The Dark Side Of Online Fame
Less than two weeks after posting the video that would make him famous, and less than one week after appearing on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Josh Holz experienced the latest milestone in the viral-fame cycle: The 15-year-old was hacked on Twitter. His account, joshholzz — the original site of the Damn Daniel meme — began tweeting out racist memes on Feb. 27. At some point after that, screenshots show, someone changed the account’s...
Twitter Shares Tumble
San Francisco — The recent negativity shown toward many Internet companies hit Twitter hard Monday, as the social-media leader’s stock price fell to its lowest level ever ahead of its upcoming quarterly earnings report. Shortly after trading began, Twitter shares fell more than 5 percent, to $14.87, hitting their lowest point since the company went public in November 2013. The losses added to Twitter’s stock-price downfall, which has...
On Twitter, Black Activism Confronts the Racial Divide
Twenty years ago, the nation was in a fever over the digital divide. The Web was still a privileged space, and there was widespread concern that minorities would be left behind as communities — and opportunities — moved online. A Pew Research Center poll from 1998 showed that white Americans were nearly twice as likely as black Americans to use the Internet. Speaking at MIT in 1998, President Bill Clinton urged students to fight for...
A Faster Way To Stop Spread Of Food Illness
One of the biggest hurdles to halting foodborne illness outbreaks is spotting the source of the problem — and spotting it quickly. More often than not, by the time authorities recognize an outbreak of salmonella, listeria or any of the other pathogens that sicken an estimated 48 million Americans each year, it already has had time to spread. But in recent years, academic researchers and public health officials in New York and Chicago,...
