Pinboard (jm)
https://pinboard.in/u:jm/public/
recent bookmarks from jmThe EU should support Ireland’s bold move to regulate Big Tech2024-01-04T11:49:17+00:00
https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4380369-the-eu-should-support-irelands-bold-move-to-regulate-big-tech/
jm
...a simple, easily enforceable rule that could change the game: All recommender systems based on intimately profiling people should be turned off by default. In practice, that means that the big platforms cannot automatically run algorithms that use information about a person’s political views, sex life, health or ethnicity. A person will be able to switch an algorithm on, but those toxic algorithms will no longer be on by default. Users will still have access to algorithmic amplification, but they will have to opt in to get it.
Great idea. The toxicity driven by "personalized feeds" has been extremely harmful.]]>cnm regulation ireland tech personalisation algorithmic-feeds tiktok instagram facebook twitter social-mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:aece7c98ad57/good thread on the toxicity of "engagement" as a metric2022-11-22T09:47:13+00:00
https://mastodon.social/@danluu/109383845633490300
jmAt a meta level, something I find mildly interesting is how many people [jm: ex-Twitter staff specifically] are writing stuff on Mastodon about how it's impossible for Mastodon to scale up without using an ad supported model (b/c server costs), it's better to have ranked feeds because most people want them, etc.
The thing I think is interesting is that the people writing this stuff, implicitly, seemingly cannot conceive of a model where the organization is not growth and profit maximizing.
]]>engagement twitter social-media metrics kpis mastodon profit capitalismhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b884b503a471/OnlyFans Bribed Meta to Put Thousands of Adult Entertainers on Terrorist Watch List, Lawsuits Allege2022-08-11T10:17:23+00:00
https://jezebel.com/onlyfans-bribed-meta-to-put-thousands-of-adult-entertai-1849396107
jmporn onlyfans social-media blocklists blocking youtube meta terrorism gifcthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:bdb46586df8c/Pandemic Communication Without Argumentative Strategy in the Digital Age: A Cautionary Tale and a Call to Arms2022-07-11T17:14:20+00:00
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-91017-4_8
jmThe Covid-19 pandemic has offered some notable examples of how public communication may backfire, in spite of the best intentions of the actors involved, and what role poor argumentative design plays in such failures, in the context of the current digital media ecology. In this chapter, I offer some preliminary considerations on the ongoing struggle to make sense of the new communication technologies in our media reality, analyze a concrete example of argumentative failure in anti-Covid vaccine communication in the European Union, and leverage this case study to issue a call to arms to argumentation scholars: argumentative competence is sorely needed for an effective response to the pandemic, yet argumentation theory will need to join forces with other areas of expertise to realize its societal impact. When it comes to arguments, self-isolation is not a viable strategy to fight Covid-19.
]]>memes social-media medicine public-health argumentation communication covid-19 societyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:acf09c3ff457/Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid - The Atlantic2022-04-19T10:19:14+00:00
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/05/social-media-democracy-trust-babel/629369/
jmWhat changed in the 2010s? [..] A mean tweet doesn’t kill anyone; it is an attempt to shame or punish someone publicly while broadcasting one’s own virtue, brilliance, or tribal loyalties. It’s more a dart than a bullet, causing pain but no fatalities. Even so, from 2009 to 2012, Facebook and Twitter passed out roughly 1 billion dart guns globally. We’ve been shooting one another ever since.
]]>communication culture democracy politics social-media facebook twitter trollshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:06a2ad42f8ab/Tek Fog in Action2022-01-17T16:25:53+00:00
https://thewire.in/tekfog/en/3.html
jmindia tek-fog grim-meathook-future spam abuse harassment bjp politics social-mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7ee86a922a76/Facebook prioritized ‘angry’ emoji reaction posts in news feeds - The Washington Post2021-10-27T08:47:52+00:00
https://archive.md/ilW8S#selection-777.0-781.1
jmfacebook hate anger negativity metrics kpis optimization engagement social-mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:fcdf81881de7/Identity verification would not help racist abuse on Twitter2021-08-11T09:08:12+00:00
https://blog.twitter.com/en_gb/topics/company/2020/combatting-online-racist-abuse-an-update-following-the-euros
jmanonymity abuse racism twitter social-media id-verificationhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:1346b1d20c20/Twitter Nazi methodology2020-10-09T09:41:15+00:00
https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/952335944291528704
jmscreamers soldiers nazis twitter social-media harassmenthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8b0b969c1f53/"Internet folklorist" tracks down the origins of a "heart shaped honeycomb" meme2020-06-17T09:38:27+00:00
https://twitter.com/byrnesong/status/1273040654831058944
jm'The things that come up are really funny from how bees have "artistic sensibilities" to bees creating that shape "to increase airflow". I've seen companies using it in their websites and so many claiming it came out of their hive somewhere in the world. I used this board, routed in the slots... a rush job I'll admit... waxed in some foundation strips into the slots and screwed inside a deep langstroth hive lid and stuck it on the hive. The bees made do best they could...
The lines are slots into which a foundation wax with the comb pattern on it can be placed...secured with melted beeswax. Normally...a sheet...to guide the bees as to where to build. So they just come across this weird pattern of foundation strip and start building onto it.
After that they just fill it out best they can. It's a simple manipulation. The bees are Capensis. The honey was most likely early season succulent type plant called a 'vygie'.
