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Polygon and Alexis Ohanians Seven Seven Six will invest $200 million in social media projects that take advantage of blockchain technologies.

The partners will fund ideas at the intersection of social media and Web 3, exploring better ways for humans to connect online.

The motivation behind Web 3 is that a better version of the internet is possible, one which empowers users over platforms. It is a response to a pervading sense that the current instantiation as represented by the social media giants has strayed too far from the early webs open source ideals, the partners said.

The result is, as one Facebook engineer famously quipped, the best minds of our generation are thinking about how to make people click ads, the partners said.

The 2nd Annual GamesBeat and Facebook Gaming Summit and GamesBeat: Into the Metaverse 2

Polygon has mission is to offer a wide range of secure, fast, affordable, and energy-efficient Ethereum scaling and infrastructure solutions for developers, empowering them to build Web3 applications for the world.

Ohanian co-founded Reddit in 2005 at the dawn of social networking. He left in 2010 and returned as executive chairman in 2014 to lead a turnaround before resigning in 2020. He cofounded Initialized Capital in 2010 and was a seed investor in Coinbase, Instacart, Opendoor, GOAT, Patreon, Flexport, Ro, Papa, and more. He is also an outspoken advocate for the open internet and equity and an active supporter of minority and women-owned businesses.

His new venture firm, Seven Seven Six, has a diverse portfolio that ranges from DroneSeed, a company taking on reforestation with drones; Sky Mavis, makers of Axie Infinity, the pioneering play-to-earn Web 3 gaming franchise; Better Brand, which is transforming the most carb-heavy foods into the least; and Stoke Space, a reusable rocket company.

We are still in the early days of Web3 and the most obvious opportunities right now are in gaming and social, said Ohanian, in a statement. This initiative will do just that, with a focus on gaming properties and social media platforms built on Polygons scalable infrastructure. Weve already seen some of the best product founders in our portfolio start building on Polygon and Im excited for Seven Seven Six and Polygon to play a big role in shaping what the new internet looks like.

Polygon is a blockchain protocol that provides scalable, low-fee infrastructure powering the biggest projects in decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), including Aave, SushiSwap, and OpenSea. The number of decentralized applications (dapps) building on Polygon passed the 3,000 mark in October, from 30 at the same time last year.

Polygons network is also quickly becoming the main destination for companies building the foundation for a new breed of social networks. Cent is an ad-free creator network that was in the headlines earlier this year when Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sold an NFT of the first-ever Tweet for $2.9 million on its platform.

Sapien Networks team is busy building a tokenized social network built on the Ethereum blockchain, but still finds time for stunts like planting a statue of Harambe in front of Facebooks headquarters. Earth 2 is a virtual twin of our real world and metaverse platform and is now collaborating with Polygon Studios in an exclusive partnership.

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Alexis Ohanian and Polygon will invest $200M in decentralized social media - VentureBeat

Social media and millennials can certainly go hand in hand, which opens up opportunities in 2022 for a pair of Global X exchange traded funds (ETFs).

Instagram noted the forthcoming trends that could shape social media influence on millennials in 2022. This was captured in the first edition of the Instagram Trend Report.

This report is your guide to the upcoming trends, as defined by Gen-Z, that will shape culture in 2022, Instagram writes. In order to create this report, we tapped into the minds of Gen-Z to learn more about the rising Instagram trends across categories including music, fashion, creators and celebs, beauty, social justice, and so much more.

Some of the topics covered in the report include:

One ETF worth noting to capture these trends is the Global X Social Media ETF (SOCL), which seeks to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of the Solactive Social Media Total Return Index. The index tracks the equity performance of the largest and most liquid companies involved in the social media industry, including companies that provide social networking, file sharing, and other web-based media applications.

Another one is the Global X Millennials Thematic ETF (MILN). MILN seeks to provide investment results that correspond generally to the price and yield performance of the Indxx Millennials Thematic Index.

