New researches

Monday, February 21, 2022

Facebook Roundup, February 21, 2022

Facebook Roundup, February 21, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

KnowTechie: Meta spirals from the top-10 list of most valuable companies. “Meta, previously Facebook, is no longer among the top ten most valuable global companies. That’s after a 45-percent tumble in stock price from its peak in September when Meta was a trillion-dollar company.”

Vanity Fair: Metamates Unite! Zuck’s Rebrand Is Full Steam Ahead. “Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, appears to be confronting the reality that a name change is not enough to overcome its existential crisis. A series of moves this week shows how Meta is trying to rebrand not only its products but its strategic response, the deficiencies of which were laid bare in its reaction to last year’s Facebook Files leak.”

Mashable: Anti-vaxxers just killed Facebook profile frames. “Did you enjoy glamming up your Facebook photos with profile frames? Those graphics and slogans you could embed over your circular Facebook profile image were a great way to customize your page for a holiday or show support for your favorite sports team. Users could even get creative and create their very own custom frame images. Well, you won’t be able to do that anymore. Facebook is removing profile frames as we know it, essentially killing the feature. And anti-vaxxers are to blame.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Bloomberg: Meta’s Stock-Market Wipeout Is Unmatched in the Megacap Era. “The stock has seen a drumbeat of bad news, including Google’s announcement this week that it would bring a privacy initiative to Android phones. While the company said the move is ad-friendly, it’s reminiscent of Apple Inc.’s changed privacy policy, which dented digital advertising and was a factor behind Meta’s catastrophic earnings report this month. The results called its growth prospects into doubt and spurred the biggest selloff in Wall Street history in terms of value erased.”

CNET: Meta Faces New Whistleblower Complaints Over Climate Change, COVID Misinformation. “The two new complaints were filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission this month by Whistleblower Aid, a nonprofit group representing former Facebook product manager turned whistleblower Frances Haugen. The complaints allege that Facebook made ‘material misrepresentations’ and omitted information in statements to investors about its efforts to stem misinformation on its platforms, according to The Washington Post, which cited redacted copies of the documents.”

The Verge: How Facebook Twisted Canada’s Trucker Convoy Into An International Movement. “For many Canadians, it’s an overdue end to a chaotic protest that has stifled trade and brought alarming weaponry into otherwise quiet communities. But right-wing supporters have a wildly different view of events: figures like Tucker Carlson have portrayed the convoy as a working-class rebellion, and Trudeau’s response has been treated as enacting martial law, leading Elon Musk to tweet (and then delete) a meme comparing Trudeau to Adolf Hitler. It’s a shocking split, arguably the single most important factor in the protests, and much of it originates in the fractured way information travels online.”

CBC: B.C. mayors go Facebook-free to preserve mental health, find better ways to connect with their community. “A pair of B.C. mayors have given up using Facebook for the month of February in an effort to preserve their mental health and to find better ways of communicating with their community. Merlin Blackwell of Clearwater and Ange Qualizza of Fernie, both in B.C.’s Interior, challenged each other to get off social media after realizing they were spending too much time reading angry comments that weren’t helping them do their job.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Facebook, Instagram are hot spots for fake Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Chanel. “Facebook owner Meta Platforms is struggling to stop counterfeiters from pushing fake luxury goods from Gucci to Chanel across its social media apps, according to research and interviews, as the company barrels into ecommerce.”

The Bureau of Investigative Journalism: Facebook accused by survivors of letting activists incite ethnic massacres with hate and misinformation in Ethiopia. “The company has known for years that it was helping to directly fuel the growing tensions in the country. Many of those fighting misinformation and hate on the ground – fact checkers, journalists, civil society organisations and human rights activists – say Facebook’s support is still far less than it could and should be. A senior member of Ethiopia’s media accused Facebook of ‘just standing by and watching this country fall apart’.”

The Register: Facebook is one bad Chrome extension away from another Cambridge Analytica scandal. “Multiple Chrome browser extensions make use of a session token for Meta’s Facebook that grants access to signed-in users’ social network data in a way that violates the company’s policies and leaves users open to potential privacy violations.”

TechCrunch: Meta axes a head of global community development after he appears on video in underage sex sting. “Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has confirmed to TechCrunch that Jeren A. Miles, who had been a manager of global community development, is no longer employed by the company after a video went viral on YouTube, which was then reposted on Reddit and other sites, featuring him in a sting operation conducted by amateurs with the intent of catching paedophiles.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

National Review: Against Meta. “The fact is, the Metaverse is not some benevolent service to the Reality Disprivileged — it is an attempt to improve upon the digital experience that technologists have already created, and which they too already fear and resent. They want to improve life for the Zoom class. The whole project is powered by the promise that it will give corporations power to prey upon people’s wallets, without returning to them anything of real value. It will be lifted up by the vision of the political elite who hope to further push-button control of a passive population of alienated individuals. The good news is that we have the means to stop such a project.”

