The 210th Block: New media influence

Regulating social media doesn't mean banning social media, dummies!

May 12, 2024

This week…

Your reading time is about 8 minutes. Let’s start.

This is how you lose the… cyberwar. (Image Creator from Microsoft Designer.)

I want to share my occasional anguish over finding links to thematically fitting articles only after I have published the newsletter for the week. Sometimes, readers reply with links to other relevant stories that I wish I could follow up with in a dedicated segment without pressuring anyone to participate in such a (semi-)public forum. I learn from my readers that you’re here mainly to diversify the sources of the stories you consume: Fewer stories from elitist U.S. establishments, more un-paywalled stories from around the world, and less feeding of the social media hype machine. I get it!

But I also like to “keep the conversation going” (ugh, I used to say this a lot as part of my sign-off when I used to present on-air), so I’ve decided to expand the “ICYMI“ segment below to include follow-up links related to the previous week’s edition. ~~Maybe I should rename it “FOMO”.~~ To manage the length of this newsletter, I’ve also cut out the “And one more thing” segment, which I previously used to drop a last-minute link just before sending out the newsletter. But I think that would be redundant with this new change. There is one more minor thing, which has to do with the paywall ($) indicator, but we don’t have to draw attention to it let alone talk about it openly. IYKYK. 🤷🏽‍♀️

Hope you like it. And now, a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.

ICYMI: The Previous Block is about the modern human nature to interrupt, our ugly Internet, and horrible chronically online sleuths. FWIW:

Baby Reindeer: fans will always go sleuthing so real people must be better protected by Bethan Jones (University of York) for The Conversation.
An American journalist read her own obituary online, and soon discovered the strange world of obit pirates by Lucia Stein for ABC News Australia.
Chinese network behind one of world’s largest online scams by Carmen Aguilar García, Sarah Marsh, and Philip McMahon for The Guardian.

CORRECTION NOTICE: None notified.

EAST V WEST

Social media platforms aren’t equipped to handle the negative effects of their algorithms abroad

Tiffany Ng for Vox:

They believed that these tech companies knowingly allowed ISIS and its supporters to use each platform’s “recommendation” algorithms for recruiting, fundraising, and spreading propaganda, normalizing radicalization and attacks like the one that took their son’s life.
Their case, Twitter v. Taamneh, argued that tech companies profit from algorithms that selectively surface content based on each user’s personal data. While these algorithms neatly package recommendations in newsfeeds and promoted posts, continuously serving hyper-specific entertainment for many, the family’s lawyers argued that bad-faith actors have gamed these systems to further extremist campaigns. Noting Twitter’s demonstrated history of online radicalization, the suit anchored on this question: If social media platforms are being used to promote terrorist content, does their failure to intervene constitute aiding and abetting?

Loosely linked:

Hong Kong is targeting Western Big Tech companies in its ban of a popular protest song ($) by Zeyi Yang for MIT TR. (Archive link.)
Big Tech regulatory crackdown spreads to Asia and Australia ($) by Kana Inagaki, Christian Davies, Song Jung-a, and Nic Fildes for FT. (Archive link.)
Despite international hires, TikTok is Chinese at its core by Caiwei Chen and Viola Zhou for Rest of World.
Europe is nowhere close to banning TikTok by Pieter Haeck for Politico.eu.
Israel is banning Al Jazeera, America is banning TikTok. We know why by Seth Stern for The Guardian.
Why are YouTube and Meta restricting Macklemore’s new pro-Palestine song ‘Hind’s Hall”? by Tricia Crimmins for Daily Dot. Excerpt: The Daily Dot confirmed that the original music video for “Harbu Drabu” […] which calls for celebrities like Dua Lipa and Bella Hadid who support Palestine to be killed, is not restricted on YouTube.

PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS

Intellectual influencers will soon be taking over your social media feeds

Lindsay Dodgson for BI:

Back when posting on social media was novel, the audience of an aspiring content creator would grow exponentially simply because they were entertaining to watch. Now, anyone can be an influencer—they just have to pick up their phone, shoot a video on TikTok, and edit it within the app with ease.
“The barrier to entry for creators is so low, and I think the standards of the general public are rising because of that,” [Katya Varbanova, a content creator and the CEO of Viral Marketing Stars] said.
“They don’t just want to be entertained or just want to be educated. They want to be edutained.”
People want to hear from creators with knowledge, such as a psychologist with 20+ years of experience who can post deep dives into a topic as a side hustle to their day job. They don’t want an inexperienced teenager’s view on nutrition, they want a registered dietician to bust food myths and tell them what they should be eating.

Loosely linked:

Do scientists need to be relatable for the public to trust their role in policymaking? by Christina Boswell and Molly Morgan for LSE Impact Blog.
Erdoğan’s relentless campaign against writers by Kaya Genç for The Dial.
India is banning critics from coming home by Vijayta Lalwani for The Walrus.
How do I prepare my phone for a protest? by Dan Phiffer, Tomas Apodaca, Miles Hilton, and Maddy Varner for The Markup.
How student journalists are covering campus protests by Sophie Culpepper for Nieman Lab.

NEW MEDIA

Meet AdVon, the AI-powered content monster infecting the media industry

Maggie Harrison Dupré for Futurism:

AdVon engages in what Google calls “site reputation abuse”: it strikes deals with publishers in which it provides huge numbers of extremely low-quality product reviews—often for surprisingly prominent publications—intended to pull in traffic from people Googling things like “best ab roller.” The idea seems to be that these visitors will be fooled into thinking the recommendations were made by the publication’s actual journalists and click one of the articles’ affiliate links, kicking back a little money if they make a purchase.
It’s a practice that blurs the line between journalism and advertising to the breaking point, makes the web worse for everybody, and renders basic questions like “is this writer a real person?” fuzzier and fuzzier.

Even after discovering AdVon’s business ties to Futurism’s parent company, the investigation continued without interference. Loosely linked:

Gannett fired an editor for talking to Poynter by Rick Edmonds for Poynter.
Screenshots are one big winner of Meta’s news ban in Canada by Laura Hazard Owen for Nieman Lab.
No more bad accents, stereotypes or cringe: why the rise of multilingual TV is good news for everyone by César Albarrán-Torres (Swinburne University of Technology) for The Conversation.
From doomscrolling to sex: being a boy in 2024 by Catherine Carr for The Guardian. Excerpt: He said it was “quite common” among his friends to record their partners on their phones giving verbal consent before having sex. Sometimes, he said, they recorded again midway through—this time to make sure that the girl was happy to ‘do something different or something’—and sometimes the phone was left recording the whole event … “to make sure”.

What I read, listen, and watch…

I’m reading The Shame Machine (2022) by Cathy O’Neil. I am rarely surprised by provocative scholarly ideas but this was a novel proposition to me, I felt called out. 🤷🏽‍♀️ (I’m about two-thirds of the way through the book.)
I’m listening to an episode of 404 Media Podcast, about how Facebook is the zombie Internet, plus how Pokemon Go players manipulate mapping technology to cheat at the game.
I’m watching Indonesian president-elect Prabowo Subianto’s interview with Jessica Washington on Al Jazeera.
I’m also watching a BBC World Service interview with WhatsApp head, Will Cathcart about how tens of millions of people use the service in countries such as Iran, North Korea, Syria, and China, where the app is banned.