# data[].attributes.headline
23- A Brief History of Social Networking

# data[].attributes.subject
23- A Brief History of Social Networking

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Long before it became the commercialized mass information and entertainment juggernaut it is today, long before it was accessible to the general public, and certainly many years before Al Gore claimed he "took the initiative in creating" it, the Internet - and its predecessors - were a focal point for social interactivity. Granted, computer networking was initially envisioned in the heyday of The Beatles as a military-centric command and control scheme. But as it expanded beyond just a privileged few hubs and nodes, so too did the idea that connected computers might also make a great forum for discussing mutual topics of interest, and perhaps even meeting or renewing acquaintances with other humans. In the 1970s, that process began in earnest.
Related:
Mullets reigned supreme in the late '70s and early '80s; computers were a far rarer commodity. Machine languages were bewildering, and their potential seemingly limited. What's more, this whole sitting-in-front-of-a-keyboard thing was so... isolationistic. Put all this together and you have a medium where only the most ardent enthusiasts and techno-babbling hobbyists dared tread. It was, in effect, a breeding ground for pocket-protector-wearing societal rejects, or nerds. Boring, reclusive nerds at that.

Yet it also was during this time, and with a parade of purportedly antisocial geeks at the helm, that the very gregarious notion of social networking would take its first steps towards becoming the omnipresent cultural phenomenon we know and love in 2014.

BBS, AOL and CompuServe: The Infant Years

"Put all this together and you have a medium where only the most ardent enthusiasts and techno-babbling hobbyists dared tread."

The BBS was no joke. Though the technology of the time restricted the flexibility of these systems, and the end-user's experience, to text-only exchanges of data that crawled along at glacial speed, BBSes continued to gain popularity throughout the '80s and well into the '90s, when the Internet truly kicked into gear. Indeed, some services - such as Tom Jennings' FidoNet - linked numerous BBSes together into worldwide computer networks that managed to survive the Internet revolution.

But there were also other avenues for social interaction long before the Internet exploded onto the mainstream consciousness. One such option was CompuServe, a service that began life in the 1970s as a business-oriented mainframe computer communication solution, but expanded into the public domain in the late 1980s.

CompuServe allowed members to share files and access news and events. But it also offered something few had ever experienced - true interaction. Not only could you send a message to your friend via a newfangled technology dubbed "e-mail" (granted, the concept of e-mail wasn't exactly newfangled at the time, though widespread public access to it was). You could also join any of CompuServe's thousands of discussion forums to yap with thousands of other members on virtually any important subject of the day. Those forums proved tremendously popular and paved the way for the modern iterations we know today.

But if there is a true precursor to today's social networking sites, it was likely spawned under the AOL (America Online) umbrella. In many ways, and for many people, AOL was the Internet before the Internet, and its member-created communities (complete with searchable "Member Profiles," in which users would list pertinent details about themselves), were arguably the service's most fascinating, forward-thinking feature.

Yet there was no stopping the real Internet, and by the mid-1990s it was moving full bore. Yahoo had just set up shop, Amazon had just begun selling books, and the race to get a PC in every household was on. And, by 1995, the site that may have been the first to fulfill the modern definition of social networking was born.

The Internet Boom: Social Networking's Adolescence

Though differing from many current social networking sites in that it asks not "Who can I connect with?" but rather, "Who can I connect with that was once a schoolmate of mine?" Classmates.com proved almost immediately that the idea of a virtual reunion was a good one. Early users could not create profiles, but they could locate long-lost grade school chums, menacing school bullies and maybe even that prom date they just couldn't forget. It was a hit almost immediately, and even today the service boasts some 57 million registered accounts.

That same level of success can't be said for SixDegrees.com. Sporting a name based on the theory somehow associated with actor Kevin Bacon that no person is separated by more than six degrees from another, the site sprung up in 1997 and was one of the very first to allow its users to create profiles, invite friends, organize groups, and surf other user profiles. Its founders worked the six degrees angle hard by encouraging members to bring more people into the fold. Unfortunately, this "encouragement" ultimately became a bit too pushy for many, and the site slowly devolved into a loose association of computer users and numerous complaints of spam-filled membership drives. SixDegrees.com folded completely just after the turn of the millennium.

Other sites of the era opted solely for niche, demographic-driven markets. One was AsianAvenue.com, founded in 1997. A product of Community Connect Inc., which itself was founded just one year prior in the New York apartment of former investment banker and the future Community Connect CEO, AsianAvenue.com was followed by BlackPlanet.com in 1999 and by the Hispanic-oriented MiGente.com in 2000. All three still exist today, with BlackPlanet.com in particular still enjoying tremendous success with more than eight million visitors per month.

Friendster, LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook: The Biz Grows Up

In 2002, social networking hit really its stride with the launch of Friendster. Friendster used a degree of separation concept similar to that of the now-defunct SixDegrees.com, refined it into a routine dubbed the "Circle of Friends," and promoted the idea that a rich online community can exist only between people who truly have common bonds. And it ensured there were plenty of ways to discover those bonds.

An interface that shared many of the same traits one would find at an online dating site certainly didn't seem to hurt. Friendster CEO Jonathan Abrams even once referred to his creation as a dating site that isn't about dating. Within a year after its launch, Friendster boasted more than three million registered users and a ton of investment interest. Unfortunately, the service has since seen more than its fair share of technical difficulties, questionable management decisions, and a resulting drop in its North American fortunes. Although briefly enjoying success in Indonesia and in the Philippines, Friendster has since abandoned social networking and now exists solely as an online gaming site.

Introduced just a year later in 2003, LinkedIn took a decidedly more serious, sober approach to the social networking phenomenon. Rather than being a mere playground for former classmates, teenagers, and cyberspace Don Juans, LinkedIn was, and still is, a networking resource for business people who want to connect with other professionals. In fact, LinkedIn contacts are referred to as "connections." Today, LinkedIn boasts more than 297 million members.

MySpace also launched in 2003. Though it no longer resides upon the social networking throne in many English-speaking countries - that honor now belongs to Facebook just about everywhere - MySpace was once the perennial favorite. It did so by tempting the key young adult demographic with music, music videos, and a funky, feature-filled environment. It looked and felt hipper than major competitor Friendster right from the start, and it conducted a campaign of sorts in the early days to show alienated Friendster users just what they were missing. Over the years however, the number of casual Myspace users declined, and today the site exists now as a social networking site targeted to bands and musicians.

As expected, the ubiquitous Facebook now leads the global social networking pack. Founded, like many social networking sites, by university students who initially peddled their product to other university students, Facebook launched in 2004 as a Harvard-only exercise and remained a campus-oriented site for two full years before finally opening to the general public in 2006. Yet, even by that time, Facebook was considered big business. So much so that, by 2009, Silicon Valley bigwigs such as Paypal co-founder and billionaire Peter Thiel invested tens of millions of dollars just to see it flourish.

The secret of Facebook's success - the site currently boasts more than 1.3 billion active users - is a subject of much debate. Some point to its ease of use, others to its multitude of easily-accessed features, and still others, to its memorable name. A highly targeted advertising model certainly doesn't hurt, either, nor did financial injections such as the $60 million from noted Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing in 2007. Regardless, there's universal agreement on one thing: Facebook promotes both honesty and openness. It seems people really enjoy being themselves, and throwing that openness out there for all to see.

Pulling Ahead: How Facebook and Twitter won the Web

Facebook is king for a reason. It wasn't just through luck that founder Mark Zuckerberg's darling came to reign supreme over the social media kingdom. It was, in fact, a series of smart moves and innovative features that set the platform apart from the rest of the social media pack. First and foremost, the 2007 launch of the Facebook Platform was key to site's success. The open API made it possible for third-party developers to create applications that work within Facebook itself. Almost immediately after being released, the platform gained a massive amount of attention. At one point in time, Facebook had hundreds of thousands of apps built on the platform, so many that Facebook launched the Facebook App Store to organize and display them all. Twitter, meanwhile, created its own API and enjoyed similar success as a result.

The other key to success was Facebook's ubiquitous 'Like' button, which broke free from the bounds of the site and began appearing all over the Internet. Now you can 'like' or "tweet' just about everything even when you're not on Facebook or Twitter. Realizing the power of social networking, Google decided to launch their own social network (Google+) in 2007. It differed from Facebook and Twitter in that it wasn't necessarily a full-featured networking site, but rather a social "layer" of the overall Google experience. Initially, Google generated a lot of buzz with the service's Hangouts feature, which allowed users to enter live video chats with other online friends. At the time of launch, Facebook was scrambling to keep up by integrating a video chat feature of their own.

Within just four weeks, Google+ had garnered 25 million unique visitors, with as much as 540 million active monthly users as of June 2014. Regardless, the service definitely didn't dethrone Zuckerberg's behemoth, especially considering more than half of Google+ users have never even visited the service's official site. It still arguably showed the world that there was still room for innovation and competition in the realm of social networking, though.

The Multi-platformed Self: The Rise of Mobile

Over the course of the past two years, "Fourth screen" technology - smartphones, tablets, etc. - has changed social networking and the way we communicate with one another entirely. What used to sit on our desks now conveniently fits in the palm of our hands, allowing us to effortlessly utilize functionality once reserved for multiple devices wherever we go.

Given the abrupt rise in mobile computing, it's not surprising the most popular social media platforms of the past several years hinge on the capabilities of smartphones. Photo and video-sharing applications such as Snapchat and Instagram, the latter of which has now garnered a staggering 20 billion images since the app's initial inception in October 2010, exist almost entirely on mobile. The same goes with platforms such as Foursquare, an application in which users use their smartphones to check in to various locations around the globe, and various matchmaking services. Tinder, for instance, currently boasts more than 10 million daily users, each of which swipes for potential partners based on their approximately in relation to their smartphone.

