Cyberbullying

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An advertising executive who lost his job after being named on an anonymous Instagram account is suing the now-defunct account for defamation. The suit names as defendants not only the account—Diet Madison Avenue, which was intended to root out harassment and discrimination at ad agencies—but also (as “Jane Doe 1,” “Jane Doe 2,” et cetera) several of the anonymous people who ran it. Whether Instagram will ultimately have to turn over the identities of the users behind the account will turn on a couple of key legal issues.

A bill recently passed by the New York State Senate makes it a crime for “a caretaker to post a vulnerable elderly person on social media without their consent.” At least one tech columnist thinks the legislation is so broadly worded that it violates the U.S. Constitution. That might be so, but—in light of several news reports about this unfortunate form of elder abuse over the last few years—that same columnist may not be correct about the bill likely having been passed in response to a one-time incident.

A new law in Egypt that categorizes social media accounts and blogs with more than 5,000 followers as media outlets allows the government in that country to block those accounts and blogs for publishing fake news. Some critics aren’t buying the government’s explanation for the law’s implementation, however, and are suggesting it was inspired by a very different motivation.

Critics of the most recent version of the European Copyright Directive’s Article 13, which the European Parliament rejected in early July, brought home their message by arguing that it would have prevented social media users from uploading and sharing their favorite memes.

In a criminal trial, social media posts may be used by both the prosecution and the defense to impeach a witness but—as with all impeachment evidence—the posts’ use and scope is entirely within the discretion of the trial court. The New York Law Journal’s cybercrime columnist explains.

To thwart rampant cheating by high school children, one country shut down the Internet nationwide during certain hours and had social media platforms go dark for the whole exam period.

Snapchat now allows users to unsend messages. Here’s how.

Employees of Burger King’s Russian division recently had to eat crow for a tasteless social media campaign that offered women a lifetime supply of Whoppers as well as three million Russian rubles ($47,000) in exchange for accomplishing a really crass feat.

We’ve all heard of drivers experiencing road rage, but how about members of the public experiencing robot rage? According to a company that supplies cooler-sized food-delivery robots, its’s a thing.

 

 

 

 

 

In an effort to deter hate groups from tweeting sanitized versions of their messages, Twitter has began considering account holders’ off platform behavior when the platform evaluates whether potentially harmful tweets should be removed and account holders should be suspended or permanently banned.

In connection with Congressional efforts to deter online sex trafficking by narrowing the Communications Decency Act’s Section 230 safe harbor protection for website operators from claims arising from third-party ads and other content, a revised House bill would require proof of intent to facilitate prostitution, helping to address Internet industry concerns regarding the legislative initiative.

YouTube is making a concerted effort to remove disturbing videos featuring children in distress.

Concerned about the effect fake news could have on the democratic process, lawmakers in Ireland proposed a law that would make disseminating fake news on social media a crime.

A proposed cybersecurity law in Vietnam would require foreign tech companies like Google to establish offices and store data in that country. According to this op-ed, such a relatively late attempt to rein in Vietnam’s social media use would “most certainly trigger a popular backlash” and “seem like a retrograde move.”

A new report from clinical experts in the UK recommends that children younger than five-years-old should never be permitted to use digital technology without supervision.

Snapchat is rolling out a redesign that places all the messages and Stories from a user’s friends to the left side of the camera, and stories from professional social media stars and media outlets that the user follows to the right of it. But will people over the age of 30 still have no idea how to use the platform?

Instagram is testing a direct messaging app that would replace its current inbox. Called Direct, the app stands independent of that Instagram platform and, like Snapchat, opens to the user’s camera.

Artificial intelligence is allowing people to actually enjoy the moments they photograph by significantly cutting down the time it takes to share and catalog pictures.

There’s a browser extension that will hide all the potentially upsetting stories in your social media newsfeeds, but it’s not perfect. And maybe that’s a good thing.

Hmmm—in a tumultuous year, the ten most-liked posts on Instagram of 2017 all belong to Beyoncé, Cristiano Ronaldo or Selena Gomez.