In the case of MILN, the underlying index is designed to measure the performance of U.S.-listed companies that provide exposure to the millennial generation as defined by the index provider. The millennial generation refers to the demographic in the U.S. with birth years ranging from 1980 to 2000. The fund offers:

For more news, information, and strategy, visit the Thematic Investing Channel.

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2 ETFs That Tap Into Millennial Influence on Social Media - ETF Trends

WORCESTER Central Massachusettsschool officials are warning parents about a viral, nationwide trendwhere students post generalized threats of school violence that is supposed to take place Friday, Dec. 17.

Thetrend began onTikTok, a video social networking app popular with teenagers, and has now spread to other social media apps such as Snapchat.

"My phone is blowing up.I'm getting numerous calls from staff and principals about threats being made in social media through TikTok in particular," Worcester Schools Safety Director Robert F. Pezzella said. "They're being encouraged. Whoever's out there encouraging this, to call in bomb threats, in school shootings, etc. throughout the United States schools, not just in Worcester. ... So we are preparing, we will be vigilant."

Pezzella said that the trend is separate from the threat that was made at Worcester Technical High School on Wednesday.

"There is a lot of unrest in our schools as a result of what they are reading and what they are now finding out from these threats that are occurring for TikTok," Pezzella said. "I can assure you on behalf of the superintendentthat we will continue to keep our schools safe."

Because of the generalized nature of the threat, some districts, such Auburn, acted preemptively to ensure that the threat was not credible, sending letters to assure parents the matter was not being taken lightly.

"That's really what preempted it was to just reassure people that, 'Look,this has happened. This is out there. We're prepared. We've got all of our plans in place. Your kids are safe with us,' " Auburn Superintendent Casey Handfield said.

More: Offensive Instagram site targeting Black students at Fitchburg HS reported as hate crime

He said, as a precaution, there will beincreased police presence inAuburn schools.

Spencer-East Brookfield Regional School Superintendent Paul S. Haughey also published a letter explaining that the school district was aware of the threat and worked with law enforcement to investigate the matter.

"For us, we just wanted to be proactive and make sure people knew that we had anSRO and we made our local law enforcement available and aware that this issue was being brought forward by parents and families in our community," Haughey said.

The letter also let parents and guardians know that the threats were found to have no credibility.

"We wanted to assure the community with my authoring of a letter today that there's no credible threat in our district," he said.

More: US schools increase security in response to TikTok posts warning of shooting, bomb threats

Unlike the generalized threats being shared on TikTok, Dudley Middle School experienced a very specific threat.

A screenshot of a Snapchat message in which the user whose name matchedthat of a student in a neighboring town threatened to shoot up the school reached school administrators, who then reached out to law enforcement. Information about the user's name used in the message has been corrected here.

Although the threat was more targeted, it is still likely part of the social media trend, Charlton Police Chief Daniel Dowd said.

"Wedon't believe it's a credible threat at this time but obviously, out of an abundance of caution, we continue to work it and try to find out more informationbut we don't believe that is as what was reported," Dowd said.

He said there is a possibility that someone used social media to learn the student's name and location, and posed as the student.

"They may not even knowthis person or they may have had," Dowd said. "What I'm saying is that the student mentioned we don't believe has anything to do with this thing other than his name was used."

Charlton police are still investigating the matter as an extra precaution.

Pezzella said that the No. 1 thing that people can do is reportany type of threats, "even if they think it might be ... just an off-color remark."

He said that people can call his direct line or they can call the school principal or the superintendent.

"We take every threat seriously. We have to investigate every threat," Pezzella said. "So if families or the public is hearing anything, then they can report it."

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Central Mass. rattled by viral trend of school violence threats on social media - Worcester Telegram

Web3 is here to give power to the people, and it will completely change how social media works. With the use of blockchain, it will be impossible to limit social platforms in any way, and anyone can join in regardless of geographic limitations.

