All posts tagged: medias

Trump Media’s new data service gives faster access to Trump’s posts

Trump Media’s new data service gives faster access to Trump’s posts

Published by Sam Flores

Cheng Xin | Getty Images News | Getty Images Trump Media and Technology Group‘s new paid data service launched on Aug. 1, providing faster access to Truth Social posts from President Donald Trump and other top accounts on the platform. “Truth API,” the new application programming interface, is designed to give firms “a direct, licensed, real-time feed of the platform’s most market-moving Truths,” interim CEO Kevin McGurn said in a release announcing the launch. While not explicitly naming Trump, the president’s @realDonaldTrump account is the largest on Truth Social by far, often posting his most consequential policy decisions there first, including updates on the war with Iran. As of Saturday, the account has 13 million followers. Trump’s family is also the largest shareholder in Trump Media, the public company that operates Truth Social.  The launch comes after Democratic Sens. Adam Schiff of California and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts took aim at the new service, urging the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday to investigate whether the company is violating the law. “This appears to be …

European researchers want to study social media’s harms but can’t get the data

European researchers want to study social media’s harms but can’t get the data

Published by skeptic

Iamnitchi is one of several misinformation researchers who told WIRED that, despite being legally entitled to obtain platform data under EU law, they face obstacles, obfuscation, and, in some cases, court battles to obtain it. Last year the law was broadened to increase researcher access, but it’s the implementation not the scope of the law itself that researchers say is the issue. In recent years, social media companies shut down public access tools like Meta’s CrowdTangle and replaced them with content libraries, or, like X, paywalled their API data, forcing academics to pay “hundreds of dollars a month,” said Duncan Allen, a research officer at Democracy Reporting International (DRI) in Germany. Researchers say that without API access, what Iamnitchi describes as the “black holes” in what society knows about how these platforms recommend content or handle reports regarding sensitive content will only grow. Others, like TikTok, cap how many posts any researcher account can pull each day, which Allen said can make it “impossible to study anything at scale.” The DSA was meant to solve …

Sony’s PlayStation Puts a Nail in Physical Media’s Coffin

Sony’s PlayStation Puts a Nail in Physical Media’s Coffin

Published by skeptic

Bad news for fans of physical media: Sony has announced that it is abandoning game discs. In a blog post published Wednesday, Sid Shuman, senior director of global content communications at PlayStation, wrote that from January 2028, “physical game disc production for all new games releasing on PlayStation consoles will be discontinued.” Shuman added that the decision is down to “consumer preferences” and the broader entertainment industry shifting away from physical discs to digital, and that he feels “this is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs.” The blog is a mere three paragraphs but raises several questions about Sony’s decision and its impact across the console gaming industry going forward. The main one that many gamers are likely leaping to, though, is “What is Sony thinking?” Sizing Errors Sony’s decision does have some merit. The vast majority of video game sales—across the entire industry, not just PlayStation—are digital downloads. There’s a convenience to being able to buy, install, …

WHCD shooting exposed MAGA media’s secret social media operation

WHCD shooting exposed MAGA media’s secret social media operation

Published by Sam Flores

In the chaotic minutes after news broke that a gunman had attempted to breach security at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, a familiar pattern unfolded on social media. A chorus of pro-Trump influencers and officials arrived at the same eerily specific and singular conclusion: The country needs Donald Trump’s ballroom.  It’s quite the departure from when a gunman shot and killed Charlie Kirk in September. Then the MAGA movement immediately called for a campaign of political repression. After Saturday’s attack at the Washington Hilton, MAGA media looked closer to home, immediately leveraging the scare as a reason to build the $400 million White House ballroom. Screenshots of pro-MAGA accounts sharing the same messaging quickly circulated on X shortly after the suspected gunman, 31-year-old Cole Tomas Allen of Torrance, California, was stopped rushing past a security checkpoint armed with two firearms and multiple knives, apparently intending to attack Trump and members of his Cabinet. “It’s time to build the ballroom,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche posted on X, attaching a letter demanding that the National Trust …

