Facebook User Verifies Truth Of Article By Carefully Checking It Against Own Preconceived Opinions
Posted: December 1, 2016 Filed under: Censorship, Education, Entertainment, Humor, Mediasphere | Tags: Facebook, Google, journalism, LinkedIn, Marketing, media, news, News satire, Parody, satire, Snapchat, Social media, Social network, Twitter Leave a comment
“You can’t just accept everything you see online, which is why I always take a closer look at the claims that are made in every article and make sure that each one of them is backed up by my existing assumptions and personal feelings about the world.”
CLARKSVILLE, TN—Explaining that people need to be critical of the news stories that circulate on social media these days, area Facebook user James Wheatley, 44, reportedly took the time to verify the truth of an article he came across Thursday by carefully checking it against the opinions he already holds.
“There are all kinds of bogus news stories out there, so it’s important to take a step back and hold each article up against my personal convictions to find out for myself whether what I’m reading is true or not. It’s pretty sad, but once I got in the habit of looking at articles this way, I could see just how many awful sites there are on the internet that don’t even adhere to the most basic tenets of my individual worldview, so now I just disregard them completely.”
“You can’t just accept everything you see online, which is why I always take a closer look at the claims that are made in every article and make sure that each one of them is backed up by my existing assumptions and personal feelings about the world,” said Wheatley, who told reporters he had to correct several friends on Facebook earlier this week after an investigation of his beliefs and individual political perspectives proved the articles they had posted to be entirely false. Read the rest of this entry »
Twitter Boasts of Expanding Effort to Extract Money from Its Users’ Data
Posted: October 22, 2015 Filed under: Global, Mediasphere, Science & Technology, U.S. News | Tags: Campaign finance, Chris Sacca, Facebook, Jack Dorsey, Jim McKelvey, Monthly Active Users, San Francisco, Social network, Square, Twitter Leave a comment
Twitter unveils initiatives aimed at making money from its users’ data and behavior.
Tom Simonite writes: Social networks have two faces. One trumpets a heartwarming message about making the world a better place by connecting people. The other has a gimlet-eyed focus on extracting value from the data of those people. Today Twitter flaunted its mercenary side.
“He cited the Black Lives Matter movement as an example of how ‘Twitter stands for speaking truth to power’—and then handed over to executives who introduced new products with a commercial focus.”
The social network is under fire from investors worried that not enough people use its service to support a large business—each month over one billion more people use rival Facebook than use 
Twitter.
“We’re the largest searchable archive of human thought, that’s public, that’s ever existed.”
— Chris Moody, Twitter’s vice president for data strategy
At an event for software developers in San Francisco, recently returned CEO Jack Dorsey introduced several new initiatives aimed at making money from data on Twitter users and their activity. Partners such as Target and Hilton chipped in with endorsements of the value of information juiced from people who use the social network.
Dorsey opened today’s event with a paean to Twitter’s idealistic side. “Twitter stands for freedom of expression and we will not rest until that’s recognized as a universal human right,” he said. He cited the Black Lives Matter movement as an example of how “Twitter stands for speaking truth to power”—and then handed over to executives who introduced new products with a commercial focus. Read the rest of this entry »
TV’s Leftover Cornflakes: Advertisers Have Lost the Attention of a Generation
Posted: June 19, 2014 Filed under: Entertainment, Mediasphere, Science & Technology | Tags: Advertising, Communication, iPhone, media, Michael Skapinker, Millennials, Mobile phone, Social network, Teens, Television Leave a comment
“In a generation, we have shifted from parents trying to stop teenagers slumping in front of the TV to young people losing all interest in the box.”
“U.S. teens are so occupied with social networks and mobile video that they watch only about 21 hours of broadcast TV a week.”
M.I.T. Meets Tumblr: The Anatomy of a Forgotten Social Network
Posted: April 2, 2014 Filed under: Entertainment, Science & Technology | Tags: Chang, Facebook, Social network, Tumblr, Twitter, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Yichang 1 CommentWhile network scientists have been poring over data from Twitter and Facebook, they’ve forgotten about Tumblr. Now they’ve begun to ask how this network differs from the rest.
“One interesting question is whether Tumblr more closely resembles a blogosphere network than a microblogging network like that of Twitter.”
But in the rush, one network has been more or less ignored by researchers: Tumblr, a microblogging platform similar to Twitter. So an interesting question is how the network associated with Tumblr is different from the Twitter network.
Today we get an answer thanks to the work of Yi Chang and pals at Yahoo Labs in Sunnyvale. These guys point out that relatively little is known about Tumblr compared to other networks like Twitter and set out to change this.
The basic statistics are straightforward. Tumblr is a microblogging service with about 160 million users who together have published over 70 billion posts.
Beheading Videos Are Now Okay on Facebook
Posted: October 21, 2013 Filed under: Censorship, Mediasphere | Tags: BBC, Decapitation, Facebook, Family Online Safety Institute, Google, May, Social network, YouTube 2 Comments
Facebook has lifted a ban on beheading videos, establishing a policy that allows the graphic videos to remain on the site so long as they are not celebrated by the people posting them.
The social network, which allows anyone 13 and older to become a member, issued a temporary ban on the beheading videos in May, following complaints from the Family Online Safety Institute. Under the new policy, images that “glorify violence” as well as those depicting a woman’s “fully exposed breast” will still be banned, the BBC reports. Beheading videos—many of those in circulation online are staged—are still viewable elsewhere on the Internet, including Google’s YouTube, but critics fear that making them accessible on Facebook to younger users increases the likelihood that teens will encounter psychologically scarring images. [BBC] TIME.com
Twitter’s New “Verified” Filter Lets Celebs Screen Out the Non-Celebs, and Dish Among Them-Beautiful-Selves
Posted: September 12, 2013 Filed under: Entertainment, Mediasphere | Tags: celebrity, Facebook, Initial public offering, Jimmy Kimmel, Online Communities, Social network, TechCrunch, Twitter, twitter.com Leave a comment
Josh Constine writes: Life is hard for famous people. You’re trying to @ reply with your celebrity friends on Twitter, but the conversation gets drowned out by rabid fans and spammers mentioning you. So Twitter’s begun rolling out to people with verified profiles two new filters for the Connect tab. Filtered, which attempts to cut down spam, and Verified, which only shows interactions with other verified profiles. Read the rest of this entry »
