"Facebook officials had internal research in March 2020 showing that Instagram - the social media platform most used by adolescents - is harmful to teen girls' body image and well-being but swept those findings under the rug to continue conducting business as usual, according to a Sept. 14, 2021, Wall Street Journal report."

"Social media often catches blame for increasing political polarization in the United States. Does it deserve that reputation? A new study from New York University's Stern Center for Business and Human Rights finds that it does. "We conclude that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are not the original or main cause of rising U.S. political polarization, a phenomenon that long predates the social media industry. But use of those platforms intensifies divisiveness and thus contributes to its corrosive consequences," the report says. Without internal or government reforms, the researchers say, partisan hatred will continue to have "dire consequences," including further trust lost in institutions, the continued proliferation of misinformation and more real-world violence like the Jan. 6 insurrection. The researchers recommend several ways to reform social media, including investing in alternative social media platforms, empowering the Federal Trade Commission to enforce standards and tweaking algorithms to stop rewarding inflammatory content."

"We now face a choice between an incremental return to where we left off and a more fundamental t ransformation of what we're about. "What Is Journalism?"-this digital edition of the magazine-takes us down that second path, and we hope it will raise fundamental questions for you, too. It is the most ambitious digital project we've ever tried at CJR. Every day this week, we'll roll out a new chapter, each exploring a question from the most basic tenets of reporting: Who gets to call themselves a journalist? Where can journalism happen? How is it produced and shared? When do we engage with it? And finally-with trust in the press at an all-time low-why bother doing journalism at all?"

"Gen Z's impulse to congregate online and post constantly-which older adults often mock-is serving them well in self-quarantine."

"How much of the internet is fake? Studies generally suggest that, year after year, less than 60 percent of web traffic is human; some years, according to some researchers, a healthy majority of it is bot. For a period of time in 2013, the Times reported this year, a full half of YouTube traffic was "bots masquerading as people," a portion so high that employees feared an inflection point after which YouTube's systems for detecting fraudulent traffic would begin to regard bot traffic as real and human traffic as fake. They called this hypothetical event "the Inversion.""

"Apple issues guidelines for how its computers, smartphones and other devices can be used in movies and TV shows. But that information in itself can be a potential spoiler alert."

"Today, Burger King unveiled a global ad campaign aimed at highlighting its commitment to dropping all artificial preservatives. Such campaigns, while laudable, come and go somewhat often without generating much more than passing interest. But this one is truly bizarre and tests just how far Burger King can take its audiences down the bold marketing route before losing the path entirely."

""We build a digital effigy of a human being and set it alight in some kind of group catharsis," Nayna said. "It's not something I'll ever take part in again, and I'm fairly confident that if we're ever able to settle into a mature code of ethics for the internet, we'll look back at shaming as a primitive phase we went through." To this day, Nayna struggles to find the right way to respond to people who regard him as a hero for having created the video. "It was a shitty thing that I did," he says in the film. "If you look at the outcomes, I was exacting revenge. Do you make someone better by attacking them and making them feel horrible? I don't think that's true.""

"Paying attention to the impeachment inquiry and other developments means having to figure out what is true, false or spin. Many Americans are throwing up their hands and tuning it all out"

"When a longtime resident started stealing her neighbors' Amazon packages, she entered a vortex of smart cameras, Nextdoor rants, and cellphone surveillance."

"For the month of November, Men's Health Awareness Month, TV Guide is presenting "I See You Man," a series of stories that take a deeper look at representations of men on TV today. Check back here throughout the month for more stories about men on television."

""A little bit famous" is the domain of Instagram influencers, reality TV contestants, YouTube creators, pageant queens, and mid-roster athletes who you yourself might not recognize on the street, but someone would. Over the past year, another group have entered this category: TikTok stars. These people, most visibly teenagers, have found huge audiences on the nascent app known for short video posts"

"If the apparatus of total surveillance that we have described here were deliberate, centralized, and explicit, a Big Brother machine toggling between cameras, it would demand revolt, and we could conceive of a life outside the totalitarian microscope."

"Since November, when Mark Zuckerberg first wrote about his vision for how content should be governed on Facebook, a team within our company has been working to design and implement this idea, with the help of input and feedback from people all around the world. Today, we're announcing more details on the structure of the Oversight Board and its relationship to Facebook in the form of a charter. This central governing document defines the board's mandate and describes its relationship to Facebook. It establishes its membership, governance and decision-making authority, and it sets out parameters for things like the size, scope and power of the board. In the coming months this charter will be available in multiple languages on a new board website."

"Researchers in the U.S. military are working to combat what they call "adversarial artificial intelligence." That's when someone hacks into an AI system to transmit the wrong information."

"One by one, original YouTube creators have found themselves pivoting away from the limelight to more traditional career paths. Here's why."

"An analysis of every video posted by high-subscriber channels in the first week of 2019 finds that children's content - as well as content featuring children - received more views than other videos"

"A Mother Jones investigation into nearly two dozen attacks reveals a grim pattern-and key warning signs."

"The key to harnessing the power of streaming to create something really new might be to turn the medium's ubiquity and fluidity into an advantage. Can we meaningfully allow for a given piece of music to morph and evolve with different impact on each hearing? Can this mutability engage artists' imaginations in new ways? Can listeners - or even the entire environment - play important collaborative roles in building such a "living music" culture? Several current projects at the MIT Media Lab, where we work, explore various forms that dynamically streamed music might take."