I don’t think I’m ignoring that. The same standards for evidence that stop us from slipping into conspiracy thinking apply here, just the same as they apply to bigfoot, UFOs, etc.
What we have is people not liking McDonalds and calling it a shit sandwich over and over and assuming that somewhere along the way it was proven without actually checking, and then saying “well you know what’s in those burgers!”.
It’s the ultimate “Sumerians Look On In Confusion as God Creates World” scenario. ActivityPub already exists, it’s the prince that was promised. We don’t need any more platforms.
I recently came across an essay that basically argued we should separate “social media” from “attention media”, as the latter is what these places has morphed into.
I think that’s exactly right. The one caveat I would throw in is that the federated alternatives are solving a slightly different problem, namely centralization. And that in and of it self did, at least at first, genuinely recreate a feel everyone recognized as belonging to a prior era of the internet. A different structure of who ones it, stopping the network from being bent toward monetization. That’s a real thing.
It’s easy to be jaded by BlueSky in particular because it effectively ate Mastodon’s lunch and got its attention, while not truly being federated or leading to any culture reset. And perhaps more importantly. BlueSky appealed I think to an aesthetic curiosity more than a philosophical purpose, so I think it gives people the wrong impression of what the fediverse is all about.
I agree that Frendica sucks. For the longest time these alternatives were designed appallingly bad. Mastodon was the first case of non-stupid design, quickly followed by Lemmy, Pixelfed and Loops. An era of devs who know what they’re doing on the design side, at least to a much greater degree than before.
Found the sane comment. What we know for sure is that a combination of browser fingerprinting, de-anonymization (you can take anonymized hashed emails and compare them to hashes of known emails), and the third party broker marketplace that they can predict things with disturbing specificity like pregnancy, and obesity, to hidden patterns you might not even realize are in the data.
Plus there’s enough statistically informed shots in the dark that drive specific ads that, sometimes, they strike with perfect resonance. That’s enough to explain uncanny similarity. And the microphone listening thing is still plausible, but without stone cold proof it’s just a guess, and it overestimates how much data they need to be able to track you and sell you shit.
One’s a settlement with a blanket denial of guilt for Siri and Google Assistant. At least mild circumstantial evidence, because there’s a real mechanism (accidental activation and recording) is identified, but no proof, and certainly no proof of an ongoing intentional data broker style program. But at least enough of a pain that they won a settlement. So that counts as a trace of meaningful circumstantial evidence.
But the second one is just a link to sell you a product that doesn’t provide any evidence whatsoever and doesn’t even pretend to, it discusses the possibility in vague generalities as something hackable and tries to sell you a product. I’m baffled as to why you think that counts as a source.
don’t need any such “proof”
I’m gonna stop you there. I’m okay with no benefit of the doubt in terms of them being bad actors, but your worldview still has to be built at the bones and joints out of things known to be true otherwise there’s no stopping you from believing every conspiracy with no guard rails.
I don’t think there’s yet a specific smoking gun on this front, but I think once there is, then it is okay to presume it likely happening in other instances. But no smoking gun just yet.
Hello? Is this thing on? I sometimes worry that it’s impossible to get anyone in a thread like this to stay focused on a train of thought for even five seconds. You posted an article that you thought was a good source, but it wasn’t. Then instead of addressing any of that whatsoever, you say “just google it.” What we just witnessed was a breakdown in your ability to tie sources to claims, not to mention your ability to keep attention focused on one point before jumping to the next one. You need to fix that before you recommend any more sources.
And I have googled it. The closest thing to a smoking gun is Cox Media Group claiming it as a capability, inspiring uproar and then walking back the claim that they could do it. That’s the best media report on it. And this has been directly studied in an academic setting, finding basically no evidence of secret listening. It doesn’t mean there’s no incentive or that they aren’t bad actors, but you can’t use a vague feeling that “it’s proven” that to justify a breakdown in your ability to think critically or actually look at evidence.
Hacks can and do happen, we already knew this from camera hacks of yesteryear. What we don’t know is that major social media platforms or tech companies are doing this, either at all or at scale. And yes, it’s important to distinguish those two things, because that’s also part of critical thinking.