The Top 5: TikTok strategies, fragmentation, myopia, online ratings & Italy
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Welcome to your weekly edition of the Top 5 articles we’ve read this week. Each week, we read dozens of articles in the hope we find essays and reporting that speak to big ideas, trends, future looks, and incredible human stories. We hope you enjoy our list, and do always let us know if you have a suggestion or a recommendation! Please also consider becoming a paid subscriber if this is one of those newsletters you open up all the time or look forward to each week.
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The Top 5 articles for your week:
“Will Politicians Ban Their Best Way of Reaching Young Voters?” (Politico Magazine)
Because Nancy Scola looks inside TikTok, a platform that might eventually be banned, and how political strategists are using it: “In interviews with nearly two dozen digital consultants, political aides and voter mobilization experts, mostly but not exclusively Democrats, sources took me inside the quietly booming campaign ecosystem that is spreading on the app and that has become crucially important in connecting with voters of color. These strategists aren’t turning to TikTok just for brand-building, messaging and mobilizing on behalf of candidates and causes, but for establishing trust and combating disinformation, which have proven to be particular challenges in connecting with these voters in recent years.”
“The Price of Fragmentation” (Foreign Affairs)
Because Kristalina Georgieva warns about the retreat of international cooperation, “The costs of fragmentation could not be clearer: as trade falls and barriers rise, global growth will take a severe hit. According to the latest International Monetary Fund projections, annual global GDP growth in 2028 will be only three percent—the IMF’s lowest five-year-ahead forecast in the past three decades, which spells trouble for poverty reduction and for creating jobs among burgeoning populations of young people in developing countries. Fragmentation risks making this already weak economic picture even worse. As growth falls, opportunities vanish, and tension builds, the world—already divided by geopolitical rivalries—could splinter further into competing economic blocs.”
“The World Is Going Blind. Taiwan Offers a Warning, and a Cure” (Wired)
Because nearsightedness (myopia) is climbing everywhere, and some researchers have discovered in Taiwan that kids who spend more time outside and produce more dopamine are more likely to delay or prevent eye issues.
“Online Ratings Are Broken” (The Atlantic)
Because “The root of the problem is that a request for your feedback isn’t actually a request for your feedback; it’s a means to accrue data of a certain kind, for a presumed purpose. For example, the demand to know “if you’d recommend us to a friend or colleague” indicates the pursuit of a market-research benchmark called “net promoter score,” a dumb business metric that persists because it’s easy to use, not because it has value. A doctor or dentist that asks for a rating is probably doing so to raise their local search-engine ranking, so that new patients can find their practice. Five-star reviews for retail or food-service delivery are more often used to lord power over poorly paid flex workers than to improve the service you encounter. If you feel alienated from requests for feedback, that’s because you are.”
“Elsewhere” (Substack)
Because this is a fun little reflection on being American, traveling, and Italy’s “la dolce vita.”