NEW RESOURCES

New-to-me, from Smashing Magazine: WaterBear: Building A Free Platform For Impactful Documentaries (Part 1). “WaterBear is a free platform bringing together inspiration and action with award-winning high-production environmental documentaries covering various topics, from animals and climate change to people and communities.”

CISA: CISA Launches National Public Service Announcement Campaign Encouraging Americans to Take Steps to Keep Themselves and Their Families Safe Online. “The campaign includes a public service announcement (PSA) that will air on stations around the country, as well as digital content, a toolkit, and other resources. Recognizing that technology is an integral part of our modern lives, Congress tasked CISA with creating this program to provide small businesses, communities, and individuals with the guidance and tools they need to protect themselves online.”

EBSCO: EBSCO Information Services Releases Moment Magazine Archive. “Moment is a Jewish magazine founded by Nobel Peace laureate Elie Wiesel and Jewish activist Leonard Fein, that explores the complexities of literary, political and cultural religious nuances of the Jewish world. Moment Magazine Archive’s coverage spans from May 1975 to December 2010 and provides in-depth analysis and unique perspectives, insightful articles and criticism on art, literature, world affairs and society, written by leaders and thinkers of the Jewish world and beyond.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Journal: Google Indexing Public Bard Conversations In Search Results. “Google is coming under scrutiny after people discovered transcripts of conversations with its AI chatbot are being indexed in search results.” (This is apparently an error Google is working to fix. Only chats users chose to make public are impacted.)

The Guardian: X/Twitter scraps feature letting users report misleading information. “X, the company formerly known as Twitter, has removed the ability for people to report a tweet for containing misleading information just weeks before a referendum on an Indigenous voice to parliament in Australia.”

AROUND THE INTERNET WORLD

Ars Technica: Can you melt eggs? Quora’s AI says “yes,” and Google is sharing the result. “When you type a question into Google Search, the site sometimes provides a quick answer called a Featured Snippet at the top of the results, pulled from websites it has indexed. On Monday, X user Tyler Glaiel noticed that Google’s answer to ‘can you melt eggs’ resulted in a ‘yes,’ pulled from Quora’s integrated ‘ChatGPT’ feature, which is based on an earlier version of OpenAI’s language model that frequently confabulates information.”

Wall Street Journal: TikTok Employees Say Executive Moves to U.S. Show China Parent’s Influence. “TikTok has spent the past three years trying to convince U.S. lawmakers it can operate independently in this country from its China-based parent company, ByteDance. After recent personnel moves, some employees aren’t so sure. Since the start of the year, a string of high-level executives have transferred from ByteDance to TikTok, taking on some of the top jobs in the popular video-sharing app’s moneymaking operations. Some moved to the U.S. from ByteDance’s Beijing headquarters.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

The Verge: FTC files a massive antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. “The Federal Trade Commission and more than a dozen state attorneys general have filed a sweeping antitrust lawsuit against Amazon, alleging that the e-commerce giant has unlawfully leveraged its market dominance to stamp out would-be competitors.”

WIRED: FBI Agents Are Using Face Recognition Without Proper Training. “THE US FEDERAL Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has done tens of thousands of face recognition searches using software from outside providers in recent years. Yet only 5 percent of the 200 agents with access to the technology have taken the bureau’s three-day training course on how to use it, a report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) this month reveals. The bureau has no policy for face recognition use in place to protect privacy, civil rights, or civil liberties.”

New York Times: ‘Unprecedented’ Secrecy in Google Trial as Tech Giants Push to Limit Disclosures. “Now as the case, U.S. et al. v. Google, enters its third week in court, it is shaping up to be perhaps the most secretive antitrust trial of the last few decades. Not only has Google argued for the landmark trial to be largely closed off to the public, but so have other companies that are involved, such as Apple and Microsoft. Apple even fought to quash subpoenas, describing them as ‘unduly burdensome,’ to get its executives out of giving testimony. The upshot is that last week, more than half of the testimony in the trial was given behind closed doors, according to one analysis.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

University of Arkansas: Socially Unacceptable Brand Mentions on Social Media Cause Disengagement. “The researchers found that for highly connected consumers, socially unacceptable brand mentions on social media constituted a threat to their social identity. This threat in turn led to vicarious shame, motivating disengagement from the brand, a separation that can undermine the economic benefits of self-brand connection.”

CNN: Teens are exhausted by phone notifications but don’t know how to quit, report finds. “About one-fourth of notifications came during school hours, a finding researchers said suggests phones and apps could improve on cutting down unnecessary alerts at times when teens shouldn’t be disrupted — especially because, during school hours, most participants used their phone at least once for 43 minutes on average. But some teens used their phones for more than six hours during that time.” Good morning, Internet…

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