onfocus

"The loud, ideological anti-vaxxers exist, and it’s not hard to understand the anger directed at them. All this may make it seem as if almost all the holdouts are conspiracy theorists and anti-science die-hards who think that Covid is a hoax, or that there is nothing we can do to reach more people. Real-life evidence, what there is, demonstrates that there’s much more to it."

Zeynep Tufekci adds more depth to the picture of people who won’t get vaccinated.

"The statistics contrast starkly with the confidence in AI presented by Facebook’s top executives, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who previously said he expected Facebook would use AI to detect “the vast majority of problematic content” by the end of 2019."

If your answer to an extremely difficult problem is "AI will solve it" you are not really interested in solving that problem. Facebook leadership knows this but they say it anyway while human moderators suffer with no resources because AI will solve this problem any minute now.

’I probably went through maybe 300 Gretsch images and I got pretty good at it so I could see them and I could know right away that it wasn't it,’ he said. ‘So it's eliminate, eliminate, eliminate, eliminate.’

This story has it all! And by all I mean classic guitars, classic rock, internet sleuthery, and people being nice.

"Workers expect more in part because the company has been doing so well, boosted by high demand for farm equipment. The company reported a record $1.79 billion in profits for the second quarter of 2021, topping the record set the previous quarter with $1.22 billion."

Seems reasonable.

Post-election, the company dissolved a unit on civic integrity where she had been working, which Haugen said was the moment she realized “I don’t trust that they’re willing to actually invest what needs to be invested to keep Facebook from being dangerous.”

Dissolving society for profit.

"Specifically, they have refused to work with Democrats to pass legislation limiting state legislatures’ ability to overturn the results of future elections, to ensure that the federal government continues to have some say when states try to limit voting rights, to provide federal protection to state and local election workers who face threats, and in general to make clear to the nation that a bipartisan majority in the Senate opposes the subversion of the popular will. Why?"

I’m guessing personal ambition, fear of a violent base, or loss of lucrative post-politics career options are why constitution-minded Republicans are silent. We will continue to be in a constitutional crisis until we address the failed coup attempt and ensure consequences for the participants.

"Win or lose, their claim to be the sole authentic inheritors of the American tradition means they are the only ones who can legitimately govern and are therefore justified in seizing power by any means."

This is all out in the open. There should be political, legal, or professional consequences for the people who tried to subvert the election, but nope.

"Both at home and abroad, labor is the ghost in the machine. The supply chain is really just people, running sewing machines or loading pallets or picking tomatoes or driving trucks."

This is a good explanation of the seemingly random supply chain disruptions that keep showing up.

"Facebook has conducted multiple studies confirming that content more likely to receive user engagement (likes, comments, and shares) is more likely of a type known to be bad. Still, the company has continued to rank content in user’s newsfeeds according to what will receive the highest engagement."

Placing engagement above any other consideration is profitable if you never have consequences for the harms your service causes. This is a shocking amount of coordinated inauthentic behavior even knowing Facebook’s poor record on moderation. Misinformation is just another externality to Facebook so they have no incentive to fix it. They need to be regulated. (He whispered into the void.)

"Crisis care standards mean that scarce resources such as ICU beds will be allotted to the patients most likely to survive. Other patients will be treated with less effective methods or, in dire cases, given pain relief and other palliative care."

This is happening in the United States of America because Republicans are actively undermining public health efforts.

"One in four hospitals now reports more than 95 percent of I.C.U. beds occupied — up from one in five last month. Experts say it can become difficult to maintain standards of care for the sickest patients in hospitals where all or nearly all I.C.U. beds are occupied."

This was preventable.

"A one-year expansion of the U.S. child tax credit, a policy championed by President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats over Republican opposition, has disproportionately benefited states that voted for former President Donald Trump in 2020, a Reuters review of Treasury Department data has found."

Not one Republican voted for it.