NEW RESOURCES

State of Maine: Maine DHHS Launches Online Resource for Families and Pilots New Tool for Mandated Reporters During Child Abuse Prevention Month. “Ensuring that parents and caregivers have the knowledge, skills, and resources they need helps promote the social and emotional well-being of children and prevent child maltreatment within families and communities…. To that end, the DHHS Office of Child and Family Services partnered with other Department Offices and state agencies to develop and launch this month Access Maine, an online guide of programs and resources tailored for families to connect them to services and resources. Access Maine includes information about meeting basic needs, such as nutrition and child care, as well as domestic violence support, mental health and substance use resources, and other programs, complementing Maine’s 211 directory.”

Launched last month but I’m just learning about it now, from the Washington City Paper: Documenting D.C.’s Doo-Wop Histories. “Working with a team of music scholars, [Beverly] Lindsay-Johnson has designed a detailed online platform that tells the story of Black D.C. rhythm and blues acts from the 1940s and ’50s, while documenting the local venues, radio stations, DJs, record stores, and history of that segregated time.”

University of Hawaii: Free online Eddie Kamae songbook, educational resource launches. “An online collection of songs meaningful to the man whom the Los Angeles Times called ‘one of the most influential Hawaiian musicians in the last half-century and a filmmaker who painstakingly documented the culture and history of the islands,’ the late Eddie Kamae, will be available to the public for free on May 1, 2022. Years in the making, The Eddie Kamae Songbook: A Musical Journey is a collection of 34 songs that were meaningful to his journey as a musician, filmmaker and Hawaiian son.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Reuters: India Stands by Social-Media Demands as Musk Moves on Twitter. “Indian government officials said last year social media platforms may no longer be eligible to seek liability exemptions as an intermediaries or the hosts of user content if they failed to comply with local information and technology laws. Laws announced that took effect last year make social media firms more accountable to requests for swift removal of posts and require them to give details of the originators of messages. The companies must also have mechanisms for addressing grievances.”

New York Times: G/O Media, Owner of Gizmodo and Deadspin, Buys Business Site Quartz . “G/O Media, the owner of websites that once belonged to the blog empire Gawker Media, has acquired the business news site Quartz, the latest deal in a wave of consolidation among digital publishers. Zach Seward, a co-founder and the chief executive of Quartz, will stay on at the company as Quartz’s editor in chief and general manager, said Jim Spanfeller, the chief executive of G/O Media.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

NewScientist: Journey through the huge archive keeping the nation’s newspapers safe. “The British Library’s National Newspaper Building in Boston Spa holds millions of pages from newspapers spanning centuries. New Scientist got a rare chance to go inside the void to see the robot cranes in action and find out about the measures in place to protect the history within.” Just-over-three-minute video. Captions are auto-generated but good.

South China Morning Post: Liberal Chinese social media site Douban tightens verification of overseas users as censorship intensifies. “Douban, a Chinese social media platform once known as a haven for relatively liberal discussions, now requires overseas users to provide a mainland mobile phone number or an official identity document to continue using the site, as it comes under growing pressure from Beijing to strengthen content control.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

1 News New Zealand: Spate of ram-raids driven by social media – police. A “ram-raid” is when a vehicle is crashed into a target location with the intention of robbery. “Police say social media is a key driving force behind the spike in ram raids across the country. Detective Inspector Karen Bright told reporters on Wednesday that offenders as young as 11 years old were posting their exploits online.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Radio New Zealand: Social media giants failing to combat ‘blatant and easy to find’ anti-Muslim hate speech. “The Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), an American non-profit organisation, says social media platforms collectively failed to act on 89 percent of posts containing anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia, even after they were reported to moderators. YouTube was the worst offender, ignoring 100 percent of anti-Muslim and Islamophobic posts. Twitter failed to act on 97 percent, Facebook ignored 94 percent, Instagram 86 percent and TikTok 64 percent. The CCDH flagged 530 posts, viewed at least 25 million times.”

Scientific American: It’s Time to Open the Black Box of Social Media. “In 2020, social media was an important mechanism for the spread of false and misleading claims about the election, and for mobilization by groups that participated in the January 6 Capitol insurrection. We have seen misinformation about COVID-19 spread widely online during the pandemic. And today, social media companies are failing to remove the Russian propaganda about the war in Ukraine that they promised to ban. Social media has become an important conduit for the spread of false information about every issue of concern to society. We don’t know what the next crisis will be, but we do know that false claims about it will circulate on these platforms.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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