Mobile-based platforms also approach social networking in an entirely different fashion than their Web-based counterparts. Rather than offering a comprehensive social networking experience like the now-defunct Myspace and the struggling Google+, they instead specialize in a specific kind of interaction service that involves the sharing of public images (Instagram), the private sharing of images sharing (Snapchat), augmented reality (Foursquare), and location-based matchmaking (Tinder). People essentially use the various services in conjunction with other platforms to build a comprehensive, digital identity.

"People now exist on multiple platforms, and instead of fighting against this trend, larger companies are tapping into this new environment."

Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality: The Future of Social Networking

In March 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus VR, a company on the cusp of mass producing virtual-reality headsets. Upon sealing the deal, Zuckerberg commented regarding the communication potential for the platform, highlighting the slew of potential uses for the virtual technology when it comes to academics, viewing live events, and consulting with doctors face-to-face. However, Facebook has taken a hands-off approach in its management of Oculus VR, allowing the company to continue focusing predominately on gaming applications while other parties - i.e. the Pentagon - quietly look into using virtual reality headsets for military purposes. A number of medical experts have even begun using virtual reality to treat anxiety, combat-induced P.T.S.D., and other pronounced mental illnesses. Adult entertainment, meanwhile, has invested in virtual reality for years.

To simplify my point, it appears a good deal of people have high hopes that virtual reality will become the next blockbuster computing platform. The technology already exists, and with the consumer version of the Oculus Rift VR headset slated to go on sale in late 2014 for under $300, the potential for widespread adoption of virtual reality has never been greater. At the very least, the Rift's success or failure in the market will shape Facebook's approach toward incorporating virtual reality. Note that augmented reality differs from virtual reality in that it applies digital interaction to the real world instead of creating an audio-visual experience from scratch. In terms of social networking, augmented reality offers a number of possibilities. For instance, people could share their name, interests, relationship status, and mutual friends all within a digital sphere.

Believe it or not, augmented reality already exists in apps like Yelp and Google Ingress. Smartphones are more than capable of delivering augmented reality, and as one might expect, the technology is the entire concept driving Google Glass' digital integration with the real world. Google's deliberate decision to sell Glass at an inflated price of $1,500, however, is likely meant to exclude the general public while the tech giant and a selective group of consumers - aka "explorers" work to hammer out the device's flaws. The day Google lowers the price of Glass to its estimated production cost of $150 marks the day when widespread adoption of augmented reality, including augmented reality in social networking, becomes a greater possibility. Until then, there's always Snapchat and the overuse of hashtags in just about everything we do.

The bid for originality: Facebook and Twitter bet big on video and livestreaming

Fueled by the rise of third-party apps, social media giants were forced to take note of the video format by 2012. But not before that same format, in a different guise, had laid waste to any form of originality on their respective services.

A spending spree followed. Within the span of just a couple of years, several major buyouts -and failed acquisition attempts - took place within the sector. In 2012, Twitter purchased video-looping platform, Vine. Later that same year, Facebook bought Instagram, which would eventually introduce video-sharing into its own app app to great success. Then in 2013, Facebook made its infamous bid for Snapchat, which was turned down by the makers of the ephemeral messaging app.

Meanwhile, the video-shaped void on Facebook and Twitter had been filled by new media companies that were experts in the art of viral content (i.e. BuzzFeed, 9GAG, Mashable). An earlier source had been YouTube, which had heralded the dawn of the internet celebrity with its homegrown roster of creators. Despite their popularity, however, viral videos posed more complications for social media giants than they did opportunities.

Left to operate independently, both Instagram and Vine proved to be solid investments. Their respective owners, however, were still facing the same issue. By 2015, Twitter was being labelled as "inaccessible" due to its flat growth in user numbers. Facebook, on the other hand, saw its users sharing less personal information. Instead of original posts, Facebook news feeds and Twitter timelines became bloated with viral videos, memes, GIFs, and clickbait articles - making them harder to navigate in the process. As in the past, the perceived solution came from an existing product, which ended up paying the ultimate price for its abrupt rise.

Having dominated the conversation at the 2015 SXSW Interactive festival, livestreaming app Meerkat caught the attention of Twitter. Capitalizing on what it viewed as an emerging trend, Twitter bought rival livestreaming app Periscope just a few months later. It has since integrated Periscope streams into its main platform, in an attempt to further popularize the app. Fast forward a few months to the end of 2015, and Facebook inevitably followed suit with the launch of Live Video. Overshadowed by its rivals, Meerkat quickly quickly abandoned livestreaming altogether.

It is easy to see the attraction live broadcasts hold for social networks. Like viral videos, livestreams have the unique benefit of making viewers feel like they are 'in the moment.' A popular livestream has a snowball effect and, in turn, can quickly become a trending topic. Like the immediacy offered by Snapchat, the format can transform the mundane into the unmissable. Best of all, it allows social networks to lay claim to something original, which now autoplays on its flagship platform.

The integration of the livestream on Twitter and Facebook has also made the two companies more open to striking broadcast deals with third-parties. In turn, having seen the success that BuzzFeed and its counterparts have had with video, both traditional and new media companies have been quick to embrace Periscope and Facebook Live.

Nowhere is this theory better evidenced than Twitter's recent deal to livestream NFL games. This compromise on the part of the social media giants comes in the wake of the realization that they can no longer be relegated to the second, third, or fourth screen. They have to be the main attraction by showcasing viral, trending, or popular visual media - whether original or not - in real-time, fueling interaction and reaction in the process.
This article was originally published on August 5, 2014, and updated on May 4, 2016, by Saqib Shah to reflect the widespread adoption of video-sharing platforms and livestreaming.
Editors' Recommendations

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The History of Social Media | Digital Trends

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Long before it became the commercialized mass information and entertainment juggernaut it is today, long before it was accessible to the general public, and certainly many years before Al Gore claimed he "took the initiative in creating" it, the Internet - and its predecessors - were a focal point for social interactivity.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I like to think I'm a fairly mellow person, but there's one thing that I simply cannot tolerate: "phubbing." If you don't know what that means, it occurs when someone snubs you in favor of their cell phone. Irritating, right? According to a new study, it seems that my hatred of this 21st-century phenomenon is not unreasonable.

Phubbing can have a negative impact on relationship satisfaction.

Researchers reveal that being "phubbed" can negatively impact our sense of belongingness, which can lead to a reduction in relationship satisfaction with the offending "phubber."

If you have ever been phubbed, these findings won't come as a surprise.

If you're not sure that you have been the victim of phubbing - or a "phubbee" - ask yourself whether you've ever been in this scenario:

You're having lunch with a friend. As you're spilling your heart about, say, a relationship problem, your friend's cell phone buzzes. Suddenly, their attention is diverted, and they proceed to pick up their phone and respond to a text.

How would this make you feel? Irritated? Ignored? I've been in this situation, and it actually made me question whether my "friend" really cared; my feelings were swept to one side, and her cell phone took priority.

Of course, there are times when this type of behavior can be overlooked; the "phubber" may have to answer a call from a babysitter, or there might be a family emergency. Unless there is a very good reason for paying attention to one's cell phone instead of engaging in face-to-face conversation, then, in my opinion, phubbers are simply rude.

However, with more than three quarters of us now owning a smartphone, phubbing is a common occurrence - so much so that researchers have taken to studying the phone-nomenon (sorry, I couldn't help myself).

As an example, a study published in 2016 found that more than 17 percent of us phub at least four times every day. You know who you are.

The latest study - which is published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology - delves into the feelings of those of us who are on the receiving end of phubbing. The results might state the obvious, but they make an interesting read.

How phubbing makes us feel

Prof. Karen Douglas and Varoth Chotpitayasunondh, who work at the University of Kent's School of Psychology in the United Kingdom, enrolled more than 150 adults to their study.

The adults watched one of three 3-minute animations of a conversation between two people. One animation portrayed high levels of phubbing, one showed partial phubbing, while the third animation showed no phubbing.

Each participant was asked to imagine that they were one of the people in the animations - more specifically, the person who was getting phubbed.

Unsurprisingly, people who were phubbed felt less satisfied with the quality of communication with the phubber, and, more importantly, relationship satisfaction suffered as a result.
Interestingly, the study's results show that such feelings were driven by the negative impact of phubbing on their sense of belongingness, or the human desire to be accepted by others.
It seems that when we're phubbed, we're internally screaming, "Hello! I'm here, willing to have a face-to-face conversation with you. Why are you more interested in your cell phone than me?"

O.K., so I have said that out loud to offending phubbers, too, and I think more of us should. Yes, technology and social media are important parts of modern life, but we shouldn't lose what is clearly a crucial contributor to our health and well-being: human contact.

Is checking a text message or Facebook notification really worth losing a friend over? It's time to start snubbing phubbing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I like to think I'm a fairly mellow person, but there's one thing that I simply cannot tolerate: "phubbing." If you don't know what that means, it occurs when someone snubs you in favor of their cell phone. Irritating, right? According to a new study, it seems that my hatred of this 21st-century phenomenon is not unreasonable.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
You may have heard the argument that social media makes you socialize less "in real life." However, if this article popped up in your Twitter feed - which you were scrolling through while surrounded by people you deemed less interesting than your screen - you needn't worry; a new study dispels such concerns.

Does spending time on social media affect how much you socialize in real life?

In fact, there are two new studies - which were both led by Jeffrey Hall, an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence - that dispel "social displacement theory."

Social displacement theory basically states that the more time you spend in the world of social media, the less time you're likely to spend socializing with people in the real world.

This applies to both passive use of social media (such as mindless scrolling at a house party) and active interaction (such as living for those little green circles that appear next to the names of your Facebook friends.)

