New researches

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Cincinnati Activism, TikTok, Google Street View, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 25, 2022

Cincinnati Activism, TikTok, Google Street View, More: Wednesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 25, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

Well, I didn’t get the Bellingcat Tech Fellowship. I’m going to keep my eye out for other opportunities that don’t require any academic standing. Thank you for your encouragement.

NEW RESOURCES

Cincinnati Public Library: 50 Years of Protest Posters, Photos, and Flyers Scanned for the Library’s Digital Collection. “The images, part of the upcoming Contemporary Arts Center (CAC) exhibit, Artist Run Spaces, include protest posters, photos, slides, and flyers from fifty years of organizing work by the community organization Over-the-Rhine People’s Movement. The images are now available for high resolution viewing on the Library’s Digital Library, opens a new window.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: TikTok’s launching Twitch-like subscriptions in beta on Thursday. “TikTok has announced a program that lets viewers pay to subscribe to specific live streamers they want to support. Dubbed Live Subscription, it gives fans access to perks like a subscriber-only chat, creator-specific emotes, and badges that differentiate them from non-subscribers (via TechCrunch).”

Google Blog: Street View turns 15 with a new camera and fresh features. “Today, we’re unveiling Street View’s newest camera, giving you more ways to explore historical imagery, and taking a closer look at how Street View is powering the future of Google Maps.”

USEFUL STUFF

Mashable: The 21 best binge-worthy podcasts that tell one hell of a story. “With definitive beginnings, middles, and ends, the limited-series podcast as we define it is a contained story told over five or more episodes. Many of those on our list have other seasons tackling different subject matters. But we’re highlighting the best of the best.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Brown University: Brown University Library Awarded Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to Create New Frameworks to Preserve and Publish Born-Digital Art. “Brown University Library has been approved for a $20,000 Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts to support ‘New Frameworks to Preserve and Publish Born-Digital Art.’ This project will develop new frameworks for the long-term preservation and presentation of born-digital art.”

The Mainichi: Tokyo’s only wooden traditional vaudeville theater seeks funds to survive pandemic . “The Shinjuku Suehirotei theater is likely to go bankrupt if the revenue decline it has suffered from the pandemic continues. The theater in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward with its classic atmosphere is a precious venue where top-notch masters of the Showa era (1926-1989) vied with each other. It recently also became the model for the Uchikutei theater featured in the popular manga series ‘Descending Stories: Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Engadget: New Jersey Attorney General also investigating Discord and Twitch after Buffalo shooting. “New Jersey’s Acting Attorney General has launched a probe into Twitch and Discord to see if the platforms broke laws on hateful and extremist content following a recent mass shooting in Buffalo. In an announcement published Monday, New Jersey’s Acting Attorney General Matthew Platkin wrote that the purpose of the investigation was to find out if policy or moderation failures allowed the platforms to become vectors for spreading extremist content, especially among young people.”

Associated Press: California parents could soon sue for social media addiction. “California could soon hold social media companies responsible for harming children who have become addicted to their products, permitting parents to sue platforms like Instagram and TikTok for up to $25,000 per violation under a bill that passed the state Assembly on Monday.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

KNDO: Washington launches new website to track recovery efforts for orca population. “The Governor’s Salmon Recovery Office created a new website to track recovery efforts for endangered Southern Resident orcas. The website has information on putting in places the recommendations made by the governor’s Southern Resident Killer Whale Task Force, general information about the whales and suggestions for how people can help save the orcas and resources for school curriculum.”

New York Times: Selfies Further Endanger Rare Phallic Plant, Conservationists Fear. “In Cambodia, video of women suggestively joking around with a protected carnivorous specimen prompted a government admonition: Hands off, people.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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May 26, 2022 at 12:35AM
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World Agricultural Production, Digital Inclusion Navigator, Hospital Data, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, May 25, 2022

World Agricultural Production, Digital Inclusion Navigator, Hospital Data, More: Wednesday ResearchBuzz, May 25, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations: FAO unveils new public tool based on agricultural census data. “The new domain allows rapid access to knowing how many farms exist in a given country, what their sizes are, the tenure typology determining its ownership, the farmer’s gender, and how many people live and work on them, all sourced to national Agricultural Censuses.”