CNN: Facebook is rebranding everything but faces the same old problems. “Nearly four months ago, amid a firestorm of critical coverage stemming from a whistleblower’s leaks, Facebook shifted its strategic focus to building an immersive version of the internet it calls the ‘metaverse’ and changed its company name to Meta. This week, the company continued with its rebranding campaign.”

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February 21, 2022 at 07:49PM
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Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds, Radar Interference Tracker, Shakespeare and Company, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, February 21, 2022

Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds, Radar Interference Tracker, Shakespeare and Company, More: Monday ResearchBuzz, February 21, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

EurekAlert: Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds, “GLUBS,” will help monitor changing marine life. “…a team of 17 experts from nine countries has set a goal of gathering on a single platform huge collections of aquatic life’s tell-tale sounds, and expanding it using new enabling technologies – from highly sophisticated ocean hydrophones and artificial intelligence learning systems to phone apps and underwater GoPros used by citizen scientists. The Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds, ‘GLUBS,’ will underpin a novel non-invasive, affordable way for scientists to listen in on life in marine, brackish and freshwaters, monitor its changing diversity, distribution and abundance, and identify new species.”

Bellingcat: Radar Interference Tracker: A New Open Source Tool to Locate Active Military Radar Systems. “The Radar Interference Tracker (RIT) is a new tool created by Ollie Ballinger that allows anyone to search for and potentially locate active military radar systems anywhere on earth. Click here to access the tool and read on for a full description of how to use it (as well as learning about the fascinating research it builds upon).”

Thanks to Esther S. for giving me a heads-up on this one. Journal of Cultural Analytics: Shakespeare and Company Project Data Sets. “This article describes three data sets from the Shakespeare and Company Project. The data sets provide information about Shakespeare and Company, Sylvia Beach’s bookshop and lending library in interwar Paris. The first data set focuses on the members of the lending library. The second, on the books that circulated in the lending library. The third, on the events—borrows, purchases, subscriptions, renewals, deposits, reimbursements—that connected members and books. Together, the three data sets promise to address and bridge concerns in modernist studies, the digital humanities, and the public humanities. Work on the data sets began in 2014. The first two versions of the data sets were released in 2020 and 2021, respectively. The current version, 1.2, was released in 2022. Over forty people have contributed to the data sets.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Engadget: Skype can now make 911 calls in the United States. “Microsoft has released Skype version 8.80, and it comes with the ability to make 911 calls if you’re in the US. As first noticed by XDA Developers, the app’s release notes list its new emergency calling support in the United States for both PC and mobile. In addition to being able to dial emergency services for you, the app can also automatically detect and share your location with emergency operators.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: Need to Remove an Image Background? Try These 5 Free Websites. “If you’ve ever taken the right picture in the wrong place, you’ll understand the need to remove an image’s background. There are a lot of different tools that can help you do this. But many of them require large downloads and installs, expensive licenses, or technical know-how that most people don’t have. That’s where online alternatives can shine. There’s a wide range of websites that can automatically remove the background from an image. Here are five of the best.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Guardian: ‘Making music is about making assets for social media’: pop stars battle digital burnout. “Billie Eilish abandoned Twitter to preserve her mental health; the US indie star Mitski deleted her accounts after the conclusion of her 2019 tour. The problem hits musicians in a unique way. Actors are not expected to self-promote to the same extent and often eschew social media; writers generally don’t have such large followings nor the parasocial relationships that come with them.”

CNN: Anatomy of a tweet: The behind the scenes story of how retired federal judge Michael Luttig used Twitter to try to stop an insurrection. “Retired federal judge Michael Luttig never expected to jump into the heated fight over the certification of the 2020 presidential election. And he certainly never imagined he would end up using Twitter to help former Vice President Mike Pence defy then-President Donald Trump. But on the night of January 4, while at his home in Colorado, Luttig got a call from an old friend, Richard Cullen, Pence’s personal lawyer.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: A Child’s TikTok Stardom Opens Doors. Then a Gunman Arrives. . “TikTok’s owner, Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., and many of its users emphasize the friendships, innovative content and creative collaboration enabled by the platform, but its enormous popularity among vulnerable, underage people has also been linked to mental health problems, injuries and deaths.”

