White supremacists have reportedly built a website that names, shames, and effectively promotes violence against interracial couples and families — “and it’s been circulated in some of the darkest corners of the internet, including in neo-Nazi Discord servers and accelerationist Telegram channels,” reports VICE News. An anonymous reader shares the report: The website was created in April but was taken offline…
Tag: Memes
Trump Won the Internet. Democrats Are Scrambling to Take It Back.
In the era of big data, memes and disinformation, the Democrats are trying to regain their digital edge as the president and his loyalists dictate the terms of debate. From a report: The deceptively edited video that purported to show Joseph R. Biden Jr. endorsing President Trump’s re-election bounced relentlessly around the internet, falsely painting the former vice president as too…
Twitter was once a fun place – now it is heading towards destruction
Twitter used to be full of cat memes and had a culture of sharing. Now, I pay a company to make sure my presence on the site is extremely limited, writes Annalee Newitz Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24532734-900-twitter-was-once-a-fun-place-now-it-is-heading-towards-destruction/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
‘How Wikipedia’s Volunteers Became the Web’s Best Weapon Against Misinformation’
Fast Company just published a 4,000 appreciation of Wikipedia’s volunteer editors:
[W]hile places like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter struggle to fend off a barrage of false content, with their scattershot mix of policies, fact-checkers, and algorithms, one of the web’s most robust weapons against misinformation is an archaic-looking website written by anyone with an internet connection, and moderated by a largely anonymous…
Reddit Has Become the Gospel of Personal Finance
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Quartz: If you look beyond the memes, cat videos, and quirky acronyms (TIL, OP, ELI5) you’ll find a treasure trove of resources that will help you quickly get acquainted with the topics that have long eluded you. For me, even though I worked on Wall Street for nearly 15 years, Reddit is the first…
Internal Docs Show Why the US Military Publishes North Korean and Russian Malware
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Newly released and previously secret documents explain in greater detail how, and why, a section of the U.S. military decides to publicly release a steady stream of adversarial countries’ malware, including hacking tools from North Korea and Russia. Cyber Command, or CYBERCOM, publishes the malware samples onto VirusTotal, a semi-public repository that researchers…
Russian Trolls Now Just Push Divisive Content Created By Others
“Americans don’t need Russia’s polarizing influence operations. They are plenty good enough at dividing themselves,” writes the Atlantic’s national security reporter, arguing that “the new face of Russian propaganda” is just a carefully-curated selection of inflammatory content made by Americans themselves. Citing the Mueller investigation, the article notes the irony that America’s two front-runners for the presidency are now “both candidates…
Facebook Says Political Candidates Can Use Paid Memes
Facebook said Friday that political candidates, campaigns and groups can use paid branded content across its platforms, a clarification prompted by a move from Michael Bloomberg’s campaign to pay top Instagram influencers to post memes on its behalf. Axios reports: Its policy didn’t explicitly state that it was OK for candidates to use branded content posts, but after hearing from various…
‘Rise of Skywalker’ Falls Short of Predecessors. Is the Future Streaming?
After 42 years the final installment in the 9-movie Star Wars franchise arrived this weekend during a “moment of transition for the movie business,” reports Variety: Its $176 million debut, though massive, ranks as the lowest opening of the most recent three films in the saga, falling far below 2015’s “The Force Awakens” ($248 million) and 2017’s “The Last Jedi” ($220…
Analysts, Gamers, and Blade Runner’s Artistic Director React To The Look of Tesla’s Cybertruck
Syd Mead, the artistic director on Blade Runner says Tesla’s new Cybertruck “has completely changed the vocabulary of the personal truck market design.” Or, for another perspective, “Tesla’s Cybertruck looks weird… like, really weird,” wrote Toni Sacconaghi, a senior equity research analyst at the global asset management firm AllianceBernstein. “Add a little bit of dirt, and you could even say it…