Social Media

French blogger spurs town to clean up 2 tons of trash from global tourist spot

by
Share this
Share

A 25-year-old tourist’s calls on his social networks for people to clean up trash strewn around the world-famous Uyuni Salt Flats Train Graveyard in Bolivia got immediate results.

In a matter of days, blogger Alexis Dessard raised the municipality along with peoples of all ages in the community, soldiers, labor unions, and other organizations in an all-out effort to clean up the area; Hundreds of people collected more than 4k lbs of litter which had been accumulating for years.

By Milan Sime Martinic

Snow sublimation confuses viewers, spurs conspiracy theory about Texas storms

by
Share this
Share

A well-known property of matter that converts it from solid to gas is at the center of a wave of Tik-Tok videos alleging that the Texas snow is fake and part of a government plan to control citizens .

The videos show how a handful of snow exposed to fire fails to drip water. “See? Proof,” say the videos.

In reality, the snow has turned to vapor and absorbs the water. Pure snow is very cold water, but a handful of snow off the ground may contain impurities that burn when exposed to fire, making it appear the snowball is scorching. That, too, is presented in the videos as “proof” that the storms were not real. In reality, the shocking visual can make it appear that the snow that is burning and the evaporating snow is smoke.

By Milan Sime Martinic

The Man Who Livestreamed a Birth on Facebook Has Lost Bid to Sue News for Copyright

by
Share this
Share

When you livestream something and news organizations cover your story, using the images you uploaded in their report, is it copyright infringement?

It is not, according to a recent ruling against a man who in 2016 livestreamed the birth of his child to Facebook (note: he did not intend for the livestream to be public, but attempted to make it viewable only to friends and family members). When many news organizations covered the story, using parts of the video feed to illustrate (for example, ABC used 22 seconds of the 45 minute stream), Kali Kanongataa sued for copyright infringement.

US District Judge Lewis Kaplan agreed with the defense that the purpose of the Fair Use defense was to allow portions of works to be used for commentary and news reports. If copyright suits like Kanongataa’s succeeded, news in the current era of social media sharing of digital images would suffer because it wouldn’t be covered as well.

Twitter Looking to Sell

by
Share this
Share

“There is a valuable idea inside Twitter. But Twitter won’t be the company that realizes it,” Paul Graham tweeted last month.

Twitter top brass has now stated that they are in a strong position to sell, and are considering “the right options” for moving forward.

Twitter’s sales are slowing down, it’s not attracting new users, and it’s not monetizing well.

However, it remains very popular with people interested in news and activism, as well as just general things happening in real time around the world.

Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and Disney are potential buyers.