“Almost by accident, though, Mactaggart had thrust himself into the greatest resource grab of the 21st century. To Silicon Valley, personal information had become a kind of limitless natural deposit, formed in the digital ether by ordinary people as they browsed, used apps and messaged their friends. Like the oil barons before them, they had collected and refined that resource to build some of the most valuable companies in the world.” By Nicholas Confessore in the NYT Mag: The Unlikely Activists Who Took On Silicon Valley — and Won.

+ “How did all this happen? How did digital technologies go from empowering citizens and toppling dictators to being used as tools of oppression and discord? There are several key lessons.” Zeynep Tufekci on how social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump.