Questions tagged [social-media]
websites and applications that enable users to create and share content or to participate in social networking.
63 questions
11
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1
answer
734
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Did Palestinians on social media decipher the "signals and gestures" that police used against protestors in Ferguson?
The Reverend Traci D. Blackmon stated the following in a recent interview for National Public Radio:
when the young people went to the street in Ferguson and encountered military tanks and snipers ...
- 8,005
4
votes
2
answers
786
views
At Reddit, are unofficial AI bots "posting old content as if it is their own" and "responding to comments"?
Redditor u/Embarrassed-Mouse-49 recently posted the following (current score of 6.9k 13k) to r/YouShouldKnow:
YSK ai bots are taking over reddit. Posting old content as if it is their own with poorly ...
- 9,280
4
votes
0
answers
756
views
Are Chinese trends being mislabeled as Japanese or Korean?
I'm seeing claims like this in various places on the Internet:
Some Chinese trends such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu makeup, specific styles of makeup originating from and named after Chinese social ...
- 9,280
9
votes
1
answer
620
views
Does TikTok "shadow ban" pro-Israeli content?
According to one influencer interviewed on Fox News, TikTok makes it difficult to post pro-Israeli content. She alleges that such posts don't get publicly displayed but that she has to manually send ...
5
votes
1
answer
1k
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Is social media bad for the mental health of youth?
Multiple sources have blamed on social media for having (or potentially having) negative impact on mental state of young people. To name few:
NPR writes
SEATTLE — The public school district in ...
- 8,884
4
votes
1
answer
6k
views
Were 400 people arrested in Russia for social media posts in 2018?
In a 2019 interview John Anderson interviewed Konstantin Kisin (excerpt, original video). The discussion is transcribed by the OP of Were over 3000 persons arrested in Britain for social media posts ...
- 695
37
votes
2
answers
79k
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Were over 3,000 persons arrested in Britain for social media posts in 2018?
In 2019, John Anderson interviewed Konstantin Kisin. The discussion is transcribed by me. I is the interviewer and K is for Konstantin.
K: In Russia last year 400 people were arrested for things that ...
- 8,884
-4
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Is the Glitch In the Matrix subreddit on Reddit real stories? [closed]
Here is the subreddit
reddit.com/r/glitch_in_the_matrix
Here is a fairly recent example of a story posted to that subreddit
https://www.reddit.com/r/Glitch_in_the_Matrix/comments/qdainf/...
- 1
8
votes
1
answer
4k
views
Did Near, a prominent emulator developer, take their own life?
A couple of weeks ago, there was news in the gaming-related media that Near, the developer of SNES emulators, has reportedly died by suicide.
However, the proof of this is an anonymous document posted ...
- 3,503
3
votes
1
answer
6k
views
Does this video depict a neo-nazi leader dying in the middle of a speech?
I'n seeing this video all over twitter, with yesterday supposedly being the 4 year anniversary:
"The head of the neo-Nazi nationalists in Lvov Ukraine died in the middle of a speech"
https:/...
- 561
17
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Did Youtube take down Dr. Pierre Kory's congressional testimony?
Bret Weinstein claimed in an interview on Triggernometry:
They also removed Pierre Cory's congressional testimony. He testified
in front of the [US] Senate on the very same topic and YouTube removed
...
- 34k
10
votes
1
answer
3k
views
Is this video of an attack on an elderly Asian woman authentic?
A video of what appears to be an attack on an elderly Asian woman has been posted on social media, with the following description:
UNPROVOKED ATTACK ON ELDERLY ASIAN WOMAN
A 69-year-old woman was ...
- 117
5
votes
1
answer
794
views
Does China censor online discussions of female orgasms?
A Washington Post article describes how people in China were recently discussing certain taboo subjects using the Clubhouse app:
They asked questions about the protests in Hong Kong, reports of mass ...
- 2,924
3
votes
0
answers
1k
views
Did a BBC headline originally misspell “analyst” as “analcyst”?
Back in 2017, a number of tweets circulated ostensibly showing a Facebook embed of a BBC headline with an unfortunate typo. An example of such a Tweet:
https://twitter.com/ClaireHammond/status/...
- 1,739
69
votes
1
answer
27k
views
Was Bill Gates' mugshot photo used in 2010 as a template for Outlook contacts?
This claim recently came up in a Reddit post but linked to this article from news.softpedia.com which states:
Getting back to the Gates mug shot being used as the generic profile
picture in Outlook ...
- 931
4
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Was the "Do So" movement orchestrated by Cambridge Analytica and is it responsible for the results of the Trinidad and Tobago election?
The Great Hack is a documentary which, among other things, claims that SCL Group (which the now-infamous Cambridge Analytica is a subsidiary of) worked for the United National Congress (UNC) in ...
- 1,409
66
votes
5
answers
19k
views
Has BLM raised over 1 billion dollars but not yet performed any neighborhood cleanup, school funding, food aid or housing services?
This Twitter post by James Woods claims that the Black Lives Matter movement has raised over 1 billion dollars but has not yet performed any neighborhood cleanup, college funding, student economic ...
- 673
10
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Did Maureen Healy, who was shot in the head by Feds in Portland, write the following press release?
There is a "press release" circulating on the internet. It purports to have been written by Maureen Healy, the protestor who received a blow to the head from a projectile in Portland, Oregon....
- 399
5
votes
2
answers
422
views
Are the "DHSC Communications Team" using bots to flood social media with posts showing NHS workers supportive of government policy?
The image below seems to be circulating on Facebook along with a text
To give you an idea of the times we are living in, Twitter has been
flooded with hundreds of new accounts today.
All ...
- 873
1
vote
0
answers
671
views
Do Alex Jones' videos get thousands of views?
Alex Jones, after being kicked off YouTube, has found a new home: Banned.video. And the view-counter over there seems very suspicious: it shows each video having thousands of views. And each time I ...
- 4,152
51
votes
1
answer
16k
views
Is Trump personally blocking people on Twitter?
To quote John Gruber's commentary, related to the recent appeals court ruling whereby Trump cannot block people on Twitter:
With the absurd number of replies he gets with each tweet — thousands, if ...
9
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Are 63% of Instagram users 'miserable'?
A few articles report this statistic that 63% of Instagram users are 'miserable':
https://www.deseretnews.com/article/900022603/63-percent-of-instagram-users-report-being-miserable-heres-why.html
...
- 199
16
votes
1
answer
934
views
Did fake news on Facebook influence US elections in 2016?
I've encountered repeated references to fake news on Facebook influencing various elections. Example from a often quoted Facebook critique in Time Magazine:
As a result, when confronted with ...
- 492
181
votes
4
answers
49k
views
Does YouTube delete video dislikes?
On some YouTube videos, particularly highly downvoted ones, I often see comments asserting that their dislikes on the video are being deleted, either by YouTube or the channel itself.
From the ...
- 1,701
11
votes
1
answer
3k
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Are these photos of burned home surrounded by pristine trees in California due to the forest fires real?
These photos are circulating on social media. Are they real? How can a forest fire burn homes in the center of a forest without burning the trees?
Portion of Paradise, CA after the "Forest Fire".
...
- 2,378
7
votes
1
answer
868
views
Did a baby named Netflix de Jesús get registered this year in Colombia?
I was recently sent this image via social media, claiming that a baby with given name Netflix de Jesús had been registered earlier this year in Colombia:
This is not entirely an implausible claim,...
- 591
6
votes
0
answers
276
views
Did Facebook ads significantly influence voting behaviour in the 2016 presidential election?
There have been significant concerns in some political groups about foreign interference via social media on many recent elections. But there seems to be little hard evidence that any content on ...
- 56.7k
6
votes
1
answer
761
views
Are scammers using social media fake-news sharing behaviour to identify and target gullible people?
In the aftermath of the Cambridge Analytica scandal I remember hearing - likely in an interview in a BBC Radio4 programme on the topic (unfortunately I don't recall more than that) - a claim that ...
- 873
12
votes
2
answers
803
views
Did GOP senators say these things about Kavanaugh allegations?
I saw the following screenshot on Twitter:
The picture shows an MSNBC screen with the header "GOP SENATORS ON KAVANAUGH ALLEGATIONS" with pictures and the following quotes:
"I'll listen to the lady, ...
- 223
5
votes
1
answer
568
views
Is British MP and Brexit campaigner Jacob Rees-Mogg receiving support on social media from known Kremlin networks?
This article, which is being linked and shared on Facebook, claims that British MP and Brexit campaigner Jacob Rees-Mogg is receiving support on social media from known Kremlin networks.
Analysis of ...
- 7,319
3
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Is this picture from the flooded cave rescue in Thailand?
I came across the following post on Facebook (original text is on Portuguese, translation and emphasis by me):
BOYS MEDITATING WHILE WAIT FOR RESCUE INSIDE CAVE IN THAILAND
The former Buddhist monk ...
- 141
4
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Was—or is?—there an ICE checkpoint at the 23rd Street N/Q/R/W subway station in Manhattan? [closed]
All around social media this past Tuesday in New York City a viral message claiming there was an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) "checkpoint” at the 23rd Street N/Q/R/W subway station ...
- 5,727
19
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Did 5% of British users delete their Facebook accounts after the Cambridge Analytica scandal?