Associated Press: Congress eyes more financial disclosure for federal judges. “Federal judges would have to publicly disclose more about their finances under a bill approved by the Senate this week, which aims to make the judiciary subject to similar transparency requirements as lawmakers. The bipartisan bill by Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Chris Coons, D-Del., is intended to make it easier for the public to find out if a judge’s financial holdings could pose a conflict of interest in a case they are presiding over.”

Gizmodo: Big Tech Sold Out on Its Promise of an Open Internet. “2021 was a bad PR year for Big Tech. Lawmakers, advocates, and scholars filled pages of books and held hours of hearing exalting what they viewed as an industry being strangled by a handful of players using anti-competitive practices to solidify their position as kings. Ironically, those exact same tactics were vehemently opposed by the Big Tech companies themselves less than a decade ago. Like an aging punk throwing out their raggedy jean jacket for a blazer, Big Tech sold out.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Mashable: I got a dog. My online life changed overnight. . “The instant I got my dog — a lovely, adorable puppy named Henry — my entire online life changed. My TikTok For You Page (FYP) was suddenly dog video after dog video. My Instagram ads were entirely for dog-related products. Twitter was…still a cesspool of my own choosing, so at least there was that. But life pre-Henry was totally different online. I had interests. I jogged, I air fried, I liked NBA basketball, I spent way too much time thinking about grilling. These interests were all displaced by the algorithms practically screaming ‘YOU HAVE A DOG!'”

FedTech: Algorithms May Take Over the Job of Scanning Dense Federal Documents. “Every year, accountants at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service must read through at least 2,000 densely written pages of federal appropriations bills to determine how much money each government agency should receive. It’s a four-week marathon to create about 200 ‘warrants’ that authorize agencies to spend their new appropriations. The bureau is experimenting with artificial intelligence to speed the drudgery-filled process, hoping to use machine learning and natural language processing to train an algorithm to interpret legislation.” Good morning, Internet…

February 21, 2022 at 06:27PM
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Sunday, February 20, 2022

Rosenwald Schools, Turkish Manuscript Seals, Narrative Device, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, February 20, 2022

Rosenwald Schools, Turkish Manuscript Seals, Narrative Device, More: Sunday ResearchBuzz, February 20, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Associated Press: ‘Architecture as an artifact’: Auburn professors scan 3D digital reconstructions of historic Rosenwald Schools. “Even with the trusses exposed, and roofs caving in, the Rosenwald Schools from the segregation era still have a lesson to teach. As the ashy paint that clings to the outside of the buildings across Alabama peel more and more with every passing year, two Auburn University professors saw the value in preserving what is left of the 40 remaining Rosenwald schoolhouses before it’s too late. Gorham Bird and Junshan Liu are using drones, 360-degree photography, photogrammetry and laser scanners to create 3D digital reconstructions to keep these buildings “standing” in an online archive.”

Daily Sabah: New database offers insight into 802 historical seals. “Carrying out works on various elements of manuscripts, the Presidency of Turkey Manuscripts Institution (TYEKB) has prepared a new database on seals for researchers and history enthusiasts. With the seal database, TYEKB aims to present the data of all seals that the manuscripts and printed works in its collections feature with their images and detailed evaluations. The platform also intends to analyze data on seals and publish research articles prepared by experts on the subject.”

Sprudge: Artificial Intelligence Can Now Write Stories About Coffee. “Narrative Device is the work of Rodolfo Ocampo, a Mexican-born PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales in Australia, that explores ‘creative augmentation using AI and human-AI creative collaboration,’ per the website. Using text data from across the internet, the AI has been ‘trained’ to create an opening paragraph based on any two inputs it receives.” A lot of fun but also a timesink, be warned.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: YouTube Eyes New Ways to Stop Misinformation From Spreading Beyond Its Reach . “YouTube outlined on Thursday new efforts it plans to undertake to tackle misinformation. Stopping misinformation before it goes viral, limiting cross-platform sharing of misinformation and better addressing misinformation in languages other than English are three areas of focus, YouTube’s chief product officer, Neal Mohan, said in a blog post.”

KnowTechie: Twitter is finally giving people a better way to sort DMs. “Twitter is on a self-improvement spree lately, with the latest new feature being something we’ve all wanted for a while. Rolling out now is the ability to pin Twitter DMs to the top of your inbox. Now you’ve got a chance of keeping your messy direct inbox in line. The new feature launched Thursday, so you should see it sliding into your DMs any minute now.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Armenpress: Hovhannes Tumanyan’s private library to be digitized. “The digitization of the private library of renowned Armenian poet Hovhannes Tumanyan and the creation of e-library will be fulfilled by the funds saved as a result of the operation of the solar power station installed in the Tumanyan Museum.”

