The 66th Block: Who watches the birdwatchers?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
This week…
Still on a semi-break, I will be on the road and will respond late to any feedback on this edition of the newsletter.
Here’s a selection of top stories on my radar, a few personal recommendations, and the chart of the week.
Twitter finally turns to the experts on fact-checking
“After months of trying everything else, Twitter announced a partnership with The Associated Press and Reuters to fight misinformation,” writes Harrison Mantas for Poynter.
This as Twitter verified, and then suspended, a fake Cormac McCarthy account.
Sky News Australia banned from YouTube over Covid misinformation
Amanda Meade for The Guardian:
Sky News Australia has been banned from uploading content to YouTube for seven days after violating its medical misinformation policies by posting numerous videos which denied the existence of Covid-19 or encouraged people to use hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin.
By the time you receive this in your inbox, the ban would have been lifted.
Facebook’s reason for banning researchers doesn’t hold up
Gilad Edelman for Wired on Facebook’s decision to disable the pages and personal accounts linked to researchers studying political ads:
So if the Ad Observer isn’t sharing information from other users, whose privacy is at stake? As Issie Lapowsky reported for Protocol in March, Facebook’s biggest concern may be the advertisers themselves. The company seems to believe that a person or business that pays to target users with ads on Facebook is entitled to a degree of secrecy about it.
Mozilla says Facebook’s reasons “simply do not hold water” in a blog post.
What I read, watch and listen to…
I’m reading about how a “baby-faced CEO turned a Farmville clone into a massive Ponzi scheme,” on Rest of World by Paul Benjamin Osterlund.
I’m watching Envy by ContraPoints.
I’m listening to YouTube’s chief product officer Neal Mohan on the algorithm, monetisation, and future for creators on Decoder with Nilay Patel. Transcript here.
Chart of the week
The Olympic Games will end this week. There’s an alternative Olympic medal table by Google that is based on other factors such as population size, GDP or even “healthy eating,” whatever that means. I won’t spoil it for you, click here for the table.
