Community
In OneZero. More on Medium.
The Community app connects A-listers with their fans—an odd proposition in the era of Covid lockdowns
I’m at the point now where I don’t even bother reading Post Malone’s texts.
Same with Diddy. Same with Paul McCartney. When Barack Obama’s name pops up on my phone I tap to see what he has to say, but he doesn’t text that often so it’s fine.
I have never met any of these people; none of them know me. Their contacts are in my phone because of Community, a startup that celebrities, businesses, and influencers of all stripes can use to text their fans.
People who purchase a Community phone number (or “leaders,” as the company calls them)…
Each year, Chabad rabbis from all over the world gather in Brooklyn. This year, they gathered over Zoom instead.
In month eight of Zoom hell, after two-quarters of grad school consisting of near-daily three-hour-long video lectures that killed me inside, I found myself enjoying a marathon Zoom meeting: A five-day-long gathering with thousands of Chabad rabbis.
I’d heard about the Zoom meeting, a virtual version of an annual event called Kinus Hashluchim, from a WhatsApp group of Chasidic friends that I belonged to before moving away from New York for school. Having ignored countless Zoom events thus far during the pandemic — Jewish singles board game nights, beer tastings, and galas from nonprofits that I’ve donated money to —…
The Color of Climate
New research shows that the people most affected by climate change are also the most concerned
This is The Color of Climate, a weekly column from OneZero exploring how climate change and other environmental issues uniquely impact the future of communities of color.
Nearly 15 years ago, Hurricane Katrina descended on the Gulf Coast and wreaked havoc on millions of people in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. Seven years later, Hurricane Sandy tore up the East Coast and flooded New York City. And less than three years ago, Hurricane Harvey displaced 30,000 people in Texas.
These hurricanes became flashpoints for the growing impact of climate change in the United States. Each caused millions of dollars in damage…
Grocery Runs, Donations, and Memes: Inside the Rise of Neighborhood Slack Groups During the Lockdown
From New York to Columbus, Ohio, Slack groups are organizing to help neighbors in need
Hadass Wade was on her way home from her job as a bartender in the Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood of Bed-Stuy earlier this month when she stopped by a liquor store to stock up on provisions.
Everything was happening “really quickly,” she says. She and her co-workers were trying to come to terms with the rapid outbreak of coronavirus cases in New York City and self-quarantine orders from Gov. Andrew Cuomo. They weren’t sure whether or not the restaurant where they worked would have to shut down, leaving them unemployed.
At the store, she saw a sign that caught her…
Why I think social media can be good for your mental health if you curate your communities
An increase in the use of social media directly corresponds to a decrease in overall mental health and well-being, according to a number of studies conducted in the past 10 years. This seems to be particularly true for teens. One study from 2013 suggests Facebook may erode subjective well-being, or moment-to-moment happiness and overall life satisfaction. Another from 2017 studied looked at the relationship between social isolation and social media use and found that young adults who spent significant amounts of time on any of 11 well-known social media sites — including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat — had far…
The platform built for neighborhood news often scapegoats the most disadvantaged communities
On August 14, a man broke into a home in the Shafter neighborhood in Oakland, California. According to the resident of the home, the alleged thief entered through a locked gate in the backyard, stole a laptop, jewelry, small electronics, and a shovel. Then he left.
After the robbery, the resident took photos of the thief that were snapped by their home surveillance network and uploaded them onto Nextdoor, a social media platform that connects those who live within the same geographical neighborhood. The post was meant both to warn others of the perpetrator as well as solicit advice for…
Love/Hate
It would hurt their business — but redeem the platform
If Mark Zuckerberg ever came to me for advice, wondering why people hated Facebook so much, I’d have him close his eyes and remember his freshman year at Harvard — all the friends he made (except these guys), the lasting relationships (except this one), and the meaningful late-night debates they all had around building global technology platforms that could wreak havoc on society.
Seriously though, when Zuckerberg first built Facebook, he was simply looking to digitally connect his college friends, a small community of folks he knew in the offline world. But today, of course, 14 years later, Facebook is…
Inside the big, twisted industry of neighborhood data collection
Annette Lott sat through the meeting with studied patience, waiting for the moment city officials would open the floor and she could ask them about Google Maps.
It was late spring in Buffalo, New York, in 2015 — a season that was unusually hot that year, and heated. The wood-paneled meeting room at Gethsemane Grape Street Baptist Church hummed with anxious homeowners from Buffalo’s Fruit Belt neighborhood, where a burgeoning, billion-dollar medical complex threatened to displace them.
Poor folks had called the Fruit Belt home for more than 150 years — first German immigrants, then African-Americans. Lott’s parents bought their…