World Economic Forum: Digital Inclusion Navigator: A platform to help bridge digital divide for billions. “The Forum’s EDISON Alliance has launched a new tool to share best practices in expanding digital inclusion: the Digital Inclusion Navigator. The Navigator is open to all, and will ultimately convene and share the best ideas and practices of the digital inclusion policymaking community the world over.”

PR Newswire: Employers’ Forum of Indiana Introduces Sage Transparency, Built Using New RAND Hospital Price Study (PRESS RELEASE). “Using data from the upcoming RAND 4.0 Hospital Price Transparency Study, Employers’ Forum of Indiana today launched Sage Transparency, a publicly accessible and customizable dashboard to demonstrate hospital value…. Sage Transparency is a free-to-use, customizable dashboard which allows the user to compare metrics of hospital price and quality across states, health systems, and facilities.” The fact that Employers’ Forum of Indiana did it makes you think it might be Indiana-only, but I was able to look up hospital information all over America.

City of Philadelphia: New Online Tool Helps Navigate City Health Trends. “Lots of different things can determine just how healthy we are. For instance, where we were born or where we live now can impact our overall health…. A new online tool called PhilaStats is ready to help users compare these various factors – sometimes referred to as social determinants of health – across different areas of Philadelphia. The interactive dashboard highlights trends in population, along with information about births and deaths in the city between 2011 and 2019. It will be updated as additional years of data become available.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: How to Search for YouTube Comments. “Looking for a specific comment on YouTube can be tricky if you don’t know how to search properly. It gets worse when you have to search through a thread of comments that goes on for pages. This can be frustrating, but there is a way to search through YouTube comments more effectively. In this article, we will show you how to search through YouTube comments, so you can find what you’re looking for.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

It’s Nice That: Dive into the random, genius, alphabetically-organised world of HejHelloHalloAnnyeong’s web design experiments. “Since the pandemic the collective have been meeting every fortnight to create innovative web-based experiments inspired by their random word selector.”

Input Magazine: Meet the amateur archivists streaming old VHS tapes online. “The tape collectors have different approaches. [Pete] Dillon-Trenchard provides a wry, Beavis and Butthead-style director’s commentary to whatever’s going on in the tapes in front of him. He typically focuses on advertisements rather than movies and TV shows — a decision taken to avoid any copyright issues, he says. [Jackson] Bedenbaugh doesn’t do much beyond clipping key moments from the tapes he finds, the equivalent of panning for gold within his analog tape mines. Meanwhile, FORGOTTEN_VCR — a Twitch streamer who asked to remain anonymous because he wants his work to speak for him — does something slightly different.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

CBS News: Debt firms used social media to “smear” and harass people, feds say. “A group of debt collectors in upstate New York went after their targets by calling friends, family and employers and orchestrating ‘smear campaigns’ against people they claimed owed money, federal regulators said. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the New York Attorney General on Monday said they shut down a ring of debt collection firms who were going after debtors using illegal techniques.”

The Verge: Florida’s social media moderation ban is probably unconstitutional, says court. “A US appeals court says Florida’s ban on much social media moderation likely violates the First Amendment, setting up a legal showdown over social networks’ speech rights. Today, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld most of an earlier court order blocking Florida’s SB 7072 while a lawsuit proceeds. It directly contradicts a recent ruling over Texas’ similar moderation ban, setting up a split that the Supreme Court could step in to resolve.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Elephants in Mourning Spotted on YouTube by Scientists. “For a paper published Wednesday in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the scientists used YouTube to crowdsource videos of Asian elephants responding to death.”

Stat News: Are smartphones making us miserable? A Google-backed study aims to find out. “Like a similar program run by its competitor Apple, Google Health Studies aims to beef up the company’s health bona fides among consumers, researchers, and care providers. In this case, Google has chosen to tackle a question that’s been the subject of great public concern as well as increasing academic study: Are smartphones really making us miserable?”

Smart Energy International: Google and UK Power Networks chart AI-driven electric cable maps. “Google’s DeepMind engineers have partnered with UK Power Networks, which delivers electricity across London, the East and South East, to create digital versions of maps covering more than 180,000km of electricity cables in the UK. The work involves new image recognition software scanning thousands of maps – some of which date back decades – and using artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically remaster them into a digital format for future use.” Good morning, Internet…

May 25, 2022 at 05:29PM
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Tuesday, May 24, 2022

Topological Materials, National Book Festival, Platinum Jubilee, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 24, 2022

Topological Materials, National Book Festival, Platinum Jubilee, More: Tuesday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 24, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

MIT News: Is it topological? A new materials database has the answer. “In 2007, researchers predicted the first electronic topological insulators — materials in which electrons that behave in ways that are ‘topologically protected,’ or persistent in the face of certain disruptions. Since then, scientists have searched for more topological materials with the aim of building better, more robust electronic devices. Until recently, only a handful of such materials were identified, and were therefore assumed to be a rarity. Now researchers at MIT and elsewhere have discovered that, in fact, topological materials are everywhere, if you know how to look for them.”