The social displacement theory also states that such a decrease in social interaction will make you miserable - or, to use scientific language, "lead to a decrease in your well-being."

So, Hall and his team tested these ideas and published their findings in the journal Information, Communication & Society.

Two studies, one conclusion

In "Study 1," Hall and his colleagues used data collected from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth between 2009 and 2011.

They investigated whether or not there was a link between social media use and "direct" social contact, which is defined as getting out of the house, hanging out with friends, talking on the phone, or partaking in any form of group activity, bar religious ones.

As Hall explains, those examined pertained to the so-called Generation X, and "the questions about social media use were asked right when Facebook was hitting its inflection point of adoption, and the main adopters in that period were Gen Xers."

"What was interesting," he adds, "was that, during a time of really rapid adoption of social media, and really powerful changes in use, you didn't see sudden declines in people's direct social contact."

"If the social displacement theory is correct, people should get out less and make fewer of those phone calls, and that just wasn't the case."

Jeffrey Hall

In "Study 2," the team quizzed 116 people about their social media use and direct social contact five times per day for 5 days in a row. Here, the findings from the previous study were confirmed.

"Social media users were not experiencing social displacement," explains Hall. "If they used social media earlier in the day, they were not more likely to be alone later."

Debunking a stubborn myth

Hall notes that his is not the first study to have questioned the social displacement theory. But despite such efforts to debunk it, the myth that more time on social media means less time socializing in real life seems to persist.
"I'm trying to push back on the popular conception of how this works," he says. "That's not to say overuse of social media is good, but it's not bad in the way people think it is."
Instead, what Hall suspects happened is that social media merely displaced other ways of getting one's information, such as traditional newspapers or even browsing the Internet.

However, he notes that this is a topic for another study. For now, the team's findings help us to view the popular theory with some suspicion.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Is social media ruining your social life?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
You may have heard the argument that social media makes you socialize less "in real life." However, if this article popped up in your Twitter feed - which you were scrolling through while surrounded by people you deemed less interesting than your screen - you needn't worry; a new study dispels such concerns.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The use of social media in politics including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube has dramatically changed the way campaigns are run and how Americans interact with their elected officials.

The prevalence of social media in politics has made elected officials and candidates more accountable and accessible to voters. And the ability to publish content and broadcast it to millions of people instantaneously allows campaigns to carefully manage their candidates' images based on rich sets of analytics in real time and at almost no cost.

Direct Contact With Voters

Social media tools including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube allow politicians to speak directly to voters without spending a dime. Using social media allows politicians to circumvent the traditional method of reaching voters through paid advertising or earned media.

Advertising Without Paying For Advertising

It has become fairly common for political campaigns to produce commercials and publish them for free on YouTube instead of, or in addition to, paying for time on television or the radio.

Often, journalists covering campaigns will write about those YouTube ads, essentially broadcasting their message to a wider audience at no cost to the politicians.

How Campaigns Go Viral

Twitter and Facebook have become instrumental in organizing campaigns. They allow like-minded voters and activists to easily share news and information such as campaign events with each other. That's what the "share" function on Facebook and "retweet" feature of Twitter are for.

Then-candidate Donald Trump used Twitter heavily in his 2016 presidential campaign.

Trump said,

"I like it because I can get also my point of view out there, and my point of view is very important to a lot of people that are looking at me."

Tailoring the Message to the Audience

Political campaigns can tap into a wealth of information or analytics about the people who are following them on social media and customize their messages based on selected demographics. A campaign may find one message appropriate for voters under 30 years old will not be as effective with those over 60.

Fundraising

Some campaigns have used so-called "money bombs" to raise large amounts of cash in a short time.

Money bombs are typically 24-hour periods in which candidates press their supporters to donate money. They use social media such as Twitter and Facebook to get the word out and often tie these money bombs to specific controversies that emerge during campaigns.

The popular libertarian Ron Paul, who ran for president in 2008, orchestrated some of the most successful money-bomb fundraising campaigns.

Controversy

Direct access to voters also has its downside. Handlers and public-relations professionals often manage a candidate's image, and for good reason: Allowing a politician to send out unfiltered tweets or Facebook posts has landed many a candidate in hot water or embarrassing situations.

A good example is Anthony Weiner, who lost his seat in Congress after exchanging sexually explicit messages and photos with women on his Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Weiner lost the New York mayor's race following a second scandal and ended up serving prison time when one of his "sexting" partners turned out to be underage.

Asking for feedback from voters or constituents can be a good thing. And it can be a very bad thing, depending on how politicians respond.

Many campaigns hire staffers to monitor their social media channels for a negative response and scrub anything unflattering. But such a bunker-like mentality can make a campaign appear defensive and closed off from the public.

Well-run modern-day campaigns will engage the public regardless of whether their feedback is negative or positive.

Weighing Public Opinion

The value of social media is in its immediacy. Politicians and campaigns do absolutely nothing without first knowing how their policy statements or moves will play among the electorate.

Twitter and Facebook both allow them to instantaneously gauge how the public is responding to an issue or controversy. Politicians can then adjust their campaigns accordingly, in real time, without the use of high-priced consultants or expensive polling.

One reason social media is effective is that it engages younger voters.

Typically, older Americans tend to make up the largest portion of voters who actually go to the polls. But Twitter and Facebook have energized younger voters, which, in turn, had a profound impact on elections.

President Barack Obama was the first politician to tap into the power of social media during his two successful campaigns.

The Power of Many

Social media tools have allowed Americans to easily join together to petition the government and their elected officials, leveraging their numbers against the influence of powerful lobbyists and monied special interests.

Make no mistake, lobbyists and special interest still have the upper hand, but the day will come when the power of social media allows like-minded citizens to join together in ways that will be just as powerful.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Social Media in Politics - Twitter and Facebook as Campaigns Tools

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
How political campaigns are now using Twitter and Facebook to energize their supporters. Find out why some candidates get into trouble on social media.

# data[].attributes.headline
19- Online Communities and Virtual BFFs 

# data[].attributes.subject
19- Online Communities and Virtual BFFs 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I have never met some of my best friends.

In recent years, less and less people I say this to find it weird. But 10 years ago when I was a shy high schooler discovering the wonders of online gaming, it was a lot stranger to say that I counted people living on another continent among my closest friends. My real life friends and family didn't understand how you could develop a deep, meaningful connection without looking someone in the eye, shaking hands, hugging, sharing a meal.

I, on the other hand, didn't understand how people related in real life. Staring at a roomful of strangers, how could you tell who liked the same things as you or had a similar personality? You could try to guess based on their looks, but when I raved to goth kids at school about a heavy metal band from Finland I received blank stares, and while I did geek out with the nerds about the newest Lord of the Rings movie, none of them had read the books first.

Online, it was easy to find people who understood me. I had stumbled across a simple text-based role-play site with no graphics, which meant it consisted of several hundred people writing stories together on a Yahoo group (anyone else remember those?). Players listed their interests in their profiles. Most of them listened to similar music to me -- obscure gypsy punk and Nordic metal opera bands.

And everyone liked to write. I had never met other serious writers before. The kids in school raised their eyebrows when I retreated to a corner to scribble frantically in a notebook. In the game, though, writing was more than a solitary exercise, more than telling a story. When you write a role-play, you're also acting. Assuming the role of your character, viewing life through the eyes of your creation.

I could be anyone I wanted to be, so I chose to write a confident, outgoing prankster woman. Pretty much the opposite of the shrinking wallflower I'd become in real life. But my character must have been believable, because other characters were drawn to her. Soon I'd accumulated a whole group of friends who referred to me as their "mama bird," the one they went to for advice and comfort.

We began to talk about our real lives too. I was careful about it (this was before online dating took off, back when the only stories you heard about meeting people from the Internet involved kidnap and murder). I never revealed my address or surname. But unlike on TV, the adults in the game were honest about their age.

I had conversations that would've been surreal in any other situation -- like the couple in their 50s I talked to throughout their separation and reunion, or the 40-something woman I considered a role model, who tragically lost her son a few years into our acquaintance. I met kids younger than me out in the Midwest who were stockpiling every spare penny for college; a guy from China who couldn't access half of our websites because of the Chinese Internet security laws. I talked to a sixty-something West Coast woman battling cancer -- a battle she eventually lost, much to our sorrow. I bonded with a UK player struggling with her identity after she accidentally fell in love with another girl in the game. I met a girl from Malaysia who was studying for her doctorate in the Ukraine. I'm invited to her wedding next year, which will be the first time we'll meet in person.

I dated a boy living in Glasgow; then fell head over heels for a British guy in Newcastle, who I very nearly married years later. I took a road trip to an older couple's campsite in Missouri to party with 30 of our game friends from all corners of the globe (including an Icelandic guy who professionally reenacted Viking battles).

Every time I've met one of those online friends (close to a hundred by now), they've been exactly how I'd imagined them.

Computer screens can let you remain anonymous, yes. There are creeps online, just as there are creeps hiding in plain sight in the real world too. But much in the same way that the divider in a confessional allows you to open up, or masquerade balls give you the confidence to dance with the person you'd be afraid to ask otherwise, the anonymity of the Internet was freeing for shy high school me.

10 years ago, I invented an outgoing, life-of-the-party character through whom I lived vicariously. Today, living in New York City with a huge network of friends (both here and around the globe), I have become that character.

The shy wallflower inside still rears her head when I show up alone at a party or attend an awkward networking event. But if the Internet has taught me anything, it's that if you inhabit a character long enough you will become it. Write who you want to be, embody that person, and you'll find true friends, both online and off.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I have never met some of my best friends. In recent years, less and less people I say this to find it weird. But 10 years ago when I was a shy high schooler discovering the wonders of online gaming, it was a lot stranger to say that I counted people living on another continent among my closest friends.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Your definitive guide to using social and creative media as an academic

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
As web companies strive to tailor their services (including news and search results) to our personal tastes, there's a dangerous unintended consequence: We get trapped in a "filter bubble" and don't get exposed to information that could challenge or broaden our worldview.

