Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online Data & Society, the New York-based research institute has published a new study, Media Manipulation and Disinformation Online, which every person interested in today's media environment should read. Media manipulation techniques are being used by a wide swathe of groups, such as the alt-right, Men's Rights Activists, gamergaters and trolls. They observe one another, adopt techniques and adapt them to achieve their objectives. The report is well-researched and cites several recent case studies, including Hillary's Health and Pizzagate. Well worth a couple hours of your time to read. Pinterest: Shazam for Food? Do you use Pinterest to share food, recipes and dining experiences? A huge number of people do, including Gini Dietrich. In fact, Pinterest reports over 5 billion food-related saves and searches by US-based users in the past year. And now Pinterest has introduced new tools, including visual Lens discovery, Recipe Pins and search filters to make it easier for users to post, promote and find food and related recipes. Facebook keeps the focus on video Three additional Facebook innovations in video are worth noting this week: Facebook's watch and scroll feature, which lets users view videos side by side with their news feed is now available to desktop users. Live Chat with Friends during Facebook Live Videos gives users the ability to move in and out of private and public chats while watching a Facebook Live Video. Facebook Live With now enables people to share a Live Video with a guest. Facebook's community standards guidelines If every there were doubt that Facebook is operating as a publisher, it was put to rest once and for all by the publication by the Guardian of leaked community standards guidance documents used by Facebook content moderators. As we have argued repeatedly, Facebook is not just a carrier, a dumb pipeline. It is a publisher. And that starts with its algorithms that incorporate the judgments of their creators and it now extends to the increasingly high profile work of their content moderators. MP3 is dead. Long live MP3 Yep, many tech media outlets were suckered by a self serving corporate position. Yes, the patent on MP3s has expired. Yes, the company that owned the patents no longer will profit from the patent. But that doesn't mean that MP3 is dead as a standard anymore than JPG is dead as a standard. The patent may have expired on both formats, but they will live on. Why? Because they do the job they are intended to do - and that's good enough. Sometimes, "good enough" technology is all we need, and its simplicity and widespread adoption will keep it alive indefinitely. So, ignore the stories about the death of MP3. You don't need a replacement. It's not going anywhere. And for an intelligent explanation of this, take a look at Marco Arment's post. Car crashes all the time Ignore the clickbait headline in the New York Times. Read the article. Respect for Ev Williams, who embodies the idealism that the Web is built on. We can do better than the ad-driven, clickbaity environment we find ourselves in. Let's join Ev in not be satisfied until the Web is again a place to create amazing content and to be able to share ideas.