EVENTS

Library of Congress: Live and In Person! Come to the 2022 National Book Festival on Saturday, Sept. 3. “The 2022 Library of Congress National Book Festival website is live. With the launch of this year’s site, you can explore past National Book Festivals, prep for the Festival with helpful information and more. If you can’t join us in Washington, D.C. this September, a selection of programs will be livestreamed, and video of all presentations can be viewed online after the Festival concludes.”

British Library: Picture Perfect Platinum Jubilee Puddings on Wikimedia Commons. “The UK Web Archive is looking for nominations for websites to be archived to a special Jubilee collection that will commemorate the event. You can nominate a website using this form here. Inspired by the Platinum Jubilee Pudding Competition, in Digital Scholarship we are encouraging you to upload images of your celebratory puddings and food to Wikimedia Commons.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Washington Post: Saving The Sounds Of An Ancient City. “For the past several years, Youssef Sherif, 28, and Nehal Ezz, 26, have wandered the Egyptian capital in search of the cries of street vendors, the tap tap tap of metal workers in their shops, the cacophony of chaotic traffic. Their goal is to capture in recordings what Cairo sounds like — right here, right now — before these noises disappear. They are collecting the sounds to share on an Instagram account and eventually hope to establish a searchable database of sounds.”

The Verge: Why We Need A Public Internet And How To Get One. “For weeks, tech news has been dominated by billionaire Elon Musk’s attempts to buy (and subsequently avoid buying) Twitter. And since Musk announced his plans in April, people have debated whether it’s better for online social spaces like Twitter to remain publicly traded companies — where they’re under pressure from shareholders — or be owned by a single wealthy figure like Musk. But Ben Tarnoff, author of the upcoming book Internet for the People, believes there’s a better way.”

Deccan Herald: Online museum to archive stories about Kodavas. “The project is called Sandooka, the Living Museum of Kodava Culture. Sandooka means treasure chest in Coorgi language, and the museum strives to be a repository of stories ranging from the traditional costumes to present-day experiences of the Kodavas, native inhabitants of Kodagu in Karnataka.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

WIRED: How GDPR Is Failing. “ONE THOUSAND FOUR hundred and fifty-nine days have passed since data rights nonprofit NOYB fired off its first complaints under Europe’s flagship data regulation, GDPR. The complaints allege Google, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram forced people into giving up their data without obtaining proper consent, says Romain Robert, a program director at the nonprofit. The complaints landed on May 25, 2018, the day GDPR came into force and bolstered the privacy rights of 740 million Europeans. Four years later, NOYB is still waiting for final decisions to be made. And it’s not the only one.”

PA Media: Paramilitaries in NI ‘using social media to incite violence and issue threats’. “Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland are increasingly using social media to incite violence and issue threats, MPs have been warned. Members of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee heard how the illegal groups are using the internet to stoke community tensions and organise disorder in the region.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

New York Times: Showcasing 27 Published Experiments in AR Storytelling. “Spatial data, real-scale explainers, interactive visual stories, 3D art, and immersive environments can enhance our readers’ understanding of the world. Since 2020, R&D has experimented with dozens of these stories in collaboration with the newsroom using Instagram’s Spark AR platform.”