# data[].attributes.headline
16- Twitter Bans 270000 accounts for promoting terrorism

# data[].attributes.subject
16- Twitter Bans 270000 accounts for promoting terrorism

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Twitter removed more than 270,000 accounts around the world for promoting terrorism in the second half of 2017, according to the company's latest transparency report.

The number of accounts permanently suspended for sharing what the firm called extremist content between July and December represents a drop for the second period in a row.

The social network puts this down to "years of hard work making our site an undesirable place for those seeking to promote terrorism".

Nick Pickles, Twitter UK's head of public policy, said: "The overwhelming majority of these accounts were detected by our own technology, with just 0.2% of the accounts we suspended in 2017 being flagged by the police."

Almost 75% of accounts were suspended before they sent their first tweet, according to the report, and 93% were discovered by tools that Twitter engineers had built.

Twitter is understood to also use a combination of US and EU lists of terrorist organisations as well as research from academics and experts to identify terrorists on its network.

The number of reports of abusive behaviour submitted by government representatives also dropped amid a marked change in the type of abusive behaviour reported. Two-thirds of the 10,000 reports concerned violated rules over impersonation, with only 16% of the reports for harassment and 12% for hateful conduct. Harassment and hateful conduct each accounted for a third of reported accounts in the first half of 2017.

Only a quarter of reports of abusive behaviour submitted by government representatives were acted upon by Twitter, compared with 98% of reports relating to the "promotion of terrorism".

Twitter's biannual transparency report details requests from governments around the world, but not individual users from each country.

The UK government made 760 requests for information and five court orders across the period. The US made 1,761 requests for information, the most of any government, and Turkey made the most legal demands, with 466 court orders and 3,828 requests of a different legal nature.

Over the last six months the social network has removed the accounts of several high profile right-wing activists in the UK and US, including Britain First and Tommy Robinson in the UK. The move prompted accusations of censorship from the activists' supporters.

Twitter does not comment on individual cases of suspended accounts but pointed towards its rules about online abuse and hate speech when asked about the suspension of Robinson's account.

Pickles said Twitter, now working with other big technology companies in the Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) to "drive change across the web", had permanently suspended more than 1.2m accounts for breaking rules about promoting terrorism since August 2015.

He said: "Since GIFCT was established last summer we've worked with more than 70 companies to help them tackle terrorist use of the internet, in addition to rolling out new technology and funding research. We're encouraged by the positive results and will continue to look for new and innovative ways to expand our progress."
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Twitter bans 270,000 accounts for 'promoting terrorism'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Twitter removed more than 270,000 accounts around the world for promoting terrorism in the second half of 2017, according to the company's latest transparency report. The number of accounts permanently suspended for sharing what the firm called extremist content between July and December represents a drop for the second period in a row.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey took to the social platform last week to announce a call-out for ideas about how to measure the health of online conversations. The initiative follows recent demands for government to regulate the negative consequences of social media.

Discussing the possibility of such regulations in January, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff compared social media with the tobacco industry, saying:

I think that you do it exactly the same way that you regulated the cigarette industry. Here's a product: cigarettes. They're addictive, they're not good for you.

However, our research suggests that social media are more like a chocolate than a cigarette - it can be healthy or unhealthy depending on how you use it. While health ratings make no sense for cigarettes, they do help consumers make informed decisions about the level of sugar, oil and other additives they want to consume when buying particular chocolate products.

Read more: Why social media apps should be in your disaster kit

Social platforms under fire

Twitter's planned " health metrics " will measure the civility of public conversation, which Dorsey admits is poor on Twitter. He told users:

We have witnessed abuse, harassment, troll armies, manipulation through bots and human-coordination, misinformation campaigns, and increasingly divisive echo chambers. We aren't proud of how people have taken advantage of our service, or our inability to address it fast enough.

The metrics, based on research by the MIT Media Lab's Laboratory for Social Machines, will gauge:

shared attention: is there overlap in what we are talking about?

shared reality: are we using the same facts?

variety: are we exposed to different opinions grounded in shared reality?

receptivity: are we open, civil and listening to different opinions?

It sounds like a step toward responsible computing, but Twitter isn't the only platform dealing with these issues. Recent online incidents have heated up the debate about the negative effects of both YouTube and Facebook.

Late last year, YouTube Kids failed to filter disturbing videos in which popular characters kill or torture each other. Facebook admitted that its platform can be bad for its users' mental health. There was also a sharp increase in cyber-bullying against teens in Australia in 2017, with a recent report revealing a 63% increase in violent threats and revenge porn.

So how seriously should we take these issues? And where is the line between healthy and unhealthy use of social media?

Social media can be good for well-being

The inherent potential of social media is that it allows us to connect. We keep in touch with family and friends, reach out to favourite brands, share our views and feelings with the world, and stay up-to-date with news and events.

Some people go further and use social media for self-development and empowering others. In 2014 and 2015 we interviewed 25 ovarian cancer patients, followed by a survey of another 150 to ascertain the impact of specialised social media groups on patients. We learned that some cancer patients use moderated Facebook groups to share information and experiences with like-minded people, which considerably improved their psychological well-being.

Read more: How social media can make life better for young people in care

In 2016, we examined past studies and interviewed a number of experts in the aged care industry. We found that social media can help older people to tackle isolation and loneliness, connect with their community, and even generate income through reaching out to new markets.

Our analysis of social media posts about natural disasters in Australia also showed that many people use Twitter to stay updated about bushfires and flooding alerts, and to post relevant pictures and news to help members of their community.

Adverse impacts

We also conducted an extensive review of past studies on the impacts of social media applications on users, and discovered various negative effects. These include feelings of stress, depression, jealousy and loneliness, as well as reduced self-esteem and life satisfaction, and violations of privacy and safety.

We found that while some users are conscious of developing negative feelings through using particular social media platforms, others may be unaware of such adverse effects until their psychological health deteriorates. These negative experiences can hurt our well-being, and in some cases may lead to extreme consequences, such as harming others or suicide.

Read more: Constantly texting your friends about problems may be increasing your anxiety

How to ensure your usage is healthy

A healthy habit of using any social media platform involves asking ourselves what values we expect from our online engagements. We need to be cautious whether such engagements will create positive or negative outcomes for us, or for the people we interact with.

We recommend:

Educating yourself about risks of using social media platforms and making yourself aware of safety recommendations. The Office of the eSafety Commissioner actively posts educational articles informing Australians about risks of - as well as strategies for - using social media and internet platforms.

Being mindful of private information you share about yourself or others on social media. Consider how you might feel if what you're sharing was exposed to a third party. Assume that your conversations will be preserved.

Trying not to become penned in by algorithmic decision-making. Place less trust in recommendations and actively venture beyond the content served up on your screen.

Supervising your children. Take advantage of features tech companies offer for parental guidance, but don't stop there. Actively monitor your children's online activities and connections.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why social media are more like chocolate than cigarettes

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey took to the social platform last week to announce a call-out for ideas about how to measure the health of online conversations. The initiative follows recent demands for government to regulate the negative consequences of social media.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Social media has been linked to higher levels of loneliness, envy, anxiety, depression, narcissism and decreased social skills. As a Behavioral Scientist, I wonder what causes this paradox? The narratives we share and portray on social media are all positive and celebratory. It's a hybridized digital version of "Keeping up with the Joneses". Meaning for some, sometimes it appears everyone you know are in great relationships, taking 5-star vacations and living your dream life. However, what is shared across our social networks only broadcasts the positive aspects of our lives- the highlight reels.

Since we're only getting people's highlight reels and comparing it to ourselves, it is natural to have reactions to what we're watching. How does this impact relationships, dating and our love lives? I conducted in-depth interviews with men and women, ranging from ages 28-73, that are active social media users and found that:

60% of people using social media reported that it has impacted their self-esteem in a negative way

50% reported social media having negative effects on their relationships

80% reported that is easier to be deceived by others through their sharing on social media

It seems that social media is creating a paradox effect: giving off the illusion of many choices, while making it harder to find viable options. Can it be that our highly connected world has now become disconnected? Dr. Jennifer Rhodes, a licensed psychologist, relationship expert, and the founder of the bi-coastal relationship consultancy, Rapport Relationships, explains "My clients that are a little obsessed with following dates on social media really do lack the skills to communicate effectively in person. This lack of security and communication skills most definitely increases anxiety and depression. I see so much anxiety related to dating and how to navigate texting & communication that I have started to use Social Fitness training to teach assertiveness skills with my clients".

Posting dinners, selfies and vacay photos over human interaction for some is interaction. That IS their interaction. Natalia Lusinski, Sex, Dating, and Relationships writer for Bustle, says " I feel couples forget how to talk in real life, with all the texting and social media-updating that they do. They seem to know everything about each other and each other's days already, so they don't feel the need to talk much in person."

The paradox effect in dating is creating the illusion of having more social engagement, social capital, and popularity, but masking one's true persona. Since some are interfacing digitally more than physically it is much easier to emotionally manipulate others because they are reliant on what I call "Vanity Validation". The one you portray on your networks and the true you, for some creates a double consciousness. Your lauded self on social media is constantly seeking more validation through electronic likes, not life. Lusinski describes this best, "I feel many people convey all the positive pics, updates, etc. - but then, once you date them, you realize there are several other layers to them, not just the positive façade they convey online." For some, projecting what they want people to see and getting likes, plusses, re-tweets, and shares helps them feel better about themselves and connected to others.

