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Daily Archives: October 6, 2022

The Role of Alternative Social Media in the News and Information Environment

“In recent years, several new options have emerged in the social media universe, many of which explicitly present themselves as alternatives to more established social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – especially by opposing free speech restrictions they say are rife at those sites. These newer sites have created a small but satisfied community of news consumers, many of whom say one of the major reasons they are there is to stay informed about current events, according to a new Pew Research Center study. The study included a survey of U.S. adults along with an audit of seven alternative social media sites – BitChute, Gab, Gettr, Parler, Rumble, Telegram and Truth Social – and a detailed analysis of prominent accounts and content across them. Although fewer than one-in-ten Americans say they use any of these sites for news, most who do say they have found a community of like-minded people there. And news consumers on the four sites with large enough numbers to be analyzed individually – Parler, Rumble, Telegram and Truth Social – largely say they are satisfied with their experience getting news on the sites, that they find the information there to be mostly accurate, and that the discussions are mostly friendly. At the same time, however, the study finds signs that these sites may be another symptom of the increasingly polarized public discourse – and Americans’ partisan divisions in the broader news media environment…”

Law Informs Code: A Legal Informatics Approach to Aligning Artificial Intelligence with Humans

Nay, John, Law Informs Code: A Legal Informatics Approach to Aligning Artificial Intelligence with Humans (September 13, 2022). Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property, Volume 20, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4218031 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4218031 “Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities are rapidly advancing. Highly capable AI could cause radically different futures depending on how it is developed… Continue Reading

The Most Visited Website in Every Country (That Isn’t A Search Engine)

Hostinger -“The World Wide Web has connected people and cultures from nearly every part of the globe. It’s given us instant access to news and media from every country and the tools to translate content from one language to another. But while it has introduced new forms and ideas on a global scale, the web… Continue Reading

World Weather Attribution

Download the full study: High temperatures exacerbated by climate change made 2022 Northern Hemisphere droughts more likely, pdf (55 pages, 5.2 MB) “High temperatures exacerbated by climate change made 2022 Northern Hemisphere droughts more likely 05 October, 2022. Western Central Europe, North America, China, and other parts of the Northern Hemisphere faced water shortages, extreme… Continue Reading

A new Supreme Court case could fundamentally change the internet

Vox: “Gonzalez v. Google, an extraordinarily high-stakes tech policy case that the Supreme Court announced it will hear on Monday, emerged from a horrible act of mass murder. Nohemi Gonzalez was a 23-year-old American studying in Paris, who was killed after individuals affiliated with the terrorist group ISIS opened fire on a café where she… Continue Reading

A wave of anti-vaccine legislation is sweeping the United States

Vox: “The anti-vaccine movement is gaining strength even after 1 million Americans have died of Covid-19. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, does not mince words when describing the scientific legacy of the Covid-19 vaccines: The mRNA shots, he said, are “the greatest scientific achievement in my… Continue Reading

An obscure software system synchronizes the network’s clocks. Who will keep it running?

The New Yorker – The Thorny Problem of Keeping the Internet’s Time: “…Today, we take global time synchronization for granted. It is critical to the Internet, and therefore to civilization. Vital systems—power grids, financial markets, telecommunications networks—rely on it to keep records and sort cause from effect. N.T.P. works in partnership with satellite systems, such… Continue Reading

BirdCast – real-time predictions of bird migrations

“When BirdCast began, much like many conceptual frameworks in the early years of big data analysis and Internet and crowdsourcing, its potential and realities were far ahead of their time. But there was a strong belief and understanding that knowledge of migratory behavior would inspire birders and scientists as well as support decisions about conservation… Continue Reading

Findings suggest COVID-19 rebound not caused by impaired immune response

NIH: “Findings from a small study of eight patients published in Clinical Infectious Diseases suggest that COVID-19 rebound is likely not caused by impaired immune responses. The study, led by scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, aimed to define the clinical course and… Continue Reading