Digital Discourse Database

Number of Posts: 32
Posts 21 - 30

The Week in Tech: Facebook Live, a More Civil Reddit and Yahoo’s Odd Deal-Making

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 9.4.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, cyberbullying, Facebook, marketing, politeness, Twitter
Summary | Reddit has for the first time in its existence enabled users to block other users from commenting. This enables censorship of less desirable opinions. Twitter landed the exclusive deal to live stream a football game on their platform, a deal Facebook was initially after since they are better known for their LiveStream service than Twitter. This is a high-profile marketing campaign for Twitter. Also, Yahoo is trying to sell itself.
Image Description | An image of a smartphone showing a livestreamed interview.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), smartphone

Obama Shifting Online Strategy on ISIS

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Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 8.1.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, law, politics, privacy, threat
Summary | President Obama wants to use surveillance techniques of new media to find IS terrorists. Tech companies, however, increasingly offer their users encrypted messaging services and refuse to hand over the keys to the government. Companies are protecting their users' privacy but also giving terrorists safe channels of communication.
Image Description | Portrait of Apple’s chief executive.
Image Tags | male(s)

Das steckt hinter Googles Sucht nach Innovationen

(This is behind Google's obsession with innovations)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 1.9.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Google, translation
Summary | Google is always on top of new trends in technology, usually they even set the trends. They are at a turning point right now: the past few years were a search for innovations under the header "mobile first" but now all innovations are geared towards improving artificial intelligence and machine learning. One of the biggest sub-projects of that is Google Translate. Thousands of people around the world are working on improving the translations in as many languages as possible. Users will even be able to take a picture of, say, a menu and have it translated on their smartphone.
Image Description | Image of Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Image Tags | Google, male(s)

Le gardien du temple des émojis

(The guardian of the emoji temple)

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Newspaper | Le Temps
Date | 21.6.2017
Language | French
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | censorship, diversity, emojis
Summary | Mark Davis (President of the Unicode Consortium), who lives in Zurich, talks about emojis. Anyone can submit new emoji proposals; but the proposal needs to be convincing. The Consortium has been trying to be more progressive, which is why people can now use same-sex couple emojis, or a hijab emoji. The Consortium does not accept any brand emojis nor famous people emojis (although people would like to see Jesus and Justin Bieber). Keith Winstein claims that nobody should have the right to tell other people which images they can or cannot use.
Image Description | Photograph of Mark Davis
Image Tags | male(s)

Das Monster lebt

(The monster is alive)

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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

Facebook-App soll das Gedankenlesen lernen

(Facebook app is supposed to learn mindreading)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 20.3.2017
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | brain, Facebook, privacy, translation
Summary | Facebook is working on new technology to enable mind reading. This would enable users to type just by thinking and moreover possibly type in a foreign language they don't even speak. All this would be possible if we had sensors that could read brain waves and interpret them correctly. The developers at Facebook emphasize that only those thoughts would be read which are willingly shared by the user.
Image Description | Thinkstock image of two cyborgs.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s)

Das steckt hinter Googles Sucht nach Innovationen

(This is behind Google's addiction for innovations)

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Newspaper | Welt
Date | 1.9.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, Google, privacy, translation
Summary | Google is always after the most exciting innovations. Their main focus at the moment is on artificial intelligence assistants which can be operated conversationally. Because they are voice-activated, issues with privacy come up: is Google's AI assistant constantly listening in? Google is working on solutions for making privacy settings as customizable as possible. Another big focus is translation. Google translate can already operate in 100 languages and now users can even scan, say a restaurant menu, and get it translated right away.
Image Description | Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
Image Tags | male(s)

“Facebook no teme a los Gobiernos, pero sí a perder a sus usuarios”

("Facebook is not afraid of governments, but is afraid of losing its users")

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Newspaper | El País
Date | 17.5.2017
Language | Spanish
Country | Spain
Topic Tags | censorship, privacy, research/study, social media, threat
Summary | Interview of the historian and journalist Timothy Garton. He talks about people's use of internet and how they can spread lies and truths. Private data, lies, truths, vigilance, and hatred circulate online. Garton claims that regarding freedom of speech, things are worse than before. According to Garton, it is part of what he calls a global anti-liberal counterrevolution. The enemies of freedom of speech are: states, and private superpowers such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Apple. Indeed, they also control what we see and do not see. When states and those superpowers come together, things can become dangerous.
Image Description | Photograph of Timothy Garton
Image Tags | male(s)

Tailandia logra censurar en Facebook un vídeo de su rey

(Thailand was able to censor a video of its king on Facebook)

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Newspaper | El País
Date | 19.5.2017
Language | Spanish
Country | Spain
Topic Tags | censorship, Facebook, law
Summary | Thailand asked Facebook to withdraw 131 pages that contain "illegal" content (i.e. pages that violate strict laws concerning the royal family). Indeed, the royal family should not be criticized. One of the videos posted online showed the current king, Maha Vajiralongkorn, displaying his tattooed back and arms. Facebook accepted to withdraw the illegal content.
Image Description | Photograph of a Facebook profile with the picture of Mark Zuckerberg.
Image Tags | Facebook, male(s)

Las reglas secretas de Facebook para moderar contenido violento, sexual y amenazas racistas

(Facebook's secret rules for moderating violent, sexual content, and racist threats)

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Newspaper | El País
Date | 22.5.2017
Language | Spanish
Country | Spain
Topic Tags | censorship, cyberbullying, Facebook
Summary | The Guardian revealed secret documents about Facebook's rules to filter its violent/racist/sexist content. The guide provides recommendations for various types of content: child abuse, threats of violence, or acts of animal cruelty. Facebook also believes that death videos should have a warning sign but they should not always be deleted because they can "raise awareness about mental problems". Recently, Facebook had to respond to various complaints concerning some content that was made public: the photograph of a naked girl victim of the Vietnam War, and the live broadcast of the murder of a man in Cleveland.
Image Description | Photograph of Mark Zuckerberg
Image Tags | male(s)

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