Decent article. Governments, neglecting regulation of platform design and provision of digital literacy programs, uphold conditions in which problems can only be exacerbated: legitimizing studies, often financed by interest groups, providing unnuanced headline statistics, which increase the likelihood of citation by sensationalist mass media; ultimately manufacturing consensus on increased government control, among the largely digitally illiterate public.

Given that platforms, like Facebook and YouTube, have been experimenting with both identity and age verification, well before being obligated to, suggests a self-serving interest in, or at least anticipation for these technically challenging regulations. Like the article, I fear minors to migrate to alt-tech platforms instead; leading governments to indiscriminatory mandate the same for these, for which they do not have the resources to comply: killing big-tech’s (future) competitors.

I’m of the opinion that in an alarmingly digitized society, intensified during the COVID pandemic, minors should also be able to participate in it. And if we’ve established, minors can no longer responsibly coexist alongside adults on the internet, perhaps we should create a (hardware) platform specifically for minors. Have children identify themselves to prove they’re young enough to enter, rather than having to prove the contrary: requiring EVERY internet user, to supply additional personally identifiable information.

Although there’s unmistakably reason for concern, I’d argue if we continue this trend long enough, we’ll end up with an effective safety-tyranny.

Curious how big-tech platforms, actively moderating every user action on their platform (for advertiser-friendliness), while often involved with codeveloping the world’s leading AI models, are somehow unable to moderate advertisement content. Certainly no conflict of interest there…

I do wonder what downstream consequences this might entail: if YouTube starts baking advertisements right into videos, would they still classify as advertisements? And what would this in turn mean for content-creators’ sponsored content (often constituting a significant portion of their income)?

As much as I passionately hate advertisements (leading me to mercilessly block every single one of them), I rather have platforms using advertisements for monetization, than doubling down on selling user-data.

Quite impressive, but not necessarily in a positive way. I especially get uneasy with the robot having 360 degree vision, turning its head 180 degrees, walking backwards towards me, and in the process rotating the rest of its body. I do appreciate them not trying to make it look like a human, nor treating it as one. Seeing the renders of groups of these clankers, especially with the knowledge of them being able to share their “intelligence”, is frankly horrifying to me.

You’re on an entirely different plane of reality mate, my brain just can’t fathom a forward-thinking concept as such ;)

And the next patent will be about a controller, not actually being plugged into the console, but merely giving gamers the illusion of affecting the gameplay…

Politicians are already hellbent on “age”-verifying social-media, but Elon seems believe there to be a lack of urgency in this regard… Please regulate social-media harder daddy! Please, we’ve had the resources to comply with these perverse regulations for a while now. I didn’t hijack this platform, just for the lefties to be able to speak their mind on alternative platforms…

So that’s why Australia initially included GitHub, on the list of “social-media” platforms to be banned under 16?

An AI gooner Aquapet… “what a time to be alive”

So Amazon is basically trying to overtake Google Shopping? To ultimately be able to see what consumers are interested in, beyond the products offered by Amazon. This would allow them to anticipate for trending products, make their own knockoff of it, and list it prominently on their own platform. And if the original vendors want to appear higher (still below Amazon’s mind you), they’d have to pay for advertisements: which is where the money is at. Beautiful dark patterns… :)