I called the image 'a sweet heart' dedicated to my wife...per the very first post of it on my Facebook page in 2013.'
]]>beekeeping hives honey honeycomb history folklore facebook social-media brian-fanner beeshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:223dabfe2d81/'What are we doing this for?': Doctors are fed up with conspiracies ravaging ERs2020-05-07T15:51:51+00:00
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/what-are-we-doing-doctors-are-fed-conspiracies-ravaging-ers-n1201446?fbclid=IwAR0DSbMLOjzWRfkx-cMqDI--4vjsWm6jMxrW8QcAHm7dASP9_wCWtglN-uc
jmWhitney Phillips, a assistant professor of communications who studies the spread of disinformation at Syracuse University, said the coronavirus outbreak offers a look at how conspiracy thinking is now, in some ways, more organized.
"With conspiracy theories, the reason they're impervious to fact-checking is that they have become a way of being in the world for believers," Phillips said. "It isn't just one narrative that you can debunk. It is a holistic way of being in the world that has been reinforced by all the other bulls--- that these platforms have allowed people to consume for years."
]]>conspiracy-theories facebook social-media covid-19 conspiracies stupid twitterhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:8cf242a52c0b/Carl T. Bergstrom on Twitter2020-03-26T21:52:46+00:00
https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status/1243252341756669953
jmthe fight against misinformation is not merely a scientific communication issue. It's a vital public health necessity. [...] In all the years of studying infectious disease and planning for this day, I never dreamed that when it came I'd be opposed by my own federal government, a non-trivial fraction of my fellow citizens, and as yet undetermined fraction of hostile foreign actors.
]]>disinformation misinformation propaganda trump covid-19 scicomm science public-health social-media twitter pandemicshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5e4c198d44e7/Kashmiri cops filed a case against people using VPN and social media2020-02-19T16:25:50+00:00
https://thenextweb.com/in/2020/02/18/kashmiri-cops-filed-a-case-against-people-using-vpn-and-social-media/
jmvpns future grim-meathook-future politics censorship india kashmir social-mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:40eb2067c638/You can't say that! Policing the long tail of public opinion on Facebook2020-02-13T14:59:57+00:00
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/you-cant-say-that-policing-the-long-tail-of-public-opinion-on-facebook-tickets-92904081609
jmPresented by Tech Won’t Build It Ireland and School of Multidisciplinary Technology TU Dublin and the TU Dublin Critical Media Literacy Group:
Social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter employ around 100,000 people worldwide to vet content posted by their users - online bullying, hate speech, extreme violence, pornography, fake news, and worse. Most content moderators are employed by third-party companies who provide services to the major Internet companies.
Thousands of those content moderators are based here in Ireland. It’s becoming increasingly clear that many moderators experience trauma and PTSD as a result of the volume of disturbing content that they’re exposed to, often without adequate preparation or support from their employer. In late January this year, one contractor (Accenture) even asked employees to sign a document acknowledging the risk of PTSD, and making them individually responsible for dealing with it.
Two groups of current and former employees are suing Facebook over this issue, in both California and Ireland. Chris Gray is the lead plaintiff in the case against Facebook and contractor Cpl Resources that is now going through the Irish High Court.
Chris will walk us through how content moderation works, how moderators are trained, conditions on the job, and how moderators make decisions. He will tell us about the psychological impact of this work, and his experience taking a legal case against his former employer Facebook, one of the world’s largest technology companies.
We’ll also discuss the tradeoffs between free speech, hate speech, censorship and fake news; and the role of regulation versus corporate responsibility for content on Internet platforms.
]]>facebook google content-moderation chris-gray social-media media twitter moderation vetting ptsd workhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:4442027eb6b0/Twitter Likes Deleter2020-02-03T14:41:28+00:00
http://twitter-likes-deleter.glitch.me/
jmlikes twitter social-media snooping via:anildash privacyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:911668910adf/Facebook Ad Library Showed Just How Unreliable Facebook’s Security System For Elections Is2020-01-15T14:17:45+00:00
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rorysmith/the-uk-election-showed-just-how-unreliable-facebooks
jmOn Dec. 10, just two days before the United Kingdom went to the polls, some 74,000 political advertisements vanished from Facebook’s Ad Library, a website that serves as an archive of political and issue ads run on the platform. [....]
Facebook has said it will not fact-check political ads or restrict the ability for campaigns to target people. Instead, it said it will provide transparency with tools like the Ad Library, the Ad Library report, and the Ad Library API, so the public, researchers, and journalists can monitor how elections play out on the platform. But that only works to the degree that those tools operate properly. It was only the news media’s reporting that brought the issue out into the open.
“The fact that they could have an outage like this that went up to the day before an election, and they didn’t really publicly communicate,” Laura Edelson, a computer scientist at NYU whose work involves using the API, told BuzzFeed News, “that’s just not how you treat a security system. That’s what this is — this is a security system for elections.”
]]>facebook ads politics uk-politics transparency microtargeting social-mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:038ab9c5b5af/Disinformation For Hire: How A New Breed Of PR Firms Is Selling Lies Online2020-01-09T17:12:52+00:00
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/disinformation-for-hire-black-pr-firms
jmIf disinformation in 2016 was characterized by Macedonian spammers pushing pro-Trump fake news and Russian trolls running rampant on platforms, 2020 is shaping up to be the year communications pros for hire provide sophisticated online propaganda operations to anyone willing to pay. Around the globe, politicians, parties, governments, and other clients hire what is known in the industry as “black PR” firms to spread lies and manipulate online discourse.
