👉 Facebook employees flag drug cartels and human traffickers. The company's response is weak, documents show
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Facebook employees flag drug cartels and human traffickers. The company's response is weak, documents show. In January, a former cop turned Facebook Inc. investigator posted an all-staff memo on the company’s internal message board. It began “Happy 2021 to everyone!!” and then proceeded to detail a new set of what he called “learnings.” The biggest one: A Mexican drug cartel was using Facebook to recruit, train and pay hit men. (Justin Scheck via Wall Street Journal)
Social media is attention alcohol. Last year, researchers at Instagram published disturbing findings from an internal study on the app's effect on young women. “Thirty-two percent of teen girls said that when they felt bad about their bodies, Instagram made them feel… (Derek Thompson via The Atlantic)
Amazon's new 'Factory Towns' will lift the working class. Plentiful new jobs at higher wages in places with cheaper housing sounds like a solution to inequality. The campaign against economic inequality has put a bullseye on cities. (Conor Sen via Bloomberg)
Facebook's Instagram chief uses awkward comparison with cars to defend social media harms. Facebook Instagram chief Adam Mosseri came under a flurry of criticism after comparing the value of social networks to society to that of cars. '“We know that more people die than would otherwise because of car accidents, but by and large, cars create way more value in the world than they destroy,” Mosseri said Wednesday on the Recode Media podcast. “And I think social media is similar.” (Salvador Rodriguez via CNBC)
Twitter Super Follows has generated only around $6K+ in its first two weeks. Twitter’s creator platform Super Follows is off to an inauspicious start, having contributed to somewhere around $6,000 in U.S. iOS revenue in the first two weeks the feature has been live, according to app intelligence data provided by Sensor Tower. And it’s made only around $600 or so in Canada. (Sarah Perez via TechCrunch)
Telegram has seen a sharp rise in cybercriminal activities, report says. Cybercriminals have been using Telegram for years, because it's encrypted and easy to access. According to a recent investigation conducted by The Financial Times and cyber intelligence group Cyberint, though, there's been "a 100 percent-plus rise in Telegram usage by cybercriminals" recently. (Mariella Moon via Engadget)
Troll farms reached 140 million Americans a month on Facebook before 2020 election, internal report shows. “Instead of users choosing to receive content from these actors, it is our platform that is choosing to give [these troll farms] an enormous reach,” wrote the report's author, Jeff Allen, a former senior-level data scientist at… (Karen Hao via MIT Technology Review)
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