51–60 of 78 posts
They underlying interview is pretty amazing, mostly not about this subject: https://www.wired.com/story/bill-gates-on-covid-most-us-test...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
His point is more nuanced than that, and oversimplified complex ideas virally spreading through social media is part of what he talks about. "Q: As someone who has built your life on science and logic, I’m curious what you think when you see so many people signing onto this anti-science view of the world. A: Well, strangely, I’m involved in almost everything that anti-science is fighting. I’m involved with climate ch…
I read all of what you pasted before I posted. I don't see how it changes my point at all. There's a complete disconnect between the first statement about encryption and the second. Unless Bill Gates really thinks that the vast majority of spread is through private messages. Even accepting the premise that censorship is the right approach, the vast majority of spread comes from public, unencrypted post. The connectio…
4chan mocked the hell out of the Christchurch shooter and Elliot Rodgers. None of those comments would be agreeable to the general public. The only places I've seen these guys, as well as Tsarnaev and the Columbine shooters praised is... Tumblr, Twitter, Reddit.
While I'm concerned about child pornography, there's more of it on Pornhub and XNXX than I've seen on Tor. And it's the low barriers to access on public porn sites that use automated filters that cause more of an issue. Bing itself will find adolescents if you type in keywords like "2k4" and "2ke" with adult terms.
Maybe Bill should focus less on trying to expose private paths and more on addressing the glaring gaps that come with over-automating platforms.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger]." Disappointing to see that Bill Gates isn't concerned about the slippery slope of regulating encryption. It frankly sounds like he'd be on board with the EARN IT act. As long as we're only undermining freedom for the children or to make sure there's no…
I've met a couple of really smart people ( like CEOs), who are very good for their company + employees and have a very strong opinion about this. They are pro security for sure, but... Security shouldn't be abused by malicious actors. And those malicious actors shouldn't be able to hide behind encryption. In the same sense, privacy is important but I'm not sure if it's that important in Covid times ( eg. The decentra…
Which is a long way to say "security is bad because it might keep people safe who we don't want to be kept safe".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
His point is more nuanced than that, and oversimplified complex ideas virally spreading through social media is part of what he talks about. "Q: As someone who has built your life on science and logic, I’m curious what you think when you see so many people signing onto this anti-science view of the world. A: Well, strangely, I’m involved in almost everything that anti-science is fighting. I’m involved with climate ch…
It seems like he's against the notion of "I disagree with what you're saying, but I will defend to the death your right to be misinformed." Basically, if something can be proved as false information, and yet it's still allowed to spread to millions of people that unlike the average HN commenter will not do the research and end up believing the misinformation, what's the value in that? Why would we allow something tha…
The distinction (whether intended in Gates' source or of my own mind) I find interesting is between veracity and velocity.
Like you, I have enormous problems with deploying censorship to completely obliterate any type of thought from readable form. I see it as society's job to target the demand (the reader's desires and education), not the supply (the writer). If people want to start believing crackpots in large numbers, well, maybe society needs to look to its basic education systems...
That said, velocity is somewhat of a trickier matter.
As a thought exercise, what would the net effect be if Facebook implemented systems that resulted in misinformation being slowed? I.e. I share {link}, it takes x1.5 base time to propagate to my friends' feeds.
The information would still be available, and shared, but the viral velocity would also be reduced.
(Note: Of the available options, delay-only seems far preferable than anything else that could lead to a de facto shadowban)
They underlying interview is pretty amazing, mostly not about this subject: https://www.wired.com/story/bill-gates-on-covid-most-us-test...
"I personally believe government should not allow those types of lies or fraud or child pornography [to be hidden with encryption like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger]." Disappointing to see that Bill Gates isn't concerned about the slippery slope of regulating encryption. It frankly sounds like he'd be on board with the EARN IT act. As long as we're only undermining freedom for the children or to make sure there's no…
"Infinite Retail Networks Invalidate Technology" can easily be achieved by segregating dot.com to its own "Internet/Network".
"Snowglobe or be snowglobed" is a better analogy than "everybody lives in a glass house except them".
ISH(water) and IRN(oil) don`t mix without constant agitation, so who better to add "business cycle" to archived knowledge and put a price on bits and bytes?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read all of what you pasted before I posted. I don't see how it changes my point at all. There's a complete disconnect between the first statement about encryption and the second. Unless Bill Gates really thinks that the vast majority of spread is through private messages. Even accepting the premise that censorship is the right approach, the vast majority of spread comes from public, unencrypted post. The connectio…
If you take the text at face value, he's making a pretty modest proposal: (1) The current velocity of disinformation is high -> (2) this leads to socially harmful outcomes -> (3) providing P2P encryption in turnkey form via social network apps isn't a good idea. I don't see the suggestions of panopticon you do. I see someone saying 'Most people on social media platforms aren't responsible, thoughtful enough media con…
How can that be achieved short of outlawing all encryption, heavily enforcing it and then allowing encryption "for the good guys"? If you outlaw encryption on FB or WhatsApp, even if you somehow get Telegram on board ... if people care about encryption (which I doubt, but let's pretend), somebody will provide a low-effort solution and you can't really stop it.
In last one week YT reco is all about bomb after watching couple of Beirut videos. That clearly says algo is broke. Tiktok was on fire during BLM protests but still keep regularly showing other contents then and then.
Microsoft first has to figure out and tell why have Teams and Skype. At this point people are migrating from SharePoint to confluence or other s/w to manage documents. Shrpnt GUI pretty much suck. New IE copy of chrome for the first week, it was consuming less CPU, now I could hear CPU fan just like chrome. MS should focus on improving software rather than media or unrelated things. Right now only s/w I like in Win10 is task manager, I use it soo much, thank god that UI has not changed.
Google never had luck with social media platforms. Fb came tookout Orkut, so many other things they started all closed down. Google search also needs improvement, it's fast but content is not as good as how it used to be 5yrs back or before.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boiled down to: nobody ever gets a promotion for maintaining the success of something that's already successful. Which is a shame, but the corporate game theory optimality of leapfrogging between hot projects has held true at essentially every company I've ever worked for.
I think it's more complex than the stewardship problem - that problem, specifically, is internal, and the executives who engage in change for the sake of advancement usually do so knowingly. I'm talking about something completely different - the executives in this case are not knowing participants, they are in the state of mind to be snowed.
So whether it's an external acquisition or internal project is somewhat immaterial.
I do expect TikTok to lose users after Microsoft acquires it. But not because of anything Microsoft might do. TikTok just seems like a fad social network that will inevitably lose the cool factor eventually.
TikTok has become too top heavy with its current creators. Its most popular stars not only live together but have conglomerated to form their own talent agency as well. You may not see it on your feed, but millions of middle schoolers seem to be highly invested in the drama that goes on between these people. These creators and their followers is what as known as “straight TikTok”. What’s to stop them from demanding t…
Can someone explain how encryption comes in play with social media moderation? I'd understand that from less technical 'thought leaders' but I imagine Bill is still a pretty technical guy so I was kinda surprised to see that.
That's kind of the point; switching to end-to-end encryption means the company is (supposedly) getting out of the moderation business, at least for these messages.
The kind of thing to worry about is social media's role in encouraging mob violence, massacres, and genocide. I assume Bill Gates is taking a global perspective on this.