A BuzzFeed News review — which looked at account takedowns by platforms that deactivated and investigations by security and research firms — found that since 2011, at least 27 online information operations have been partially or wholly attributed to PR or marketing firms. Of those, 19 occurred in 2019 alone.
]]>disinformation china propaganda pr disinfo social-media marketinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:50de876c041d/Buckle Up Twitter2020-01-08T18:10:53+00:00
https://theoutline.com/post/7295/buckle-up-twitter-is-cancelled?zd=1&zi=nf5sh77k
jmI am thinking of the response to February’s “Beau Brummell invented toxic masculinity” episode, in which the 19th-century English fancy man Beau Brummell, as infamous a dandy as one can be, was “taken down” in a grueling thread which neatly encapsulated all the worst qualities of Buckle Up Twitter: bewilderingly irate, laden with a combination of baroque linguistic flourishes and performatively subversive swearing, assumption of complete ignorance on the part of the audience, fondness for the word “gaslighting,” a powerful youth pastor-like eagerness to “meet people where they are,” high likelihood that it will be retweeted by people who refer to themselves as “Scolds” in their twitter bios, strong urge to lay the blame for the ills of the 21st century firmly at the foot of a basically random actor or event, total erasure of most things that have ever happened.
]]>twitter threads bores social-media funnyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c558a8bb4f12/Sacha Baron Cohen Uses ADL Speech to Tear Apart Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook2019-11-22T10:58:32+00:00
https://www.thedailybeast.com/sacha-baron-cohen-uses-adl-speech-to-tear-apart-mark-zuckerberg-and-facebook?via=rss
jm“if Facebook were around in the 1930s, it would have allowed Hitler to post 30-second ads on his ‘solution’ to the ‘Jewish problem,’” he said. “So here’s a good standard and practice: Facebook, start fact-checking political ads before you run them, stop micro-targeted lies immediately, and when the ads are false, give back the money and don’t publish them.” [...] “if we prioritize truth over lies, tolerance over prejudice, empathy over indifference and experts over ignoramuses” then “maybe, just maybe, we can stop the greatest propaganda machine in history, we can save democracy, we can still have a place for free speech and free expression, and, most importantly, my jokes will still work.”
]]>adl sacha-baron-cohen racism facts fact-checking facebook social-media propaganda truthhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:11945ca87d99/How A Massive Facebook Scam Siphoned Millions Of Dollars From Unsuspecting Boomers2019-10-16T13:39:18+00:00
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-subscription-trap-free-trial-scam-ads-inc
jmSince 2015, Ads Inc. has made money — lots of it — by executing one of the internet’s most persistent, lucrative, and sophisticated scams: the subscription trap. The subscription trap works by tricking people into buying what they think is a single free trial of a celebrity-endorsed product. Although the customers would receive the product — which in most cases was not made by Ads Inc. itself — in reality, the celebrity has nothing to do with the offer. And in purchasing the free trial, the customer unwittingly commits to a pricey monthly subscription designed to be hard to cancel.
As for the products, a current employee described the diet and male enhancement offerings as, “the worst of the worst … China-made sawdust in a capsule.”
But the subscription trap was just one part of Ads Inc.’s shady business practices. Burke’s genius was in fusing the scam with a boiler room–style operation that relied on convincing thousands of average people to rent their personal Facebook accounts to the company, which Ads Inc. then used to place ads for its deceptive free trial offers. That strategy enabled his company to run a huge volume of misleading Facebook ads, targeting consumers all around the world in a lucrative and sophisticated enterprise, a BuzzFeed News investigation has found.
]]>facebook scams ads-inc subscriptions account-rental scammers social-mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:769f4c77ffbf/The White House is reportedly drafting an order to stop social media ‘bias’ - The Verge2019-08-08T10:32:35+00:00
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/7/20759191/white-house-trump-administration-social-media-bias-executive-order-report
jmOne shooting was apparently an act of far-right terrorism, based on an anti-immigrant screed posted online. There was a fine line between its rhetoric and the views of major conservative figures like Tucker Carlson or Trump himself. Preemptively flagging the shooter — or one of several far-right killers before him — could have looked like egregious anti-conservative bias. And since predictive AI has sky-high error rates, it would probably catch a lot of non-violent conservative accounts (alongside those of non-conservatives) purely by accident. That’s already a recipe for a PR disaster, and it gets even dicier if Trump adds new legal punishments.
(via JK)]]>filtering ai terrorism far-right fascism nazis trump twitter social-mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3fe0493a26e9/Jigsaw Bought a Russian Twitter Troll Campaign as an Experiment2019-06-13T16:33:50+00:00
https://www.wired.com/story/jigsaw-russia-disinformation-social-media-stalin-alphabet/
jm"Let's say I want to wage a disinformation campaign to attack a political opponent or a company, but I don’t have the infrastructure to create my own Internet Research Agency," Gully told WIRED in an interview, speaking publicly about Jigsaw's year-old disinformation experiment for the first time. "We wanted to see if we could engage with someone who was willing to provide this kind of assistance to a political actor ... to buy services that directly discredit their political opponent for very low cost and with no tooling or resources required. For us, it’s a pretty clear demonstration these capabilities exist, and there are actors comfortable doing this on the internet."
