June 2023
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The Algorithm Con – How Social Media Manipulates Us
Algorithms, algorithms, algorithms. That’s all we’ve been hearing about for years now. And here we are, midway through 2023, watching the AI bandwagon race along at full speed, churning out generated content, videos, articles, the lot. Bullshit everywhere, made by AI. And the search results? Completely screwed. Google’s algorithms haven’t caught up. Did they ever?…
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Ragebait, Deepfakes and the Death of Trust Online
This has been bothering me for a while, and it’s finally tipped over from background noise into something I can’t ignore. Ragebait isn’t new. Sensationalism isn’t new. People twisting stories for attention has been around as long as people have been selling newspapers on street corners. What is new is how little effort it now…
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The UK’s Online Safety Bill. A Nation of Crybabies and Thought Police?
The UK’s Online Safety Bill is plodding its way through, and from the looks of it, even the politicians pushing it don’t fully understand what they’re doing. But hey, why let basic tech literacy get in the way of a good bit of moral panic, right? Apparently, we’re all a bunch of dangerous reprobates for…