Ubergizmo: China To 3D-Print A 590-Foot Dam, Without Human Workers. “Regular people are barely using 3d-printers at home, and 3D-printed homes are not yet commonly printed, but China is already planning to 3d-print a massive dam in Tibet, with an AI-powered design and no human laborers. The endgame is to deliver 5 billion kWh of electricity per year.” Good afternoon, Internet…

May 25, 2022 at 01:06AM
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YouTube Content Takedowns, Cultural Warfare, Hyperlocal Disinformation, More: Ukraine Update, May 24, 2022

YouTube Content Takedowns, Cultural Warfare, Hyperlocal Disinformation, More: Ukraine Update, May 24, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Guardian: YouTube removes more than 9,000 channels relating to Ukraine war. “YouTube has taken down more than 70,000 videos and 9,000 channels related to the war in Ukraine for violating content guidelines, including removal of videos that referred to the invasion as a ‘liberation mission’.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

WIRED: Volodymyr Zelensky and the Art of the War Story. “A culture has no budget, no government, no army. It collects no taxes; it has no CEO, bible, or headquarters. If it can’t be precisely identified, how can a nation’s whole culture, which is made up of innumerable artifacts and practices, be loathed? And yet the constant warning of the far right in Russia—and France, and the US—is that someone, somewhere, hates your culture and thus deserves to die. No one but Zelensky has ever dissolved this hollow alarmism with such dispatch.”

WIRED: Open Source Intelligence May Be Changing Old-School War. “Open source intelligence is information that can be readily and legally accessed by the general public. It was used in war and diplomacy long before the internet—alongside information stolen or otherwise secretly obtained and closely held. But its prevalence today means what was once cost-prohibitive to many is now affordable to myriad actors, whether North Korea, the CIA, journalists, terrorists, or cybercriminals.”

US Embassy & Consulates in Italy: War in Ukraine damages major cultural sites. “Russia’s barbaric treatment of Ukrainian cultural sites is not new. Russia has demolished gravesites and seized 4,095 Ukrainian national and local monuments in Crimea since 2014, when it forcibly occupied Crimea and instigated conflict in areas of the Donbas region.”

Global Voices: How Russians are protesting the war in Ukraine from a totalitarian state. “The rare independent sources, for instance, student journal DOXA and the Telegram channel of journalist Roman Super, publish collections of protest photos every day showing readers that within Russian society there is more than the ‘unified’ around the lies of propaganda. Global Voices, with the permission of the authors, is publishing a selection of photos of everyday forms of protesting from around the country.”

Washington Post: Goodbye, Pushkin. Ukrainians target Russian street names, monuments.. “The onset of war has hastened Ukraine’s efforts to remove the names of famous Russian and Soviet figures from metro stations, streets and landmarks. There’s even an app. The only reason more Russian statues haven’t been toppled lately, [Serhii] Sternenko said, is that Ukrainians have been too busy fighting a war.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Putin Promises to Bolster Russia’s IT Security in Face of Cyber Attacks. “President Vladimir Putin said on Friday that the number of cyber attacks on Russia by foreign ‘state structures’ had increased several times over and that Russia must bolster its cyber defences by reducing the use of foreign software and hardware.”

Reuters: Pro-Russian hackers attack institutional websites in Italy – police. “Pro-Russian hackers have attacked the websites of several Italian institutions and government ministries, the police said on Friday. At 0800 GMT it was still not possible to access the websites of the Italian foreign ministry and its national magistrates association.”

ProPublica: Why It’s Hard to Sanction Ransomware Groups. “The Russia-linked ransomware gang Conti avoided the sanctions that hit Russian banks and businesses after the invasion of Ukraine, spotlighting the difficulty of reining in cybercriminals. Meanwhile, confused victims face uncertainty.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CyberScoop: Network of hyperlocal Russian Telegram channels spew disinformation in occupied Ukraine. “The Russian disinformation effort in Ukraine is so extensive that it now includes a hyperlocal Telegram network which spews disinformation customized to resonate in individual towns across occupied Ukraine, according to recent research published by the Ukrainian think tank Detector Media.”

Center for European Policy Analysis: The Sky’s Not the Limit: Space Aid to Ukraine. “Despite the signal sent by Russia’s blunt-force space weapons test in November — signaling at the very least its keen interest in the military aspects of space — it is the West that has employed a wide array of government and private sector space technology to aid Ukraine, including satellite platforms providing vital open-source intelligence (OSINT), diplomatic, and humanitarian support.”

New Eastern Europe: The war in Ukraine and historical revisionism. “The Kremlin has been eager to draw parallels between its ongoing invasion of Ukraine and the Second World War. Stressing the idea that it is fighting Nazism much like in its ‘glorious’ past, the country’s controversial ideology has been in development ever since Putin came to power.”

