Worth Reading – Trust Networks as Antidote to AI Slop
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Worth Reading – The Last Days Of Social Media
They may not be the perfect medium for connecting with other people online or staying informed, but at least we get to choose what we subscribe to and what fills our readers’ and inboxes. As an internet user, I’ve always been a fan of RSS as a way to stay informed and follow my favorite sources. As a creator, I’ve learned to love newsletters as social media has become less effective for sharing my blog posts. As someone with many friends in faraway places, I’ve been a fan of social media as a technology that can keep us connected, but it seems to be doing less and less of that these days.
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Worth Reading – To Change Your Life, Start With Your Algorithm
My advice to you is to find the content that gives you hope, even if it’s just content that makes you laugh. We need more of that and a lot less outrage.
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Linked – The Plan To Sunset Section 230 Is About A Rogue Congress Taking The Internet Hostage If It Doesn’t Get Its Way
How many companies that provide hosting or build platforms for other people to communicate can’t afford to defend themselves every time someone posts something that results in litigation? Many will be forced to shut down due to the risk. Many will be targeted specifically in the hope that they will have to shut down.
When that happens, more and more voices will be silenced online. Only the rich can afford to build their platforms and keep lawyers around to defend themselves. Google and Meta will be OK. The rest of us will no longer have any outlets for ourselves. Our opportunities to communicate online with each other will be limited to what Big Tech says we can do.
It’s hard not to assume that is the goal, though.
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Linked – Actually, the internet’s always been this bad
The study authors pointed out that they only researched text-based platforms. Video platforms may be worse in terms of toxicity. However, that hasn’t been my experience; they seem pretty similar to me, but that’s just anecdotal. They also pointed out that current-day social networks are much larger. Many more people see the toxicity on Facebook than people who saw a Usenet post in the 90s. That also means there is more total toxicity. It might only be 7-10% of the content, but the content generated by 500 million users dwarfs the content generated by 10,000 users. So there’s more of it; we are more aware of it, but the percentage hasn’t changed much.
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Shared Links (weekly) Dec. 3, 2023
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Who is productive, and who isn’t? Here’s how to tell.– an interesting conversation about employee archetypes.
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Middle Managers Suffer Most From Change- – “Organizations that aren’t investing in helping their people through change are failing,”
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Networking for Better Opportunities: Land a Job By Socializing
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Is iPhone AirDrop Feature ‘NameDrop’ Dangerous, as Facebook Posts Claim?– “To be clear, no contact information is automatically shared when two devices are brought together without a user taking action.”
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AI doesn’t cause harm by itself. We should worry about the people who control it
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