NEW RESOURCES

KPAX: Agritourism industry sees opportunity with new website. “A labor of love 3 years in the making came to fruition this May with a first-of-its kind website offering a step-by-step guide for busting into the agritourism industry. Here, you’ll find advice from agritourism experts, videos and detailed podcasts so you can pop in the headphones and learn without missing a weed.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Mashable: Clubhouse and TED will team up to deliver audio-only TED Talks. “Clubhouse is teaming up with TED to bring exclusive TED talks to your phone. The news was announced Sunday, and the first talks will launch Monday in the official TED Clubhouse room. These talks will only be available to Clubhouse users.” This is a week ago, playing catch-up as usual.

Tubefilter: YouTube Rolls Out Personalized Video Recommendation Feed ‘New To You’. “YouTube is introducing a video discovery feed it hopes will ‘help viewers discover creators or content that is new to them, and help them explore beyond their typical recommendations,’ Becka, a products manager, said in the platform’s most recent Creator Insider upload.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Sacramento Bee: How an octogenarian’s TikTok videos struck social media gold for Sacramento History Museum. “[Howard] Hatch is an octogenarian docent who has volunteered at the museum for 22 years. In a few short videos, he became a globally famous TikTok star, and the museum’s not-so-secret weapon. On camera, Hatch sports a denim apron adorned with a ‘CA Grown’ pin, thin wiry spectacles and a gentlemanly demeanor. He comes across as a clear outsider, and his own disbelief at the channel’s success just might be its biggest appeal.” You know what’s really funny? I first found this article via a newspaper in Malaysia!

BBC: Why was my tweet about football labelled abusive?. “Online hate has been in the headlines again recently due to an avalanche of racist posts directed at three players who missed penalties in England’s defeat to Italy in the Euro 2020 final.” Warning: the article quotes abusive language.

Ars Technica: Creepypasta and the search for the ghost in the machine. “It was the music, they said, that drove the children to madness. The eerie, detuned soundtrack to Pokémon Red’s Lavender Town contained harmful sonic irregularities played at such high frequencies that only the youngest players could hear them. In extreme cases, these could alter brain chemistry and trigger psychosis—after playing the game, hundreds of Japanese children put down their Game Boys, climbed on to the roof, and jumped to their deaths. None of this is true, of course.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Poynter: Defamation was considered a well-settled area of law. Then came social media.. “When Ed Henry’s legal team arrives at court to carry out defamation lawsuits against Fox News, CNN and NPR over his sexual misconduct allegations, it will have to prove there was a reckless disregard for the truth. In other words, the former Fox News personality must demonstrate that the media companies intentionally lied and avoided learning the facts about the alleged situation.”

TechCrunch: Twitter appoints resident grievance officer in India to comply with new internet rules. “Twitter has appointed a resident grievance officer in India days after the American social media firm said to have lost the liability protection on user-generated content in the South Asian nation over non-compliance with local IT rules.”

TASS: Russian media watchdog demands Google unblock video on Russian MP’s YouTube channel. “Russia’s mass media watchdog Roscomnadzor said on Sunday it has demanded Google LLC unblock a video on the YouTube channel of Russian Senator Alexei Pushkov. The video host removed a Post Scriptum program from the Alexei Pushkov official channel. The video is now available on RuTube.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

CNET: Black teen kicked out of skating rink after facial recognition error. “Public outcry against facial recognition software is on the rise this week as the parents of a Black teenager consider legal action against a Detroit-area roller-skating rink, accusing the rink of racially profiling their daughter with the technology. The rink banned teen Lamya Robinson on Saturday, according to a report from Fox 2 Detroit, accusing her of participating in a public brawl, after the rink’s facial recognition software wrongly identified her as a previous patron.”

Neowin: Google is making on-device machine learning easier on Android later this year. “The usage of machine learning (ML) has become quite common across various applications for multiple use-cases. While on-device ML is preferred over its server-based counterpart for a number of reasons such as low latency and lack of dependency on internet connectivity, it also has numerous drawbacks. Google says that it will be addressing these challenges with the Android ML Platform, coming later this year.”

New York Times: ‘They’re Killing People’? Biden Isn’t Quite Right, but He’s Not Wrong.. “You could also blame individuals themselves for believing in lies and not doing due diligence and checking their facts. After all, deciding to forgo a vaccine is a personal choice, even if it is an unfortunate one. But the ability to resist social media juggernauts pales in comparison to the tremendous power of these platforms to amplify bad information. Attempting to stop falsehoods by claiming to offer good information is like using a single sandbag to hold back an impossibly fetid ocean.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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