The Internet

When shopping online, consumers engage in a type of social learning by which they become informed from the decisions of others. For example, you’re probably more likely to purchase a book at the top of the New York Times' best-sellers list or buy an app that’s been downloaded millions of times. But observing other people’s choices is only a part of social learning. The other is noting the resulting outcomes through mechanisms like online star ratings. But how people interpret — or fail to interpret — this data is affecting their decision-making in a negative way.  more »

Websites for online classified ads selling sex are widely used by human traffickers, but law enforcement efforts to trace and disband human trafficking rings are hindered by the pseudonymous nature of adult ads, the tendency of ring leaders to employ multiple phone numbers and email addresses to avoid detection and the difficulty in determining which online ads reflect willing participants in the sex trade and which reflect victims forced into prostitution. The study is a first step toward developing a suite of freely available tools to help police and non-profit institutions overcome these challenges and identify victims of sexual exploitation on websites such as Backpage and Craigslist.   more »

Internet Scout's Research Group's weekly marvelous discoveries: In February 1623, a group of Dutch officials accused a team of English merchants and Japanese mercenaries of conspiring to capture a castle on Amboyna, a small island in what is now part of Indonesia. The island was central to the booming spice trade, which had fueled an increasingly acrimonious rivalry between the British and the Dutch. "Folk art is a reflection of society as seen through the eyes of artists whose perceptions are sometimes traditional and conventional - sometimes unruly, and even wild." So writes the Canadian Museum of History, host of a online exhibit that highlights Quebec folk art from the eighteenth century through today. Michael Twitty explains how enslaved African-Americans created contemporary American southern cuisine. more »

This bill [Seniors Fraud Prevention Act of 2017] directs the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to establish an office within the Bureau of Consumer Protection to advise the FTC on the prevention of fraud targeting seniors and to assist the FTC in monitoring the market for mail, television, Internet, telemarketing, and recorded message telephone call (robocall) fraud targeting seniors. The office must: (1) disseminate to seniors and their families and caregivers information on the most common fraud schemes, including methods of reporting complaints either to the FTC's national toll-free telephone number or to the FTC's Consumer Sentinel Network, (2) provide, in response to a specific request about a particular entity or individual, publicly available information regarding the FTC's enforcement action; and (3) maintain a website as a resource for information on fraud targeting seniors. more »