Our picksUndetectable media bots; teens’ climate lawsuit; war zone Ebola crisis, and more

NYTimes report shows how Twitter, McKinsey were complicit in helping Saudi Arabia silence critics (Emily Stewart, Vox)
Saudi Arabia reportedly groomed a Twitter employee to help it spy on dissenters.

Americans lose confidence they can sniff out social media bots (Nancy Owano, Tech Explore)
How times have changed. Just a few years ago, Americans were uncomfortably amused at the presence of social bots but were confident they could tell tofu from prime rib.
In the newest study, about half, 47 percent, of people who heard about bots were very or somewhat confident they could recognize these kinds of accounts on social media. In the earlier study, a more substantial 84 percent expressed confidence in spotting made-up news.
Here; this is how the Pew Research Center explained the then-and-now: “About half of those who have heard of bots (47%) are very or somewhat confident that they can recognize them, and just 7% are very confident. About four-in-ten (38%) are not very confident, and 15% say they are not at all confident. This stands in contrast to the confidence Americans had in their ability to detect made-up news: In a December 2016 survey, 84% of Americans were very or somewhat confident in their ability to recognize made-up news.”
So, fast forward to October 2018 and it appears that most Americans cannot distinguish between a human comment and that delivered by an automated bot. And they are not amused; you would need to scroll all the way south to find social bots’ numbers on a popularity poll.

Trump administration asks Supreme Court to stop teens’ climate lawsuit (Greg Stohr, Bloomberg)
President Donald Trump’s administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court stop a novel and sweeping lawsuit pressed by children and teenagers seeking to force the federal government to take steps against climate change.
Thursday’s emergency filing aims to head off a trial that’s set to start Oct. 29 in federal court in Oregon. It’s the administration’s second attempt to have the nation’s highest court intervene in the case. The group of mostly teenagers says U.S. government policies have exacerbated global warming in violation of their constitutional rights and those of future generations. They want the government to put in place a plan to phase out carbon emissions and stabilize the Earth’s climate.
The Trump team inherited the case from the Obama administration, which had similarly tried to have