NEW RESOURCES

National Library of the Netherlands: Libraries make their foreign language collections easier to find. “The dashboard lists all non-Dutch language books available for borrowing in libraries in the Netherlands, or in the online Library…. At the moment, the foreign language collections of 712 libraries are included, offering over 527,000 titles in 161 languages.”

The Conversation: Nigerian elections are crowded with candidates: use this new tool to decide who to vote for in your area. “The tool, called My Candidate Nigeria, is an initiative that falls under the Africa Data Hub. Its aim is to inform voters and strengthen democracy. The tool helps voters in Nigeria identify candidates for the elections based on their location address.” I tried this and I really liked it except for the “Candidate Biography” link, which leads to an unrestrained Google search. This would have been an excellent application for a Google CSE with a specific set of domains to search.

German Press Agency: “Facts against fakes”: New website tackles internet disinformation. “Under the title ‘Facts against Fakes,’ fact-checking organizations from Germany and Austria offer up-to-date articles on false information currently being circulated on the internet. This creates the largest freely-accessible archive of fact checks in the German language. In addition, the site provides learning opportunities to promote media literacy among citizens, as well as many research articles.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

How-To Geek: Proton Mail Just Got a Big Upgrade on Desktop PCs. “Proton Mail’s data synchronization and encryption isn’t compatible with regular email apps. That’s why Proton also has a desktop Bridge application, which relays messages to your favorite mail app while maintaining end-to-end encryption. Proton Mail has announced a revamp to its bridge that will allow it to be much faster and comfortable to use, helping whatever email client you’re using it with to feel much more native.”

TechCrunch: Instagram’s co-founders’ personalized news app Artifact launches to the public with new features . “Artifact, the personalized news reader built by Instagram’s co-founders, is now open to the public, no sign-up required.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Boing Boing: The cryptid complications of Wikipedia’s editing policies. “This is (apparently) a great war simmering between Wikipedia editors and cryptid hunters. Cryptid enthusiasts, such as those who haunt r/Cryptozoology, accuse the open-source information website of being biased against their beloved beasts, dismissing such things as Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster with pejorative descriptors of ‘pseudoscience’ (Or, worse — ‘folklore’).”

Vox: Social media used to be free. Not anymore.. “Social media companies can’t make as much money off their free users as they used to. A weaker advertising market, privacy restrictions imposed by Apple that make it harder to track users and their preferences, and the perpetual threat of regulation have made it harder for social media apps to sell ads. Which is why we’re seeing the beginnings of what might be a new era of social media: pay-to-play.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

Reuters: Australia tells Twitter, Google to give information on handling online child abuse. “An Australian regulator has sent legal letters to Twitter and Google telling them to hand over information about their efforts to stop online child abuse, drawing them into a crackdown that has already put pressure on other global tech firms.”

Engadget: FCC chair proposes rules to reduce scam robotexts. “The chair of the Federal Trade Commission has proposed new rules to tackle the scourge of text message scams. If the agency’s commissioners approve the rules at a meeting in March, providers would have to block robotexts that are ‘highly likely to be illegal,’ chair Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement.”

Euractiv: European Commission bans TikTok from corporate devices. “The EU executive’s IT service has asked all Commission employees to uninstall TikTok from their corporate devices, as well as the personal devices using corporate apps, citing data protection concerns.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

National Library of Spain and Google-translated from Spanish: The BNE and the Euskadi Digital Library collaborate to save the .eus domain. “Thanks to the collaboration between the Digital Library of the Basque Country and the National Library of Spain, the .eus domain, a benchmark for Basque culture and language on the Internet, has been saved for the first time for its preservation…. Addressing the .eus domain in its entirety is a complex technical challenge, which involves saving more than 13,000 domains. Each domain has been saved with a size limit of 150 MB and a total of 730 GB of information has been stored.”

Search Engine Land: Social media engagement hits a new low, except for TikTok. “Social media as we’ve known it seems to be in its dying days – with one notable exception, Tiktok. That’s according to a new social media engagement rate benchmark report.” Good morning, Internet…

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