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Yale Library, Google Ads, Onerep, More: Saturday ResearchBuzz, November 22, 2025

NEW RESOURCES

Yale Library: Five new and nine expanded collections now available for researchers. “Beinecke Library reports that from July to September, staff processed 5 new collections and added new materials to 9 existing collections—including the Louise Glück papers. All the collections are discoverable in Archives at Yale.”

TWEAKS AND UPDATES

Search Engine Land: Google Ads adds account-level political content setting. “Google Ads expanded its ‘Political content’ declaration, allowing advertisers to set a default political-ads preference at the account level — not just within individual campaigns. The feature quietly rolled out after Google introduced the campaign-level setting in August 2025.”

Krebs on Security: Mozilla Says It’s Finally Done With Two-Faced Onerep. “In March 2024, Mozilla said it was winding down its collaboration with Onerep — an identity protection service offered with the Firefox web browser that promises to remove users from hundreds of people-search sites — after KrebsOnSecurity revealed Onerep’s founder had created dozens of people-search services and was continuing to operate at least one of them. Sixteen months later, however, Mozilla is still promoting Onerep. This week, Mozilla announced its partnership with Onerep will officially end next month.”

USEFUL STUFF

MakeUseOf: This completely free app keeps finding great movies I’ve never heard of. “Mometu might have that obscure movie you once heard about but could never find streaming anywhere. I was shocked at how many movies on Mometu I’d never heard of. It was legit more than two-thirds of the films and I consider myself a decently well-educated moviegoer.”

AROUND THE SEARCH AND SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD

9to5 Google: Google releases its ‘Google Sans Flex’ font to the public . ” Through the Google Fonts website, Google Sans Flex is now available for download. This is the font you’ll find across Google products, including on Pixel phones in some areas of the software. This is also the font used as the base of the ‘Rounded’ variant used in Material 3 Expressive. It was first released in 2023.”

Tubefilter: TV distributors turned YouTube into a home for reruns. Now it’s hosting unaired episodes, too.. “On March 7, 2006, NBC pulled the sitcom Joey from the airwaves due to low ratings. That decision came in the middle of the Friends spinoff’s second season, leaving eight finished episodes unaired — until now.”

SECURITY & LEGAL

NC Newsline: North Carolina settles with Greystar in AI rent-fixing lawsuit. “A group of nine attorneys general, including North Carolina’s AG Jeff Jackson, said Thursday they had reached a settlement with the rental company Greystar. The group sued the company and several other property management firms earlier this year, alleging illegal rent fixing through the use of AI tools.”

Techdirt: Cities Shut Down Flock Camera Networks Following Improper Access By Federal Agencies. “Other news has surfaced as well, making Flock Safety look even worse. It has placed almost no restrictions on access by anyone from anywhere, which has resulted in a lot of local law enforcement agencies performing searches federal agencies like CBP, US Border Patrol, and ICE can’t perform themselves. In some cases, Flock’s lack of restraint and nonexistent privacy policies has made their cameras pretty much illegal.”

Engadget: Meta ordered to pay €479 million to Spanish media outlets. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Meta has been fined for unlawfully processing user data to gain a market advantage. On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Madrid court ordered the company to pay €479 million ($552 million) in damages to 87 Spanish media outlets. The fine stems from the company changing its legal grounds for harvesting personal data after new regulations took effect.”

RESEARCH & OPINION

Pew (PEW PEW PEW PEW PEW!): Americans’ Social Media Use 2025. “YouTube and Facebook remain the most widely used online platforms. The vast majority of U.S. adults (84%) say they ever use YouTube. Most Americans (71%) also report using Facebook. These findings are according to a Pew Research Center survey of 5,022 U.S. adults conducted Feb. 5-June 18, 2025.”

University of Waterloo: Predicting disease outbreaks using social media. “Researchers at the University of Waterloo have developed a new approach that could help public health officials predict where outbreaks might occur. By analyzing social media posts, the method identifies early signs of increasing vaccine skepticism — a warning signal that could emerge before any disease begins to spread.”

Search Engine Journal: LLMs.txt Shows No Clear Effect On AI Citations, Based On 300k Domains. “A new analysis from SE Ranking suggests the llms.txt file isn’t delivering measurable benefits yet. After examining roughly 300,000 domains, the company found no relationship between having llms.txt and how often a domain is cited in major LLM answers.” Good morning, Internet…

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