Online hate as a precursor of real-world violence: Anti-Asian hate speech has spiked in fringe corners of the internet, my colleague Davey Alba reported. Researchers told Davey that a surge in online vitriol toward ethnic groups showed an increased risk of violence against them.
A novel but potentially abusive way to get more people online: Rest of World wrote about loans for people who couldn’t otherwise afford smartphones, but they come with a catch. Pop-up messages take over the phone screen to nudge people to make payments, and the phone might lock if people miss too many.
TikTok is the opposite of reading books but … TikTok videos are selling a lot of books. My colleague Elizabeth A. Harris wrote about “BookTok,” or short videos of people recommending titles, recording time lapse videos of themselves reading or weeping after an emotionally crushing ending. “I wish I could send them all chocolates!” one author told Elizabeth.
The New York Times