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Researchers find Twitter is good for amplifying lies
When it comes to spreading President Trump's false and misleading remarks, Twitter is a perfect storm. A study by Media Matters found that when tweeting about Trump's statements, major news outlets include false information 30 percent of the time. And 65 percent of the time, news outlets fail to provide corrections or context in the body of those tweets. That's especially troublesome given that so many people get their news via tweets and headlines and do not fully read most stories, where they might find more context.
BBC Sport widget delivers the news without annoying you
If you're a serious ports fan, keeping up with the latest results, injuries and transfers can feel like a full-time job. Plenty of apps offer all of this information in one place, but then you're often left with two options: continuously open the app, or set up push notifications and face an onslaught of vibrations in your pocket. Now, the BBC is trying to tackle the problem with a new "Top Stories" widget for its Sports app. On iOS, that means you can read the most popular headlines from the Notification Centre and jump through to the app if one grabs your interest. They work well enough, although some of the headlines are a little too short and ambiguous. On Android, however, the new home screen widget lets you choose from different sizes and sports. Neither addition is particularly earth-shattering, but they could prove useful if your smartphone is becoming a notification nightmare.
The Daily Grind: Do you comment on headlines before you read articles?
I'm not a Twitter fan. I never use it outside of work, and the time I spend manning the Massively Twitter feed is one of the least enjoyable portions of my workday. This is due mostly to the large numbers of people who read our headlines via Twitter and then proceed to comment or tweet back without reading the article. I know; it's a game of trolls and the winner gets to feel like a special snarkanaut for cramming his invaluable insight into 140 characters or less and hopefully provoking some sort of reaction. But like all casual games, it gets tiresome rather quickly. Ultimately, we, like most writers on the internet, design headlines specifically to entice reading, not to sum up a post in 10 words. How about you, Massively readers? 'Fess up: Do you comment on headlines before you read articles, either on Twitter or elsewhere? Every morning, the Massively bloggers probe the minds of their readers with deep, thought-provoking questions about that most serious of topics: massively online gaming. We crave your opinions, so grab your caffeinated beverage of choice and chime in on today's Daily Grind!
TUAW Fact Check: Apple using underage labor? No.
When a lot of people get their news electronically, skimming over headlines through news aggregators, RSS feeds, and retweets on Twitter, sometimes the majority of information people will get from an article comes from the headline. When a headline leans towards the sensational side, or doesn't accurately reflect the information that's actually contained in the article, it's easy for poorly-represented news to spread like wildfire. This article from the UK's The Daily Telegraph, regarding Apple's self-initiated audit of its overseas manufacturing facilities, is a perfect example, with its attention-grabbing headline: "Apple Admits Using Child Labour." The sub-headline isn't any better: "Apple has admitted that child labour was used at the factories that build its computers, iPods and mobile phones." Once a person reads those words, his or her knee-jerk reaction is most likely going to be one of disgust and horror. "How could you, Apple?" they might say. If this hypothetical reader owns a Mac or an iPhone, their eyes might glance over at it with anguished guilt; if they don't own any products from Apple, it's just one more reason not to buy them. If you dig beyond the headline, however, to the meat of the Telegraph's article, where the actual reporting finally begins? Then you get a completely different story as early as the first sentence: "At least eleven 15-year-old children were discovered to be working last year in three factories which supply Apple." That's pretty far from the image conjured by the headline, of legions of school-aged children lined up in factories and slapping together MacBook Pros when they should be slapping together algebra homework. Instead, we find a relatively small number of teenaged factory workers -- reprehensible, but not unusual at all for overseas factories. The end of this first sentence is even more important, because it puts the focus where it belongs: three factories which supply Apple. Two paragraphs later, we find another very important bit of news not reflected in the headline: "Apple said the child workers are now no longer being used." Other news sites performed better reporting on the matter, but at least one still had an easily misinterpreted headline. Read on to find out more.
Google Reader Go Mobile brings RSS to your cell
Google world domination step #12,875: get inside their phones. In the latest attempt to filter every bit of data that could possibly hit your eyeballs, Google has introduced a mobile interface for its Google Reader RSS aggregator, so now you can get your news, read your email, and do the search thing without ever surfing away from a Google-owned domain. As long as you have a Google Personalized Homepage with the Reader Homepage Module installed, you can access Google Reader Go Mobile from any cellphone browser, giving you immediate access to the headlines from your favorite sites like Engadget and Engadget Mobile. Google's next step? Implantable RFID chips: get inside their heads.
