Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 95
Posts 81 - 90

2016: the year Facebook became the bad guy

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Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 12.12.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, Facebook, fake news, law, threat
Summary | 2016 has been a bad year for Facebook. Many scandals surrounded the company. It became clear that Facebook is now longer just an advertizing machine with access to almost 2 billion people world-wide but that it also curates what news media most of these people perceive - whether Facebook wants to accept this or not. They no longer just have to deal with sensoring nudity and human rights violations content but also fake news. While Zuckerberg denies that the fake news bubbles have influenced the presidential elections, his company at the same time makes tons of money selling exactly this persuasive power to advertisers.
Image Description | The Facebook reaction emojis and dislike (thumb-down) emojis, glasses in front of like buttons, and a man holding a smartphone with the Facebook logo in the background.
Image Tags | emojis, Facebook, logo, male(s), smartphone

Twitter Addresses Troll Problem. Again.

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 15.11.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, Facebook, fake news, threat, Twitter
Summary | Twitter has a huge problem with trolls. Many users harrass other users on the platform and Twitter is always trying to do something about it with little success. But at least they are trying - Facebook is rejecting any responsibility for fake news spread on their platform.
Image Description | Getty image of the Twitter icon on a building.
Image Tags | logo, Twitter

Oh mein Bot!

(Oh my bot!)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 2.10.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook
Summary | Facebook messenger offers a lot of chatbots. They are however not very good - yet. They are most useful for finding out simple information quickly, quicker than if one were to google, say, the weather forecast. Developers are constantly working on improving chatbots. The most quickly developing technology is voice recognition so that people can speak with chatbots.Contrary to science fiction belief however, programmers have no intentions of making chatbots seem as human as possible - they should be efficient not mistaken for an actual person.
Image Description | Getty image of a CGI woman with a tablet.
Image Tags | female(s), tablet

Schweizer Firmen setzen auf Bots

(Swiss firms put their money on bots)

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 27.12.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, privacy
Summary | Many companies in Switzerland are testing out chatbots to replace their telephone customer service. Many company chatbots can be contacted via the Facebook messenger. They are quite useful because they can organize tasks according to content and delegate them to the appropriate departments or help the customers themselves. Experts demand full transparency about what happens to customer data created in chatbot uses.
Image Description | Getty image of a woman's torso holding a smartphone, some chatbot chat screenshots and graphs.
Image Tags | female(s), hand(s), smartphone, text

Worüber Flüchtlinge auf Facebook sprechen

(What refugees talk about on Facebook)

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Newspaper | Der Standard
Date | 16.12.2016
Language | German
Country | Austria
Topic Tags | Facebook, politics
Summary | Refugees use Facebook to inform themselves about the journey to europe and to keep in touch with their family and friends. Human traffickers openly advertize their services on Facebook. One can learn quite a lot about the general attitutes of refugees - what they think of Europe and what their intentions are. Among refugees, images of overfilled trains and busses are posted as memes and commented with "this is us going back after the war is over in Syria".
Image Description | Photograph of young men charging their smartphones in a van and a meme with arabic captions.
Image Tags | male(s), smartphone

Ein Hashtag allein ist kein Zeichen für Mitgefühl

(A Hashtag is not a sign of empathy)

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 24.12.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | emojis, Facebook
Summary | The recent terrorist attacks at a christmas market in Berlin have prompted a flood of empathetic social media postings. It is questionable how empathetic people really are when they showcase their solidarity on social media, say psychologists. They may just be submitting to peer pressure and conforming to what appears to be the popular, appropriate reaction - namely posting on social media.
Image Description | Getty image of a solidarity gathering with a woman holding a heart sign.
Image Tags | female(s)

Zuckerberg can now talk to his AI, but it's still no Jarvis

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Newspaper | USA Today
Date | 19.12.2016
Language | English
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook
Summary | Mark Zuckerberg is experimenting with his household appliances trying to connect them all to the internet so that he can eventually operate any and all devices in his home by voice command. He thinks that artificial intelligence will become more and more important in our daily lives and is hard at work in creating his own personal digital butler that follows all his verbal orders and even anticipates his needs. The technology is however not ready yet: not all household appliances can be connected to the internet and those that can often use different programming languages.
Image Description | Getty image portrait of Mark Zuckerbern while speaking.
Image Tags | male(s)

Facebook lurking makes you miserable, says study

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Newspaper | BBC News
Date | 22.12.2016
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | (mental) health, Facebook, research/study, threat
Summary | Studies have shown that looking at other people's posts on Facebook can increase feelings of envy and be otherwise bad for one's mental health. Especially 'lurking' on Facebook, so not actually interacting with anyone on the platform but just looking at the content can be detrimental to one's emotional state and cause unrealistic standards which result in disappointment with one's own life.
Image Description | iStock image of a woman in a bar looking at her smartphone sadly/boredly.
Image Tags | female(s), smartphone

Like? Haha. Love! Sad? Wow. Angry

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Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 26.2.2016
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | emojis, Facebook
Summary | Facebook has a new reaction feature that is an expansion of the “like” function: users can now not only “like” content on Facebook but also, laugh at it, love it, be sad about it, be amazed by it, or angry at it. These five newly available reactions are depicted with emojis. Users were generally content with the new feature, although some think it is controversial. Many inappropriate happy reactions were for instance recorded when a refugee camp caught fire.
Image Description | N/A

Hey, du Mensch!

(Hey, you human! )

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Newspaper | Die Zeit
Date | 15.4.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Facebook, texting
Summary | Facebook has recently followed the footsteps of other large companies and implemented a chatbot in its messenger. Chatbots as conversational user interfaces are increasingly popular because smartphone users are reported to grow tired of having to download so many different apps. By enriching a social media service such as Facebook with a chatbot, users can enquire about things (e.g the weather) without changing platforms and using a mode that is familiar and comfortable for users: casual texting. The article however criticizes that chatbot technology is not very advanced and that it does not resemble human interaction yet.
Image Description | Photograph of a man texting in front of the Facebook Messenger logo, and screenshot of a Messenger chat.
Image Tags | Facebook, logo, male(s), smartphone, text

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