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Friday, April 02, 2021

The internet has become a tool for authoritarian repressionThe internet has become a tool for authoritarian repression

 The hidden fingerprint inside your photos BBC 


Personal Data: Instagram Is a Real TattletaleStatista 


Open Culture -“The PrinceThe Canterbury TalesThe Communist ManifestoThe Souls of Black FolkThe Elements of Style: we’ve read all these, of course. Or at least we’ve read most of them (one or two for sure), if our ever-dimmer memories of high school or college are to be trusted. But we can rest assured that students are reading — or in any case, being assigned — these very same works today, thanks to the Open Syllabus project, which as of this writing has assembled a database of 7,292,573 different college course syllabi. Greatly expanded since we previously featured it here on Open Culture, its “Galaxy” now visualizes the 1,138,841 most frequently assigned texts in that database, presenting them in a Google Maps-like interface for your intellectual exploration…”



MuckRock – Strategies for delving into government filing cabinets by Yilun Cheng / Edited by Michael Morisy. “In the fiscal year 2020, federal agencies received a total of 790,772 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. There are also tens of thousands of state and local agencies taking in and processing public record requests on a daily basis. Since most agencies keep a log of requests received, FOIA-minded reporters can find interesting story ideas by asking for and digging through the history of what other people are looking to obtain. Some FOIA logs are posted on the websites of agencies that proactively release these records. Those that are not can be obtained through a FOIA request. There are a number of online resources that collect and store these documents, including MuckRockthe Black VaultGovernment Attic and FOIA Land. Sorting through a FOIA log can be challenging since format differs from agency to agency. A more well-maintained log might include comprehensive information on the names of the requesters, the records being asked for, the dates of the requests’ receipt and the agency’s responses, as shown, for example, in a log released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency…”



The internet has become a tool for authoritarian repression


Wired – “Researchers found that social media users are generally adept at identifying fake news. But that doesn’t always affect their decision to repost it. you don’t need a study to know that misinformation is rampant on social media; a quick search on “ vaccines” or “climate change” will confirm that. A more compelling question is why. It’s clear that, at a minimum, there are contributions from organized disinformation campaigns, rampant political partisans, and questionable algorithms. But beyond that, there are still a lot of people who choose to share stuff that even a cursory examination would show is garbage. What’s driving them? That was the question that motivated a small international team of researchers who decided to take a look at how a group of US residents decided on which news to share. Their results suggest that some of the standard factors that people point to when explaining the tsunami of misinformation—inability to evaluate information and partisan biases—aren’t having as much influence as most of us think. Instead, a lot of the blame gets directed at people just not paying careful attention…”


Red lights and bathroom posters: Amazon’s all-out fight to block a union Agence France Presse

 

Amazon started a Twitter war because Jeff Bezos was pissed Recode

 

AI: Ghost workers demand to be seen and heardBB

Elite philanthropy mainly self-serving Academic Times

 

Hugs are good for us. But when will they be safe?Globe and Mai


Shanna Swan: ‘Most couples may have to use assisted reproduction by 2045’ Guardian 


How to Be Animal Orion