"But it's not hard to see how social media and a rise in misogyny are, in fact, related. Social media sites trap girls in spirals questioning their attractiveness and self-worth. They're encouraged to compare themselves to others and seek approval for the way they look, while reinforcing beauty standards that favor thinness and whiteness. They feel pressured to promote themselves as objects. There have been many studies establishing all this over about the last 10 years, including Facebook's own research into girls and Instagram - research that the company suppressed until exposed by whistleblower Frances Haugen in 2021.
"Teens blame Instagram for increases in the rate of anxiety and depression," Facebook's study noted. "This reaction was unprompted and consistent across all groups.""
"Has the introduction of social media in the past 10-15 years caused the increase in prevalence of mental health problems in teens?
At this point, most of what I'm reading and hearing is a resounding yes (especially for girls).
I don't necessarily disagree with this. Just to level set: I think there is a very good chance (my current number is probably around 75%) that social media has contributed to the teen mental health crisis. At the same time, I think large-scale mental health crises are complex phenomena, that there are likely multiple causes, and that we need to make sure we're approaching the data with the scrutiny it deserves. It's this nuance that, I think, has been missing from the conversation."
"To start we need a new human right to "cognitive liberty", which would come with an update to other existing human rights to privacy, freedom of thought and self-determination. All told it would protect our freedom of thought and rumination, mental privacy, and self-determination over our brains and mental experiences. It would change the default rules so we have rights around the commodification of our brain data. "
"Given that, isn't it interesting that the one thing nobody talks about at the moment is the environmental impact of the vast amount of computing needed to train and operate LLMs? A world that is dependent on them might be good for business but it would certainly be bad for the planet. Maybe that's what Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the outfit that created ChatGPT, had in mind when he observed that "AI will probably most likely lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime, there'll be great companies"."
"Research suggests more than half of adolescents are on screens right before bedtime, and that can keep them from getting the sleep they need. Not only is poor sleep linked to all sorts of downsides, including poor mental health symptoms, poor performance in school and trouble regulating stress, Prinstein said, but "inconsistent sleep schedules are associated with changes in structural brain development in adolescent years. In other words, youths' preoccupation with technology and social media may deleteriously affect the size of their brains.""
"Launched on the eve of the millennium, Turkey's most popular homegrown social media website has weathered lawsuits, criticism from the highest levels of government and even death threats directed at one of its founders. A simple editable online dictionary turned national obsession, Ekşi Sözlük has for more than two decades spurred its own biting form of social satire while providing a rare haven for free expression on the Turkish internet.
But this year's earthquakes that upended life across Turkey may prove to be the death knell for Ekşi Sözlük, which was abruptly blocked across the country in the weeks after the earthquakes first struck, without proper explanation."
"A record number of countries switched off access to internet services in response to political upheaval last year, causing "incalculable and persistent damage to people's lives", according to a new report.
The research by internet rights group Access Now and the #KeepItOn coalition documents 187 shutdowns in 2022. These were introduced by governments in 35 countries - the highest number in a single year since the groups began documenting internet blackouts in 2016."
"Pornbots create fake accounts that are designed to mimic real people. They steal photos from public social media accounts, and follow the real profile's friends. They tack on suggestive captions and post links to external paid adult sites. The fake accounts choose @usernames that are deceptively similar to those they impersonate. And for good measure, the fake accounts block the person they're copying, making it difficult for the victim to see or interact with them."
"ChatGPT Heralds an Intellectual Revolution
Generative artificial intelligence presents a philosophical and practical challenge on a scale not experienced since the start of the Enlightenment."
"Especially at voting time, fears grow of TikTok 'disinformation' threatening democracy. Politicians and their paymasters are terrified that they can no longer control the supply of information to the public, thanks to platforms like Facebook and TikTok.
With Thailand's general election only a few months away, the Election Commission of Thailand (ECT) is battling to take back control of information through self-censorship of the TikTok video-sharing platform. Ostensibly, this is to keep young voters on the government's straight and narrow path."
