Ars Technica: “Glassdoor, where employees go to leave anonymous reviews of employers, has recently begun adding real names to user profiles without users’ consent, a Glassdoor user named Monica was shocked to discover last week. “Time to delete your Glassdoor account and data,” Monica, a Midwest-based software professional, warned other Glassdoor users in a blog.… Continue Reading
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Category Archives: Social Media
VLOGGER: Multimodal Diffusion for Embodied Avatar Synthesis
Google: “We propose VLOGGER, a method for text and audio-driven talking human video generation from a single input image of a person, which builds on the success of recent generative diffusion models. Our method consists of 1) a stochastic human-to-3d-motion diffusion model, and 2) a novel diffusion based architecture that augments text-to-image models with both… Continue Reading
Online Hate and Harassment: The American Experience 2023
ADL Report on online hate and harassment – “Over the past year, online hate and harassment rose sharply for adults and teens ages 13-17. Among adults, 52% reported being harassed online in their lifetime, the highest number we have seen in four years, up from 40% in 2022. Both adults and teens also reported being… Continue Reading
Fact-opinion differentiation
Misinformation Review – paper by Matthew Mettler & Jeffery J. Mondak: “Statements of fact can be proved or disproved with objective evidence, whereas statements of opinion depend on personal values and preferences. Distinguishing between these types of statements contributes to information competence. Conversely, failure at fact-opinion differentiation potentially brings resistance to corrections of misinformation and… Continue Reading
You Can Now Hide Your Phone Number on Signal
Lifehacker: “Signal is one of the best messaging apps for people who value privacy, but its biggest criticism was that it used your phone number to register and message other people. The company has now addressed that flaw and your phone number is now hidden by default in Signal. You should still take a moment… Continue Reading
State of Journalism 2024
Executive summary – read the full report Funding and Trust: About one-third of journalists express concerns about lack of funding and trust in journalism, consistent with last year’s findings. Employment Trends: More than one-third report layoffs or buyouts, with 30% turning to LinkedIn for job opportunities. Over half prefer a hybrid work arrangement, yet many… Continue Reading
Everything You Need to Know About Facebook Marketplace Scams
AARP: “…It’s difficult to gauge the extent of the risk. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, hasn’t disclosed how many complaints it’s received about scammers or how many it’s taken action against, though from July to September 2023 alone, the website removed 827 million fake Facebook accounts, according to a Meta spokesperson. However, the BBB’s Scam Tracker… Continue Reading
New Study Unveils Strategies to Combat Disinformation Wars on Social Media
Brookings Center on Regulation and Markets working paper. (Dis)information wars. Adrian Casillas, Maryam Farboodi, Layla Hashemi, Maryam Saeedi, and Steven Wilson.February 29, 2024. “With the unprecedented rise of internet access across the globe, social media platforms have emerged as prominent vehicles for displaying dissent. In response, numerous entities engage in spreading fake news on these platforms.… Continue Reading
Inside the World of TikTok Spammers and the AI Tools That Enable Them
404 Media: “At 404 Media we have tried very hard to make our content the old-fashioned way, but, after watching an Instagram Reel that suggested we could get wildly rich with no effort, I decided to dive into the exciting world of creating spam by recycling other people’s content using basic AI tools. We have recently… Continue Reading
Gendered disinformation and social networks
Revisión Crítica de Jurisprudencia y Gobernanza. Oxford University Press and New York University School of Law. Gendered disinformation and social networks. Argelia Queralt Jiménez. March 2024. https://doi.org/10.1093/icon/moad094, “The subject of this article is gender-based disinformation on social networks. This type of disinformation is identified with those contents that circulate on networks with the aim of… Continue Reading
Everything you need to know to prepare for the EU’s AI Act
sifted: “EU lawmakers finally came to an agreement on the AI Act at the end of 2023 — a piece of legislation that had been in the works for years to regulate artificial intelligence and prevent misuses of the technology. Now the text is going through a series of votes before it becomes EU law… Continue Reading
Facts Not Fakes: Tackling Disinformation, Strengthening Information Integrity
“More action needed to tackle disinformation and enhance transparency of online platforms: OECD. 04/03/2024 – As roughly half the world’s population prepares to vote in elections, a new OECD report offers the first baseline assessment of how OECD countries are upgrading their governance measures to support an environment where reliable information can thrive, prioritising freedom… Continue Reading
