Tag: Business For Sale

Why anti-vaccine propaganda still runs rampant on Instagram

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This story is part of Doubting the Dose, a series that examines anti-vaccine sentiment and the role of misinformation in supercharging it.  Read more here . It takes about three taps on Instagram to find numerous sources of misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines. The problem has been well-reported. And Facebook, which owns Instagram, has made several rounds of changes to discourage the spread of vaccine misinformation on its platforms. Facebook says it’s already removed millions of Facebook and Instagram posts containing false information about COVID-19 and the vaccines. But anti-vaccine content remains a pervasive presence on one of the most popular social networks. Vaccine misinformation that spreads on social platforms like Instagram is one component of the ongoing “infodemic,” a dimension of the crisis that’s impacted how people think about the pandemic and the public health initiatives combating it. Currently almost a third of Americans do not plan to get vaccinated , as a Pew Research study from early March shows. And in order to reach herd immunity— when 80% to 85% of the population carries antibodies— a significant segment of the fearful, doubtful, and paranoid will need to be convinced to get their shot, for the good of everybody. “The more people who remain unvaccinated, the more opportunity the virus has to take hold in a community and create an outbreak,” says Summer Johnson McGee, dean of the School of Health Sciences at the University of New Haven. “As populations reach herd immunity, less social distancing, greater social mixing of groups, and larger-capacity events should be possible without fear about major outbreaks and lockdowns.” As the numbers of willing-yet-unvaccinated people go down in the next few months, a new phase in the information war may begin. If curbing misinformation’s spread has been the focus so far, then actively changing the minds of vaccine doubters may soon become a pressing priority. Read More …

Disney put the brakes on going back to the movies. Here’s why

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For many months now, the much-anticipated Marvel movie Black Widow has sat boldly on the movie release calendar. Slated to come out in theaters on May 7, the film was a sign that Disney, the studio releasing the film, felt confident that the ebbing state of the pandemic meant that fans would swarm to see the film in-person, driving up box-office receipts. More than any other film set for release this year, Black Widow was a harbinger of better times ahead for the movie business, which has been severely crippled by COVID-19.   On Tuesday, Disney dashed those hopes.   The studio abruptly announced on March 23 that it was not only moving Black Widow back to July 9, but that it will be simultaneously releasing the film on its streaming service, Disney Plus, for an additional $30 for subscribers, as it’s done with films such as Mulan and Raya and the Last Dragon . Disney also said that Cruella , which stars Emma Stone as Cruella de Vil, will also get the day-and-date theatrical-streaming treatment, though the film will   remain on its original release date of May 28.   Other changes included pushing the next Pixar film, Luca , straight to streaming on June 18, and delaying films including the Ryan Reynolds comedy Free Guy and another Marvel film, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings .   The news was a major blow to the exhibition business (to put it mildly), as well as a sign that the world’s emergence from COVID-19 is slow, laborious, and prone to unforeseen shifts—such as the new strains of COVID-19 that are ravishing Europe at the moment, sending countries back into lockdown. This gradual, up-and-down emergence from the pandemic, as opposed to the quick, clean pivot everyone would love, is evident in current movie theater attendance. While recent releases like Tom and Jerry and Croods 2 have proven that there’s pent-up demand to get back into theaters, in the United States the reality is that only 52% of theaters are currently open. Those that are operating are doing so at between 25% and 50% capacity. Anecdotally, that means that parents who couldn’t wait to break out of the house and go see Raya and the Last Dragon with their kids last weekend in cities like Los Angeles, where vaccinations are moving along at a steady clip, found themselves in empty-feeling theaters that were nonetheless sold out. That’s great for audiences, safety-wise. But not so great for Disney looking at all that lost revenue. The fact that Raya was also on Disney Plus was a consolation for the studio, as it now will be with Black Widow . Read More …