May 24, 2022 at 06:33PM
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Southeast Native Radio, Federal Infrastructure Funding, Archaeology Search Engine, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, May 24, 2022

Southeast Native Radio, Federal Infrastructure Funding, Archaeology Search Engine, More: Tuesday ResearchBuzz, May 24, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Raven Radio: Southeast Native Radio aired for just 16 years, but its voices will live on in a new digital archive . “Southeast Native Radio was broadcast over KTOO in Juneau for 16 years, from 1985 to 2001. The volunteer-produced show played as current affairs at the time, but twenty-one years later it’s become a window into the lives of the people and events that shaped Native culture in the region over the last century.”

Route Fifty: New Online Hub to Help Cities Apply for Federal Infrastructure Funding. “The Local Infrastructure Hub is bringing together public sector groups and nonprofits to help local leaders navigate the complicated Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act application process in order to win grants. Experts will provide free coaching, data analysis and support, among other things, in developing the applications.”

I found this resource in February but it wasn’t quite ready for public release. It was ready in March, but then the notice got lost in my email. Without any FURTHER ado, from Phys .org: Researcher develops Google for archaeologists. “An incredible quantity of archaeological reports are stored in digital archives. If you want to search for information in them, you have to do this manually. And that is a real chore. Archaeologist Alex Brandsen has now used deep learning, a form of artificial intelligence, to develop a search engine that can search very precisely through all the data.” You can access the engine at http://agnessearch.nl/ . The interface is in Dutch but Google Translate handles it well.

Vermont Public Radio: The ACLU wants Vermonters to get to know their elected prosecutors. “The ACLU of Vermont is launching an online database to inform voters about their candidates for upcoming state’s attorney elections. The website features detailed profiles on every county’s current incumbent. Each profile includes publicly-available written policies, contact information, and links to learn more.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Wall Street Journal: Elon Musk’s Planned Twitter Takeover Creates a ‘Chaos Tax’ for Employees. “It is a tricky time to work at Twitter. Far beyond the usual uncertainty at an acquisition target, Mr. Musk’s $44 billion takeover deal has left employees bewildered about what their jobs are and will be, as well as how to keep operating a platform with around 229 million daily users while its would-be owner uses it to publicly assail the company for everything from its free-speech policies to its business model.”

The Register: The Return of Gopher: Pre-web hypertext service is still around. “An announcement about a new handheld games console a few days ago caused confusion, because it was online but not on the web. It was published on Gopher.”

USEFUL STUFF

How-To Geek: Your iPhone Pro Has LiDAR: 7 Cool Things You Can Do With It. “Some high-end iPhone and iPad models have a LiDAR scanner integrated into the camera module on the back of the device. This effectively gives your device 3D scanning abilities with a few unique and interesting applications.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Boing Boing: Adam Savage rants about Google Search. “This video is posted as Adam Savage’s ‘rant on laser printers’ but it’s really about how dreadful Google’s search engine is nowadays. He hopped online to research his way to a nice new ‘large format laser printer’ and found the site useless: the results are a mix of ads, low-quality referral roundups (‘click to see price!’) and incoherent nonsense he suspects is procedurally generated.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Sky News: Facial recognition company Clearview AI fined £7.5m for illegally using images of Brits scraped from online. “Facial recognition company Clearview AI has been fined more than £7.5m by the UK’s privacy watchdog for collecting the facial images of people in Britain from the web and social media.”

The Verge: Google will start distributing a security-vetted collection of open-source software libraries. “Google announced a new initiative Tuesday aimed at securing the open-source software supply chain by curating and distributing a security-vetted collection of open-source packages to Google Cloud customers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

PsyPost: New research links deepfake pornography to psychopathic tendencies. “New research provides evidence that psychopathic personality traits are associated with the creation and dissemination of deepfake pornography. The findings have been published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.”

NewsWise: Body cameras, live streaming bring search and rescue into the next generation. “New digital tools developed and tested at Simon Fraser University have the potential to revolutionize wilderness search and rescue efforts. Developed at the SFU School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT), the RescueCASTR system equips rescuers with 360-degree body cameras that send video and photos back live to a central command post.” Good morning, Internet…

May 24, 2022 at 05:27PM
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Monday, May 23, 2022

Asian Studies Digital Collection, NextDoor, Apple, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 23, 2022

Asian Studies Digital Collection, NextDoor, Apple, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, May 23, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

