Saturday, December 14

SOCIAL MEDIA

Bluesky’s Resemblance To The Old Twitter Is Drawing Millions Of New Users
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SOCIAL MEDIA, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

Bluesky’s Resemblance To The Old Twitter Is Drawing Millions Of New Users

Bluesky isn’t the ‘new Twitter,’ but its resemblance to the old one is drawing millions of new users. What would you say at Twitter’s funeral? That’s the question my collaborators and I asked over 1,000 people on social media as part of a broader research project on Twitter migration. Responses ranged from the profane to the poetic, but one common theme was that despite its significant flaws, Twitter at its best was truly great … until it wasn’t. “The world is a better place for it having existed, and a better place now that it’s gone.” “It takes so little to destroy so much.” “I will miss it for what it could be in its best moments, but I will be happy that we can finally move on to healthier spaces.” For many, it was time to leave in the hopes of finding greener pastures. Since El...
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TikTok Ban Upheld
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SOCIAL MEDIA, TOP FOUR

TikTok Ban Upheld

Appeals court upholds TikTok ban: 5 essential reads on the case and its consequences. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Dec. 6, 2024, upheld a law requiring TikTok’s China-based parent company, ByteDance, to sell the video app by Jan. 19, 2025, or face a nationwide ban on the app. The court rebuffed TikTok’s claim that the law violates its First Amendment rights. The appeals court ruling is the latest development in a lengthy saga over the fate of an app that is widely popular, especially among young Americans, but that many politicians in Washington say is a security risk. The ruling is unlikely to be the end of the story. TikTok is expected to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, though the court could refuse to hear the...
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AI-Generated Images — The Latest Form Of Social Media Spam
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SOCIAL MEDIA, TOP FOUR

AI-Generated Images — The Latest Form Of Social Media Spam

From shrimp Jesus to fake self-portraits, AI-generated images have become the latest form of social media spam. If you’ve spent time on Facebook over the past six months, you may have noticed photorealistic images that are too good to be true: children holding paintings that look like the work of professional artists, or majestic log cabin interiors that are the stuff of Airbnb dreams. Others, such as renderings of Jesus made out of crustaceans, are just bizarre. Like the AI image of the pope in a puffer jacket that went viral in May 2023, these AI-generated images are increasingly prevalent – and popular – on social media platforms. Even as many of them border on the surreal, they’re often used to bait engagement from ordinary users. Our team of researchers from the Stanford Inter...
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Instagram Will Be Removing The Beauty Filters
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SOCIAL MEDIA, TOP FOUR

Instagram Will Be Removing The Beauty Filters

Instagram has announced it will be removing beauty filters – but the damage is done. Meta has announced third-party augmented reality (AR) filters will no longer be available on its apps as of January 2025. This means more than two million user-made filters offered across WhatsApp, Facebook and, most notably, Instagram will disappear. Filters have become a mainstay feature on Instagram. The most viral of these – which often involve beautifying the user’s appearance – are created by users themselves via the Meta Spark Studio. But the use of beautifying AR filters has long been connected to worsened mental health and body image problems in young women. In theory, the removal of the vast majority of Instagram filters should signal a turning point for unrealistic beauty standards. Howeve...
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The Death Of Print Newspapers
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SOCIAL MEDIA, SOCIETY, TOP FOUR

The Death Of Print Newspapers

The death of printed newspapers has long been predicted – but there are still some pleasing signs of life. When the Australian newspaper celebrated its 60th anniversary this year, its founder, Rupert Murdoch, foreshadowed the death of print newspapers within 15 years. “Fifteen years, with a lot of luck,” declared the media mogul and chairman emeritus of News Corp in a Sky interview, much to the chagrin of his employees. It’s an uncomfortable prediction for those in an already struggling industry. In the past month, Australia’s newsrooms have continued to shrink. Big-name journalists have been taking redundancies across metropolitan and regional mastheads. Workplace discontent is also high, with job cuts following hundreds of Nine journalists striking over pay during the Paris Olympic...
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Parents Here’s How To Get Your Kids To Think Twice About Popular Social Media Challenges
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SOCIAL MEDIA

