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"A week ago, The Washington Post reported that altered videos ("shallowfakes") of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi - slowed down to make it look as if she were drunk and slurring her words - were spreading on social media. Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump's personal attorney, tweeted one of them (though he later deleted the tweet). From the Post: One version, posted by the conservative Facebook page Politics WatchDog, had been viewed more than 2 million times by Thursday night, been shared more than 45,000 times, and garnered 23,000 comments with users calling her "drunk" and "a babbling mess." YouTube took the videos down. Facebook said it would downrank them, but wouldn't remove them altogether. "We don't have a policy that stipulates that the information you post on Facebook must be true," Facebook said in a statement to The Washington Post. The company said it instead would "heavily reduce" the video's appearances in people's news feeds, append a small informational box alongside the video linking to the two fact-check sites, and open a pop-up box linking to "additional reporting" whenever someone clicks to share the video. Monika Bikert, Facebook's head of product policy and counterterrorism, told CNN's Anderson Cooper that Facebook's policy is that "people make their own informed choice about what to believe. Our job is to make sure we're getting them accurate information." She claimed that "anybody who is seeing this video in their news feed, anybody who is going to share it to somebody else, anybody who has shared it in the past, they are being alerted that this video is false.""

" Nestlé, Epic Games and other major brands said on Wednesday that they had stopped buying advertisements on YouTube after their ads appeared on children's videos where pedophiles had infiltrated the comment sections. The companies acted after a YouTube user posted a video this week to point out this behavior. For the most part, the videos targeted by pedophiles did not violate YouTube's rules and were innocent enough - young girls doing gymnastics, playing Twister or stretching - but the videos became overrun with suggestive remarks directed at the children."

"We've compiled a mage-list of 40 viral videos (in no particular order) that summarize life on the Internet in 2013. And even though some of the year's most watched YouTube videos were ads (Dove, WestJet, Kmart and Volvo) or music videos like Miley Cyrus' Wrecking Ball, we left those off to make room for some classics from the everyday man."

"Kids like weird things: Yellow sponge-boys, talking doe-eyed ponies, ruddy-cheeked rodents that say only "pika pika," and, especially in the past few years, unboxing videos. Kids' unboxing videos are YouTube series in which children, or in some cases just disembodied hands, take toys out of their packaging and play with them as uplifting music plays in the background. One particularly popular video shows a small boy unwrapping and then assembling a child-size electric car, using plastic tools that would surely fall apart in less practiced hands. He then drives the car down the sidewalk through an eerily empty neighborhood to a playground that is also completely empty, where he plays by himself, presumably because all the other neighborhood children are busy watching YouTube. The video has 267 million views."

" the International Fact-Checking Network has been producing videos that focus on tips, tricks and tools that can help improve people's fact-checking skills. Each video is about two minutes long and features interviews and demonstrations with journalists and developers who debunk fake news for a living. From how to fact-check on WhatsApp to preparing for breaking news misinformation, here are all eight instructional videos from our "Check It" series."

"The videos demonstrate the process of facilitating group learning about media literacy. Students are prompted to think critically about all media messages by asking questions such as: * Who produced this media message, and for what purpose? * Is the information credible, how would you know? * What techniques were used to communicate this message? * Who might be the target audience? * Who might benefit or be harmed by this message? * How might other people interpret this message differently? As shown in the videos, teachers respond with evidence-based prompts such as: "What makes you say that and where is that shown in the document?" These literacy principles are often preceded by content questions that encourage students to analyze media documents, including: * What are the main messages here about… (fill in the blank)? * What bias or point of view do you see here? * What information is left out of this message and why? Project Look Sharp developed these materials after assessing how some teachers present media documents to illustrate key points rather than to engage students. The videos include running annotations that explain how to conduct discussions about media messages using the constructivist methodology. Teachers will learn how to shift their practices from predominantly delivering facts to engaging students in rigorous analysis, application of key knowledge, and reflection on their understanding of the mediated world they live in."

This year in viral video, advertisers either broke new ground or just got better at old concepts. But what is clear from this year's top 10 is how passion - for a company, brand or creative concept - continues to drive innovation in viral video advertising.  Here are the top 10 most innovative viral video ads of 2012.. 

"Unruly co-founder and co-CEO Sarah Wood explains which aspects of an ad are relevant when seeking widespread success online including the level of emotional intensity and the diversity and strength of users' social motivations.  Wood also dispels some of the misconceptions surrounding virality. "There's a myth around video success-which is if you get a million views or 5 million views, then you've got a successful video," Wood says. "All that view shows is how much you spent on the media. If you want to think and understand why people shared that video, and if it really has been a viral success where word of mouth played a key part, then you need to be measuring the shares." "

"Earlier this week, at the biggest video game conference of the year - the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) - Microsoft unveiled a number of new games for their Xbox One video game console. After the presentation, Anita Sarkeesian, of Feminist Frequency, correctly observed that none of the games featured had a female protagonist."

"The fourth annual Viral Video Awards will be presented April 1 at Ad Age's Digital Conference in New York City. Now's your chance to help us decide who gets a VVA trophy. Up for voting are candidates for funniest viral campaign of the year. First, a word about the selection process: There are plenty of funny branded videos out there, but these were picked because they're both funny AND they performed really well, making us laugh and achieving a brand goal in the process."

