Facebook feeds you sadness

Facebook feeds you sadness
Number	2267
Broadcast Date	JUNE 30, 2014
Episode Length	57:56
Hosts	Tom Merritt
Guests	Don Reisinger

Don Reisinger is on the show. We’ll chat about why Facebook thought it was OK to play with our emotions for science.

Guest

• Don Reisinger, technology columnist at cnet.com
• @donreisinger

Headlines

• The next Version of Windows, codenamed Threshold, expected to arrive in Spring 2015.

Microsoft reportedly will aim Threshold squarely at disgruntled desktop users still using Windows 7. Some versions of Threshold will be all desktop, while some will focus on the tiled screen or desktop screen depending on whether a keyboard is attached and some version meant for tablets and phone swill have no desktop view at all. And yes word is STILl that the mini Start menu showed off at BUILD will be part of Threshold. A preview version of Threshold should arrive in the autumn and one more update to Windows 8.1 will arrive before Threshold does.

• Google is finally pulling the plug on its social network from 2004 called Orkut on Sept. 30

Orkut was popular in Brazil and India, but Google says they’ve had more success with YouTube, Blogger and Google+. Orkut users can continue to post until Sept. 30 and can retrieve posts after that dat from an archive of all Orkut communities. I will miss you ‘fans of turn signals’ community!

• A study in PNAS that manipulated 689,000 users News Feeds from Jan. 11-18, 2012 in order to study emotional contagion.

For the affected users either positive or negative emotional posts had a 10-90% chance of being removed. The study found those with fewer positive posts in their feed used 0.1% fewer positive words in subsequent posts and those with fewer negative posts in their feed used 0.07% fewer negative words. Controversy broke out over whether the Facebook Terms of Service sufficed as informed consent for the study.

• Google Glass is now banned in some UK movie theaters over piracy concerns

Vue and the Cinema Exhibitors’ association trade group both feel the shaky 30-45 minutes of video Google Glass is capable of recording poses enough of a threat to their bottom line that they must fight back. Google said in a statement that Glass should be treated no differently than cell phones in a theater and that “The fact that Glass is worn above the eyes and the screen lights up whenever it’s activated makes it a fairly lousy device for recording things secretly.”

• Samsung has four new budget Android KitKat phones.

The 4.5-inch Galaxy Core II leads the way with a 1.2GHZ processor 768 MB RAM and 4GB of storage. There’s also the 4-inch Galaxy Ace 4 and the 3.5-inch Galaxy Young 2 and Star 2. All run TouchWiz with pricing and availability to be announced.

• Twitter is rolling out mobile app promotion ads that take users to app downloads or the apps themselves if already installed.

Along with that, Twitter’s unveiling new cost-per-app-click pricing for the unit and a dashboard to track usage. The ads appear only for iOS and Android mobile users.

• the US Supreme Court decline to hear Google’s challenge to dismiss a complaint that its streetview cars illegally collected data from private WiFi networks

Google has admitted its cars were accidentally collecting unencrypted traffic and stopped the practice when it was discovered. Google is fighting a lawsuit that it violated the Wiretap Act. Google’s defense has been that tyhe act allows the interception of unencrypted radio communication, but a federal appeals court rejected that logic saying the act referred to predominantly auditory broadcasts.

News From You

• US President Obama is expected to name Phil Johnson, a pharmaceutical industry executive, as the next Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Johnson has previously tried to block legislation aimed at reigning in patent trolls. The Director’s job has been vacant for 18 months, and former Google employee Michelle Lee, the deputy director, has been managing the department.

Submitted by: spsheridan

• Netflix Could Be Classified As a 'Cybersecurity Threat' Under New CISPA Rules

Could Netflix be called a cybersecurity threat? Slashdot posting that quotes Greg Nojeim of the Center for Democracy and Technology making the argument that wording in the proposed US bill “Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act” could do just that. A ‘threat,’ according to the bill, is among other things anything that may result in an unauthorized effort to ad-adversely impact the availability of information. Nojeim argues that the vague wording could be used to justify slowing down Netflix at congested connections.

Submitted by: metalfreak

• Blackphone has started shipping.

Blackphone is aconsumer grade handset running a forked version of Android called PrivatOS bundled with privacy-related apps including Silent Phone and Silent Text (for normal voice, video and text communications), Disconnect (VPN and search), SpiderOak (cloud storage) and the Smarter Wi-Fi Manager (for protection from dodgy hotspots). The first units of the $629 handset to ship are for European LTE users, and U.S. units will follow.

Submitted by: KAPT_Kipper

Discussion

• Facebook experiment proves that social networks can alter your mood
• Facebook explains why it briefly toyed with users' emotions
• Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks
• Frame Clashes, or: Why the Facebook Emotion Experiment Stirs Such Emotion
• Adam D. I. Kramer post about Facebook recent study published in PNAS
• What Facebook’s Own Rules Say About Its News-Feed Experiment
• ‘Where Are the Limits?’ What Users Are Saying About Facebook’s News Feed Experiment
• The Morality Of A/B Testing

Pick of the Day

• Swift Player

Links

• This episode on dailytechnewsshow.com
• Support DTNS on Patreon
• DTNS subreddit

Preceded by: "Business^3, Transparency^3"

Facebook feeds you sadness

Followed by: "Community demands: Yahoo answers"