Meet the developer suing Apple for failing to clean up the App Store

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Kosta Eleftheriou, an iOS app developer, says there’s a simple way to investigate whether an iPhone app might be a scam. The first step is to ignore the app’s average star rating and featured reviews, which he says are too easy for developers to artificially inflate. Instead, you should look at the full list of written reviews, sort them by “Most Recent,” and start searching for patterns. Glowing reviews filled with bad grammar and nonsensical sentences are a bad sign, but the real tells are the one-star reviews. If you spot users complaining about astronomical in-app purchase prices or features that don’t work as advertised, the app is probably much worse than its stellar score lets on. “You’ve got to make sure that you do a little bit of work,” Eleftheriou says. “You want to investigate.” Eleftheriou has done plenty of his own App Store sleuthing in recent months. After discovering that a shoddy imitation of his popular FlickType keyboard app was charging customers hundreds of dollars per year in subscription fees, he launched his own crusade against App Store scams in general. On Twitter, he regularly flags apps that appear to be purchasing fake reviews and tricking users into making expensive in-app purchases, and he’s called out Apple for not doing enough to stop them. Up to now, I've been in the “Apple *wants* to do the right thing” camp. Read More …

A Trump social network could get sued out of existence

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Donald Trump is “holding high-powered meetings” to start his own social network in the next two to three months, according to the ex-president’s adviser Jason Miller, who appeared on the Fox News show Media Buzz on Sunday. The former president was, of course, booted from Twitter and suspended from YouTube and Facebook (pending review), after spewing misinformation about the 2020 election and, arguably, inciting a riot at the Capitol on January 6. Sunday night, many on the right were joyous about the idea of a Trump social networking site. “BarYohai,” a commenter on FoxNews.com, summed up the sentiment nicely : This is how the free market works. People “vote” with their wallets. Trump’s social media platform will be widely successful and, additionally, it will create an incentive for people to close their Twitter (and perhaps even Facebook) accounts. Amazon and other self-appointed “speech police” will also feel the economic pain as dissatisfied customers seek substitutes for, and then “cancel” the “cancel culture” businesses. But running a social network is hard, as Trump may soon find out if Miller is right. People post untrue, defamatory, threatening, and conspiratorial things on social networks, requiring a major investment in content moderation staff and systems. It might get even harder this year if Congress decides to scale back or repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which shields social networks from civil suits arising from hosting (or removing) user content. Actually, repealing Section 230 was one of Trump’s go-to threats against the Big Tech companies that run social networks, especially Twitter. Days after Twitter began applying truth labels to his tweets, Trump released an executive order directing Congress to remove the 230 protections. #BREAKING : President Trump signs executive order strip liability protection from companies that censure content: “Companies that engage in censoring or any political conduct will not be able to keep their liability shield.” https://t.co/D5ooUw1fNz pic.twitter.com/FHs7kUvJH1 — The Hill (@thehill) May 28, 2020 Many of Trump’s executive orders had little effect, but that one spurred some of his GOP devotees in Congress, such as Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, to introduce bills restricting the Section 230 protections. Hawley’s 2019 Ending Support for Internet Censorship Act reserves Section 230 protections only for content removals the social network can prove were “politically neutral.” A House bill from Arizona Republican Paul Gosar proposed revoking Section 230’s legal exemptions for social networks that remove content they deem “objectionable.” Other bills condition the legal protections on more transparent content monitoring and faster removal of toxic content. Reforming Section 230 is one of the few issues in Congress that’s garnered support from both Democrats and Republicans, if for different reasons Read More …

Employee surveillance software is here to stay, even when we go back to the office

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For many people, switching to work remote was a hopeful chance to escape the prying eyes of upper management. No longer would they feel pressure to act busy when bosses walked past, or feel guilty about logging into Twitter (even if it is for work purposes). But despite the physical distance, businesses are keeping closer tabs on employees than ever before. The use of performance monitoring tools has jumped significantly over the past year, as managers try to improve team visibility and track output. Even before the crisis, 62% of organizations were using monitoring tools to collect data on employees’ behavior during work hours.  After a year of remote work, those tools have become securely integrated into companies’ day-to-day. Although a return to offices is approaching, managers are unlikely to roll back software that’s provided insight, especially as many businesses will continue to offer work from home as an option. But there’s a fine line between surveillance and management, and there’s an even finer line between legitimate reasons to monitor staff and an illegal intrusion on people’s privacy Read More …