In contrast, the most popular tweets of this year concern politics, tragedy and, well, chicken nuggets.

The government in Indonesia has warned the world’s biggest social media providers that they risk being banned in that country if they don’t block pornography and other content deemed obscene.

A member of the House of Lords has proposed an amendment to the U.K.’s data protection bill that would subject technology companies to “minimum standards of age-appropriate design” such as not revealing the GPS locations of users younger than 16.

A bill in Wisconsin would make impersonating someone on social media a misdemeanor.

Google’s general counsel wrote a blog post arguing that two new cases over right-to-be-forgotten requests and pending before the European Union’s top court put the search-engine company at risk of “restricting access to lawful and valuable information.”

Trucking is a $700 billion industry that stands to save billions from automation,  and will likely get self-driving vehicles on the road sooner than most people expected.

Social media platforms are often used to prey on potential sex trafficking victims, according to one FBI special agent.

A recent study shows that searching for information from unofficial sources on social media during a crisis is likely to result in the spread of misinformation and anxiety. Researchers recommend that, to quash rumors, emergency management officials should stay in regular contact with people even if they don’t have any new information.

This piece in Slate invites readers to imagine what the Internet would look like today if not for the passage of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a statute that “says that in general, websites are not responsible for the things their users do or post.”

An op-ed in USA Today compares to swift spread of infectious diseases that resulted from the concentration of populations in urban areas to the swift spread of ideas that accompanied the invention of the Internet, and concludes that traditional training in critical thinking is as necessary to survive the latter as nutrition was to survive the former.

By allowing companies to provide consumers with verifiable information about things like their diversity-driven hiring practices and their products’ supply chains, blockchain is going to change the marketing industry significantly, the American Marketing Association reports.

A high school senior who was bullied in middle school created Sit With Us, the phone-based anti-bullying app that helps kids find a welcoming place to eat in their school cafeteria.

After British police unsuccessfully tried to get the blogging platform WordPress.com to remove offensive and threatening posts, the deputy leader of the UK’s Labour Party vowed to urge changes that would make the country’s laws less tolerant of online abuse.

As bipartisan U.S. legislation to prevent the appearance of foreign-entity-funded political ads on social media gains traction, Twitter announced that it will impose a “promoted by political account” label on election ads and allow everyone to see all ads currently running on the platform regardless of whom those ads target. These efforts will not prevent automated accounts known as “bots” from influencing voters or spreading fake news on Twitter, but an op-ed in The Guardian suggests the technology to overcome the bots problem exists.

While we’re on the subject of potential solutions for the problems that plague social media, one industry observer suggests that blockchain technology, which records digital events on a public ledger and requires consensus among users, could cure social networks’ fake-news and trolling problems, and prevent brands from purchasing fake followers.

Legislation is another way of discouraging undesirable online behavior. In Texas, “David’s Law” now requires school districts to create cyberbullying policies and to investigate bullying reports that involve students but take place off-campus or after school hours. And legislation that cleared a committee in Tallahassee would make threatening someone on social media in Florida a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Should artificial intelligence be regulated? Some experts believe that the time is now, on the cusp of the AI revolution.

Facebook acquired a nine-week-old startup whose app encourages teens to anonymously exchange positive feedback.

This piece quoting Socially Aware contributor Julie O’Neill explains how cross-device tracking can cause employees to expose their organizations to significant data security risks—especially if the employees use their personal devices to perform work-related tasks.

The online marketplace eBay launched a service for sellers of certain luxury wallets and handbags that relies on experts to verify the authenticity of the goods being sold, backed by a 200% money-back guarantee.

Instagram has become such an integral part of promoting restaurants that the Culinary Institute of America will begin offering electives in food photography and food styling.

Tips for becoming a social media influencer from a pair of fashion bloggers who made it big.

A federal appeals court in Miami held that a judge needn’t necessarily recuse herself from a case being argued by a lawyer with whom the judge is merely Facebook “friends.”

