September 2023 business blogspot

Social Media Manipulation
"When I ran for London mayor in 2021", says Rory Stewart on The Rest is Politics podcast, "two political consultancy firms from overseas came to my house. Both claimed they could win the election for me by "manipulating social media". Both said they’d worked all over the world, one boasting it had just won a race in a former Soviet republic. I turned them down, but this sort of thing is now increasingly common". Apparently, it played a part in the campaign against the clean air around London Ulez scheme, which helped sway the Uxbridge by-election in the Tories’ favour. It turned out that only around 10 per cent of the Twitter users pushing anti-Ulez messages were real - the other 90 per cent were fake. Here’s how it works. First, the consultancy sets up tens of thousands of fake accounts on Twitter, Facebook and TikTok. This part is cheap - a thousand accounts can be created for as little as £30 - and it's easy to do. The operators get the accounts to follow each other, so that the users look like real people, then they amplify whatever message the campaign wants. The full service, however, is not cheap. The fixers who approached Rory Stewart wanted hundreds of thousands of pounds per month. But if you’re set on beating your rivals and prepared to risk the reputational damage of exposure, some will consider it money well spent.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/2jx4JzB7TugsFkE9Sb9UEo

Legislation Against Harmful Social Media Content
New EU rules require social media platforms to take down posts flagged as harmful within 24 hours - and that has a dramatic effect on the spread of harmful content. A new study has found that government legislation like that recently introduced by the EU can be effective at moderating harmful social media content, even on fast-moving platforms like X (formerly Twitter). Several countries are considering regulating social media content to reduce the likelihood of harm in light of the European Union (EU) introduction of its Digital Services Act to combat the dissemination of dangerous content. A new study by researchers from the University of Technology Sydney and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne has looked at the effectiveness of such legislation. "Social networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter (now X) do not have much incentive to resist harmful content, as their business model is based on monetizing attention", said Marian-Andrei Rizoui, corresponding author of the study. "Elon Musk acquired Twitter with the stated goal of preserving free speech for the future, but alongside free speech, misinformation and disinformation spreads and prospers in this unregulated space". The EU legislation includes mechanisms to seek out harmful online content using appointed "trusted flaggers" whose reports require platforms to remove flagged material within 24 hours. Indications are that similar legislation would be welcome in this country. Early findings from a national survey of public attitudes published in March 2023 found that nearly 90 per cent of people between 18 and 34 had witnessed or received harmful content online at least once. Two-thirds of all UK adults reported being exposed to hate speech, false information, fake images and bullying at least once, and more than 40 per cent of 18-to-24-year-olds had been exposed to this type of harmful content "many times".
https://www.uts.edu.au/news/business-law/government-regulation-can-effectively-curb-social-media-dangers

Interpol Interactive
An Interpol-led operation arrested 14 suspects and identified 20,674 "suspicious" networks spanning 25 African countries that international police have linked to more than $40 million in cybercrime losses. Africa Cyber Surge II, a combined police operation which began in April and lasted four months, was a coordinated effort between Interpol, African law enforcement, and private-sector security firms to disrupt online extortion, phishing, business email compromise (BEC) and other cyber scams. Interpol, Afripol, and infosec companies Group-IB and Uppsala Security provided on-the-ground operational support, the international agency said. In total, information shared by Group-IB and other private partners Trend Micro, Kaspersky, and Coinbase led to some 150 Interpol analytical reports containing intel on cyber threats targeting specific countries. These reports included details about: 3,786 malicious command and control servers, 14,134 victim IPs linked to data stealer cases, 1,415 phishing links and domains, 939 scam IPs and more than 400 other malicious URLs, IPs and botnets.
https://www.interpol.int/en/News-and-Events/News/2023/Cybercrime-14-arrests-thousands-of-illicit-cyber-networks-disrupted-in-Africa-operation

High-Tech Ballpoint Inks Draw Stretchable LEDs
The invention of the printing press revolutionised duplication of the written word, giving the hands of tired scribes a break and making written material more accessible. A similar breakthrough has happened in reverse in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis. There is much anticipation about the exciting possibilities of stretchable electronics, also known as elastic electronics or elastic circuits, technologies for building electronic circuits by depositing or embedding electronic devices and circuits onto stretchable materials including wearable fabrics. Fabrication of such things is beyond most people's abilities, but now scientists have created inks that let anyone draw stretchable LEDS onto various surfaces using regular ballpoint pens. Researchers working with Chuan Wang, associate professor of electrical and systems engineering, have developed ink pens that allow individuals to handwrite flexible, stretchable optoelectronic devices on everyday materials including paper, textiles, rubber, plastics and 3D objects. Flexible optoelectronics for emitting and detecting light, which are already found in everyday objects like smartphones and fitness trackers, can bend, fold and flex while maintaining functionality. According to the research team, the accessibility and flexibility of this method could democratise electronic manufacturing, allowing virtually endless possibilities for customised, stretchable electronic devices.
https://engineering.wustl.edu/news/2023/Perovskite-light-emitters-and-detectors-with-the-stroke-of-a-pen.html?

Boxed Rocks
In 1975, a Californian advertising executive called Gary Dahl was listening to his friends complaining about their pets when he had a brainwave, says Historic Vids on X (formerly Twitter). The perfect non-human companion, he declared, was a rock. It would be cheap as hell, and wouldn’t require “feeding, grooming or attention”. His buddies laughed, but Dahl took his “Pet Rock” idea seriously. He ordered a shipment of large stones from Mexico, packaged them in a cardboard box – complete with straw bedding and “air holes” – and wrote a mock 32-page training manual entitled The Care and Training of Your Pet Rock. They were a hit. Over the next six months, more than 1.5 million Pet Rocks were sold, making Dahl a millionaire.
https://twitter.com/historyinmemes/status/1684456286870462464

SEARCH ENGINE OF THE MONTH
Andi is a new type of search engine with an intelligent AI assistant "that answers complex questions directly, and gives you tools to fight spam and ad tech". Andi is conversational. It's like messaging a smart friend who can answers questions, and sends you useful links. It uses a simple chat interface, with a panel to show the full results. It's radically different to any other search engine you've used and provides "Deep Answers" to questions. Unlike keyword searches on Google and elsewhere, Andi will spend a lot more time to research these question (up to 10 seconds) and works to find the exact answer or information if it can, and present it along with the usual style of full search results.
https://andisearch.com/