it cost just $250.]]>disinformation fakes disinfo fake-news russia trolls jigsaw social-mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:47436354b2d3/We Built A Broken Internet. Now We Need To Burn It To The Ground.2019-04-01T21:12:47+00:00
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mikemonteiro/we-built-a-broken-internet-now-we-need-to-burn-it
jmThe promise of the internet was that it was going to give voice to the voiceless, visibility to the invisible, and power to the powerless. That’s what originally excited me about it. That’s what originally excited a ton of people about it. It was supposed to be an engine of equality. Suddenly, everyone could tell their story. Suddenly, everyone could sing their song. Suddenly, that one weird kid in Helena, Montana, could find another weird kid just like them in Bakersfield, California, and they could talk and know they weren’t alone. Suddenly, we didn’t need anybody’s permission to publish. We put our stories and songs and messages and artwork where the world could find them. For a while it was beautiful, it was messy, and it was punk as fuck. We all rolled up our sleeves and helped to build it.
We were the ones who were supposed to guide it there, and we failed. We failed because we were naive enough to believe everyone had the same goals we did. We failed because we underestimated greed. We failed because we didn’t pay attention to history. We failed because our definition of we wasn’t big enough.
We designed and built platforms that undermined democracy across the world. We designed and built technology that is used to round up immigrants and refugees and put them in cages. We designed and built platforms that young, stupid, hateful men use to demean and shame women. We designed and built an entire industry that exploits the poor in order to make old rich men even richer.
]]>design ethics internet web twitter social-mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:4b0be05e86cf/Ash Sarkar on how to counter the new right2019-03-15T17:00:45+00:00
https://twitter.com/AyoCaesar/status/1106484542058180609
jmalt-right fascism media politics internet social-media twitter reddit ash-sarkarhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:f02ead9b62c7/The Soothing Promise of Our Own Artisanal Internet | WIRED2019-02-17T12:23:54+00:00
https://www.wired.com/story/soothing-promise-our-own-artisanal-internet/
jmfacebook twitter internet web social-media mastodon fediverse anil-dashhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:43e0287d8d85/Troy Hunt: The Effectiveness of Publicly Shaming Bad Security2018-09-11T20:49:16+00:00
https://www.troyhunt.com/the-effectiveness-of-publicly-shaming-bad-security/
jmNow I don't know how much of this change was due to my public shaming of their security posture, maybe they were going to get their act together afterward anyway. Who knows. However, what I do know for sure is that I got this DM from someone not long after that post got media attention (reproduced with their permission):
Hi Troy, I just want to say thanks for your blog post on the Natwest HTTPS issue you found that the BBC picked up on. I head up the SEO team at a Media agency for a different bank and was hitting my head against a wall trying to communicate this exact thing to them after they too had a non secure public site separate from their online banking. The quote the BBC must have asked from them prompted the change to happen overnight, something their WebDev team assured me would cost hundreds of thousands of pounds and at least a year to implement! I was hitting my head against the desk for 6 months before that so a virtual handshake of thanks from my behalf! Thanks!
]]>business internet security social-media shame troy-hunt bad-press spin shaminghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:cc9320f3797b/Facebook's new rules for moderators on dealing with far-right pages are awful2018-07-13T10:27:25+00:00
https://twitter.com/Limerick1914/status/1000039928045146112
jmFacebook: "We allow to call for the creation of white ethno-states."
In other words, Facebook is officially ok with people calling for ethnic cleansing and genocide.
The time for Facebook to hire/consult with experts re: the far-right was about three or four years ago. That they now *agree* with the rationale of Alt-Reich rebranding in 2018 shows that this company is simply not fit for purpose.
[...] t's quite something that Facebook's advice to their moderators literally mirrors Nazi propaganda: "Being interested in and caring for one’s kind is not to disparage foreign peoples and races"- Nazi party pamphlet "Why the Aryan Law?" (1934)
]]>facebook awful moderation far-right nazis fascism ethnic-cleansing genocide social-media failhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:bf33119c94cd/How Ireland Beat Dark Ads – Foreign Policy2018-06-02T17:21:31+00:00
https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/06/01/abortion-referendum-how-ireland-resisted-bad-behaviour-online/
jmIn practice, while these recognizable attempts to disrupt the democratic debate with microtargeted ads, bot activity, and misinformation were active, they appear to have been relatively ineffective and may even have turned voters away from those employing them.
Given the battleground online discourse has become in democracies across the world, this small country’s resistance to it may offer some cause for hope. The resilience offered by the small size and close-knit nature of the Irish electorate may be difficult to reproduce in larger democracies. But the active measures taken by media, volunteer groups, and campaigners against potentially corrosive techniques can be a powerful inspiration.
+1 -- it's heartening that we were able to defeat these 21st century dirty tricks after the damage they did with Trump and Brexit.]]>brexit elections trump fake-news propaganda bots dark-ads facebook social-media repealthe8th referenda abortion ireland repeal-shield twitterhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7fa6d59ac179/I tried leaving Facebook. I couldn’t - The Verge2018-05-01T13:25:34+00:00
https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/28/17293056/facebook-deletefacebook-social-network-monopoly
jmFacebook events, Facebook pages, Facebook photos, and Facebook videos are for many people an integral part of the church picnic, the Christmas party, the class reunion, the baby shower. (The growing scourge of gender reveal parties with their elaborate “reveal” rituals and custom-made cakes seems particularly designed to complement documentation on social media). The completeness of Facebook allows people to create better substitutes for in-person support groups in a wide range of ever-narrowing demographics — from casual interests like Instant Pot recipes for Korean food to heavy life-altering circumstances like rare forms of cancer.
