The Download: How to save social media, and “leftover” embryos

—Eli Pariser & Deepti Doshi

Last week, when Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta would be doing away with third-party fact-checking, it was a shocking turn, but not exactly surprising. It’s just the latest example of the billionaire flip-flop affecting our social lives online.

Zuckerberg isn’t the only social media CEO who cares across the board: Since Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and touted free speech as “the foundation of a functioning democracy,” he’s suspended journalists, reinstated tens of thousands of banned users, banned political advertising and weakened the vetting and harassment policy.

Unfortunately, these capricious billionaires can do whatever they want because of an ownership model that privileges single, centralized control in exchange for shareholder returns. The Internet doesn’t have to be like this. But luckily, a new way appears just in time. Read the full story.

Deciding the fate of the “remaining” embryos

For the past few months I have been working on feature on IVF embryos. The goal of IVF is to create babies with little lab work: stimulate the release of lots of eggs, introduce them to sperm in the lab, transfer one of the resulting embryos into someone’s uterus, and cross your fingers for a healthy pregnancy. Sometimes it doesn’t work. But it happens often. For the article, I researched what happens to the healthy embryos that are left.

Today, responsible IVF clinics will always discuss with people the possibility of having leftover embryos before starting treatment. But it can be very difficult to make those decisions before you even start treatment, and some people can’t imagine what they have left—or how they might feel about them. Read the full story.

— Jessica Hamzelow