Technology

cross-posted from: https://feditown.com/post/1309705

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/28700613

From their own internal metrics, tech giants have long known what independent research now continuously validates: that the content that is most likely to go viral is that which induces strong feelings such as outrage and disgust, regardless of its underlying veracity. Moreover, they also know that such content is heavily engaged with and most profitable. Far from acting against false, harmful content, they placed profits above its staggering—and damaging—social impact to implicitly encourage it while downplaying the massive costs.

Social media titans embrace essentially the same hypocrisy the tobacco industry embodied when they feigned concern over harm reduction while covertly pushing their product ever more aggressively. With the reelection of Trump, our tech giants now no longer even pretend to care.

Engagement is their business model, and doubt about the harms they cause is their product. Tobacco executives, and their bought-off scientists, once proclaimed uncertainty over links between cigarettes and lung cancer. Zuckerberg has likewise testified to Congress, “The existing body of scientific work has not shown a causal link between using social media and young people having worse mental health, ” even while studies find self-harm, eating disorder and misogynistic material spreads on these platform unimpeded. This equivocation echoes protestations of tobacco companies that there was no causal evidence of smoking harms, even as incontrovertible evidence to the contrary rapidly amassed.

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/29043868

Can't run Windows 11? Don't want to? There are surprisingly legal options

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/11192965

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/28905872

One of the strongest points of Linux is the package management. In 2025, the world of Linux package management is very varied, with several options available, each with their advantages and trade-offs over the others.

cross-posted from: https://metawire.eu/post/18992

Die geringe Nachfrage ist ein primärer Grund, warum Sony wie viele andere Hersteller keine 8K-TVs mehr bringen wird. (8K, Sony)

cross-posted from: https://metawire.eu/post/5948

Since January 2024, Wikimedia has seen a 50 percent increase in Wikipedia’s bandwidth usage. However, this enormous increase is not due to human users suddenly reading Wikipedia articles or watching videos but to AI crawlers that automatically scrape content to train AI models. This creates new challenges for the foundation. The sudden increase in traffic […]

Creator: Coen van Eenbergen Publish Date: 07.04.2025, 17:28 Categories: Infrastructure, AI, AI crawlers, Artificial Intelligence, bandwidth, content scraping, Wikimedia, Wikipedia

cross-posted from: https://europe.pub/post/119675

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27700093

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/27609050

• A jetlagged Troy Hunt accidentally clicked a link and logged into an account only to realise he had been phished.
• Despite reacting quickly, attackers were able to export a mailing list for Hunt’s personal blog.
• Hunt has detailed the attack and warned his subscribers in a timely fashion.

cross-posted from: https://europe.pub/post/46849

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27255738

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/27360624

I don’t usually like to call out the bad behaviour of specific companies, but the egregious mis-design and lack of acknowledging it justify this case.

cross-posted from: https://reddthat.com/post/37534963

cross-posted from: https://feddit.nl/post/30774194

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/9508044

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/27434840

cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/27223116

What’s the context?

Women's groups worry Big Tech algorithms suppress words and products related to women's health.

Google, Meta, others accused of blocking health content Algorithms fail to differentiate between content Concerns amid rollback of diversity, rights policies

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/27079878