Welcome back to Lately, The Globe’s weekly tech newsletter. If you have feedback or just want to say hello to a real-life human, send me an e-mail.
In this week’s issue:
😱 I reset my Instagram algorithm. My new feed was even worse
🌐 Diving into Trump’s online universe
🤑 Romance scams on the rise
💆🏻♀️ Would you “sever” your work self from the rest of your life?
🎙️ The truth about the singles tax
SOCIAL MEDIA
I reset my Instagram algorithm. My new feed was even worse
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about how I was planning to reset my Instagram algorithm and report back on how it went. Well, reader, I can firmly say it did not go very well. The fitness influencers, paparazzi photos and recipes that had filled my Explore page pre-reset were replaced with grotesque meat-processing videos (I’m a long-time vegetarian), misogynist memes, The Substance-style body horror reels, and an alarming amount of AI slop involving President Donald Trump and humanoid eagles in military garb.
What was happening on my Explore page is called the “cold start problem” which is essentially when an app doesn’t know anything about you, it throws everything at you to see what sticks. And because social media platforms prioritize content with engagement, the posts that are most successful aren’t necessarily of the highest quality.
Even still, we don’t fully know how the Instagram algorithm works, so we can’t ever fully control what recommended content we see. “Resetting allows us to restart, but it doesn’t address some of the more fundamental problems, such as the opaqueness of algorithms,” said Samuel Hardman Taylor, a researcher who studies social media algorithms. “The refresh gives us some agency, but we still live in this secretive space of how Instagram’s recommendation algorithms work.”
SOCIAL MEDIA
Trump’s new right-wing online universe
Trump and the politicians, podcasters and influencers in his online universeIllustration by Photo illustration The Globe and Mail
For the past month, I’ve been reporting on a parallel social-media universe that has cropped up in recent years, attracting everyone from traditional Republicans to extremist far-right castaways. The platforms in this right-wing ecosystem include Truth Social (similar to X), Rumble (a YouTube alternative favoured by right-wing voices) and Kick (a livestreaming platform like Twitch, but without any semblance of community guidelines).
The users on these platforms also mirror Trump’s own broad alliance of supporters: controversial pundits and legacy news commentators, Gen Z influencers, red-pilled meme warriors and crypto bros and suburban MAGA moms. The coalition’s beliefs may not always overlap, but at the centre of their universe is President Trump. And although these platforms have user bases a fraction of the size of their counterparts, they still can be incredibly influential and can help push fringe ideas into the mainstream. Read my full story here.
CYBERCRIME
Romance scams on the rise
Love is in the air – and so are crypto-fuelled romance scams. In typical cases, the fraudster convinces the victim that they’re in a relationship and then uses that bond to convince them to invest in cryptocurrency through a fake website that appears to show their profits are growing. Some experts call these schemes “pig butchering,” a term derived from the practice of “fattening up” the victims by gaining their trust before “slaughtering” them by stealing their funds. Last year, Canadian romance scam victims reported more than $58-million in losses to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, the second-highest-grossing scam after investment fraud, at $310-million. Read cybercrime reporter Alexandra Posadzki’s full story.
COMMERCE
Shopify under fire for selling Kanye West’s swastika shirt
This week, Shopify faced criticism for not quickly taking down Kanye West’s online store that sold T-shirts emblazoned with swastikas. He promoted the store during a Super Bowl ad on Sunday, but the Ottawa-based company didn’t become aware of it until Monday morning, according to internal Slack messages viewed by The Globe. The store was taken down Tuesday because it did not follow the platform’s policies and presented a heightened risk of fraud. The swastika T-shirt is the latest test of the company’s commitments to free speech versus corporate responsibility, as standards across the digital media world have shifted quickly in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election last fall.
Meanwhile, an AI-generated video featuring deepfakes of more than a dozen Jewish celebrities – including Scarlett Johansson, Steven Spielberg and Adam Sandler – condemning West and antisemitism went viral on social media. In the video, the deepfakes are wearing T-shirts with a graphic of the Star of David on the back of a hand giving the middle finger. In response, Johansson denounced the video’s use of AI. “We must call out the misuse of A.I., no matter its messaging, or we risk losing a hold on reality,” she said in a statement to People. “I urge the U.S. government to make the passing of legislation limiting A.I. use a top priority; it is a bipartisan issue that enormously affects the immediate future of humanity at large.”
What else we’re reading this week:
Matchmakers in India now have competition: AI (The Walrus)
The incredible shrinking dating app (WIRED)
Microsoft study finds AI makes human cognition “atrophied and unprepared” (404)
Soundbite
“With dating apps, we’re finding this illusion that the grass is always greener. I don’t think that rising rates of singlehood are because people want to forgo romantic relationships. People are saying, ‘I want to prioritize singlehood right now’ then later they’re finding it difficult to date.” – Yuthika Girme, director of the Singlehood Experiences and Complexities Underlying Relationships Lab at Simon Fraser University on this week’s episode of the Lately podcast.
Adult Money
AUDIO
NAD C588 TurntableNAD/Supplied
NAD C588 turntable, $1,199
All this talk of tariffs, trade wars and annexation has unleashed a flurry of patriotism, with many Canadians sharing lists of local products to buy instead of U.S. brands. (The Globe compiled a big list of Canadian options, if you want to peruse.) Some products are easy to swap, like cleaning products or condiments, but it’s harder when it comes to technology. Canada has a thriving tech sector, but it hardly plays a role in the supply chains of products such as smartphones and laptops. If you’re an audiophile though, there are some Canadian options. NAD Electronics makes amplifiers, receivers and turntables, including this stylish turntable with a nine-inch carbon-fibre arm.
Culture radar
STREAMING
Adam Scott in "Severance"Apple TV+
Would you “sever” your work self from the rest of your life? On the show Severance, a high-tech brain procedure allows workers to sever their work selves from the rest of their lives. Each severed person has two separate lives: an “outie,” who has no memories of their time at work, and an “innie,” who only experiences their life at their job. It offers a dystopian conundrum on work/life balance: You never have to experience work again, but you’re dooming a version of yourself to a literally unending office job. It sounds pretty bleak. Yet for some Canadians, it’s not such a bad trade-off.
Healthy living reporter Graham Isador talked with people from all walks of life – 9-5ers, nurses, service industry workers – who would all be interested in the procedure. “What repeatedly came up was the stress of their job eating into their ‘real’ life. Many felt like they were already at work all of the time. It’s an increasingly common problem,” writes Isador. Would I ever do this procedure myself? Never. But I do recommend watching the show, which is currently on its second season.