Day archives: October 30th, 2024

Vanishing Culture: A Report on Our Fragile Cultural Record

Internet Archives Blogs: “In today’s digital landscape, corporate interests, shifting distribution models, and malicious cyber attacks are threatening public access to our shared cultural history. The rise of streaming platforms and temporary licensing agreements means that sound recordings, books, films, and other cultural artifacts that used to be owned in physical form, are now at …

Subjects: Censorship, Civil Liberties, Copyright, Education, Internet, Knowledge Management, Libraries, Search Engines, Social Media

Librarians Face a Crisis of Violence and Abuse

The New York Times [unpaywalled] – As libraries become public stages for social problems – homelessness, drug use, mental health – the people who work there are burning out: “…Like Mr. [Mychal] Threets. [a supervisor at the Fairfield Civic Center Library in Solano County, Calif], librarians around the country are struggling to reconcile their desire …

Subjects: Civil Liberties, Education, Health Care, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research

Exploiting Meta’s Weaknesses, Deceptive Political Ads Thrived on Facebook and Instagram in Run-Up to Election

ProPublica: Reporting Highlights Deceptive Political Ads: Eight deceptive advertising networks have placed over 160,000 election and social issues ads across more than 340 Facebook pages in English and Spanish. Harmed Users: Some of the people who clicked on ads were unwittingly signed up for monthly credit card charges or lost health coverage, among other consequences. …

Subjects: AI, E-Commerce, Health Care, Internet, Knowledge Management, Legal Research, Social Media

Prebunking Elections Rumors: Artificial Intelligence Assisted Interventions Increase Confidence in American Elections

Mitchell Linegar, arXiv:2410.19202. 24 Oct 2024 – Large Language Models (LLMs) can assist in the prebunking of election misinformation. Using results from a preregistered two-wave experimental study of 4,293 U.S. registered voters conducted in August 2024, we show that LLM-assisted prebunking significantly reduced belief in specific election myths,with these effects persisting for at least one …

Subjects: AI, Congress, Internet, Knowledge Management

What is Causing Our Epidemic of Loneliness and How Can We Fix It?

Harvard Graduate School of Education – Researchers share what Americans have to say about social disconnection and potential solutions – “U.S. surgeon general Vivek Murthy placed a spotlight on America’s problem with loneliness when he declared the issue an epidemic last year. Murthy explained, in a letter that introduced an urgent advisory, that loneliness is …

Subjects: Education, Health Care