Scapegoating the Algorithm: America’s epistemic challenges run deeper than social media.
Many people sense that the United States is undergoing an epistemic crisis, a breakdown in the country’s collective capacity to agree on basic facts, distinguish truth from falsehood, and adhere to norms of rational debate.This crisis encompasses many things: rampant political lies; misinformation; and conspiracy theories; widespread beliefs in demonstrable falsehoods (“misperceptions”); intense polarization in preferred information sources; and collapsing trust in institutions meant to uphold basic standards of truth and evidence (such as science, universities, professional journalism, and public health agencies).
According to survey data, over 60% of Republicans believe Joe Biden’s presidency was illegitimate. 20% of Americans think vaccines are more dangerous than the diseases they prevent, and 36% think the specific risks of COVID-19 vaccines outweigh their benefits. Only 31% of Americans have at least a “fair amount” of confidence in mainstream media, while a record-high 36% have no trust at all.
What is driving these problems? One influential narrative blames social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter (now X), and YouTube. In the most extreme form of this narrative, such platforms are depicted as technological wrecking balls responsible for shattering the norms and institutions that kept citizens tethered to a shared reality, creating an informational Wild West dominated by viral falsehoods, bias-confirming echo chambers, and know-nothing punditry.
The timing is certainly suspicious. Facebook launched in 2004, YouTube in 2005, and Twitter in 2006. As they and other platforms acquired hundreds of millions of users over the next decade, the health of American democracy and its public sphere deteriorated. By 2016, when Donald Trump was first elected president, many experts were writing about a new “post-truth” or “misinformation” age.
Moreover, the fundamental architecture of social media platforms seems hostile to rational discourse. Algorithms that recommend content prioritize engagement over accuracy. This can amplify sensational and polarizing material or bias-confirming content, which can drag users into filter bubbles. Meanwhile, the absence of traditional gatekeepers means that influencers with no expertise or ethical scruples can reach vast audiences.
The dangerous consequences of these problems seem obvious to many casual observers of social media. And some scientific research corroborates this widespread impression. For example, a systematic review of nearly five hundred studies finds suggestive evidence for a link between digital media use and declining political trust, increasing populism, and growing polarization. Evidence also consistently shows an association between social media use and beliefs in conspiracy theories and misinformation.
But there are compelling reasons to be skeptical that social media is a leading cause of America’s epistemic challenges. The “wrecking ball” narrative exaggerates the novelty of these challenges, overstates social media’s responsibility for them, and overlooks deeper political and institutional problems that are reflected on social media, not created by it.
The platforms are not harmless. They may accelerate worrying trends, amplify fringe voices, and facilitate radicalization. However, the current balance of evidence suggests that the most consequential drivers of America’s large-scale epistemic challenges run much deeper than algorithms.
Scapegoating the Algorithm—Asterisk
America’s epistemic challenges run deeper than social media.asteriskmag.com
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defends decision to support military aid for Israel
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/33487836
By MEE staff
Published date: 21 July 2025 21:11 BSTThe New York lawmaker voted against an amendment by Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene last week that sought to block $500m in Congress' annual defence spending bill for Israel's Iron Dome programme.
Fellow Democrats Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar [as well as Democrats Al Green of Texas, Summer Lee of Pennsylvania and Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky - PL] had supported Taylor Greene's amendment, which eventually lost in a 422-6 vote.
In a post on X on Saturday, Ocasio-Cortez claimed that Greene's amendment did "nothing to cut off offensive aid to Israel nor end the flow of US munitions being used in Gaza".
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defends decision to support military aid for Israel
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/33487836
By MEE staff
Published date: 21 July 2025 21:11 BSTThe New York lawmaker voted against an amendment by Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene last week that sought to block $500m in Congress' annual defence spending bill for Israel's Iron Dome programme.
Fellow Democrats Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar [as well as Democrats Al Green of Texas, Summer Lee of Pennsylvania and Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky - PL] had supported Taylor Greene's amendment, which eventually lost in a 422-6 vote.
In a post on X on Saturday, Ocasio-Cortez claimed that Greene's amendment did "nothing to cut off offensive aid to Israel nor end the flow of US munitions being used in Gaza".