Of all people, I know why I shouldn’t trust Facebook, why my presence on its network contributes to the collective problem of its monopolistic hold on people. Everyone is on Facebook because everyone is on Facebook. And because everyone is on Facebook, even the people who aren’t are having their data collected in shadow profiles. My inaction affects even the people who have managed to stay away. I know this, I barely use Facebook, I don’t even like Facebook, and I find it nearly impossible to leave.
]]>privacy facebook deletefacebook social-networking social life social-media data-privacyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:15c939d5976d/how to deal with obnoxious political ads on Facebook2018-03-02T23:05:44+00:00
https://twitter.com/HMcEvansoneya/status/969502871468367873
jmads facebook social-media reporting antichoice repeal-the-8thhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:f18f30d4d256/Spam is back | The Outline2017-11-24T20:54:41+00:00
https://theoutline.com/post/2498/spam-is-back
jm it’s 2017, and spam has clawed itself back from the grave. It shows up on social media and dating sites as bots hoping to lure you into downloading malware or clicking an affiliate link. It creeps onto your phone as text messages and robocalls that ring you five times a day about luxury cruises and fictitious tax bills. Networks associated with the buzzy new cryptocurrency system Ethereum have been plagued with spam. Facebook recently fought a six-month battle against a spam operation that was administering fake accounts in Bangladesh, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and other countries. Last year, a Chicago resident sued the Trump campaign for allegedly sending unsolicited text message spam; this past November, ZDNet reported that voters were being inundated with political text messages they never signed up for. Apps can be horrid spam vectors, too — TechCrunch writer Jordan Crook wrote in April about how she idly downloaded an app called Gather that promptly spammed everyone in her contact list. Repeated mass data breaches that include contact information, such as the Yahoo breach in which 3 billion user accounts were exposed, surely haven’t helped. Meanwhile, you, me, and everyone we know is being plagued by robocalls. “There is no recourse for me,” lamented Troy Doliner, a student in Boston who gets robocalls every day. “I am harassed by a faceless entity that I cannot track down.”
“I think we had a really unique set of circumstances that created this temporary window where spam was in remission,” said Finn Brunton, an assistant professor at NYU who wrote Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet, “and now we’re on the other side of that, with no end in sight.”
(via Boing Boing)]]>spam privacy email social-media web robocalls phone ethereum texts abusehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:0f2e642c3b29/Tech Leaders Dismayed by Weaponization of Social Media - IEEE Spectrum2017-11-20T23:07:03+00:00
https://spectrum.ieee.org/view-from-the-valley/telecom/internet/tech-leaders-dismayed-by-weaponization-of-social-media
jm“We have passed the fail-safe point,” McNamee said. “I don’t think we can get back to the Silicon Valley that I loved. At this point we just have to save America.”
]]>propaganda fake-news facebook twitter social-media us-politics brexit internet russia silicon-valley usahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:c3eb69f3b256/IBM urged to avoid working on 'extreme vetting' of U.S. immigrants2017-11-20T16:25:48+00:00
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ibm-immigration/ibm-urged-to-avoid-working-on-extreme-vetting-of-u-s-immigrants-idUSKBN1DG1VT
jmICE wants to use machine learning technology and social media monitoring to determine whether an individual is a “positively contributing member of society,” according to documents published on federal contracting websites. More than 50 civil society groups and more than 50 technical experts sent separate letters on Thursday to the Department of Homeland Security saying the vetting program as described was “tailor-made for discrimination” and contending artificial intelligence was unable to provide the information ICE desired.
]]>civil-rights politics usa trump ice ibm civil-liberties immigration discrimination racism social-mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:35662dbd651d/Revealed: Facebook exposed identities of moderators to suspected terrorists | Technology | The Guardian2017-06-16T15:40:03+00:00
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jun/16/facebook-moderators-identity-exposed-terrorist-groups
jmThe moderator said that when he started, he was given just two weeks training and was required to use his personal Facebook account to log into the social media giant’s moderation system.
“They should have let us use fake profiles,” he said, adding: “They never warned us that something like this could happen.”
Facebook told the Guardian that as a result of the leak it is testing the use of administrative accounts that are not linked to personal profiles.
