By ResearchBuzz
TWEAKS AND UPDATES
The Guardian: ‘Front page of the internet’: how social media’s biggest user protest rocked Reddit. “In June, thousands of Reddit communities plunged into darkness – making their pages inaccessible to the public in a mass protest of corporate policy changes. Users of a social network lambasting it is nothing new; but Reddit’s moderators rebelled on a scale never seen before. Six months later, users and researchers say reforms sparked by the movement are still rippling through the social network, which bills itself as the ‘front page of the internet’.”
Tubefilter: Kai Cenat was Twitch’s top streamer in 2023. “As for which creators are bringing in the most viewership, xQc has finally been knocked from the #1 spot. For the past three years, he’s been Twitch’s most-watched streamer, but this year, he was overtaken by three people: Kai Cenat, who’s #1 with 109 million hours of watch time; Gaules, with 106 million hours; and ibai, with 106 million hours. xQc is in fourth place, with 89 million hours. Cenat snatching top spot isn’t all that surprising considering his channel alone accounted for 2.5% of all global watch hours on Twitch in February.”
AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD
The Drum: From Musk’s mayhem to TikTok testimony, here’s our top 20 media stories of 2023. “From the demise of X under the leadership of mercurial billionaire Elon Musk to a landmark Google antitrust case, the question of Threads’ viability and the promise of the merger that is Max, these are the stories that defined the media landscape in 2023.”
Search Engine Journal: ChatGPT Vs. Bard Vs. Bing: What Are The Differences? (Festive Flashback). “If you want to search for information, need help fixing bugs in your CSS, or want to create something as simple as a robots.txt file, chatbots may be able to help. They’re also wonderful for topic ideation, allowing you to draft more interesting emails, newsletters, blog posts, and more. But which chatbot should you use and learn to master? Which platform provides accurate, concise information? Let’s find out.”
WIRED: Generative AI Learned Nothing From Web 2.0 . “…for all the novelty and speed, generative AI’s problems are also painfully familiar. OpenAI and its rivals racing to launch new AI models are facing problems that have dogged social platforms, that earlier era-shaping new technology, for nearly two decades. Companies like Meta never did get the upper hand over mis- and disinformation, sketchy labor practices, and nonconsensual pornography, to name just a few of their unintended consequences. Now those issues are gaining a challenging new life, with an AI twist.”
SECURITY & LEGAL
New York Times: Chinese Spy Agency Rising to Challenge the C.I.A.. “The ambitious Ministry of State Security is deploying A.I. and other advanced technology to go toe-to-toe with the United States, even as the two nations try to pilfer each other’s scientific secrets.”
AFP: Legal battles loom as first Mickey Mouse copyright ends. “Anyone is now free to copy, share, reuse and adapt ‘Steamboat Willie’ and ‘Plane Crazy’ —another 1928 Disney animation—and the early versions of the characters that appear within them, including Mickey and Minnie. A vital caveat is that later versions of the characters, like those in 1940 film ‘Fantasia,’ are not in the public domain, and cannot be copied without a visit from Disney’s lawyers.”
RESEARCH & OPINION
San Francisco Chronicle: Errors found in key database tracking foreign influence in U.S. politics. “[OpenSecrets] is a widely used source of campaign finance and lobbying data cited by lawmakers, journalists and researchers. But since at least Dec. 11, some of its foreign lobbying data has differed from the amounts published by the Justice Department, and some of the contribution totals have not matched its own desegregated data.”
PsyPost: New study investigates psychological correlates of emoji use and preference. “In this work, Janine Carroll examined the association between mental health, personality, prosocial behavior, and emoji use. A total of 222 participants, recruited from the University of Chester and Prolific Academic, participated in this research. Participants completed measures of anxiety and depression, prosocial behavior, Big 5 personality traits, and various aspects of emoji usage, including frequency, motivation, attitudes, and preferences (e.g., positive and negative emojis).”
Washington Post: Microsoft says its AI is safe. So why does it keep slashing people’s throats?. “Lately, ordinary users of technology such as Windows and Google have been inundated with AI. We’re wowed by what the new tech can do, but we also keep learning that it can act in an unhinged manner, including by carrying on wildly inappropriate conversations and making similarly inappropriate pictures. For AI actually to be safe enough for products used by families, we need its makers to take responsibility by anticipating how it might go awry and investing to fix it quickly when it does. In the case of these awful AI images, Microsoft appears to lay much of the blame on the users who make them.” Good afternoon, Internet…
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December 31, 2023 at 02:06AM
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