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George Soros Invested His Foundations Money In His Own Funds

These social networks have full authority over the data that is shared and stored on the platform, as opposed to Web2 legacy ones such as Facebook, which got bogged down in the Cambridge Analytica scandal after leaking the data of millions of users.

As Web3 keeps developing, the growth of its social networks will hinge on catering to brands and communities as DeFi investors are mostly focused on yield generation.

We spoke with Alex Siman, CEO of SubSocial, a social networking platform that provides the architecture and social primitives upon which social networks can be built. The company recently won a slot on Kusama Parachain and has its own views on Web3 drivers and the future of DeFi.

Social networking platforms provide the architecture and social primitives for social networks to be built on top of. Those social networks will differentiate from Web2 social networks by being open, decentralized, and permissionless, with built-in Social Finance features like tips and subscriptions, without there being a middleman taking a cut.

On a larger scale, all social networks will share content and a user base, meaning users can migrate between social networks seamlessly, without losing their content backlog, or their followers. This will likely result in a much better specialization of particular social networks, as well as more competition between them. This is what we strive for.

Most of the people very involved in DeFi are just looking for where they can park their capital to earn the highest yield, so social networks do not appeal to them as much.

In contrast, social networks usually appeal highly to those with communities and brands, who may not be as interested in yield farming as they are in community engagement, content creation, and content monetization.

This means that in order to grow the user base of Web3 social networks, a very different market segment will have to be targeted.

We definitely expected to win a slot in this round, due to opening our crowdloan a few days earlier than anyone else, but we certainly didnt expect to hit our cap of 100K KSM so quickly, and become the fourth project to hit a crowdloan cap.

Being able to operate as a parachain is crucial to becoming a blossoming ecosystem of Social Finance. Integrations with other parachains building DeFi, identity solutions, and privacy features will allow us a much larger list of potential features.

We are humbled by the enthusiastic support of our community. Its really awesome to see all of our hard work pay off, though in another sense, the work is just beginning. Now we have to keep delivering.

The Dotsama ecosystem is at the forefront of the Web3 movement. Looking back at Web1 and Web2, social interaction has always been an integral part of the internet the internet is a communication tool first and foremost.

Social networks have dominated Web2,and we aim to provide the proper tools for Web3 social networks to flourish, allowing civilization to continue communicating with these beneficial tools, without all of the downsides present in Web2.

We are considering multiple approaches to this issue. The main consideration is that if the fees are too low, or its too easy to get free transactions, then bad actors can spam the network. The most likely approach will be that you can stake SUB tokens to earn some number of free transactions per day.

At the moment, we have three live projects: the SubSocial blockchain, our web app, and Sub.ID - our one-stop shop for viewing all of your Substrate assets in one place.

We have a few more projects in development, including a mobile SubSocial app, and another app centered around NFTs (built on top of SubSocial). I cant say much about the rest yet, but they will also add more value to the Dotsama ecosystem.

Updated on Dec 16, 2021, 10:47 am

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CEO Spotlight: Alex Siman From SubSocial On The Future Of Web3 And Social Networks - ValueWalk

While social networking platforms remain integral across the global democracies for media convergence, public opinion, and freedom of expression without the states inference, censorship, and reprisals, over the recent yearsit has contributed to polarization, populism, biased facts, divisive political rhetorics, and manipulation, threatening the very fabric of democracy. Leading social media platforms, particularly Facebook operated by the parent company Meta owned by the tech mogul Mark Zuckerberg, and microblogging site Twitter now operated under the newly Indian origin CEO Parag Agrawal not only have turned the biggest source of hate propelling and disinformation but have also failed to regulate the biased against facts flow of information.

