"Facebook has made building the metaverse one of its big priorities. It's invested heavily in virtual reality through its Oculus headsets, making them cheaper than rivals - perhaps even at a loss". - BBC News.
Imagine a universe composed of pictures of your kids & family vacations. And lunch pics & cats & stupid memes.
Jeezus H Christ.
From 4 March 2023
Can you imagine a universe where it's filled with precious memories of your kids, those unforgettable family vacations, and of course, the classic lunch pics, adorable cats, and those hilarious, sometimes stupid memes that keep us entertained? It's like a digital realm where our personal moments come to life.
Oh, has anyone here tried to buy cheap Instagram comments? I've seen people mentioning it to boost engagement, but I'm not sure how effective it is. Has anyone here given it a shot? I'd love to hear your experiences or any other tips you have for growing an Instagram following organically.
Unconvincing James Bond villain, Mark Zuckerberg, announced that "Facebook has changed its corporate name to Meta as part of a major rebrand." - according to this BBC article.
This follows a report that the company had made building the so-called "metaverse" (a virtual universe of family/holiday/lunch/cat pics) one of its main priorities. Following the stupid announcement, the word Meta is consulting its solicitors and experiencing self-esteem issues.
From Tech Crunch . . .
Core Might Be The Vegas Of The Metaverse
The Z-U-C-C, Zucc . . .
From Venture Beat . . .
Paris Hilton heads to the Metaverse with Decentraland and Genies
From Barron's . . .
Facebook to Hire 10,000 People to Build Its ‘Metaverse.’ What That Means.
@Palladium and to avoid the inevitable (?) death agony (overhaul) of the global financial paradigm, we must migrate over to a purely fiat currency, backed by nothing but enthusiasm, with the word 'crypto' in it.
Well, there we are, then. I'm still a bit on soc med and you're a bit in crypto. 😶
Where are you on cryptocurrency and all that? Do you understand it? How was it even allowed to happen? Wasn't there some governmental pushback on it for a while? How stunning is the concept of FB's The Diem?
Unfortunately, I don't think the profound implications of machine-learning algorithms are widely understood, to date. The business model, as I understand it, is to maximise engagement with the platform, since that yields the highest advertising revenue and the greatest amount of personal data from users.
The latter is also fed back into the algorithms, to constantly optimise (and tailor for individual users) the content which will further increase their engagement with the platform. It's basically a model for addiction and division (since divisive posts have been found to increase engagement more than friendly posts - so they tend to be boosted by algorithms).
To quote Jaron Lanier, who wrote a really excellent book on the subject:
‘Social media is biased, not to the Left or the Right, but downward. The relative ease of using negative emotions for the purposes of addiction and manipulation makes it relatively easier to achieve undignified results. An unfortunate combination of biology and math favors degradation of the human world. Information warfare units sway elections, hate groups recruit, and nihilists get amazing bang for the buck when they try to bring society down.’
– Jaron Lanier, Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts
From an article in The Atlantic . . . Facebook is developing its own money, a blockchain-based payment system known as Diem (formerly Libra) that financial regulators and banks have feared could throw off the global economy and decimate the dollar. I don't understand the whole blockchain thing. I've just heard the word often and it's one of those like cryptocurrency that I feel I can't quite grasp the concept of or why there are no legal checks and balances when it comes to things like newfangled fiat currencies.
. . .
'Nothing more to prove
So please just send in the machines'
-- from Crash - Gary Numan
Thought of that line song Crash by Gary Numan when I read this line from an FB whistleblower article. . .
Unlike traditional algorithms, which are hard-coded by engineers, machine-learning algorithms “train” on input data to learn the correlations within it. The trained algorithm, known as a machine-learning model, can then automate future decisions.