Michigan Daily: Our finstas, our selves. “Up against algorithms that consume billions of data points, it’s no wonder so many assume everything’s on display. This should strike terror into the old-school diarist: Is honesty even possible if something’s always watching? We know. And we revel in it.”
South China Morning Post: As India goes digital, unsuspecting victims lose life savings to social media scams. “While cybercrimes are not new to India, a new wave of these crimes is spreading rapidly across the country … These crimes are pushing many deep into debt, and often, despair. Late last month, a software engineer in the southern city of Hyderabad took his own life after losing more than 1.2 million rupees in a similar scheme, just months after he got married.”
University of Hawaii: Insta-worthy catch? Social media helps UH Hilo researchers track changes in fisheries. “While studying new fishing habits that arose during the pandemic and how those changes were impacting local fisheries, the researchers also confirmed something interesting about data collection in the age of social media. Catch photos posted to Instagram told a story about changes in fishing behavior much more quickly than conventional approaches to data collection. “
Texas Standard: Fentanyl’s rise, distribution tied to growth of social media. “According to an expert who studies drug trafficking, fentanyl is the new ‘social media drug’ and Mexican criminal groups are exploiting the technology to dominate the market – recruiting dealers in Texas to peddle the opioid.”
TechCrunch: Instagram’s co-founders’ personalized news app Artifact launches to the public with new features . “Artifact, the personalized news reader built by Instagram’s co-founders, is now open to the public, no sign-up required.”
Platformer: Instagram’s co-founders are mounting a comeback. “Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger are back. The Instagram co-founders, who departed Facebook in 2018 amid tensions with their parent company, have formed a new venture to explore ideas for next-generation social apps. Their first product is Artifact, a personalized news feed that uses machine learning to understand your interests and will soon let you discuss those articles with friends.”
GeekWire: Seattle Public Schools sues TikTok, YouTube, Instagram and others, seeking compensation for youth mental health crisis. “A new lawsuit filed by Seattle Public Schools against TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Snap, Instagram, and their parent companies alleges that the social media giants have ‘successfully exploited the vulnerable brains of youth’ for their own profit, using psychological tactics that have led to a mental health crisis in schools.”
CBS News: Twitter and other social media sites slipped on removing hate speech in 2022, EU review says. Please note this study is from the spring, before Elon Musk. “The EU report, carried out over six weeks in the spring, found Twitter assessed just over half of the notifications it received about illegal hate speech within 24 hours, down from 82% in 2021. In comparison, the amount of flagged material Facebook reviewed within 24 hours fell to 64%, Instagram slipped to 56.9% and YouTube dipped to 83.3%. TikTok came in at 92%, the only company to improve.”
Cairo Scene: The Arab Kissing Archive Reclaims On-screen Intimacy In Arab Film. “The Instagram account acts as a digital archive, posting snippets of kissing scenes from films made all over the Arab world, documenting titles, actors and filmmakers in the process. The project began in January 2022, with the anonymous founders amassing a dedicated Instagram following and a feed of Arab cinema’s remarkable pecks and smooches while reclaiming a cinematic narrative that is often forgotten.”
Engadget: Twitter and Instagram lock Kanye West’s accounts after a weekend of antisemitic posts. “Kanye West’s return to Twitter has been short-lived. Less than a day after Elon Musk welcomed him back to the platform, the rapper saw his account suspended for posting an antisemitic message.”
Ars Technica: Coroner lists Instagram algorithm as contributing cause of UK teen’s death [Updated]. “In a London court this week, coroner Andrew Walker had the difficult task of assessing a question that child safety advocates have been asking for years: How responsible is social media for the content algorithms feed to minors? The case before Walker involved a 14-year-old named Molly Russell, who took her life in 2017 after she viewed thousands of posts on platforms like Instagram and Pinterest promoting self-harm.”
Business Insider: TikTok copies Instagram’s move to copy buzzy app BeReal. “TikTok is launching a new tool that people quickly noticed is incredibly similar to another popular app: BeReal. The social media platform announced on Thursday TikTok Now, a tool where users receive a daily prompt to film a 10-second video or take a photo to share what they’re doing in the moment from the front and back cameras on their phone.”
Wall Street Journal: Instagram Stumbles in Push to Mimic TikTok, Internal Documents Show. “The document, titled ‘Creators x Reels State of the Union 2022,’ was published internally in August. It said that Reels engagement had been falling—down 13.6% over the previous four weeks—and that ‘most Reels users have no engagement whatsoever.’ One reason is that Instagram has struggled to recruit people to make content. Roughly 11 million creators are on the platform in the U.S., but only about 2.3 million of them, or 20.7%, post on that platform each month, the document said.”
International Business Times: Irish Data Watchdog Fines Instagram 405 Mn Euros Over Children. “Ireland’s Data Protection Commission on Monday said it had fined Instagram a record 405 million euros ($402 million) for breaching regulations on the handling of children’s data…. The DPC launched an investigation in late 2020 into concerns about how the image-sharing social media platform handles children’s personal data.”
ProPublica: Real Money, Fake Musicians: Inside a Million-Dollar Instagram Verification Scheme. “A jeweler. A plastic surgeon. An OnlyFans Model. They and others received a blue check in likely the biggest Instagram verification scheme revealed to date. After ProPublica started asking questions, Meta removed badges from over 300 accounts.”
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