Ars Technica: “On Monday, Florida became the first state to ban kids under 14 from social media without parental permission. It appears likely that the law—considered one of the most restrictive in the US—will face significant legal challenges, however, before taking effect on January 1. Under HB 3, apps like Instagram, Snapchat, or TikTok would… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Social Media
8 charts on technology use around the world
“While internet use is nearly ubiquitous in many countries, not everyone is online. Divides still exist on technology usage between people in some advanced economies and those in some emerging economies, according to Pew Research Center data from 27 countries in 2022 and 2023. Smartphone ownership and social media use also vary around the world.… Continue Reading
The Royal Order of Adjectives
Lush the Content Agency via Filament: “…Writers typically don’t use more than two or three adjectives at a time, and we don’t seem to struggle much in getting their order correct. But occasionally there can be some confusion. This is where the royal order comes in. But, what’s an adjective? Let’s back up and start… Continue Reading
The Anxious Generation and an Epidemic of Mental Illness
This is not a promotion and I have no association with the author, Jonathan Haidt, or the book. The data is noteworthy. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness – In the summer of 2022, I was working on a book project — Life After Babel:… Continue Reading
What We Know About You: Welcome to the Surveillance State
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
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
