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Instagram announces changes ahead of political grilling

Published

21 minutes ago

Instagram has announced new features it says will help teenagers and parents manage time spent on the app.

Parents will be able to see how much time their children spend on Instagram and set time limits, while teens will get reminders to take a break.

It comes a day before Instagram chief Adam Mosseri is due to appear before US Senators investigating online safety.

Instagram has been under increasing pressure over teens' use of the platform in recent months.

Its internal research suggesting that teens blamed Instagram for increased anxiety was the first in a series of revelations in France Haugen's leaked documents from inside Facebook.

The US Senate Committee is expected to quiz Mr Mosseri on Instagram's internal information on child safety and its plans - as well as what the committee calls "potential legislative solutions".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-59565631


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What if Media Covered the War on Democracy Like an Actual War?
by Monika Bauerlein
December 13, 2021

https://www.motherjones.com/media/2021/ ... acy-media/

Introduction:
(Mother Jones) We’re heading into the slow news days of December—that blissful winter week when journalists break out the evergreen stories of puppies and kittens (or, at Mother Jones, What Would Happen if We Really Went to War Against Christmas) as the daily headlines fade. And hoo boy, can we all use the break.

This was supposed to be the year when things went back to a little more normal, and yet the anxiety-inducing news is nonstop: Inflation! Omicron! Shutdown! Weather disaster! Midterm polls! It’s easy to conclude that the world has gone mad, but historians would remind us that the world has always been mad—we just didn’t have 24/7 coverage of it. And the reason the volume—in the sense of both quantity and loudness—keeps going up is that two contradictory things about media are true at the same time.

One, there is less actual journalism being created: In the last decade-plus, some 30,000 news jobs have been lost in this country and the pandemic eliminated 6,000 more last year. And two, there is more news coming at us all the time, on more platforms and in more formats, because more content and (often) more outrage is still the path to more eyeballs and revenue.

Further Extract:
For decades now, the default mode for political reporting in America has been sports coverage: which team is winning, which is losing, what the star players are up to, which tactics the coaches are pursuing, all within a framework of rules that everyone knows and mostly respects. It’s no coincidence that the dominant polling news site grew out of fantasy baseball.

That model, rooted in the need to maximize revenue and minimize offense to audiences or advertisers, has always been problematic. But its most dangerous blind spot is this: Play-by-play coverage means we don’t see what happens outside of the game. Say, if someone is setting the arena on fire.
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
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Facebook/Meta is the worst company of the year, Yahoo Finance audience survey finds

Thu, December 16, 2021, 4:53 PM

Every December, Yahoo Finance selects a Company of the Year, based on its market performance and its achievements that particular year. In 2021, Microsoft (MSFT) took home the crown, smashing through the $2 trillion market capitalization mark and seeing a 53% surge in its stock price as of Dec. 16, year-to-date.

However, the spirit of Festivus has taught us we can learn just as much from the bad as the good by airing our grievances. That’s why Yahoo Finance also selects a Worst Company of the Year, polling our audience as to which company upset them the most.

Our survey’s 1,541 respondents were mad about a lot this year, from the Robinhood (HOOD) trading freezes last winter to electric truck startup Nikola still not having its act together. But one company irked them the most — Facebook (FB). The survey’s results shed more light on why the company decided to rebrand this year to a new name: Meta Platforms.

The open-ended survey was posted on Yahoo Finance on Dec. 4 and Dec. 5, and dozens of names were submitted. Facebook received 8% of the write-in vote.

Facebook has had its share of controversies this year. It’s been under the antitrust microscope and faced a flurry of allegations from a whistleblower claiming Facebook ignored safety issues for the sake of growth. Congress is constantly demanding answers from the company on both fronts. At the same time, some critics, including conservatives, say Facebook over-policed the platform’s speech and stifled their voices. Other critics, including those on the left side of the aisle, claim Facebook allows the spread of misinformation.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/meta-fac ... 45819.html
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Twitter is next :lol:
Internet used to be an escape from the real world.
Now the real world is an escape from internet.
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Could Supernova be an 'Ethical Alternative' to Social Media Giants?
by Mike Butcher
December 20, 2021

https://techcrunch.com/2021/12/20/could ... ia-giants/

Introdcution:
(TechCrunch) Supernova* is a new app that has now gone live on the Apple and Android app stores billing itself as a new “ethical alternative” to Instagram and Facebook, where most of the ad revenues go to charities. Does it have a chance?

It would be fair to say that after many years of either watching Facebook become a panopticon-like prison which jauntily suggests you join private groups to topple the US government or doom-scrolling through Instagram, where you and your teens’ mental health is slowly eroded, many people would be quite happy with an alternative social media platform with – please God – higher-minded principles. A few of these have come and gone over the years (RIP Path) but none have managed to wrestle the masses away from Zuckerberg’s vice-like grip.

Perhaps what people have forgotten is that the only reason Facebook (and by extension, Instagram) are as big as they are is that their advertising revenues prop up these free services. If advertisers had somewhere else to go that could capture the social media crowd with a compelling enough app, Facebook and Insta would start to feel some heat. At least, that’s how the theory goes.

Now, a British entrepreneur, who knows the ad industry inside-out, plans to take on these giants with a solution of his own, designed to appeal to Millenials and Gen Z-ers who are generally led by a desire to support good causes far more than previous generations.
*https://go-supernova.com/
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.
Don't mourn, organize.

-Joe Hill
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China Appears to Have Blocked the Global Steam Store


By Ryan Whitwam on December 28, 2021 at 11:12 am
https://www.extremetech.com/gaming/3300 ... team-store

500151-steam-logo

Valve’s Steam storefront has been nominally available in China for years, but the company launched a China-specific store earlier this year. Now, the other shoe has dropped. Chinese authorities appear to have blocked the global Steam domain, leaving affected gamers with only the much smaller (and government-approved) Steam China domain.

The Chinese government has been slow to accept video games as a legitimate form of media. It didn’t even allow game consoles in the country from 2000 until 2015, and restrictions have been ramping up even on mobile games. For example, China has instituted limits on how long children are allowed to play games, and a few publishers have even implemented creepy features in their games to enforce the restrictions. China is also strengthening its restrictions. As of earlier this year, gaming companies can only let those under 18 play online for one hour per day, from 8 to 9 PM on Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays, and legal holidays.
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