[News] The Internet Was a Mistake

A thread for updates on the various ways the internet is destroying everything and the undying hellsites of social media. Let's all laugh at the abyss.

Grenn wrote:
Prederick wrote:

Former security chief claims Twitter buried ‘egregious deficiencies’

tl:dr

And, finally, Twitter appears to have been lying to Elon Musk about bots quite extensively.

Is there any way to punish Twitter while also forcing Musk to pay the 1 billion fee at the same time? How do we make is so they both lose?

Musk tendered the offer without doing any due diligence and the money folks went along because he's Musk. It's all on him.

I dunno. Having Musk own it seems to be punishment for both parties?

Jonman wrote:

I dunno. Having Musk own it seems to be punishment for both parties?

Having Musk own it will immediately turn it back into a platform for the people who have previously been kicked off of it. Short of being able to burn the entire service down, I'd like the deplatformed pieces of crap to remain deplatformed.

Seth wrote:

Yeah at some level, there’s no functional difference between the countless humans covering Noah Kahan’s new single on TikTok and if those countless NPCs were robots instead of teens.

As Jonman points out, I’d say we’re actually extremely well prepared for ai generated content, and have been since we started playing video games with computer generated dungeons in them.

That said, I am eternally grateful that I am old enough that I will never be forced to take part in the upcoming Matrix metaverse that, despite half a century of sci fi warning us about it, seems inevitable. What a rotten, horrifying idea.

I also think that we are well prepared to weather the incoming flood of ai content by essentially ignoring it, but I do worry how it will impact the overall culture I exist in. For example, I have successfully ignored the entire "influencer" ecosystem, but I still feel the impact it's had.

I have successfully managed to stay off my own lawn, but I still worry about those darn kids.

(Nah for real though I get what you're saying and you're not wrong to be concerned, I'm just being a dick.)

The Bionic-Hand Arms Race

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FbG6HTnVQAE6gGf?format=png&name=900x900)

Honestly, we gotta start beating some of these people up.

Just a sh*tload of (theoretically) well-meaning dudes not actually listening to the needs of the people they're allegedly attempting to help, but instead convinced of their own Musk-ian genius and that it's for everyone else to understand how great what they've done is.

Prederick wrote:

The Bionic-Hand Arms Race

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FbG6HTnVQAE6gGf?format=png&name=900x900)

Honestly, we gotta start beating some of these people up.

To be fair, paying a "subscription fee" so that you can try to get support for parts of your body when they start to malfunction is a fair description of the US Healthcare system.

yup...

IMAGE(https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMjA4MTUxODM0MV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwMDg3MTgwMw@@._V1_FMjpg_UX1000_.jpg)

Keldar wrote:
Prederick wrote:

The Bionic-Hand Arms Race

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FbG6HTnVQAE6gGf?format=png&name=900x900)

Honestly, we gotta start beating some of these people up.

To be fair, paying a "subscription fee" so that you can try to get support for parts of your body when they start to malfunction is a fair description of the US Healthcare system.

To be fairer, we gotta start beating up those responsible for the US Healthcare system too.

Thanks Obama

Bigots of a feather, flock together.

Looks like Kiwifarms finally got too toxic for Cloudflare.

CF shouldn't get a lick of congratulations for this, they only did it because Kiwifarms went full Kiwifarms, as everyone said they would.

Funny how this came about after NBC covered them.

They almost immediately got a .ru backup running but it’s barely functional and Keffals is already organizing a campaign against the company that hosts KF’s primary servers.

ruhk wrote:

They almost immediately got a .ru backup running...

I swear to God, I wish I could've bet on that

Not entirely sure where this one goes, but I'll put it here for now.

Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers and hiring military security to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences

They started out innocuously and predictably enough. Bitcoin or ethereum? Virtual reality or augmented reality? Who will get quantum computing first, China or Google? Eventually, they edged into their real topic of concern: New Zealand or Alaska? Which region would be less affected by the coming climate crisis? It only got worse from there. Which was the greater threat: global warming or biological warfare? How long should one plan to be able to survive with no outside help? Should a shelter have its own air supply? What was the likelihood of groundwater contamination? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system, and asked: “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” The event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from raiders as well as angry mobs. One had already secured a dozen Navy Seals to make their way to his compound if he gave them the right cue. But how would he pay the guards once even his crypto was worthless? What would stop the guards from eventually choosing their own leader?

The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed “in time”.

The brains.... are bad.

I'm sure if we just keep voting Republican, we'll all get our own trickle-down Xanadus before The Event.

Damn, Love, Death, & Robots 3 Robots is dead on.

I bet one of these underground shelters gets filled up with nothing but clones of a guy named Gary.

We need to keep track of where Bezos is shipping all the water chips. It's going to matter.

Or one dude and a crate of puppets.

ruhk wrote:

They almost immediately got a .ru backup running but it’s barely functional and Keffals is already organizing a campaign against the company that hosts KF’s primary servers.

KF was just dropped by their .ru provider and Josh Moon, owner of KF, released a statement saying that he has two other potential providers lined up but doesn’t expect them to be able to handle the site, and that he “doesn’t see a situation in which the site is allowed to continue operating.”
Good start to the week.

Prederick wrote:

Not entirely sure where this one goes, but I'll put it here for now.

