(Dis)Information Wars. Adrian Casillas, Maryam Farboodi, Layla Hashemi, Maryam Saeedi, and Steven Wilson NBER Working Paper No. 32896 September 2024 Over the past decade, social media platforms have emerged as prominent vehicles for displaying dissent. In response, various actors have increasingly spread fake news on these platforms to impair the opposition—the (dis)information war. We analyze… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Social Media
Google Serves AI Slop as Top Result for One of the Most Famous Paintings in History
404 Media: “The first thing people saw when they searched Google for the artist Hieronymus Bosch was an AI-generated version of his Garden of Earthly Delights, one of the most famous paintings in art history. Depending on what they are searching for, Google Search sometimes serves users a series of images above the list of… Continue Reading
Ten Strong Suggestions for Surviving the Age of Misinformation
Experimental Living with A.J. Jacobs: “I came up with a lot of these strategies a couple of years ago while working on a book called Factchecking My Life. The book was a reaction to the knowledge crisis we’re facing now: People don’t agree on basic facts. The media has splintered into different realities. Trust in… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, September 14, 2024
Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, September 14, 2024 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on… Continue Reading
Is the press ‘sanewashing’ Trump?
Columbia Journalism Review: “There’s a hot new term doing the rounds among media critics: “sanewashing.” The term itself actually isn’t new, and it wasn’t born in media-criticism circles, per se; according to Urban Dictionary, it was coined in 2020 on a Reddit page for neoliberals (which Linda Kinstler wrote about recently for CJR), and meant… Continue Reading
How Telegram Became a Playground for Criminals, Extremists and Terrorists
The New York Times & ProPublica: “Telegram has become a global sewer of criminal activity, disinformation, child sexual abuse material, terrorism and racist incitement, according to a four-month investigation by The New York Times that analyzed more than 3.2 million Telegram messages from over 16,000 channels. The company, which offers features that enable criminals, terrorists… Continue Reading
Billion-Dollar Bank Accused of Secretly Sending Customers’ Personal and Financial Information to Facebook, Google and Microsoft
The Daily Hodl: “The eighth-largest bank in the US by total assets is accused of secretly collecting personal and financial information from its customers and sharing the data with tech giants. A new class-action lawsuit alleges Capital One engaged in an “outrageous, illegal, and widespread practice of disclosing – without consent – the Nonpublic Personal… Continue Reading
Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, September 7, 2024
Via LLRX – Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, September 7, 2024 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly… Continue Reading
How publishers are experimenting with Reddit even without a formal publisher program
DIGIDAY: “While it hasn’t formally launched a publisher program, over the last 18 months Reddit has been steadily rolling out products and resources aimed at courting media companies to increase their presence on the platform. And according to audience development leads from publishers including Newsweek, The Hill and Wirecutter, those efforts have helped pivot focus… Continue Reading
There’s a ‘Cat-astrophe’ Brewing on Downing Street
WSJ unpaywalled: “…Larry, the Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, has now outlasted five prime ministers—and their pets. A British icon, he has his own unofficial X account, with 900K followers. He is so well known that Downing St. has even reportedly made plans for how to break the news of his eventual death (Larry… Continue Reading
Findings Report: Governance on Fediverse Microblogging Servers
Erin Kissane and Darius Kazemi with the support of the Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund August 20, 2024 [PDF version / web version] [Quick-Start Guide to Fediverse Governance Decisions] [Fediverse Governance Opportunities for Funders & Developers] Project Introduction – We proposed this project in the fall of 2023 based on our shared sense that the Fediverse’s… Continue Reading
6 Tips to Make You a Better Reddit User
Gizmodo: “Reddit isn’t difficult to use, and you don’t even need an account to browse through everything ‘the front page of the internet’ has to offer. Recent and popular posts are just a click away from the main homepage, and you can use the search box at the top to look for posts on almost… Continue Reading
