May 14, 2019

Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute: Factions on the Left and Right Want Change in the Social Media Industry

Sovereign Wealth Fund Institute: Factions on the Left and Right Want Change in the Social Media Industry. “Social media giant Facebook, Inc. is facing angst from the both the Left and Right of the political spectrum in the United States. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is weighing new regulatory action against Facebook and possibly other social media companies. Facebook has around US$ 3 billion saved for anticipation of an FTC fine. Some people argue that social media is akin to a public utility and that some regulation needs to occur.”

Uncategorized 0
December 25, 2018

The Verge: Facebook shelved a feature intended to promote civil political discourse

The Verge: Facebook shelved a feature intended to promote civil political discourse. “The Wall Street Journal reports that Facebook had begun working on a feature that would encourage users of opposing political beliefs to interact in a more positive way. But the project — known as ‘Common Ground’ — was reportedly halted after Facebook’s global head of policy raised concerns that it could lead to accusations that the site was biased against conservatives.”

Tweaks & Updates 0
December 21, 2018

The New Yorker: The Search for Anti-Conservative Bias on Google

The New Yorker: The Search for Anti-Conservative Bias on Google. “Algorithmic neutrality is a common Silicon Valley refrain. But an algorithm built without favoring one political party or another, or constructed without intentionally championing a particular ideology, is actually designed to deliver culturally biased results. A search engine runs on algorithms and artificial intelligence to instantaneously sift through the Internet’s nearly two billion Web sites. Google’s engineers have embedded something they call ‘authoritativeness’ into their search algorithm to deliver its results, though what this is, exactly, is challenging to understand, because it appears to be based on a tautology: an authoritative source is a source that a lot of other sources consider to be authoritative. “

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
September 13, 2018

CNET: Google’s Sergey Brin calls 2016 election ‘offensive’ in leaked video

CNET: Google’s Sergey Brin calls 2016 election ‘offensive’ in leaked video. “Google co-founder Sergey Brin told a company gathering that he felt offended by the 2016 election, according to a leaked video published by Breitbart on Wednesday, comments that will likely fuel criticism among conservatives that the search giant is biased against them.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
September 13, 2018

Facebook’s idea of ‘fact-checking’: Censoring ThinkProgress because conservative site told them to (ThinkProgress)

ThinkProgress: Facebook’s idea of ‘fact-checking’: Censoring ThinkProgress because conservative site told them to. “The Weekly Standard brought its third-party ‘fact-checking’ power to bear against ThinkProgress on Monday, when the outlet determined a ThinkProgress story about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh was ‘false,’ a category defined by Facebook to indicate ‘the primary claim(s) in this content are factually inaccurate.’”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
September 1, 2018

Nieman Lab: Republicans who follow liberal Twitter bots actually become more conservative

Nieman Lab: Republicans who follow liberal Twitter bots actually become more conservative. “Social media companies have been big on injecting “alternative views” into users’ feeds — the idea, seemingly, being that exposing people to values and beliefs that conflict with their own will expand their worldviews or making them more tolerant. (See also: a zillion different ‘burst your bubble’ efforts. In some ways, this makes all the sense in the world. On the other hand, changing people’s minds is hard.” There are limitations to this study and I’m not here to make RB political. However I have severe problems with those folks who say, “All you have to do is explain your side and people will understand.” Would that were true, but it’s not.

Research & Opinion 0
August 21, 2018

Washington Post: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admits ‘left-leaning’ bias but says it doesn’t influence company policy

Washington Post: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey admits ‘left-leaning’ bias but says it doesn’t influence company policy. “Faced with criticisms from President Trump that Twitter is ‘shadow banning’ and silencing conservative voices, chief executive Jack Dorsey admitted that those who work for the social media giant have their own biases — and that they’re ‘more left-leaning.’”

Tweaks & Updates 0
April 9, 2018

The Hill: Liberal group launches database to track corporations’ response to tax law

The Hill: Liberal group launches database to track corporations’ response to tax law. “The website from Americans for Tax Fairness, called ‘Trump Tax Cut Truths,’ contains searchable data about the size of corporations’ tax cuts as well as information about bonuses, wage increases, job cuts, new investments and stock buybacks companies have planned following the law’s enactment. The database contains information about more than 800 companies.” I hesitated to include this as I try to be apolitical. But since the information is fact-based, like the size of a corporate tax cut and information on stock buybacks – I feel okay about putting it here.

