Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

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caltrek
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Boston University Study Finds Plus Size Models Rising Presence on Social Media
July 14, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) (Boston)—With the changing societal body image in America, plus size models have gained in popularity and positively impacted a body inclusive model of beauty. As such, plastic surgeons will likely see an increased demand for procedures that enhance the plus size body type according to researchers from Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM).

“While the American standard of beauty appears to idolize extreme thinness as seen in Victoria Secret models and their diminishing body sizes, we sought to explore the impact of plus size models by reviewing their body size metrics and social media presence to better understand their emerging role in the current standards of beauty,” explained corresponding author Neelam Vashi, MD, associate professor of dermatology at BUSM and director of the Boston University Cosmetic and Laser Center at Boston Medical Center.

A total of 169 models were included in this study (159 plus sized models and 10 mainstream models). Plus sized model metrics averaged: height 69 inches (in.), bust 40 in., waist 43 in., hips 46 in and dress size 14. The waist-to-hip ratio remained low amongst mainstream models (0.69) and plus size models (0.74), illustrating that this remains a constant and objective standard of beauty across all body types. Using the Fashion Model Directory and various modeling agency websites, the researchers obtained data for: eye color, hair color, height, bust measurement, waist measurement, dress and shoe size. Data pertaining to social media presence was collected for each model using Social Blade (http://socialblade.com). For comparison, the top 10 highest paid mainstream models were determined using Forbes.

Collectively, 144 plus-sized models had 51 million followers and 190,000 total posts. While the top 10 highest paid mainstream models averaged 38 million followers compared to the top 10 plus sized models with an average of approximately 3.8 million followers, there was no significant difference between the average likes per post, comments per post and total posts between the top mainstream models and top plus-sized models.
According to the researchers, the fashion industry has also acknowledged the increasing popularity of plus size models by representing curvaceous figures within their marketing campaigns and even altering models figures with padding.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/958813
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Elon Musk Wants Twitter Trial to Wait Until February 2023
by Jay Peters
July 15, 2022

Introduction:
(The Verge) Elon Musk’s legal team has responded to Twitter’s lawsuit against him, saying that the company is demanding an unreasonably fast trial. In response, Musk’s team asks that the case not be heard until next year, as reported earlier by Bloomberg.

Twitter has pushed for the trial to take place in mid-September, justifying the request to expedite things given that Musk and Twitter’s merger agreement has an October 24th “presumptive drop-dead date.” However, Musk’s team is asking that the trial not be held until February 13th, 2023 trial at the earliest, the filing notes.

Twitter declined to comment on the matter, and pointed to its initial complaint filed Tuesday.

Twitter sued Musk earlier this week after he officially tried to bail on his $44 billion agreement to buy the company. Nearly immediately after he said he intended to pull the plug, Twitter board chairman Bret Taylor said the company would be taking Musk to court, and the company filed its lawsuit on Tuesday. Musk hadn’t responded via the court until Friday, though on Tuesday, he did tweet.

Musk’s primary assertion for wanting to terminate the merger is that Twitter has not given him the data to “‘make an independent assessment of the prevalence of fake or spam accounts on Twitter’s platform,” his legal team wrote last week. His team again invoked the bots issue in Friday’s filing, noting “the core dispute over false and spam accounts is fundamental to Twitter’s value. It is also extremely fact and expert intensive, requiring substantial time for discovery.”
Read more here: https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/15/232 ... lawsuit
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Russia fines Google $370 million for repeated content violations, regulator says
Source: Reuters
Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) Google was fined 21.1 billion roubles ($373 million) on Monday by a Moscow court for a repeated failure to remove content Russia deems illegal, such as "fake news" about the conflict in Ukraine, Russia's communications regulator said.

Moscow has long objected to foreign tech platforms' distribution of content that falls foul of its restrictions. But the simmering dispute has erupted into a full-on battle since Moscow assembled its armed forces before sending them into Ukraine in February.

