NBC News: Instagram pushes drug content to teens. “Instagram is pushing drug-related content to teen accounts, according to research by the watchdog group Tech Transparency Project (TTP). While the company has pledged to crack down on drug sales, it continues to suggest hashtags related to buying illegal substances to children as young as 13, the research shows.”
Hurriyet Daily News: Prosecutor launches probe into ‘Help Turkey’ social media posts. “The Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office has launched a probe into social media posts that asked for foreign help with the hashtag ‘Help Turkey’ amid the massive wildfires. In a statement on Aug. 5, the prosecutor’s office argued that the posts were trying to show the country as ‘incapable’ and ‘attempted to create panic, fear and concern among the public.’”
Vogue: How Orthodox Women Are Using Social Media to Liberate Each Other From Dead Marriages. “The intersection of religious and secular law has proved sticky terrain for women (or men) attempting to obtain a get [document establishing a Jewish divorce]. But the emergence of social-media-fueled activism has the potential to change the traditional power dynamics. In many ways, #FreeChava mimics other social-justice movements that have played out on social media: There is an initial post, then the repost, and sometimes a viral moment. (To date, more than 1,500 posts have used the #FreeChava hashtag.)”
BuzzFeed News: As Indians Face A COVID-19 Crisis, Facebook Temporarily Hid Posts With #ResignModi. “Facebook temporarily hid posts calling for the resignation of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, marking the platform’s latest foray in a series of controversial decisions affecting free speech in a country experiencing a full-blown COVID-19 crisis.”
SF State News: New study on #MeToo movement reveals Twitter echo chamber. “Two years ago, San Francisco State University Associate Professor of Economics Sepideh Modrek published a paper about the 2017 #MeToo movement. The viral hashtag emerged after celebrities started coming forward with sexual assault allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein and other well-known public figures. Modrek’s first paper was a snapshot of those early Twitter conversations of mostly women tweeting personal stories of sexual assault and voicing support for survivors. In a new paper published in the April 2021 Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Modrek returned to Twitter to examine how the movement affected those uninvolved in the initial online conversations. The answer, unfortunately: not much.”
BBC: Paris hits back at filthy streets hashtag campaign. “Paris officials have blamed a ‘political smear campaign’ after angry comments and pictures of filthy streets spread on social media criticising a ‘trashed Paris’. The hashtag ‘saccage Paris’ went viral over Easter, with many of the messages accusing the city’s Socialist leadership of ruining the capital.”
Lifehacker: How to Make Your Hashtags More Reader-Friendly. “Communicating in the language of hashtags is an annoyingly universal aspect of social media. But if you’re using hashtags on your Instagram posts, tweets, or Facebook status updates, you should make sure they’re readable for people with visual and cognitive disabilities.”
MakeUseOf: How to Mute Specific Words and Hashtags on Twitter. “Sometimes, Twitter can be an information overload—from bad news, to spammy trends, to content that you have no interest in engaging with. Luckily, it’s possible to tune your timeline and notifications to filter out harmful content or topics you’d rather not see on your timeline. Read on to learn how to mute tweets that contain particular words, phrases, usernames, emojis, or hashtags.”
Reuters: After Facebook ban, thousands in Myanmar take to Twitter to plead #RespectOurVotes. “Since Myanmar’s new military rulers imposed a temporary blockade on Facebook on Thursday, thousands in the Southeast Asian country have joined Twitter, according to app downloads and a Reuters estimate.”
UCLA: How a Twitter hashtag provides insights for doctors and support for people with breast cancer. “A UCLA-led review of nine years of social media posts with the hashtag #BCSM suggests that Twitter can be a useful resource not only for patients, but also for physicians and researchers. The hashtag — an initialism for ‘breast cancer social media’ — first appeared on Twitter in 2011. Created by two cancer survivors, it was used to curate a weekly informational chat for people with breast cancer. Dr. Deanna Attai became one of the group’s moderators a few weeks later.”
NBC News: QAnon accounts make a dent in voting discussion on Twitter. “More than 1 in 50 tweets about voting in the 2020 elections in August and September were posted by QAnon accounts, according to research released Friday by Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan nonprofit.”
WNCT: ECU students make #ShutDownECU Twitter account, #KeepECUOpen forms in response. “A Twitter account continues gaining popularity, urging [East Carolina University] to switch to remote learning. #ShutDownECU is made up of about 10 students, with a list of demands for the university. They all want to remain anonymous.”
Tech Transparency Project: Instagram’s Hashtag Blocking Favors Trump, Hurts Biden. “When a person searches Instagram for a hashtag and clicks on it, the platform has automatically generated “related hashtags” pointing users to other relevant content. TTP examined related hashtags for 20 popular terms associated with the Trump and Biden campaigns and found starkly different treatment of the two candidates. Instagram blocked the display of related hashtags on all 10 of the Trump hashtags reviewed, including #donaldtrump, #trump and #trump2020. That means users were not directed to other content, including anything negative or critical about the president. But for all 10 similar Biden hashtags, Instagram did display related hashtags, which at times steered users to insults and disinformation about the former vice president, with phrases like #creepyjoebiden, #joebidenpedophile and #joebidenisaracist.”
Global Voices: Nigerians counteract COVID-19 denialism with social media campaigns. “Nigerians are reducing the effect of COVID-19 denial narratives with powerful online Twitter campaigns such as #MyCOVID19NaijaStory and #COVIDStopswithMe. These counter-narratives aim to prove that the deadly coronavirus is not a hoax and more importantly, to encourage people to adopt good public health behaviours to mitigate its spread. As of July 29, Nigeria had recorded 41,804 confirmed COVID-19 cases,18,764 recoveries and 868 deaths.”
BBC: Banned protesters send #ZimbabweanLivesMatter viral. “Could a social media hashtag – tapping into the energy and anger of the global #BlackLivesMatter phenomenon – help achieve in Zimbabwe what years of street protests, strikes and political campaigns have so clearly failed to do? Over the last few days, in response to a particularly brutal, public, widespread, and on-going clampdown by security forces, the hashtag #ZimbabweanLivesMatter has gone viral, globally.”
