Every 6 months, Twitter releases a statement that outlines government requests for information on its users. They’ve released their latest report, though it has been heavily redacted. In October, Twitter sued the…
Social Media
Tim Cushing writes at Techdirt: The TSA is disappointed that so few Americans have opted out of its bottle-tossing, package-groping screenings by signing up for its PreCheck program. For a few years now,…
Via World Policy Blog Welcome back to the World Policy “Best of” list. Today we pull back the curtain on the Egyptian revolution and reveal its somewhat dark underbelly. Political activist Mahmoud Salem,…
via Pando Daily: Instagram recently decided to permanently delete many of the spam accounts it’s discovered on its service. The move was meant to help the network remain “authentic” because “it’s a place…
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. By Bjorn Nansen, University of Melbourne; James Meese, University of Melbourne; Martin Gibbs, University of Melbourne; Michael Arnold, University of…
Dr. Oz opened up a can of worms on Twitter yesterday. He asked the Twitter community for health questions and some of the responses are great. Don’t you love it when social media…
via Activist Post: What is the point of a social network that doesn’t share your content with friends and followers? Oh, yeah, for profit, government spying, emotional experiments and now, political manipulation….
via The Atlantic: Through likes and comments, I’ve watched my hometown of Perry, Ohio, disappear into and come back from heroin addiction. The U.S. is facing a massive heroin epidemic, and nowhere…
via Ars Technica: Ello, the notably stripped-down, ad-free social network, announced Thursday that it has taken $5.5 million in venture capital and re-incorporated as a “Public Benefit Corporation.” The company’s founders and investors also…
via Mediaite: Politically inactive conservatives generally populate Pinterest, while politically inactive liberals tend to use Instagram. Them’s the facts, according to new data revealed by audience measurement service Quantcast this month. As the helpful…
Many moons ago, I discovered a wonderful social network known as myspace.com. It was an exciting way to meet new people and find those who had likeminded interests. It was also a great…
Ramez Naam writes at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies: Don’t believe the hype. You’re the customer, whether you pay directly or by seeing ads. Tell me if you’ve heard this one…
Could this rise of local news by the people be detrimental? What are the side effects of “hyperlocal” news? We’ve already seen the damage that Twitter and Reddit ‘journalists’ can do, but large…
From Wired: There’s this great Andy Warhol quote you’ve probably seen before: “I think everybody should like everybody.” You can buy posters and plates with pictures of Warhol, looking like the cover…
A great dissection of the corporate food lobby’s fear of social media and the Internet over at The Lunch Tray Dr. Brian Wansink, a professor of consumer behavior at Cornell University and director of…
Do you like scavenger hunts? Are you looking to score some herb, man? Well, if you live in Vancouver and like to frequent Twitter, you can check out HiddenWeedYVR, an account that…
Okay, at first, I had to check to make sure this wasn’t some sort of satirical article or metaparody of sorts, because, well, just look at the first tweet from the Central…
A Cuban social media platform called ZunZuneo with tens of thousands of users was in fact an espionage project concocted by the U.S. government. Although, what social network isn’t about covert data…
Sarah Gray reports for Salon (via AlterNet) on research about how people on Facebook interacted with “trolls” posting false information; she says the results are depressing: From the steady roll of theories…
Researchers claim that Facebook has the power to spread moods in a viral fashion. Here’s the good news, though: Positive moods spread more easily. Via BBC News: “What people feel and say…
More than once I’ve been struck with the desire to abandon Facebook, and at least one of those times I actually deactivated my account. The reasons for my frustration have varied over…
Facebook users abandoning the ubiquitous sharing site in droves sounds unlikely but a serious academic study suggests it’s going to happen, reports TIME: Facebook’s growth will eventually come to a quick end,…
Robert Nemiroff and a team of grad students at Michigan Technological University have been searching Twitter for prescient content: Information that could not have been gained without knowledge of the future. Via…
The The Next Web writes that you will soon be “empowered” by having every mundane aspect of your life mined for data: Are you only as good as the company you keep?…
Anyone could certainly compose a valid argument that Facebook is a key indicator of narcissism, but it’s hard to say that liking the musical works of Phil Collins more than Huey Lewis…