Via LLRX – What We Know About You: Welcome to the Surveillance State – Kevin Novak begins his article with a reference to a report in The Wall Street Journal that caught his attention. Commercial data brokers are selling their third-party data to the government. If you’re an optimist, you would think this could be… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Social Media
The 8 Best AI Image Detector Tools
MakeUseOf: “Key Takeaways Hive Moderation offers a free and quick detector tool for AI images and texts, including a browser extension for Google Chrome. Illuminarty provides a simple AI image detector with a premium plan for detailed analysis and API access. AI or Not is an easy-to-use tool for detecting AI images with both free… Continue Reading
TikTokSpreads Misinformation 20 Percent of the Time and Is Banned in China
NewsGuard Reality Check: “The debate in Washington about what to do about TikTok is not about hypothetical harms. NewsGuard research over the years has shone a harsh light on TikTok as a misinformation superspreader. In one report, NewsGuard analysts mimicked how TikTok users interact with the video platform by analyzing 540 TikTok results based on… Continue Reading
Users ditch Glassdoor, stunned by site adding real names without consent
Ars Technica: “Glassdoor, where employees go to leave anonymous reviews of employers, has recently begun adding real names to user profiles without users’ consent, a Glassdoor user named Monica was shocked to discover last week. “Time to delete your Glassdoor account and data,” Monica, a Midwest-based software professional, warned other Glassdoor users in a blog.… Continue Reading
VLOGGER: Multimodal Diffusion for Embodied Avatar Synthesis
Google: “We propose VLOGGER, a method for text and audio-driven talking human video generation from a single input image of a person, which builds on the success of recent generative diffusion models. Our method consists of 1) a stochastic human-to-3d-motion diffusion model, and 2) a novel diffusion based architecture that augments text-to-image models with both… Continue Reading
Online Hate and Harassment: The American Experience 2023
ADL Report on online hate and harassment – “Over the past year, online hate and harassment rose sharply for adults and teens ages 13-17. Among adults, 52% reported being harassed online in their lifetime, the highest number we have seen in four years, up from 40% in 2022. Both adults and teens also reported being… Continue Reading
Fact-opinion differentiation
Misinformation Review – paper by Matthew Mettler & Jeffery J. Mondak: “Statements of fact can be proved or disproved with objective evidence, whereas statements of opinion depend on personal values and preferences. Distinguishing between these types of statements contributes to information competence. Conversely, failure at fact-opinion differentiation potentially brings resistance to corrections of misinformation and… Continue Reading
You Can Now Hide Your Phone Number on Signal
Lifehacker: “Signal is one of the best messaging apps for people who value privacy, but its biggest criticism was that it used your phone number to register and message other people. The company has now addressed that flaw and your phone number is now hidden by default in Signal. You should still take a moment… Continue Reading
State of Journalism 2024
Executive summary – read the full report Funding and Trust: About one-third of journalists express concerns about lack of funding and trust in journalism, consistent with last year’s findings. Employment Trends: More than one-third report layoffs or buyouts, with 30% turning to LinkedIn for job opportunities. Over half prefer a hybrid work arrangement, yet many… Continue Reading
Everything You Need to Know About Facebook Marketplace Scams
AARP: “…It’s difficult to gauge the extent of the risk. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, hasn’t disclosed how many complaints it’s received about scammers or how many it’s taken action against, though from July to September 2023 alone, the website removed 827 million fake Facebook accounts, according to a Meta spokesperson. However, the BBB’s Scam Tracker… Continue Reading
New Study Unveils Strategies to Combat Disinformation Wars on Social Media
Brookings Center on Regulation and Markets working paper. (Dis)information wars. Adrian Casillas, Maryam Farboodi, Layla Hashemi, Maryam Saeedi, and Steven Wilson.February 29, 2024. “With the unprecedented rise of internet access across the globe, social media platforms have emerged as prominent vehicles for displaying dissent. In response, numerous entities engage in spreading fake news on these platforms.… Continue Reading
Inside the World of TikTok Spammers and the AI Tools That Enable Them
404 Media: “At 404 Media we have tried very hard to make our content the old-fashioned way, but, after watching an Instagram Reel that suggested we could get wildly rich with no effort, I decided to dive into the exciting world of creating spam by recycling other people’s content using basic AI tools. We have recently… Continue Reading
