After we interacted with content of five popular right-leaning comedy podcasters, TikTok’s “For You” page recommendation algorithm catapulted our account down a right-wing rabbit hole of conspiracy theories and toxic masculinity content over the span of just a few hours.
TikTok’s recommendation algorithm began quickly populating our FYP with right-wing conspiracy theories and toxic masculinity content.
Of the 425 videos coded, 28% contained conspiracy theories and 16% contained toxic masculinity content.
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“However AI plays out, I would be very, very cautious not to see licensing by language models as being, somehow, the path to sustainability. There’s not going to be a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow”
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How Tech Bros create problems and offer solutions that make matters worse for their clients (and society in general):
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It sounds suspiciously like he’s not acting as a nonprofit.
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Hmmm… I don’t know how I feel about Wired’s framing there? “takeover”? I mean, the internet has been colonized by these corporations for a while now… I think it’s still an open question whether or not Bluesky is an alternative that will open the internet back up for us, but they are either giving people better options or at worst, they are just doing with other companies have done? The fact that they are willing to play nice with other platforms indicates something other than a “takeover of the social internet” I’d argue…
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Why Silicon Valley’s Most Powerful People Are So Obsessed With Hobbits
Andreessen, along with Musk and Thiel, helped muster support for Trump in Silicon Valley, and he depicts the tech entrepreneur as a conqueror who achieves “virtuous things” through brazen aggression, and villainizes anything that might slow growth and innovation — like government regulation and demoralizing concepts like “tech ethics” and “risk management.”
“We believe in nature, but we also believe in overcoming nature,” Andreesen writes. “We are not primitives, cowering in fear of the lightning bolt. We are the apex predator; the lightning works for us.”
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Here’s hoping Andreessen takes up yelling at lightning storms as a hobby. I recommend doing it in chainmail while waving around a sword. That will show the lightning who’s boss.
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ETA:
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Saruman’s - the lot of them.
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Lil bill gets a bit into the alienating nature of online communities - specifically talking about the experience of being Black, especially as it informs younger people and their understanding of the world from a Black perspective, and how that contributes to generational fighting and a sense of obstinance when being challenged on one’s beliefs… Probably some ideas that could inform other topics related to the internets and our state of being online…
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Another barn burner from Ed Zitron… as always, some good and thoughtful stuff here…
The Business Idiot… accurate.
Also, I like how he frames this as the Business Idiots (and their boosters, followers, cult members, etc) of the world being the ones that are suffering from alienation… maybe he’s not using the term in the Marxist sense, but maybe so?
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So some of these Techbros literally want to be gods, which I guess isn’t the least bit surprising.
Interesting that the guy in this article is pushing the idea that “the body is God,” and he also wants to live forever, which definitely isn’t going to happen, especially if he’s confined to a human body. He and the transhumanists like Kurzweil must have some animated discussions about this stuff.
And for someone who thinks that the Human Body is God, he sure is pretty cavalier about just letting AI decide what’s best for his lord and savior:
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