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Zak

@ Zak @lemmy.world

Posts
7
Comments
882
Joined
3 yr. ago

  • Study: Social media probably can’t be fixed

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  • After 20 years of living with it, I've decided I don't like the downvote. The upvote is fine.

    Reddit's founders, early on tried to encourage people to treat the downvote as moderation. It was meant to mean that a thing doesn't belong on reddit and people shouldn't see it. Of course that quickly became mere dislike or disagreement.

    I'd prefer an approach that requires some input about what's wrong with a post in order to reduce its prominence; a restricted list of options as in Slashdot's moderation would be sufficient, I think. I'm not sure whether this should necessarily require also making a report to a more powerful admin/moderator, but I lean toward making that optional in most communities.

  • Study: Social media probably can’t be fixed

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  • The study is based on having LLMs decide to amplify one of the top ten posts on their timeline or share a news headline. LLMs aren't people, and the authors have not convinced me that they will behave like people in this context.

    The behavioral options are restricted to posting news headlines, reposting news headlines, or being passive. There's no option to create original content, and no interventions centered on discouraging reposting. Facebook has experimented with limits to reposting and found such limits discouraged the spread of divisive content and misinformation.

    I mostly use social media to share pictures of birds. This contributes to some of the problems the source article discusses. It causes fragmentation; people who don't like bird photos won't follow me. It leads to disparity of influence; I think I have more followers than the average Mastodon account. I sometimes even amplify conflict.

  • Schools are using AI to spy on students and some are getting arrested for misinterpreted jokes and private conversations

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  • This is an ass-covering response to school shootings, because some of the shooters have expressed their intent before.

    A strip search obviously isn't necessary even if it's a credible threat; a metal detector wand and basic pat down is more than enough to ensure someone doesn't have a gun. This wasn't a credible threat though, and a chat with the school counselor would have been the right way to handle this.

  • Schools are using AI to spy on students and some are getting arrested for misinterpreted jokes and private conversations

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  • Snapchat’s automated detection software picked up the comment, the company alerted the FBI, and the girl was arrested on school grounds within hours.

    Someone should tell the kids about Signal.

    As for monitoring on school computers, that seems OK to me if it's disclosed to the students and parents in advance. What's problematic is the responses, which seem much more focused on ass-covering than student welfare. I imagine most 13 year olds have made jokes about killing people once or twice and any adult with common sense would be able to tell they're jokes.

  • Best option for enabling comments on my Ghost blog?

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  • Not Lemmy, unless the post tags a community.

  • Trump Burger Owner is Illegal Immigrant with Sham Marriage

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  • And they learned that the left is bad rather than that authoritarianism is bad. Wrong lesson.

  • Texas becomes seventh state to ban lab-grown meat: The new law establishes civil and criminal penalties for selling the product.

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  • There's an argument for labeling so people can make an informed choice; I would actively seek it put for ethical reasons while som might avoid it.

    I can only think of bad reasons for an outright ban.

  • Texas becomes seventh state to ban lab-grown meat: The new law establishes civil and criminal penalties for selling the product.

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  • No. States can ban local sales of products that are legal in other states. A common example is that some states ban guns with certain features.

  • what's your ringtone?

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  • Often vibrate-only, but when not, voice/video calls are on defaults. I received them rarely and haven't bothered to set it.

    My default for messages is a honk from Untitled Goose Game. Specific contacts get custom notifications, usually bird calls, though one who likes cats more than most has a meow.

  • Grok’s ‘spicy’ video setting instantly made me Taylor Swift nude deepfakes

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  • Yes, but Musk makes inappropriate offers to impregnate women regularly, so this isn't surprising.

  • Why don't smart watches use USB-C to recharge?

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  • A flashlight is literally one of the simplest electronic devices there is

    You might be surprised at everything going on inside a modern flashlight. I'll grant that it's probably easier to find room for extra seals around the port than in a smartwatch though.

  • Why don't smart watches use USB-C to recharge?

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  • If you mean a USB-C port in general, they can be made waterproof. If you mean something specific to putting one in the most compact form factor possible, that might be true.

  • Google loses app store antitrust appeal, must make sweeping changes to Play Store

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  • They don't have to offer backroom incentives to the sort of organizations that want to use attestation. That would be a good future target for antitrust courts, as I'm pretty sure Google's primary motivation to add it was Amazon launching a phone in 2014 without Google services. Amazon didn't need Google's help to fail at that, but perhaps the next company to try was dissuaded.

    As Apple recently discovered, willful noncompliance with the antitrust court is a bad plan. Google will probably be wary of backroom deals in the short term.

  • The EU still wants to scan all your chats – and the rules could come into force by October 2025

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  • If you're a citizen of an EU country, you should contact your politicians to tell them not to, maybe they won't.

    It only has to pass once, and they keep trying.

  • Google loses app store antitrust appeal, must make sweeping changes to Play Store

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  • Oh, no doubt they would if they could. I'm not saying they're more ethical than Google; I'm saying they're less powerful than Google.

  • Let's say you are teaching a basic, 1-hour-long class to the general public about privacy and general tech hygiene. What kinds of topics would you include?

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  • Someone who voluntarily sits through an hour-long presentation clearly cares enough to take some kind of action.

  • Google loses app store antitrust appeal, must make sweeping changes to Play Store

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  • Still ironic though that Epic games is the main proponent, but yet they do the exact same thing on their store paying for exclusives.

    The tactic only becomes illegal when it confers the ability to exclude competitors from the market.

    Google has successfully excluded all meaningful competitors from the Android app distribution market. Even big companies like Samsung and Amazon have been unable to operate a profitable app store. Epic is not likely to exclude competitors from the game store market in the near future.

  • Google loses app store antitrust appeal, must make sweeping changes to Play Store

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  • From the article:

    developers can opt out if they don't want their apps to be available more widely

    So it won't affect that.

  • Let's say you are teaching a basic, 1-hour-long class to the general public about privacy and general tech hygiene. What kinds of topics would you include?

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  • Here are six topics you can probably do in about ten minutes each.

    • Password manager
    • Avoid password reuse
    • Basic phishing prevention
    • Adblocking (be sure to mention private DNS on phones to block ads in apps)
    • Reasons to prefer websites to apps
    • Scam recognition (if there's time - the concepts are similar to phishing)

    I'd mention Firefox in the adblocking section, but getting them to use anything will be a big win.