HuffPost: Google Has Made Millions Advertising Phony Government Handouts. “The ad caught Gordon Turner’s eye immediately. It was an official-looking online video encouraging viewers to apply for the “Senior Booster Program,” which entitled those 65 and older to government-issued payments of $1,728. For Turner, a 77-year-old Texan on disability benefits who lives alone and financially supports his elderly mother, that kind of cash could go a long way. So he clicked the ad’s link right away to input his personal information, and he waited. Unfortunately for Turner — and the more than 10 million others who’ve viewed this video — no such program exists, and no check will be coming in the mail.”

BBC: The amateur historians chronicling Delhi’s past on Instagram. “Mr [Umair] Shah, now 27, lives in Delhi where he works in digital marketing for fashion brands. But he’s also Sikkawala, or coin collector – that’s his moniker on Instagram where he documents fragments of history. To take to Instagram isn’t to reduce history to a mere snapshot. Mr Shah’s lyrical captions are steeped in facts and read like excerpts from an exciting story – where we learn about dead emperors, malevolent djinns and of rebellions that dissolved empires – in about 300 words.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

This is just for Ohio, of course, but it’s such a good idea that I wanted to index the article. Ohio Court News: Online Forum to Assist Courts With Technology Questions. “The IT Leaders Forum, which has already drawn 180 members, opens an online channel for Ohio’s court technology leaders to communicate directly with each other individually or as a group. Participants can pose questions, post answers, and circulate documents. [Robert] Stuart likens the group to the existing associations that connect court leaders in different roles, such as judges, magistrates, clerks of court, court administrators, and court reporters.”

Department of Justice: Justice Department Announces First Director of National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team . “The NCET was established to ensure the department meets the challenge posed by the criminal misuse of cryptocurrencies and digital assets, and comprises attorneys from across the department, including prosecutors with backgrounds in cryptocurrency, cybercrime, money laundering and forfeiture. The NCET will identify, investigate, support and pursue the department’s cases involving the criminal use of digital assets, with a particular focus on virtual currency exchanges, mixing and tumbling services, infrastructure providers, and other entities that are enabling the misuse of cryptocurrency and related technologies to commit or facilitate criminal activity.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Guardian: De-extinction puzzle: how decoding numbat DNA could help resurrect the Tasmanian tiger. “Researchers at DNA Zoo Australia have mapped the genome of the numbat for the first time. The milestone is notable in its own right, motivated by a desire to improve conservation efforts for the endangered termite-eating marsupial, which is now found only in small pockets of Western Australia. But in announcing the development last week, scientists also had a more extraordinary suggestion: that the numbat’s DNA could be used as a blueprint to bring its extinct cousin, the thylacine, back from the dead.”

Stanford Internet Observatory: Final Projects from the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Online Open Source Investigation Course . “In fall 2021, the Stanford Internet Observatory offered the fourth iteration of its Online Open Source Investigation course. The class covers strategies for investigating content on social media, cryptocurrency transactions, and more. Throughout the quarter students work on an open source investigation into the topic of their choosing. In the downloadable report we are publishing five student projects from the fall 2021 quarter.” Good morning, Internet…

February 20, 2022 at 06:32PM
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Saturday, February 19, 2022

Disability-Friendly Rentals, Columbia Music Photography, Cultural Center of the Philippines, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, February 19, 2022

Disability-Friendly Rentals, Columbia Music Photography, Cultural Center of the Philippines, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, February 19, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from Spectrum News 1: Website helps people with disabilities find rentals. “Lorraine Woodward was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy at the age of 2. For the last 21 years, she’s lived in a house she helped create to be wheelchair-friendly. She says homes like hers are few and far between, especially among vacation rentals….She’s using designs from her home to model other vacation properties in Raleigh, Tennessee and Arkansas. She also created the website Becoming RentABLE for people with disabilities to find rentals that fit their needs.”

Daily Hampshire Gazette: Listening with his camera: The late photographer Don Hunstein captured a golden age of music . “Along with taking many shots of [Bob] Dylan in his early career, Hunstein, who died in 2017, photographed a huge array of stars on Columbia’s roster from the late 1950s into the 1980s: Billie Holiday, Aretha Franklin, Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, Barbara Streisand, Simon and Garfunkel, Johnny Cash, Janis Joplin, Billy Joel. The photographer also shot hundreds of album covers, including Loretta Lynn’s memorable ‘Coal Miner’s Daughter’ from 1970, as well as the records of classical musicians including pianist Glenn Gould.”