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defends decision to support military aid for Israel
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/33487836
By MEE staff
Published date: 21 July 2025 21:11 BSTThe New York lawmaker voted against an amendment by Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene last week that sought to block $500m in Congress' annual defence spending bill for Israel's Iron Dome programme.
Fellow Democrats Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar [as well as Democrats Al Green of Texas, Summer Lee of Pennsylvania and Republican Thomas Massie of Kentucky - PL] had supported Taylor Greene's amendment, which eventually lost in a 422-6 vote.
In a post on X on Saturday, Ocasio-Cortez claimed that Greene's amendment did "nothing to cut off offensive aid to Israel nor end the flow of US munitions being used in Gaza".
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Israeli special forces abduct director of hospital in Gaza
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/33488385
By Alex MacDonald
Published date: 21 July 2025 14:50 BST
The Palestinian health ministry said on Monday that Hams, who also oversees field hospitals in the Gaza Strip, was on his way to visit the ICRC facility in northern Rafah when undercover Israeli soldiers opened fire, killing one person and wounding another civilian, before capturing him.The person killed was a local journalist who had been conducting an interview with al-Hams at the time of the attack.
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Israeli special forces abduct director of hospital in Gaza
cross-posted from: lemmy.ml/post/33488385
By Alex MacDonald
Published date: 21 July 2025 14:50 BST
The Palestinian health ministry said on Monday that Hams, who also oversees field hospitals in the Gaza Strip, was on his way to visit the ICRC facility in northern Rafah when undercover Israeli soldiers opened fire, killing one person and wounding another civilian, before capturing him.The person killed was a local journalist who had been conducting an interview with al-Hams at the time of the attack.
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Could AI Help Humanity Understand Whales?
This project hopes that decoding sperm whale sounds will boost conservation efforts
AI Comes Up with Bizarre Physics Experiments. But They Work.
AI Comes Up with Bizarre Physics Experiments. But They Work. | Quanta Magazine
Artificial intelligence software is designing novel experimental protocols that improve upon the work of human physicists, although the humans are still “doing a lot of baby-sitting.”Anil Ananthaswamy (Quanta Magazine)
DeepMind’s Quest for Self-Improving Table Tennis Agents: How robots can learn new skills by challenging each other
DeepMind Table Tennis Robots Train Each Other
Two robots playing table tennis against each other non-stop is helping DeepMind to make more adaptable autonomous agents.Pannag Sanketi (IEEE Spectrum)
Advanced version of Gemini with Deep Think officially achieves gold-medal standard at the International Mathematical Olympiad
Advanced version of Gemini with Deep Think officially achieves gold-medal standard at the International Mathematical Olympiad
Our advanced model officially achieved a gold-medal level performance on problems from the International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO), the world’s most prestigious competition for young...Google DeepMind
Bypass blocked VPN restrictions
I have recently been finding myself on a network (cellular) that blocks access to VPN. I have tried Wireguard on multiple ports using IVPN and Windscribe with no luck. Similarly tried OpenVPN and IKEv2.
I also tried using Windscribe’s “stealth” protocol and IVPN’s obfuscation protocol but again with no luck.
I refuse to rawdog the internet like that and was hoping to get advice on how to work around that nonsense.
I am on iOS if that matters.
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You can use Tor: orbot.app/
Cheapest way to not be in this situation is to run an exit node on your home network and route your traffic through when you're travelling (dead simple with Tailscale).
Also try Mullvad's circumvention methods.
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pi.hole down?
I've tried using all three methods to access the web interface and none of them work. When I try using the https:///admin/ I get search results to access my router login. (I obviously replace the link with my pihole's IP address but I still get router login results)
Accessing through pi.hole/admin or pi.hole usually works but I keep having trouble connecting to the site. Checked downforeveryoneorjustme.com and it looks like pi.hole is down. Has this happened to anyone before? Do I just wait for the site to go back up?
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When I try using the https:///admin/ I get search results to access my router login.
Something is very wrong if you're getting search results, maybe try a different browser?
