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The MIT researchers’ paper, however, suggests that the danger of information cascades may not be as dire as it previously seemed.

a mathematical model that describes attempts by members of a social network to make binary decisions — such as which of two brands of cell phone to buy — on the basis of decisions made by their neighbors. The model assumes that for all members of the population, there is a single right decision: one of the cell phones is intrinsically better than the other. But some members of the network have bad information about which is which.

The MIT researchers analyzed the propagation of information under two different conditions. In one case, there’s a cap on how much any one person can know about the state of the world: even if one cell phone is intrinsically better than the other, no one can determine that with 100 percent certainty. In the other case, there’s no such cap. There’s debate among economists and information theorists about which of these two conditions better reflects reality, and Kleinberg suggests that the answer may vary depending on the type of information propagating through the network. But previous models had suggested that, if there is a cap, information cascades are almost inevitable.

if there’s no cap on certainty, an expanding social network will eventually converge on an accurate representation of the state of the world; that wasn’t a big surprise. But they also showed that in many common types of networks, even if there is a cap on certainty, convergence will still occur.

people in the past have looked at it using more myopic models,” says Acemoglu. “They would be averaging type of models: so my opinion is an average of the opinions of my neighbors’.” In such a model, Acemoglu says, the views of people who are “oversampled” — who are connected with a large enough number of other people — will end up distorting the conclusions of the group as a whole.

What we’re doing is looking at it in a much more game-theoretic manner, where individuals are realizing where the information comes from. So there will be some correction factor,” Acemoglu says. “If I’m seeing you, your action, and I’m seeing Munzer’s action, and I also know that there is some probability that you might have observed Munzer, then I discount his opinion appropriately, because I know that I don’t want to overweight it. And that’s the reason why, even though you have these influential agents — it might be that Munzer is everywhere, and everybody observes him — that still doesn’t create a herd on his opinion.”

the new paper leaves a few salient questions unanswered, such as how quickly the network will converge on the correct answer, and what happens when the model of agents’ knowledge becomes more complex.

the MIT researchers begin to address both questions. One paper examines rate of convergence, although Dahleh and Acemoglu note that that its results are “somewhat weaker” than those about the conditions for convergence. Another paper examines cases in which different agents make different decisions given the same information: some people might prefer one type of cell phone, others another. In such cases, “if you know the percentage of people that are of one type, it’s enough — at least in certain networks — to guarantee learning,” Dahleh says. “I don’t need to know, for every individual, whether they’re for it or against it; I just need to know that one-third of the people are for it, and two-thirds are against it.” For instance, he says, if you notice that a Chinese restaurant in your neighborhood is always half-empty, and a nearby Indian restaurant is always crowded, then information about what percentages of people prefer Chinese or Indian food will tell you which restaurant, if either, is of above-average or below-average quality.

Weibo won't be turning into Facebook, Mr. Chao said, but will have more Facebook-like features to allow for "stronger social relationships based on our new applications."

The Wall Street Journal's examination of scraping—a trade that involves personal information as well as many other types of data—is part of the newspaper's investigation into the business of tracking people's activities online and selling details about their behavior and personal interests.

Some companies collect personal information for detailed background reports on individuals, such as email addresses, cell numbers, photographs and posts on social-network sites. Others offer what are known as listening services, which monitor in real time hundreds or thousands of news sources, blogs and websites to see what people are saying about specific products or topics.

One such service is offered by Dow Jones & Co., publisher of the Journal. Dow Jones collects data from the Web—which may include personal information contained in news articles and blog postings—that help corporate clients monitor how they are portrayed. It says it doesn't gather information from password-protected parts of sites.

The competition for data is fierce. PatientsLikeMe also sells data about its users. PatientsLikeMe says the data it sells is anonymized, no names attached.

Nielsen spokesman Matt Anchin says the company's reports to its clients include publicly available information gleaned from the Internet, "so if someone decides to share personally identifiable information, it could be included."

Internet users often have little recourse if personally identifiable data is scraped: There is no national law requiring data companies to let people remove or change information about themselves, though some firms let users remove their profiles under certain circumstances.

The success suggests that socialbots could manipulate social networks on a larger scale, for good or ill. "We could use these bots in the future to encourage social participation or support for humanitarian causes," Hwang claims. He also acknowledges that there is a flip side, if bots were also used to inhibit activism.

The military may already be onto the idea. Officials at US Central Command (Centcom), which oversees military activities in the Middle East and central Asia, issued a request last June for an "online persona management service". The details of the request suggest that the military want to create and control 50 fictitious online identities who appear to be real people from Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is not clear, however, if any of the management of the fake identities would be delegated to software. A Centcom spokesperson told New Scientist that the contract supports "classified blogging activities on foreign language websites to enable Centcom to counter violent extremist and enemy propaganda outside the US".