Tech billionaires are buying up luxurious bunkers and hiring military security to survive a societal collapse they helped create, but like everything they do, it has unintended consequences

They started out innocuously and predictably enough. Bitcoin or ethereum? Virtual reality or augmented reality? Who will get quantum computing first, China or Google? Eventually, they edged into their real topic of concern: New Zealand or Alaska? Which region would be less affected by the coming climate crisis? It only got worse from there. Which was the greater threat: global warming or biological warfare? How long should one plan to be able to survive with no outside help? Should a shelter have its own air supply? What was the likelihood of groundwater contamination? Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system, and asked: “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” The event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from raiders as well as angry mobs. One had already secured a dozen Navy Seals to make their way to his compound if he gave them the right cue. But how would he pay the guards once even his crypto was worthless? What would stop the guards from eventually choosing their own leader?

The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed “in time”.

The brains.... are bad.

Someone either hasn't read a particular chapter from World War Z, or has and thinks they can buy a different outcome.

Reddit Disinformation & How We Beat It Together - Smarter Every Day 232

They built a Minecraft crypto empire. Then it all came crashing down

Not everyone shares the same outlook on play-to-earn gaming. Mikhai Kossar, a chartered accountant and a member of Wolves DAO, a group that consults with NFT gaming projects in the early stages of their development, told Rest of World that some players will always go wherever they can make more money. “They will play Pac-Man if they can earn more,” he said.

According to Kossar, NFT renting mechanisms in play-to-earn games are important to keep them accessible to poorer players. “You have people that have money, but don’t have the time to play the game, and on the other hand, you have people that don’t have money but have time,” he said.

He sees a future, however, where guild ownership and management could upend the model of wealthy Western players managing those in low-income countries. “Filipinos could band together to buy some assets and then rent them out to themselves and make money that way,” he said.

But he also envisions NFT games that could exploit the wealth gap between players to deliver a different experience. “With the cheap labor of a developing country, you could use people in the Philippines as NPCs (“non-playable characters”), real-life NPCs in your game,” said Kossar. They could “just populate the world, maybe do a random job or just walk back and forth, fishing, telling stories, a shopkeeper, anything is really possible.”

I'd say "can you hear yourself" but he can, and thinks this is good.

I think it might have been a year or two since I last read this thread.
It's like our spider picture thread, but for a different part of the brain.

I really need to rethink about reading this thread before I go to bed...

New Report Claims YouTube Is Cashing in on Misogyny, Racism, and Targeted Harassment

On YouTube, engagement is king. The platform, which thrives on its dual status as both a social media network and news space, pays creators handsomely for making videos that get large amounts of views and interactions from any given audience. To keep the worst out, the sheer influx of content is moderated with a series of community guidelines that are intended to “make YouTube a safer community” while still giving creators freedom, according to the site.

But a new investigation by research firm Bot Sentinel found at least two dozen YouTube channels with “flagrant” policy violations were allowed to continue posting without censure from YouTube moderators. Even more alarming: they’re still getting paid.

In an exclusive interview, Bot Sentinel founder Christopher Bouzy tells Rolling Stone that the report uncovered a pattern of unchecked hate speech, misogyny, racism, and targeted harassment singularly focused on famous and identifiable women. The most mentioned women in the channels were Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and actress Amber Heard, both of whom have remained extremely vocal about the long-term mental and emotional effects of targeted harassment. (While the report notes that Bot Sentinel has been hired by Heard’s team in the past, to determine how much of the online hate was organic, they write that “no one hired Bot Sentinel to compile and publish this report.”) In a review of just five single-purpose hate channels focused entirely on Markle, Bot Sentinel estimated the channels receive a combined $42,000 in monthly payments. Since all of the videos run with advertisements, it is understood that YouTube also receives a share of the profits.

“YouTube is to blame,” Bouzy tells Rolling Stone. “A lot of these folks would not do what they’re doing if YouTube was not rewarding them. And let’s be clear here, they are rewarding them. When you allow these folks to monetize this content and you’re the company that is paying them, at the end of the day, you’re pretty much facilitating the harassment, the vitriol that we’re currently seeing.”

When contacted for comment, a YouTube spokesperson, who has not seen the report, said that the site takes these sorts of violations seriously: “We’re committed to rigorously enforcing these policies equally for all creators, and encourage any user to flag content they believe violates our Community Guidelines.”

Under Youtube’s current community guidelines, the site prohibits “malicious insults” focused on famous or identifiable individuals or based on people’s appearances or status (like race, or being a survivor of domestic abuse). But according to the report, channels that focus their content on reactions and opinions of Markle and Heard are often allowed to post defamatory content entirely unchecked. Others employ deceptive practices, like including thumbnails that don’t correlate to a video’s content in order to get past moderators. According to the report, these channels aren’t slipping under the radar — they’re commonplace.

At least 29 YouTube channels were allowed to monetize content that contained harmful, defamatory, and threatening language toward Markle, according to the report. An additional 22 channels posted at least 30,000 videos that made up 80 percent of all negative anti-Meghan titles on YouTube, like “Booed At Buckingkham! Meg puce with rage as Mourners screamed LOUDEST BOOED Meg BACK as Queen’s dead” and “SHE IS UNWELCOME! Meghan CAN’T HIDE DESPAIR Over ABSENCE In Scotland After QUEEN DEATH REPORT.”

The single-purpose hate channels, focused solely on anti-Markle sentiments, mentioned negative and defamatory remarks toward Markle in 94 percet of all their content. According to the report, three top producing channels mention Markle’s name at least 15,000 times in videos that have received a combined 76 million views. In comparison, Bouzy says Catherine the Princess of Wales is mentioned less than 3,000 times in videos discussing the royal family and most references are “overwhelmingly positive.”

New?

Another article from the land of duh.