The Atlantic: Tumblr’s First Year Without Porn. “From 2018 to 2019, the average number of unique monthly visitors to Tumblr’s website decreased by 21.2 percent, according to data compiled by the analytics service SimilarWeb. The total volume of visits to the site is in decline, as is the number of visits per unique visitor, as is the amount of time that visitors spend on the site. From 2018 to 2019, the average site visit dropped by nearly a minute, and the average number of pages per visit dropped by more than one and a half.”
social media
Tech Xplore: Filtering out social bots can help critical response teams see what’s happening in real time
Tech Xplore: Filtering out social bots can help critical response teams see what’s happening in real time. “Researchers have created an algorithm that distinguishes between misinformation and genuine conversations on Twitter, by detecting messages churned out by social bots. Dr. Mehwish Nasim and colleagues at the School of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Adelaide say the algorithm will make it easier for emergency services to detect major events such as civil unrest, natural disasters, and influenza epidemics in real time.”
Rappler: CrowdTangle rolls out new, better search tool for fact checkers
Rappler: CrowdTangle rolls out new, better search tool for fact checkers. “Content discovery and social monitoring platform CrowdTangle announced on Saturday, December 7, that it is giving fact checkers access to a new search tool, which can find and measure public posts across several social media platforms…. This tool can search for public posts shared across Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and Twitter. It is still in beta and is only currently available to Facebook’s fact-checking partners.”
New York Times: Trump Administration Sued Over Social Media Screening for Visa Applicants
New York Times: Trump Administration Sued Over Social Media Screening for Visa Applicants. “A pair of documentary film organizations sued the Trump administration on Thursday over its requirement that foreigners disclose their social media accounts — including pseudonymous ones — when they apply for visas.”
The Guardian: Uncovered: reality of how smartphones turned election news into chaos
The Guardian: Uncovered: reality of how smartphones turned election news into chaos. “Ask the average 2019 voter where the problems with political news lie, and you might hear a few familiar claims: fake news. Russian interference. The biased BBC. But take a look at their smartphones, and you might discover a different, more chaotic world – in which news is being shaped less by publishers or foreign agents but by social media algorithms and friendship groups.”
CBC: Inuit sharing ancient knowledge of ice, sea and land with new app
CBC: Inuit sharing ancient knowledge of ice, sea and land with new app . “A social media app geared toward the outdoor lives of Inuit launched Wednesday with features that tie traditional knowledge to smartphone technology. The Siku app and web platform, named after the Inuktitut word for sea ice, allows users to trade observations about dangerous conditions, document wildlife sightings and trade hunting stories.”
New York Times: Fake ‘Likes’ Remain Just a Few Dollars Away, Researchers Say
New York Times: Fake ‘Likes’ Remain Just a Few Dollars Away, Researchers Say. “Companies like Facebook and Twitter are poorly policing automated bots and other methods for manipulating social media platforms, according to a report released on Friday by researchers from the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence. With a small amount of money, the researchers found, virtually anyone can hire a company to get more likes, comments and clicks.”
