Kyle Chayka

New York, Washington, D.C.

Senior Staff Writer at The New Yorker

staff writer @newyorker; second book, FILTERWORLD: How Algorithms Flattened Culture, coming @doubleday January 2024; newsletter: https://t.co/iELTxgVFJV

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Articles

「ソーシャルメディアは終わった」とマーク・ザッカーバーグは言う

3 days ago | wired.jp | Kyle Chayka

ソーシャルネットワークとは一体何か？人と人をオンラインで結ぶウェブサイトや、友人が投稿したコンテンツを片っ端から見たり楽しんだりできるデジタルの集まり？ソーシャルメディア全盛期の2000年代は確かにそうだった。Facebookは、友人が新しい誰かとデートしていることを知ったり、誰かが自分を招待せずにパーティーを開いたことを突き止めたりできる場所だった。しかし、過去10年の間に、ソーシャルメディアは“従来の”メディアに似てきた。いまやソーシャルメディアは、有名人が制作したプロモーションビデオ、ニュースに反応して声高に自分の意見を主張する評論家、ポップカルチャーから集められたクリップ、急増する粗悪なAI生成コンテンツ、そのほか、とにかく数多くの視聴者に届くことだけを目的につくられたコンテンツで溢れる場所になった。自分がフォローする人やその人たちが投稿するメッセージは、まるでデジタルの干し草の山の中に埋もれた針のように、ますます見つけにくくなっている。ソーシャルメディアは、それほどソーシャルではなくなってしまった。個性を失くしたソーシャルメディア...
Donald Trump, Secret Minimalist?

5 days ago | newyorker.com | Kyle Chayka

For someone whose whole brand is gaudy—from the Oval Office’s new golden sconces to the planned extra White House flagpoles—the President is starting, as the economy seems to sour, to sound like an advocate for minimalism. Plus:• Will Leo XIV be a Pope of peace? • Susan B.
How Cory Arcangel Recovered Michel Majerus’s Digital Legacy

1 week ago | newyorker.com | Kyle Chayka

In 2002, the thirty-five-year-old, Luxembourg-born painter Michel Majerus was on a short flight from Berlin, where he lived, to his native country, when the plane crashed, killing him and nineteen other passengers. With his death, a burgeoning artistic career was cut short. Majerus had been the subject of a solo museum exhibition in Switzerland, in 1996, and he’d created a major installation for the Venice Biennale, in 1999.
How the Internet Left 4chan Behind

2 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Kyle Chayka

4chan was where I learned that the internet could be bad. I first encountered the site during high school, not long after its founding, in 2003, by an American teen-ager named Christopher Poole (better known by his username, moot).
Mark Zuckerberg Says Social Media Is Over

3 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Kyle Chayka

What, exactly, does a social network do? Is it a website that connects people with one another online, a digital gathering place where we can consume content posted by our friends? That’s certainly what it was in its heyday, in the two-thousands. Facebook was where you might find out that your friend was dating someone new, or that someone had thrown a party without inviting you. In the course of the past decade, though, social media has come to resemble something more like regular media.
ジブリ風のAI画像の限界を宮崎駿は知っている

3 weeks ago | wired.jp | Kyle Chayka

「人間らしい」アートの代表例を挙げろと言われたら、ジブリアニメの作品名を答えるのは悪くない選択だ。スタジオジブリは日本のアニメ制作会社で、84歳の伝説的な監督、宮崎駿が設立した。手描きの絵やみずみずしい質感のある色彩、壮大なストーリーを特徴とし、幼い頃の曖昧な感情と大人になるまでの紆余曲折を思い起こさせる作風で知られている。米国のミレニアル世代は、まさに成長する過程で翻訳された英語版に触れる機会に恵まれた。そのため、『となりのトトロ』『もののけ姫』『千と千尋の神隠し』といった作品はこの世代にとって子ども時代の共通の思い出となっている。ジブリ作品の映像、そして死にゆく森の生き物や湯屋の強欲な幽霊たち、それらとの失われたつながりという宮崎作品のストーリーラインは、わたしたちに楽しくノスタルジックな思い出と震えるような悲しみを喚起させる。 ChatGPT-4oの波紋だが残念なことに、大量のジブリ風画像に遭遇すると、そのような感動はすぐに蝕まれてしまう。2025年3月下旬、まさにそうした事態がネット上で起こった。原因はOpenAIのChatGPTの最新版にある。...
Recession Indicators Are Everywhere

4 weeks ago | newyorker.com | Kyle Chayka

Anecdotally, signs of a recession are already here. Hairdressers are reporting that their clients are ordering less expensive treatments. “I’ve been eliminated from their budget,” one aesthetician told Bloomberg. Young people are hosting home cafés, making their own cappuccinos and iced matchas in lieu of patronizing coffee shops.
Social Media Is Getting Better by Falling Apart

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Kyle Chayka

Posting online has gotten weird. Twitter is X; TikTok’s fate remains uncertain; and upstart platforms such as Bluesky are growing. The future of social media may be less like the old Facebook and more like e-mail. Plus:• How Trump’s tariffs fit the autocrat’s playbook• The Brazilian judge taking on the digital far right• Regrets? YouTube moms have a fewSocial Media Is Getting Better by Falling ApartKyle ChaykaChayka writes about technology and internet culture.
TikTok and the Retreat from Technological Globalization

1 month ago | newyorker.com | Kyle Chayka

ByteDance and the U.S. government had reportedly been nearing a deal that was slated to be announced last week. According to the Times and other outlets, it would have involved the American database company Oracle and tech-investment firms, perhaps including Andreessen Horowitz and Susquehanna, the latter of which is already a stakeholder in ByteDance.
Bluesky’s Quest to Build Nontoxic Social Media

1 month ago | rsn.org | Kyle Chayka

X and Facebook are governed by the policies of mercurial billionaires. Bluesky’s C.E.O., Jay Graber, says that she wants to give power back to the user. Jay Graber, the C.E.O. of the upstart social-media platform Bluesky, arrived in San Francisco the Sunday after Donald Trump’s reëlection and holed up in a hotel room.