Many people fear that a corrupt or authoritarian regime might misuse data to cause harm. However, the reality is that such regimes tend to carry out harmful actions regardless of the data they collect. Data can make their efforts more efficient, but the real danger lies in the regime's intent, not necessarily the data itself.
Exactly, historical authoritarian states got by just fine by reading the mail and listening to conversations. You don't need to know which fragrance I bought last week to oppress me, and it wouldn't help anyway
But they broadly didnt actually get along just fine... Almost without exception they have falleb, commonly due to internal resistance. Making that internal resistabce harder via enhanced surveillance is the issue that could make future scenarios even worse.
The most defined example would probably be Apartheid South Africa. Despite being in a weak position, having few resources, and dealing with constant losses, the ANC were so successful in harassing the National Party over three decades that the National Party finally ceded power in 1993. This was enabled by radio broadcasts, fast printing, and starting in the late 1970s digital espionage. Information and the spread of information was tightly controlled by the National Party, which is one of the three major reasons why it took so long and why slow erosion was the only viability rather than full immediate revolution.
I disagree with this sentiment. Form factor has been the driving force behind the adoption of computing devices throughout history—look at the PC or the smartphone. Each one marked a new era. Glasses seem like the preeminent form factor for a computing device, short of a direct neural interface.
The smartphone enabled always-available computing. Glasses will enable always-on computing.
It can certainly be banned, prohibited, and censored to an extent (current BTC gossip protocol is unencrypted via TCP, if I'm not mistaken), plus the on/off-ramps can be outlawed.
As I understand it, the regulation is largely on how it interacts with a country's own currency or banking system, which indicates to me that users need to do this in order to have real-world use. You can have all the virtual currencies you like online and as far as I'm aware no government cares, the taxman isn't looking at your millions of gold in WoW or Eve-online ISK, but they would if it's used the same way crypto currencies have been in their jurisdictions.
Moreover, Wikipedia relies heavily on news articles as sources. It goes without saying that news outlets are not well known for holding neutral positions.
Virtually dressing every day seems like a lot of work compared to just using an avatar that has your favorite three or four variations baked in, not to mention the basic assumption there that everyone wants to be a realistic (or realistically shaped) human and not a robot or an anime exaggeration of the human frame.
Seems likely to me. I can't recall Facebook acting in good faith at any point in time. If there's a bunch of money to be made assisting well-funded politicians, then I'd fully expect Facebook to be wanting a piece of that pie when their business model is generally to act against the users of the site by selling their data to manipulators.
No, dude. Conclusions cannot be made based on feelings. Where exactly is that step in the scientific method? It certainly doesn't sound like the rigorous skepticism that should be applied to what is observed.
I am appalled at the willingness to make huge logical leaps on the basis of emotions or morality in this thread.
We're talking reasonably informed caution here. Science doesn't come into it, at all. Science is trying to make sense of the world, this is about preventing harm. And, as I wrote elsewhere, the social sciences have almost nothing to offer in terms of policy and decision making. They're too unreliable.
We can however easily imagine what's happening in this particular case, and the data support it. The damages are enormous. Like climate change, continuing is not an option, nor is waiting until we've got conclusive evidence, because that will take ages.
Making claims based on scientific method (not even theory or findings, because we have them, and they support the tenor of the article) is not helpful.
> We can however easily imagine what's happening in this particular case, and the data support it.
I have yet to see credible data regarding causation and I prefer that large societal decisions not be made based upon imagination. Comic books, pinball, rock n roll, violent video games at some point were all claimed to be destroying our youth and there was "data" presented to back it up.
Teen drug, alcohol, nicotine and sexual activity are significantly down since 2009. Maybe social media is causing that too and on the whole is a benefit. Or maybe teens are more depressed because they aren't getting high, drinking, smoking or screwing enough.
> Like climate change
Climate change has actual quality data and science behind it, so it is nothing alike.
> Climate change has actual quality data and science behind it, so it is nothing alike.
I don't disagree, but
> I prefer that large societal decisions not be made based upon imagination
with that attitude, no decision can ever be taken. Social sciences can't produce the evidence you need. It's correlations all the way.
But also:
* Not acting is also taking a decision, because social media isn't going to stop any time soon. How's there evidence for just letting things continue?
* How is stopping children (until, say, 18) a large societal decision? That's just minor. There isn't even a risk involved. Children didn't have social media until 10-15 years ago at all. Did that stump their progress or something?
Those under 18 are people too and they have fundamental rights just as other people do. This includes free speech rights. This right is even specifically protected by Article 13 of the Convention on the Rights of Children. I recognize that free speech rights have limitations, but I consider any decision by the state to limit speech major and should require more than casual correlation based upon shady data. Individual parents can decide what they want for their children but the state should stay out of it.
At an even higher level, Apple and Google devices are what allow hateful and abusive content to be created. Should they bear some responsibility and prevent us from creating such content?
I think this is a fair question. I guess the way I see the difference is that a google/Apple phone is more like a tool (say a hammer) where Meta is providing a public space (like a restaurant or public square). So I think that in real life we would say that a restaurant owner has some duty to prevent their restaurant from being used to kill people/encourage suicide/do sex trafficking, but we wouldn’t ask a hammer manufacturer to police how people use hammers (we still do require some basic things like that the product must be reasonably safe). So I guess the root difference is the difference between a tool and a platform. They both bear some responsibility, but we expect the platform/space to bear much more responsibility for what happens.
I mean it gets exhausting. We had Covid (and Q), Musk taking over Twitter, war in Ukraine, fear of war in Taiwan, ... accelerated climate change and so on. There are real limits to how many things one can be upset about.
