CNBC: TikTok to settle as social media addiction trial involving Meta, YouTube moves forward. “TikTok has agreed to settle with a plaintiff and will no longer be part of a high-profile social media trial kicking off on Tuesday. An attorney for the plaintiff said the trial, held in Los Angeles Superior Court, will proceed as scheduled against Meta and Alphabet’s YouTube.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/28/cnbc-tiktok-to-settle-as-social-media-addiction-trial-involving-meta-youtube-moves-forward/
siliconvalley
Always good to listen to Mark Little who reminds that tech has, and can be, a positive force despite some of the more authoritarian and dystopian ideas predominating in #SiliconValley at the moment
https://pod.link/1325667441/episode/ZDJjY2JmNGYtMWJkYi00NTU3LTlhZTItYjNkZTAxMmFhYjE2
What Tech Wants: The San Francisco Experiment
https://www.levernews.com/what-tech-wants-the-san-francisco-experiment/
@technology @law @democracy @politics @technology #economy #wallstreet #finance #classwar @povertyandinequality @workersrights @workingclasshistory #socialjustice #poverty #democracy #usa #USpoli #housing #plutocracy #billionaires #technology #mastodon @socialmedia #socialmedia #siliconvalley
In terms of 'Digital Sovereignty' this is giving the Tech Bros a slice of your territory as a bribe.
UK Labour just gave....Swindon...to the Clan Of Paedophiles.
And how's that OFCOM investigation into Grok AI going? Has it started? The Euro one has....
#Meta #TechBros #DigitalSovereignty #UKPOL #UKPOLITICS #Technology #SiliconValley #Fascism #SocialMedia #Bribery #Corruption
Ars Technica: Meta wants to block data about social media use, mental health in child safety trial. “The company has petitioned the judge to exclude certain research studies and articles around social media and youth mental health; any mention of a recent high-profile case involving teen suicide and social media content; and any references to Meta’s financial resources, the personal […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/26/ars-technica-meta-wants-to-block-data-about-social-media-use-mental-health-in-child-safety-trial/
¡Acabáramos! ¡Que son los tecnobros de Silicon Valley quienes quieren Groenlandia! Se sabía que las tecnológicas necesitan explotar recursos y territorios físicos para sostener la gran estafa digital de la IA generativa, pero ¿a quién le importa que el imperialismo regrese si trae el «futuro»?
#UAE #SiliconValley #SocialMedia #legal
'The federal decree law establishes a national Child Digital Safety Council... and applies to internet service providers and digital platforms, whether operating within or targeting users in the UAE.'
The National (Middle East): Parents in the UAE now have a legal obligation to monitor children’s digital usage, experts say . “The federal decree law establishes a national Child Digital Safety Council, to be governed by the Ministry of Family, and applies to internet service providers and digital platforms, whether operating within or targeting users in the UAE. It also applies to anyone […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/22/the-national-parents-in-the-uae-now-have-a-legal-obligation-to-monitor-childrens-digital-usage-experts-say/TechCrunch: Snap reaches settlement in social media addiction lawsuit. “According to the New York Times, the settlement was announced Tuesday in the California Superior Court in Los Angeles County. The lawsuit against Snap was brought by a 19-year-old known in court documents as K.G.M., accusing the social media app of designing algorithms and features that caused addiction and mental health […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/01/21/techcrunch-snap-reaches-settlement-in-social-media-addiction-lawsuit/
Is the politicization of generative AI inevitable?
[…] On September 29, #Anthropic released Claude Sonnet 4.5, with supposed “substantial gains in reasoning and math.” We identified a dramatic shift in the behavior of Claude Sonnet 4.5 compared to its predecessor, with a much higher rate of refusal to answer prompts despite multiple nudges. In some cases where the model did select a response, it claimed to be choosing an option arbitrarily due to our insistence, but it emphasized that its response did not reflect its ability to harbor political opinions. This shift signals that Anthropic may have added additional safeguards to Claude Sonnet 4.5 that encourage refusal to respond to questions that are political in nature.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/is-the-politicization-of-generative-ai-inevitable/
The more I test #LLM responses to political and current issues, the more I realize they’re rapidly becoming a vector for misinformation that protects power and obscures harm, simply by refusing to engage or verify claims. I primarily use #Claude, and I’ve noticed a troubling pattern: recently it’s been reluctant to search for up-to-date information or verify claims in content it’s analyzing, unless instructed. Instead, when it come to these type of topics at least, it uses hedge language like “claims that” or “alleges” even when facts are indisputable - they’re simply unknown to the LLM possibly due to the fact that it relies on training data rather than searching.
