TikTok toe, how to raise your A.I. newborn, and the great carbon-credit scam: Weekend reads for March 16, 2024

Some writing worth your attention

This week, lawmakers in Washington proved it is still possible for them to rise above the petty bitterness and come together and get things done…which in this case meant pissing off millions of hormonal teenagers.

It was another big foray into industrial policy in the United States, as the House of Representatives threatened the social video juggernaut TikTok with a ban unless it agrees to change owners.

Whether or not the proposal finds votes in the Senate and moves forward, the very idea of it is complicated, as any viable purchase would probably result in further consolidation of the digital platforms that already seem to own everything.

Meanwhile, on Israel and Gaza, the Biden campaign has continued to drift away from the Netanyahu government, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer this week got the world’s attention in calling out the Israeli leader as an obstacle to peace.

And extremely online folks everywhere are still on the hunt for a missing princess.

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In case you missed it

We had a big slate of interviews this week, with people making sense of the news — and those making it in the first place.

• Federal Trade Commission chair and anti-monopoly cop Lina Khan talked to us about why big companies aren’t just ripping us off but threatening our freedom. 

• Charlie Warzel educated us on the Kate Middleton disappearance — and asked whether we all might just be conspiracy theorists now.

• Paul Waldman told us about the ways Republicans and Democrats have failed rural Americans, and how to fix it.

We hope the articles we’ve collected below for our subscribers to read challenge you to see the world in new ways. Thanks, as always, for reading The Ink and continuing to support us (and if you’re not a paid subscriber already, we encourage you to join our community).

The interviews and essays that we share here take research and editing and interviewing and more. We work hard, and we are eager to bring on more writers, more voices. But we need your help to keep this going.

And today we’re offering you a very rare discount of 20 percent if you become a paying subscriber. You will lock in this lower price forever if you join us now!

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Monopoly power, big tech, and the fight for freedom

Spying, mergers and acquisitions, and other viral dance crazes

But in terms of whether changes will hurt creators and users, well, TikTok already has changed its algorithm in ways that harm creators, abruptly and often. All the big platforms do this; Meta, for instance, is in the process of destroying the news globally because they have decided it’s strategically more profitable to eliminate the sharing of traditionally reported news on their sites. So this concern is just another way of saying that dependence on a dominant platform that can shift its algorithm at will is dangerous. [BIG]