"we recently paid people a few dollars to unfollow the most divisive accounts on X. After a month, they felt 23% less animosity towards other political groups. "Their experience was so positive that half declined to refollow those hostile accounts after the study and they felt less animosity 11 months later. "Platforms could easily redesign their algorithms to stop promoting the most outrageous voices and prioritize more representative or nuanced content."
How algorithms amplify toxic online voices | Jay Van Bavel, PhD posted on the topic | LinkedIn
Only a small percentative of people engage in toxic activity online, but they’re responsible for a disproportionate share of hostile or misleadin...
"The poor [#MoD official] who thought they were sending 150 #Afghan names to be verified, and accidentally sent nearly 25,000, was part of a department with a history of blunders. The 🇬🇧 Ministry of Defence has had various procurement fiascos and other data leaks… it entrusted the names of both Afghans and their supporters in the UK’s military and intelligence services to that wonder of modern science, the spreadsheet." 🤮
Client Challenge
The excellent @Open Rights Group 20th birthday conversation between @npub1fdrp...lvhs and @npub18nrq...k27q started with the #OpenTech panel discussion which led to ORG's founding. It featured Cory, me, Rufus Pollock, and @npub16xpw...kvxd 😎 An #ORG friend has dug out the video! I've uploaded it to #Peertube here:
p.lu
Where's the British EFF?
Panel discussion at Open Tech 2005, held at Imperial College London on 23 July https://www.opentech.org.uk/events/opentech2005/recording/ Speakers:...
“The #Trump #Gaza video tells us that the crisis of meaning in online spaces has entered a new phase, one in which trollish ambiguity is no longer ambiguous in any real sense but is now overtly the merest fig leaf for undisguised barbarity.”
DRB
The Monad Unchained - DRB
The collapse of liberalism in the age of Trump and Netanyahu
This was great! 👏 👀 @npub1fdrp...lvhs @npub18nrq...k27q #ORGat20 From: @npub1xhq5...4vjh
mas.to
Ian Forrester | @cubicgarden (@cubicgarden@mas.to)
Attached: 1 image #live !!!! !#ORGat20 Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic@mamot.fr ) and Maria Farrell (@mariafarrell@mastodon.social ) For Open Right...
When #Eurostar works properly, it’s still quite an amazing experience thundering across Kent and northern France in the sunshine at 320km/h 😍
#PostOffice & #Fujitsu 'employees knew the #Horizon IT system was deeply flawed but “maintained the fiction” that it could not produce errors when prosecuting innocent sub-postmasters, a public inquiry has found.' 13 postmasters committed suicide 🤮
Client Challenge
So many #BigTech alternative services are finally getting to the point they are mainstream consumer-ready - which is *essential* if they are going to grow into serious challengers 👏 I'm now hosting all my own videos on @PeerTube. Bye #YouTube! #interoperability
p.lu
Interoperability
Educational materials about interoperability as a tool to give users more choice and generate competitive pressure in monopolised markets
"One would rightly quail if just a few foreign firms owned Europe’s roads, ports or electricity grid. Yet, for 15 years, this is precisely what we’ve allowed to happen to our tech infrastructure — the backbone of our economy and democracy." 💯 #DMA #antitrust #Google #Meta #news #adtech #DigitalSovereignty #StrategicAutonomy
Digital sovereignty can’t be bargained away – POLITICO
#Apple's #News+ is just a pile of 💩 It has a reasonable selection of articles and newspapers, but: * Shows horrible, clunky ads in the middle of stories 🤬 * Insists on continuing to show articles from rags I've explicitly blocked, like the Torygraph 🤬 * Destroys the relationship between news media and their readers, no doubt to their great disadvantage in the long run 🤬🤬 Free trial cancelled! Thank FSM for the Financial Times subscription!