Checked downforeveryoneorjustme.com and it looks like pi.hole is down.
The PiHole website is pi-hole.net/ is that what you meant to check?
You can't check local private domains like pi.hole using a public service.
Home
1. Install a supported operating system You can run Pi-hole in a container, or deploy it directly to a supported operating system via our automated installer. Dpi-hole.net
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pi.hole is the domain to access the web interface whereas pi-hole.net is the official website for pi-hole to view documentation and download the client.
I realized I forgot to remove the <> from the url. Unfortunately I'm still unable to connect to that IP address though so I'm thinking I may have to restart my raspberry pi
I'd check its IP in the router then try and access it via http, not https.
But my version in still 5.something and v6 could bring https, I have yet to update my LXCs
la volpe e la finestra fanno insieme il grande spacc (glitch Firefox coi freeze a caso)
Regà, aiuto. Io vorrei ogni giorno arrivare a fine giornata senza bestemmiare, ma purtroppo non è fottutamente mai possibile, perché c’è sempre qualcosa che non funziona!!! E boh, ultimamente allora non capisco se sono io che sto diventando sempre di più una calamita per gli insetti digitali di merda, o se tra le tante cose […]
Fears of escalation after Israel hits Huthi-held Yemen port
Hodeida (Yemen) (AFP) – Israel pounded Yemen's Huthi-held port of Hodeida with air strikes on Monday for the second time in a month, stoking fears of escalation as it warned Yemen could face the same fate as Iran.In its latest raids, Defence Minister Israel Katz said Israel struck "targets of the Huthi terror regime at the port of Hodeida" and aimed to prevent any attempt to restore infrastructure previously hit.
The renewed strikes on Yemen are part of a year-long Israeli bombing campaign against the Huthis, but the latest threats have raised fears of a wider conflict in the poverty-stricken Arabian Peninsula country.
"Yemen's fate will be the same as Tehran's," Katz said.
His warning was a reference to the wave of suprise strikes Israel launched on Iran on June 13, targeting key military and nuclear facilities.
A Gulf official told AFP there were "serious concerns in Riyadh... that the Israeli strikes on the Huthis could turn into a large, sustained campaign to oust the movement's leaders".
The Huthis withstood more a decade of war against a well-armed, Saudi-led international coalition, though fighting has died down in the past few years.
Any Israeli escalation could "plunge the region into utter chaos", said the official, requesting anonymity because he cannot brief the media.
The Huthis' Al-Masirah television reported "a series of Israeli air strikes on the Hodeida port".
A Huthi security official, requesting anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, told AFP that "the bombing destroyed the port's dock, which had been rebuilt following previous strikes."
On July 7, Israeli strikes hit Hodeida and two nearby locations on the coast, with targets including the Galaxy Leader cargo ship, captured in November 2023, which the Israelis said had been outfitted with a radar system to track shipping in the Red Sea.
A Yemeni port employee in Hodeida said the strikes targeted "heavy equipment brought in for construction and repair work after Israeli airstrikes on July 7... and areas around the port and fishing boats".
An Israeli military statement said that the targets included "engineering vehicles... fuel containers, naval vessels used for military activities" against Israel and "additional terror infrastructure used by the Huthi terrorist regime".
It said the port had been used to transfer weapons from Iran, which were then used by the Huthi rebels against Israel.
Bubble Trouble
This article describes what ive been thinking about for the last week. How will these billions of investments by big tech actually create something that is significantly better than what we have today already?
There are major issues ahead and im not sure they can be solved. Read the article.
Bubble Trouble
As I previously warned, artificial intelligence companies are running out of data. A Wall Street Journal piece from this week has sounded the alarm that some believe AI models will run out of "high-quality text-based data" within the next two years i…Edward Zitron (Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At)
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tl;dr AI companies are slowly running out of data to train their models; synthetic data is not a viable alternative.
I can't remember where I saw it, but someone somewhere on YouTube suspected the next step for OpanAI and such would be to collect user data directly; recording conversations of users and using that data to train models further.
If I find the vid I will add a link here.
