SF Gate: ‘They start calling you Hitler’: Why Disneyland has some of the most toxic fans on the internet. “There is a serious issue with toxicity in Disney social media as a whole, and it has increased so much over the past few years that the topic has become a growing area of academic study.”
KnowTechie: Here’s why your Twitter feed is filled with these red flag emojis. “If you’ve spent any time on Twitter over the last couple of days, no doubt you’ve seen a bunch of posts using the red flag emoji quite liberally. As tends to happen on social media, the emoji has become the subject of a pretty major trend, with its use on the platform skyrocketing over the last couple of days. So what does it mean?”
Mashable: TikTok’s nostalgia-fueled obsession with the early 2000s. “For an app primarily used by by young people, TikTok is oddly obsessed with nostalgia. Whether its obsession with childhood memories or Y2K fashion, the app is overrun with yearning for the past.” I am too old to be entirely comfortable with that excerpt.
Mashable: Posting memes will get you banned from Instagram. “Since March, my accounts have been disabled five more times. One backup was actually deleted while I wrote this article for an innocent image of a man kissing a baby’s head. I’m not kidding. [I will bet you $10 Facebook’s AI thought the baby’s head was a breast. I’m not kidding.-TJC] Adiòs to another 14,000 followers, I guess. No matter how many appeals I send, nothing happens. I never fully understand why my account gets disabled, but I always try to play by Instagram’s distinctly vague community guidelines. Instagram did not reply to multiple requests for comment on this story, but when they do talk to the press, they usually say some version of, “Instagram has a responsibility to keep people safe.” While that may be true, how exactly does disabling an account for posting a Coachella meme have anything to […]
InsideHook: Why Photo Dumps Are Taking Over Your Instagram Feed. “If you’ve noticed a significant deviation from the meticulously curated, overly filtered photos that typically swarm your Instagram feed, you’re not alone. Welcome to the age of the ‘photo dump’ — the current trendy way to share photos on the social media platform that’s also switching up the traditional Instagram mold. So, what is a photo dump?”
Make Tech Easier: 10 Meme Generators to Create Your Own Memes for Free. “Want to turn a picture into a meme? You can do it with help of meme generator apps, which offer an advantage for a wide variety of templates, especially the trending ones, such as meme fonts and a dedicated interface. Let’s take a look at the best meme generator apps for Android, iPhone, online tools, and desktop.” EXTENSIVE annotation and instructions.
The Hill: State AG seeks meeting with TikTok CEO over ‘Slap a Teacher’ challenge. “Connecticut Attorney General William Tong (D) on Monday urged TikTok leadership to meet with teachers and parents in the state — and himself — to address the ‘Slap a Teacher’ challenge on the app.”
Ars Technica: “Wayforward Machine” provides a glimpse into the future of the web. “What could the future of the Internet look like? With the digital world of the 21st century becoming a pit of unwanted ads, tracking, paywalls, unsafe content, and legal threats, ‘Wayforward Machine’ has a dystopian picture in mind. Behind the clickbaity name, Wayforward Machine is an attempt by the Internet Archive to preview the chaos the world wide web is about to become.”
Techdirt: Should Information Flows Be Controlled By The Internet Plumbers?. “Content moderation is a can of worms. For Internet infrastructure intermediaries, it’s a can of worms that they are particularly poorly positioned to tackle. And yet Internet infrastructure elements are increasingly being called on to moderate content—content they may have very little insight into as it passes through their systems.”
New York Times: The Melting Face Emoji Has Already Won Us Over. “There are times when words feel inadequate — when one’s dread, shame, exhaustion or discomfort seems too immense to be captured in written language. That’s where the melting face emoji comes in. The face, fixed with a content half-smile even as it dissolves into a puddle, is one of 37 new emojis approved this year by the Unicode Consortium, the organization that maintains the standards for digital text.”
Washington Post: Facebook is like chairs. No, telephones. No, cars. No …. “Whether it’s chairs or newspapers or telephones or churches or the printing press, Facebook has a pattern of reaching for analogies to older, more widely accepted tools to downplay criticism and justify its march to global ubiquity. It’s a tactic that reveals how Facebook’s leaders rationalize the social network’s problems as they navigate seemingly endless waves of backlash. But historians of technology say that these sorts of comparisons can also be revealing in ways that the people drawing them don’t necessarily intend.”
ArtsHub Australia: How social media is changing the way we experience art. “From influencing creation, curation and perception, there’s no denying social media is changing the way we experience art. It’s an effective tool for generating excitement and keeping audiences engaged. But is it standing in the way of a genuine appreciation of art?”
HuffPost: Trump Insiders Are Quietly Paying Teen Memers For Posts. “In the fever swamps of Instagram, a network of right-wing meme accounts run by teenage boys and young men has erupted into an advertising powerhouse reaching millions. These memers — who regularly post far-right conspiracy theories, anti-vaccine propaganda and other incendiary clickbait — first caught the attention of obscure brands selling cheap MAGA merch, who started paying them to display ads to their rapidly growing conservative audiences. The money wasn’t great, as a few memers told HuffPost last summer, but it still felt like a big deal to watch their Instagram pages blossom into mini businesses. Little did they know, members of Donald Trump’s inner circle would soon come knocking.”
