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Category: Social media

Twitter is eroding your intelligence. Now there’s data to prove it

Twitter is eroding your intelligence. Now there’s data to prove it

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The Washington Post reports: Twitter, used by 126 million people daily and now ubiquitous in some industries, has vowed to reform itself after being enlisted as a tool of misinformation and hate. But new evidence shows that the platform may be inflicting harm at an even more basic level. It could be making its users, well, a bit witless. The finding by a team of Italian researchers is not necessarily that the crush of hashtags, likes and retweets destroys brain…

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Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy

Finland is winning the war on fake news. What it’s learned may be crucial to Western democracy

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CNN reports: On a recent afternoon in Helsinki, a group of students gathered to hear a lecture on a subject that is far from a staple in most community college curriculums. Standing in front of the classroom at Espoo Adult Education Centre, Jussi Toivanen worked his way through his PowerPoint presentation. A slide titled “Have you been hit by the Russian troll army?” included a checklist of methods used to deceive readers on social media: image and video manipulations, half-truths,…

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A path for regulators to break up Facebook remains unclear

A path for regulators to break up Facebook remains unclear

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April Glaser writes: Facebook is big. Possibly too big. Which is why the chorus of experts and former Facebookers who think it’s time to break the company up is getting louder. Last Thursday, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes wrote a mammoth op-ed in the New York Times about why the company that made him very wealthy should be less powerful. In his view, the way to do that is to make the market more competitive. To do that, Hughes recommends (among…

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Trump’s social media bias reporting project is a data collection tool in disguise

Trump’s social media bias reporting project is a data collection tool in disguise

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Casey Newton writes: Three years ago this month, Mark Zuckerberg gathered together a group of influential conservatives to defend Facebook against allegations of political bias. The company had found itself under pressure after Gizmodo reported that the editors who then worked for Facebook “routinely suppressed conservative news” from its since-abandoned Trending Topics module. It hoped that a roundtable discussion with Glenn Beck, Fox News host Dana Perino, and others would quell the growing panic that Silicon Valley liberals were stifling…

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Trump administration balks at global pact to crack down on online extremism

Trump administration balks at global pact to crack down on online extremism

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The New York Times reports: The Trump administration said on Wednesday that it would not sign an international accord intended to pressure the largest internet platforms to eradicate violent and extremist content, highlighting a broader divide between the United States and other countries over government’s role in determining what content is acceptable online. Citing free speech protections, the administration said in a statement that “the United States is not currently in a position to join the endorsement.” It added that…

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Facebook busts Israel-based campaign to disrupt elections

Facebook busts Israel-based campaign to disrupt elections

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The Associated Press reports: Facebook said Thursday it banned an Israeli company that ran an influence campaign aimed at disrupting elections in various countries and has canceled dozens of accounts engaged in spreading disinformation. Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook’s head of cybersecurity policy, told reporters that the tech giant had purged 65 Israeli accounts, 161 pages, dozens of groups and four Instagram accounts. Although Facebook said the individuals behind the network attempted to conceal their identities, it discovered that many were linked…

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Should the media sever their ties to Facebook?

Should the media sever their ties to Facebook?

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Mathew Ingram writes: With all that has transpired between Facebook and the media industry over the past couple of years—the repeated algorithm changes, the head fakes about switching to video, the siphoning off of a significant chunk of the industry’s advertising revenue—most publishers approach the giant social network with skepticism, if not outright hostility. And yet, the vast majority of them continue to partner with Facebook, to distribute their content on its platform, and even accept funding and resources from…

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Now for sale on Facebook: Looted Middle Eastern antiquities

Now for sale on Facebook: Looted Middle Eastern antiquities

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The New York Times reports: Ancient treasures pillaged from conflict zones in the Middle East are being offered for sale on Facebook, researchers say, including items that may have been looted by Islamic State militants. Facebook groups advertising the items grew rapidly during the upheaval of the Arab Spring and the ensuing wars, which created unprecedented opportunities for traffickers, said Amr Al-Azm, a professor of Middle East history and anthropology at Shawnee State University in Ohio and a former antiquities…