The Legal Cases Against Social Media’s Do No Harm

The Legal Cases Against Social Media’s Do No Harm

Published by Jenni Sidey

Recent legal cases brought against social media companies concerning the impact of their products on mental health have provoked some significant questions and debates. Notably, these debates involve accusations of the knowing and deliberate design of an addictive device. However, a further issue of significant psychological importance is the extent to which digital usage (whether the consequence of addiction or not) is responsible for a person’s poor mental health. This question was brought to the fore by the tenor of the argument presented by Facebook’s legal team, suggesting that pre-existing mental health conditions are a more important factor than social media use. The contention: Even if a person is in clear difficulty with their mental health and they have used social media a great deal, if their mental health condition was poor before the social media usage, then this somehow absolves the social media company from any responsibility. It is an argument long used by insurance companies attempting not to pay out to claimants; in this sense, it is nothing new. However, in the context …

Is this social media’s ‘tobacco’ moment? | Science, Climate & Tech News

Is this social media’s ‘tobacco’ moment? | Science, Climate & Tech News

Published by skeptic

Why could what happened to tobacco companies in the 1990s come back to haunt social media companies? In the 1990s, tobacco companies faced a series of trials that ultimately held them accountable for selling a product they knew was harmful – they became known as the “tobacco trials”. Could social media companies be about to face the same fate? There’s a series of landmark trials taking place in the US, where lawyers representing people allegedly harmed by social media are trying a new line of attack against tech giants. These trials focus on how platforms are designed – not on what is posted on them. You need javascript enabled to view this content Enable javascript to share Share Prince Harry fights back tears as he speaks to bereaved parents That means the tech companies can’t rely on Section 230 of the Communications Act, a piece of law that protects them from liability over user content. That defence has seen a lot of cases fail in the past. There are currently more than 2,000 active cases …

The mass media’s blind spot on Trump’s Venezuela escalation

The mass media’s blind spot on Trump’s Venezuela escalation

Published by Sam Flores

The story the American media is missing about Venezuela right now is not really about Venezuela. It is not about the country’s strongman president Nicolás Maduro, electoral legitimacy, corruption or even oil — at least not in the way Donald Trump pretends it to be. It is about something far more unsettling. The world’s most powerful country is openly asserting the right to invade, occupy and “run” any nation it chooses, and by failing to connect the dots for the American people, the media is helping to normalize Trump’s expansionist project. What we are watching is not simply another foreign policy crisis; it is the construction of a permission structure for imperialism, built by stenography and deference. Mainstream media coverage of Trump’s attack on Venezuela and capture of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, has not merely failed to interrogate the Pentagon’s actions, it has actively laundered them, presenting an act of war as a technocratic maneuver, a coup as a “capture” and an invasion as an “operation.” Americans have seen this pattern before, and …

the psychology behind social media’s angriest posts

the psychology behind social media’s angriest posts

Published by skeptic

“Rage bait” has been named the word of the year by the Oxford University Press. It means social media content that is designed to create a strong and negative reaction. Posting content intended to antagonise people may not seem like a wise strategy for a social media influencer. But people who post content on social media can make more money if their channel has a high level of engagements – regardless of how positively people are responding. In addition, social media platforms use algorithms that tailor the content we see to what we are likely to engage with. This doesn’t necessarily mean content that will make us happy – the algorithm will learn from any engagement that we have with the content, including angry comments we might post in response. But there are things you can do to help control your reaction to this kind of content. First though, you need to understand why rage bait is so effective. Provocative posts can result in a higher number of clicks, shares and comments. This may be …

Social media’s reckoning may have arrived — thanks to Elon Musk

Social media’s reckoning may have arrived — thanks to Elon Musk

Published by Sam Flores

In 2014, Buzzfeed News reported on the Internet Research Agency, a “troll farm” based in Russia that waged an organized propaganda campaign across social media. According to internal emails, operatives were instructed to run multiple Facebook, Twitter and blog accounts, bombard comment sections and build fake audiences to shape American political discourse. It’s a method employed by Russia that dates back to at least the 2008 presidential campaign. Yet nearly two decades later, the U.S. is still debating the scope and geographical breadth of our foreign troll problem. All the while, fraudulent accounts have continued to flourish. In 2022, when Elon Musk purchased Twitter, the news-heavy platform he’s since rebranded as X, the multi-billionaire immediately reinstated accounts banned for hate speech and violent disinformation, including Donald Trump’s. A 2024 CNN analysis of 56 pro-Trump accounts on X revealed “a systematic pattern of inauthentic behavior.” Fifteen even displayed blue check marks, indicating they had been officially verified by the company. Eight used stolen photos of well-known European influencers to lend credibility. Musk himself has personally boosted …