Alphabet's YouTube has been a particular target of the state's ire but, unlike Twitter (TWTR.N) and Meta Platforms' (META.O) Facebook and Instagram, it has not been blocked.

The regulator, Roskomnadzor, said the Tagansky District Court had fined Google 21.1 billion roubles for repeatedly failing to restrict access promptly to banned materials, and singled out YouTube for particular criticism.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/technology/goog ... 022-07-18/
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Twitter Says Elon Musk's Argument to Delay Trial "Fails at Every Level"
by Sara Fischer
July 18, 2022

Introduction:
(Axios) Twitter on Monday filed a reply to Elon Musk's Friday response to the company's lawsuit against the billionaire, saying Musk's request to delay a trial "fails at every level."

Why it matters: A Tuesday hearing at a Delaware Chancery Court will determine whether the trial moves forward in September.

• Twitter requested an expedited trial in a lawsuit filed against Musk last Tuesday.
Details: In the filing Monday, Twitter argued that Musk's response doesn't dispute that Twitter’s lawsuit meets the standards for expedition.

• Citing historical legal precedents, Twitter argues that cases like the one pertaining to its lawsuit “are routinely expedited” because they “readily fit within the standards for expedition.”
Read more here: https://www.axios.com/2022/07/18/twit ... al-delay
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Twitter Posts Quarterly Sales Drop and Says It Spent $33 Million on Pending Musk Acquisition
by Paul Sawers
July 22, 2022

Extract:
(TechCrunch) Twitter has published its Q2 2022 results, with the social networking giant’s numbers falling short of analysts’ estimates across user growth and revenues.

Perhaps more interestingly, however, Twitter also revealed that it spent $33 million in Q2 on Elon Musk’s pending acquisition.

Today’s results represent Twitter’s second earnings since accepting Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition bid back in April, but a lot has happened in those intervening months. To cut a long story short, Musk decided he didn’t want to buy Twitter any more, but Twitter is trying to force the deal through, and a judge ruled last week that the company could expedite legal proceedings against the billionaire.

Twitter announced that its Q2 revenue amounted to $1.18 billion, down around 5% on the previous quarter and 1% on the corresponding period last year — analysts had estimated its Q2 revenues at around $1.32 billion. This, according to Twitter, reflects “headwinds’ in the advertising industry related to the current economic environment, while it also pointed to “uncertainty” caused by Musk’s attempts to pull out from the deal.

But arguably the most interesting nugget was its year-on-year increase in costs and expenses, which grew 31% to $1.52 billion.
Read more here: https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/22/twi ... isition/
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Social Media Helps Scientists Monitor Rarely Sighted Whales
August 11, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) Photographs shared by members of the public, via Facebook and nature-watching network iNaturalist, helped scientists assess how the species is faring around the Aotearoa New Zealand mainland.

Carried out in cooperation with the Department of Conservation and published in the journal Ocean & Coastal Management, the study* reveals that southern right whales are slower than expected at re-establishing a habitat in mainland waters.

The research was led by Annabelle Cranswick, a masters student in the Faculty of Science at Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland. Sightings of the whale rose between 2003 and 2010, but the increase wasn’t sustained over the past decade, Cranswick found. That’s despite some high-profile incidents such as the appearance of Matariki, the southern right whale which captured the nation’s heart while lingering in Wellington Harbour in 2018.

One possibility is that the species’ knowledge of mainland wintering grounds was lost when numbers crashed because of whaling.

“Photos supplied on social media and by citizen scientists are proving so important for us to monitor populations of these recovering whales,” says Cranswick. “We can assess that yes, this is a southern right whale, and discover how long a whale stayed in a particular area.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/961660 and here:* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ ... d=coauthor
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The SEC Asked Twitter to Explain Its User Metrics After Elon Musk Complained
by Russell Brandom
August 24, 2022

Introduction:
(The Verge) This summer, the SEC conducted an active review of Twitter’s user numbers in response to concerns of bot activity, as revealed in new filings made public on Wednesday. The review came in the weeks after Elon Musk raised concerns over the same user figures and suggests federal regulators took Musk’s allegations seriously.

