NEW RESOURCES

Lohud: Which films got tax breaks? Check the first national database . “How much in public tax breaks has gone to films and television shows across the nation? The USA Today Network in New York spent months canvassing all 34 states that have film-incentive programs, finding that they allocate $1.3 billion breaks to productions. Of the states with programs — and about 10 have dropped them in recent years because of concerns about their economic value — 29 states responded to our requests for how much each film and show received over the past five years.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

TechCrunch: Facebook launches collaborative Stories for Groups and Events. “Facebook is combining its Snapchat Stories clone with features Snapchat can’t match in a bid to boost usage. Starting today, users of Facebook Groups and Events will be able to contribute to a Facebook Story visible to the rest of the members and moderated by the admins. This could be fun for parties, weddings, meetups and more. In essence, these collaborative Stories will work like a private hashtag so multiple people can add content but only those involved can see it.”

WordPress 4.9 Release Candidate 3 is now available.

USEFUL STUFF

Noupe: By Designers For Designers: Fontbase Organizes Your Fonts For Free. “The reasonably new tool Fontbase is available for free on your Mac, Windows, or Linux device. Originally, Fontbase was made to simply manage your system fonts. Soon after, the option of folder synchronization was added. This allows you to synchronize project-related fonts, and remove them after the project’s completion.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Guardian: Artist’s ‘sexual’ robin redbreast Christmas cards banned by Facebook. “Facebook has blocked the sale of a pack of Christmas cards featuring a robin redbreast because of its ‘sexual’ and ‘adult’ nature. The artist, Jackie Charley, said she ‘could not stop laughing’ when she discovered the reason the social media company would not approve the product last month.”

Poynter: For American fact-checkers working around gaps in government data, a lesson from Argentina. “Gaps in information frustrate the work of fact-checkers. But what about when a government agency creates them? ‘To know that the data has been tracked in the past and is maybe still tracked currently and is not being released — that just seems like a step backward,’ said Angie Holan, editor of PolitiFact (a project of the Poynter-owned Tampa Bay Times). Her concern stems from a recent change to the FBI’s 2016 crime report, which FiveThirtyEight reports now has close to 70 percent fewer tables than the 2015 version. Among the data tables missing in the report — the first to come out under the Trump administration’s FBI — is specific information about arrests, homicides and the only national estimate of gang-related murders.”

Medium: Voice Technology is an Opportunity to Make Weird Stuff. “I’ve recently been working with friends at the Google Creative Lab on something I’ve been interested in awhile: how people and computers talk to each other. It’s a theme I’ve played with in previous projects I made, but we explored it in a new dimension: voice.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Fortune: Google Is Being Investigated By Missouri Attorney General. “The state of Missouri is gearing up for a legal battle with Google. Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley said Monday that his office is investigating the search giant over allegations that it violated the state’s various consumer-protection and antitrust laws.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Telegraph: How just one Facebook ‘like’ can be used to influence behaviour with targeted adverts. “Researchers used ‘mass psychological persuasion’ in an online ad campaign that saw sales rise by more than 50 percent. In an experiment that targeted 3.5 million people, the academics used just a single Facebook ‘like’ for each user to glean a psychological trait – whether they were introverted or extroverted. This characteristic was then used to tailor an ad for each consumer in an effort to influence them.”

New York Times: It’s Time to Tax Companies for Using Our Personal Data. “The value of our personal data is primarily locked up in the revenues of large corporations. Some, like data brokerages, exist solely to buy and sell sets of that data. Why should companies be the major, and often the only, beneficiaries of this largess? They shouldn’t. Those financial benefits need to be shared, and the best way to do it is to impose a small tax on this revenue and use the proceeds to build a better, more equitable internet and society that benefit us all.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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