TIL about Fedi-Search, an open sourced frontend to easily search the Fediverse with a lot of mainstream engines
FediSearch — Easily Search the Fediverse
Easily search the fediverse in your preferred search engineprogrammer2514
adhocfungus likes this.
Seattle's Primary Season Is Upon Us, Trump Wants Sports to Be Racist Again, and Scientists Figured Out How Snakes Eat Bones
Free Gui: Guilherme “Gui” Silva, a Brazilian immigrant, lawyer, and muralist, was detained by ICE earlier this month on San Juan Island in Washington state. Silva was a lawyer in Brazil, and moved to the US about eight years ago to pursue his art. He has a four-year-old daughter with his now ex-wife, and is expecting a child in just a few months with his wife Rachel Leidig. Two Fridays ago, masked ICE agents followed Silva from his home in unmarked vehicles, pulled him from his car, confiscated his cellphone, and detained him. When he asked to see an arrest warrant, they refused. Silva is married to an American citizen and is currently in legal proceedings to apply for a green card. The only blemish on his record that the Seattle Times was able to find was a $100 speeding ticket. The Department of Homeland Security said they detained him because he overstayed his tourist visa, which, let’s say it again together: is a civil violation.
Junior dev's code worked in tests, deleted data in prod
Junior developer's code worked in tests, destroyed data in production
Who, Me?: For the lack of a little documentation, two techies did a lot of accidental damageSimon Sharwood (The Register)
Vibe coding service Replit deleted user’s production database, faked data, told fibs galore
: AI ignored instruction to freeze code, forgot it could roll back errors, and generally made a terrible hash of thingsSimon Sharwood (The Register)
Junior dev's code worked in tests, deleted data in prod
Junior developer's code worked in tests, destroyed data in production
Who, Me?: For the lack of a little documentation, two techies did a lot of accidental damageSimon Sharwood (The Register)
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showed it to senior folks who said the results looked fine
Did anyone look at the code?
Also, what's a "multi-type"? Does he mean he needed to check a different field? Or are they doing something unholy without real schemas and got burned because they're mess confused someone! Also, why is a junior being moved between teams and touching production immediately?
I have so many questions.
The second one makes a ton more sense, and is pretty hilarious.
SELECT
statement first to verify you typed it correctly.
Why front-end development will persist
Why front-end development will persist
By focusing on the skills that large language models lack, ‘designgineers’ can adapt to a market upended by AI.Matt Asay (InfoWorld)
Why front-end development will persist
Why front-end development will persist
By focusing on the skills that large language models lack, ‘designgineers’ can adapt to a market upended by AI.Matt Asay (InfoWorld)
Human-level AI is not inevitable. We have the power to change course
Human-level AI is not inevitable. We have the power to change course
Technology happens because people make it happen. We can choose otherwiseGuardian staff reporter (The Guardian)
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Apple sues YouTuber for alleged iOS 26 trade-secret theft
YouTuber leaked iOS secrets via friend spying on dev's phone, Apple lawsuit claims
: Jon Prosser and alleged accomplice accused of stealing trade secrets from development deviceBrandon Vigliarolo (The Register)
Mechanize likes this.
Apple sues YouTuber for alleged iOS 26 trade-secret theft
YouTuber leaked iOS secrets via friend spying on dev's phone, Apple lawsuit claims
: Jon Prosser and alleged accomplice accused of stealing trade secrets from development deviceBrandon Vigliarolo (The Register)
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According to the suit, Ramacciotti was in need of money, and had a friend named Ethan Lipnik who worked at Apple as a software engineer on the Photos team – two facts that Prosser was aware of when he allegedly offered to pay Ramacciotti to break into Lipnik's development iPhone and show Prosser what the version of iOS running on the device looked like.Ramacciotti, who frequently stayed at Lipnik's home, allegedly used location-tracking software to determine when Lipnik was far enough from home to be gone for an extended period. During such windows, he allegedly used the opportunity to obtain the passcode and access the device.
Apple isn’t a very pro WFH or remote work company from what I learned when I was job hunting, I’m honestly surprised they let a dev iPhone leave their campus.