Bills in both houses of Congress propose amending Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act to clarify that it doesn’t insulate website operators from liability for violating civil or criminal child-sex-trafficking laws.

The Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania held that an unemployment-benefits board acted appropriately when it relied, in part, on an applicant’s Facebook post to determine that the applicant was not entitled to benefits.

A Texas law makes cyberbullying punishable by as much as a year in jail and/or a fine of up to $4,000.

Google is trying to make it more difficult to find and profit from YouTube videos that contain extremist content by placing warnings on those videos and disabling the advertising on them.

A company backed by Mark Cuban is planning to create a social media platform that will anonymize its users’ identities using blockchain technology and attempt to cut down on trolls by charging people with bad reputations on the platform more for premium services.

The online publishing platform Medium is giving some of its content writers the option to put their work behind Medium’s subscription pay wall and get paid based on the number of “claps” that work gets.

Evolutionary psychologists aren’t at all surprised by the popularity of snooping on social media.

Tips for law firm marketers on how to best leverage Instagram.

Advice on how to pen the best automated out-of-office reply.

When you visit someone’s home these days, do you use the doorbell or text instead?

One year since agreeing with the European Commission to remove hate speech within 24 hours of receiving a complaint about it, Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and YouTube are removing flagged content an average of 59% of the time, the EC reports.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held that a catering company violated the National Labor Relations Act when it fired an employee for posting to Facebook a profane rant about his supervisor in response to that supervisor admonishing him for “chitchatting” days before the employee and his coworkers were holding a vote to unionize.

The value of the digital currency Ether could surpass Bitcoin’s value by 2018, some experts say.

The Washington Post takes a look at how the NBA is doing a particularly good job of leveraging social media and technology in general to market itself to younger fans and international consumers.

A judge in Israel ruled in favor of a landlord who took down a rental ad based on his belief that a couple wanted to rent his apartment after they sent him a text message containing festive emoji and otherwise expressing interest in the rental. The landlord brought a lawsuit against the couple for backing out on the deal, and the court held the emoji in the couple’s text “convey[ed] great optimism.” The court further determined that, although the message “did not constitute a binding contract between the parties, [it] naturally led to the Plaintiff’s great reliance on the defendants’ desire to rent his apartment.” For a survey of U.S. courts’ treatment of emoji entered into evidence, read this post on Socially Aware.

The owner of a recipe site is suing the Food Network for copyright infringement, alleging that a video the network posted on its Facebook page ripped off her how-to video for snow globe cupcakes.

Twitter’s popularity with journalists has made it a prime target for media manipulators, The New York Times’s Farhad Manjoo reports. As a result, Manjoo claims, the microblogging platform played a key role in many of the past year’s biggest misinformation campaigns.

The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University claims that the @realDonaldTrump Twitter account’s blocking of some Twitter users violates the First Amendment because it suppresses speech in a public forum protected by the Constitution.

Pop singer Taylor Swift, who pulled her back catalogue of music from free streaming services in 2014 saying the services don’t fairly compensate music creators, has now made her entire catalogue of music accessible via Spotify, Google Play and Amazon Music.

To encourage young people in swing constituencies to vote for Labour in the UK’s general election, some Tinder users turned their profiles over to a bot that sent other Tinder users between the ages of 18 and 25 automated messages asking if they were voting and focusing on key topics that would interest young voters.

GettyImages-484516083_SMALLFor the third year in a row, Socially Aware co-editor Aaron Rubin and I attended SXSW Interactive, which arguably has become the premier annual gathering for the global tech community. But this year, SXSW Interactive had a very different vibe to it than in the prior two years.

In the past, a spirit of boundless optimism infused the event. A sense existed that there is no problem that could not be solved through technological innovation.

Indeed, at SXSW Interactive last year, President Obama—who was rapturously received by the audience—touched on this “can do” spirit in his keynote address:

“So the reason I’m here really is to recruit all of you. It’s to say to you as I’m about to leave office, how can we start coming up with new platforms, new ideas, new approaches across disciplines and across skill sets to solve some of the big problems that we’re facing today.”

