SoylentNews

Database to Track 'Suspicious Memes' on Twitter

posted by n1 on Tuesday August 26 2014, @04:48PM   
from the most-of-twitter-to-be-flagged dept.

PapayaSF writes:

The National Science Foundation is funding the “Truthy” database, intended to detect “false and misleading ideas,” "political smears," and other "social pollution” in online political activity. Researchers at Indiana University have received $919,917 (so far) for this project. The resulting open-source platform will be made publicly available, including via a web service open to the public for "monitoring trends, bursts, and suspicious memes.”

According to the grant, “This service could mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate."

• Re:(off topic) this is a test Re:(off topic) this is a test (Score: 3, Interesting) by n1 on Tuesday August 26 2014, @08:55PM

  by n1 (993) on Tuesday August 26 2014, @08:55PM (#85908) Journal

  I can't say i'm very impressed. I do not feel it's appropriate without proper attribution and linking, it's also putting an unnecessary load on the SoylentNews servers.

  I was under the impression the pipedot founder bryan(?) and NCommander had communicated amicably on a number of issues, so this situation comes as a surprise.

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  Starting Score:	1		point
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• Re:(off topic) this is a test Re:(off topic) this is a test (Score: 3, Informative) by lhsi on Tuesday August 26 2014, @09:17PM

  by lhsi (711) on Tuesday August 26 2014, @09:17PM (#85920) Journal

  A little while ago, a few weeks maybe, Bryan said he would stop adding stories and focus on coding. Ncommander offered to have the SN feed show up on pipedot, but nothing happened for a while.

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  • Re:(off topic) this is a test (Score: 3, Informative) by bryan on Wednesday August 27 2014, @08:06AM

    by bryan (29) <bryan@pipedot.org> on Wednesday August 27 2014, @08:06AM (#86124) Homepage Journal

    When NCommander graciously offered to have the SN feed show up on Pipedot, I wrote a simple script to do exactly that (within a day or two). However, the main editor at Pipedot, zafiro17 [pipedot.org] (also a large contributer on Usenet's comp.misc), wanted to try his hand at something more unique [pipedot.org] - and so I agreed to keep the feed off for a few weeks. Unfortunately, he is now in the midst of an unrelated database project that is taking up more of his time and so he asked me to finally turn the feed on.

    No animosity exists between the two sites. We are working towards the same goal. Ever since the July 4th incorporation as a public benefit corporation, the policy of Pipedot is to direct all users to SoylentNews for daily news and discussion.

    The Pipecode project at Pipedot is working on making a better slash-like platform where users are in control and technical measures are implemented so that mistakes like the "beta" redesign debacle cannot happen in the future.

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• Re:(off topic) this is a test (Score: 3, Interesting) by lhsi on Tuesday August 26 2014, @09:28PM

  by lhsi (711) on Tuesday August 26 2014, @09:28PM (#85925) Journal

  Found a link where something related is mentioned: https://pipedot.org/comment/1404886957_ncommander_pipedot_org [pipedot.org]

  I didn't see an anouncement on pipedot after I noticed it earlier, but hadn't checked the site in a couple of days.

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• Re:(off topic) this is a test (Score: 3, Interesting) by Random2 on Tuesday August 26 2014, @10:14PM

  by Random2 (669) on Tuesday August 26 2014, @10:14PM (#85943)

  Reposting for the sake of visiblilty:

  Before we jump too far down the fire and pitchforks route, we should determine if this comment is factual and still valid:

  https://pipedot.org/comment/1404886957_ncommander_pipedot_org [pipedot.org] [pipedot.org]

  Specifically the part:

  I don't think the staff (or I) would have any issue if you spooled in our articles directly (obviously, we have to get a license on new content hammered out before you could do that, but that's on our TODO

  If they have worked out some sort of licensing then they may be in the clear, but if not this could be a bit awkward. Remember that Soylent is also a news aggregation at present, and taking articles from other news sites (sometimes verbatim) is a thing that has been done here. That said, I personally consider also grabbing the comments fairly questionable, as aggretators distinguish themselves on content and community, the comments on these articles being the 'community' aspect of Soylent.

  Moreover, I can see how what NCommander? posted as being interpreted to mean "All of the content on our site can be freely posted on your site after we have reached a licensing agreement"; although I believe what he meant was "Once we have started our independent journalism, you may repost those articles (without comments) freely".

  --
  If only I registered 3 users earlier....

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• Re:(off topic) this is a test (Score: 2) by lhsi on Wednesday August 27 2014, @07:47AM

  by lhsi (711) on Wednesday August 27 2014, @07:47AM (#86119) Journal

  Pipedot about page has been updated to mention it: https://pipedot.org/about [pipedot.org]

  About the Pipedot - SoylentNews Gateway

  Stories and comments posted on SoylentNews are mirrored by the Pipedot - SoylentNews gateway. Please do not take this to mean that we are "stealing" content or trying to redirect other's efforts to our own site. It's just a mirror and you still "own" your own comments just as much as you do with the copies indexed by Google, Coral Cache, or the Wayback Machine.

  Stories and comments are owned by their original poster!

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