NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from AV Club: We condemn you to Websites From Hell, an archive of the internet’s ugliest websites. “When we think of heinous websites, it’s usually the words and images displayed on them that come to mind and not the visual design, which templates and decades of wisdom have typically managed to keep at a certain quality bar that only the rare examples fail to reach. The internet is vast, though, and keen explorers can still venture out into the wilderness to find garish artifacts from the past or businesses that have continued to update the digital equivalents of an old house’s never-replaced green shag carpet. To ‘honor’ these ugliest of online destinations, we have Websites From Hell.”

KQ2: St. Joseph Artifacts Selected For Missouri’s Bicentennial Digital Exhibit. “To celebrate Missouri’s 200 years of history, historians throughout the state curated a virtual gallery to tell the story of Missouri and its people. The collection is called ‘Show Me Missouri’ which is made up of 200 objects highlighting different regions and eras.”

The Greeneville Sun: Common Threads: New Appalachian Cultural Exhibit Opens. “According to [archivist Sandi] Laws, nuns of the Glenmary Order left Chicago to bring Catholic teachings to the region through community service in the 1940s. The sisters’ arrival, wearing their distinctive nuns’ habits and following unfamiliar practices, sparked wonder and suspicion. In 1967, 44 sisters broke away from the order and founded the Federation of Communities in Service, to serve the region in more practical ways without the restrictions and distinctive dress requirements placed on them by their mother church…. Common Threads, a new digital exhibit curated by Laws, tells the story in photographs, documents and film.” I can’t excerpt enough to do the article justice.

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Investopedia: Google’s Incredible YouTube Purchase 15 Years Later. “Nearly 15 years ago, Alphabet Inc.’s (GOOGL, GOOG) Google purchased YouTube for the hefty sum of $1.65 billion. The actual date the news hit was Oct. 9, 2006. That may seem like a small sum for the behemoth that YouTube is today. But back then, the video site had been around for less than two years—even if it was growing like a weed.”

LinkedIn Blog: Learn from Experts in Real Time With Office Hours. “We’re excited to introduce a new Office Hours feature that lets instructors host live events on LinkedIn Learning. With Office Hours, learners are able to stay on top of industry trends and interact with experts and fellow learners in real-time by posting questions, comments and reactions.” LinkedIn is also some of its courses free through October 15.

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

New Yorker: The Queer Past Gets Deleted on eBay. “In researching his book ‘Bound Together: Leather, Sex, Archives, and Contemporary Art,’ Andy Campbell, an associate professor of critical studies at the Roski School of Art and Design, used both eBay and the Johnson/Carter Library, in addition to other archives around the country. ‘Bound Together’ argues that queer archives are particularly precarious, as they often lack institutional support structures and their content is at odds with community guidelines.”

AP: Social media’s 70-up ‘grandfluencers’ debunking aging myths. “Joan MacDonald’s health was in shambles at age 71. She was overweight and on numerous medications with high cholesterol, rising blood pressure and kidney trouble. Her daughter, a fitness coach, warned that she’d wind up an invalid if she didn’t turn things around. She did, hitting the gym for the first time and learning to balance her diet with the help of a brand new tool, an iPhone. Now 75, MacDonald is a hype beast for health with a bodybuilder’s physique and 1.4 million loyal followers on Instagram.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Verge: Dems push for federal probe of alleged ad collusion between Google and Facebook. “Four Democratic members of Congress are calling for an investigation into whether an alleged secret 2018 agreement between Google and Facebook concerning digital advertising violated federal antitrust law. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) and Mondaire Jones (D-NY) wrote a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Acting US Attorney General Nicholas Ganjei of Texas asking them to determine whether federal charges might be warranted.”

AFP: Russia Accuses Google, Apple of Election Interference. “Russia said Thursday that Google and Apple’s refusal to remove jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s app ahead of elections could be seen as interference in the country’s domestic affairs. The country is holding parliamentary elections later this month, with nearly all vocal Kremlin critics including Navalny’s allies barred from running.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Washington Post: Misinformation on Facebook got six times more clicks than factual news during the 2020 election, study says. “A new study of user behavior on Facebook around the 2020 election is likely to bolster critics’ long-standing arguments that the company’s algorithms fuel the spread of misinformation over more trustworthy sources. The forthcoming peer-reviewed study by researchers at New York University and the Université Grenoble Alpes in France has found that from August 2020 to January 2021, news publishers known for putting out misinformation got six times the amount of likes, shares, and interactions on the platform as did trustworthy news sources, such as CNN or the World Health Organization.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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