Rappler: CCP to launch new digital museum ’21AM’. “The Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) will be launching a special 50th Anniversary project, a digital museum website called 21AM, on Friday, February 25, via live stream on CCP’s Facebook page. The CCP said in a press statement that 21AM will recall their original visual arts department in 1969 called Arts Museum, which was known to form the mid-20th century visual arts avant-garde in the early years. The new online museum will present a new contemporary arts exhibition.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

University of Arkansas: University of Arkansas Libraries Join HathiTrust. “The University of Arkansas Libraries have joined HathiTrust, a non-profit global collaborative of more than 200 research and academic libraries with a mission of ensuring that the cultural record is preserved and accessible in the future. The U of A campus will benefit from an increase in digital resources as well as enhanced accessibility. Specialized features facilitate access by persons with print disabilities and allow users to gather subsets of the digital library into collections that can be searched and browsed.”

Ars Technica: Google.com tests a busier homepage with a row of info cards. “Check out this totally wild Google homepage experiment spotted by 9to5Google: the search page suddenly has a row of cards at the bottom. If this design is widely adopted, it would easily be the biggest google.com design change ever.” Reminds me of the circa-1999 portal pages that Google’s original clean design was a rebuke against. Everything old is new again.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Washington Post: Google lowered its salaries in North Carolina. Now workers are protesting.. “Employees raised concerns that Google cut wages in the ‘Triangle’ area of Chapel Hill, Durham and Raleigh in 2020 for new employees and those who moved there to lower levels than comparable metro areas, according to a letter posted this week on an internal forum obtained by The Washington Post and confirmed by employees there. That is a problem, they say, because the company is using the area as a place to help recruit more Black engineers.”

Fast Company: Is Reddit a better search engine than Google?. “The core argument is that many people have become so disappointed in—or distrustful of—good old Google search results that they now append the term ‘reddit’ to the end of their queries. So instead of searching the world of information that Google and its web-crawler bots see, you get information and links from the world of things that have been discussed in Reddit land, which are a lot.” Better than Google for some kinds of searches? Absolutely. Better than Google for all kinds of searches? Absolutely not.

Downtown Los Angeles News: Library to preserve photographer’s theater shots. “For four decades, photographer Ed Krieger was the go-to theater guy in the Los Angeles area. Before he died on Dec. 16, 2020, he snapped production stills and headshots for such venues as The Fountain Theatre, Skylight Theatre, Boston Court, El Portal, Laguna Playhouse, Rubicon Theatre, Downey Civic Light Opera, Ford Amphitheatre, Hollywood Bowl and others.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

ZDNet: Eight countries jointly propose principles for mutual recognition of digital IDs. “An international working group, consisting of eight countries, found most government-led digital identity initiatives have been designed with mutual recognition and interoperability thus far.”

Los Angeles Times: Trump White House didn’t preserve social media records, National Archives warns. “The Trump White House did not preserve the former president’s social media accounts, the national archivist told Congress Friday, warning lawmakers some of the missing records may not be retrievable.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Nebraska-Lincoln: Husker researcher building database to help farmers breed hardier sheep. “The project, funded by a $650,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, will develop a database of traits for robustness and climatic resilience. Researchers will assemble current and additional genetic data, as well as performance records, for several major U.S. sheep breeds: Katahdin, Polypay, Rambouillet and Suffolk.”

University of Illinois: Study examines accuracy of arrest data in FBI’s NIBRS crime database. “As more police agencies transition to the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System for crime reporting, a study of one state’s data found that a design flaw in NIBRS, the timings of arrests and human factors can lead to discrepancies. When the authors of the current study compared the statuses of a statewide sample of 480 cases in NIBRS with data they collected directly from the Massachusetts jurisdictions where the crimes occurred, they found that about 16% of the cases incorrectly indicated in NIBRS whether arrests were made or summonses were issued.” Good morning, Internet…

February 19, 2022 at 06:35PM
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Friday, February 18, 2022

The Anti-Racism Lab, IU Bloomington Graduates, Roboto Serif, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, February 18, 2022

The Anti-Racism Lab, IU Bloomington Graduates, Roboto Serif, More: Friday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, February 18, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

University of Alberta: New website offers a worldwide hub for research on decolonization and anti-racism. “A new online hub is bringing together scholars and students from around the world to share research, amplify voices and encourage conversations about decolonization and anti-racism in universities. The Anti-Racism Lab is a collaborative international network of researchers in Finland, Sweden, South Africa, Brazil, the United States, Canada and the Métis Nation, showcasing the work of the researchers involved, Tate explained. The unifying factor in the collaboration is that universities involved in the research project are in settler-colonial states.”

