From sam at commonedge.com.au  Fri Apr 28 03:33:21 2023
From: sam at commonedge.com.au (Sam de Silva)
Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2023 11:33:21 +1000
Subject: <billions> Links from April 2023
Message-ID: <BE330878-2159-4E6F-A358-7F1BBF7C5484@commonedge.com.au>

Hi all,

Here?s some April links to reflect on. 

Join us on Telegram - https://t.me/bi11i0ns

Best, Sam.

An Insider?s Guide to ?Anti-Disinformation? <https://www.racket.news/p/an-insiders-guide-to-anti-disinformation> - Racket News - 26 April 2023 -    ?I underestimated just how much money is being pumped into think tanks, academia and NGOs under the anti-disinformation front, both from the government and private philanthropy. ? Clearer boundaries need to be drawn. I?m not generally for deplatforming, but anyone taking military, defense contractor, or intelligence agency money should not be part of civil society and human rights events. 

Are the Twitter Files a Scandal? <https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/capitalisnt-are-twitter-files-scandal> - Capitalisn?t Podcast - 03 April 2023 - ? Despite the potential significance of these documents, they have received relatively little coverage from the mainstream media. 

Elon Musk?s Free-Speech Charade Is Over <https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/elon-musk-twitter-free-speech-matt-taibbi-substack/673698/> - The Atlantic - 13 April 2023 ? Musk owns the platform, and he can use it to magnify or ignore whatever ideas and sources he chooses. But it?s not a right that most of these conservative, self-styled defenders of free speech think you should have. For them, free speech is when they can say what they want, and when you can say what they want.

Meta is developing a decentralized Twitter alternative: Here's what we know <https://www.zdnet.com/article/meta-is-developing-a-decentralized-twitter-alternative/> - ZDNet - 26 April 2023 ? Meta, the parent company of Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, is working on a decentralized social media project that can rival Twitter in ways that Mastodon couldn?t?

Twitter is complying with more government demands under Elon Musk <https://restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk-twitter-government-orders/> - RestofWorld - 27 April 2023 ? the figures show a steep increase in the portion of requests that Twitter complies with in full. In the year before Musk's acquisition, the figure had hovered around 50 percent, in line with the compliance rate reported in the company's final transparency report. After Musk's takeover, the number jumps to 83 percent (808 requests out of a total of 971).

BuzzFeed, Blue Check Marks, and the End of an Internet Era <https://www.newyorker.com/culture/infinite-scroll/buzzfeed-blue-check-marks-and-the-end-of-an-internet-era>- The New Yorker - 21 April 2023 ? Just a decade ago, Twitter and BuzzFeed were the popular poles of online life. Now their struggles are emblematic of where social media went wrong.

AI translation is jeopardizing Afghan asylum claims <https://restofworld.org/2023/ai-translation-errors-afghan-refugees-asylum/> - RestofWorld - 19 April 2023 ? The stakes for getting translations right can be grave for asylum seekers filling out applications. 

The Unbearable White Maleness of AI - Dame Mag <https://www.damemagazine.com/2023/04/11/the-unbearable-white-maleness-of-ai/> - 11 April 2023 ? If the mutually assured destruction of the AI apocalypse lies in any direction, it is in that one?the one in which we ruminate endlessly on imagined future threats from hyper-sentient robots who learned to learn from men who fancied themselves kings and captains of industry, rather than cooperators and collaborators. 

The Delusion at the Center of the A.I. Boom <https://slate.com/technology/2023/03/chatgpt-artificial-intelligence-solutionism-hype.html> - Slate - 29 March 2023 ? technological solutionism is the mistaken belief that we can make great progress on alleviating complex dilemmas, if not remedy them entirely, by reducing their core issues to simpler engineering problems. 

Brace Yourself for the 2024 Deepfake Election <https://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-generative-ai-deepfake-2024-us-presidential-election/> - Wired - 27 April 2023 ? No matter what happens with generative AI, its disruptive forces are already beginning to play a role in the fast-approaching US presidential race.

WhatsApp and Signal unite against online safety bill amid privacy concerns <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/apr/18/whatsapp-signal-unite-against-online-safety-bill-privacy-messaging-apps-safety-security-uk> - Guardian - 18 April 2023 ? Encrypted chat apps sign open letter warning of ?unprecedented threat to safety and security? of UK citizens
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