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Republicans have a new line of attack against the social media giants

Posted onMarch 26, 2021Authoradmin

In past Congressional hearings about the content moderation practices of big tech companies, Republican lawmakers have been fixated on complaints that Silicon Valley censors conservative viewpoints, a claim that studies have revealed to be false . But a very different GOP showed up Thursday to question the CEOs of Facebook, Google, and Twitter in a hearing on misinformation in front of the joint subcommittees of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. Republicans questioned the witnesses on a far wider variety of issues, many of which aligned with the interests of Democrats. This certainly wasn’t apparent from the get-go. Ranking minority member Robert Latta of Ohio read this from his opening remarks: “We are all aware of Big Tech’s ever increasing censorship of conservative voices and their commitment to serve the radical progressive agenda by influencing a generation of children by either shutting down or cancelling any news, books, or even toys that aren’t considered woke.” But it soon became apparent that other Republicans were interested in moving on from this well-worn non-starter. Instead, a new theme emerged to connect many of the Republicans’ comments and questions: that Big Tech companies’ services are harmful to families Read More …

The NSFW future of OnlyFans, where celebs, influencers, and sex workers post side by side

Posted onMarch 26, 2021Authoradmin

Vex Ashley began working as a cam girl to pay her way through art school. Whatever reservations she had about being a “little weird goth kid” doing porn melted away as she met other performers online who also had a more alternative approach to mainstream adult content. “I thought that to do porn, you had to fit a very rigid stereotype,” Ashley says. “I never was interested in fitting into that mold.” Ashley wanted to infuse porn with a higher level of aesthetics and concepts, using it as a medium to explore ideas rather than purely for viewing pleasure. And if ever there was a tenet of the creator economy, it’s that niche interests can always find an audience. Ashley uploaded experimental videos to Tumblr and quickly gained a following that she took to Patreon in 2014 to better monetize her art and support her production company, Four Chambers . At the height of her success on Patreon, Ashley had more than 3,000 subscribers and was pulling in around $25,000 per month. But after the platform changed its policies in 2018, she effectively lost it all. Vex Ashley [Photo: courtesy of Four Chambers] Like many other adult content creators whose Patreon revenue was decimated, Ashley migrated to OnlyFans in 2018. And like many of her peers, she’s now wary of meeting the same fate on the platform. OnlyFans, which allows creators to charge users a monthly or pay-per-view fee to access content, launched in 2016 with the intention of being for all types of creators but has become a nexus for adult entertainment. Amateur and professionals alike have flocked to OnlyFans as a safe haven to monetize NSFW (not safe for work) content, becoming the key drivers of the platform’s early growth. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated that momentum as more creators looked to OnlyFans as a source of income during record rates of unemployment. Between March and April of last year, OnlyFans experienced a 75% spike in new user and creator registrations. To date, OnlyFans has more than 120 million users and 1 million creators who have earned more than $3 billion collectively (the company takes a 20% cut). Read More …

The clothes we wear are about to undergo a wild digital revolution

Posted onMarch 25, 2021Authoradmin

Imagine an article of clothing that could tell your washing machine how to keep its colors from fading. Imagine a piece of clothing that could warm your body in the winter and cool it down in the summer. Imagine wearing clothes that weren’t designed last year, or last season, but yesterday, in response to that day’s buying patterns. Imagine being able to fully customize every article of clothing in your wardrobe for the same cost as mass-produced items. And imagine a clothing industry that could do all of this while significantly reducing emissions and retaining most of its workforce. Thanks to new advancements in manufacturing, you won’t have to imagine forever. While the clothing we wear today is largely designed, manufactured, and sold in the same way it was 100 years ago, what we wear is expected to change dramatically in the not-so-distant future, thanks to advancements in manufacturing technology. Read More …

Why anti-vaccine propaganda still runs rampant on Instagram

Posted onMarch 25, 2021Authoradmin

This story is part of Doubting the Dose, a series that examines anti-vaccine sentiment and the role of misinformation in supercharging it. Read more here . It takes about three taps on Instagram to find numerous sources of misinformation about the COVID-19 vaccines. The problem has been well-reported. And Facebook, which owns Instagram, has made several rounds of changes to discourage the spread of vaccine misinformation on its platforms. Facebook says it’s already removed millions of Facebook and Instagram posts containing false information about COVID-19 and the vaccines. But anti-vaccine content remains a pervasive presence on one of the most popular social networks. Vaccine misinformation that spreads on social platforms like Instagram is one component of the ongoing “infodemic,” a dimension of the crisis that’s impacted how people think about the pandemic and the public health initiatives combating it. Currently almost a third of Americans do not plan to get vaccinated , as a Pew Research study from early March shows. And in order to reach herd immunity— when 80% to 85% of the population carries antibodies— a significant segment of the fearful, doubtful, and paranoid will need to be convinced to get their shot, for the good of everybody. “The more people who remain unvaccinated, the more opportunity the virus has to take hold in a community and create an outbreak,” says Summer Johnson McGee, dean of the School of Health Sciences at the University of New Haven. “As populations reach herd immunity, less social distancing, greater social mixing of groups, and larger-capacity events should be possible without fear about major outbreaks and lockdowns.” As the numbers of willing-yet-unvaccinated people go down in the next few months, a new phase in the information war may begin. If curbing misinformation’s spread has been the focus so far, then actively changing the minds of vaccine doubters may soon become a pressing priority. Read More …

2 former Navy Seals are using robot submarines to build ‘Google Earth’ for the ocean

Posted onMarch 24, 2021Authoradmin

In 2005, Joe Wolfel and Judson Kauffman were a year into their Navy Seal careers when they received a briefing on the USS San Francisco , a nuclear-powered submarine that crashed into an undersea mountain, in large part due to uncharted waters. Joe Wolfel (left) and Judson Kauffman [Photo: courtesy of Terradepth] “The Navy really doesn’t have charts or maps of very much of the seafloor at all,” Kauffman says. Even now, 80% of the ocean remains unmapped, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration . “That was the first time that either one of us understood the level of ignorance that exists around this subsea world, so that kind of planted a seed.” Still, their scheme for hurdling that challenge wouldn’t germinate for another dozen years, after the pair parlayed their military experience into a business consultancy and began noting the burgeoning array of space exploration robotics. “One day we looked at each other and said, ‘Why isn’t anybody taking this technology—autonomy, AI, and machine learning—and finding a way to map the ocean?’ ” Kauffman says. “There’s a whole lot of room for modern technology to come in and disrupt the world of ocean exploration and the industry of ocean surveys.” [Image: courtesy of Terradepth] That vision has since blossomed into Austin-based Terradepth , a data service company that has developed a new type of robotic submarine to autonomously map the ocean and its varied environments. [Photo: courtesy of Terradepth] The 30-foot-long submersible uses a camera and sensor suite to collect data, then employs machine learning to process it, discern what’s important, and reprogram itself to return to a location and test for additional information—all without human intervention. The system relies on edge computing, which can analyze information and solve problems at the data source in near real time. The team successfully ran the submarine through its first on-site paces in nearby Lake Travis earlier this month, paving the way for more robust testing in the Gulf of Mexico within three weeks and the Florida coast after that. Along with a camera, the submarine utilizes two types of sonar as well as depth, navigational, temperature, and geolocation instruments. It can dive to nearly 20,000 feet, the depth of 98% of the ocean Read More …