"Melissa Coker, 35, the founder and creative director of the clothing company Wren, commissioned the video to showcase her clothing line's fall collection for Style.com's Video Fashion Week. Style.com had created the video series for brands that might lack the financial wherewithal to put on a runway show during Fashion Week. The video's outrageous popularity had the web abuzz all week, with some industry experts suggesting that it could force major designers to think more expansively about how to advertise future collections."

"We, as human beings, think that through social networks, we've somehow become more social creatures. The problem with this theory is, the more we "connect" online, the less actual human interactions we have, making us actually fairly unsocial. A new video breaks down exactly how the social aspects of human beings have evolved and transformed, showing how we've regressed from a social standpoint."

". Social media turned mobile phones into personal televisions, not just because Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and even Twitter provided more and more videos, but because they created a highly emotive space where sensationalism would win over rationality. Think about how these platforms shamelessly optimize their content to encourage more engagement, how they push users to do live personal broadcasts and visual personal diaries - their "Stories" - and display them in the form of traditional television with names like Instagram Television (IGTV). That's in addition to YouTube TV and Facebook Watch, which feature professionally produced video or live television feeds. Now there are fewer and fewer people watching traditional television, but more and more are spending their time on social media. The Wall Street Journal reported in February 2017 that "YouTube viewers worldwide are now watching more than 1 billion hours of videos a day, threatening to eclipse U.S. television viewership." I think of this as neo-television, because much of the internet today has become something you watch instead of read."

"Fake news videos aren't new, but they are on the rise and more realistic than ever due to technological advances. What used to be a fairly big production and cost thousands of dollars can now be achieved with a selfie stick and a smartphone. That may not sound like a big deal, but when politics, propaganda and bad intentions enter the fray, the potential to cause harm is staggering and potentially irreparable.   ASU Now spoke to Dan Gillmor and Eric Newton , who launched News Co/Lab in October, a collaborative lab inside the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication that aims to help the public find new ways of understanding and engaging with news and information. They believe fake videos soon will be "trivially easy, inexpensive, and all too believable.""

"Here Come the Fake Videos, Too Artificial intelligence video tools make it relatively easy to put one person's face on another person's body with few traces of manipulation. I tried it on myself. What could go wrong?"

Last semester, a student in the masculinity course I teach showed a video clip she had found online of a toddler getting what appeared to be his first vaccinations. Off camera, we hear his father's voice. "I'll hold your hand, O.K.?" Then, as his son becomes increasingly agitated: "Don't cry!… Aw, big boy! High five, high five! Say you're a man: 'I'm a man!' " The video ends with the whimpering toddler screwing up his face in anger and pounding his chest. "I'm a man!" he barks through tears and gritted teeth. The home video was right on point, illustrating the takeaway for the course: how boys are taught, sometimes with the best of intentions, to mutate their emotional suffering into anger. More immediately, it captured, in profound concision, the earliest stirrings of a male identity at war with itself. This is no small thing. As students discover in this course, an Honors College seminar called "Real Men Smile: The Changing Face of Masculinity," what boys seem to need is the very thing they fear. Yet when they are immunized against this deeper emotional honesty, the results have far-reaching, often devastating consequences. Despite the emergence of the metrosexual and an increase in stay-at-home dads, tough-guy stereotypes die hard. As men continue to fall behind women in college, while outpacing them four to one in the suicide rate, some colleges are waking up to the fact that men may need to be taught to think beyond their own stereotypes."

"The owner of video game marketplace Steam said it has removed a game where players could simulate a school shooting, a premise that sparked outrage among the families of survivors and turned out to be the work of a previously restricted publisher.  Valve Corporation said it has pulled Active Shooter, which was scheduled to launch on its Steam platform June 6. Steam offers a developer program allowing smaller game designers to publish their video games - commonly played on PCs or Macs - on the platform. Active Shooter was described as a "dynamic SWAT simulator" where players can choose to work as the member of a SWAT team attempting to disarm the shooter, or the shooter themselves."

"A tear-jerking viral video, called "2012: What Brought Us Together," is making the rounds online. Posted to YouTube on Tuesday, the six-minute video is a montage of major moments over the past year, from silly to serious. Set to the music of This Will Destroy You's "The Mighty Rio Grande," It includes clips about Hurricane Sandy, KONY 2012, the Costa Concordia disaster and the suicide of Amanda Todd."

"VideoNotes is a free web tool that allows students to take notes on a video they are watching. The notes are synchronized with the video being watched. The good thing about VideoNotes is that it is integrated into Google Drive which means that students will be able to save their notes directly to their Drive account and access, edit, and work on them anytime they want. All the notes are time-stamped. Watch Michelle's tutorial to learn more about how you can use VideoNotes with your students."

"Some experts think people can become addicted to playing video games, much in the same way people are addicted to physical substances, but is that really possible? If you are a gamer, what motivates you to play? How do you resist temptation when you need to? If you don't play video games, is there another behavior that you think it would be possible to be addicted to?"