NEW RESOURCES

Music Mayhem Magazine: The Prince Estate Launches New Prince Social Accounts, Giphy Launches Comprehensive Library of Authorized Prince GIF Content. “To help celebrate the launch of the Prince social media accounts, The Prince Estate has aligned with GIPHY to create an enormous library of Prince GIF content on the web. The new channel… features over 1,700 of the best Prince GIF moments from every decade of his 40+ year career.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Chrome Story: Chrome will Soon Let You Share Link to Specific Word or Sentence on a Page. “When you share a YouTube video, you now have an option to create a link that will start the video at a specific spot. For example, if you want your friend start playing the video at two minutes mark, you can create a link for that specific spot. Now, imagine you are sharing a link to a web page. There is one specific sentence or paragraph that you want your friend to read. The page does not have any anchor links. What will you do?”

Reuters: Russian search engine Yandex expects 2019 revenue to rise up to 32 percent. “Russia’s biggest internet search engine Yandex said on Friday it expects its revenue, excluding Yandex.Market, to rise by between 28 and 32 percent this year. Yandex said its adjusted net profit rose 62 percent last year to 22.9 billion roubles ($343 million), while its adjusted revenue increased 41 percent to 126.4 billion roubles.”

CNET: Facebook Watch scores recaps of every NBA, WNBA game. “NBA Digtial, along with the NBA and Turner Sports, has teamed up with Facebook to make all NBA, WNBA, NBA G League and NBA 2K League game recaps available on the social network. Now you can watch recaps from every game of the season on Facebook Watch, the social network’s platform for videos and livestreaming events. The episodes will include the Summer League, preseason and playoffs.”

USEFUL STUFF

Gizmodo: Rediscover the Magic of Browser Bookmarks—And How to Keep Them in Order. “Between read-it-later services, social media feeds, and the unbelievable speed at which a Google search can find the exact information you’re looking for, browser bookmarks have become a forgotten a relic of a previous internet age. But the basic bookmarking tools built into your browser can still be hugely useful in the modern web era, and we’re going to explain exactly how to make the most of them.” The comments remind me of me screaming whenever someone claims RSS is dead.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) recently did an AMA on Reddit. “From 12pm – 4pm Eastern on February 13, 2019, historians asked us about how we collect, preserve and provide access to the collection, as well as questions about the content of the archive, and of course how scholars might collaborate with us to use the archive for research or in their teaching (we love hearing ideas!)”

Business Insider: Google Maps just accidentally exposed Taiwan’s secret missile sites. “Google released new maps of Taiwan Wednesday, and in the process, exposed some of the island’s hidden missile sites, Taiwanese media reported Friday. Taiwan, a self-ruled democratic territory perceived in Beijing as a renegade province, faces an ever-present threat from the massive Chinese military force situated just across the strait.”

Poynter: This website impersonated a fact-checking outlet to publish fake news stories. “Someone is publishing fake news stories on a website that looks like a fact-checking organization. On Wednesday, Brazilian fact-checker Aos Fatos published an investigation about a fake news website that had ripped off its brand to publish bogus content. Instead of AosFatos.org, the network published to AosFatos.com.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Washington Post: The U.S. government and Facebook are negotiating a record, multibillion-dollar fine for the company’s privacy lapses. “The Federal Trade Commission and Facebook are negotiating over a multi-billion dollar fine that would settle the agency’s investigation into the social media giant’s privacy practices, according to two people familiar with the probe. The fine would be the largest the agency has ever imposed on a technology company, but the two sides have not yet agreed on an exact amount. Facebook has expressed initial concern with the FTC’s demands, one of the people said. If talks break down, the FTC could take the matter to court in what would likely be a bruising legal fight.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Cornell Chronicle: Study uses neural networks to define Dada. “To make a Dadaist poem, artist Tristan Tzara once said, cut out each word of a newspaper article. Put the words into a bag and shake. Remove the words from the bag one at a time, and write them down in that order. This ‘bag of words’ method is not entirely different from how artificial intelligence algorithms identify words and images, breaking them down into components one step at a time. The similarity inspired Cornell researchers to explore whether an algorithm could be trained to differentiate digitized Dadaist journals from non-Dada avant-garde journals – a formidable task, given that many consider Dada inherently undefinable.”

University of Hawai’i at Manoa: From Facebook to the Streets: Russian Troll Ads and Black Lives Matter Protests. “Online trolling is typically studied in the IS literature as an uncoordinated, anarchic activity. Coordinated, strategic online trolling is not well understood despite its prevalence on social media. To shed light on this prevailing activity, the present study examines the proposition that coordinated online trolling is timed to leverage macro societal unrest. In testing this proposition, we analyzes the dynamics of the Russian State’s coordinated trolling campaign against the United States beginning in 2015. Using the May 2018 release of all Russian Troll Facebook advertisements, this study constructs a topic model of the content of these ads. The relationship between ad topics and the frequency of Black Lives Matter protests is examined. We argue that the frequency of Black Lives Matter protests proxies for civil unrest and divisiveness in the United States. The study finds that Russian ads related to police brutality were issued to coincide with periods of higher unrest. This work also finds that during periods of relative calm (evidenced by lower frequency of protests) Russian ads were relatively innocuous.” The entire paper is available as a PDF.

The Guardian: New AI fake text generator may be too dangerous to release, say creators. “The creators of a revolutionary AI system that can write news stories and works of fiction – dubbed ‘deepfakes for text’ – have taken the unusual step of not releasing their research publicly, for fear of potential misuse.” Good morning, Internet…

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