Hwang has ambitious plans for the next stage of the socialbot project: "We're going to survey and identify two sites of 5000-person unconnected Twitter communities, and over a six-to-12-month period use waves of bots to thread and rivet those clusters together into a directly connected social bridge between those two formerly independent groups," he wrote in a blog post on 3 March. "The bot-driven social 'scaffolding' will then be dropped away, completing the bridge, with swarms of bots being launched to maintain the superstructure as needed," he adds.

that is tragedy because just at the moment when we celebrate the product of these two wonders—Zuckerberg and the Internet—working together, policymakers are conspiring ferociously with old world powers to remove the conditions for this success. As “network neutrality” gets bargained away—to add insult to injury, by an administration that was elected with the promise to defend it—the opportunities for the Zuckerbergs of tomorrow will shrink. And as they do, we will return more to the world where success depends upon permission. And privilege. And insiders. And where fewer turn their souls to inventing the next great idea.

Zuckerberg is a rightful hero of our time. I want my kids to admire him. To his credit, Sorkin gives him the only lines of true insight in the film: In response to the twins’ lawsuit, he asks, does “a guy who makes a really good chair owe money to anyone who ever made a chair?” And to his partner who signed away his ownership in Facebook: “You’re gonna blame me because you were the business head of the company and you made a bad business deal with your own company?” Friends who know Zuckerberg say such insight is common. No doubt his handlers are panicked that the film will tarnish the brand. He should listen less to these handlers. As I looked around at the packed theater of teens and twenty-somethings, there was no doubt who was in the right, however geeky and clumsy and sad. That generation will judge this new world. If, that is, we allow that new world to continue to flourish.

consistent with George's analysis, authorities last week relaxed past regulations that limited the use of the Internet and social media for election campaigning. Political parties and candidates will be allowed to use a broader range of new media platforms, including blogs, micro-blogs, online photo-sharing platforms, social networking sites and electronic media applications used on mobile phones, for election advertising. The loosening, however, only applies for political party-run websites, chat rooms and online discussion forums. Candidates must declare the new media content they intend to use within 12 hours after the start of the election campaign period. George warned in a recent blog entry that the new declaration requirements could open the way for PAP-led defamation suits against new media using opposition politicians. PAP leaders have historically relied on expensive litigation to suppress opposition and media criticism. "The PAP won't subject everyone's postings to legal scrutiny. But if it decides that a particular opposition politician needs to be utterly demolished, you can bet that no tweet of his would be too tiny, no Facebook update too fleeting ... in order a build the case against the individual," George warned in a journalism blog.

While opposition politicians will rely more on new than mainstream media to communicate with voters, they already recognize that the use of social media will not necessarily translate into votes. "[Online support] can give a too rosy a picture and false degree of comfort," said the RP's Jeyaretnam. "People who [interact with] us online are those who are already convinced with our messages anyway."

Entitled "Can Twitter Make You Amoral? Rapid-fire Media May Confuse Your Moral Compass," it claimed that the research "raises questions about the emotional cost —particularly for the developing brain — of heavy reliance on a rapid stream of news snippets obtained through television, online feeds or social networks such as Twitter."

Compared to in-depth news coverage, first-person Tweets of on-the-ground events, such as the 2008 Mumbai bombings, is generally unmoving. But in those situations, Twitter’s primary use is in gathering useful, immediate facts, not storytelling.

Most people who read a handful of words about a friend’s heartache, or see a link to a tragic story, would likely follow it up. But following links to a video news story makes the possibility of a short-circuited neurobiology of compassion becomes more real. Research suggests that people are far more empathic when stories are told in a linear way, without quick shot-to-shot edits. In a 1996 Empirical Studies of the Arts paper, researchers showed three versions of an ostensibly tear-jerking story to 120 test subjects. "Subjects had significantly more favorable impressions of the victimized female protagonist than of her male opponent only when the story structure was linear," they concluded.

A review of tabloid news formats in the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media found that jarring, rapid-fire visual storytelling produced a physiological arousal led to better recall of what was seen, but only if the original subject matter was dull. If it was already arousing, tabloid storytelling appeared to produce a cognitive overload that actually prevented stories from sinking in.

"Quick cuts will draw and retain a viewer’s focus even if the content is uninteresting," said freelance video producer Jill Bauerle. "MTV-like jump cuts, which have become the standard for many editors, serve as a sort of eye candy to keep eyeballs peeled to screen."

f compassion can only be activated by sustained attention, which is prevented by fast-cut editing, then the ability to be genuinely moved by another’s story could atrophy. It might even fail to properly develop in children, whose brains are being formed in ways that will last a lifetime. More research is clearly needed, including a replication of the original empathy findings, but the hypothesis is plausible.

