Number of Posts: 16
Posts 1 - 10
Growing social media backlash among young people, survey shows
Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 5.10.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | (mental) health, addiction, cyberbullying, research/study, social media, technology-free, threat, youth
Summary | Two out of three pupils claim they would not care if there was no social media. According to the survey, young people are aware of the negative effects of new technologies on their lives and mental health. Some of them said that they had been victims of online abuse, that they were addicted, or/and that they felt less confident. Other pupils talked about the positive aspects of new technologies and social media (e.g. memes, Snapchat stories) and what improvements they would like to see. At a private boarding school for girls, pupils tried a new experiment: hand over their phones for three days. The girls liked the experiences and would like to do it again for a longer period.
Image Description | Photograph of someone (whose face is cut off) sitting on a bed and using/looking at a laptop.
Image Tags | computer/laptop
Facebook ließ gezielte Werbung an "Judenhasser" zu
(Facebook allowed targeted advertising for "Jew Haters")
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 15.9.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, diversity, Facebook, politics, threat
Summary | Facebook is one of the biggest advertising platforms world-wide. It lists target groups for advertisers to choose from. One of those groups used to be "Jew Haters". Facebook removed the target group saying that they will do a better job at curating users into appropriate target groups based on how they position themselves in their profiles.
Image Description | The Facebook logo on a computer screen with a mouse cursor over it.
Image Tags | computer/laptop, Facebook, hand(s), logo
Schamlosigkeit hilft
(Shamelessness helps)
Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 10.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, social media, spelling, threat
Summary | A German TV show host has just responded to a hate comment on social media by mimicking the commenter's faulty spelling and reversing his accusations and insults. The commenter, confronted with an imitation of himself, apologized. A German artist sprayed hateful tweets on the Twitter building to show how much illegal hate speech they have not managed to remove. This strategy of shaming is nothing new in disciplining members of a community but it seems to work.
Image Description | Portrait of the TV show host.
Image Tags | female(s)
Notwendiger Twitter-Protest oder Vandalismus?
(Necessary Twitter protest or vandalism?)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 8.8.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, law, social media, threat, Twitter
Summary | A German artist protested Twitter's lax action upon hate comments on their platform by spraypainting hate comments from Twitter on the German Twitter headquarter building. Twitter only deletes 1% of user-reported hate comments. The German justice minister has also gone after social media companies and is threatening with very high financial sanctions if they do not comply with local laws that prohibit hate language.
Image Description | Image and tweets of the protester and of the justice minister.
Image Tags | male(s), Twitter
Germany Tells Sites to Delete Hate or Pay Up
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 30.6.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, censorship, cyberbullying, Facebook, fake news, law, threat
Summary | Germany has the strictest policies when it comes to illegalizing slanderous, threatening, and extremist language from public spaces. Germany has just passed a law that allows them to fine Facebook as much as 57 million dollars if they do not remove offensive content quickly enough from the platform. While some may say this is censorship , German lawmakers claim that respectful online encounters are a necessity for free speech to thrive. Facebook is now working on improving the flagging process for offensive material and are also using artificial intelligence to remove fake news.
Image Description | Blurry man looking at a smartphone with the Facebook logo in the background.
Image Tags | Facebook, logo, male(s), smartphone
The Rise and Fall of Yik Yak, the Anonymous Messaging App
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 27.5.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | childhood, cyberbullying, law, privacy, social media, threat, youth
Summary | The anonymous messaging app Yik Yak became very popular in colleges and schools because it lets people broadcast anonymously to other users near them. The activity on the app has however started to become thretening with college students and children bullying each other and people making bomb threats that have led to multiple evacuations. A feminist group from University of Mary Washington have filed complaint to the University to block Yik Yak on campus because it has been used to harrass and threaten members.
Image Description | An illustration with a face and a smartphone and an image of the creators of Yik Yak.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone
So gewaltig wie die Erfindung der Schrift
(As huge as the invention of writing)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 21.6.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | (mental) health, artificial intelligence, cyberbullying, Facebook, law, marketing, politics, threat
Summary | The digitalization is the most significant development of our time. Created for the democratization of information, it can however also be used for the opposite. The Chinese government are already using the internet as a means to survey their citizens and assess their loyalty. Artificial intelligence technologies are in place to calculate the shortest way to your destination, predict crimes, predict illnesses and cancer risks, as well as what book you will buy next. Amazon sends customers unsolicited products because the loss of having to return the product by mail is smaller than the profit of the customer keeping the well suggested item. Facebook has been created to connect people within a community but the platform cannot battle the hate language and cyberbullying to the extent that it influences presidential elections.
Image Description | Heisenberg media image of the author at a public speaking event with another man.
Image Tags | male(s)
Das Monster lebt
(The monster is alive)
Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 31.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | censorship, cyberbullying, Facebook, law, threat
Summary | Facebook is hiring thousands of new employees to battle cyberbullying on their platform and to remove offensive material as quickly as possible. But a couple thousand are not very many people to combat wrongdoings of 2 billion users. German politicians are trying to make Facebook comply with local laws about removing illegal content from the internet but Facebook is nowhere near fulfilling those requirements.
Image Description | A photograph of a man holding a smartphone showing the Facebook logo and the face of a monster.
Image Tags | Facebook, hand(s), logo, male(s), smartphone
Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?
Newspaper | The Atlantic
Date | 0.9.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | (mental) health, addiction, cyberbullying, gender, smartphone, social media, threat, youth
Summary | A US study has conducted a large survey among teenagers and found out that smartphones are impacting their lives significantly. They sleep less, go out less, date less, are less likely to get (someone) pregnant, feel left out more, have more mental health issues, etc. Especially girls are more likely to feel left out because they spend more time on social media and because girls tend to bully each other by ostracization which is very easily achievable in cyberspace. Also, the teenage suicide rate has surpassed the teenage homicide rate for the first time in history.
Image Description | Two illustrations showing a woman falling with a tablet and a woman lying in bed at night looking at her smartphone. Charts showing the results from the US survey.
Image Tags | chart, female(s), smartphone, tablet
Im Gefühlsextremismus
(In the middle of emotional extremism)
Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 10.5.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, pornography, privacy, sexting, social media, threat
Summary | Social media have messed with our sense of privacy. Celebrities can now address their fans from a seemingly private realm of self-orchestrated social media presence and regular people can become famous very quickly when they embarrass themselves enough on social media. Additionally, one can be made famous on social media by cyberbullies and previous partners by sharing "revenge porn" (nudes shared during a romantic relationship) after a breakup. The general tenor on all social media sites entails schadenfreude (rejoicing over other people's misfortune) - whether it be directed towards celebrities' faux-pas or normal people.
Image Description | The crying tears from laughter emoji.
Image Tags | emojis
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