"In a recent series of experiments, we paid people a few dollars to #unfollow the most divisive political accounts on X. After a month, they reported feeling 23% less animosity towards other political groups. In fact, their experience was so positive that nearly half the people declined to refollow those hostile accounts … #Platforms could easily redesign their #algorithms to stop promoting the most outrageous voices and prioritise more representative or nuanced content." https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/jul/13/are-a-few-people-ruining-the-internet-for-the-rest-of-us
"As we become aware as a public we're putting pressure on our democratic institutions. We need new law, we need new regulatory regimes that interrupt and outlaw the key mechanisms of surveillance capitalism. Including the very principles of taking human experience unilaterally and turning it into data ... do we want a dominant capitalism that trades in behavioural futures?"
#ShoshanaZuboff, 2019
#podcasts#Vox#RecodeDecode#SurveillanceCapitalism#DataFarms #platforms

France considers requiring Musk’s X to verify users’ age https://www.politico.eu/article/france-considers-requiring-musks-x-to-verify-users-age/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=RSS_Syndication#SocialMedia#Technology#Platforms
Hostile Takeover? How tech #billionaires are undermining our #democracy and what the #EU can do
We will take a close look at tech billionaires, their #platforms, #algorithms and #strategies. We also want to talk about #freedom of expression and #censorship and what the EU can and should do in concrete terms now.
Simultaneously interpreted in German and English.
Full details here: https://europe-calling.de/en/webinar/tech-billionaires/