Providing meaningless, quick responses to gratify impatient users or simply to save costs on searching and processing more tokens is misleading customers and in itself promoting misinformation if users are actually using LLMs’ responses on social media, for instance.
OK, really, I guess a conventional #introduction post is in order.
I just moved from the soon-to-be defunct sanjuans.life to the groovy and happening beige.party!
Hi, I'm Eric! I'm one of "those" people that spent most of his life in #SiliconValley and escaped in later life to the #PacificNorthwest. I spent some halcyon times that then turned tumultuous in #Portland before landing, through all sorts of weird life changes, in #OrcasIsland, Washington.
Still an active, if somewhat grizzled, #techie, I got to do a bunch of stuff (mostly involving #ReleaseEngineering) in places like Sierra Online, The Santa Cruz Operation, Frame Technology, Xerox PARC, DreamWorks Animation, Yahoo!, and Puppet.
I've been an erratic participant at #BurningMan. Originally, hanging (but not officially) with Spock Mountain Research Labs and Lamplighters, taking long breaks then coming back and doing stuff with #BLD
I have been an avid traveler. I love scuba diving, amusement parks, especially #rollercoasters. Back in the day, I was co-contributor of The World of Coasters and had some fun contributions to NPR, CNN, American Heritage.
After Covid set in things changed. I don't get out much and managed to stay free of it. I plan on keeping it that way. If one is to be stuck at home, San Juan County is a damn fine place to do it.
Edited 1y ago
📰 No vienen a salvarnos 📰
Por Marta Peirano @minipetite
Esta a punto de ocurrir: energía limpia, la maquina que aspira los gases, la vacuna contra el envejecimiento, la inteligencia artificial general. Al mismo tiempo, es el fin de la abundancia, de la democracia y de la despreocupación.
Un buen día, despertaremos y ya no habrá que dejar de fumar, de comer grasas saturadas o de poner el aire acondicionado
por encima de 24 C. quizá no habrá agua, derechos civiles
O calefacción, Parecen relatos antagónicos pero son muy
compatibles. Para que Jeff Bezos suba al espacio, millón y medio de trabajadores de Amazon tienen que malvivir. Para que Mark Zuckerberg encienda el metaverso, millones de europeos pondrán
la lavadora de noche y dejaran de hornear.
"No hay otra alternativa” fue el lema de Margaret Thatcher
para imponer la desregulación, el ultraliberalismo económico y
el imperio de los combustibles fósiles. "No hay otra alterativa"
dicen Davos, las ultimas cumbres climáticas y la televisión. Un milagro tecnológico salvara el mundo en el ultimo minuto porque
ya no queda tiempo y porque somos demasiado vagos, estúpidos, egoístas e insignificantes para cualquier cosa. Todo lo que hagamos
será ridículo en comparación.
"La mentira que alimenta la utopía del tecnocapitalismo es que solo existe una manera de hacer bigdata, inteligencia artificial o computación en nube", decía Evgeny Morozov en un ensayo reciente, "y es la manera que ha descubierto y perfeccionado Silicon Valley".
Es la mentira que devora el resto de alternativas, secuestrando sus recursos y ninguneando su potencial. El fin de la abundancia podría ser el fin del Estado de bienestar o el principio de una nueva era de responsabilidad radical. Pero despreciamos la acción colectiva y en incremento capaz de generar soberanía local en coordinación con las instituciones porque nos parecen pequeñas y tontas.
Es de listos pensar que la maquina de explotación de datos, vigilancia masiva y desinformación se transformara en un arca donde cabremos todos en lugar de triplicar la injusticia y la desigualdad.
Toda tecnología lo suficientemente centralizada es susceptible de convertirse en un arma de destrucción, explotación o colonización masiva.
Somos niños esperando que los adultos cojan el volante, pero los adultos son Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates y Elon Musk y no vienen a salvarnos.
Para que su futuro exista, el nuestro tiene que desaparecer.
#emergenciaclimatica #martapeirano #novienenasalvarnos #gafam #JeffBezos #BillGates #MarkZuckerberg #combustiblesfósiles #davos #colapso #ElonMusk #tecnocapitalismo #capitalismo #SiliconValley
Edited 3y ago