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Friday, March 2, 2018
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If your job requires you stay informed about Russia, Meduza wants to get you the right stories in EnglishThe English edition of the three-year-old Russian news site now gets an average of 100,000 monthly unique visitors and can count among its readers everyone from European policymakers to members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. By Shan Wang. |
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Disinformation spread online is so disorienting that it’s messing with the researchers who study itPlus: Outrage-tweeting is a dangerous thing, and why we have to teach students not to be “trust misers.” By Laura Hazard Owen. |
What We’re Reading
Columbia Journalism Review / Mathew Ingram
Jarrod Dicker on what the blockchain can do for news →
“With something like Po.et, you can own and archive your own content that's recorded on the blockchain, and then license or syndicate it to whoever you want. If you're a sports blogger writing for SB Nation or Deadspin, and all your content is archived in Po.et, you may get offers from other media companies, but also brands might say: ‘Hey, look, you're a big player in this space and we are willing to sponsor you,’ and you can cut your own deal.”
Bloomberg / Stephanie Bodoni
The EU is demanding platforms remove terrorist content within 1 hour of discovery →
“The commission last year called upon social media companies, including Facebook Inc., Twitter Inc. and Google owner Alphabet Inc., to develop a common set of tools to detect, block and remove terrorist propaganda and hate speech. Thursday's recommendations aim to ‘further step up’ the work already done by governments and push firms to ‘redouble their efforts to take illegal content off the web more quickly and efficiently.'”
Poynter / Alexios Mantzarlis and Daniel Funke
Facebook's algorithm change hasn't obliterated fact-checkers' engagement — yet →
“The topline is that, as of March 1, the worst-case scenario predictions have not materialized.”
HuffPost / Paul Blumenthal
Russian trolls used this one weird trick to infiltrate our democracy. You’ll never believe where they learned it →
“The founders of Mic were trolls in the standard internet sense. They tapped into strong feelings and sentiments they didn't necessarily share, and thus they reverse-engineered a briefly successful media operation out of the algorithmic preferences of social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.”
Washington Post / Tony Romm
As D.C. sits on the sidelines, these states are looking to regulate Facebook, Google and Twitter →
“Along with Maryland, leaders from New York to Washington state have pitched new bills that would make more information about online political ads available to local voters. In California, meanwhile, state leaders are taking aim at the scourge of social-media bots, or networks of computer-directed accounts often used to amplify misinformation.”
Digiday / Max Willens
Viral publishers see sharp engagement drops on Facebook →
“Publishers such as Viral Thread, ViralNova, 9gag, Bored Panda, Diply and Distractify have all seen interactions — likes, shares, comments and other reactions — slide precipitously since Facebook announced in January that it would deprioritize publisher content in its news feed, according to Facebook-owned CrowdTangle.”