Reported on the BBC:
But when the news came out that Facebook had passed on data of up to 87 million of its members to political consultancy Cambridge Analytica without their knowledge - and one in ...
9
votes
1
answer
967
views
Does Instagram withhold likes to increase usage?
Matt Mayberry, who works at a California startup called Dopamine Labs, says it's common knowledge in the industry that Instagram exploits this craving by strategically withholding "likes" from certain ...
- 193
26
votes
2
answers
25k
views
"The Flat Earth Society has members all around the globe"?
When one googles "The Flat Earth Society has members all around the globe", many images appear. Some of them claim this is a post by the Flat Earth Society itself, such as this one:
I wonder if this ...
- 466
2
votes
0
answers
423
views
Do we live in a post-truth era? [closed]
Apparently Oxford Dictionary's "word of the year" in 2016 was post-truth:
... relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are
less influential in shaping public opinion than ...
- 1,146
10
votes
0
answers
597
views
Does social media cause permanent damage to concentration capability?
In this TEDxtalk (transcript is here), the speaker claims that there is a growing amount of research that shows that spending large amounts of time on social media permanently damages the capability ...
- 101
3
votes
1
answer
2k
views
WhatsApp group "Interschools" linked to Daesh?
I recently received this message, apparently a mass text message, from a WhatsApp group:
There is a watsup group called' Interschools, if invited, don't join
the group, it belongs to Daesh(ISIS). If ...
- 876
12
votes
0
answers
1k
views
Is this €150k beach club bill real?
This bill, with a total amount of over €150,000, from a beach club in Monaco is currently circulating on social media. Is it real?
I've checked the website of the beach club; some of the more common ...
- 1,452
7
votes
1
answer
1k
views
Did 150,000 people march against Muslim Immigration in Poland?
The following video was posted on the Facebook page of Milo Yiannopoulos.
The video has the following text:
150,000 MARCHED AGAINST MUSLIM IMMIGRATION IN POLAND
BUT THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA DID ...
- 71
6
votes
1
answer
18k
views
Do 82% of women making $100K per year in the US do it through home based businesses? [closed]
See this on social media every now and then. Any truth to it?
- 299
13
votes
3
answers
2k
views
Is there a Russian social media game called "Blue Whale" that incites self-violence and suicide?
According to the Daily Mail:
Police in Russia are investigating a rush of teenage suicide attempts amid fears that they may have been manipulated by sinister social media groups.
Two schoolgirls fell ...
- 15.9k
4
votes
0
answers
6k
views
Is the "Most people are sheep" video genuine?
On August 30, 2016, Anonymous posted a "quite disturbing" video of a young woman caving in to herd behavior by standing up whenever a random beep was heard in the waiting area of an eye exam office ("...
- 1,025
21
votes
0
answers
1k
views
Does Twitter censor content with a double standard? [closed]
If you google search "twitter double standard censorship", there's certainly no shortage of people claiming that Twitter censors content with a double standard. Essentially, the claim will take ...
user11643
11
votes
1
answer
810
views
Does YouTube send every video to every subscription inbox?
According to this video by The Game Theorists, YouTube does not push every video a channel makes to all of that channel's subscriber inboxes. Rather, a subscriber only sees videos from channels they ...
- 209
5
votes
1
answer
422
views
Can 100 bicycles be made from the materials used to build one car?
I found this tweet from Greenpeace Colombia which says:
(In Spanish):
Con los materiales usados para hacer un auto se hacen 100 bicicletas.
(Translated):
The materials used to build one car ...
2
votes
1
answer
673
views
Did Frances Coppola tweet about immigration opponents organising the Cologne sex crimes?
Did Frances Coppola, a senior journalist at Forbes, post the following tweet?
@shoerster I bet they did. I suspect anti-immigration people of organising the Cologne
sex crimes. Fastest way of ...
- 39.1k
67
votes
1
answer
23k
views
Did this Twitter bot predict the Paris shootings 2 days before they happened?
A (now suspended) Twitter bot under the handle PZFeed Ebooks (@PZbooks) posted this tweet on November 11th, at 11:44 AM. Note the date carefully, that's November 11th, 2015.
It reads:
BREAKING: ...
- 1,965
195
votes
1
answer
30k
views
Did the Twitter account Fifndhs predict the exact World Cup results ahead of time?
There was a feeling of exhilaration and excitement on Twitter, with the Twitter account @FifNdhs called “FIFA Corruption” seemingly having predicted the final result of the World Cup final hours ahead ...
- 30.4k
7
votes
1
answer
980
views
Are Facebook Likes similar to cocaine addiction?
The Financal Times reports:
Dopamine jolt behind internet addiction
The effect on the brain is similar to what makes drug addicts reuse cocaine
Kristen Lindquist, professor of psychology at the ...
- 2,629