Parents Here’s How To Get Your Kids To Think Twice About Popular Social Media Challenges

Teenage brains are drawn to popular social media challenges – here’s how parents can get their kids to think twice. Viral social media trends started innocently enough. In the early 2010s there was planking, the “Harlem Shake” dance and lip syncing to Carly Rae Jepsen’s summer anthem “Call Me Maybe.” Then came the ice bucket challenge, which raised an estimated US$115 million for ALS research. In recent years, social media challenges have grown more popular – and more dangerous, leading to serious injuries and even deaths. It’s not hard to see why. The milk crate challenge dares people to walk or run across a loosely stacked pyramid of milk crates, the Tide pod challenge involves eating laundry detergent pods, and the Benadryl challenge encourages taking six or more doses of over-the-c...
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Social Media’s Addiction
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SOCIAL MEDIA, TOP FOUR

Social Media’s Addiction

Why students harmed by addictive social media need more than cellphone bans and surveillance. Recently, five school boards in Ontario filed a lawsuit against the major social media platforms: Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. Their lawsuit says that these platforms are designed to be addictive and have caused all kinds of problems for the education system. The lawsuit says social media causes children to suffer from mental health issues, and it increases distraction, social withdrawal, and cyberbullying. And it causes damage and disruption to the classroom, putting all kinds of new burdens on teachers who are already dealing with shrinking budgets and increased class sizes. The $4.5 billion lawsuit follows over 200 lawsuits by school boards in the United States in the...
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Teens See Selected Content As Not Just “For Them” But Also “About Them”
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SOCIAL MEDIA, TOP FOUR, VIDEO REELS

Teens See Selected Content As Not Just “For Them” But Also “About Them”

Teens see social media algorithms as accurate reflections of themselves, study finds. Social media apps regularly present teens with algorithmically selected content often described as “for you,” suggesting, by implication, that the curated content is not just “for you” but also “about you” – a mirror reflecting important signals about the person you are. All users of social media are exposed to these signals, but researchers understand that teens are at an especially malleable stage in the formation of personal identity. Scholars have begun to demonstrate that technology is having generation-shaping effects, not merely in the way it influences cultural outlook, behavior and privacy, but also in the way it can shape personality among those brought up on social media. The prevalenc...
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Dental TikTok Trends You Might Treat With Caution
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SOCIAL MEDIA

Dental TikTok Trends You Might Treat With Caution

5 dental TikTok trends you probably shouldn’t try at home. TikTok is full of videos that demonstrate DIY hacks, from up-cycling tricks to cooking tips. Meanwhile, a growing number of TikTok videos offer tips to help you save money and time at the dentist. But do they deliver? Here are five popular dental TikTok trends and why you might treat them with caution. 1. Home-made whitening solutions Many TikTok videos provide tips to whiten teeth. These include tutorials on making your own whitening toothpaste using ingredients such as hydrogen peroxide, a common household bleaching agent, and baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). In this video, the influencer says: And then you’re going to pour in your hydrogen peroxide. There’s really no measurement to this. But hydrogen peroxide...
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Why Emoji Can Be Even More Powerful Than Words — Is It A Sign of our times
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SOCIAL MEDIA

Why Emoji Can Be Even More Powerful Than Words — Is It A Sign of our times

Signs of our times: why emoji can be even more powerful than words. Each year, Oxford Dictionaries – one of the world’s leading arbiters on the English language – selects a word that has risen to prominence over the past 12 months as its “Word of the Year”. The word is carefully chosen, based on a close analysis of how often it is used and what it reveals about the times we live in. Past examples include such classics as “vape”, “selfie” and “omnishambles”. But the 2015 word of the year is not a word at all. It’s an emoji – the “face with tears of joy” emoji, to be precise. Formerly regarded with disdain as the textual equivalent of an adolescent grunt, it appears that emoji has now gone mainstream. Even if it’s not a fully-fledged language, then it is – at the very least – something that ...
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