afternoonbuzz

Corporate Governance, Facebook, Social Media, More: Monday Afternoon ResearchBuzz, March 15, 2021

NEW RESOURCES

University of Virginia: Why Everything We Thought We Knew About Corporate Governance Is Wrong. “Nearly two decades of influential scholarship on how corporations are governed and valued is based on bad data, according to new research co-authored by Cathy Hwang of the University of Virginia School of Law. The paper, ‘Cleaning Corporate Governance,’ reveals that an index cited thousands of times by scholars to measure corporate governance and shareholder rights is riddled with errors. Written by Hwang, Columbia Law School postdoctoral fellow Jens Frankenreiter, Wisconsin law professor Yaron Nili and Columbia law professor Eric L. Talley, the new research also offers a dataset with pilot data to rectify the problem, creating a clearer picture about the power dynamics that control corporations and what that might imply in terms of profit potential, valuation and long-term prospects, among other business factors.”

USEFUL STUFF

Make Tech Easier: 9 of the Best Chrome Extensions for Students. “Most students today rely on information available online to complete their projects and assignments. Those who are using the Chrome browser by Google have a variety of Chrome extensions available for them that will help with research and completing schoolwork. This article looks at the best Chrome extensions that every student should install and use.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

BuzzFeed News: Facebook Created An Employee “Playbook” To Respond To Accusations Of Polarization. “In a Thursday presentation, Facebook executives told employees the company isn’t to blame for social division in the country. One researcher said some polarization can be a good thing, citing the civil rights movement.”

Washington Post: Why Russia is tightening its grip on social media. ” Russia is not likely to build its own version of China’s Great Firewall to control the Internet. The reasons are social (Russians like foreign social media and would hate to lose access) and technical (China’s Internet developed differently than Russia’s, making it easier to cordon off.) But the Kremlin, increasingly insecure about rising social discontent over everything from food prices to political repression, wants to crush online dissent. Can it do it?”

New York Times: Doctors Are Investigated After Posting Organ Photos Online as ‘Price Is Right’ Game. “A health care network in Michigan said it had opened an investigation after some operating room doctors posted photos on social media last week showing themselves holding a surgically removed organ and tissue material as part of a game that they likened to ‘The Price Is Right.'”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Citizens for Ethics: Judge stops ICE from destroying records of abuse. “ICE cannot destroy records of sexual abuse and assault, death reviews, detainee segregation files and other records it planned to dispose of, a federal judge ordered today in a case brought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, American Historical Association and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.”

The Daily Swig: Shorteners – new tool allows researchers, orgs to search for exposed shortened URLs. “A new online service allows security researchers to search for exposed shortened URLs, known for their risks to security and privacy. Shortened URLs are comparatively easy to brute-force, thanks to the lower character count, which reduces the number of possibilities, and often involve sensitive documents.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Brookings Institution: Lessons for online platform regulation from Australia vs. Facebook. “To be clear, the Australian approach is a limited way to deal with tech monopoly power and the crisis in news production. It does not stop Facebook from dropping news sources again if it does not like the arbitrator’s commercial arrangements. Moreover, as media scholar and others have pointed out, public funds and infrastructure for local journalism will be needed in addition to subsidizing established national news outlets. But the Australian approach is a start.”

EurekAlert: Engineers combine AI and wearable cameras in self-walking robotic legs. “Robotics researchers are developing exoskeletons and prosthetic legs capable of thinking and moving on their own using sophisticated artificial intelligence (AI) technology.”

OTHER STUFF I THINK IS COOL

Hackaday: Web Pages (And More) Via Shortwave. “If you are a ham radio operator, the idea of sending pictures and data over voice channels is nothing new. Hams have lots of techniques for doing that and — not so long ago — even most data transmissions were over phone lines. However, now everyone can get in on the game thanks to the cheap availability of software-defined radio. Several commercial shortwave broadcasters are sending encoded data including images and even entire web pages.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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