News:iterary Project: News Literacy in America: A survey of teen information attitudes, habits and skills (2024). “American teens spend hours each day scrolling social media platforms, immersing themselves in an often-confusing stream of entertainment, ads, news, rumors and conspiracy theories. Young people need the knowledge, skills and habits of mind to assess the credibility and… Continue Reading
“The Federal Trade Commission today charged that Sitejabber, a company offering an AI-enabled consumer review platform, deceived consumers by misrepresenting that ratings and reviews it published came from customers who experienced the reviewed product or service, artificially inflating average ratings and review counts. Under a proposed order settling the agency’s complaint, Sitejabber will be prohibited from… Continue Reading
MakeUseOf: “Heard that your browser is giving up your privacy? Unfortunately, it’s the truth: your browser knows everything about you. Moreover, your browser has a unique fingerprint that can be used to identify you online—and this is how you find out just how unique you are…” Continue Reading
CBA – Lawsuit filed in B.C. Supreme Court alleges that Caseway AI violates CanLII’s terms of service and copyrights: “The Canadian Legal Information Institute (CanLII) has taken the makers of an AI chatbot to court over what it says is a violation of its terms of service, due to the chatbot scraping CanLII’s database in… Continue Reading
EveryLibrary – (But it Might Have) – “Libraries have never been immune from political and social movements, but we have behaved as if we are somehow a special place, a place apart from these fights. The last three years of censorship and discrimination fights should have been a wake-up call for our library organizations, stakeholders,… Continue Reading
“The whitepaper, e-Patients: How they can help us heal health care, authored by the late Tom Ferguson, MD, is the foundation for the founding of the Society for Participatory Medicine (SPM). After his 15 year battle with multiple myeloma ended in 2006, the group of advisors Doc Tom had assembled decided to ensure that his… Continue Reading
Publisher’s Weekly: “After a favorable legal ruling in August, freedom to read advocates in Alaska have scored a significant victory in court over would-be book banners. In an October 31 filing, the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District in Alaska agreed to pay $89,000 to settle claims that the district improperly removed dozens of books, including several… Continue Reading
Axios: “Leading AI companies such as OpenAI, Google and Meta rely more on content from premium publishers to train their large language models (LLMs) than they publicly admit, according to new research from executives at Ziff Davis, one of the largest publicly-traded digital media companies. Why it matters: Publishers believe that the more they can… Continue Reading
MakeUseOf: “If you want to prevent companies from tracking what you do online, you may be tempted to turn on your browser’s “Do Not Track” option. However, while enabling it doesn’t exactly do any harm, it doesn’t do much good either. So, here’s what I do to stop websites from tracking me instead of relying… Continue Reading
Bookshop.org: “This is a list of books compiled to help distract you from the state of the election in 2024, or any other dreadful time in your life.” See also Defector – Books You Can Read Tonight To Distract Yourself From Whatever Is To Come Continue Reading
Ars Technica: “Subscription fees for video streaming services have been on a steady incline. But despite subscribers paying more, surveys suggest they’re becoming less satisfied with what’s available to watch. At the start of 2024, the industry began declaring the end of Peak TV, a term coined by FX Networks Chairman John Landgraf that refers… Continue Reading
“The internet is an unimaginably vast repository of modern life, with hundreds of billions of indexed webpages. But even as users across the world rely on the web to access books, images, news articles and other resources, this content sometimes disappears from view. A new Pew Research Center analysis shows just how fleeting online content… Continue Reading