TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Google Stadia is shutting down soon, so transfer your games and saves while you can. “Google Stadia, the company’s not-long-for-this-world cloud gaming service, will be shutting down for good on January 18th. (Specifically, January 18th at 11:59PM PT, Google spokesperson Patrick Seybold confirmed to The Verge.) While the shutdown means that you’re about to lose access to all of your titles and saves on Stadia, many publishers have shared ways to bring your purchases and progress to other platforms so you can keep playing your games.”

Business Insider: A group of laid off Twitter employees finally got paltry severance agreements. Now they must decide whether to sign, or pursue legal action against Elon Musk’s company.. “Hundreds of Twitter employees who were part of Elon Musk’s first round of layoffs just got severance paperwork after waiting for two months. Now they must decide whether to sign or join lawsuits against the company and its billionaire owner.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: 8 Ways to Discover the Most Popular Online Content. “These days, most people get their daily dose of news from Facebook posts, Twitter, Reddit threads, and more. However, if you don’t want to rely on social media as your only source for news, there are other ways to discover more popular content online. There was a time when news aggregators and RSS Feeds were more common. These tools still have a place in the digital world despite the rise of social media. Here, we’ll be looking at a few of the best options.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Poynter: Misinformation is swirling online about COVID-19 vaccines and Damar Hamlin’s collapse. “Hamlin tackled Cincinnati Bengals receiver Tee Higgins during a Jan. 2 game at Paycor Stadium. As millions watched, Hamlin stood up after the hit and moments later fell to the ground. Social media users seized on the incident and used it to suggest that COVID-19 vaccines contributed to Hamlin’s cardiac arrest.”

Mid-Day: Why people are keeping their deceased ones alive through social media accounts. “The last post on Bollywood singer KK’s Instagram account was in October 2022, roughly five months after his sudden death in Kolkata last May. ‘After he passed, I spoke to Nakul [his son], about what we should do with his account,’ says Shubham Bhatt, KK’s manager, ‘and we decided to not deactivate it as it was a way to reach out to all his fans….’ … The singer’s posthumous Instagram account is now of the many belonging to renowned artistes across the globe, who have an active account after their death.

Fast Company: How Gen Z social media managers became the new CMOs. “[Zaria] Parvez, who’s since been promoted to global social media manager, is just one of several young corporate marketing staffers who, thanks largely to TikTok’s meteoric rise, have quickly become leaders in their companies when it comes to messaging and positioning. These Gen Z’ers are not just in tune with the brand voice, but actively shaping it, and altering marketing departments along the way.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

GeekWire: Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and others, seeking compensation for youth mental health crisis. “A new lawsuit filed by Seattle Public Schools against TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Snap, Instagram, and their parent companies alleges that the social media giants have ‘successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth’ for their own profit, using psychological tactics that have led to a mental health crisis in schools.”

Bleeping Computer: Slack’s private GitHub code repositories stolen over holidays. “Slack suffered a security incident over the holidays affecting some of its private GitHub code repositories. The immensely popular Salesforce-owned IM app is used by an estimated 18 million users at workplaces and digital communities around the world.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

The Conversation: Beyond Section 230: A pair of social media experts describes how to bring transparency and accountability to the industry. “…the more that platforms like Twitter test the limits of their protection, the more American politicians on both sides of the aisle have been motivated to modify or repeal Section 230. As a social media media professor and a social media lawyer with a long history in this field, we think change in Section 230 is coming – and we believe that it is long overdue.”

New York Times: A New Area of A.I. Booms, Even Amid the Tech Gloom. “An investment frenzy over ‘generative artificial intelligence’ has gripped Silicon Valley, as tools that generate text, images and sounds in response to short prompts seize the imagination.” Good afternoon, Internet…

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