Notably, the review began more than a week before the full whistleblower report by Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, although it deals with many of the same concerns he reported to the SEC.

“We note your estimate that the average number of false or spam accounts during fiscal 2021 continues to represent fewer than 5% of mDAU,” the commission wrote to Twitter in a letter dated June 15th. “To the extent material, please disclose the methodology used in calculating these figures and the underlying judgements and assumptions used by management.”

Seven days later, Twitter responded with a description of the methodology that is broadly consistent with the company’s public statements. As described in the statement, Twitter conducts a human review of thousands of randomly chosen accounts out of the mDAU sample every quarter and flags for spam and platform manipulation where appropriate.

It’s not clear whether this explanation was good enough for the SEC.
Read more here: https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/24/233 ... wer-mudge
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What Makes Us Share Posts on Social Media?
August 25, 2022

Introduction:
(EurekAlert) The average internet user spends nearly three hours a day using social media. It’s clear that social media is becoming increasingly crucial to sharing important information with the public—like how to stay safe from COVID-19, for example—and researchers want to know what makes a piece of media compelling enough for people to share it online.

A new study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General led by University of Pennsylvania researchers Danielle Cosme and Emily Falk analyzed the behavior of more than 3,000 individuals to explore the psychology behind sharing information online. It turns out that the answer is quite straightforward: People share information that they feel is meaningful to themselves or to the people they know. Cosme and her team test what contributes to “value-based virality”—essentially that information on the internet can go viral because people find it inherently valuable, either to themselves or to society.

This finding is key to crafting effective messaging for social causes, says Cosme, a research director at the Annenberg School for Communication’s Communication Neuroscience Lab. Knowing the psychological ingredients that make a person share a post on social media can help scientists share facts about climate change or public health officials dispel myths about vaccines.

Cosme’s research shows that people pay more attention to information they perceive to be related to themselves.

Similarly, humans are social beings and love to connect with each other. Sharing information activates reward centers in our brain. And when we communicate with others, we consider what the other person is thinking or wants to hear—a quality known as social relevance.
Read more here: https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/962918
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Fox Reports Trump's TRUTH Social Faces 'Big Money Woes,' Owes Web Host $1.6 Million in Outstanding P
Source: mediaite
At least he’s consistent. The ex-president with a decades-long history of screwing over his vendors is once again the face of a company with major financial troubles and unhappy unpaid vendors.

TRUTH Social, the social media platform launched by former President Donald Trump to post his various complaints and musings after getting permabanned from Twitter, is reportedly having major financial problems, including owing its web hosting company $1.6 million.

The scoop was tweeted Thursday afternoon by Fox Business senior correspondent Charlie Gasparino, who wrote there were “big money woes” at TRUTH Social, specifically describing how one of its “biggest vendors,” web-hosting service provider RightForge, was owed $1.6 million after the company had fallen months behind in its payments.

Read more: https://www.mediaite.com/trump/fox-repo ... -payments/
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Meta's Facebook agrees to settle Cambridge Analytica data privacy suit
Source: Politico

BY CAMILLE GIJS

Meta's Facebook settled a long-running lawsuit in a U.S. court seeking damages for letting third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, access the private data of users.

The preliminary settlement was disclosed in a court filing late Friday. The terms were not disclosed.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs and Facebook asked the judge to put the lawsuit on hold for 60 days to allow the parties to “finalize a written settlement agreement” and present it for preliminary approval by the court.

Facebook users sued the company in 2018 after it was revealed that it had violated consumer privacy regulations by sharing personal data of users with third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, a firm connected with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. The scandal saw the data of 87 million users scraped and shared without their consent.
Read more: https://www.politico.eu/article/metas-f ... vacy-suit/
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