"However, Ms Bower also noted Woolworths' AI technology is considerably less invasive than technology recently trialled and abandoned by Bunnings and Kmart. "The Woolworths cameras don't collect sensitive biometric data or any personal information," she said. "Woolworths has also taken steps to keep customers informed using a combination of in-store signage and public statements. Importantly, customers can opt-out by using the traditional checkout process. These are all consumer protections Bunnings and Kmart failed to implement.""
"Google, which recently laid off thousands of employees globally, is now laying off the robots that cleaned cafeterias at its headquarters. A report by Wired recently said that Alphabet's "Everyday Robots" project - a unit under Google's experimental X laboratories - has been shut down by Google's chief executive officer (CEO) Sundar Pichai."
"Taken as a whole, it shows strong and clear evidence of causation, not just correlation. There are surely other contributing causes, but the Collaborative Review doc points strongly to this conclusion: Social Media is a Major Cause of the Mental Illness Epidemic in Teen Girls."
"Google adverts direct pregnant women to services run by UK anti-abortion groups
The tech giant is carrying adverts styled to look like real internet search results for women seeking pregnancy advice
Shanti Das
Sat 25 Feb 2023 13.00 GMT
Last modified on Sat 25 Feb 2023 20.15 GMT
Women seeking online advice about abortions are being directed to pregnancy counselling services run by anti-abortion campaigners, an Observer investigation has found.
Google adverts that are styled to look like real search results and appear above genuine listings are routinely being shown to people searching key terms relating to pregnancy and abortion."
"Taming trolls is fairly easy if you follow the four-step approach below. It really works-in public and private social-media spaces, I tame 90% of trolls after phase one and have blocked fewer than a dozen people over the past four years."
"I have been working with generative AI and, even though I have been warning that these tools are improving rapidly, I did not expect them to really be improving that rapidly. On every dimension, Bing's AI, which does not actually represent a technological leap over ChatGPT, far outpaces the earlier AI - which is less than three months old! There are many larger, more capable models on their way in the coming months, and we are not really ready."
"Among other things, the declaration states that military AI needs to be developed according to international laws, that nations should be transparent about the principles underlying their technology, and that high standards are implemented for verifying the performance of AI systems. It also says that humans alone should make decisions around the use of nuclear weapons."
"ne YouTuber, Dan Duffy, joined the search just to post a video of himself joining it, and was fined on a public order offence, which he also filmed. One TikTok account, Curtis Cool Stuff, posted a video of a man digging up woodland, and another of him roaming around a derelict house opposite the bank where Bulley was last seen. Another group of men had to be dispersed from the house, having travelled there from Liverpool."
"Kellin Pelrine, an American player who is one level below the top amateur ranking, beat the machine by taking advantage of a previously unknown flaw that had been identified by another computer. But the head-to-head confrontation in which he won 14 of 15 games was undertaken without direct computer support.
The triumph, which has not previously been reported, highlighted a weakness in the best Go computer programs that is shared by most of today's widely used AI systems, including the ChatGPT chatbot created by San Francisco-based OpenAI.
The tactics that put a human back on top on the Go board were suggested by a computer program that had probed the AI systems looking for weaknesses. The suggested plan was then ruthlessly delivered by Pelrine."
"At first glance, the Twitter user "Canaelan" looks ordinary enough. He has tweeted on everything from basketball to Taylor Swift, Tottenham Hotspur football club to the price of a KitKat. The profile shows a friendly-looking blond man with a stubbly beard and glasses who, it indicates, lives in Sheffield. The background: a winking owl.
Canaelan is, in fact, a non-human bot linked to a vast army of fake social media profiles controlled by a software designed to spread "propaganda".
Advanced Impact Media Solutions, or Aims, which controls more than 30,000 fake social media profiles, can be used to spread disinformation at scale and at speed. It is sold by "Team Jorge", a unit of disinformation operatives based in Israel."