In this era of "media convergence" — when GPS and wireless devices are colluding to make one's offline location known in the virtual world — friendship pages allow you to see an event your nonfriend has RSVP'd to or a plan he or she made with your mutual pal.

Blanchard said that on her doctor's advice, she tried to have fun, including nights out at her local bar with friends and short getaways to sun destinations, as a way to forget her problems. She also doesn’t understand how Manulife accessed her photos because her Facebook profile is locked and only people she approves can look at what she posts.

Insurer confirms it uses Facebook

the insurer said: "We would not deny or terminate a valid claim solely based on information published on websites such as Facebook." It confirmed that it uses the popular social networking site to investigate clients.

Frustrated with the Google-owned video site, Bieber instead uploaded his video using Facebook’s video app onto his Facebook page. “no one keeps my music from my fans. nobody,” he wrote on Twitter.

There’s a level of irony to the situation. Bieber got his start on YouTube, where home videos of him on his account singing covers of hip-hop songs

You would think if anyone deserved to be able to upload his own music videos to YouTube, it would be Bieber. So why couldn’t he? The answer lies in the complicated legalities behind copyright law and new media. It comes down to the question: who owns the video? In Bieber’s case, the answer depends on who you ask.

According to the YouTube website where Bieber’s upload was blocked, it appears that UMG has ownership. YouTube has a Content ID copyright protection system in place. Content ID automatically detects whether new content being uploaded to the website infringes on any copyrighted material in YouTube’s vast video database, using video and audio recognition techniques. The rights-holder can preselect what YouTube should do to the video in response: A) block it outright, B) monetize it by overlaying an ad on the video or C) do nothing, but be able to track the video’s viewership.

And why was Bieber able to upload his video to Facebook with no problems? Facebook also says it has a copyright protection scheme in place. But if it has a similar Content ID system to YouTube, it doesn’t have the same amount of video content that YouTube does, meaning a given uploaded video to the social network is less likely to automatically ring warning bells.

In determining how reasonable a persons actions are we have to look at what a normal person would do in the same situation.

The idea that women have rape fantasies have been perpetuated by men’s magazines, and pornographic movies and books. A certain segment of the male population is going to believe that such as a fantasy exists in the minds women. And sadly, though rare, it does exist in the minds of a few women, as hard as that is for most of us to accept. This fantasy obviously appeals to many men or they would not be watching these movies or buying these magazines, even normal men who would never commit a rape may harbor such fantasies. So, while the idea makes most people’s skin crawl it was “reasonable” for McDowell to believe that a woman could harbor this fantasy.

But, would a reasonable man act upon it? Everything within most of us shouts no. But, the truth is there are many couples who in the privacy of their homes act out fantasies include bondage fantasies. So, is it less reasonable that a man who has such a fantasy would, if he could find a woman that shares that fantasy act on it? The truth is that his actions may well be considered reasonable in the face of the facts as we now know them.

There are those who claim this man was a rapist ready to happen, and while I don’t necessarily disagree I also believe we will never know. There are probably thousands if not millions of people who have sexual fantasies both big and small that they have never acted upon. This man could have been one of them. On the other hand his enthusiasm in acting out this fantasy may well be an indication that he would have at sometime committed such an act on a woman he knew to be unwilling.

What is most disturbing is Stripe’s actions. By setting up the rape fantasy the way he did, by communicating with McDowell while pretending to be the victim, he set up a situation where the victim herself could not stop what was happening. No matter how many times she told McDowell to stop, how tearfully she begged, he was primed by Stripe to believe that this was all part of the playacting.

Let’s not forget Craig’s list. Until we make laws making it illegal for such ads as these to get posted there are going to be sites such as these who will make their money uncaring who gets hurt in the process. In fact, the more notoriety this site seems to get, the more people seem to want to use it.

Just on the rape fantasy for women part, a number of studies show it to be a fairly significant fantasy that about 1/3 to 2/3 of women have. Nothing can condone what he did, but it's easy to believe he may have thought she was okay with it. There are many people who play out bondage and torture fantasy and we can't judge them.

Well, it doesnt look like the Judge bought McDowell's story. He was sentenced to 60 years to life in prison. The same sentence that Stipe received.

It does say something of McDowell that he voluntarily changed his plea from "not guilty" to "guilty." From reviewing many reports on this case, it appears that, once he realized what really happened, he wanted to make this as easy on the woman as possible. His remorse at what he accidentally did must be mixed with the horror he knows he unwittingly created.Perhaps the real case yet to come is McDowell's teaming up with the woman in a civil case against Stipe, the real criminal.