#SocialMedia#TikTok#APIs: "We don’t have any way of validating whether the hashtags we selected captured all of the content on TikTok in the US about the war in Gaza. However, there are some signs we had decent coverage. Some of the hashtags were popular enough that we observed ‘trend chasing’, where creators will add many trending hashtags to unrelated posts. We also know our initial hashtag selection was overbroad because we had to remove some after our collection. This doesn’t mean we captured all relevant hashtags, of course! The research API lets you query data by hashtag, description, and user, so to a certain extent, you need to know what you’re looking for. The research API returns data about public videos, video comments, and user accounts. It allows fine-grained searching by keyword and hashtag, but there is no equivalent of the Twitter firehose. We are thinking through methods to estimate ‘top content’, and prior work from other researchers has attempted this for other platforms. Because of the very strong imbalance of views to content, to understand what (most) people are seeing, the top 1% of content appears to be a pretty good approximation. However, it clearly wouldn’t help researchers who wanted to study posting activity, either by itself or in connection to view activity."
Every time I see a big mass of letters from someone on social media with "Three Words Are You..." fill in the blank, I always purposely find the least helpful words I can find and post them.
1/2 Today in, "Chris writes to Politicians” 🤣
I wrote to the British Columbia Minister of Emergency Management and Climate Readiness today in relation to this news that she was negotiating with Meta to try to get access to Facebook to post emergency updates. How did we allow ourselves to be so beholden to these corporations for basic communication!
Here is my letter:
Dear Minister Ma (EMCR.Minister@gov.bc.ca)
CC: My Local MLA Minister Josie Osborne
I understand and agree with why you feel you must try to get Meta to allow you to post Emergency messages on that platform, especially during the fire season when we all now face so much uncertainty.
However, you must also acknowledge that:
Meta has made it clear its concern is curating its own content and “news” for its own financial benefit separate from any public benefit consideration.
You will never be able to control the algorithm on any Meta platform, so while you may post, you are still never guaranteed that your message can reach 100% of the people 100% of the time.
You as a Minister and as a representative of the Government of British Columbia cannot rely on third parties to get timely messaging out to communities and citizens. You are government, you have the means and responsibility to get the message out directly.
The question is how do you, as government, use social media directly? This has not been possible before, but it is now.
The answer is the Open Social Web. You may cringe at this example (and rightly so), but the pioneer and most famous person using the Open Social Web tools for public communication is Donald Trump with his “truth.social”.
#Bridgy became quietly available for people to test, but as bridged posts started to appear, other people became aware and more people started to test and use the bridge.
To make your fediverse account available in Bluesky, you’ll have to follow this account: @bsky.brid.gy@bsky.brid.gy
Almost feels like news worth celebrating until you remember the track record of child protection regulations in the UK, a country where the economy is being propped up by pushing junk food and nicotine onto children.
Social Media, #Medienkompetenz und Künstliche Intelligenz - mit diesen und anderen Aspekten setzt sich das Projekt "Forum gegen Fakes" rund um das Thema #Desinformation auseinander.
In einem #Bürgerrat und einem Online-Beteiligungsprozess werden Empfehlungen für die Politik zum Umgang mit Desinformation erarbeitet.
I love diving into thought-provoking articles on [Twitter]! So many talented writers sharing knowledge & sparking discussions. #SocialMedia What are you reading lately? #Amsharing#Amreading
TikTok is suing the United States government in an attempt to stop the enforcement of last month’s bill, which would ban the app in the U.S unless its Chinese owner ByteDance sells up.
The lawsuit argues that the bill is an “unprecedented violation” of the First Amendment, and says that invoking national security concerns is not a sufficient reason for restricting free speech. NBC News has more, but we’re keen to hear what you think. Do you agree with the bill?