What a difference a year can make. Perhaps it was due in part to the weather—overcast, wet and cold—but a pessimistic mood seemed to hang over this year’s edition of SXSW Interactive. Continue Reading Gloom Descends on This Year’s SXSW Interactive

Twitter is suing the Department of Homeland Security in an attempt to void a summons demanding records that would identify the creator of an anti-Trump Twitter account.

Facebook has joined the fight against the nonconsensual dissemination of sexually explicit photos online—content known as “revenge porn”—by having specially trained employees review images flagged by users and using photo-matching technologies to help stop revenge porn images from being shared on the company’s apps and platforms.

Amid its own revenge porn scandal, the U.S. Marines Corps has expanded its social media policy to clarify how military code can be used to prosecute members’ offensive or disrespectful online activities.

A Minnesota judge has ordered Google to disclose all searches for the name of the victim of a wire-fraud crime worth less than $30,000.

Scientists are studying the use of emoji in human interactions, marketing campaigns and business transactions. Here at Socially Aware we’ve taken a look at the difficulty that courts have had in evaluating the meaning of emoji in connection with contract, tort and other legal claims.

Did the White House’s social media director violate the Hatch Act with a tweet?

In the interest of maintaining big-spending advertisers’ business, Google is trying to teach computers the nuances of what makes content objectionable.

The upcoming desktop version of the popular mobile dating app Tinder, Tinder Online, prompts users to talk more and swipe less.

One jet-setting couple with a combined three million Instagram followers is earning between $3,000 and $9,000 per post.

The New York Times’s Brian Chen walks readers through some of the most worthwhile apps and tech gadgets in the pet-care category.

Google unveiled a new tool designed to combat toxic speech online by assessing the language commenters use, as opposed to the ideas they express.

Is a state law banning sex offenders from social media unconstitutional? Based on their comments during oral arguments in Packingham v. North Carolina, some U.S. Supreme Court justices may think so.

Facebook is implementing a feature that uses artificial intelligence to identify posts reflecting suicidal inclinations.

Facebook Analytics for Apps reached a significant milestone: It now supports more than 1 million apps.

So did YouTube, which recently surpassed 1 billion hours of video per day.

As many as 15% of regular social media users—that is, people, not businesses—are buying “likes” on social media?!

The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct’s warning to judges about their use of social media was prompted by this case in which a St. Lawrence County town judge used Facebook to criticize the prosecution of a town council candidate.

More than 40% of Americans incessantly check their gadgets for new messages and social media status updates, and it might be making them a little crazy.

University of Manchester researchers have developed a computer that is faster than any other because its processors are made of DNA, which allows the computer to replicate itself.

Mobile marketers can significantly increase the open rates of their push notifications by doing one simple thing: including emojis.

A woman whose “starter marriage” was covered by the New York Times wedding announcements section in 1989 might have been spared some angst if the United States had a Right to Be Forgotten, as Europe does.

New York City’s Conflicts of Interest Board has issued guidelines prohibiting elected officials from using official social media accounts for political purposes or having their staff draft content for their personal social media accounts.

Congress has begun paving the way for the deployment of autonomous vehicles.

Twitter has begun temporarily limiting its account features for users the company identifies as abusive.

Google Maps now allows users to create lists and share them with followers.

U.S. and Canadian companies can post job openings to their Facebook pages for free.

Thanks to millennials, online chat rooms are making a comeback.

With Tinder’s acquisition of the video-sharing startup called Wheel, video dating is likely in store for a revival, too.

Yelp will be offering a new feature that allows users to ask questions about a venue.

Reportedly used by political operatives ranging from White House staffers to EPA workers, encrypted messaging apps have become popular in Washington—and it’s raising legal questions.

Warren Buffet is getting into the wearables game.

Some tips for small businesses on how to manage a social media presence.