• 5 Posts
  • 348 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 19th, 2023

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  • The title is not mine and the paper the article is responding to was published last month, not two years ago as you claim. The only mention of Musk in the entire article is in this one sentence:

    Unlike self-serving warnings from Open AI CEO Sam Altman or Elon Musk about the “existential risk” artificial general intelligence poses to humanity, Google’s research focuses on real harm that generative AI is currently causing and could get worse in the future.



  • Interesting article. The results of the author’s research is consistent with my understanding of the social media landscape in countries like the Philippines, which I believe are extremely toxic and partisan. However, I’m not sure the additional studies linked support the argument that social media does not increase polarisation. I’ve only read the abstracts of each so it’s quite possible I’m overlooking something, but they immediately seem flawed due to their reliance on consenting participants. I would have thought that anyone who agrees to take part in such a study is clearly an outlier within society and therefore not a reliable test subject. Polarisation via algorithm relies on people being unwittingly exposed to content; if they’re switched on enough to deactivate their social media accounts or disable re-shares as part of a study into political polarisation, they are clearly not representative of society at large.






  • It’s not a “problem”, as such. As I said, I created the account to view the pages and groups of small businesses and organisations that have no other online presence. I don’t use it for the doomscroll algorithm. This was just my observation of what kind of content is targeted towards males in my location by default.


  • I found this article quite interesting, as I deactivated my main Facebook account around the time the article asserts Facebook was still “trying” and only recently created a new account under a generic pseudonym to access all the community and small business information that is still locked entirely to the platform. Because I have basically nothing in my feed on this account, Facebook backfills it with “recommended” posts and I was pretty shocked at how universally terrible they are. I guess the algorithm uses my location and gender to generate these recommendations, since I’ve provided very little in the way of alternative information or interaction for it to use. As a result, my default feed is basically just a wall of misogynistic and highly sexualised slop and even the few genuine recommended posts (like backpackers looking for travelling buddies) are clearly being recommended because they feature young women with a bunch of older men thirsting over them in the comments.








  • There’s probably something in the terms about it

    2.3 Geographic Restrictions

    The Paid Services, and certain content available within the Paid Services, may only be available in certain countries. You agree that you will not present any false, inaccurate or misleading information in an effort to misrepresent your country of residence, and you will not attempt to circumvent any restrictions on access to or availability of the Paid Services or content available within the Paid Services.

    Terminations and Suspensions by YouTube

    YouTube reserves the right to suspend or terminate your Google account or your access to all or part of the Service if (a) you materially or repeatedly breach this Agreement; (b) we are required to do so to comply with a legal requirement or a court order; or © we believe there has been conduct that creates (or could create) liability or harm to any user, other third party, YouTube or our Affiliates.

    I don’t understand these surprise pikachu reactions from some people. If you break the terms of service you are running the risk that the company in question will terminate your service or account at some point in the future. There is nothing controversial or surprising about this, other than the fact that Google has taken so long to get around to it.