I’m a lucky man. Whenever I’m baffled by the internet, and social media, I turn to my co-worker Katie Notopoulos, who is there to explain it to me. That’s because Katie’s job at Business Insider is to explain how the internet works — how the people who run big internet platforms want it to work, and what the people who actually use those platforms do on it, for better and for worse. So that’s what we’re talking about today, to help ease us into the new year.

Discussed here: Why Katie still loves the internet and technology, even with all of its many warts; how she came to be a professional chronicler of the internet; how her views on all of this are changing as her kids grow older; and poop. Lots of poop talk here. You’re gonna love it.

Note: We recorded this chat on January 6 — a day before Mark Zuckerberg announced he was going to reshape his entire company to accommodate the upcoming Trump administration. So that’s why it’s not in this conversation. Rest assured - we’ll be talking about this a lot in future episodes. Happy 2025!

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