TechCrunch: Reddit rolls out new search improvements, including a way to find comments. “Reddit announced today that it’s rolling out the ability to search comments, alongside a few other search-related features. With the new comment search function, users no longer have to click on several comments to find threads when looking for a particular conversation.”
New York Times: That Comment Someone Left on Facebook? It Can Get You Sued.. “For Facebook, which has long insisted that it is a neutral vessel for public discourse, the court’s ruling may offer a type of indirect amnesty. While the company may still face defamation suits in Australia, plaintiffs there will be more likely to take local people and media companies to court. And if adopted more widely, the view endorsed by Australia’s court could stifle the sort of freewheeling discourse that often keeps users glued to social media.”
Ubergizmo: YouTube Testing Out Instant Translation For Comments. “…according to a report from Android Police, it seems that YouTube is testing out a new instant translation feature for the comments section. Unfortunately, this seems to be a feature that might only be available to YouTube Premium subscribers as the test is only for those who are subscribed to the service.” I was given the opportunity to look at this as a YouTube Premium subscriber. However, the feature was for phone apps only and I was desktopping it.
Mashable: This clever bot turns Reddit arguments into video game scenes. “On Sunday, 24-year-old software engineer Micah Price from Cape Town, South Africa, unveiled what can only be described as a niche-but-genius creation: a bot that takes everyday arguments on Reddit and has them play out in the style of scenes from Ace Attorney, Capcom’s animated courtroom-based video game series. The end result is a gloriously dramatic affair that shines a whole new spotlight on Reddit’s comment section.”
CNET: Instagram now lets everyone pin comments on posts. “Instagram is expanding its pinned comments feature to everyone, after testing the tool with a select group of users in May. The social media giant said the feature aims to help Instagrammers manage the conversations being had in the comment section of their posts.”
CNET: Byte has a bot problem after just two days. “Byte, the 6-second video app meant to fill the Vine-shaped hole in our hearts, reportedly has a bot problem just days after its release. The app was released on Friday for iPhone and Android, but users quickly returned with complaints about multiple bot-generated spam comments being left on their posts, according to a Sunday blog post from co-founder Dom Hoffman.”
The Outline: A Good Place: The Only Good Comments Section On The Internet. “No matter where the comments live these days, it’s almost impossible to find a comments section where the unsolicited opinions that live there are actually positive, let alone helpful. Unless we’re talking about the comments on NYT Cooking, a digital collection of recipes from The New York Times.”
BuzzFeed News: Political Operatives Are Faking Voter Outrage With Millions Of Made-Up Comments To Benefit The Rich And Powerful. “A BuzzFeed News investigation — based on an analysis of millions of comments, along with court records, business filings, and interviews with dozens of people — offers a window into how a crucial democratic process was skewed by one of the most prolific uses of political impersonation in US history. In a key part of the puzzle, two little-known firms, Media Bridge and LCX Digital, working on behalf of industry group Broadband for America, misappropriated names and personal information as part of a bid to submit more than 1.5 million statements favorable to their cause.”
TechCrunch: YouTube tests profile cards that show users’ comment history. “YouTube commenters will now have their channel loyalty — or their tendency to troll — exposed, thanks to a new feature called profile cards, now in testing. Recently announced by way of YouTube’s Creator Insider channel, where the company shares updates and changes with its creator community, these new profile cards would appear whenever you clicked on a commenter’s name, and would list all their other recent comments on the channel.”
CNET: YouTube vowed to halt comments on videos with young kids. It hasn’t . “Comment-enabled videos prominently depicting young kids are still easy to find on YouTube. A single YouTube search for one kids-focused subject — ‘pretend play’ — returned more than 100 videos with comments enabled, all prominently featuring infants, preschoolers and other children young enough to still have their baby teeth. After CNET contacted YouTube with a list of these videos, comments were disabled on nearly half of them.”
Gizmodo: Australian Court Rules Media Orgs Are Liable for Defamation Posted to Facebook by Random Users. “An Australian Court has ruled that media organizations are liable for anything defamatory that’s published to the public Facebook pages of those media companies, even if it’s just posted by a random Facebook user.”
CNET: YouTube comments hidden by default in new test by the video site. “YouTube’s comments section can be a mix between no man’s land in a war zone and the Wild West. Translation: The place can be dangerous. So instead of making you read what the New Statesman called ‘the worst of the internet,’ YouTube is working on a new feature that would hide comments by default.”
MakeUseOf: How to Search for YouTube Comments
MakeUseOf: How to Search for YouTube Comments. “Looking for a specific comment on YouTube can be tricky if you don’t know how to search properly. It gets worse when you have to search through a thread of comments that goes on for pages. This can be frustrating, but there is a way to search through YouTube comments more effectively. In this article, we will show you how to search through YouTube comments, so you can find what you’re looking for.”