Casey Newton
Founder of Platformer; co-host of Hard Fork
Independent technology journalist who founded the Platformer newsletter after years at The Verge, covering AI labs, platform power and content moderation. Co-hosts Hard Fork with Kevin Roose.
Key arguments & positions
- Covers AI as a platform-power story: who controls distribution, moderation and the rules users never see.
- Argues independent reporting on AI labs needs sources inside them, and has broken several internal-policy stories that way.
- Publicly skeptical of both AI-will-save-us and AI-is-nothing framings, arguing the honest position is narrower than either.
Accomplishments
- Founded the Platformer newsletter in 2020 after a decade at The Verge and CNET.
- Co-hosts Hard Fork with Kevin Roose.
- Left Substack publicly in 2024 over its moderation policies, moving Platformer to Ghost.
Papers & key writings
Links
In the library
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Recommended next
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Data Workers and the Mental Toll of Cleaning the Internet
Elaine O. Nsoesie and Nuredin Ali Abdelkadir discuss the mental-health toll of content moderation in Africa, including exposure to harmful material and the need for workplace preparation and support.
Why this: Also about content moderation
The Technology Behind LinkedIn's Fight Against AI Slop
A LinkedIn engineering leader describes how the platform detects and down-ranks generic, repetitive AI-generated posts in the feed, and what that means for members who post.
Why this: Also about content moderation
From Inside AI (Palisade Research)
Interviews from Palisade Research with people who worked at OpenAI, Google DeepMind and Anthropic about what they say the public is not being told.
Why this: Also about AI labs
Zentropi — Build Custom Content Labelers
A tool for writing your own content-moderation rules in plain language and turning them into an AI labeler.
Why this: Also about content moderation