September 24, 2023

Analytics India: Google is Officially Killing the Internet with AI

Analytics India: Google is Officially Killing the Internet with AI. ” In the latest iteration of the company’s ‘Helpful Content Update’, the phrase ‘written by people’ has been replaced by a statement that search giant is constantly monitoring ‘content created for people’ to rank sites on its search engine. The linguistic pivot shows that the company does recognise the significant impact AI tools have on content creation. Despite prior declarations of intentions to distinguish between AI and human-authored content, with this move, it appears that the company is contradicting its own stance on the omnipresent AI-generated material on the internet.”

Research & Opinion 0
September 24, 2023

New York Times: Google Says Switching Away From Its Search Engine Is Easy. It’s Not.

New York Times: Google Says Switching Away From Its Search Engine Is Easy. It’s Not.. “I decided to test how easy or hard it really is to switch to a different search engine. In a blog post this month, Google said the change was a straightforward process and offered three examples… So I followed Google’s instructions and also shared the company’s guidance with a panel of three design veterans. The verdict: It’s hard to switch — and most people would probably give up before completing the change.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
September 24, 2023

Bloomberg: TikTok’s Rules Deter Researchers From Crunching Data on Users, Misinformation

Bloomberg: TikTok’s Rules Deter Researchers From Crunching Data on Users, Misinformation. “As TikTok gets more popular, researchers at leading academic institutions want to study what users are doing there. Publicly, the company says it’s open to this, and is partnering with academics. But researchers said so far, the video app’s rules about data are too burdensome.”

Research & Opinion 0
September 21, 2023

Motherboard: Google Flat-Out Refuses to Bargain With Workers, Prompting YouTube Music Strike

Motherboard: Google Flat-Out Refuses to Bargain With Workers, Prompting YouTube Music Strike. “YouTube Music contract workers went on strike on Wednesday morning because of Google’s refusal to bargain with the union representing the workers. Google, YouTube’s parent company, claims that because the workers are employed through a third-party contractor it has no obligation to meet them at the table, according to an email from a law firm representing Google seen by Motherboard.”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
September 20, 2023

The Japan News: Google, X Among Six Search, Social Media Operators Subject to Japan’s New Government Regulations to Protect Personal Data

The Japan News: Google, X Among Six Search, Social Media Operators Subject to Japan’s New Government Regulations to Protect Personal Data. “Google LLC and X Corp., which operates the service formerly known as Twitter, are among the six companies whose services will be subject to regulation by the Japanese government from as soon as October. A council of the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry released its report Tuesday saying that it is appropriate to designate the six companies, with the aim of strengthening the protection of users’ personal information.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
September 20, 2023

Reuters: Google launches last-ditch effort to overturn $2.6 billion EU antitrust fine

Reuters: Google launches last-ditch effort to overturn $2.6 billion EU antitrust fine. “Alphabet’s Google on Tuesday made a last-ditch effort at Europe’s top court to overturn a 2.42 billion euro ($2.6 billion) EU antitrust fine imposed for market abuse related to its shopping service, saying that regulators failed to show that its practices were anti-competitive.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
September 20, 2023

New York Times: The Google Trial Is Going to Rewrite Our Future

New York Times: The Google Trial Is Going to Rewrite Our Future. “The Google antitrust trial, which began last week, is ostensibly focused on the past — on a series of deals that Google made with other companies over the past two decades. The prosecution in the case, U.S. et al. v. Google, contends that Google illegally spent billions of dollars paying off Samsung and Apple to prevent anyone else from gaining a foothold in the market for online search.”

Research & Opinion 0
September 19, 2023

X Corp (Twitter) case: Karnataka High Court suggests that government bring in minimum age for using social media (Bar and Bench)

Bar and Bench (India): X Corp (Twitter) case: Karnataka High Court suggests that government bring in minimum age for using social media. “The Karnataka High Court today suggested that the Central government consider setting a minimum age for using social media so that children are prevented from using it. A bench of Justices G Narender and Vijaykumar A Patil made the suggestion while dwelling upon the dangers of exposing children to social media.”

Security & Legal Issues 0
September 19, 2023

CNBC: Elon Musk says Twitter, now X, is moving to monthly subscription fees and has 550 million users

CNBC: Elon Musk says Twitter, now X, is moving to monthly subscription fees and has 550 million users. “Elon Musk discussed his plans for Twitter, now called X, on Monday during a livestreamed conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Among other things, Musk said the social network is ‘moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the X system’ in order to combat ‘vast armies of bots.’”

Around the Search & Social Media World 0
September 18, 2023

TechCrunch: Twitter/X rival T2 rebrands as ‘Pebble,’ saying the old name was never meant to be permanent

TechCrunch: Twitter/X rival T2 rebrands as ‘Pebble,’ saying the old name was never meant to be permanent . “An X challenger didn’t hide its ambitions to take on the social network formerly known as Twitter when it dubbed itself T2 at launch, but now that name — one which indicates a desire to build a Twitter clone — is no more. The company announced on its platform that the would-be X rival will now be called ‘Pebble.’” “Like the smartwatch?” said my not-quite-keeping-up memory.

Tweaks & Updates 0
September 16, 2023

Revival strategy: X turns to Google to sell programmatic ads (Marketing/Beat)

Marketing/Beat: Revival strategy: X turns to Google to sell programmatic ads. “X,formerly Twitter, will start receiving programmatic ads for Google as it continues to seek new advertising supply sources to replenish its funds. Google confirmed today that X would use the programmatic ad platform for publishers, Google Ads Manager, to participate in online auctions to sell its inventory.”

Tweaks & Updates 0
September 16, 2023

The Markup: Twitter is Still Throttling Competitors’ Links—Check for Yourself

The Markup: Twitter is Still Throttling Competitors’ Links—Check for Yourself. “Twitter continues to slow traffic to competing sites nearly a month after it partially pulled back from such throttling, a Markup analysis has found. Users of the social platform, now officially known as X, are made to wait on average about two and a half seconds after clicking on links to Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, and Substack, the analysis found. That’s more than 60 times longer than the average wait for links to other sites.”

Useful Stuff 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.