Self-Esteem and "Vanity Validation"

In the latest Match Singles in America study's findings on how social media has impacted people's dating lives, they found that 57% of singles say social media has generated a Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO). Dr. Suzana Flores, author of Facehooked: How Facebook Affects our Emotions, Relationships and Lives explains "when someone interacts over social media for prolonged periods of time, inevitably they feel compelled to continue to check for updates. I call this the "Slot Machine Effect" in that when we receive a like or a comment to a post, or when we come across an interesting new post from someone else, we experience what psychologists refer to as intermittent reinforcement-sometimes we get "rewarded" with an interesting post, and sometimes we are not, but the rewards through external validation of our posts, cause us to remain digitally connected."

The "Slot Machine Effect" and comparing ourselves to others is just one side of FOMO. Match reported 51% say social media has made them feel more self-conscious about their appearance. Flores further explains "research has also shown that Facebook users are becoming increasingly depressed from comparing themselves to their own profile. Meaning that if a person's reality does not match the digital illusion they post on their profiles, emotionally, one may feel they are not living up to the "best" form of themselves."

"Emotionally secure people do not struggle as much with these issues. However, a large portion of our population has emotional insecurities and these folks are the ones that would benefit from a dating consultation to provide them with the tools and support to learn how to more effectively communicate their needs and desires. Social media and texting have made it all too easy to default to one's own perception rather than remain curious about what may actually be going on." cautions Rhodes.

This is just an aspect of what is occurring in today's rapidly evolving digital world. For us to accept these behaviors with disregard for how it impacts us emotionally is what the core of what I call, The Millennial Virus, is. What is it doing to our sense of self? Are we becoming more narcissistic? Are we becoming more insecure? Is technology driving dating, sex and emotion? Are dating patterns just an extension of how we behave on social networks?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Social media has been linked to higher levels of loneliness, envy, anxiety, depression, narcissism and decreased social skills. As a Behavioral Scientist, I wonder what causes this paradox? The narratives we share and portray on social media are all positive and celebratory. It's a hybridized digital version of "Keeping up with the Joneses".

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.provider_name
Pew Research Center: Internet, Science & Tech

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Facebook and YouTube dominate the social media landscape. But younger Americans, especially those ages 18 to 24, stand out in using a variety of platforms like Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter.

# data[].attributes.headline
12- Psychologists analyze how social media affects our sleep, body image, social interactions 

# data[].attributes.subject
12- Psychologists analyze how social media affects our sleep, body image, social interactions 

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Social media is a big part of people's lives but it could be detrimental

FEMAIL has spoken to two psychologists about how it can affect our health

They say sleep and body image can both be impacted by logging on too much

Social media has woven itself into the fabric of many people's lives and although many people enjoy it, some aspects can be detrimental to our mental health.

FEMAIL spoke with developmental psychologist Stephanie Lau and psychologist and clinical director of MindMovers Psychology Jaimie Bloch.

They have shared the four main ways that social media is affecting our health.

Unfortunately many of us are guilty of choosing to wind down before bed with our phone in hand, scrolling through social media posts from the day that has been and gone.

Stephanie Lau explained that many of us are using technology far too close to bed time, which is affecting how well we sleep.

'Being potentially addicted or using these devices too much will make you stay up late as well and stop you from getting quality sleep,' she said.

She recommends that people set limits on how often during the day they use social media, particularly before bed time.

Ms Lau explained that people should stop using them at least an hour before they hit the hay.

A new Canadian study has warned that just one hour of social media use per day could be enough to destroy your sleeping patterns.

'The main problem that occurs with taking your electronics to bed is the blue light they emit,' Ms Bloch said.

'The blue lights of electronics sends signals to our brain telling us it is daytime. Our brains then release cortisol hormones, which then keep us in an alert, wakeful state.'

Ms Bloch also said that scrolling through social media while you're lying in bed can increase the length and frequency of sleep disturbances.

'The combination of heightened emotions, getting distracted from the time and the blue light all work together to create disrupt sleep that can enable dullness and sluggishness in the morning,' she said.

HOW TO MANAGE SOCIAL MEDIA USE

'Being bombarded with images of perfection, perfect bodies, perfect make up, perfect faces can leave people feeling quite down about themselves because you're mislead to believe that this is reality,' Ms Lau explained.

She said that this is coming to light more now as social media ''influencers'' are becoming more open and honest about how much time and energy it takes to produce their content.

'With age comes perspective and wisdom... young people are more vulnerable so they need guidance from adults and monitor their use of technology.'

Ms Bloch explained that the effects of social media on body image and self-esteem have been well documented through research studies in recent years and agreed with Ms Lau about the vulnerability of young people.

'This type of research has uncovered that adolescent girls and young women are the most vulnerable and affected by social media, specifically when it comes to body dissatisfaction.

'Research into constant exposure to images that portray "thin-ideals" and cosmetically-altered bodies, found that girls and women who were exposed to these types of images rated significantly high levels of displeasure in their own body.'

She said that platforms like Snapchat, Facebook and Instagram, create an environment that is based on rating people and earning approval through likes, reposts and comments.

'This creates a hyper focus and link between body image, self-esteem and social belonging,' she said.

SOCIAL INTERACTION

Ms Lau said that the increased amount of time that people are spending on social media is impacting social interactions.

'We're always staring at a screen and not mindful of the people that we're with and we're too attached to our gadgets,' she explained.

'Even a phone in a room can take away your attention from what's going on in the room.

'We're always on standby for the next notification and alert and it takes time away from the people who are with us.'

CONSTANT CONNECTIVITY

Ms Bloch explained that wanting to connect with other people is a human need and the invention of social media has helped people connect, even from afar.

'However an excess of constant connectivity can be negative to our mental health and our lives,' she said.

'The pressure of having to be always available or responsive can create overwhelming feelings of anxiety and can make you feel like you are constantly switched on, allowing no room or space to switch off and relax.'

Ms Bloch also said that many people feel like they need to live their entire lives on social platforms.

'We are constantly walking the tight rope to deliver content, respond to others, be responded too, but also to monitor and manage what we are sharing,' she said.

'This near impossible balancing act can create intense stress, anxiety and depression in many social media users.'

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.authors[].name
Billie Schwab Dunn For Daily Mail Australia

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Social media ruining our lives? Psychologists explain why it could be

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Social media is a big part of people's lives but it could be detrimental FEMAIL has spoken to two psychologists about how it can affect our health They say sleep and body image can both be impacted by logging on too much Social media has woven itself into the fabric of many people's lives and although many people enjoy it, some aspects can be detrimental to our mental health.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The most amazing thing about the recent Facebook crisis with Cambridge Analytica is how long it took people to care. More than three years. The Guardian first reported most of the story in December 2015, covering most of what is in the news today:

In 2014, Cambridge University lecturer Aleksandr Kogan formed UK company, Global Science Research (GSR), developed a Facebook app involving a personality questionnaire, got Facebook users to use the app, and in the process scraped up their personal Facebook details and that of all of their friends. This was allowed by Facebook.

Within months, Kogan claimed he had a massive pool of data on more than 40 million Americans. The Facebook data was used to create personality profiles based on five personality traits.

Kogan then started working with UK company, Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL), on a "large research project" to analyze U.S. Facebook users. Kogan impermissibly shared the Facebook data that GSR had gathered with SCL and its U.S. subsidiary, Cambridge Analytica.

Financed by Republican financier, Robert Mercer, Cambridge Analytica performed targeted analysis using the Facebook data to help shape campaign messages. The company mission was to further hone the grassroots, digital profiling developed by the Obama campaign.

Cambridge Analytica was hired to help with the presidential campaigns of Ted Cruz and Ben Carson and received fees of $750,000 from Cruz and around $220,000 from Carson. It also worked for John Bolton's Super PAC and got about $2.5 million from Super PACs that Mercer or his family contributed to.

Facebook claimed it was "carefully investigating the situation" with respect to Cruz and stated that misuse of Facebook information "is a direct violation of our policies and we will take swift action against companies that do, including banning those companies from Facebook and requiring them to destroy improperly collected data."

Sounds like today's news, doesn't it? The story died. Then, two years later, in March 2017, The Intercept published an article headlined, "Facebook Failed to Protect 30 million Users From Having Their Data Harvested by Trump Campaign Affiliate." It rehashed much of the same information as The Guardian article.

The Intercept article did go a step farther, however. It began describing to readers how the Facebook data could be used for predictive purposes. It noted that a 2013 study by three of Kogan's Cambridge colleagues, "showed that [Facebook] likes alone could predict race with 95 percent accuracy and political party with 85 percent accuracy. " Dan Gillmore, director of Arizona State University's Knight Center, noted in the article, "It's reasonable to believe that sooner or later, we're going to see wide-spread manipulation of people's decision-making, including in elections, in ways that are more widespread and granular, but even less detectable than today."

Again, ho-hum was the response by readers and regulators. So, what was it about the March 2018 articles in The New York Times and London Observer - which covered much of the same ground as the Guardian and Intercept stories - that set everyone's hair on fire? The articles did reveal more information about Robert and Rebekah Mercer's and Steve Bannon's involvement and the Trump campaign's use of Cambridge Analytica's data collected from 50 million Facebook users. Most importantly, however, the articles provided details on what data was collected and how it was analyzed and used to help Trump win the presidency.

American's are finally, finally coming to understand the power of Big Data. The widespread media coverage on Russian interference in our elections and their misuse of Facebook and other social media platforms to influence 126 million Americans has served as a continuing education of the American public about how seemingly innocuous, personal details may be used against them. The Facebook articles drove the point home.

For years, Americans have shrugged their shoulders over NSA surveillance and government access to digital data and said, "I don't care; I have nothing to hide." Now they are starting to see that maybe they do have something to hide. They are starting to understand that their own preferences and those of their friends and family can be hoovered up and stored in perpetuity and fed through algorithms to produce manipulative messaging intended to move beliefs and influence actions.