NEW RESOURCES

Georgia Southern University: Georgia Southern launches Asian Studies Digital collection, celebrates Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month in May. “The archive provides a curated collection of multidisciplinary resources in support of the Asian American and Pacific Islander community in the United States. Contributions are curated from Digital Commons, the University’s open-access institutional repository, and highlight Georgia Southern’s scholarly and cultural assets related to the Asian Studies minor. The collection represents faculty and student research, books, videos, community resources and campus events.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

BusinessWire: Nextdoor announces first API partnership with Microsoft to deliver hyperlocal neighborhood content to users (PRESS RELEASE). “Going forward, trending public posts from Nextdoor will be integrated directly into Microsoft properties, delivering engaging local neighborhood content to Microsoft users in the United States. For example, people using Microsoft Bing, Microsoft Start Feed, or MSN in their preferred city will be able to view Nextdoor content for that specific area.”

TechCrunch: Apple adds live captions to iPhone and Mac, plus more accessibility upgrades to come. “Apple has released a bevy of new accessibility features for iPhone, Apple Watch and Mac, including a universal live captioning tool, improved visual and auditory detection modes, and iOS access to WatchOS apps. The new capabilities will arrive ‘later this year’ as updates roll out to various platforms.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: How to Create Stories on TikTok. “Previously popularized by apps such as Instagram and Snapchat, Stories has now made it to TikTok. A new update now allows users of the video-focused social networking service to post images and videos that will stay on the app for 24 hours before being deleted. This article shows how you can get started with your first Story on TikTok.”

Engadget: The best online resources for cooking at all skill levels. “Be it beginner how-tos or deep-dive YouTube videos, we hope this list of Engadget staff favorites will get you started on your path to culinary confidence. Oh, and if you’re ever confused about measurements, a tool like this recipe converter is a good reference to keep on your bookmarks tab.” Let me recommend https://www.youtube.com/c/BerylShereshewsky as another cooking channel. Beryl Shereshewsky tries recipes crowdsourced from all over the world and presents it all with a friendly, kind vibe. Happy little foods.

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Voxy (New Zealand): Twenty-eight publishers join NPA’s collective bargaining with Google and Facebook. “Twenty-eight publishers have to date chosen to join the News Publishers’ Association’s (NPA) collective bargaining initiative to seek fair payment from Google and Facebook for the use of Kiwi journalism on their platforms. The diverse group of publishers employ New Zealand journalists across more than 100 titles, providing valuable national and local news to the community.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

PC Magazine: Google: A Spyware Company Exploited 5 Chrome, Android Zero-Days in 2021. “One spyware company exploited at least five zero-day vulnerabilities—four in the Chrome browser and one in the Android operating system—throughout 2021, according to Google. The company’s Threat Analysis Group (TAG) says the spyware maker in question is a North Macedonian firm known as Cytrox.”

TorrentFreak: Bogus DMCA Notices Sent to Google By Fake Google….To Protect Google?. “If the title of this article has caused any confusion, please direct any blame towards the architects of some of the most absurd DMCA abuses of recent times. People with an apparent interest in delisting Android APK sites are sending bogus DMCA notices in Google’s name, ostensibly to protect Google’s rights. Who are they sending them to? Google, of course.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Ars Technica: Citizen scientists help discover more than 1,000 new asteroids. “On International Asteroid Day in 2019, a group of research institutions launched a program that could make a deep impact on our knowledge of the diminutive bodies. Using citizen science to train a machine-learning algorithm, the Hubble Asteroid Hunter project identified more than 1,000 new asteroids; the discoveries could help scientists better understand the ring of heavenly bodies that primarily float between Mars and Jupiter.”

CNET: VR Exercise Games Could Offer Hope for Delaying Dementia. “Virtual reality exergaming has exploded in popularity in recent years, with more people getting a workout by using PlayStation VR or Oculus headsets and playing games like Beat Saber and Supernatural. Less known is the impact VR exergaming may have on improving cognitive function in older adults. Growing research, however, suggests VR exergaming, or ‘gamercising,’ may help slow cognitive decline, which could have a major impact on the health and quality of life for seniors.” Good afternoon, Internet…

May 24, 2022 at 12:34AM
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Facebook Update, May 23, 2022

Facebook Update, May 23, 2022
By ResearchBuzz

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Meta freezes hiring for shopping team, Messenger Kids, and other products. “Meta is pulling back its investments in a number of products, including the teams it spun up early in the pandemic to compete with Zoom and build shopping features, The Verge has learned. In addition to a hiring freeze for certain engineering roles, the company also recently paused the hiring of recruiters and low-level data scientists.”