]]>facebook security counter-terrorism moderation social-media role-accounts adminhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:805b9b47125e/Turla’s watering hole campaign: An updated Firefox extension abusing Instagram2017-06-07T09:45:43+00:00
https://www.welivesecurity.com/2017/06/06/turlas-watering-hole-campaign-updated-firefox-extension-abusing-instagram/
jmThe extension will look at each photo’s comment and will compute a custom hash value. If the hash matches 183, it will then run this regular expression on the comment in order to obtain the path of the bit.ly URL:
(?:\\u200d(?:#|@)(\\w)
Looking at the photo’s comments, there was only one for which the hash matches 183. This comment was posted on February 6, while the original photo was posted in early January. Taking the comment and running it through the regex, you get the following bit.ly URL: bit.ly/2kdhuHX
Looking a bit more closely at the regular expression, we see it is looking for either @|# or the Unicode character \200d. This character is actually a non-printable character called ‘Zero Width Joiner’, normally used to separate emojis. Pasting the actual comment or looking at its source, you can see that this character precedes each character that makes the path of the bit.ly URL
]]>security malware russia turla zwj unicode characters social-media instagram command-and-controlhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:171cc0c70851/serviette/serviette.py at master · heathervm/serviette · GitHub2017-04-11T20:34:21+00:00
https://github.com/heathervm/serviette/blob/master/serviette.py
jmtwitter tweets delete privacy social-mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:706b02e5b328/US grand jury decides that a GIF counts as a deadly weapon in Twitter seizure case - The Verge2017-03-23T14:07:07+00:00
http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/22/15017080/gif-deadly-weapon-us-jury-kurt-eichenwald
jmFBI investigators seized the account late last year after tracking him through his iPhone, and allege that Rivello sent several tweets and messages about his intentions to cause Eichenwald to have a seizure — including the text “You deserve a seizure for your post.” According to NBC News, other messages specifically say that "I hope this sends him into a seizure,” while others read "Spammed this at [Eichenwald] let's see if he dies."
]]>images twitter epilepsy gifs nam-shub abuse social-media trollshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:5ca9b9cdb7a0/Minor Infractions — Real Life2017-02-10T14:44:24+00:00
http://reallifemag.com/minor-infractions/
jmWhen our son turned 12, we gave him a phone and allowed him to use social media, with a condition: He had no right to privacy. We would periodically and without warning read his texts and go through his messenger app. We would follow him on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (though we wouldn’t comment or tag him — we’re not monsters). We wouldn’t ambush him about what we read and we wouldn’t attempt to embarrass him. Anything that wasn’t dangerous or illegal, we would ignore.
Food for thought. But not yet!]]>surveillance family kids privacy online social-media teenagershttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:f6e9be539cd7/Hacking the Attention Economy2017-01-07T18:04:00+00:00
https://points.datasociety.net/hacking-the-attention-economy-9fa1daca7a37#.btsmwwrbe
jmThe Internet has long been used for gaslighting, and trolls have long targeted adversaries. What has shifted recently is the scale of the operation, the coordination of the attacks, and the strategic agenda of some of the players.
For many who are learning these techniques, it’s no longer simply about fun, nor is it even about the lulz. It has now become about acquiring power.
A new form of information manipulation is unfolding in front of our eyes. It is political. It is global. And it is populist in nature. The news media is being played like a fiddle, while decentralized networks of people are leveraging the ever-evolving networked tools around them to hack the attention economy.
]]>danah-boyd news facebook social-media gaslighting trolls 4chan lulz gamergate fake-newshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3d0fb16fbb96/How Putin's cronies seized control of VKontakte2016-12-07T15:36:59+00:00
http://www.theverge.com/2014/1/31/5363990/how-putins-cronies-seized-control-over-russias-facebook-pavel-durov-vk
jmputin russia vk vkontacte social-media politics censorship totalitarianismhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b0f7fff725f3/Here's Why Facebook's Trending Algorithm Keeps Promoting Fake News - BuzzFeed News2016-10-31T09:17:52+00:00
https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/can-facebook-trending-fight-off-fake-news#.yqypZOpoO
jmKalina Bontcheva leads the EU-funded PHEME project working to compute the veracity of social media content. She said reducing the amount of human oversight for Trending heightens the likelihood of failures, and of the algorithm being fooled by people trying to game it.
“I think people are always going to try and outsmart these algorithms — we’ve seen this with search engine optimization,” she said. “I’m sure that once in a while there is going to be a very high-profile failure.”
Less human oversight means more reliance on the algorithm, which creates a new set of concerns, according to Kate Starbird, an assistant professor at the University of Washington who has been using machine learning and other technology to evaluate the accuracy of rumors and information during events such as the Boston bombings.
“[Facebook is] making an assumption that we’re more comfortable with a machine being biased than with a human being biased, because people don’t understand machines as well,” she said.
]]>facebook news gaming adversarial-classification pheme truth social-media algorithms ml machine-learning mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:1cf7693304cb/17 of the most important things to ever happen to Irish Twitter2015-08-06T14:19:29+00:00
http://thedailyedge.thejournal.ie/best-of-irish-twitter-2246497-Aug2015/
jmireland twitter funny social-mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ad9b29b70424/Inside the sad, expensive failure of Google+2015-08-05T12:48:44+00:00
http://mashable.com/2015/08/02/google-plus-history/
jm"It was clear if you looked at the per user metrics, people weren’t posting, weren't returning and weren’t really engaging with the product," says one former employee. "Six months in, there started to be a feeling that this isn’t really working." Some lay the blame on the top-down structure of the Google+ department and a leadership team that viewed success as the only option for the social network. Failures and disappointing data were not widely discussed. "The belief was that we were always just one weird feature away from the thing taking off," says the same employee.