Although regulators and state attorneys general are launching investigations, the real hammer will be the market. Whether it is Facebook, Twitter, or some other social media platform, when users start to realize that the data they are sharing may be used against them or cause them to lose control over their beliefs or be manipulated, they will begin to shut off. If the company can't be trusted with personal data, users simply will not use that platform and advertisers will go elsewhere.

Roger McNamee, Mark Zuckerberg's long-time mentor, saw the risk early on and tried to get Facebook executives to manage it, but his warnings fell on deaf ears. In an interview with Christiane Amanpour (watch the video here), McNamee said that in October 2016, he personally warned Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg of the magnitude of the risk, but failed to get their attention. According to McNamee, Facebook's leaders kept arguing that Facebook is a platform company, not a media company and "we're not responsible for what third parties do." McNamee warned them then, "You have 1.7 billion members and if they decide you are responsible, it won't matter what the law says."

That seems to be what is happening. McNamee says Facebook usage in North America was down in the last quarter of 2017 for the first time, and he expects the same for the first quarter of 2018. He may be right. Big names are drawing attention to Facebook's lack of governance and exploitation of individuals. Bloomberg quoted Apple's CEO Tim Cook as saying, "The ability of anyone to know what you've been browsing about for years, who your contacts are, who their contacts are, things you like and dislike and every intimate detail of your life--from my own point of view it shouldn't exist," Elon Musk deleted SpaceX and Tesla's Facebook pages, Cher deleted hers, and #DeleteFacebook and #RegulateFacebook have become popular hashtags.

It remains to be seen whether Facebook can regain the trust of its users and whether it will be the company that leads the tech industry into regulations, but Facebook's crisis will be remembered. It is the Great American Privacy Wake-up Call.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Here's What's Amazing About The Facebook Cambridge Analytica Story

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The most amazing thing about the Facebook / Cambridge Analytica story is how long it took three years for people to care about Facebook data being used to manipulate views and influence actions....Americans are finally beginning to understand the evils of Big Data.

# data[].attributes.headline
9- Instagram affecting young people's mental health

# data[].attributes.subject
9- Instagram affecting young people's mental health

# data[].attributes.headline
8- All the data Facebook and Google have on you

# data[].attributes.subject
8- All the data Facebook and Google have on you

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Want to freak yourself out? I'm going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it.

Google stores your location (if you have location tracking turned on) every time you turn on your phone. You can see a timeline of where you've been from the very first day you started using Google on your phone.

Click on this link to see your own data: google.com/maps/timeline?...

Here is every place I have been in the last 12 months in Ireland. You can see the time of day that I was in the location and how long it took me to get to that location from my previous one.

Google stores search history across all your devices. That can mean that, even if you delete your search history and phone history on one device, it may still have data saved from other devices.

Click on this link to see your own data: myactivity.google.com/myactivity

Google creates an advertisement profile based on your information, including your location, gender, age, hobbies, career, interests, relationship status, possible weight (need to lose 10lb in one day?) and income.

Click on this link to see your own data: google.com/settings/ads/

Google stores information on every app and extension you use. They know how often you use them, where you use them, and who you use them to interact with. That means they know who you talk to on Facebook, what countries are you speaking with, what time you go to sleep.

Click on this link to see your own data: security.google.com/settings/secur...

Google stores all of your YouTube history, so they probably know whether you're going to be a parent soon, if you're a conservative, if you're a progressive, if you're Jewish, Christian, or Muslim, if you're feeling depressed or suicidal, if you're anorexic ...

Click on this link to see your own data: youtube.com/feed/history/s...

Google offers an option to download all of the data it stores about you. I've requested to download it and the file is 5.5GB big, which is roughly 3m Word documents.

Manage to gain access to someone's Google account? Perfect, you have a diary of everything that person has done

This link includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, your Google Drive files, all of the above information, your YouTube videos, the photos you've taken on your phone, the businesses you've bought from, the products you've bought through Google ...

They also have data from your calendar, your Google hangout sessions, your location history, the music you listen to, the Google books you've purchased, the Google groups you're in, the websites you've created, the phones you've owned, the pages you've shared, how many steps you walk in a day ...

Click on this link to see your own data: google.com/takeout

Facebook offers a similar option to download all your information. Mine was roughly 600MB, which is roughly 400,000 Word documents.

This includes every message you've ever sent or been sent, every file you've ever sent or been sent, all the contacts in your phone, and all the audio messages you've ever sent or been sent.

Click here to see your data: https://www.facebook.com/help/131112897028467

Facebook also stores what it thinks you might be interested in based off the things you've liked and what you and your friends talk about (I apparently like the topic "girl").

Somewhat pointlessly, they also store all the stickers you've ever sent on Facebook (I have no idea why they do this. It's just a joke at this stage).

They also store every time you log in to Facebook, where you logged in from, what time, and from what device.

And they store all the applications you've ever had connected to your Facebook account, so they can guess I'm interested in politics and web and graphic design, that I was single between X and Y period with the installation of Tinder, and I got a HTC phone in November.

(Side note, if you have Windows 10 installed, this is a picture of just the privacy options with 16 different sub-menus, which have all of the options enabled by default when you install Windows 10)

The data they collect includes tracking where you are, what applications you have installed, when you use them, what you use them for, access to your webcam and microphone at any time, your contacts, your emails, your calendar, your call history, the messages you send and receive, the files you download, the games you play, your photos and videos, your music, your search history, your browsing history, even what radio stations you listen to.

I got the Google Takeout document with all my information, and this is a breakdown of all the different ways they get your information.

Here's the search history document, which has 90,000 different entries, even showing the images I downloaded and the websites I accessed (I showed the Pirate Bay section to show how much damage this information can do).

Here's my Google Calendar broken down, showing all the events I've ever added, whether I actually attended them, and what time I attended them at (this part is when I went for an interview for a marketing job, and what time I arrived).

This is my Google Drive, which includes files I explicitly deleted including my résumé, my monthly budget, and all the code, files and websites I've ever made, and even my PGP private key, which I deleted, that I use to encrypt emails.

This is my Google Fit, which shows all of the steps I've ever taken, any time I walked anywhere, and all the times I've recorded any meditation/yoga/workouts I've done (I deleted this information and revoked Google Fit's permissions).

This is all the photos ever taken with my phone, broken down by year, and includes metadata of when and where I took the photos

Every email I've ever sent, that's been sent to me, including the ones I deleted or were categorised as spam.

I'll just do a short summary of what's in the thousands of files I received under my Google Activity.

First, every Google Ad I've ever viewed or clicked on, every app I've ever launched or used and when I did it, every website I've ever visited and what time I did it at, and every app I've ever installed or searched for.

They also have every image I've ever searched for and saved, every location I've ever searched for or clicked on, every news article I've ever searched for or read, and every single Google search I've made since 2009. And then finally, every YouTube video I've ever searched for or viewed, since 2008.

This information has millions of nefarious uses. You say you're not a terrorist. Then how come you were googling Isis? Work at Google and you're suspicious of your wife? Perfect, just look up her location and search history for the last 10 years. Manage to gain access to someone's Google account? Perfect, you have a chronological diary of everything that person has done for the last 10 years.

This is one of the craziest things about the modern age. We would never let the government or a corporation put cameras/microphones in our homes or location trackers on us. But we just went ahead and did it ourselves because - to hell with it! - I want to watch cute dog videos.

A caption was corrected on 28 March 2018 to replace "privacy options in Facebook" with "privacy options in Windows 10".

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Are you ready? This is all the data Facebook and Google have on you | Dylan Curran

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Want to freak yourself out? I'm going to show just how much of your information the likes of Facebook and Google store about you without you even realising it. Google stores your location (if you have location tracking turned on) every time you turn on your phone.

# data[].attributes.headline
7- Facebook might have even more information than you think

# data[].attributes.subject
7- Facebook might have even more information than you think

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Suddenly lots of people are waking up and asking themselves questions about Facebook. How much data am I sharing with the social media giant? Did I really give permission for it to be collected and stored?

And, even more seriously, have I handed over my friends' data to be stored on some Californian server?

I am one of those people and what I've discovered has left me somewhat shocked. Over the weekend I got hold of my Facebook data. It's easy enough, you go to settings, then general account settings and click on download my data.

An hour or so later an email arrived with a link to click and I was downloading a 675MB folder chronicling all of my life on the network since I signed up in 2007.

Big numbers

At first sight there was nothing very troubling - I would expect all the photos and videos I'd ever posted to be there, and scrolling down my timeline provided an entertaining glimpse of my life over the last decade.

I did notice that for some years every song I'd listened to on Spotify was listed, a handy reminder that when you link any external app to Facebook it then gathers a lot more data about you.

But then I clicked on a file called contacts. I was taken aback to find my entire contact list, thousands of phone numbers. Now this was not limited to Facebook friends and included many people in the public eye who might be disturbed to find that their private numbers were stored in this way.

I cannot remember what happened when I set up my Facebook account back in 2007 - in those naive days I could well have clicked yes when invited to upload my contacts so that I could see who else was part of this new young community. So, my fault I suppose.

Then I noticed that at the top of the list were some numbers that cannot have been sucked into the Facebook machine a decade ago because I had only added them in recent weeks. They included, ironically, the mobile number of Carole Cadwalladr, the journalist who has blown open the whole story of Cambridge Analytica and Facebook.

So this means that every time I enter a new number into my phone's database, it somehow ends up with Facebook - the company is in effect monitoring me.

This is not the most startling example of Facebook's data collection. At least one user has reported that all of his text messages from an Android phone have somehow ended up being stored by Mark Zuckerberg's company.