A2020 media manipulation survey from the University of Oxford institute on Friday, Dec. 17found evidence in each of the 81 countries surveyed. Organizedsocial media manipulation campaigns online was up 15% in one year across at least70 countries in 2019, a report compiled bythe Oxford Internet Institute (OII) suggests, adding that governments, public relations firms, and political parties produce a large scale of misinformation, particularly with respect to thepolitical communication.OII team warns that the level of politicalmanipulation across Facebook and Twitter has risen tenfoldwith governments and political parties spending millions on private sector cyber troops' that manipulate the citizens' opinion spending $10 million on an average towardssocial media political advertisements.

Our report shows misinformation has become more professionalised and is now produced on an industrial scale. Now, more than ever, the public needs to be able to rely on trustworthy information about government policy and activity,"Philip Howard, director of the institute and the reports co-author said in the report.

During the 2020 Presidential elections, social media platforms Twitter and Facebook instated an unprecedented ban on the former US leader Donald Trump for his unsubstantiated claims about the election fraud that led to the violent insurrection in the United States Capitol. In an apparent display of breach of the democratic procedure, the mob attempted to halt the certification of the democratically elected President of the United States, Joe Biden.

Under public pressure, Twitter and Facebook then indefinitely banned the former US Presidents official social media accounts citing the political context of emergency and national security, which the latter argued was a gory violation of his human rights and freedom of speech. Geneva Press clubalso discussed at length the impact of such a move on democracy as such measures taken by the social media giants is the impediment to freedom of expression.

We have made a lot of mistakes in running the company, and Facebook must work harder at ensuring the tools it creates are used in 'good and healthy'ways." Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Over the past several years, Facebook and Twitter have also been accused of resorting tonew tactics of foreign influenceto manipulate voters via a network of fakeandautomated accounts. In 2010, personal data belonging to millions ofFacebookusers was acquired by the British consulting firmCambridge Analytica without the knowledge or consent of the users forpolitical advertising via an app "This Is Your Digital Life. The Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal involved 87 million Facebook profiles harvested through the platform for analytical assistance for the 2016 US presidential campaigns ofTed CruzandDonald Trump.

We didnt take a broad enough view of our responsibility, and that was a big mistake. It was my mistake, and Im sorry. I started Facebook, I run it, and Im responsible for what happens here."Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of social media platform Facebook after the data leak scandal.

Political parties such as the Republicans and Democrats have been criticized for inflating their popularity by creating hashtags and trends linked to their political parties, thus maliciously influencing the democratic voting systems. The worlds most polarizing political figures also employ social media platforms for pushing their agenda via artificial bots and fake accounts. According to the Special Counsel Robert MuellersReport, the Russian conspirators meddled in the 2020 US elections, hampering the democratic process by spreading discord, lies, and disinformation to at least 100 million voters on social media platforms.

Russian government and firmslinked to Kremlin used a "sweeping and systematic" effort to undermine Americans' confidence in their democracy, the Mueller report reveals citing the federal investigators. Former director of the FBI, and law enforcement officers from the Trump administration, who was named as a special counsel to investigate Russian collusion said during his testimony before a pair of House committeesthat Russian operatives hacked their way into local voter registration systems without actually tampering with vote tallies but by launching a mass political campaign to sway the American citizens opinions of politicians and the US political system using the trolls and hacking into accounts.

FBI Director Christopher Wray also confirmed the undermining of the American democracy with the Senate Judiciary Committee, stressing that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 to help elect Trump via an online political campaign. A Facebook representative also testified at the US Congress, stating that at least 470 Russian-controlled accounts collectively made 80,000 political posts between January 2015 and August 2017 to influence the voting of over 126 million people, as per Facebooks estimates.

Twitter similarly in 2018published an update that there were 3,814 accountsonline operated by the Russian government outfitInternet Research Agency(IRA) that attempted to influence political opinion by tweeting 175,000 times, reaching 1.4 million Americans. The threat to democracy from social media is largely due to the unregulated content, ineffective design and enforcement of fair policies, and lack of authenticity of the millions of existing accounts

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Is social media threatening democracies across the world through misinformation? - Republic World