The exhausting playbook behind Trump’s battle with Twitter

AI could help scientists fact-check covid claims amid a deluge of research

The Download Your daily dose of what’s up in emerging technology 05.29.20 Good morning! Today: the backstory to Trump's fight with Twitter, and AI could help researchers to fact-check the flood of papers on covid. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. The exhausting playbook behind Trump’s battle with Twitter Some history: Conservative and far-right figures have been depicting Twitter’s enforcement of its policies against abuse and misinformation as a crusade laced with anti-conservative bias for a long time (remember Gamergate?) But the issue came to a head this week, after Twitter fact-checked two of President Trump’s tweets for containing misleading claims about mail-in voting. The response: Trump has just signed an executive order that could penalize major social-media companies for perceived censorship of conservative views. This moment feels like an inevitable escalation of a conflict that has been playing out across the major social-media companies, but particularly Twitter, for years. Hours before the news broke, Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway went on Fox News and encouraged viewers to hound a Twitter employee. The blueprint: The cycle has been set off in the past whenever Twitter has taken action against abuse. It begins with waves of speculation arguing that Twitter isn’t actually, say, enforcing its new abuse policies but instead implementing a secret anti-conservative agenda that must be stopped. Then there’s a rush to find and target someone responsible for implementing it. None of these claims have to be true to be popular, which is something Trump and his online supporters know well. They just need to sound controversial enough to grab attention—or, better yet, redirect it from something else. Read the full story.  —Abby Ohlheiser AI could help scientists fact-check covid claims amid a deluge of research An experimental tool helps researchers wade through the overwhelming amount of coronavirus literature to check whether emerging studies follow scientific consensus. Why it matters: Since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been a flood of relevant preprints and papers, produced by people with varying degrees of expertise and vetted through varying degrees of peer review. This has made it challenging for researchers trying to advance their understanding of the virus to sort scientific fact from fiction. How it works: The SciFact tool, developed by the Seattle-based research nonprofit Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), is designed to help with this process. Type a scientific claim into its search bar—say, “hypertension is a comorbidity for covid”—and it will populate a feed with relevant papers, labeled as either supporting or refuting the assertion. How it was built: The system is built on top of a neural network called VeriSci. It was trained on an existing fact-checking data set compiled from Wikipedia and fine-tuned on a new scientific fact-checking data set containing 1,409 scientific claims, accompanied by 5,183 abstracts. How it performs: When the researchers tested VeriSci on scientific claims related to covid-19, they found that it retrieved relevant papers and accurately labeled them 23 out of 36 times. In the future, some of the tool’s errors could be reduced in part through use of more training data. Read the full story. —Karen Hao We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction in these weird times. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or tweet 'em at me.)   + An empty Paris, 100 years on.   + A 70-step basketball shot machine, two months in the making.   + Why “The Gross Clinic” is one of the most important paintings in US history.   + Read a poem a day by contemporary poets.   + This man tried to stop squirrels stealing his bird feed with mechanical engineering. Squirrels proved a tougher adversary than he’d reckoned.   + See if you can spot how this real estate listing differs from others.   + You don’t need to do as much exercise as you might think to get the benefits of it, and you might enjoy it more if you call it something else. The top ten must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 We are nowhere near herd immunity Even in the hardest-hit cities, the vast majority of people still remain vulnerable to coronavirus. (NYT $)   + There were nearly 700,000 new infections reported worldwide last week. (NYT $)   + Covid-19 has been devastating for Latinx communities. (Stat)   + We must not get complacent. (New Yorker $) 2 The UK’s contact tracing program has launched, despite not being ready Nothing to do with needing a distraction from the Cummings scandal, surely. (FT $)   + Remembering the stories of the people who died from coronavirus in the UK. (The Guardian) 3 We need to understand how the virus travels There’s a surprising amount of variability in the way it spreads in different places at different times. (Wired $)   + A small number of people may be responsible for a large number of infections. (Axios) 4 Trump responds to Twitter’s fact-check by targeting social-media protections This could backfire. (TR)   + Two things you need to understand about it. (Techdirt)   + Zuckerberg has dismissed fact-checking...after bragging about fact-checking. (Ars Technica)   + The story behind Twitter’s decision. (OneZero) 5 Our sense of time is broken ⏱️ And that’s bad news for our mental health. (Scientific American $)   + How to stay sane when the world’s going mad. (TR) 6 Russia is hacking email software, says the NSA Déjà vu alert. (CBS) 7 This isn’t the end for cities 🌇 Density does not have to mean overcrowding. (Foreign Affairs) 8 Social media mobs can be good, actually 🔥 The online rage at Amy Cooper was justified, and could be a powerful deterrent. (The Atlantic) 9 A YouTuber has sparked outrage after rehoming her son She adopted him from China, made a lot of money off him, and then gave him away. (Buzzfeed) 10 You can make new friends, even during a pandemic 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 “Weak ties” matter a lot right now. (Vox) Support independent tech journalism.  MIT Technology Review delivers insights on today's technologies and their impact upon our collective future through a trustworth lens you won't find anywhere else. Subscribe today.  Quote of the day "It was a kind of relief. And then the anxiety set in." —Filmmaker Martin Scorsese tells the BBC how he’s been feeling during lockdown.  Top image credit: CHARLES DELUVIO | UNSPLASH Please send crafty squirrels to hi@technologyreview.com. Follow me on Twitter at @charlottejee. Thanks for reading! —Charlotte Was this newsletter forwarded to you, and you'd like to see more? Sign up for free Technologies driving business Virtual conference, June 8–10 View this in a browser You received this newsletter because you Webmaster220 Bible Study Blog  subscribed with your email address  *Edit email preferences   |   *Unsubscribe from all emails Follow us: MIT Technology Review One Main Street Cambridge, MA 02142

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