posts

Posts by both Elon Musk and Republican-leaning accounts became considerably more prominent on X (formerly Twitter) after he endorsed Donald Trump for President according to a study. The paper says the change was significant enough to suggest the ... site may have intentionally changed its algorithm. Much of the controversy over the site in the past few years has involved its default "For You" feed, which is created by an algorithm. Rather simply showing all posts from accounts the user follows in chronological order, the feed shows what X implies are the most likely posts to interest and engage ... (view more)

Internal Facebook documents suggest automated moderating will never pick up more than a small portion of the hate speech posted on the site. The figures suggest Facebook has used some creative wording when publicly arguing how well its systems are ... working. The company has a natural interest in using automated moderation, particularly with artificial intelligence that doesn't simply follow rules to spot content that breaks site rules, but develops its own methods for detecting it. That's because it's highly unlikely Facebook could every employ enough humans to manually moderate posts (before ... (view more)

Social media users are more likely to share posts that criticize political opponents by name than those which praise people and ideas they support according to newly-published research. The pattern was consistent across different sites and people ... with different views. Researchers at the University of Cambridge were exploring what makes some posts on Facebook and Twitter more likely to be shared. Previous research had suggested the main driver was the tone of the language, with negative emotions such as anger, or a "sense of moral indignation" the most likely to lead to a post being widely ... (view more)

Twitter is asking volunteers to add notes explaining why posts are misleading. It calls it a "community-driven approach to help address misleading information on Twitter." The company appears to believe that using volunteers will make it easier to ... address quickly-spreading misinformation rather than rely on paid staff. It says the project, dubbed Birdwatch, won't involve labeling posts as "true" or "false". It also won't involving hiding or removing any posts as already happens after staff review reports of users breaching the site's guidelines. Volunteers Will Reach Consensus Birdwatch will ... (view more)

A dispute over Internet law has led to a Presidential veto of a major defense bill. Lawmakers will now decide whether to reject Donald Trump's demands to remove rules on how websites and services handle content posted by users. The bill in question ... authorizes US military spending for the next year. One of the quirks of the US legislative system is that bills can include measures which have little or nothing to do with the main subject of the proposed law. These measures are often the result of negotiation between politicians. In this case, Trump wants the defense bill to include a repeal of ... (view more)

Facebook chief says the site will let users opt-out of seeing political advertising for this year's US presidential elections. But the site won't seek to block controversial content posted by politicians themselves unless it breaks the law. Writing ... in USA Today, company chief Mark Zuckerberg announced a voter registration drive. Facebook will have a dedicated section with information about how to register, cast a vote, or arrange mail-in or early votes. The section will include verified content from election officials. This section will be promoted at the top of user's news feeds and on ... (view more)

Human tiredness could be the key to spotting automated fake posts online, according to researchers at the University of Southern California. They are developing systems to distinguish between posts by humans and those posted by automated programs, ... otherwise known as 'bots' - which is a short form for robots. Since most of the online world gets their news using smartphones these days, fake news is a serious problem. It's also an incredibly serious issue for social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter, where news is often talked about, debated, and forwarded to others. Bots Designed To ... (view more)

The Library of Congress has abandoned a project to archive every post made on Twitter. It blames the sheer number of "tweets" now being made, along with an increasing reliance on images and videos. The library is the world's largest and collects all ... manner of documents from newspapers to government forms. As a general rule it, doesn't aim to collect all possible data from a source but made an exception for Twitter in 2010. At that point it reached an agreement with Twitter to get a copy of its complete archive of posts, then dating back to 2006. The idea was to "document the emergence of ... (view more)

Facebook says it's cracking down on posts that unreasonably encourage users to share content or tag friends. It's also offering a way to temporarily stop seeing posts from a particular user. The move is designed to deal with people and organizations ... who take unfair advantage of the way Facebook decides what most users see on the site (with the default settings). The order posts appear for a particular user is heavily influenced by how many other people the user knows have "liked", shared or commented on. Meanwhile tagging somebody in a post (which is done by writing their name in a reply to a ... (view more)

Facebook is to use artificial intelligence to spot posts made by people who might be suicidal. However, it will continue using human moderators to decide how to act over such posts. The site already has a tool that moderators can activate to display ... special messages to people whose wellbeing may be in question. These messages include details of local professional support services and help lines. The messages also encourage the user to talk over their problems with a friend and even include suggested wordings for how to ask for help. Facebook says this tool was developed with the help of ... (view more)