NEW RESOURCES

Yahoo Finance: New database ranks 4,500 US colleges and universities by return on investment. “A new database released by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce (CEW) ranks 4,500 colleges and universities based on their return on investment (ROI)…. The ranking assessed schools on a variety of factors, including tuition and costs, average student debt, graduation rates, and net earnings after enrollment.”

NBC News: Where are the Russian oligarchs? This Twitter feeds follows their private jets. “The comings and goings of powerful Russian elites have come under intense scrutiny since Vladimir Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine last week, an attack that has drawn international condemnation. And that’s why Jack Sweeney, 19, a University of Central Florida student, started tracking them on the Twitter feed Russian Oligarch Jets, which he launched over the weekend and which already had more than 52,000 followers Monday afternoon.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Reuters: Twitter will label, reduce visibility of tweets linking to Russian state media. “Twitter (TWTR.N) is adding labels and reducing the visibility for tweets containing content from Russian state-affiliated media websites like RT and Sputnik, the social media company said on Monday.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

The Verge: The Internet Is A Force Multiplier For Ukraine. “After being widely credited for Trump’s election in 2016, and preparing to initiate the biggest war of the social network era, Russia might have been expected to excel at information warfare. Instead, like the rest of the war, it has gone quite badly for them. It is Ukraine that has been masterful in its use of social media — and while that may not prove decisive in whether or not it overcomes Russia’s superior military, at the very least it complicates our understanding of big tech and democracy. Today, let’s talk about how.”

Rolling Stone: Exclusive: Ukraine Pushes to Unplug Russia From the Internet. “Ukrainian officials are asking a key organization responsible for the operation of the internet to disconnect all Russian sites from the global computer network of networks, Rolling Stone has learned. It’s the latest attempt to turn Russia into a pariah state in retaliation for the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine. Experts call it a massive — and ill-advised — step.”

BBC: The chefs using TikTok to reinvent their careers. “The Covid crisis saw thousands of restaurants temporarily or permanently close their doors, prompting some chefs to turn to TikTok to reinvent themselves.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Bleeping Computer: Hundreds of eBike phishing sites abuse Google Ads to push scams. “A large-scale campaign involving over 200 phishing and scam sites has tricked users into giving their personal data to fake investments schemes impersonating genuine brands. The fraudulent operation relies upon the abuse of Google Ads and SEO to draw victims to hundreds of fake websites targeting the Indian audience.”

ZDNet: How to avoid being unwillingly drafted as a cyber combatant in the Russia-Ukraine war. “Got a security roll-out plan for the next few years? Escalate it. Thinking about recruiting more security engineers? Start hiring. Looking for the right time to patch vulnerabilities and refresh passwords? Now’s the time. The Ukraine conflict may feel far away to some of you, but the risk of your network being caught in the crossfire is increasing.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Toronto Star: Legislation to level playing field between Big Tech and news organizations is needed now. “Since 2013, we have lost 300 trusted news titles in Canada. The time for Canadian parliamentarians to act is now. A made-in-Canada approach, along the broad strokes of what the Australians have done, is what we need. This is not a one-and-done silver bullet, but receiving fair market value for content Canadian journalists produce is an important step to putting the news business on a more stable commercial footing.”

MIT Sloan School of Management: As content booms, how can platforms protect kids from hate speech?. “From July to September of 2019, YouTube purged roughly half a billion comments in violation of the company’s hate speech policy — a twofold increase over the previous quarter. The same year YouTube introduced a setting to automatically hide toxic comments until channel owners could review them. ‘We often talk about the idea of viral videos or virality in social media,’ said Catherine Tucker, a marketing professor at MIT Sloan. ‘We were interested in the dark side of that: How viral is hate? How viral is the use of abusive language towards children?'” Good afternoon, Internet…

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