]]>google google+ failures post-mortems business facebook social-media fail bureaucracy vic-gundotrahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:ca5eee837484/How to Create RSS Feeds for Twitter2015-07-29T13:17:37+00:00
http://www.labnol.org/internet/twitter-rss-feed/28149/
jmrss-feeds feeds twitter favorites api social-media workaround google-scripthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:56c4e3dc7107/That time the Internet sent a SWAT team to my mom's house - Boing Boing2015-07-27T10:34:03+00:00
http://boingboing.net/2015/07/24/that-time-the-internet-sent-a.html
jmThe solution is for social media sites and the police to take threats or jokes about swatting, doxxing, and organized crime seriously. Tweeting about buying a gun and shooting up a school would be taken seriously, and so should the threat of raping, doxxing, swatting or killing someone. Privacy issues and online harassment are directly linked, and online harassment isn’t going anywhere. My fear is that, in reaction to online harassment, laws will be passed that will break down our civil freedoms and rights online, and that more surveillance will be sold to users under the guise of safety. More surveillance, however, would not have helped me or my mother. A platform that takes harassment and threats seriously instead of treating them like jokes would have.
]]>twitter gamergate 4chan 8chan privacy doxxing swatting harrassment threats social-media facebook law feminismhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:cddb2809ac1f/The Agency - NYTimes.com2015-06-02T22:28:59+00:00
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html
jmfuture abuse trolls russia trolling politics social-media twitter facebookhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:146514a25e6c/J. G. Ballard predicted social media in a 1977 essay for Vogue2015-04-11T20:36:52+00:00
https://twitter.com/Suzanne_Heath/status/573768749918126080
jm'In the intro essay to High Rise it says that J G Ballard predicted social media in a 1977 essay for Vogue. Here it is'
]]>j-g-ballard social-media twitter instagram youtube future society vogue 1977 facebook mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:988322e29266/Salutin' Putin: inside a Russian troll house | World news | The Guardian2015-04-02T12:42:15+00:00
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-inside-russian-troll-house
jmgrim-meathook-future guardian russia trolls social-media media censorship livejournal ideology social-controlhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:f3ca0ac0165a/South Korean spymaster had a team posting political comments on Twitter and rigging polls2015-02-09T17:41:22+00:00
http://www.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/654921.html
jmweb polls twitter social-media psyops korea south-korea nis sock-puppets democracyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:01046bca0e48/Twitter CEO: 'We suck at dealing with abuse' | The Verge2015-02-05T11:11:08+00:00
http://www.theverge.com/2015/2/4/7982099/twitter-ceo-sent-memo-taking-personal-responsibility-for-the
jm'We suck at dealing with abuse and trolls on the platform and we've sucked at it for years. It's no secret and the rest of the world talks about it every day. We lose core user after core user by not addressing simple trolling issues that they face every day.
I'm frankly ashamed of how poorly we've dealt with this issue during my tenure as CEO. It's absurd. There's no excuse for it. I take full responsibility for not being more aggressive on this front. It's nobody else's fault but mine, and it's embarrassing.
We're going to start kicking these people off right and left and making sure that when they issue their ridiculous attacks, nobody hears them.
Everybody on the leadership team knows this is vital.'
More like this!]]>trolls twitter gamergate dickc abuse leaks social-mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:654066fa9cad/Politwoops2015-01-24T21:43:29+00:00
http://www.politwoops.eu/g/Ireland
jmdelete twitter politics politicians ireland social-media newshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:e9a863fa822f/Surveillance of social media not way to fight terrorism – Minister2015-01-19T23:10:42+00:00
http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/surveillance-of-social-media-not-way-to-fight-terrorism-minister-1.2071361
jmBlanket surveillance of social media is not the solution to combating terrorism and the rights of the individual to privacy must be protected, Data Protection Minister Dara Murphy said on Monday. [He] said Ireland and the European Union must protect the privacy rights of individuals on social media. “Freedom of expression, freedom of movement, and the protection of privacy are core tenets of the European Union, which must be upheld.”
]]>dara-murphy data-protection privacy surveillance europe eu ireland social-mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:6adb795bcdd2/Yes, Isis exploits technology. But that’s no reason to compromise our privacy | Technology | The Observer2014-11-10T15:40:42+00:00
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/09/isis-exploits-technology-no-reason-compromise-privacy
jmFrom the very beginning, Isis fanatics have been up to speed on [social media]. Which raises an interesting question: how come that GCHQ and the other intelligence agencies failed to notice the rise of the Isis menace until it was upon us? Were they so busy hoovering metadata and tapping submarine cables and “mastering the internet” (as the code name of one of their projects puts it) that they didn’t have time to see what every impressionable Muslim 14-year-old in the world with an internet connection could see?
]]>gchq guardian encryption nsa isis technology social-media snooping surveillancehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:27fe5cfc0208/The Laborers Who Keep Dick Pics and Beheadings Out of Your Facebook Feed | WIRED2014-10-28T21:05:21+00:00
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/content-moderation/
jm“Everybody hits the wall, generally between three and five months,” says a former YouTube content moderator I’ll call Rob. “You just think, ‘Holy shit, what am I spending my day doing? This is awful.’”
]]>facebook wired beheadings moderation nsfw google youtube social-media filtering porn abusehttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:71b37988025a/How did Twitter become the hate speech wing of the free speech party?2014-10-06T11:30:24+00:00
http://www.kevinmarks.com/twitterhatespeech.html
jmYour tweet could win the fame lottery, and everyone on the Internet who thinks you are wrong could tell you about it. Or one of the "verified" could call you out to be the tribute for your community and fight in their Hunger Games.
Say something about feminism, or race, or sea lions and you'd find yourself inundated by the same trite responses from multitudes. Complain about it, and they turn nasty, abusing you, calling in their friends to join in. Your phone becomes useless under the weight of notifications; you can't see your friends support amongst the flood.
