Another week, another catastrophic failure of policy at Twitter that's being eagerly exploited by its myriad competitors--and they truly are myriad. And yet, in spite of the momentary success of some of these platforms--Threads has gotten over 70 million signups as of this writing--none has quite ascended to the lofty heights of Twitter's influence at its height, where it seemed, for good or for ill (let's be honest, mostly ill), to be at the heart of every conversation among our world's epistemic elites. To understand why, we have to go to Azeroth. Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker once, tongue-in-cheek, called Twitter the best video game of all time, likening it to the then-still-popular wave of Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games, or MMORPGs, that were led by titles like World of Warcraft. Aside from the obvious connections--adopting an online persona in a gamified system entirely governed by earned metrics--we can also look at the fact that Twitter, like World of Warcraft, is surrounded by failed imitators.

In a corner of Alphabet's campus, there is a team working on piece of software that may be the key to self-driving cars. No journalist has ever seen it in action until now. They call it Carcraft, after the popular game World of Warcraft. The software's creator, a shaggy-haired, baby-faced young engineer named James Stout, is sitting next to me in the headphones-on quiet of the open-plan office. On the screen is a virtual representation of a roundabout.

While horror MMO The Secret World never quite became the next World of Warcraft, its unique supernatural vibe made it a cult hit among MMO fans. The game's publisher, Funcom, plans to relaunch the game as a free-to-play "shared-world action RPG," no doubt hoping to cash in on the original title's recognition while updating the title for a modern audience. Secret World Legends will launch with the same original eight levels of creepy, supernatural content as the original MMO, with the rest of the environments, dungeons and stories from The Secret World following soon. Funcom also plans to create original content for the new game in the near future. All content will be free, though things like extra character slots and more weapon storage will cost you.

The same tech we use to trade stocks, such as machine intelligence, neural networks, really diverse forms of artificial intelligence, we can and do use to influence elections. We just created a new digital species that influences, as well as buys/sells, no actually is seeking to manipulate attitudes and most likely votes. Hacking Reality used to influence elections and harness attitudes that consumers hold, signals a new dangerous era of mass communications. This is information warfare on steroids focused not on military but civilian world. The nuanced soft war that goes on we don't talk much about.

The same tech we use to trade stocks, such as machine intelligence neural networks, really artificial intelligence, we use to influence elections. We just created a new digital species that influences, as well as buys/sells, no actually is seeking to manipulate attitudes and most likely votes. Hacking Reality used to influence elections and harness attitudes that consumers hold signals a new dangerous era of mass communications. This is information warfare on steroids. The nuanced soft war that goes on we don't talk much about.