https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/02/chinese-face-swap-app-zao-triggers-privacy-fears-viral
Released on Friday, the Zao app went viral as Chinese users seized on the chance to see themselves act out scenes from well-known movies using deepfake technology, which has already prompted concerns elsewhere over potential misuse.
As of Monday afternoon it remained the top free download in China, according to the app market data provider App Annie.
Concerns over deepfakes have grown since the 2016 US election campaign, which saw wide use of online misinformation, according to US investigations.
In June, Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said the social network was struggling to find ways to deal with deepfake videos, saying they may constitute “a completely different category” of misinformation than anything faced before.
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more on deepfake in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=deepfake
Ed-tech historian and critic Audrey Watters, for example, said plagiarism-detection software in general frames all writers as potential cheaters, undermining the trust that is essential to strong student-teacher relationships. She said the companies making the software tend to accept as given that most writing assignments are so cookie-cutter that students can reasonably consider copying someone else’s work a viable strategy.
My note: the paragraph above reflects my deep personal belief and most of the information and notes in this blog regarding the “automation” of plagiarism detection
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more on plagiarism in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=plagiarism
New 50-State Data Tool Exposes College and Career ‘Readiness Gap’
Researchers probing a new, interactive “data explorer” that matches students’ outcomes with college and career readiness measures found that—while nearly all students are graduating from high school in some states—fewer than half are considered ready for college or careers.
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More on Career in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=career
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2019-08-28-colleges-face-investigations-over-whether-their-use-of-social-media-follows-accessibility-regulations
Nearly 200 colleges face federal civil rights investigations opened in 2019 about whether they are accessible and communicate effectively to people with disabilities.
As a result, colleges are rolling out social media accessibility standards and training communications staff members to take advantage of built-in accessibility tools in platforms including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
For example, last fall, a blind man filed 50 lawsuits against colleges whose websites he said didn’t work with his screen reader. And on August 21, in Payan v. Los Angeles Community College District, the Federal District Court for the Central District of California ruled that Los Angeles Community College failed to provide a blind student with “meaningful access to his course materials” via MyMathLab, software developed by Pearson, in a timely manner.
YouTube and Facebook have options to automatically generate captions on videos posted there, while Twitter users with access to its still-developing Media Studio can upload videos with captions. Users can provide alt-text, or descriptive language describing images, through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Hootsuite.
California State University at Long Beach, for instance, advises posting main information first and hashtags last to make messages clear for people using screen readers. The University of Minnesota calls for indicating whether hyperlinks point to [AUDIO], [PIC], or [VIDEO]. This summer, leaders at the College of William & Mary held a training workshopfor the institution’s communications staff in response to an Office for Civil Rights investigation.
an online website accessibility center.
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more on SM in education
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=social+m+edia+education
https://www.npr.org/2019/08/29/751116338/china-intercepts-wechat-texts-from-u-s-and-abroad-researcher-says
Chinese cyberspace is one of the most surveilled and censored in the world. That includes WeChat. Owned by Tencent, one of China’s biggest companies, the chat-meets-payment app has more than 1 billion monthly users in China and now serves users outside the country, too, although it does not divulge how many. Researchers say its use abroad has extended the global reach of China’s surveillance and censorship methods.
“The intention of keeping people safe by building these systems goes out the window the moment you don’t secure them at all,” says Victor Gevers, co-founder of the nonprofit GDI Foundation, an open-source data security collective.
Every day, Gevers scans the Internet for vulnerabilities to find unsecured databases, and he has exposed a large number of them, particularly linked to China.
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more on WeChat and surveillance in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=wechat
How Teens on TikTok Drew National Attention to a Teachers’ Labor Issue
Although the TikTok was intended exclusively for students in the Clark County School District, it ended up going viral, in large part because it was shared on Twitter by social media producer and podcaster Klaudia Amenabar. As of publication, it has racked up more than 36,000 likes and 780 comments, and has prompted other CCSD students on TikTok to join Sullivan’s call to strike.
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more on Tik Tok in this IMS blog
https://blog.stcloudstate.edu/ims?s=tik+tok