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Co-founder of Facebook says it’s time to break up the company

Co-founder of Facebook says it’s time to break up the company

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Chris Hughes writes: The last time I saw Mark Zuckerberg was in the summer of 2017, several months before the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke. We met at Facebook’s Menlo Park, Calif., office and drove to his house, in a quiet, leafy neighborhood. We spent an hour or two together while his toddler daughter cruised around. We talked politics mostly, a little about Facebook, a bit about our families. When the shadows grew long, I had to head out. I hugged…

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Facebook gives social scientists unprecedented access to its user data

Facebook gives social scientists unprecedented access to its user data

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Nature reports: Facebook is giving social scientists unprecedented access to its data so that they can investigate how social-media platforms can influence elections and alter democracies. The first group of projects selected for funding involves more than 60 researchers split into 12 teams. They will tackle questions such as how fake news spreads, who distributes it and how to identify it. Their projects, announced on 28 April, will focus on countries including Germany, Chile, Italy and the United States. The…

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Facebook’s banning of Alex Jones and other bigots misses the real problem

Facebook’s banning of Alex Jones and other bigots misses the real problem

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April Glaser writes: [After banning Infowars, Alex Jones, Paul Joseph Watson, and other inflammatory figures like far-right personalities Laura Loomer and Milo Yiannopoulos, white supremacist politician Paul Nehlen, and Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan] Facebook didn’t share what rules specifically were violated or what the process was for reviewing its rules. Presumably, if Thursday’s actions reflect a new approach that Facebook is now taking—or at least a new sense of urgency—then far more than seven accounts would have been…

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Major media outlets’ Twitter accounts amplify false Trump claims on average 19 times a day, study finds

Major media outlets’ Twitter accounts amplify false Trump claims on average 19 times a day, study finds

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Media Matters reports: Major media outlets failed to rebut President Donald Trump’s misinformation 65% of the time in their tweets about his false or misleading comments, according to a Media Matters review. That means the outlets amplified Trump’s misinformation more than 400 times over the three-week period of the study — a rate of 19 per day. The data shows that news outlets are still failing to grapple with a major problem that media critics highlighted during the Trump transition:…

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Ignore the Poway Synagogue shooter’s manifesto: Pay attention to 8chan’s /pol/ board

Ignore the Poway Synagogue shooter’s manifesto: Pay attention to 8chan’s /pol/ board

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Robert Evans writes: On April 27, 2019, at around 11:30 a.m. local time, a young man with a semi-automatic rifle walked into the Chabad of Poway Synagogue in Poway, California. He opened fire, killing one worshipper and wounding three others. In the hours since the shooting, a manifesto, believed to be written by the shooter, began circulating online. Evidence has also surfaced that, like the Christchurch Mosque shooter, this killer began his rampage with a post on 8chan’s /pol/ board….

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Facebook fact-checker has ties to climate doubt

Facebook fact-checker has ties to climate doubt

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E&E News reports: Facebook’s newest fact-checking partner is connected to an enterprise that was founded by a conservative Fox News host and that routinely promotes climate doubt. The social media giant is partnering with CheckYourFact.com to provide third-party oversight of news on its platform, Facebook announced last week. Check Your Fact is an affiliate of The Daily Caller, the right-leaning news outlet co-founded by Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Climate scientists and advocates are worried that the new partnership means…

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How the far right spread politically convenient lies about the Notre Dame fire

How the far right spread politically convenient lies about the Notre Dame fire

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Talia Lavin writes: As a conflagration spread through the ancient timbers of Notre Dame Cathedral’s attic on Monday, a parallel fire was spreading on social media. This one was willfully set, a series of conspiracy theories neatly slotted into preexisting cultural biases. And soon enough, willing believers were aflame with hate. The conspiracy theorizing began almost as soon as the blaze did, right when people saw the shocking, transfixing video of the cathedral’s spire toppling. While French authorities began to…

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