AnalogFolk’s weekly social news roundup issue #44
Twitter fighting misinformation, Facebook for kids and more…
Welcome to the AnalogFolk weekly social news roundup, a weekly collection of the best social news of the week, compiled by our Junior Editor, Rachael Bennett.
Clearview AI under fire
Last month, Clearview AI’s database came to light in a New York Times expose for using images from social media sites to build its database. The system is based on a database of over three billion images scraped from the internet, and is designed to help law enforcement quickly identify people of interest.
The biggest companies in the industry have demanded an end to the practise. LinkedIn this week issued a cease-and-desist letter to Clearview AI, following in the recent footsteps of Twitter and YouTube. Facebook hasn’t gone quite this far yet but has requested an immediate halt and an explanation.
Twitter fights misinformation
In another effort to tackle misinformation, Twitter has introduced a manipulated media tag. Any tweets that contain a digitally manipulated photo or video that aims to deceive or poses a public risk is now likely to be accompanied by a message flagging that it could be deemed untrustworthy, and a warning will appear when someone attempts to like or retweet it.
Parental control on track
Facebook has introduced several new parental control and visibility features to its stand-alone Messenger Kids app. Parents can now access recent contacts and chat history to see who their kids are chatting with, view photos and videos that kids have sent and received, as well as see a list of reporting and blocking actions their kids have taken.
Youngsters get a kid-friendly version of a data education overview to help them understand what information other people can see.
Everyone loves a cull…
Following tests in recent months, Instagram has now given all users the ability to check which accounts they see most and interact with least — making it a doddle to unfollow accounts you don’t remember following in the first place.
Instagram said: “We know that over time, your interests and relationships can evolve and change… we want to make it easier to manage the accounts you follow on Instagram so that they best represent your current connections.” And there you have it. Cull to your heart’s content.
Thanks for reading!
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