New York Times: Meta to give researchers more information on political ad targeting.. “Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said that it planned to give outside researchers more detailed information on how political ads are targeted across its platform, providing insight into the ways that politicians, campaign operatives and political strategists buy and use ads ahead of the midterm elections.”

CNET: Facebook and Instagram Turn Off AR Filters In Texas and Illinois. “Meta has turned off augmented reality filters for Facebook and Instagram in Texas and Illinois due to facial recognition and privacy laws in those states.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New York Times: Buffalo gunman’s video is surfacing on Facebook, sometimes with ads beside it.. “People searching on Facebook for footage of Saturday’s racist shooting rampage in Buffalo, N.Y., may have come across posts with footage of the attack or links to websites promising the gunman’s full video. Interspersed between those posts, they may have also seen a variety of ads. The social network has sometimes served ads next to posts offering clips of the video, which a gunman live streamed on the video platform Twitch as he killed 10 people.”

CNET: Meta Doesn’t Want Employees to Discuss Abortion at Work, Report Says. “Meta employees have been told not to discuss abortion on Workplace, the company’s internal version of Facebook, The Verge reported Friday. An executive apparently said doing so could lead to the company being seen a ‘hostile work environment’ following the leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion indicating that the court will overturn Roe v. Wade next month.”

CNET: Facebook Says Content Was Mistakenly Pulled Down Because of a Bug. “Facebook parent company Meta said Tuesday that a bug resulted in content getting mistakenly pulled down in the first three months of this year. The social media giant said it fixed the problem and restored posts that were incorrectly flagged for violating its rules, including against terrorism and organized hate.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: The midterms are here. Critics say Facebook is already behind.. “Republican congressional candidate Joe Kent recently claimed ‘rampant voter fraud’ in the 2020 election in an ad on Facebook — a misinformation problem Facebook has tried to correct. The ad, which ran in mid-May as part of the Donald Trump-endorsed candidate’s race to win Washington state’s 3rd District, was one of several by the campaign to go undetected by Facebook’s system designed to remove false claims that the election results are invalid, according to a Washington Post analysis of Facebook’s ad library.”

Washington Post: Facebook quietly bankrolled small, grassroots groups to fight its battles in Washington. “Backed by millions from Facebook-parent company Meta, American Edge has launched a full-throated campaign to combat antitrust legislation in Washington, placing op-eds in regional papers throughout the country, commissioning studies, and collaborating with a surprising array of partners, including minority business associations, conservative think tanks, and former national security officials. It’s a political playbook more common to other industries, including pharmaceuticals, tobacco and telecommunications. But tech companies, under heightened scrutiny from federal regulators, are seizing on these methods. (Meta also paid a GOP consulting firm to malign TikTok, The Post reported in March.)”

TechCrunch: Meta faces years of tougher antitrust oversight in Germany. “Facebook’s rebranded parent, Meta, has become the next tech giant to be confirmed as subject to a special competition abuse control regime in Germany, following a 2021 update to its digital competition rules that are focused on large digital companies which are considered to be of ‘paramount significance for competition across markets’, as the law puts it. The designation, which stands for five years, empowers the regulator, the Federal Cartel Office (FCO), to take faster action to respond to competition concerns linked to Meta’s operations by imposing operational conditions intended to correct antitrust abuses.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Facebook Dating was set to take over the market – instead it was dead in the water. “As an online dating technology researcher, I had an eye on Facebook Dating since its announcement. But as I never heard anything about its market success, it took me a while to look into it. Now, I think I have a good idea why the app failed.”

NiemanLab: What’s working for local TV stations on Facebook? Posting early, killing hashtags, skipping sports. “… what local TV stations publish on Facebook is important. They retain generally high levels of trust, and they’re reaching an audience that might not be seeking out much other news on digital platforms. That power can, of course, be used for good or for ill. It’s also the subject of a new paper which examines how local TV stations use their Facebook prominence — and what works for them in terms of making content that spreads.”

Motherboard: Facebook’s New AI System Has a ‘High Propensity’ for Racism and Bias. “Facebook and its parent company, Meta, recently released a new tool that can be used to quickly develop state-of-the-art AI. But according to the company’s researchers, the system has the same problem as its predecessors: It’s extremely bad at avoiding results that reinforce racist and sexist stereotypes.”

May 23, 2022 at 08:22PM
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