NEW RESOURCES

Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation: New Historic Image Collection: The World Trade Center, 9/11, and Its Aftermath, as Seen from Our Neighborhoods. “We are proud to share the latest addition to our Historic Image Archive, the Robert Fisch World Trade Center and 9/11 Collection, which contains an incredible array of photos of the pre-9/11 World Trade Center, the 9/11 attacks, their aftermath, and the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. Many of the images are from the perspective of Greenwich Village, where Robert lives, and where he has long documented in pictures the world around him.”

Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury: New Online Resources Focus on Charter Schools. “The Tennessee Comptroller’s Office is releasing a new collection of resources on charter schools in Tennessee. As of the 2023-24 school year, more than 100 charter schools operate in the state under six authorizers. More charter schools are set to open in 2024-25. The charter school series includes short publications, infographics, and an interactive data dashboard for Tennessee charter schools. A new publication will be released online weekly over the coming weeks.”

Block Club Chicago: Alderman Launches Migrant Data Portal, Improving Transparency On Care For New Arrivals. “The website will provide weekly updates on the number of migrants in the city, new arrivals, shelter locations and other data, as well as efforts by Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration and city departments to address the ongoing humanitarian crisis, Vasquez said. The data includes how many migrants are staying in each shelter, in police stations and other locations.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

The Verge: Roblox’s new AI chatbot will help you build virtual worlds. “Roblox announced a new conversational AI assistant at its 2023 Roblox Developers Conference (RDC) that can help creators more easily make experiences for the popular social app. The new tool, the Roblox Assistant, builds on previously announced features that let creators build virtual assets and write code with the help of generative AI.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Mashable: X is no longer labeling ads for some users. “Multiple users on X have recently reported advertisements showing up on their feed without any disclosure or labeling. The paid ads being served to users appear as organic posts (aka tweets) and show up like non-paid content, right in a user’s feed.”

Wall Street Journal: Inside Musk’s Twitter Transformation: Impulsive Decisions, Favors for Friends. “When he felt his own posts weren’t being seen widely enough, he marshaled dozens of company engineers to make his postings some of the platform’s most visible, according to people involved in that effort. At one point, he said a program designed to flag abusive posts would no longer be extended to the accounts of employees, resulting in a harassment campaign that drove one former executive out of his home, some of the people said. X has said Yaccarino and Musk jointly oversee decisions for the company’s trust and safety department, which handles what kinds of posts should or shouldn’t be online. Current and former employees said Musk often calls the shots himself.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

SF Chronicle: X, formerly Twitter, sues California over content moderation law. “X, the site formerly known as Twitter, sued the state of California Friday over a law passed last year requiring social media companies to divulge their terms of service, including how they moderate content on their sites. The lawsuit claims the law, authored by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, violates the company’s freedom of speech, while Gabriel said the law is designed to increase transparency around an important topic.”

Ars Technica: FTC judge rules Intuit broke law, must stop advertising TurboTax as “free”. “The Federal Trade Commission’s chief administrative law judge ruled that Intuit violated US law with deceptive advertising and should be forced to stop promoting TurboTax as ‘free’ unless all conditions imposed on the free offer are immediately and conspicuously displayed to consumers.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

National Review: TikTok’s Secret Effort to Influence American Higher Education. “Since 2019, ByteDance has spent nearly $18 million on lobbying the American government. But its eight-figure funding campaign to American universities has fallen under the radar. This is because all but one of the recipients of TikTok funds failed to properly report the donations to the Department of Education.”

Colorado Sun: Fort Lewis College suddenly pulls plug on rare skiing injury database. “Fort Lewis College last month suddenly pulled the plug on a year-old program that had business and marketing students surveying skiers to assemble a first-of-its-kind database exploring collisions and injuries on ski slopes.” Good afternoon, Internet…

Do you like ResearchBuzz? Does it help you out? Please consider supporting it on Patreon. Not interested in commitment? Perhaps you’d buy me an iced tea. Check out Search Gizmos when you have a minute.