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Saved by @zmbnski

The YouTube algorithm that I helped build in 2011 still recommends the flat earth theory by the *hundreds of millions*. This investigation by @RawStory shows some of the real-life consequences of this badly designed AI.

 This spring at SxSW, @SusanWojcicki promised "Wikipedia snippets" on debated videos. But they didn't put them on flat earth videos, and instead @YouTube is promoting merchandising such as "NASA lies - Never Trust a Snake". 2/
A few example of flat earth videos that were promoted by YouTube #today:
https://t.co/TumQiX2tlj 3/
https://t.co/uAORIJ5BYX 4/
https://t.co/yOGZ0pLfHG 5/
https://t.co/Tj1zVkoIFG 6/
https://t.co/uUXCFjXxHg 7/
And this one would be hilarious if not recommended so massively to people who are the most vulnerable to conspiracies
https://t.co/EKed0B1XhD
8/
@nasa's @mlthaller nicely shows in 3 minutes why the earth is round and wonders: Why do so many people believe in flat earth? But the conspiracy is promoted by YouTube 100,000,000s of times, so I'm actually surprised that *so few* people fall for it 9/

https://t.co/yZpqdiJgsR
NBA star @KyrieIrving fell for it and explained that he was convinced both by Instagram and YouTube recommendations 10/

https://t.co/cqYz3SbDO8
So basically we have the two best AIs of the world, on Instagram and YouTube, competing to convince people that the earth is flat. Because it yields large amounts of watch time, and watch time yields ads. This is a #raceToTheBottom 11/
Flat Earth is not a "small bug". It reveals that there is a structural problem in Google's and Facebook's AIs: they exploit weaknesses of the most vulnerable people, to make them believe the darnedest things 12/
Another real-life harm of this conspiracy promoted by AI: in Nigeria, Boko Haram used the flat earth theory to motivate the killings of more than 600 geography teachers 😰 13/

https://t.co/M2mVtZRut9
https://t.co/myxPsrhlKa
More info on the link between Boko Haram and flat earth in this detailed @latimes article 14/
Full @latimes article here:
https://t.co/M2mVtZRut9
15/
How do we know if harmful videos get promoted by the AI? To monitor that, I created https://t.co/0RjD2PtTvV, a site that scans YouTube recommendations daily. If harmful videos get recommended by the AI from many channels, they will appear at the top of the list there. 16/
For now, it is available in English for YouTube yet, but with the help of universities and @HumaneTech_, it will soon cover more languages and platforms 17/
The real danger of AI is not that it becomes "self-conscious". It's that we trust it too much and slowly become imbeciles

Flat-earthers are the canaries in the coalmine /18
I've seen some people state that: "canaries are only a small fraction of our users!"

I think they're missing the point. 19/
"Ban all the canaries from the coal mine!" also misses the point.

With AI in charge of our information, we're facing a brand new, existential problem that concerns all of us. We need to develop tools to understand it better. 20/
One more key to understand this: this @KELLYWEILL's article shows that some people spent *days* on YouTube after being converted to flat earth

From the algorithm's point of view, flat earth is a gold mine.

Full article: https://t.co/LPjCKpbwXj

21/
Also fascinating in this article is that Logan Paul was a speaker at a Flat-Earth conference, where he said "I’m coming out of the Flat Earth closet". He has 18,610,154 followers on YouTube, mostly pre-teens and teens

https://t.co/LPjCKpbwXj 22/

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On Wednesday, The New York Times published a blockbuster report on the failures of Facebook’s management team during the past three years. It's.... not flattering, to say the least. Here are six follow-up questions that merit more investigation. 1/

1) During the past year, most of the anger at Facebook has been directed at Mark Zuckerberg. The question now is whether Sheryl Sandberg, the executive charged with solving Facebook’s hardest problems, has caused a few too many of her own. 2/ https://t.co/DTsc3g0hQf


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It’s underremarked upon that stablecoins accomplish basically all of the original design goals for Bitcoin qua a transactional mechanism (instant free value transfer anywhere), but that nobody cares about this because nobody ever cared about that part of the pitch.

“Why do people care about stablecoins then?”

