Sasha Akhavi @sakhavi@qoto.org

Important reporting by Davey Alba and Julia Love on Google's rush to compete with OpenAI and sloppily pushing things out via a "code red", ignoring the weak ethics review guidelines already in place.

In particular, I'm glad they gave prominent attention to @Mahdi and the way they've censored his work on LLMs. Leadership did everything they could to stop this paper from being published, while lavishing praise on silly Medium posts by senior VPs.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-04-19/google-bard-ai-chatbot-raises-ethical-concerns-from-employees

♪♫ we believe that children are our workforce

treat them tough and give them quarter pay

show them all the hours they can work at niiiiight

give them a sense

of fright

let the children’s labor

remind us how it used to be ♪♫
https://who13.com/news/politics/iowa-politics/iowa-senate-passes-child-labor-bill-in-pre-dawn-session/

getting older means seeing past the stories of what our society is about.
Learning systems can be a source of despair.
This is what I try to do about it: https://jessitron.com/2023/04/15/when-the-world-feels-wrong/

I think we tend to overestimate the importance of software design as the main factor in explaining why social media feels “good” to us while underestimating the importance of good people posting good things. This comes to mind as folks wonder if Bluesky or Substack Notes or whatever new platform might be more “user friendly” than Mastodon and then therefore definitely “better.”

"Don't make me think" is only half of the story.

It's a #UX sin to assume that your app is the most important thing in your user's world, and add to their cognitive load unnecessarily. But sometimes the user *is* focused on your product. They don't want a low-touch, automagic experience. They want to be in control. Let them.

Don't *make* me think - but *let* me think.

This is part of why "reduce friction" is misleading. Friction is texture. Without it, there's nothing to grab on to

#UXDesign

Got a new opinion piece out in @globeandmail today: "Yet another subscription fee: Twitter, Facebook, Netflix are desperate and dying"

#BigTech #digital #digitaleconomy #netflix #twitter #facebook

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/commentary/article-subscription-fees-twitter-meta/

So many conservative complaints boil down to "the people we oppress are treated like heroes, but we, the people who oppress them, are never treated like heroes, wah."

Spider-Man Particle Man

🤝
doing things their species
in particular can

You like bad boys?

Real poor-quality guys with failing organs and paper-thin skin?

Faulty, low-grade, broken-brained men who are literally falling apart?

Just shoddy, defective, garbage-shit male humans?

Want some decrepit Earth dudes?

maybe you recognize me from the cover of Thriving magazine

How Marjorie Taylor Greene’s ‘pedophile’ slur made it to ‘60 Minutes’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/03/lesley-stahl-interview-marjorie-taylor-greene-pedophile-slur/

This is textbook fascism where problems are being blamed on a marginalized and powerless minority.

As other previously targeted minorities have become politically necessary to appease, right wingers have found a demographic small enough to abuse without election consequence risk

Microsoft Word?

I haven’t heard that name for years…

It's amazing how much you can learn about risks to the future of the internet by just watching attacks on sex workers and their livelihoods.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88x9mb/spankpay-sex-work-payment-platform-shuts-down

🚨 “what we do in the next few years will determine our fate for millennia” 🌎

Humanity at the climate crossroads: highway to hell or a livable future?

#IPCC report released.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/mar/20/humanity-at-climate-crossroads-highway-to-hell-or-a-livable-future