Forest Stairs
BuzzFeed News
BuzzFeed News
Blaming contractors when that’s the moderation system they designed? They can’t control their own moderation system? Facebook stock price is at an all time high so the company doesn’t have much incentive to change their systems. It’s working well for making money, working terribly for society.
The Verge
The Verge"At least two separate Facebook users reported the account for inciting violence prior to the shooting, The Verge has learned. In each case, the group and its counter-protest event were examined by Facebook moderators and found not to be in violation of the platform’s policies."Facebook increases engagement by recruiting new members to groups like this. This is Facebook working as designed.
Conspiracy Thinking as Corrupted Play
I hesitate to mention conspiracy theories at all because while I think they can be entertaining to turn over in your mind they're ultimately not a rewarding way to spend your mental energy. What if humans didn't land on the moon? is a neat party trick once but you can't build a movement on it because it doesn't hold up with any scrutiny. (By the way, check out the fantastic three-episode Our Fake History podcast on this topic: Why Deny the Moon Landings?)
If you haven't been following the big consipracy theory of our day, I don't blame you. There's a good primer in The Atlantic: American conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase. I think it's good to be aware of it because it's starting to affect our politics and creep into our culture. You can't help but encounter these theories on social media. And unlike moon landing denial or flat-earthers, these theories have become a dangerous world view and belief system for many of the people who are snared.
One useful angle I've seen for thinking about these all-encompassing conspiracies is comparing them with alternate reality games. ARG designers Adrian Hon and Dan Hon both had great articles expanding on this connection: What ARGs Can Teach Us About QAnon and QAnon looks like an alternate reality game. I think looking at the history of ARGs can help us make predictions about how current conspiracy behavior will unfold. I especially liked this idea Jon Glover mentioned of corrupted play that describes losing the frame:
Another post that gave me a lot to think about this topic was Mike Hoye's Connections. He saw conspiracy thinking as similar to occult thinking and summarized C. S. Lewis' view of its ultimate futility:
If you haven't been following the big consipracy theory of our day, I don't blame you. There's a good primer in The Atlantic: American conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase. I think it's good to be aware of it because it's starting to affect our politics and creep into our culture. You can't help but encounter these theories on social media. And unlike moon landing denial or flat-earthers, these theories have become a dangerous world view and belief system for many of the people who are snared.
One useful angle I've seen for thinking about these all-encompassing conspiracies is comparing them with alternate reality games. ARG designers Adrian Hon and Dan Hon both had great articles expanding on this connection: What ARGs Can Teach Us About QAnon and QAnon looks like an alternate reality game. I think looking at the history of ARGs can help us make predictions about how current conspiracy behavior will unfold. I especially liked this idea Jon Glover mentioned of corrupted play that describes losing the frame:
Role play is contingent on navigating between real and imagined worlds, which affords opportunities for allegorical thinking, exploration of alternate identities and universes, and creative problem solving. But when this boundary collapses, we have what Joseph Laycock calls “corrupted play,” a term that helps explain dark or weaponized ARGs.Corrupted play describes both the appeal and danger of conspiracy thinking. The appeal is all of the good pieces of play that we need but twisting it by losing the fact that it is play at all. Here's the article by Glover: This Is Not a Game.
Another post that gave me a lot to think about this topic was Mike Hoye's Connections. He saw conspiracy thinking as similar to occult thinking and summarized C. S. Lewis' view of its ultimate futility:
Lewis saw occultism as a sort of psychological snare, a set of endlessly self-referential symbols of symbols of symbols with no ultimate referent, a bottomless semiotic rathole for the overcurious inquirer designed to perpetually confuse and distract the mind.In computer terms, this reminds me of a Honeypot:
Generally, a honeypot consists of data (for example, in a network site) that appears to be a legitimate part of the site that seems to contain information or a resource of value to attackers, but actually, is isolated and monitored and, enables blocking or analyzing the attackers.However, unlike a script that's trapped in a loop gathering bogus data, conspiracy adherents take their collected data and act in the world.
Vox
Vox“While I will be a Democratic candidate, I will be an American president,” Biden said. “I will work as hard for those who didn’t support me as I will for those who did. That’s the job of a president. To represent all of us, not just our base or our party.”Competency looks so unusual! But I think I'm ready for it again.
NBC News
NBC News“As of this morning, we have tested 954 students and have 177 in isolation and 349 in quarantine, both on and off campus” university officials wrote in a statement. “So far, we have been fortunate that most students who have tested positive have demonstrated mild symptoms.”Another danger of opening campuses and then abruptly closing them is creating a spreading event. Here's more from The Chronicle of Higher Education: UNC Pulls the Plug on In-Person Fall. Will Other Campuses Follow?
"Students now must pack up and go home. Once there, Joseph Eron, chief of the infectious-diseases division at the UNC School of Medicine, recommended that they quarantine themselves for a time, away from their family members. They should stay in a separate room, wash their hands frequently, and wear a mask around the house. “They should not expose themselves to their parents or their grandparents,” he said. “That’s the way to be completely safe.” After all, they would be returning from something of a coronavirus hotspot."Cluster, indeed.
popular.info
popular.info"There are 44 states that don't require any reason to vote by mail or allow concerns about COVID-19 as a valid reason. All 44 states provide alternatives to the USPS to return your mail-in ballot."You might want to know how to return a ballot without using the postal service. Just in case it’s needed.
Native Lazy Loading
Hey, did you know that many web browsers have native lazy loading for images now? You can use it by adding an attribute to your image tags:
That's it! Instead of loading every image when the page loads the browser will wait until it's needed. Efficient!
Today I added it here and if you scroll very quickly through a page like this with lots of photos, you'll catch them loading as needed.
loading="lazy"
That's it! Instead of loading every image when the page loads the browser will wait until it's needed. Efficient!
Today I added it here and if you scroll very quickly through a page like this with lots of photos, you'll catch them loading as needed.
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com“Some stories demand collaboration, and this one is a plain example. The nation’s newsrooms — working together and, crucially, with the help of the public in communities around the nation — could find out and explain what is going on, at the macro and micro level,” he said.Dan Gillmor on how the media should work to ensure the postal service story is told.
Browseulator
BrowseulatorFun experiment: see if loading up Paul Ford's random archive.org ephemera thing gives you the same dopamine hit as the random crap social media gives you to look at. I enjoy it.
Wired
Wired"Here we are, this is August. We are the only country in the world where we waste the most money on tests. Fix the reimbursement."Gates has a great point here. If companies weren’t reimbursed for tests that take longer than 48 hours to return you’d start seeing results faster than 14 days which is next to useless.
BuzzFeed News
Facebook Fired An Employee Who Collected Evidence Of Right-Wing Pages Getting Preferential Treatment
In another recent Workplace post, a senior engineer collected internal evidence that showed Facebook was giving preferential treatment to prominent conservative accounts to help them remove fact-checks from their content.Heartening to hear Facebook employees are continuing to speak up and challenge management. If you haven’t seen Max Wang’s departure video, it’s well worth your time: Leaving facebook: a critique of fb's policies, priorities, and ideologies, ft. hannah arendt. It’s a very personal take on the difficult ethical spot the company is putting its employees in.
The company responded by removing his post and restricting internal access to the information he cited. On Wednesday the engineer was fired, according to internal posts seen by BuzzFeed News.