Trump is being given a steroid that is usually used for severe cases of covid-19

Smoking's lessons for regulating social media

Sponsored by Dassault Systèmes The Download Your daily dose of what's up in emerging technology 10.05.20 Good morning! Today: Trump is being given a steroid usually reserved for severe covid-19 cases, and smoking's lessons for regulating social media. Get your friends to sign up here to get The Download every day. Trump is being given a steroid that is usually used for severe cases of covid-19   The news: President Donald Trump has started receiving the steroid drug dexamethasone, which is usually reserved for patients with a severe case of covid-19. A study in June found that it significantly cut the chances that seriously ill patients died from the coronavirus. The World Health Organization recommends it is only given to patients with “severe and critical covid-19.” Extra oxygen: At a news conference yesterday his doctors also announced that he had required extra oxygen, after his oxygen levels fell. Trump is also receiving a five-day course of remdesivir, which evidence suggests can shorten hospital stays and save lives for covid-19 patients. However in the news conference yesterday, his doctors said he was able to get out of the hospital bed and walk, and claimed he may be discharged today.  Be careful reading too much into all it: Given that he is 74 and overweight, the president is at higher risk for serious illness. But we don’t know whether the cocktail of drugs is being given to Trump by his doctors due to their own medical assessment of his condition, or whether Trump has directed them to do so. On Friday Trump was given a dose of an unapproved, experimental, cutting-edge antibody treatment not available to other Americans. It’s being developed by Regeneron and is designed to mimic a powerful immune response in order to ward off a serious case of covid-19. Read the full story. Smoking’s lessons for regulating social media Day by day, the evidence is mounting that Facebook is bad for society. Trump’s team openly marked 3.5 million Black Americans for deterrence in their data set in the 2016 while Facebook’s own staff aided their voter suppression efforts. Despite the growing evidence of Facebook’s harm, regulation has not yet come to pass. A new way to think about it: Facebook's former director of monetization, Tim Kendall, gave testimony before Congress that suggested a new way to look at the site’s deleterious effects on democracy. Kendall compared social media to the tobacco industry. But the comparison is more than metaphorical. It’s a framework for thinking about how public opinion needs to shift so that the true costs of misinformation can be measured and policy can be changed.  How so? It might seem inevitable today, but regulating the tobacco industry was not an obvious choice to policymakers in the 1980s and 1990s, when they struggled with the notion that it was an individual’s choice to smoke. Instead, a broad public campaign to address the dangers of secondhand smoke is what finally broke the industry's heavy reliance on the myth of smoking as a personal freedom. Like secondhand smoke, misinformation damages the quality of public life. Read the full story. —Joan Donovan 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.)   + My favorite rock ‘n’ roll 10-year-old Nandi Bushell wrote a song for Dave Grohl after he wrote a song for her.   + Baby giraffes!   + How Dürer helped to invent the self-portrait. (NYT $)   + What a lovely dog.   + Imagine having as good a sense of balance as this bicycle ballet performer.   + That’s one young Buffalo Bills fan.    + An 86-year-old found a new pastime during lockdown: blogging about her scarves. (NYT $)   + Work taking over your life? It may be a good idea to find a way to mark the start and end of the working day.   + How the days of the week got their names. Sponsor Message Science powering a sustainable and resilient world Join Dassault Systèmes at Science in the Age of Experience – an exclusive, virtual science and technology event, starting October 13, 2020. Hear how industry leaders, renowned scientists/academics, government leaders, heads of private institutions and Dassault Systèmes executives and experts will set the course for a more efficient, innovative and sustainable future. Some of the most highly sought-after leaders in science and technology will join us – including our conference keynote, Nobel Prize Winner, Dr. Frances Arnold of Caltech. Request registration. 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’re entering a frightening new phase of the covid information war Misinformation will flow into the vacuum left by the White House. (Wired $)   + False negatives are more common in covid-19 testing than most people realize. (GQ)   + A problem with an Excel spreadsheet meant 16,000 cases in the UK went unreported. (BBC)  2 How an AI tool for fighting hospital deaths actually worked in the real world Technical work combined with social and emotional labour radically cut sepsis deaths. (TR)   + A VR film/game with AI characters can be different every time you watch or play. (TR)  3 Social media companies say you’re not allowed to wish for Trump’s death Ask any woman on the internet how they feel about this new rule. (NPR)   + Two high-profile Black women have pointed out that Twitter doesn’t offer them the same level of protection. (The Guardian)   + Facebook is still running ads that seek to delegitimize the election. (Vice)   + Twitter is building a new system to fight misinformation. (TechCrunch)   + The legal arguments Facebook plans to use to argue it doesn’t need to be broken up. (WSJ $)  4 America is getting closer to having a national contact tracing app It’s very much a bottom-up effort. (Recode)   + States are finally starting to use Apple and Google’s contact tracing system. (CNBC)  5 How Italy is suppressing a second wave of the coronavirus Mass testing combined with clearly communicated, strict rules. (Wired UK)   6 The making of an anti-shutdown celebrity Activists jumped on one man’s decision to reopen his gym, and social media algorithms helped turn him into a cause célèbre. (The Atlantic)   7 A new breed of computers could run forever  A Game Boy powered by tiny solar panels and the button presses of the player is a glimpse of our computing future. (WSJ $)   8 How a TikTok house imploded Youth, fame, and money form a combustible mix. (Vox)   9 Cineworld and Regal are reportedly closing all theaters this week The postponing of the latest James Bond movie was apparently the last straw. (The Verge)   10 Gay men are hijacking the Proud Boys hashtag online 🏳️‍🌈 Well this is just fantastic. (CNET) In just two weeks, prepare to lead with innovation at EmTech MIT. Our annual flagship event on emerging technology and trends is going online. Join us as we examine the technology driving and the forces influencing our digital world: AI, biomedicine, cybersecurity, diversity, equality, global-scale technology, and more. Register now. Take a stand "I'm sorry, I'm really sorry.” —Geoff Huston, chief scientist at the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre, apologizes to Australians for helping connect their country to the internet, ZDNet reports. Top image credit: AP Images Please send scarves 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 Leading with Innovation. 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