At least for me social media was hardly less "mandatory" in the halcyon years of the late 2000s, the thing to have was just Facebook on your computer and not Instagram, which is allegedly the worst type of social media for mental health. Smartphone adoption was clearly rising very fast in 2012-2013 [1] (unfortunately no breakdown by sex / age / income).
It is frustrating to see these issues blamed on "smartphones" at large and not particular usages (Instagram, Tinder, Twitter stand out). I suspect if everyone used their smartphones to read e-books, lookup recipes, text their friends and family, or even just play video games there wouldn't be such a problem.
I fully agree with you that certain uses are by far the worst, but something that smartphones in general have done is remove boredom. And I think there is a reasonable argument to be made that boredom is/was good for mental health, intellectual health, and potentially much more. For instance something my friends and I would do when we were bored kids was to play a sort of homebrew dungeons and dragons with one another, creating impromptu 'choose your own adventure' tales to each other. I'm certain such things were phenomenal for our mental development. Of course that boredom also at times led us to engage in some less wholesome ventures, but it's all part of growing up. But what about now a days? If we were bored and had phones instead we could just go turn on our phone and watch some funny videos, or go play a "free" video game.
I'm certain such arguments were probably made at the advent of radio, television, and other mass media. 'But this time its different!' No, really. The big difference now is that, even as an adult, I could browse YouTube for hours without ever getting bored. Television, radio, and all previous forms of entertainment were all much more limited in their dynamics and content, even with a gazillion channels, meaning boredom was inevitable and often sooner rather than later.
Alongside what's mentioned from this article, there is also now evidence of decreasing IQ in developed nations. And yes, that is after controlling for immigration and other obvious potential confounding factors. [1] This started in the mid 90s, just about the time the internet explosion started making boredom quickly become a thing of the past. What we're seeing in modern times: decreasing IQ, decreasing testosterone, decreasing fertility, increasing obesity, increasing depression, increasing anxiety. It's hard not to see a connection between these and the end of boredom.
It didn't have to be someone at Project Zero. Anyone with a bunch of network logs could have searched for some of the fingerprints or URLs that were publicly available and deduced the target from associated traffic.
So we now know that drive-by rooting of even "locked-down" and "secure" user devices like the iPhone is possible and in active use by state actors. What are the odds that other governments, even the US (which has the additional advantage of being able to gag Apple and Google), are doing this? Seems like it would become a more important way to do surveillance as more data and networks become encrypted.
One of the pellets in this scattershot is basically, because sometimes beards are associated with being a man, and sometimes being clean-shaven is associated with being a man, there are surely no cross-cultural or cross-temporal ideals about masculinity at all and being a man can be completely redefined by lecturers in early modern masculinity or whoever.
That being said, as someone who can't grow a great beard, I'll always have the Romans; can't blame it on gas masks or TV ads back then.
People put their lives and their children's lives in danger to illegally enter the United States, frequently paying human traffickers substantial money in the process, because the border and enforcement is weak. They know that if they can get past the border they have a very good chance of spending as long as they want living and working in the US.
This is absurd. Where on earth are these "racist and horrible" Pepe memes coming from? In reality, 90% of uses of the Pepe character (which is now a fading meme) are as an avatar or highlight of a post's emotion. Seriously, the majority of all Pepes ever posted have been either a sad frog, a smug frog, or a happy frog. People use the meme to help express themselves along with their text, and then people spazz out worse than a bored housewife hearing about D&D in 1985 or NWA in 1995.
Peterson may not even be able to see the flag in the photo, but he has known about Pepe for a while, and even mentioned the meme in his livestreams as "interesting", possibly because as a Jungian psychologist he sees some association with Abraxas, which is a kind of "god of nature" / good+evil archetype in some of Jung's writing.
One of the most insidious effects of internet news in general and social media in particular is that we latch to information bubbles where people spread material painting "the other" in the worst possible view. It is entirely possible that u/sprafa news feed is a place where 90% of Pepe-related content does consist of "look at what those evil racists are peddling all day long" outrage based like-bait.
The sad part is the u/sprafa may well be unable to reconcile the perspective of what he saw with his own eyes with the perspective of others, in which Pepe is merely an avatar of one's own benign emotion.
Appreciate the courage. Can't speak for Jordan Peterson, but there are some of us that don't have a lot of time for or interest in browsing reddit in general and political subreddits in particular. We very rarely see a Pepe meme.
FICO scores are definitely worth comparing to this new emerging system, but there are key differences. The input data to FICO scores is broadly public (but not the exact weighting), and they only relate to financial and credit history. They are also regulated by the FCRA, making it so people can see the data that is being held about them and requiring negative information to be removed after a certain amount of time. People can and do receive damages from credit agencies and creditors if they don't correct erroneous information or violate other parts of the law.
It's regrettable that they're are used for things like employment, but on the other hand, you won't be prohibited from using a taxi (Uber), hotel (Airbnb), entering a restaurant (PatronScan), or using a phone or the mail (WhatsApp) because of your FICO score.
Nobody knows what data goes into the reputation systems of tech companies, where it's collected, or who it's shared with. You usually can't look at it. You usually have no recourse as there is no regulatory oversight and no contract to use their services besides "we can kick you off at any time for any reason or no reason at all".
Exactly; let's say you have a social media record or even a browsing history that indicates labor activism (or drug use, or health issues, or any other kind of activism). That data is saved somewhere, associated with you directly or just assembled into a behavioral profile for ad targeting purposes -- at least for now and as far as we can tell. And like racial bias, this data can be dumped into a neural net with a score at the end to launder what exactly is going on.
You can tell it's not a fluke if you look at the copyright claims that are sometimes available in the "Show More" section. Frequently, it will show claims that recordings of the same piece by other performers are part of the video.
Two of the movements have correct copyright claims for the performance, but another of the movements has a claim for a recording by a different conductor and orchestra. I see this all the time.
Like another person said here, we don't know how Content ID works or what exactly it's looking for, but it's clearly not an "exact match" of sound waves or something: it has to catch covers of compositions that are still under copyright, for example [1].
It is frustrating to see these issues blamed on "smartphones" at large and not particular usages (Instagram, Tinder, Twitter stand out). I suspect if everyone used their smartphones to read e-books, lookup recipes, text their friends and family, or even just play video games there wouldn't be such a problem.
[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/201183/forecast-of-smart...