The limited tools available - blocking, muting, going private - do not match well with these floods. Twitter's abuse reporting form takes far longer than a tweet, and is explicitly ignored if friends try to help.
]]>harassment twitter 4chan abuse feminism hate-speech gamergate sea-lions filtering social-media kevin-markshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:05196a963f79/How do I keep my children safe online? What the security experts tell their kids | Technology | theguardian.com2014-09-08T13:05:18+00:00
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/aug/11/how-to-keep-kids-safe-online-children-advice
jmkids online social-media internet web facebook privacy securityhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:076cf774dee1/Does This Soldier's Instagram Account Prove Russia Is Covertly Operating In Ukraine?2014-08-01T13:29:47+00:00
http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl
jm“sitting around, working on a buk, listening to music, basically a good sunday”
]]>ukraine buzzfeed politics sam missiles mh-17 war-crimes russia facebook instagram social-media whoopshttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7c85233fd70b/How A Spam Newsletter Caused a Bank Run in Bulgaria2014-07-06T22:55:23+00:00
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/07/fact-week-spam-newsletter-caused-bank-run-bulgaria.html
jmAccording to the Bulgarian National Security Agency (see here, for a reporting in English), an investment company that “built a network of associated companies for marketing services” that was used to diffuse panic by means of an alert, uncomfortably titled “Information Bulletin of on the Risk of Deposits in Bulgarian Banks”. The “bulletin” claimed – Bloomberg reports – KTB was undergoing a liquidity shortage. The message apparently also said that the government deposit guarantee fund was under-capitalised to meet possible repayments, that banks could go bankrupt and that the peg of the currency with the euro could be broken. Allegedly, the alert was diffused by text, email and even Facebook messages, thus ensuring a very widespread outreach. In a country that in 1997 underwent a very serious banking crisis featuring all these characteristics – whose memory is still fresh – this was enough to spur panic.
]]>spam banking bulgaria banks euro panic facebook social-mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:3957d942ad81/Syria's lethal Facebook checkpoints2014-04-24T22:10:43+00:00
http://boingboing.net/2014/04/23/syrias-lethal-facebook-check.html
jmAn anonymous tip from a highly reliable source: "There are checkpoints in Syria where your Facebook is checked for affiliation with the rebellious groups or individuals aligned with the rebellion. People are then disappeared or killed if they are found to be connected. Drivers are literally forced to load their Facebook/Twitter accounts and then they are riffled through. It's happening daily, and has been for a year at least."
]]>boing-boing war facebook social-media twitter internet checkpoints syriahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:61d86bd22b36/Survey results of EU teens using the internet2014-02-10T15:20:54+00:00
http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/more-and-more-children-upset-by-online-content-survey-29995307.html
jmJust under half of children said they access the internet from their own bedroom on a daily basis with 22pc saying they do so several times a day.
]]>surveys eu ireland politics filtering internet social-media facebook children teens cyber-bullyinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:35ecc7699ff9/The Gardai haven't requested info on any Twitter accounts in the past 6 months2014-02-06T16:24:54+00:00
https://twitter.com/adrianweckler/statuses/431447411861377024
jmcyber-bullying twitter social-media enforcement gardai policing harassment online society law governmenthttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:209c779722ea/BBC News - Pair jailed over abusive tweets to feminist campaigner2014-01-27T10:53:46+00:00
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25886026
jmWhen a producer from BBC Two's Newsnight programme tracked Nimmo down after he had sent the abuse, the former call centre worker told him: "The police will do nothing, it's only Twitter."
]]>bbc bullying social-media twitter society uk trolls trolling abuse feminism cyberbullyinghttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:b8f588b38c7c/Irish quango allegedly buys fake twitter followers2014-01-20T11:19:08+00:00
http://itonlyencouragesthem.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/quango-buys-fake-twitter-followers/
jmconsumers quangos ireland politics twitter funny fake-followers latin-america south-america brazil social-media techhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:6cfde362bd93/Photographer wins $1.2 million from companies that took pictures off Twitter | Reuters2013-11-25T15:59:36+00:00
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/22/us-media-copyright-twitter-idUSBRE9AL16F20131122
jmThe jury found that Agence France-Presse and Getty Images willfully violated the Copyright Act when they used photos Daniel Morel took in his native Haiti after the 2010 earthquake that killed more than 250,000 people, Morel's lawyer, Joseph Baio, said
]]>copyright twitter facebook social-media via:niall-harbison law getty-images afp daniel-morel haiti photographyhttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:7ce3f3dd932f/The 29 Stages Of A Twitterstorm2013-10-11T13:20:20+00:00
http://www.buzzfeed.com/tomphillips/the-29-stages-of-a-twitterstorm
jmuk twitter media funny pricehound racism outrage pitchforks rage social-mediahttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:d02fbb355a51/Fauxdelma Healy Eames2013-03-12T11:45:32+00:00
http://youtu.be/uHoI5Zum2ek
jmfunny comedy fidelma-healy-eames politics ireland social-media inept youtube videohttps://pinboard.in/https://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:f3188879677f/Fine Gael's Facebook spam campaign2011-02-08T17:29:37+00:00
http://election.ie/2011/02/fine-gael-return-with-a-twolicy-page/
jmfacebook fine-gael twitter social-media twolicy spamhttps://pinboard.in/u:jm/b:da273b0d6614/