Remember that one, but honestly: not worth much testing a device exclusively in laboratory settings and not in real life situations.
It is a risk but I think not one you can and should avoid. At least if you want your mobile device to perform.
You can read it two ways:
1) gee they’re so WFH friendly
2) they drive their people hard and they work nights and weekends
Instacart’s former CEO is taking the reins of a big chunk of OpenAI
Instacart’s former CEO is taking the reins of a big chunk of OpenAI
Incoming OpenAI executive Fidji Simo, who will start Aug. 18 as its “CEO of Applications” and report directly to CEO Sam Altman, sent a memo to employees Monday.Hayden Field (The Verge)
EpicFailGuy likes this.
Scientists Are Now 43 Seconds Closer to Producing Limitless Energy
Scientists Are Now 43 Seconds Closer to Producing Limitless Energy
The Wendelstein 7-X stellarator in Germany set a record with 43 seconds of plasma, marking a major step toward clean, sustainable nuclear fusion energy.Elizabeth Rayne (Popular Mechanics)
Technology reshared this.
This is a very good point since tritium is a very limited resource.
The hope is that it will be generated by the fusion reactor itself using tritium breeder blankets iter.org/machine/supporting-sy…
Whether that will work remains to be seen.
Tritium breeding
In the deuterium-tritium (D-T) fusion reaction, high energy neutrons are released along with helium atoms.ITER - the way to new energy
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The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble
The Hater's Guide To The AI Bubble
Hey! Before we go any further — if you want to support my work, please sign up for the premium version of Where’s Your Ed At, it’s a $7-a-month (or $70-a-year) paid product where every week you get a premium newsletter, all while supporting my free w…Edward Zitron (Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At)
adhocfungus likes this.
The process as explained in this article has nothing to do with privacy. The problem with privacy is not that I send Google a query, it's they Google is scanning my machine, gathering cookie data, recording every move I make, mixing and matching my data with data from other sites, data from data brokers, also using third party cookies, etc etc etc...
Encrypting the query I make with Google isn't going to change much of that.
Dating Apps Need to Learn How Consent Works
Dating Apps Need to Learn How Consent Works
Staying safe whilst dating online should not be the responsibility of users—dating apps should be prioritizing our privacy by default, and laws should require companies to prioritize user privacy over their profit.Electronic Frontier Foundation
Quali sono i 50 stati europei?
VS Achuthanandan, politician who pushed for Linux adoption in India, passed away today
India has one of the highest rates of (desktop) Linux usages in the world - hovering around 10% according to StatCounter. Why is this? One reason is concerns over software controlled by foreign countries - particularly the US and China. But another is cost.
The first major boost for Linux and other free software in India came in 2006, when VS Achuthanandan - who passed away today - was elected Chief Minister of the state of Kerala. His government came up with a policy to shift all government computers to free software, starting with schools and colleges.
When the financial benefits became apparent, other states and the Union government followed suit.
Microsoft Windows to be replaced by Maya OS amid rising cyber threats
Indian government agencies reportedly developed Ubuntu-based Maya OS for more than six months.Vinay Patel (International Business Times UK)
Gemini Is 'Strict and Punitive' While ChatGPT Is 'Catastrophically' Cooperative, Researchers Say
Gemini Is 'Strict and Punitive' While ChatGPT Is 'Catastrophically' Cooperative, Researchers Say
In tests involving the Prisoner's Dilemma, researchers found that Google’s Gemini is “strategically ruthless,” while OpenAI is collaborative to a “catastrophic” degree.Rosie Thomas (404 Media)
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JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress) - Jono Alderson
JavaScript broke the web (and called it progress)
We replaced simple websites with complex apps nobody asked for. Now it takes a complex build pipeline just to change a headline.Aymen - Speetals.com (Meta)
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Two UK pro-Palestine organisations have bank accounts frozen
Two UK pro-Palestine organisations have bank accounts frozen
Groups say having access to funds cut off raise fears of wider attempt to silence voices speaking out about GazaHaroon Siddique (The Guardian)
henchmannumber3
in reply to Peter Link • • •Peter Link
in reply to henchmannumber3 • • •