Jack NicasVerified account

@jacknicas

New York Times reporter. I cover Silicon Valley and more. WSJ, Boston Globe alum. Jumbotron regular. DMs open.

nytimes.com/by/jack-nicas
Joined December 2008
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  1. Retweeted
    Nov 24

    Please pass along: The New York Times is now FREE for all high school students and teachers across the United States.

    92 replies 1,571 retweets 2,509 likes
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  2. Retweeted
    Nov 24

    It’s probably art, officials said.

    261 replies 429 retweets 2,660 likes
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  3. Retweeted
    Nov 24

    This is a big get from . More than 110,000 government government officials and candidates were on a Facebook whitelist that prevented them from being factchecked — and subsequently have their reach reduced — for spreading misinformation.

    53 replies 763 retweets 1,195 likes
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  4. Nov 24

    Correction to this tweet: Facebook says it has not yet changed its algorithm back to its pre-election code. So FB attributes these shifts to swings in engagement because of the election results, not because of another change to its algorithm.

    But then Facebook changed it back. Look at the results. Here are the top-performing posts on Facebook just before the election, about a week after the election, and three days after that. For a few days, the world got a tase of a "nicer news feed," as some FB workers called it
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  5. Nov 24

    Meet GPT-3, an A.I. system you might be soon hearing a lot more about. Already it can write tweets, pen poetry, summarize emails, answer trivia, translate languages and create computer programs, all with little prompting. Fascinating story by :

    1 reply 3 retweets 8 likes
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  6. Retweeted
    Nov 24

    For more than a year, I covered the tragic, infuriating story of the 737 Max with and many others. The true cause of the crashes wasn’t faulty software. It was a corporate culture gone horribly wrong.

    5 replies 21 retweets 65 likes
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  7. Nov 24

    And here’s a piece from today on the human effect of Facebook’s decisions: People can’t stop scrolling even though it’s making them miserable.

    3 replies 9 retweets 19 likes
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  8. Nov 24

    A Facebook spokesman told my colleagues: “No News Feed product change is ever solely made because of its impact on time spent." He said that people who spoke to my colleagues had no decision-making authority. Here's the story. Read it for yourself:

    1 reply 2 retweets 4 likes
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  9. Nov 24

    Another change would've retroactively told users that they had shared misinfo but execs rejected it because they feared it would disproportionately affect people who shared posts from right-wing pages. There are plenty more examples in the piece.

    1 reply 3 retweets 3 likes
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  10. Nov 24

    This is far from the only example of execs rejecting changes that were good for the world but bad for FB. A new algorithm that reduced the visibility of posts that users would consider “bad for the world” also lowered Facebook usage. So it was rejected.

    1 reply 4 retweets 6 likes
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  11. Nov 24

    Facebook executives said the change was always intended to be temporary. But that decision upset some employees, illustrating a central tension inside the company: Facebook's goal of improving the world is often at odds with its desire for dominance.

    1 reply 2 retweets 7 likes
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  12. Nov 24

    But then Facebook changed it back. Look at the results. Here are the top-performing posts on Facebook just before the election, about a week after the election, and three days after that. For a few days, the world got a tase of a "nicer news feed," as some FB workers called it

    3 replies 8 retweets 15 likes
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  13. Nov 24

    Many of us had speculated that Facebook changed its algorithm after the election. This story confirms: It did! Voter-fraud claims were rampant, so FB tweaked its formula so news outlets could compete with the hyperpartisan pages that typically dominate.

    This is the second straight day that Facebook's top posts are mostly from large news outlets versus right-wing Facebook pages. It could reflect something about the election. But given how sharp and sudden the change has been, I bet Facebook changed its algorithm.
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    1 reply 4 retweets 10 likes
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  14. Nov 24

    Wow, this Facebook story is truly damning. It seems clear: The more misinformation on Facebook, the more time people spend there. As a result, FB has consistently resisted changes that would make it a better place. By & :

    2 replies 58 retweets 110 likes
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  15. Nov 23

    Offseason now a success.

    Free agent Tacko Fall has signed a two-way contract with the Boston Celtics, sources tell .
    5 likes
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  16. Retweeted
    Nov 23

    NEW - A look at how the top superspreaders of misinformation are responsible for a disproportionate amount of the false posts about voter fraud. Please share! I had to do a lot of math for this story and I HATE math.

    42 replies 207 retweets 507 likes
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  17. Retweeted
    Nov 23

    Google’s choice to pull out prominent quotes from news articles without the story’s context is… not great.

    12 replies 114 retweets 550 likes
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  18. Retweeted
    Nov 23

    New: Conservatives can't stop tweeting about Parler, their new online safe space away from the reality of Trump's election loss. But if mainstream social networks are such censorship prisons, why can't they, y'know, stop tweeting? w/

    18 replies 69 retweets 304 likes
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  19. Retweeted
    Nov 22

    Rattled. Was just accosted while taking photos at a baseball tournament in Mesa. Parents yelled for me to not take pictures of their kid. I agreed and asked which kid was theirs. They didn’t want to say and said if I did they would “kick my ass.” They yelled I was the fake

    2,501 replies 4,682 retweets 31,077 likes
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  20. Retweeted
    Nov 22

    Meet Double T and Teague, your newest old Celtics.

    3 replies 6 retweets 89 likes
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