WBIW: Did your ancestors graduate from IU? The new database will tell you | WBIW. “The IU Bloomington Degree Compendium contains the names, graduation years, and degrees awarded to graduates from the classes of 1830 to 1890. The database will eventually be expanded to include information about all IU Bloomington graduates.”

9to5 Google: Google commissions and releases ‘Roboto Serif’ as new font ideal for reading. “Google introduced Roboto in 2011 as Android’s new system font and gave it a big upgrade three years later. ‘Roboto Serif’ is now the newest variation ‘designed to make reading more comfortable at any size, in any format.'”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: TikTok’s ban on misogyny and misgendering attempts to clean up For You Pages. “TikTok has long prohibited hate-speech and violence on its social video platform, but a recent update is getting more specific about what can and can’t be posted on videos. The China-based tech firm ByteDance, which created and owns TikTok, updated its community guidelines with new ban-worthy offenses on Tuesday. The change targets content that’s aimed at offending LGBTQ users broadly as well as trans users specifically.”

CNET: Twitter Expands Beta for Safety Mode Autoblocking Feature. “Twitter is greatly expanding the size of the beta for its Safety Mode feature, which aims to limit ‘unwelcome interactions’ in your feed. Previously available only to a small feedback group, the feature will now be available to about 50% of users in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand, Twitter said Tuesday.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

Techradar Pro: Taking on Google: Meet the challenger search engine trying to break the monopoly. “Google benefits from almost every advantage any company could ever hope for; it has the most advanced technology, broadest talent pool, greatest lobbying power and some of the deepest pockets. Most importantly, it has a vice-like grip on many of the markets in which it operates, particularly browsers and search. Some might think it impossible to overthrow a company in this position, especially in its core areas of business. But not Gabriel Weinberg, who is patiently twirling his sling in anticipation of an opportunity to bring down the internet’s Goliath.”

Yale Daily News: Collection of Musical Instruments plans for major renovation. “The Morris Steinert Collection of Musical Instruments — a leading institution that acquires, preserves and exhibits musical instruments from antiquity to the present — is one of many Yale museums currently closed to the public due to the pandemic. It will use the period of closure to develop its online presence and make plans for an extensive renovation.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): More members of Congress, especially Democrats, are talking about Black History Month on social media. “A growing share of congressional lawmakers have taken to social media each February to commemorate Black History Month, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of their Facebook and Twitter activity. Nearly two-in-three members of Congress (64%) mentioned Black History Month on Facebook or Twitter in February 2021, up from just 29% in 2015.”

The Orion: Social media algorithm designed to be toxic. “With the number of social media users nearing 4 billion in 2022, it’s safe to say that these platforms are not going anywhere in spite of the damage they cause. Platforms should make an effort to be transparent about the true, altered nature of pictures and videos by providing a disclaimer. Sadly, it does not seem to be a likely possibility because it goes against the influencers that draw traffic and increase the site’s popularity. Therefore, it is up to users to educate themselves on the harmful effects of social media.”

WIRED: Google Stadia Is a Failure. The Company Should Kill It. “Much has happened between the 2018 “Project Stream” beta, the official Stadia launch in 2019, and today. You could arguably call Google a leader in the second wave of cloud gaming, after the early debuts of services like PS Now and OnLive. Now, though, there is more competition, and the demands of the market are crystallizing. Google tried to make a case that it could bring market advantages to cloud gaming, but the company’s vision has not borne fruit. Today, Stadia is languishing and has few prospects of success.” Good afternoon, Internet…

February 19, 2022 at 03:53AM
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Michigan Air Pollution Permits, Nelson Mandela, Environmental Inequality, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, February 18, 2022

Michigan Air Pollution Permits, Nelson Mandela, Environmental Inequality, More: Friday ResearchBuzz, February 18, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Detroit Free Press: Free Press releases database of air pollution permits. “The Free Press is making air permit data available for the first time to improve access and to help build on our work examining air pollution in communities with long-standing racial and socioeconomic disparities. Last year, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy approved 309 permits for air pollution that remained active at year’s end. A Free Press analysis of the one-year snapshot alone found a relationship among site location, race and poverty in Michigan communities.”

Free Press Journal: Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory launches digital archive for greater public access . “A new digital archive was launched on Friday by the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory to allow greater public access to the archives of the global icon who became the first democratically-elected president of South Africa after serving 27 years as a political prisoner under the white minority apartheid regime. Razia Saleh, Head of Archive and Research at the centre, explained that the closure of the Nelson Mandela Centre of Memory (NMCM) for almost two years due to the COVID-19 lockdown restrictions had given the team time to come up with ideas to widen access to the resources, which have been physically available in the past.”