A mix of “they encourage dollar-denominated liquidity in the cryptocurrency ecosystem and discourage withdrawal of the same” and “they’re good for money laundering.”

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This was a solved problem in traditional finance, too, mostly through the extension of credit. (It doesn’t matter how long settlement takes if there is sufficient trust to enable credit.)

The Bitcoin ecosystem is *positively allergic* to credit, so you have to call it a coin for them to accept it. And after you call it a coin they ignore everything the world has learned about credit, like risk management.

“Stablecoins aren’t credit!”

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Zed A. Shaw, Writer
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When you complain about an open source project's management you'll get the reply, "Use something else if you don't like it!" That'd be true except for the tiny problem that *many* projects also strive for complete monopolistic dominance.

Let me tell you about Java in early 2k:

I was programming in Java since it's release, and all through the late 90s into the early 2000s. At first Java was very determined to unseat C++ and it used various propaganda tactics to turn C++ and malloc into a weird enemy for all of us to hate. This worked great!

Everything was fine though because there were plenty of jobs in tech because of the dot-com boom, and then suddenly there were not jobs because of the dot-com bomb.

Overnight it seemed as if the *only* way to get a job was at giant companies, and they *loved* Enterprise Java.

Now, this is the golden ticket for many open source projects and corporations. They all want to be the top dog #1 in the industry for their particular use, and once they gain that position they become abusive by ignoring user needs and extracting wealth from them.

With Java the dominance was so insane that *every* language had to copy Java's weirdness to survive. If you wonder why a language has some odd CamelCase things it's because early Python, Ruby, and others had to copy Java's semantics and style to even be considered "serious".
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Next up in Privacy Technology at #enigma2021, Kelly Huang from @ethyca speaking about "GONE, BUT NOT "FORGOTTEN"—TECHNICAL & PRACTICAL CHALLENGES IN OPERATIONALIZING MODERN PRIVACY

Just imagine there's a global pandemic forcing everyone to stay home and buy their stuff over the internet. And you've been working on your sanitization-on-demand startup. You've got more users than you can count! ... literally, because your data's all over.

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How do you operationalize privacy rights?

Primary stakeholders:
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We spend a lot of time on Twitter analyzing the legal rulings, but it's harder where the "rubber meets the code" 🥁
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सत्यवती ने महर्षि भृगु से अपने तथा अपनी माता के लिए पुत्र का वरदान मांगा।ये जानकर महर्षि भृगु ने यज्ञ किया और तत्पश्चात सत्यवती और उसकी माता को अलग-अलग प्रकार के दो चरू (यज्ञ के लिए पकाया हुआ अन्न) दिए और कहा कि ऋतु स्नान के बाद तुम्हारी माता पुत्र की इच्छा लेकर पीपल का आलिंगन...

...करें और तुम भी पुत्र की इच्छा लेकर गूलर वृक्ष का आलिंगन करना। आलिंगन करने के बाद चरू का सेवन करना, इससे तुम दोनो को पुत्र प्राप्ति होगी।परंतु मां बेटी के चरू आपस में बदल जाते हैं और ये महर्षि भृगु अपनी दिव्य दृष्टि से देख लेते हैं।

भृगु ऋषि सत्यवती से कहते हैं,"पुत्री तुम्हारा और तुम्हारी माता ने एक दुसरे के चरू खा लिए हैं।इस कारण तुम्हारा पुत्र ब्राह्मण होते हुए भी क्षत्रिय सा आचरण करेगा और तुम्हारी माता का पुत्र क्षत्रिय होकर भी ब्राह्मण सा आचरण करेगा।"
इस पर सत्यवती ने भृगु ऋषि से बड़ी विनती की।


सत्यवती ने कहा,"मुझे आशीर्वाद दें कि मेरा पुत्र ब्राह्मण सा ही आचरण करे।"तब महर्षि ने उसे ये आशीर्वाद दे दिया कि उसका पुत्र ब्राह्मण सा ही आचरण करेगा किन्तु उसका पौत्र क्षत्रियों सा व्यवहार करेगा। सत्यवती का एक पुत्र हुआ जिसका नाम जम्दाग्नि था जो सप्त ऋषियों में से एक हैं।
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