give less of a shit about the details — the ad, the rhetoric, the jeans, her boobs, whatever. Good lord, who cares.
Let’s look at the *structure* of the episode.
Related stories
Related Knowledge Center: Social media
Social media platforms are the source of news for millions of people — and they have a fraught and ever-shifting relationship with the enterprises that provide that news.
The TikTok ban | The Meta-FTC trial
Related Knowledge Center: Information integrity
In an increasingly fractured media landscape, truth has been a casualty in the public discussion. Coverage has been warped by the business needs of struggling news organizations, and a significant segment of the public relies on bad-faith outlets that are little more than propagandists. While fact-checking has become routine, some organizations are exploring other ways to combat the trends. And misinformation spewed by AI-driven chatbots has become more of a feature than simply a bug.
Fact-checking and its detractors