February 2022 Links

Governments and social media platforms should not rely on content removal for combatting harmful scientific misinformation online, a report by the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science, has said.

Tweets We Like Aren’t Alike: Time of Day Affects Engagement with Vice and Virtue Tweets Abstract: “Consumers are increasingly engaging with content on social media platforms, such as by “following” Twitter accounts and “liking” tweets. How does their engagement change through the day for vice content offering immediate gratification versus virtue content offering long-term knowledge benefits? Examining when (morning vs. evening) engagement happens with which content (vice vs. virtue), the current research reveals a time-of-day asymmetry. As morning turns to evening, engagement shifts away from virtue and toward vice content. This asymmetry is documented in three studies using actual Twitter data—millions of data points collected every 30 minutes over long periods of time—and one study using an experimental setting. Consistent with a process of self-control failure, one of the Twitter data studies shows a theory-driven moderation of the asymmetry, and the experiment shows mediation via self-control. However, multiple processes are likely at play, as time does not unfold in isolation during a day, but co-occurs with the unfolding of multiple events. These results provide new insights into social media engagement and guide practitioners on when to post which content.”"

Bowers (1938) was the first researcher to find that interpersonal channels are more important than mass media channels for later adopters than for earlier adopters.

Hard Tomatoes, Hard Times: A Report of the Agribusiness Accountability Project on the Failure of America’s Land Grant College Complex. Tomatoes were selected to be produced because they were hard and could be picked by machine.

CRS Report on “Section 230: An Overview”

My Twitter thread on Elon Musk’s in the limit thinking.

How Discord, Born From an Obscure Game, Became a Social Hub for Young People

Different groups of hominins probably learned from one another much earlier than was previously thought, and that knowledge was also distributed much further. Phys.org

“Gimme shelter: The rise and rise of corrugated iron”

Herbert Simon, “The Architecture of Complexity”

As Jessica Orkin noted, “We are in a liminal space, and it is here that old power structures get destabilized and old rules lose their potency.” Stowe Boyd

Your attention didn’t collapse. It was stolen

Hacker News links:



First published Mar 4, 2022