Mozilla: “Powered by 22,722 volunteers, Mozilla scrutinized YouTube to determine how much control people actually have over the platform’s recommendation algorithm. This is what we learned….Our work is the largest experimental audit of YouTube by independent researchers, powered by Mozilla’s RegretsReporter. Using RegretsReporter, an open source tool Mozilla built to study YouTube’s recommendation algorithm, we… Continue Reading
Accurate, Focused Research on Law, Technology and Knowledge Discovery Since 2002
Category Archives: Social Media
How to Ditch Facebook Without Losing Your Friends (Or Family, Customers or Communities)
EFF: “Today, we launch “How to Ditch Facebook Without Losing Your Friends” – a narrated slideshow and essay explaining how Facebook locks in its users, how interoperability can free them, and what it would feel like to use an “interoperable Facebook” of the future, such as the one contemplated by the US ACCESS Act…You can… Continue Reading
Manufactured Uncertainty in Constitutional Law
Waldman, Ari Ezra, Manufactured Uncertainty in Constitutional Law (September 6, 2022). Fordham Law Review, Vol. 91, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4211548 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4211548 “Civil rights litigation is awash in misinformation. Courts find that abortion causes cancer, that adolescent hormone therapy is irreversible, that in-person voter fraud is a growing problem. Except none of that is… Continue Reading
For Gen Z, TikTok Is the New Search Engine
The New York Times: “…TikTok’s rise as a discovery tool is part of a broader transformation in digital search. While Google remains the world’s dominant search engine, people are turning to Amazon to search for products, Instagram to stay updated on trends and Snapchat’s Snap Maps to find local businesses. As the digital world continues… Continue Reading
TikTok’s Search Engine Pumps Toxic Misinformation To Its Young Users
NewsGuard: “[A] NewsGuard investigation found that for a sampling of searches on prominent news topics, almost 20 percent of the videos presented as search results contained misinformation. This means that for searches on topics ranging from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to school shootings and COVID vaccines, TikTok’s users are consistently fed false and misleading… Continue Reading
How To Search Tweets By Location
Advos: “Ever wonder who the people are that are near your location and tweeting with a certain topic or hashtag? Maybe not, unless you are a Twitter nerd like me. But it can be interesting and if done correctly, improve your social marketing. Here is how to do it…” Continue Reading
For media publishers, Twitter still dominates on social
Axios: “Twitter is still the place where media publishers collectively have the largest audiences, followed by Facebook and Instagram, according to an Axios analysis of 82 major news, entertainment and sports publishers. Why it matters: While some publishers are finding quick success on TikTok, the platform yields fewer overall followers for publishers than other social… Continue Reading
A Prehistory of Social Media
Driscoll, Kevin. “A Prehistory of Social Media.” Issues in Science and Technology 38, no. 4 (Summer 2022): 20–23. “The standard account of internet history took shape in the early 1990s, as a mixture of commercial online services, university networks, and local community networks mutated into something bigger, more commercial, and more accessible to the general… Continue Reading
Transacting in Person with Strangers from the Internet
Krebs on Security: “These safe trading places exist because sometimes in-person transactions from the Internet don’t end well for one or more parties involved. The website Craigslistkillers has catalogued news links for at least 132 murders linked to Craigslist transactions since 2015. Many of these killings involved high-priced items like automobiles and consumer electronics, where… Continue Reading
Facebook Engineers: We Have No Idea Where We Keep All Your Personal Data
Intercept: “In March, two veteran Facebook engineers found themselves grilled about the company’s sprawling data collection operations in a hearing for the ongoing lawsuit over the mishandling of private user information stemming from the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The hearing, a transcript of which was recently unsealed (PDF), was aimed at resolving one crucial issue: What… Continue Reading
News Habits and Attitudes of the Gen Z and Millennial Generations
AP/NORC: “A new in-depth survey of 16- to 40-year-olds shows that members of the Gen Z and Millennial generations are active consumers of news and information, with nearly a third of them willing to pay for it. But their relationship with the news is complex — their trust in the press is low, many are… Continue Reading
Edelman Trust Barometer 2022
The Cycle of Distrust: “We find a world ensnared in a vicious cycle of distrust, fueled by a growing lack of faith in media and government. Through disinformation and division, these two institutions are feeding the cycle and exploiting it for commercial and political gain. Distrust is now society’s default emotion Nearly 6 in 10… Continue Reading
