Noupside

Noupside, 5 months ago to random

Interesting to see Margarita Simonyan co-opt Prigozhin’s phrasing for some multi-layered trolling in a year-end holiday video on RT (which features a poor quality Biden facemorph).

Noupside, 5 months ago to random

The annual Christmas tradition in which I am kicked out of the gift wrapping room by my spouse because I am “phoning it in” and there are gaps in the seams of my wrapping. 🫥

Noupside, 5 months ago to random

Conversations with the 3yo on this family holiday visit: “what are you going to be when you grow up?”

“A human. But a little bit taller.”

Noupside, 5 months ago to random

We watched a fight about this play out in SFUSD in 2019 or so. The budget was approximately $2 per meal per pupil. The board cancelled the lunch contract because some kids said the food was gross and then had no plan for finding anyone else — the bidding process turned up nothing. They wound up going back to the vendor. My kid, fwiw, said it was fine. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Some districts have their own kitchens in the schools apparently but that’s an option most urban districts don’t seem to have.

Noupside, 5 months ago to random

Academic institutions - many institutions - just do not know how to respond to bad faith attacks. The game has changed. The opponents don’t care about facts, only optics. Communications teams must start to understand what they’re actually engaging with.

Noupside, 5 months ago to random

I just turned in my book manuscript!

I could have second-guessed every word for many more weeks but it feels so good to just be done with it.

Noupside, 5 months ago to random

Is there a handy tool free tool where you drop in a URL and it generates a Chicago style citation?

Noupside, 5 months ago to random

Recently we looked over a Russia-linked disinformation network operating on TikTok: the videos alleged grift and corruption of Ukrainian officials including at the local level, and the audiences they seemed to target spanned Europe, with the likely intent to undermine support for war aid. Most of the accounts only made 1 video. Some had quite a lot of views. Unclear how TikTok’s FYP dynamics shaped this, the “winner” videos seemed somewhat random.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-67687449

Noupside, 5 months ago to random

Since Alex Jones is back on Twitter and it is being processed in the context of “free speech” I would like to share one of my favorite content policy documents of all time: Infowars’ TOS.

All civilizations have rules.

Noupside, 6 months ago to random

The opening post of an important new coverage theme on Just Security. These attacks are happening to so many people who work on various facets of election protection and it’s critical to understand just how coordinated and deliberate it is.

https://www.justsecurity.org/90417/americas-election-officials-fight-disinformation-and-death-threats-ahead-of-2024/

Noupside, 6 months ago to random

Late #caturday entry: new kitten doubles as a standing desk foot warmer.

Large Maine Coon kitten hanging out on my standing desk pad while I work:

Noupside, 6 months ago to random

More important coverage of CSAM issues on Meta properties. Includes additional work done by SIO, led by @det. The groups recommendation engine has been a source of very bad unintended consequences for a long time now. This work requires dedicated resources and trained human teams; it’s very adversarial. But there was an awful lot of extremely obvious stuff here.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/meta-facebook-instagram-pedophiles-enforcement-struggles-dceb3548

Noupside, 6 months ago to random

“If you're going to create an ideology in the time of social media, you’ve got to engineer it to be viral.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilybaker-white/2023/12/01/who-is-basedbeffjezos-the-leader-of-effective-accelerationism-eacc/

Noupside, 6 months ago to random

People who have done books or write/review a lot: what tools would you suggest for diffs? I have a manuscript back from the publisher in Word, but more updated versions I kept tweaking in GDocs. Need to compare and merge edits…

Noupside, 6 months ago to random

The Twitter Files clowns made up a “”censorship”” apparatus to rail against —charging their readers $9.99/mo to follow their ‘work’ fighting to ‘take down’ a thing that doesn’t exist. Meanwhile, actual censorship goes underexamined as Elon has eliminated access to both the transparency reports & the APIs that let researchers track govt requests, and understand how state power& unaccountable private power intersect.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/08/india-twitter-online-censorship/

Noupside, 6 months ago to random

“The people no longer paying me to amplify their speech because they didn’t want to associate with my speech are actually oppressors of YOUR speech!”

Noupside, 6 months ago to random

This is a bad decision. And this is ridiculous: “Executives at Meta made the decision based on free-speech considerations after weighing past U.S. elections in which the results might have been contested by a portion of the electorate, according to people familiar with the issue.” Ads are paid political speech. If they do this, they are profiting from the Big Lie.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/meta-allows-ads-claiming-rigged-2020-election-on-facebook-instagram-309b678d

Noupside, 6 months ago to random

This article details the impact, but the situation is very simple: Institutions are cowering rather than push back against a handful of election deniers -some who hold Congressional gavels. The deniers& their influencer propagandists run smear campaigns targeting election workers and researchers, fabricating an alternate reality, to ensure they are able to act unopposed in 2024. It’s about power. That’s all.

https://www.npr.org/2023/11/10/1211929764/election-false-claims-social-media-cisa-trump

Noupside, 6 months ago to random

#caturday updated photos of the boy joining us in 3 weeks. He is 4mo old and 7lb.

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Noupside, 6 months ago to random

I got a bunch of writing and talks finished this week but honestly the major accomplishment is that I now have 2 children that can swim in deep water. 🏊‍♀️ We have been going to the pool every Saturday for nearly a year and it felt like it would never happen.

(The toddler still can’t swim; I am kind of envious of people who can attend those infant backfloating rescue classes every single day.)

Noupside, 6 months ago to random

Elon’s last batch of firings of his moderation team in Ireland happened because a current fanboy simp with a secret past as a white nationalist YouTuber named “frame games” ratted out the team lead for liking a tweet making fun of Elon.

Noupside, 6 months ago to random

As I head into my eighth month of having become a bête noire in the cinematic universe of Substack propagandists & partisan hacks with a victim complex, I feel that the full scale of the splintering of American society into bespoke realities has not yet been fully internalized by most people.

Noupside, 7 months ago to random

Trust & Safety research folks, have a look and please share! https://cyber.fsi.stanford.edu/io/news/call-proposals-expanding-online-trust-safety-research

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Noupside, 7 months ago to random

One of my essays made a very good reading list ❤️

https://barackobama.medium.com/what-im-reading-on-the-rise-of-artificial-intelligence-72e088918de2