sometimes people ask me uh is it possible that we're living in a simulation that all this is you know that reality isn't what we and and if you think about it it's not just 00:52:31 possible it's guaranteed

A different concern with decentralized moderation is that it will leadto “filter bubbles” and “echo chambers” by which instance members willchoose to only interact with like-minded users.

despite Twitter’s self-styled reputation as a public town square — where everyone gathers to see the same messages — in practice, the pandemic showed how users segregate to follow mostly those with similar views, argues information scientist Oliver Johnson at the University of Bristol, UK. For instance, those who believed that COVID-19 was a fiction would tend to follow others who agreed, he says, whereas others who argued that the way to deal with the pandemic was to lock down for a ‘zero COVID’ approach were in their own bubble.

. We also find evidence of “falsehood echo chambers”, where users that are more often exposed to misinformation are more likely to follow a similar set of accounts and share from a similar set of domains. These results are interesting in the context of evidence that political echo chambers are not prevalent, as typically imagined

TikTok starts studying its users from the moment they first open the app. It shows them a single, full-screen, infinitely looping video, then gauges how they react: a second of viewing or hesitation indicates interest; a swipe suggests a desire for something else. With every data point, TikTok’s algorithm narrows from a shapeless mass of content to a refined, irresistible feed. It is the ultimate video channel, and this is its one program.The “For You” algorithm, as TikTok calls it, gradually builds profiles of users’ tastes not from what they choose but how they behave. While Facebook and other social networks rely on their users to define themselves by typing in their interests or following famous people, TikTok watches and learns, tapping into trends and desires their users might not identify.

How TikTok ate the internetThe world’s most popular app has pioneered a new age of instant attention. Can we trust it?By Drew HarwellOct. 14

In her confusion, Peter wrote an e-mail seeking advice from Rachel Tashjian, a fashion critic who writes a popular newsletter called “Opulent Tips.” “I’ve been on the internet for the last 10 years and I don’t know if I like what I like or what an algorithm wants me to like,” Peter wrote. She’d come to see social networks’ algorithmic recommendations as a kind of psychic intrusion, surreptitiously reshaping what she’s shown online and, thus, her understanding of her own inclinations and tastes. “I want things I truly like not what is being lowkey marketed to me,” her letter continued.

While Brave Search does not have editorial biases, all search engines have some level of intrinsic bias due to data and algorithmic choices. Goggles allows users to counter any intrinsic biases in the algorithm.

t what is an individual 01:13:07 okay so why why the why in the world would i why would we ask this question and why would i spend you know multiple pages in this paper even discussing like of course we know what 01:13:20 an individual is right or or maybe not like like that actually turns out to be a difficult question what is an individual and it's important to this and it's important to this discussion of societal 01:13:33 systems because who are we who what you know what is the purpose of a societal system what is it what is it who is it supposed to serve you know so you have to ask really like 01:13:45 it's it's good to ask if we're going to build a societal system who wh who is it that it's supposed to service you know like who are we what do we want you know it's part of 01:13:57 figuring out what do we want what do we value who are we start there you know i would say so so we've already kind of touched on these themes but 01:14:09 this idea of rugged individualism you know like from a certain perspective and a certain you know from a limited sort of time frame perspective sure there's there's a rugged individualism that exists right and it can be useful in 01:14:22 certain certain situations but by and large that's not what life is doing you know that's not what the the they're um we are we are 01:14:36 it's really even difficult to say like where if i'm a rugged individual where do i actually start and where do i end you know like where is where is me this you know even physically it's hard to say 01:14:48 because this physical me is really i think more bacterial cells than it is um human cells right so so uh like i'm a sieve i'm a i'm a process through which things are 01:15:02 flowing through i'm a i'm an ecosystem myself with bacteria and viruses and human cells and all of those components are necessary for me to survive today and for for 01:15:14 humans to survive you know over eons were like a mix we're a bag of of human-like things and bacterial-like things and viral-like things and 01:15:26 and we're porous and we're part of the carbon cycle and we're part of the nitrogen cycle and then you and then when you say like okay well how could you be a rugged individual individual when you're really 01:15:38 this this porous smorgasbord of things right

What happens in Indonesia when a textile manufacturer illegally dumps dye waste!

David Chalmer’s beautiful metaphor of the ‘Extended Mind’ (Chalmers, 1998). Chalmers promotes the idea that media, such as, e.g., smartphones, have already begun to function as an extension to our mind, allowing us to navigate and manage an increasingly complex world

there's a fact of the matter right this minute about whether your high school 00:22:51 sweetheart is thinking about you you just can't tell but the universe knows that fact is there

There is an additional civic value here, one that goes beyond simply preserving professional journalism. For about ten years now, a few of us have been waging a sometimes lonely battle against the premise that the internet leads to political echo chambers, where like-minded partisans reinforce their beliefs by filtering out dissenting views, an argument associated with the legal scholar and now Obama administration official Cass Sunstein. This is Sunstein’s description of the phenomenon:If Republicans are talking only with Republicans, if Democrats are talking primarily with Democrats, if members of the religious right speak mostly to each other, and if radical feminists talk largely to radical feminists, there is a potential for the development of different forms of extremism, and for profound mutual misunderstandings with individuals outside the group

Beware online "filter bubbles"

According to Eschwege, the total produce of the Brazilian diamond mines for the eighty years, ending in 1823, had not realised the price of one-and-a-half years’ average produce of the sugar and coffee plantations of the same country, although the diamonds cost much more labour, and therefore represented more value.

A home provides stability and financial predictability

Like all experts, academics are used to speaking to a specialized audience. That’s true no matter their discipline, from sociology to geotechnical engineering to classics. When you speak to a niche audience among peers, a lot of understanding comes for free. You can use technical language, make presumptions about prior knowledge, and assume common goals or contexts. When speaking to a general audience, you can’t take those circumstances as a given.

In this particular case, Google worked as a kind of amplifier of distortion.

“Design it so that Google is crucial to creating a response rather than finding one,”

Ut bibendum

I am a PhD candidate in the Human Computer Interaction (HCI) group of Computer Science Department at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I work in the CASCAD Lab, advised by Prof.Wai-Tat Fu. I also work closely with Prof. Bruce Schatz . My research interests broadly lie in the fields of human computer interaction (HCI), social computing, health informatics and cognitive science. Please see bio and projects for more details.

The researchers examined social media patterns for 1.2 million Facebook users and found that nearly 92 percent of those who engage with Italian conspiracy theory pages interact almost exclusively with conspiracy theory pages.