Social Media

A look at social media and the issues surrounding this technology.

NPR

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‘Filterworld’ explores how social media algorithms ‘flatten’ our culture : NPR

In his new book, Filterworld, Chayka examines the algorithmic recommendations that dictate everything from the music, news and movies we consume, to the foods we eat and the places we go. He argues that all of this machine-guided curation has made us docile consumers and flattened our likes and tastes.

"For us consumers, they are making us more passive just by feeding us so much stuff, by constantly recommending things that we are unlikely to click away from, that we're going to tolerate [but] not find too surprising or challenging," Chayka says.

What's more, Chayka says, the algorithms pressure artists and other content creators to shape their work in ways that fit the feeds. For musicians working through Spotify or TikTok, this might mean recording catchy hooks that occur right at the beginning of a song — when a user is most likely to hear it.

Facebook Jail 👮🏻

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Hah, I got threatened with Facebook jail and my comment deleted on my post regarding regulation of AI for showing an image of the rainbow flag containing the forbidden number for decrypting DVDs.

Does anybody actually use DVDs anymore? The forbidden number is hardly a secret these days, I downloaded the image from Wikipedia but apparently sharing it on Facebook violates their sharing of cyber security information policy.

Which totally makes my point. The government and their social media platforms can try to suppress information – or for that matter artificial intelligence – but if the people find it useful or interesting it’s going to be used regardless of what the government says.

Musk Says That, as of April 15th, Only Tweets from Twitter Blue Subscribers Will be Recommended in the Main Feed | Social Media Today

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Musk Says That, as of April 15th, Only Tweets from Twitter Blue Subscribers Will be Recommended in the Main Feed | Social Media Today

With Twitter Blue take-up failing to reach expectations, Elon Musk is taking drastic action to drive more adoption, announcing today that, as of April 15th, the only tweets that will be displayed in the ‘For You’ tab – i.e. the main tab of the app – will be from paying, Twitter Blue verified accounts.

I would be very annoyed if they banned Tiktok 🐮

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I would be very annoyed if they banned Tiktok 🐮

I like watching Tiktok, especially AgTok and the bullhaulers and truckers doing bull hauling-trucking type stuff while stuck in traffic on the bus. While I don’t make my own TikTok videos, in part because my life is so boring, it sure is a lot of fun to watch.

Is Tiktok healthy, good way to spend time? Sure I could be watching an instructional video, learning a new skill, doing something better with my time while stuck in traffic in commute home, but sometimes after a long day of work, I need a breath of fresh air, even if it sometimes tastes a bit like diesel smoke and silage.

Tiktok is fun. I think concerns about it being used as a spy platform are overblown, as I don’t think there is much useful information to be gleamed out of such things. While I guess the platform could be grabbing geopositioning data from uploaded videos, I think people would have already figured out if the app was actually stealing data or other information from people’s phones at this point. It’s not difficult to put a network snooping app on a phone, and watch what traffic the app is generating — and I’m sure security researchers and developers have already searched out for nefariousness purposes.

Meta is dumb 👥 

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Meta is dumb 👥 

There is all this talk about re branding Facebook as Meta and creating some kind of 3D virtual world. But does anybody really want to go through life wearing 3D glasses or some slow, bulky, data intensive interface?

People just want the information they need, without too much bulk or clutter or geegaws.

Why did Facebook originally replace MySpace? The interface was simple and uncluttered, unlike MySpace which allowed for a lot of clutter with users choosing their own pages colors and being able to lard them up with silly tunes, comic sans fonts and garish colors. Facebook with its clean white background, easy read text and fast loading made all the difference. 

Everything You Say on Facebook Will be Used Against You

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Everything you say can and will be used to ram Facebook advertising down your throat

Since installing the Facebook Lite app that uses very little data and memory space, I have to admit I’m using Facebook more then I probably should be and seeing more advertising for that priveledge. The truth is most of the advertising isn’t all that relevant to me and much of it is very scammy.

Lately the biggest chunk of advertising I’ve seen is for the “Community Solar” that is being aggressively promoted by green marketeers, ever since the state adopted a regulation mid-December that allowed solar farm operators to bill you for their energy produced to the grid. Community solar, allows one to buy “a share” of an industrial solar facility. I see a ton of these days as I’m often talking about off-grid living and the solar panel on my truck, but the Facebook algorithm doesn’t understand the issue. If anything, I’ve been critical of community solar farms, which I think have been permitted with too little scrutiny by regulators, and a somewhat dubious value to the grid or society as a whole. Roof-top solar — closely paired with a load — makes a lot of sense especially on hot summer days and will mean the dirtiest, most fossil-fuel intensive plants are kept off, but I’m not sure I agree with covering farm fields with solar panels and aluminum frames with no decommissioning plans.

The other big advertising I’ve seen a lot of is so-called geothermal heat pumps, that use electricity to pump heat from or into the ground as an alternative to fossil fuel boilers. I guess that’s a good thing if you have a large house as it eliminates on-site fossil burning, and carbon emissions but most heat pumps also consume an increadible amonut of energy — often doubling the electricity consumption of a modern suburban house, which is a lot of energy that still to this day is largely produced by burning fossil fuels, mostly natural gas in New York. Maybe you come out ahead with heat pumps, even if with the loses of converting gas into energy, but I’m skepitical. I just don’t think the standard suburban way of living in sustainable even if you green wash it. I guess it might be more reasonable if you also had a large grid-tied solar array on your home, but even that is unlikely to fill all the energy-hungry needs of geothermal heat pump.

Beyond all the green advertising I see being pushed down my throat with Facebook, there have been a lot of sponsored posts on financial services, but most of the ones being sold as “scamy” and of dubious value. There are the category of apps that are suppposed to make it easier to budget, those suggesting financial products you should buy before your 36th birthday, those trying to claim to be a better good then what I already have. Information is never a bad thing, but I think I’m an informed consumer and the products I already are investing in or have purchased are a better deal then what the marketers are selling. I don’t like the dishonesty of nature of those ads, trying to trick you into buying a product or service that really isn’t in your best interest. I think it’s good to care about money, to invest, work towards a better future, but I don’t like what I see in the ads.

Additionally, there is the category of ads that follow you around the internet of products you have looked at before, some of which you have already bought. Sometimes I will look at a product have seriously, mostly because I want to know the cost or what is out there to meet a need. Sometimes then I will build thing at home or find another way to make it work for less money. Other times, there are just interesting things out there to check out. Doesn’t mean I ever plan to buy it. Or even worse is advertisements for things you’ll already bought but they are continuing to push to you, as the algorithms just aren’t smart enough to do know the difference.