Even if Facebook users agree to share this data, their friends whose numbers or text messages are being collected almost certainly have not. And even if those people have never joined Facebook - or have decided to delete their accounts - it looks as though some of their data will stay with the social network as long as the people who provided it remain.

Facebook says that uploading your contacts is a normal part of signing up with many messaging or social apps - and insists that users are given a clear choice.

People are expressly asked if they want to give permission to upload their contacts from their phone - it's explained right there in the apps when you get started. People can delete previously uploaded information at any time.

The company is right to say this is common practice. And if you think it is creepy that Facebook is storing this information, what about Apple's iCloud where millions store their iPhone data, including their contacts?

In any case, Facebook insists it never shares this data with anyone else. The problem is that its business model, unlike Apple's, depends on exploiting its users' data. And given what they have learned over the last week about how that information may have been used, many Facebook users may not be inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
If I've got your number, so has Facebook

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Suddenly lots of people are waking up and asking themselves questions about Facebook. How much data am I sharing with the social media giant? Did I really give permission for it to be collected and stored? And, even more seriously, have I handed over my friends' data to be stored on some Californian server?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that the social network "made mistakes" that led to millions of Facebook users having their data exploited by a political consultancy.

Cambridge Analytica is accused of improperly using the data on behalf of political clients.

In a statement, Mr Zuckerberg said a "breach of trust" had occurred.

In a later interview with CNN he said he was "really sorry", and pledged to take action against "rogue apps".

He added that he was "happy" to testify before Congress "if it's the right thing to do".

In his statement posted on Facebook, he promised to make it far harder for apps to "harvest" user information.

"We have a responsibility to protect your data, and if we can't then we don't deserve to serve you," Mr Zuckerberg said.

What has Zuckerberg pledged to do?

To address current and past problems, Mr Zuckerberg said his company would:

investigate all Facebook apps that had access to large amounts of information before the platform was changed "to dramatically reduce data access" in 2014

conduct a "full forensic audit" of any app with suspicious activity

ban any developer that did not agree to a thorough audit

ban developers that had misused personally identifiable information, and "tell everyone affected by those apps"

In future, he said Facebook would:

restrict developers' data access "even further" to prevent other kinds of abuse

remove developers' access to a user's data if the user hadn't activated the developer's app for three months

reduce the data that users give an app when they sign in to just name, profile photo, and email address

require developers to obtain approval and also sign a contract in order to ask anyone for access to their posts or other private data

Mr Zuckerberg added: "While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn't change what happened in the past.

"We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward."

'Legal defence'
Analysis by Dave Lee, BBC North America technology reporter, at Facebook's headquarters
I read one thing loud and clear from Mr Zuckerberg's initial statement: Facebook is not prepared to take the blame for what has happened.

Contrition has never been Mr Zuckerberg's strong point, and the statement, days in the making, was no different.

No apology to users, investors or staff over how this incident was allowed to happen by the data policies in place at the time.

No explanation as to why, after learning its data was being abused like this in 2014, it opted to give the companies a telling off instead of banning them outright.

No reasoning as to why Facebook failed to inform users their data may have been affected. Technically, it still hasn't.

Mr Zuckerberg's words were not an explanation, but a legal and political defence. This company knows it is heading into battle on multiple fronts.

Follow Dave Lee on Twitter @DaveLeeBBC

What is the row about?

In 2014, Facebook invited users to find out their personality type via a quiz developed by Cambridge University researcher Dr Aleksandr Kogan called This is Your Digital Life.

About 270,000 users' data was collected, but the app also collected some public data from users' friends.

Facebook has since changed the amount of data developers can gather in this way, but a whistleblower, Christopher Wylie, says the data of about 50 million people was harvested for Cambridge Analytica before the rules on user consent were tightened up.

Mr Wylie claims the data was sold to Cambridge Analytica - which has no connection with Cambridge University - which then used it to psychologically profile people and deliver pro-Trump material to them.

The firm's chief executive, Alexander Nix - who was suspended on Tuesday - was secretly recorded in a Channel 4 investigation saying the London-based company ran Donald Trump's digital campaign during the 2016 US election.

"We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting, we ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy," he added.

Dr Kogan has said he was told by Cambridge Analytica everything they had done was legal, and that he was being made a "scapegoat" by the firm and Facebook.

How has Cambridge Analytica responded?

Cambridge Analytica denies any wrongdoing.

Facebook says users' data was obtained legitimately but Cambridge Analytica failed to delete it when told to do so.

For its part, Cambridge Analytica says it did delete the data when told to by Facebook.

It suspended Mr Nix following his comments which appeared to suggest tactics his company could use to discredit politicians online.

However, the firm said the report of comments secretly recorded by Channel 4 News had "grossly misrepresented" Mr Nix's comments.

What investigations are under way?

US senators have called on Mr Zuckerberg to testify before Congress about how his company will protect users, while consumer watchdog the US Federal Trade Commission has reportedly opened an investigation into Facebook.

The head of the European Parliament also said it would investigate to see if the data was misused.

The UK's Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham is attempting to obtain a warrant to search the offices of Cambridge Analytica.

Meanwhile, a UK parliamentary committee has called for Mr Zuckerberg to give evidence about its use of personal data.

There have also been calls for an investigation into the work Cambridge Analytica carried out during the 2013 election in Kenya.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that the social network "made mistakes" that led to millions of Facebook users having their data exploited by a political consultancy. Cambridge Analytica is accused of improperly using the data on behalf of political clients. In a statement, Mr Zuckerberg said a "breach of trust" had occurred.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
I left my house without my phone the other day and could not be bothered to go back to get it. "Sure, I can be totally disconnected for a day," I thought to myself. "It will be good for me."

It's a long time since I have been phoneless. It's not as if I am a teenager who feels her phone to be a necessary limb, is it? It would surely mean that I would be truly in the moment; not distracted by social-media froth, not needing to know the news as it happens, unable to answer emails or text various offspring my various and inane instructions. Instead, I would be in the world, communicating deeply and authentically with it. Poor world. For I awaited this cliched epiphany of disconnection. I wanted to say that everything was more meaningful now that I was no longer "elsewhere" (ie online). I wanted to feel the moral superiority, or at least maturity, of those people who proudly announce they don't do Facebook/Twitter/Instagram in the same way they once would have announced they didn't watch TV.

Actually, nothing much happened except I had no clue what time it was, and I realised I have no memory of anyone's number or address any more, or any idea of where I was, but I managed. The best thing was that I probably read more of my book than usual. Er ... that's it.

Virtual untethering is mostly virtue signalling. It is deemed good for the soul by just about everyone who talks about social media on social media. Apparently we can reclaim a sense of self, freedom and creativity when we stop our online dependency. We engage more fully and at a deeper level in our personal relationships. We can focus better and concentrate more. All of this is taken as a given by just about everyone who talks about the digital world. In other words, the thing many people do is inherently bad for us.

In France, François Hollande's Socialist party is about to vote through a measure that will give employees in companies of more than 50 people the " right to disconnect ". It is assumed that this means workers - especially in tech companies - cannot be emailed at weekends or evenings, allowing them to switch off from professional life. This is an interesting, if unworkable, extension of worker rights; unworkable, some say, because these same companies will be competing with India and China. Others see this as the laudable French recognition of la dolce vita. It is interesting that la dolce vita now consists of the "authentic" civility of the family meal, the modest consumption of fine wines and now digital disconnection. The French appear to represent simultaneously both nostalgia and aspiration for a life most of us cannot achieve. For they cannot achieve it themselves.

The idea, however, that a law has to stop us being permanently connected is revealing. The entire narrative around our online lives remains always punitive. It is an unchanging language of addiction, excess, dependency and stress. The only other everyday activity that we talk about as so unhealthy is eating: thus the digital detox becomes an actual thing. The rise of activities such as mindfulness or yoga is all about the promise to reconnect to our true, unmediated selves. Get the app!

While accepting that there is simply too much information, that we can get hooked into bad habits, there has to be another way of thinking about all this without the "Stop the world! I want to get off" model. Ten years ago, all sorts of people were giving fairly apocalyptic warnings about where this online dependency would lead. We were warned of depression and detachment, of a world where no attention could ever be sustained. We would no longer pause or reflect. All of us would just be looking for instant dopamine hits online. And yet, it seems very few actually have opted out, and that opting out is something of a privilege.

We no longer use phrases such as "digital natives", because now we simply live in a digital culture. All the eye-rolling over teenagers having an umbilical attachment to their phones is somewhat pointless, isn't it?

It is possible to accept that social media may cause anxiety and unhappiness and that those networks do not often work out equally, but we surely have to move away from always opposing the real world to the online world. They are integrated. These huge shifts have reshaped the presentation of self, who and what we have access to, the boundaries between work and leisure, the very concept of privacy. It has happened. Simply telling people to switch off from a bad thing is unrealistic.

Indeed, it was in France where I saw the absolute necessity of connection. In the refugee camps, one of the things people desperately want is Wi-Fi. Their phones are their lifelines, their connection to where they come from and where they are going. This is why the French police smash their phones before they beat them.

Social media for some people is about more than pictures of hamsters in jumpers, although there is never anything wrong with family pets in knitwear. The contemporary dolce vita may not be about being either switched on or switched off, it may be about learning to live with those distractions.
Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Stop telling us to switch off - we live in a digital culture now | Suzanne Moore

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
I left my house without my phone the other day and could not be bothered to go back to get it. "Sure, I can be totally disconnected for a day," I thought to myself. "It will be good for me." It's a long time since I have been phoneless.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Instagram is testing a feature that will show users when someone else takes a screenshot of their story. Users included in the test are getting a warning that the next time they take a screenshot of a friend's story the friend will be able to see it, as shown below:

And users who are participating in the test can see who took a screenshot of their story by going to the list of story viewers and seeing a new camera shutter logo next to anyone who took a screenshot of their photo. To be clear, creators won't get a specific notification when someone takes a screenshot of their story, it will only show up in their list of story viewers.

