The Verge: “There’s this picture from more than a decade ago that still goes viral on the web every once in a while. You’ve probably seen it: it was created by the venture capitalist Andrew Parker, and it compares a few dozen startups with subsections of Craigslist. Back then, Craigslist was all things to all… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Social Media
Why people still fall for fake news about climate change
Grist: “In 1995, a leading group of scientists convened by the United Nations declared that they had detected a “human influence” on global temperatures with “effectively irreversible” consequences. In the coming decades, 99.9 percent of scientists would come to agree that burning fossil fuels had disrupted the Earth’s climate. Yet almost 30 years after that… Continue Reading
Facebook Is Being Overrun With Stolen AI-Generated Images That People Think Are Real
404 Media: “…In many ways, this is a tale as old as time: people lie and steal content online in exchange for likes, influence and money all the time. But the spread of this type of content on Facebook over the last several months has shown that the once-prophesized future where cheap, AI-generated trash content… Continue Reading
How Verified Accounts on X Thrive While Spreading Misinformation About the Israel-Hamas Conflict
ProPublica: “…An investigation by ProPublica and Columbia University’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism shows how false claims based on out-of-context, outdated or manipulated media have proliferated on X during the first month of the Israel-Hamas conflict. The organizations looked at over 200 distinct claims that independent fact-checks determined to be misleading, and searched for posts… Continue Reading
Crowds Can Effectively Identify Misinformation at Scale
Martel, C., Allen, J., Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2023). Crowds Can Effectively Identify Misinformation at Scale. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916231190388 “Identifying successful approaches for reducing the belief and spread of online misinformation is of great importance. Social media companies currently rely largely on professional fact-checking as their primary mechanism for identifying… Continue Reading
Nobody Knows What’s Happening Online Anymore
The Atlantic [read free]: “You are currently logged on to the largest version of the internet that has ever existed. By clicking and scrolling, you’re one of the 5 billion–plus people contributing to an unfathomable array of networked information—quintillions of bytes produced each day. The sprawl has become disorienting. Some of my peers in the… Continue Reading
‘It’s totally unhinged’: is the book world turning against Goodreads?
The Guardian: “The influential user review site has suffered a year of controversies, from cancelled book deals to review-bombing, and exposed a dark side to the industry.” Continue Reading
Health misinformation is rampant on social media
The Conversation – Monica Wang: “The global anti-vaccine movement and vaccine hesitancy that accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic show no signs of abating According to a survey of U.S. adults, Americans in October 2023 were less likely to view approved vaccines as safe than they were in April 2021. As vaccine confidence falls, health misinformation… Continue Reading
Regulating and Monitoring AI and Social Media
Brennan Center for Justice: Regulating AI Deepfakes – “Artificial intelligence–produced video and audio can make it impossible to separate fact from fiction when deciding how to vote. Next year will bring the first presidential election of the AI deepfake era, and policymakers must be prepared to protect the democratic process from the dangers of these… Continue Reading
Without a Trace: How to Keep Your Phone Off the Grid
The MarkUp: “Monique O. Madan and Wesley Callow put on [their] trenchcoats and gave you a behind-the-scenes look at our quest for phone anonymity. We gave you a step-by-step guide on how to set up an off-the-grid phone, and a glimpse into why, personally speaking as a journalist, having one is so important for protecting… Continue Reading
Here’s how 13 news outlets are using LinkedIn newsletters
Nieman Lab: “…LinkedIn has been experimenting with newsletters as a way for individuals and companies to connect with readers. There are more than 143,000 newsletters on the platform, with over 500 million subscribers. At least 150 news publishers send newsletters out regularly, said Keren Baruch, LinkedIn’s director of product. “Social media platforms feel particularly volatile… Continue Reading
How Twitter Broke the News
The Verge: “Here is a very dumb truth: for a decade, the default answer to nearly every problem in mass media communication involved Twitter. Breaking news? Twitter. Live sports commentary? Twitter. Politics? Twitter. A celebrity has behaved badly? Twitter. A celebrity has issued a Notes app apology for bad behavior? Twitter. For a good while,… Continue Reading
