The 25 most-cited news organizations in the U.S. lost 75% of their total user engagement on Facebook and 58% of interactions on Instagram between 2022 and 2024. "Where will people go for this information? Or will they just go without?" https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/21/social-media-trump-biden-politics-instagram-facebook/

NYC's AI weapon scanners produce 85% false positives

Hell Gate

NYC Has Tried AI Weapons Scanners Before. The Result: Tons of False Positives - Hell Gate

Mayor Eric Adams announced his intention to put weapons scanners on the subway system, but a 2022 pilot at a NYC hospital showed that the technolog...

"Maybe the most significant effect of that Russian op was to give American elites what Kevin Baker calls 'psy-op brain' -- the belief that any online political expression with which they are uncomfortable must be the product of a foreign psychological operation. ... Israel, portrayed badly? Gotta be a psy-op!"

Four unpersuasive arguments against TikTok

The TikTok ban, the de-professionalization of MrBeast, and what happens in the sequels to Dune

DOES ANYONE KNOW ANY GOOD TECH/BUSINESS EDITORS??? my boss (who I would crucify myself for bc he’s the best editor I’ve ever had) is retiring and they’re hiring for TWO tech editor roles at WaPo (one in DC and one in SF) 🙏🏻 https://washpost.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/washingtonpostcareers/job/Technology-Policy-Editor_JR-90274661 https://washpost.wd5.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/washingtonpostcareers/job/Technology-Companies-Editor_JR-90274660

Facebook made a UI tweak to bring back the "Poke" button, and found that use of Pokes went up 13x -- mostly among users 18-29, who had probably never even used Poke the first time around

Business Insider

Facebook is reviving one of its earliest features after hiding it for years

Meta says Facebook Pokes surged after it quietly resurfaced the Poke button. And more than half of new Pokes are coming from users ages 18 to 29, t...

“These guys are these delicate narcissists, out in Northern California, and they’re just like: Not only do we not want to be criticized, but we would like to be celebrated because we are visionary geniuses.” I chatted with director Adam Frucci about his new movie that skewers Silicon Valley venture capitalists https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/movies/2024/03/12/disruptors-adam-frucci-silicon-valley/

As Eliot Higgins, the founder of Bellingcat, says in this thread, it's disturbing that a completely insane conspiracy theory about Kate Middleton swapping her face in a photo has 38M views. People who actually understand photo manipulation have debunked this repeatedly (see Eliot's thread), but it has no effect. The truth truly does not matter to people because they want to believe the conspiracy and cannot be convinced otherwise.

X (formerly Twitter)

@eliothiggins.bsky.social (@EliotHiggins) on X

There's so many minor differences, like the reflection of the light in her pupils, the light and shadow on her face, the teeth visible, wrinkles, e...

Someone should show this piece to editors of The New Republic, NY Mag, Slate & all the other media orgs who have published dangerous and anti scientific conspiracy theories about this disease. This from @npub1segp...rjq2 is what ACTUAL reporting looks like

the Guardian

‘You don’t want to get better’: the outdated treatment of ME/CFS patients is a national scandal | George Monbiot

The notion that this illness is psychosomatic is having devastating effects, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

The exclusion of Covid in major news reporting about the global hospital and healthcare system collapse is an active choice, based either in denial or collusion, and it’s happening everywhere. Read this piece.

Unmitigated COVID is overwhelming hospital systems- globally.

From Canada to the UK to the US to Australia and beyond, media keeps framing the hospital crises as local and budget related. What about the elepha...

I sat down with Chaya Raichik of LibsofTikTok to talk about Nex's death, her role in Oklahoma politics, her beliefs on gender, the great replacement theory, sex education, her false accusations against the Uvalde shooter, why she and Seth Dillon cut ties and more: Read my latest story on her impact in Oklahoma: https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/02/24/libs-tiktok-oklahoma-nonbinary-teen-death/

Mainstreaming Covid denialism/Covid denialists is now leading to the mainstreaming of full on AIDS denialism. This is what happens when the media and public boost Covid denying conspiracy theorists

VICE

Joe Rogan and Bret Weinstein Promote AIDS Denialism to an Audience of Millions

Weinstein repeated discredited theories to Rogan about HIV not being the cause of AIDS, alarming and infuriating public health experts.

"Any social media platform that dips under 10% poster will fail, but as the early days of Bluesky demonstrated, if you over index on posters, you will have endless fucking chaos. It is possible that posters are deeply unwell. Certainly they are far too online."

The Verge

Toward a unified taxonomy of text-based social media use

The development of trolls appears to be the internet’s version of carcinization.

"It is clear that there is no platform coming to save journalism. And there are an increasingly large number of platforms who seem intent on killing it"

Platformer

Scenes from a dying web

News at the intersection of Silicon Valley and democracy. On Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 5PM Pacific.

Apple Vision Pro users alarmed to learn that VR porn doesn't currently work on the $3,500 device

404 Media

A ‘$3,500 Chastity Belt’: Early Apple Vision Pro Adopters Alarmed to Learn VR Porn Doesn't Work

"So uhh.. where is all the 3d porn?"

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Chicago-area Tesla charging stations are lined with dead cars and have essentially turned into car graveyards as temperatures have dropped to the negative double digits: “A bunch of dead robots out here” https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chicago-area-tesla-charging-stations-024817227.html

Screenshotting this post 👇🏻 in order to quote post it! I don’t know where people get the idea that quote posting = dunks, personally I feel that that opinion is just Twitter brain. Every major social platform from Tumblr, to Facebook, to LinkedIn and more has the ability to natively quote post. This is because the primary use of such a feature is to amplify information w added context or to open a new line of discussion. Replies are used far more often for harassment but we don’t ban replies!

"Why do we Palestinians have to film our own country getting bombed and our own people getting killed, just for the world to watch silently?” asked Plestia Alaqad, a 22-year-old freelance journalist whose Instagram account has 4.6 million followers

TIME

Inside the Israel-Hamas Information War

Horrific scenes from Oct. 7 and the attack on Gaza fuel a global fight for public opinion.

“Meta’s policies and practices have been silencing voices in support of Palestine and Palestinian human rights on Instagram and Facebook in a wave of heightened censorship on social media”

Human Rights Watch

Meta’s Broken Promises

The 51-page report, “Meta’s Broken Promises: Systemic Censorship of Palestine Content on Instagram and Facebook,” documents a pattern of undu...

The IDF operates a Telegram channel called "72 Virgins – Uncensored" that posts sadistic images of Israelis murdering Palestinians & mutilating their bodies: “Burning their mothers…exterminating the cockroaches” Videos show Israelis rampaging through a hospital hunting for more Palestinians to kill https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/security-aviation/2023-12-12/ty-article/.premium/graphic-videos-and-incitement-how-the-idf-is-misleading-israelis-on-telegram/0000018c-5ab5-df2f-adac-febd01c30000