In a statement provided to TechCrunch Instagram acknowledged the test, saying "we are always testing ways to improve the experience on Instagram and make it easier to share any moment with the people who matter to you."

Instagram is likely using this test to see if the feature has any noticeable impact on engagement, before deciding whether or not they'll roll it out to all users. For example, there's a chance that some users may end up watching less stories over time if they aren't able to take screenshots without notifying the creator.

Prior to this test the only screenshot notifications on Instagram were when someone took a screenshot of a private direct message. Anyone could take a screenshot of someone's photo or story without notifying the creator. Notably, users can rewatch stories as many times as they want within 24 hours, with the creator unable to see exactly how many times one person watched it.

If rolled out, this feature would essentially align Instagram with Snapchat in terms of how the platform deals with screenshots. Any screenshot of a direct message triggers a notification to the sender, but a screenshot of a story will just result in a notation being placed next to the offender's name in the viewer analytics tab.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Instagram is testing screenshot alerts for stories

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Instagram is testing a feature that will show users when someone else takes a screenshot of their story.

# data[].attributes.headline
3- Mother Shares Powerful Body Positive Message After 5-Year-Old Daughter Rejects Curvy Barbie

# data[].attributes.subject
3- Mother Shares Powerful Body Positive Message After 5-Year-Old Daughter Rejects Curvy Barbie

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A mother had the perfect response when her five-year-old daughter rejected Curvy Barbie for being too big.

Allison Kimmey, a stoic body positivity campaigner from Florida, is used to talking openly with her little girl and previously made headlines when she shared a conversation that explained stretch marks as " glitter stripes " to the youngster.

But, Kimmey wasn't prepared for just how moved she would feel when she found her daughter's Curvy Barbie had been relegated to the rubbish bin.

Taking to Instagram, Kimmey shared the moment her daughter, Cambelle, admitted to throwing away the doll, but when she asked her why, her child's response felt brutal.

"Because I don't like her. Her arms aren't right. Her legs are too big. She doesn't look like my other Barbies," the youngster replied.

"And she doesn't fit into any of the clothes except this one outfit."

In a state of shock, the mother-of-two suddenly related to the inanimate object.

My daughter threw away her Curvy Barbie. M:"Cambelle!" C:"What mama?" M:"Did you throw away this barbie?" C:"Um. Yes." M:"Okay. Can you tell me why you threw away one of your perfectly good toys?" C:"Because I don't like her. " M:"What do you mean you don't like her?" C:"Her arms aren't right. Her legs are too big. She doesn't look like my other barbies. And she doesn't fit into any of the clothes except this one outfit." I paused. I was speechless. I honestly felt some tears start welling in my eyes. I related to this inanimate object. It was as if curvy barbie's life was a reflection of the way I felt for SO long being a plus size woman in a thin woman's world. I always felt like my arms weren't right, my legs were big, and anywhere I went, nothing fit. For a very long time I allowed those perceptions and the constricts of society make me feel as if I was the trash. Much like myself, Curvy barbie is still living in a thin barbie world. M:"How do you think barbie feels now that you put her in the trash? Was that a very nice thing to do?" C:"I think she feels sad and crying." M:"Just because her body is different, does that mean that she is wrong?" C:"No, mama. Because she has more fat. And it's okay to have fat." M:"And just because the clothes don't fit her right, does that mean she shouldn't be able to play with the other barbies?" C:"No mama. We have to be kind to everyone." M:"Do you have friends that look different than you?" C:"Yes, mama. Some have skinny legs and other girls like me have legs that touch." M:"Okay, we'll leave that discussion for another time. Do you think that you could wash her off and find her something to wear?" C:"Yes, mama." I go deeper into this conversation on my blog (link in profile). But for now I will leave you with this: each time I am put in a position where I can ignore these early signs for body image issues and pass them off as "oh she's just a kid playing with her barbies, maybe she really just doesn't like this one, it doesn't REALLY matter" OR I can make a conscious effort to help her dissect how she's feeling, allow her to explain her discomfort, and give her a new loving perspective. Just do you! Xoxo Allie
A post shared by ALLIE 🌸 Just Do You, Babe! (@allisonkimmey) on

'I paused. I was speechless. I honestly felt some tears start welling in my eyes," she wrote.

"It was as if curvy Barbie's life was a reflection of the way I felt for so long being a plus size woman in a thin woman's world.

"I always felt like my arms weren't right, my legs were big, and anywhere I went, nothing fit. For a very long time I allowed those perceptions and the constricts of society make me feel as if I was the trash. Much like myself, Curvy Barbie is still living in a thin Barbie world."

Instead of shying away from a difficult conversation, Kimmey explained to her daughter that Curvy Barbie shouldn't be treated any differently just because of the way she looked.

Eventually the little girl agreed, and decided to wash and dress her doll before continuing to play.

The mother concluded, "Each time I am put in a position where I can ignore these early signs for body image issues and pass them off as 'Oh she's just a kid playing with her Barbies, maybe she really just doesn't like this one, it doesn't really matter', or I can make a conscious effort to help her dissect how she's feeling, allow her to explain her discomfort, and give her a new loving perspective."

Unsurprisingly, the post went viral immediately with nearly 8,000 likes and hundreds of comments from supportive parents applauding her for addressing the issue with her daughter.

"Good parenting. Instead of ignoring the situation you took this opportunity and used it as a teachable moment and you let her express herself," one person wrote.

"This is so important for young children. Give yourself a pat on the back"

Another added: "As both an early childhood educator and a plus size woman, I love that you had this conversation with your daughter, amazing!"

Reuse content

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
This mother had the perfect response when her daughter rejected Curvy Barbie for being too big

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A mother had the perfect response when her five-year-old daughter rejected Curvy Barbie for being too big. Allison Kimmey, a stoic body positivity campaigner from Florida, is used to talking openly with her little girl and previously made headlines when she shared a conversation that explained stretch marks as "glitter stripes" to the youngster.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Parents know one particular challenge of raising kids all too well: teaching them to do what we say, not what we do.

A similar challenge has hit artificial intelligence.

As more apps and software use AI to automate tasks, a popular data-backed model, called "word embedding," has also picked up entrenched social biases.

The result is services like language translation spitting those biases back out in subtle but worrisome ways.

Earlier this year, for instance, examples of gender bias started cropping up on social media with Google Translate.

Try translating terms into English from Turkish, which has gender-neutral pronouns, and a phrase like o bir muhendis becomes he is an engineer, while o bir hemsire translates to she is a nurse.

Microsoft's own translation service on Bing has a similar problem, thanks to the use of gender in grammar - think le and la in French, or der and die in German.

When Bing translates "the table is soft" into German, it offers the feminine die Tabelle, which refers to a table of figures.

"These gender associations are projected onto objects," says Kate McCurdy, a senior computational linguist with the language-learning startup Babbel in Berlin, Germany, who discovered the bias in Bing.

"Objects that happen to be grammatically masculine are given masculine properties. It's learning to take gender stereotypes and project them into the whole world of nouns."

Because of word embedding, a popular method of machine learning, translation algorithms are working off these biases, and so are other services like Google Search, as well as Netflix and Spotify recommendations.

"This is an approach that has taken off and is extremely widespread in the industry, and that's why it's so important to interrogate the underlying assumption," says McCurdy.

Word embedding works by linking words to a vector of numbers, which algorithms can use to calculate probability. By looking at what words tend to be around other words, like "engineer," the model can be used to figure out what other word fits best, like "he."

The price of learning from reams of existing text and dialogue is that such models pick up the true-to-life imbalance between genders when it comes to jobs or opportunities.

A 2016 study that trained word-embedding models on articles on Google showed gender stereotypes "to a disturbing extent," according to its researchers.

McCurdy says that there isn't anything necessarily wrong with the word-embedding model itself, but it needs human guidance and oversight.

"The default now is to build these applications and release them into the wild and fight the fires when they come out," she adds. "But if we were more deliberate about this and took things more seriously, we'd do more work to integrate a more critical perspective."

Companies who are using the word-embedding model to make services for consumers also need more diverse programmers who are more likely to notice the risk of biases before they crop up.

"If we're serious about having artificial intelligence make decisions that don't end up with biases that we don't want to reinforce, we need to have more diverse and critical people looking at this earlier on in the process."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Algorithm That Helped Google Translate Become Sexist

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Parents know one particular challenge of raising kids all too well: teaching them to do what we say, not what we do. A similar challenge has hit artificial intelligence. As more apps and software use AI to automate tasks, a popular data-backed model, called "word embedding," has also picked up entrenched social biases.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Facebook has finally designed something akin to a "dislike" button after years of campaigning from the social network's users.

The "downvote" button is being tested on a small number of Facebook users and applies only to comments. When clicked, it hides a comment and is intended for flagging offensive comments to moderators.

It is unclear whether the writer will know their comment has been "downvoted", but pictures of the button in action, which were shared on social media on Thursday evening, suggest that the comment will remain online for everyone to see, except for the person who "downvoted" it.

For years, many of Facebook's two-billion users have campaigned for a "dislike" button, a feature which Facebook has repeatedly refused to address. The social network were keen to stamp out any excitement over what many will perceive as an alternative to the "like" button.

"We are not testing a dislike button," a spokesman said. "We are exploring a feature for people to give us feedback about comments on public page posts. This is running for a small set of people in the US only"

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Facebook answers calls for a dislike button with 'downvote' feature

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Facebook has finally designed something akin to a "dislike" button after years of campaigning from the social network's users. The "downvote" button is being tested on a small number of Facebook users and applies only to comments. When clicked, it hides a comment and is intended for flagging offensive comments to moderators.