Social media sites thrive on the engagement that comes from those people doom scrolling so this whole premise is antithetical to the purpose of social media sites and the only reason they aren’t doing the same to children is because the law prevents them from doing so wholesale (but they will try to edge around the law every chance they get).
Yeah. My entire windows machine is locked down specifically to combat the copilot ms365 plague. I’m also using Bazzite and generally loving it. But I have a work machine for work things and some of my programs require windows to work.
I for one will not be putting any gibberish into Google’s AI for any reason. I don’t find it fun. I find it annoying and have taken steps to avoid it completely on purpose. I don’t understand these articles that want to throw shade at AI LLM’s by suggesting their viewers go use the LLM’s which only helps the companies that own the LLM’s.
Like. Yes. We have established that LLM’s will give misinformation and create slop because all their data sets are tainted. Do we need to continue to further this nonsense?
I also do this. I was having CCleaner clear all temp files as well when I close a browser but I set up windows to just delete them so that’s no longer a problem.
Long term/ extended stay hotels exist that will provide these things. But the vast majority of people don’t even consider those. They rely on what they can search up on Google for the area and algorithms don’t take into account that you need to bring your dog, want a separate set of bedrooms in the same suite, or that you’re looking for a kitchen.
I see this every time AirBnB is mentioned and every time I wonder if people even know extended stay hotels exist.
I believe at least one of the anti-trust lawsuits Google lost was brought by the previous Trump Administration.
This is largely the problem with most social media, and generative AI has made this problem worse just like it has made other pretty terrible facets of human interactions worse.
Anyone who was paying attention on reddit the last couple years (even pre-pandemic) could see that bots were taking over. The main difference (love mods or hate them) was that mods who’s subreddits didn’t rely on bot content to stay active were moderating the bot problem as best they could.
Now, most of those mods aren’t mods anymore and the vast majority only really want the engagement anyway so of course they’ll let bots basically take over.
Reddit the corp never cared about keeping bots off the platform and they care even less now. Bot engagement counts. Bot views of ads count. Removing bots actively hurts their bottom line in the short term so of course they aren’t going to do anything with that.
The actual human users on Reddit don’t care because they’re there to consume. It doesn’t matter to them if the posts they engage with are made by bots or not.
That’s honestly hilarious though. They made Marvin and don’t see the problem with that.
Buy things up in the fallout. The power vacuum the collapse will create will be ripe for anyone who comes out financially ahead in such a situation.
Tech giants welcomed Trump because they thought he would enable two things. A roll-back of regulations, and to increase profits. The thing is, the monkey wrench in this situation is twofold. The first problem is Elon Musk being placed in a position of power that enables him to detrimentally effect the profits and regulations of these industries to benefit his companies first and foremost while also being detrimental to these other tech companies. We see that a lot with the data he’s been stealing from all kinds of government agencies under the guise of saving the government money.
This means that even regulations that are removed that pave the way for these companies to enact policy or even just products to enrich themselves are hindered by Musk being a direct competitor to a lot of them. Facebook/Instagram vs Twitter, Tesla vs Ford, SpaceX vs Blue origin.
The second problem is the tariff situation. It cuts off a majority of tech companies from the cheap manufacture of components, devices, and even just consumer electronics that a lot of tech companies rely on in order to get their products into the hands of users so they can siphon up user data.
A third problem is that Musk has his hands in so much stuff that he’s pressuring the government to place his companies first in the running for. SpaceX and Tesla especially for things like bullet proof vehicles (where previously the government had contracts with other automotive manufacturers), and SpaceX being used for missions that NASA might have previously handled using Boeing products etc.
All these tech companies went to Washington DC to “Kiss the Ring” with the intention not just of avoiding a lot of legislation being leveled at them by previous administrations, but also in the hopes that they could position themselves as Musk had. For further government contracts. Because long after Trump is dead and buried, the contracts would be lucrative.
But that assumes they survive all the upheaval his administration is causing (and not just survive it, but come out largely economically and financially unharmed).
Anything may be possible, but the market has to survive in order for these companies to remain supreme.
Trump’s first administration filed the lawsuit that led to the court determination that Google held a search monopoly. The result of that is the DOJ filed a proposal that Google sell chrome web browser to another entity. Google has been fighting this proposal tooth and nail.
So the answer is, I’ll believe Meta gets broken up when I see it.
That’s true. But that doesn’t mean they don’t get to choose a better option than Facebook or Google or Amazon. Amazon at the very least isn’t a main competitor of theirs because Amazon doesn’t have a short form video product that’s mainstream. And they can afford to buy Tik Tok. So there’s that at least.
Oh the third hand, Google fomented the scam ads that then took over that they are now using their AI tool to solve, and it’s come very late to the table to do so. They shouldn’t have to rely on AI to clean up their mess. They should have been facilitating protocols to vet ads long before now. At best the AI might be faster, but those results will still more than likely need to be checked by people (at the very least, appeals will be, but perhaps most of these scam ad companies won’t try to appeal).
With the use of AI to deny or approve healthcare insurance claims etc, this is exactly why we should be pushing for legislation that regulates AI. There’s too many people who are all “cats out of the bag” and not enough people going, we should be regulating this.
They haven’t “won” until Meta has to pay damages. And even then, that win is hollow because not only will Meta try this again if the penalty isn’t high enough, but they’ll use the advantages of our weak leadership to further avoid any serious repercussions.
This article assumes Tik Tok wants to sell or that they are going to sell to a company that’s basically a direct competitor. I don’t understand this assumption.
It’s a bad time for an increase economically. But when you realize that we have been paying $60 USD for games since at least the 90’s and $60 in 90’s money is something like $150 in 2025 money, you realize just how good we’ve had it for a long time. And then take into account that games have become more and more expensive to make (yeah yeah I understand that a lot of the cost is down to a lot of non-game development relevant jobs), you don’t start to wonder why they didn’t increase prices before?
I’m not saying we like it. I’m saying that anyone who’s given it some thought can see why they might want to increase prices.
Some of them are just fine with the switch 2 hardware and even understand that game prices have been stagnant for some time. But Nintendo has been constantly showing us they aren’t a company we want to continue to support and if you couple that with affordability you’re gonna have a bad time.
They’re charging $90 for a game that plays better on non-oem hardware than it did on it’s original intended hardware, a game a lot of fans have already bought (who would still need to pay an additional $10 fee just to get the game running the way it probably should have run from the start).
I mean this in the best possible way, but Nintendo fans are avid collectors and they want this, but Nintendo dissuades them in multiple ways from showing support.
The sarcasm lost on you, or?
So, did the market tumble again after he said this nonsense?
They have 2 good points though (even if I generally agree with you that this is a first world problem). The first is that this will likely show up for parents who have lost a child or potential parents having fertility issues and that does suck.
The second is that it’s just good UI to add a little box that says “never show this message again”. It wouldn’t take but the smallest iota of extra effort to do that. Annoying popups are honestly a first world problem. But they absolutely also show that these companies do not care, while these companies are trying to show they care.
People are lonely. They lack the kinds of interactions in their lives that make them feel comfortable and more importantly allow them to feel seen or understood. The mindless scrolling temporarily fills the void they have in human interaction while allowing them to interact themselves if/when they want to.
Humans are “addicted” to human interaction and the algorithms take advantage of that fact to make a product out of them.
Additionally, human brains seek out novelty. A lot of our day to day lives are filled with work and duties (chores, bills, children) etc. People in the 1920’s weren’t addicted to the news paper. They needed something to do with their free time that didn’t break the bank. Increasingly there’s just not that many things that you can put down to switch gears that fit that bill.