New Resources 0
April 5, 2018

Motherboard: A Startup Media Site Says AI Can Take Bias Out of News

Motherboard: A Startup Media Site Says AI Can Take Bias Out of News. “The artificial intelligence boom has expanded into creative fields once deemed uniquely human, like music, poetry, and even narrative podcasts. AI has also started writing rudimentary news articles and assisting reporters, but a new startup launched Wednesday says it will use AI to publish breaking news about a wide variety of topics. The site is called ‘Knowhere,’ and its creators say that they believe AI can be used to write unbiased news. The site will publish three versions of every article, aggregated from right-, left-, and center-leaning websites.”

New Resources 0
March 31, 2018

The Next Web: Study shows social media echo chambers might actually be a good thing

The Next Web: Study shows social media echo chambers might actually be a good thing. “A group of researchers, as part of a social experiment, paid liberals and conservatives on Twitter to follow a bot for a month that tweeted political views from the other side. Shockingly, rather than softening their own views or learning to understand the opposition, most participants dug in deeper. We’re not partisan out of ignorance, it seems, but because we fundamentally disagree.”

Research & Opinion 0
January 20, 2018

Pew: Very liberal or conservative legislators most likely to share news on Facebook

From Pew (pew pew pew pew pew! and an extra pew for Robert M.!): Very liberal or conservative legislators most likely to share news on Facebook. “The most ideological members of Congress shared news stories on their Facebook pages more than twice as often as moderate legislators between Jan. 2, 2015, and July 20, 2017, according to a new Pew Research Center study that examined all official Facebook posts created by members of Congress in this period. The analysis included links to national news websites that members of Congress linked to at least 25 times overall in the time studied.”

Research & Opinion 0
September 23, 2017

Quartz: Analysis of 500 million Reddit comments shows how the alt-right made the alt-left a thing

Quartz: Analysis of 500 million Reddit comments shows how the alt-right made the alt-left a thing. “By taking a deep-dive into the data, we can see the different ways in which the alt-right have attempted to capitalize on Trump’s speech and the opportunity to turn the ‘alt-left’ into a mainstream political concept. Through examining the last six months of Reddit comments—all half a billion of them—we can see the intensity with which /r/The_Donald has attempted to push the focus of public conversation toward condemnation of the left, not the right.”

Research & Opinion 0
January 27, 2017

New Web Site Designed to Streamline Representative Contact

A new Web site makes it easier for citizens to contact their representatives. “5 Calls streamlines the calling process to make it user friendly and convenient. Simply enter your zipcode at the top left and you’ll be given a personalized list of numbers to call about the most pressing issues of the day. Click through topics on the left hand column to access a brief overview of each issue, a script to use when placing the call, and an explanation of why you’re calling a particular office (i.e. it’s one of your Senators or the Army Corps of Engineers is conducting an environmental impact report on the Dakota Access Pipeline).” Please note that the helper content here is liberal-oriented; if you’re in favor of a border wall or support the repeal of ACA, you will not find any resources here.

New Resources 0
September 3, 2016

Facebook Blames Vomiting Sticker Search Result on “Bug”

Facebook is getting some heat over what it calls a “bug” in its sticker search. “Facebook is apologizing for what it says is a ‘bug’ that caused people to see the vomit sticker when looking for something to represent ‘liberals’ or ‘feminism’ on its platform. The company attributed the blame to something in its search algorithm and acknowledged that it was fixing the problem.” That same search algorithm Facebook will resolutely not share any information on, but probably not the same algorithm that determines what posts from friends and pages you get to see. Feel better now? No? Me neither.

Around the Search & Social Media World 0

The ResearchBuzz Firehose is regular RB content presented as individual posts.
For digest-type posts a couple of times a day, please visit ResearchBuzz.

Want to know how to best use the Firehose for content discovery?
Check out this handy article.

Get RB Firehose Via EMail

Enter your email address to subscribe to ResearchBuzz Firehose and get a firehose of new posts straight to your email.

Join 2,020 other subscribers

Recent Posts

Popular Posts

Latest ResearchBuzz Gizmos

Stephen’s Cloud Seeder
Search Mastodon Instances for Two Hashtags at a Time
Search Wikipedia for Mastodon Accounts with WMT
RSStodon v2
Mastodon Username Helper

Brought to you by Calishat.