Could social media support healthy online conversations? New_Public is working on it

[Nieman Lab: The Daily Digest] Tuesday, July 16, 2024 [Could social media support healthy online conversations? New_Public is working on it]( “We talk to a lot of towns where there is no newspaper anymore; there’s no community center anymore; the town store shut down. And this is kind of it.” By Sophie Culpepper. [Mashable, PC Mag, and Lifehacker win unprecedented AI protections in new union contract]( Ziff Davis can’t lay off workers or decrease their salary due to generative AI, according to the tentative contract. By Andrew Deck. What We’re Reading The Washington Post / Paul Farhi [How the media’s wait for the facts in Trump shooting fed a backlash →]( “Given the enormous stakes involved in Saturday’s shooting, reporters generally exercised discipline, limiting themselves to what they could see and hear….Few of the initial accounts of the shooting — which injured Trump slightly; killed a Pennsylvania man, Corey Comperatore; and critically wounded two others — were outright wrong. Instead, readers jumped on the stories’ hesitant approach.” 404 Media / Emanuel Maiberg [AI maxers are thrilled with Trump’s Vice President pick →]( “People who support the rapid development of AI, specifically the self-designated ‘effective accelerationists’ (e/acc) or ‘techno-optimists,’ have latched on to two positions they share with Vance: the idea that big tech companies are promoting government regulation of AI that benefit them as incumbents, and the idea that those same companies and the government are trying to imbue AI with leftist ideology.” Tech Policy Press / Roberta Braga and Cristina Tardáguila [The 2018 stabbing of Brazil’s president offers insight on the predictable misinformation spread post-Trump shooting →]( “The misinformation reflects a wider trend of belief that elites are ‘plotting’ against the larger public or working with media and social media companies to ‘hide the truth’ from us, two narratives that our recent DDIA poll found to be increasingly penetrating in the United States. The false information circulating is also reflective of a [fissure of distrust]( between the right and left in the US and across the Americas.” The New York Times / Pete Wells [After 12 years, Pete Wells is stepping away from restaurant criticism →]( “When, in the line of duty, you have spent enough hours loading up your tray with mashed potatoes, rolls, biscuits and an extra slice of pie, you eventually have to ask yourself whether you are standing in the buffet line for the audience or for yourself.” Platformer / Casey Newton [An assassination attempt for the social media age →]( “The rise of social media and parallel decline of mainstream journalism have enabled us to create what researcher Renee DiResta calls ‘bespoke realities’: custom versions of the truth that reflect what we already want to believe…unlike in 2020, platforms showed this weekend that they are increasingly comfortable sitting on the sidelines of contentious news stories, content to let users seek out whichever versions of the truth most appeal to them.” Wired / David Gilbert [TikTok pushed young German voters toward a far-right party →]( “For the regular search, you will see AfD popping up more often, because the AfD is more present on TikTok, but for the search suggestions there’s also this algorithmic aspect where someone makes the decision to relate these two searches,” said Martin Degeling, who tracks AI-based recommendation systems at Interface, a European IT think tank. “You search for the Green Party, and the AfD pops up, you search for the CDU and the AfD pops up, [but] you search for AfD, no other party pops up.” Proof News / Annie Gilbertson and Alex Reisner [Tech companies used thousands of swiped YouTube videos to train AI →]( “Our investigation found that subtitles from 173,536 YouTube videos, siphoned from more than 48,000 channels, were used by Silicon Valley heavyweights, including Anthropic, Nvidia, Apple, and Salesforce. The dataset, called YouTube Subtitles, contains video transcripts from educational and online learning channels like Khan Academy, MIT, and Harvard. The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and the BBC also had their videos used to train AI, as did The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, and Jimmy Kimmel Live.” The Washington Post / Elahe Izadi [Former DCist staff launch the 51st, a worker-run local news site for Washington →]( “Worker-run newsroom: When?” Maddie Poore asked her old co-workers on the night they gathered to commiserate over the closure of DCist. “When are we going to do this? We need this as a city.” [Nieman Lab]( / [Fuego]( [Twitter]( / [Facebook]( [View email in browser]( [Unsubscribe]( You are receiving this daily newsletter because you signed up for for it at www.niemanlab.org. Nieman Journalism Lab Harvard University 1 Francis Ave.Cambridge, MA 02138 [Add us to your address book](