Washington Post: Biden officials launch ‘screening tool’ to help identify disadvantaged and polluted communities. “As part of its effort to address historic environmental injustices, the Biden administration launched an online screening tool Friday to identify ‘communities that are marginalized, underserved, and overburdened by pollution.’ The administration is calling on residents to use a “beta version” of its Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool over the next 60 days to upload data that will reveal communities with multiple pollution sources and health threats such as tainted water, poor air quality, dirty roadways and nearby Superfund sites.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Tom’s Hardware: No PC Needed: How to Install Raspberry Pi OS Over the Internet. “As any experienced Raspberry Pi user can tell you, the popular single-board computer does not come with an OS preloaded. Unless you buy a third-party kit / card that comes with Raspberry Pi OS on it, you must download the operating system on a PC or Mac and write it to a microSD card or USB storage device for the Pi. We have articles on how to set up a Raspberry Pi and how to create a headless Raspberry Pi that show you how to do this. But what if you don’t have access to a computer (or don’t have a card reader)?”

Wired: What Is Google Workspace Individual, and How Does It Work?. “ANDY WARHOL ONCE said a big part of Coke’s appeal is that everyone has the same version. ‘A Coke is a Coke,’ he said, ‘and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking.’ Google’s email and calendar services, Gmail and Google Calendar, used to be the same way—everyone had access to the same tool. Not anymore, thanks to Google Workspace Individual. You can now buy a better Coke (OK you’ve been able to buy superior Mexican Coke for a long time now, but let’s ignore that so my metaphor works.)”

USEFUL STUFF

Wish I’d found this a bit earlier, but you’ve still got over a week. Business Insider: Scribd, an online reading platform, is making all its books free for 30 days in response to recent book bans. “While book bans aren’t new, they’ve recently been making the news more often…. In response to the rising trend, the reading app Scribd is offering free access to its digital library of millions of ebooks, audiobooks, magazines, documents, and podcasts for 30 days if you sign up by February 28. (No credit card information is required to sign up).”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Guardian: Eleven strangers watched me write this article. Is this the answer to our productivity crisis?. “I have been randomly assigned to work with Ben on a website I use every day called Focusmate, which uses a sense of accountability to help you focus. The homepage kind of looks like a Google calendar: you book in a 50-minute session and the site matches you with someone else who wants to work in that time slot (this is mostly done randomly, although brand new users are matched with more experienced ones). When the time comes, you and your buddy get placed on a video call. You politely and briefly tell each other what you’re planning to use the time to do – and then you get on with it.”

Daily Beast: After FBI Raid, Dem. Congressman Feels the Love – From a Network of Trolls. “[Henry] Cuellar, one of the most conservative Democrats in Congress, had never seen much engagement before the raids, with his tweets normally only drawing a half dozen or so replies. But after the FBI came knocking, Cuellar’s replies teemed with critics calling on him to resign, reminding him of the investigation, and taunting the nine-term congressman with the thought of prison. Within a week, those replies were matched with missives from ostensible supporters swooping in to battle the haters.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

New York Times: I Used Apple AirTags, Tiles and a GPS Tracker to Watch My Husband’s Every Move. “I’ve been covering privacy for more than a decade, and have found that the best way to concretely explain the dystopian implications of new technologies is to immerse myself in them, guinea pig-style. My husband has lived on Bitcoin with me, been spied on by our “smart home,” and watched me give up the tech giants. (He would not give them up himself, saying, ‘I have a job,’ but he agreed to unplug our Amazon Echo.) He also happens to be a professional press freedom advocate, so I was fairly certain he’d be game.”

Bleeping Computer: WordPress force installs UpdraftPlus patch on 3 million sites. “WordPress has taken the rare step of force-updating the UpdraftPlus plugin on all sites to fix a high-severity vulnerability allowing website subscribers to download the latest database backups, which often contain credentials and PII. Three million sites use the popular WordPress plugin, so the potential for exploitation was substantial, affecting a significant share of the internet, including large platforms.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Washington: Google’s ‘CEO’ image search gender bias hasn’t really been fixed. “The researchers showed that for four major search engines from around the world, including Google, this bias is only partially fixed, according to a paper presented in February at the AAAI Conference of Artificial Intelligence. A search for an occupation, such as ‘CEO,’ yielded results with a ratio of cis-male and cis-female presenting people that matches the current statistics. But when the team added another search term — for example, ‘CEO + United States’ — the image search returned fewer photos of cis-female presenting people. In the paper, the researchers propose three potential solutions to this issue.”

