Facebook will lift its ban on political ads on Thursday, ending a self-imposed prohibition that began immediately after the November 2020 general election and remained active for months. Politico reports: Facebook informed top political advertisers of its decision by phone and email on Wednesday, according to sources with knowledge of the announcement. The social media giant banned political and social issue-related…
Tag: social
How Worried Should You Be About Those Tom Cruise Deepfakes?
Are the TikTok deepfake videos of Tom Cruise doing magic and playing golf a threat to global democracy? Not exactly. “[T]he reality is that they took a lot of time, technical expertise, and the skilled performance of a real actor,” reports VICE News. “Rather than predicting a dark future of disinformation for the masses, they’re simply another example of what can…
Colorado Bill Seeks To Force Social Platforms To Register With the State, Impose $5k/Day Fine For Allowing ‘Fake News’ or Conspiracy Theories
michaelmalak writes: The Colorado Senate President Pro Tempore, Kerry Donovan, is the prime sponsor of SB21-132,
Digital Communications Regulation, which if passed, would fine websites $5,000 per day as a class 2 misdemeanor if they “allow” user comments that: “…promote hate speech; undermine election integrity; disseminate intentional disinformation, conspiracy theories, or fake news; or authorize, encourage, or carry out violations of users’…
The hidden rules that determine which friendships matter to us
Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar has found that our friendships are governed by secret rules, based on everything from your sex to your sleep schedule. Our unique social fingerprints help determine who we are drawn to, which friendships last and why some friends are ultimately replaceable Source: https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933240-700-the-hidden-rules-that-determine-which-friendships-matter-to-us/?utm_campaign=RSS%7CNSNS&utm_source=NSNS&utm_medium=RSS&utm_content=home…
Facebook, TikTok Least Trusted By Americans, Google Most Trusted, Says Survey
An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Forty percent of Americans don’t trust Facebook and TikTok and Google appears to be winning the trust wars, according to a survey from SeoClarity. SeoClarity surveyed 1,057 American residents to gauge trust in tech companies and found a majority of US citizens think social media companies need more regulation. The findings are notable…
China Charges Ahead With a National Digital Currency
The electronic Chinese yuan is now being tested in cities such as Shenzhen, Shanghai and Beijing. No other major power is as far along with a homegrown digital currency. From a report: Annabelle Huang recently won a government lottery to try China’s latest economics experiment: a national digital currency. After joining the lottery through the social media app WeChat, Ms. Huang,…
Did ‘Tens of Thousands’ of Bot Accounts Hype GameStop’s Stock and Dogecoin?
Reuters reports: Bots on major social media platforms have been hyping up GameStop Corp and other “meme” stocks, according to an analysis by Massachusetts-based cyber security company PiiQ Media, suggesting organized economic or foreign actors may have played a role in the Reddit-driven trading frenzy… it is unclear how influential they were in the overall saga… PiiQ said it identified very…
How Facebook Silenced an Enemy of Turkey To Prevent a Hit To the Company’s Business
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shares this report from ProPublica: As Turkey launched a military offensive against Kurdish minorities in neighboring Syria in early 2018, Facebook’s top executives faced a political dilemma. Turkey was demanding the social media giant block Facebook posts from the People’s Protection Units, a mostly Kurdish militia group the Turkish government had targeted. Should Facebook ignore the request,…
Why an Animated Flying Cat With a Pop-Tart Body Sold for Almost $600,000
In the 10 years since Chris Torres created Nyan Cat, an animated flying cat with a Pop-Tart body leaving a rainbow trail, the meme has been viewed and shared across the web hundreds of millions of times. On Thursday, he put a one-of-a-kind version of it up for sale on Foundation, a website for buying and selling digital goods. In the…
Twitter Announces Paid Super Follows To Let You Charge For Tweets
Twitter announced a pair of big upcoming features today: the ability for users to charge their followers for access to additional content, and the ability to create and join groups based around specific interests. From a report: They’re two of the more substantial changes to Twitter in a while, but they also fit snugly into models that have been popular and…