An interesting comparison between Threema, Signal, Whatsapp and Telegram. https://threema.ch/en/messenger-comparison Keep in mind that Switzerland is not the promised land of privacy, remember CryptoAG?
A paper published today in the journal Scientific Reports by controversial Stanford-affiliated researcher Michal Kosinski claims to show that facial recognition algorithms can expose people’s political views from their social media profiles. Using a dataset of over 1 million Facebook and dating sites profiles from users across Canada, the U.S., and the U.K., Kosinski and coauthors say they trained an algorithm to correctly classify political orientation in 72% of “liberal-conservative” face pairs. Study claims there are links between facial features and political orientation
That’s enough pornlitics for me, remember to use Tor, Telegram, use non-USA services, use your brain. There are always alternatives, do your research. We’re heading straight into the dark ages, head first.
There are two alternatives to Twitter and their ilk:
The federated approach, where many Twitter like sites can interconnect and exchange messages. One current example of this is Mastodon, other is GNU social (status.net/identi.ca).
The indie approach, where everyone basically hosts their own profile and there are no Twitter like sites at all, one instead uses readers that are completely separate from ones hosted profile, just like it was in the blogosphere days.
I tend to favor the indie approach as the federated one seems to in practice often end up with interoperability issues and mono-cultures, at least historically, plus there are still central providers whereas in the indie world everyone is a provider themselves.
Speech without a platform isn’t speech at all. Also, if you are tolerant with exceptions, you are intolerant, period. Which applies to free speech too: if you can say what you want EXCEPT that the Earth moves around the Sun, congratulations, you have no free speech.
And you are Galileo Galilei.
Does nobody notice when they’re writing software with features designed around user “engagement” and “retention” that they’re doing a disservice to their users? If not outright building addictions?
As The Age of Surveillance Capitalism points out – social networks need to be regulated. We need to punish their bad behaviour just as we punish sexual abuse. But banning bad behaviour, sadly, isn’t enough. We also have to take responsible steps to protect ourselves. Abstinence isn’t safe – why quitting social media isn’t the solution
I think we are quickly approaching a point in time when culture will start to swing the other way, and the internet will become this thing that people don’t take seriously, much like it was in the 90s. That, and some combination of that and censorship.
And the tech monopolies absolutely will not survive the level of influence they have now, even if they think they are playing it safe by supporting a particular political faction that happens to be popular at the moment. I think things are going to change fairly rapidly in this direction because it turns out being connected constantly is actually pretty awful in most of the ways that count.
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. - Anatole France
The greatest incentive for “social media” is to create outrage and agreement or disagreement, and it’s on a descending scale from there. “Quality content” is pretty far down the list, and of course the format makes quality content even harder.
