Techdirt: Chinese Professor Argues Google Should Launch A Censored Search Engine In China. “The argument from Bai Tongdong, a professor of philosophy at Fudan University, is pretty straightforward. More or less, it argues that Baidu is not a very good search engine. Google, even in a heavily censored fashion, is almost certainly going to be a lot better, and thus it will certainly aid in getting everyday people in China more access to information.”
Author: ResearchBuzz
ABC News: Pakistan causes YouTube outage for two-thirds of world
ABC News: Pakistan causes YouTube outage for two-thirds of world. “Most of the world’s Internet users lost access to YouTube for several hours Sunday after an attempt by Pakistan’s government to block access domestically affected other countries. The outage highlighted yet another of the Internet’s vulnerabilities, coming less than a month after broken fiber-optic cables in the Mediterranean took Egypt off line and caused communications problems from the Middle East to India.”
Chartbeat: What happens when Facebook goes down? People read the news
Chartbeat: What happens when Facebook goes down? People read the news . “What would the world look like without Facebook? Chartbeat had a glimpse into that on Aug. 3, 2018, when Facebook went down for 45 minutes and traffic patterns across the web changed in an instant. What did people do? According to our data, they went directly to publishers’ mobile apps and sites (as well as to search engines) to get their information fix. This window into consumer behavior reflects broader changes we see taking hold this year around content discovery, particularly on mobile. This is good news for publishers.”
Washington Post: Iranians masqueraded as foreign journalists to push political messages online, new Twitter data shows
Washington Post: Iranians masqueraded as foreign journalists to push political messages online, new Twitter data shows. “Twitter accounts originating in Iran masqueraded as foreign journalists and concerned U.S. citizens in their attempt to push political messages on the social media site until they were suspended earlier this year, according to research published Wednesday.”
Popular Mechanics: Facebook Admits Its New Gadget Might Use Your Data for Ads After All
Popular Mechanics: Facebook Admits Its New Gadget Might Use Your Data for Ads After All. “The debut of Portal, Facebook’s video chatting device, sparked an obvious question: Does this camera-enabled home assistant manufactured by a company attached to numerous privacy scandals keep your private data private? Facebook was quick to note that Portal wouldn’t feed your data to advertisers — ‘Portal conversations stay between you and the people you’re calling,’ last week’s announcement said — but that reassurance has already proven false: Facebook might use your calls and Portal app usage as queues for its advertising network, a company spokesperson told Recode.”
University of New South Wales: Larval fish database to show effects of climate change on fisheries
University of New South Wales: Larval fish database to show effects of climate change on fisheries. “A new larval fish database collated over the last 30 years will be used to measure marine ecosystem state and change as well as seasonal patterns of various fish species.”
Tumblr turns stumblr, left humblr: Blogging biz blogs bloggers’ private info to world+dog (The Register)
The Register: Tumblr turns stumblr, left humblr: Blogging biz blogs bloggers’ private info to world+dog . “Tumblr today reveal it has fixed a security bug in its website that quietly revealed private details of some of its bloggers. This is quite an interesting bug. The desktop version of Tumblr shows a list of recommended blogs for logged-in users to check out. According to Tumblr, ‘it was possible, using debugging software in a certain way, to view certain account information’ associated with the blogs shown in the box of recommendations.”
