Reporting on artificial intelligence: the companies building it, the data feeding it, and the people living with its consequences.
Bots used to be crude. Now manufactured attention is a product — and Medvi's network of 800+ fake Facebook doctors shows what happens when engineered visibility hits a regulated industry.
Marketers used to buy ads. Now they buy conversations. Inside the growth operation turning obscure brands into things people can't stop talking about.
Moderators of woodworking, aquarium, and ham radio communities describe a losing war against generated posts designed to farm ad revenue.
Everlume trained 'memorial companions' on scraped obituaries and funeral home guestbooks — without asking the families.
Everyone worried about bots and fake news. The real force shaping what billions of people see online is attention—and it has quietly become an industry.
Most people think viral content happens by accident. Behind many of the internet's biggest hits is an invisible industry built to make you pay attention.
'It just went viral' sounds increasingly outdated. What looks like spontaneity is often the end stage of a system designed to manufacture visibility.
