US military studied how to influence Twitter users in Darpa-funded research • Defense Department spent millions to research social networks • Studies focused on Occupy and Middle East protests • Projects also analysed memes, celebrities and disinformation Darpa defended the funding, including to study activists on social networks and Lady Gaga's influence, as essential to US interests. Photograph: Stan Honda/AFP/Getty
Voycee /vois-i/ is a history-free social media network. It allows you to share and follow status updates, photos, videos, audio files, and other forms of social media posts, all while avoiding privacy concerns which are presented from traditional social media networks today. The next time you create a new post, the previous post and all of its comments, likes, notifications and hashtags are automatically deleted. Destroyed. Forever. Without a trace.
That seems like an odd conclusion: restriction of information flow in social networks - based on cell-phone call patterns between people with similar traits? I imagine there's much more to their study than is explained in that article. Those crazy Finns.
Earlier studies have shown, for instance, that "good news" gets passed on more than "bad news", i.e. a bias or form of cherry picking resulting in a similar restriction/selection of information flow. It would appear that this study shows something akin based on how some information gets passed on faster/more among similar groups (based on gender, age, connectivity in social networks).
That seems like an odd conclusion: restriction of information flow in social networks - based on cell-phone call patterns among people with similar traits? I imagine there's much more to their study than is explained in that article. Those crazy Finns.
The results were obtained by means of a computational method developed by the research group and then applied to massive amounts of anonymised mobile phone call data. The data came from a mobile phone operator's billing system and includes detailed information about the timing of hundreds of millions of mobile phone calls and the age, gender and billing types of anonymised callers and recipients.
The research is linked to computational social science, an area of multidisciplinary research that has become highly important in recent years. In this area, computational methods are used to mine information about human behavior from massive data sets. Rather than focusing on the individual, computational social science strives to understand general properties in the behavior of large groups of people. This contrasts with data collection and mining used for intelligence purposes, which has recently attracted a lot of publicity. Furthermore, the data used is always anonymised. (...)
(...) The scientists conducted a large-scale national survey in England, which like the US struggles with issues of immigration, diversity and ethnic tension. They surveyed more than 1600 adults from 224 neighborhoods, which varied widely in diversity. About half the respondents overall were from the white British majority, while the other half were from various ethnic minority groups. The survey asked about perceptions of community diversity; about the nature of everyday contact with others; about if and how people felt threatened by those not like themselves; and about how much these dissimilar neighbors could be trusted.
Schmid and her colleagues wanted to examine the effects of diversity on three kinds of trust—in-group trust, out-group trust, and overall neighborhood trust. They expected diversity to boost trust, but only indirectly: That is, they thought that more diversity would open more opportunities for casual everyday contact, and that such contact would be a key factor in increasing enhanced trust.
They found an interesting pattern of results, which they describe in an article to appear in the journal Psychological Science. Perceived and actual diversity were associated with diminished out-group trust and diminished overall trust, but only among White British respondents. But here’s the most important part: That effect vanished when the scientists factored in actual day-to-day personal contact. That is, when majority and minority members had the opportunity to exchange pleasantries and chat a bit about their kids or sports, this deflated their sense that they were threatened, which boosted feelings of trust—trust of all kinds. So overall, diversity did lead to more trust, just indirectly.
So if these findings are correct, it does not appear that neighborhood diversity inevitably fosters a hunkering-down mentality. Diversity can also enable people—both established majority and newcomers—to open up to others. But it’s not enough just to live side-by-side in the same community. Only meaningful face-to-face interactions can trump the potentially destructive effects of diversity on trust and solidarity.
WHAT is the deal with Facebook the last couple days?? Unresponsive script errors, people's avatars not showing up, hanging, lagging, freezing up Firefox... Anyone else seeing all this?
I use Safari because of my Scramble addiction (Scramble was not working in Firefox for a while). I haven't had any of those errors.
WHAT is the deal with Facebook the last couple days?? Unresponsive script errors, people's avatars not showing up, hanging, lagging, freezing up Firefox... Anyone else seeing all this?
Yes, it's happening to both Allan and me. Sometimes we get the "unresponsive script" message, sometimes it just freezes Firefox. Allan spent most of yesterday troubleshooting (whereas I had no problems with FB, unlike Saturday, where it kept giving me the spinning beach ball of death). As far as we can tell, there's NO info on either FB help or FF help...of course, that was last night.
WHAT is the deal with Facebook the last couple days?? Unresponsive script errors, people's avatars not showing up, hanging, lagging, freezing up Firefox... Anyone else seeing all this?
They're readying their new software to make charging for the services easier.
WHAT is the deal with Facebook the last couple days?? Unresponsive script errors, people's avatars not showing up, hanging, lagging, freezing up Firefox... Anyone else seeing all this?
"Yall don't hear me!!!! You only live once!!!! Let's go!!! Imma take you wit me if u wanna come!!! Lol pause!!" That's a tweet from @iamdiddy—as in Sean Combs—received and retweeted by 390,000 followers last week. But reading the tweet brings two questions to mind: The first is: Huh? Bueller? What does it mean? The second is: Wait. Was that really Sean Combs? "Ghosttweeters" have been a popular subject lately—you know, people hired by the celebrity or the celebrity's agent to sound like them. Most stars say they are the ones actually doing the typing. But how does one know for sure? And what are these tweets really trying to say? I'm trying my hand at translating celebritweets and determining whether it's the celebrity at the keyboard or a ghosttweeter. Here goes: @officialtilaTila TequilaOriginal Tweet: I've been dating crazy psychotic females for the past year non-stop and right now, I've just had enough of those girls. Time for an old man. Translated: That's a show? That's a show. Ooooh, bikini sale. Real or ghost: Real. No one except Tila Tequila could sound this shallow. @mileycyrus Miley CyrusOriginal Tweet: i came up with a new tweet—thats "tweet-alicious" i am the ultimate twitter-er. please tweet my twitter (say that three times fast) Translated: OMG!! Don't blame me. Hannah Montana got all my brains. Real or ghost: Ghost. Cyrus is 16. This person sounds 12. @britneyspears Britney SpearsOriginal Tweet: I had a nice, restful evening and got a great massage last night. ~Brit Translated: Massage? Is that what they're calling it now? Real or ghost: Ghost. Can you see Britney saying "restful"? @marthastewart Martha StewartOriginal Tweet: today is beautiful—lots of gardening, planting and all the boxwoods will be limed—they like sweet soil i will fit in a horseback ride also. Translated: Horseback ride? Is that what they're calling it now? Real or ghost: Real. Only Martha could tweet about horseback riding and come up with "sweet soil." @johncmayer John MayerOriginal Tweet: I'm nice enough but I ramble on and on and on and on. And I blink a lot. And hard. Hard blinking, like full face blinking. Translated: Jennifer Aniston just unfollowed me. I'd better call her. Or Tweet her. My eyes hurt. Real or ghost: Real. You can't fake something so pathetic.