NIST: VTTI, NIST Provide Tool for Quantifying Automated Driving Conditions. “The tool helps researchers and industry practitioners to understand and quantify automated driving operating conditions in a city, community, or region. These conditions are described in the Operational Design Domain (ODD) in which an automated vehicle is designed to operate. The ODD of an automated vehicle provides a description of its environmental, geographical, and other restrictions, as well as applicable constraints, such as permissible speeds, geographic areas, road types, and environmental conditions.” Good afternoon, Internet…

February 18, 2022 at 11:48PM
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Thursday, February 17, 2022

Facebook Roundup, February 17, 2022

Facebook Roundup, February 17, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

CNET: Meta rolls out vanish mode, payment splitting for US Messenger users. “Facebook Messenger rolled out new features — including splitting payments, vanishing messages and improved voice message recording controls — to iOS and Android users in the US on Wednesday, according to Meta.”

Bloomberg: Meta’s Clegg Promoted as Zuckerberg Steps Back From Policy. “Meta Platforms Inc. Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has promoted his top policy executive, Nick Clegg, to an even greater role inside the company — a move that will mean less involvement in future policy decisions for the CEO and Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg.”

The Verge: Facebook rebrands News Feed after more than 15 years. “Meta is changing the name of Facebook’s News Feed, the primary part of the service that users scroll through to see what their friends and family have shared. Going forward, it’ll just be called the ‘Feed,’ according to a tweet from the company on Tuesday. The ‘News Feed’ name had been in place since the feature was first introduced more than 15 years ago.”

New York Times: Out With the Facebookers. In With the Metamates.. “So past Facebook values like ‘Be bold’ and ‘Focus on impact’? They are gone. In their place are ‘Live in the future,’ ‘Build awesome things,’ ‘Focus on long-term impact’ and ‘Meta, Metamates, me,’ Mr. Zuckerberg said on Tuesday.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

TIME: Inside Facebook’s African Sweatshop. “Here in Nairobi, Sama employees who speak at least 11 African languages between them toil day and night, working as outsourced Facebook content moderators: the emergency first responders of social media. They perform the brutal task of viewing and removing illegal or banned content from Facebook before it is seen by the average user.”

New York Times: Meta and Salesforce present differing takes on the metaverse.. “Real world or virtual world? Take your pick. Meta, the parent company of Facebook, set its Super Bowl ad in the metaverse. In the ad, an animatronic dog and its friend, a pink-tentacled monster, are separated in their physical reality but reunited via the company’s Quest 2 virtual reality headsets.”

BuzzFeed News: Meta Wouldn’t Tell Us How It Enforces Its Rules In VR, So We Ran A Test To Find Out. “Facebook’s parent company declined to answer our questions about how it moderates content in VR, so we created a test Horizon World filled with content banned from Facebook and Instagram. Content moderators said the world was fine — until we told Meta’s PR team about it.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CNET: Texas Sues Facebook Over Its Use of Facial Recognition. “Texas is suing Meta, the parent company of Facebook, over the social network’s past use of facial recognition technology. The suit, filed Monday by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, accuses Facebook of violating the state’s privacy laws by capturing biometric data on tens of millions of Texans without properly obtaining consent.”

Reuters: Meta’s Facebook to pay $90 million to settle privacy lawsuit over user tracking. “Facebook agreed to pay $90 million to settle a decade-old privacy lawsuit accusing it of tracking users’ internet activity even after they logged out of the social media website. A proposed preliminary settlement was filed on Monday night with the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California, and requires a judge’s approval. The accord also requires Facebook to delete data it collected improperly.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

TechCrunch: How to ruin the metaverse? Build it around profit and centralization. “Reading back through a transcript from Facebook’s investor-disappointing fourth-quarter earnings call has solidified my perspective that we need a third-party, benevolent central entity for the metaverse. A sort of central digital clearinghouse that can transport me from place to place, inclusive of the platform-locked areas that will inevitably come to constitute a portion of our online selves.”

New York Times: Facebook Has an Innovation Problem. “Facebook can’t seem to do it. The company just doesn’t appear to know how to invent successful new stuff. Most of its biggest hits — not just two of its main products, Instagram and WhatsApp, but many of its most-used features, like Instagram Stories — were invented elsewhere. They made their way to Facebook either through acquisitions or, when that didn’t work, outright copying. But buying and copying other ideas is becoming increasingly difficult for Facebook.”

George Washington University: Study: Corrections on Facebook News Feed Reduce Misinformation. “Factual corrections published on Facebook’s news feed can reduce a user’s belief in misinformation, even across partisan lines, according to a new paper co-authored by a George Washington University assistant professor published this month in the Journal of Politics.”

February 17, 2022 at 08:20PM
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