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WIRED

Welcome to Uncanny Valley—an insider look at the people, power, and influence of Silicon Valley—where each week, WIRED’s writers and editors bring you original reporting and analysis about some of the biggest stories in tech. On Tuesdays, WIRED’s Zoë Schiffer has an urgent conversation about this week in the news. And on Thursdays, WIRED’s Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond is joined by Lauren Goode, Michael Calore, to break down a recent story or phenomena bubbling up in Silicon Valley and explain its influence on our daily lives.

Gadget Lab: Weekly Tech News from WIRED

In a post-Twitter world, text-based social media apps have taken a new shape. X, BlueSky, and Threads are home to wildly different types of discourse. So, which of these apps are actually worth our time? This week on Uncanny Valley, we talk about the state of text-based social apps and how they impact journalism. And finally, we ask–is it time to quit? 

Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com.

You can follow Michael Calore on Mastodon at @snackfight, Lauren Goode on Threads and @laurengoode, and Zoë Schiffer on Threads @reporterzoe.

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Is This The Year We Quit Social Media?

Wearable tech, self-driving cars and AI mishaps. There were a lot of new product launches this year – some more successful than others. This week on Uncanny Valley, we talk about the tech out there that we are most excited about and the tech that has us most terrified for the coming year. Plus, we share our gifting recommendations. 

Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com.

You can follow Michael Calore on BlueSky at @snackfight, Lauren Goode on BlueSky at @laurengoode, and Zoë Schiffer on Threads @reporterzoe.

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All of Our Hopes and Fears for Tech

In her new FX docuseries “Social Studies,” the artist and filmmaker Lauren Greenfield delves into the post-pandemic lives—and phones—of a group of L.A. teens. Screen recordings of the kids’ social-media use reveal how these platforms have reshaped their experience of the world in alarming ways. On this episode of Critics at Large, Vinson Cunningham, Naomi Fry, and Alexandra Schwartz discuss how the show paints a vivid, empathetic portrait of modern adolescence while also tapping into the long tradition of fretting about what the youths of the day are up to. The hosts consider moral panics throughout history, from the 1971 book “Go Ask Alice,” which was first marketed as the true story of a drug-addicted girl’s downfall in a bid to scare kids straight, to the hand-wringing that surrounded trends like rock and roll and the postwar comic-book craze. Anxieties around social-media use, by contrast, are warranted. Mounting research shows how screen time correlates with spikes in depression, loneliness, and suicide among teens. It’s a problem that has come to define all our lives, not just those of the youth. “This whole crust of society—people joining trade unions and other kinds of things, lodges and guilds, having hobbies,” Cunningham says, “that layer of society is shrinking. And parallel to our crusade against the ills of social media is, how do we rebuild that sector of society?”

Listen to and follow Critics at Large here: 
http://swap.fm/l/tny-cal-feeddrop

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From Critics at Large: Will Kids Online, In Fact, Be All Right?

What do Dogecoin and the Department of Government Efficiency have in common? Elon Musk, of course. This new government committee led by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy is being tasked with cutting the federal budget. So this week, we examine the Silicon Valley mindset behind it.

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Musk Takes Washington

Sometimes you just need a little help. That’s where the robots come in! But, have we actually reached a place where AI is more helpful than working with a human expert? This week, we compare notes on our week with AI assistants.

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We Turned Our Lives Over to AI Assistants

With the news that Meta is ending its third-party fact-checking program, we dig into the future of content moderation. From Community Notes to automated systems, how do you manage trust and safety for a site with two billion daily active users?

Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com.

You can follow Michael Calore on BlueSky at @snackfight, Lauren Goode on BlueSky at @laurengoode, and Zoë Schiffer on Threads @reporterzoe.

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Zuck Ends Fact-Checking. What Could Go Wrong?

It wasn’t that long ago that one of Silicon Valley's most prominent and influential venture capitalists, Marc Andreessen, was a major supporter of the Democratic Party. So how did he, in such a short time, transform into a top advisor to the Trump administration? This week, we retrace Andreesen’s steps–from his early days at Netscape to his current role of “unpaid intern” at DOGE.

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The World According to Marc Andreessen

On a Sunday in January, TikTok users were greeted with a notification in the app which said that TikTok was no longer available to use in the U.S., but that it hoped to be back soon. The following day, President Trump took office and signed an executive order keeping the app around another 75 days. But, it’s still unclear what will happen with TikTok after those 75 days are up. This week, we break down years of drama around the potential ban on TikTok, and we ask each other: what makes this app so unique and so uniquely vulnerable?

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TikTok Stole Our Hearts, But Can It Last?

WIRED Politics Senior Editor Leah Feiger joins Global Editorial Director Katie Drummond to talk about the latest at DOGE and the inexperienced engineers holding key positions at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. They discuss how WIRED’s been preparing for this moment since the first assassination attempt on Trump last summer, and how, despite the unprecedented chaos of this moment, the courts will catch up.

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WIRED News Update: Keeping Tabs on DOGE

Dating apps have evolved a lot over the years, with apps dedicated to any romantic niche– dog lovers, astrology heads, and big, bushy beards. Despite the seemingly endless options of dating platforms, the industry seems to be at a low. So this week, we talk about the current state of dating apps and what it means for those looking for love (or something like it).

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Are Dating Apps Getting Worse?

It's an election year in the US, which means you can expect a fresh tsunami of campaign ads in your feeds, in your inbox, and jammed in front of YouTube videos. This is also the first election of the AI era, where anyone can generate just about anything—an image, a Twitter bot, a speech—by typing a few lines of text into a prompt. Whether it's bad actors generating misleading deepfakes or candidates using text generators to write cringey campaign emails, AI is now firmly part of the election process.

This week on Gadget Lab, WIRED senior politics writer Makenna Kelly joins us en route from the Iowa caucus to talk about how scammers and political campaigns alike are using AI to influence voters at the polls.

Show Notes:

Read more from Makena about the Iowa caucus and the end of Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign. Scroll through her TikToks about the caucus. Follow all of WIRED’s coverage of the 2024 election and artificial intelligence.

Recommendations:

Makena recommends Uniqlo under layers. Mike recommends the cringey Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone show The Curse. Lauren recommends the show Catastrophe.

Makena Kelly can be found on social media @kellymakena. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.

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AI Hits the Campaign Trail

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