Tag Archives: influence

Unlocking the Power of Aura: Aristotle’s Influence on the New Currency of Cool | Life & Style

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You can track your calories, steps, and even the number of streams on your favorite songs. Now, you can also quantify your awesomeness with Aura Points, which determine your level of attractiveness. (It’s basically charisma, and if you didn’t know that, you just lost 100 Aura points.)

Asking someone out and getting a “yes” results in losing 100 aura points. Using Snapchat after the age of 19 is frowned upon and leads to a deduction of 1,000 aura points. Answering a question confidently in class, even if it’s wrong, puts you in the negative.

According to a TikTok explanation, this trend has caused a 378% spike in posts with the hashtag #aurapoints between May and June. It’s all about exuding a positive, carefree, and confident attitude to earn points and gain entry into the cool-kids club.

The concept of Aura Points is a modern twist on the elusive “it” factor, popularized by stars like Clara Bow and Evelyn Nesbitt, now reimagined for the younger generation. Gain your Aura Points to join the cool club, or risk losing them and facing consequences.

Stories on TikTok illustrate how people earn and lose points. Acting breezy and confident in tough situations earns you points, while staying with a cheating partner results in a deduction that no aura person would accept. Some scenarios are absurd but entertaining.

While Aura Points are mostly light-hearted, some creators use them to symbolize personal growth moments. It can be a way to reflect on important life choices and behaviors that define one’s character positively.

Young TikTok users share anecdotes of their point-earning and losing experiences. The trend aligns with Gen Z’s interest in cosmic belief systems like astrology. It offers a playful yet insightful approach to evaluating personal growth and character development.

Aura Points may seem like a modern TikTok fad, but they draw parallels to ancient virtue ethics from Greek and Roman philosophy. It’s more than just a superficial trend; it encourages self-reflection and moral alignment with personal values.

The concept of Aura Points also relates to moral credit, where positive actions counterbalance potential negative ones. It serves as a gamified system to assess behavior and invite constructive criticism.

Just like Alain de Botton’s notion of “status anxiety,” Aura Points reflect the ongoing concern for how others perceive us and our quest for self-worth. It’s a way for individuals to navigate social evaluation and engage in status transactions.

Understanding the philosophy behind this TikTok trend? Congratulations, you’ve earned 1,000 Aura points!

Source: www.theguardian.com

Unveiling the key components that influence your microbiome and well-being

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The rats in John Cryan's lab were withdrawn and anxious, behaving in ways that mirrored those who had been bullied at work and who feared they might encounter the bully again.

Believe it or not, the good news is that they fed some of these rodents a slurry of microbes extracted from their own feces. This may sound unpleasant, but it had a surprisingly positive effect on their behavior. “That was surprising,” says Cryan, a neurobiologist at University College Cork in Ireland. “We found that the behavioral changes that were induced by stress were normalized, and they started to behave like normal animals.”

Even more surprising, the mental changes weren't brought about by changes to gut bacteria, but by modifying another key aspect of the microbiome whose importance is only now being recognized: viruses.

After all, our bodies are full of these viruses – trillions of stowaways that do no harm to our health, but instead play a key role in nurturing a beneficial microbiome and making us healthier. Recent studies have found that the influence of this “virome” can be found throughout the body, from the blood to the brain. The hope is that tweaking it might lead to new ways of treating a variety of ailments, from inflammatory bowel disease and obesity to anxiety.

Microbiome Diversity

Over the past decade, there has been a surge in interest in the microbiome (all the tiny organisms that live on and in our bodies), but that interest has focused primarily on bacteria. Until recently, the assumptions were that…

Source: www.newscientist.com

The Influence of Chemistry on the Flavor of Alcohol

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Animals have been consuming alcohol for millions of years, and primates and humans have been digesting it for about 7 to 21 million years. Throughout human history, alcohol consumption and production has been a part of many different cultures. Experts on human societies, including anthropologists and indigenous peoples, have long known about the origins of rice wine (Miju) and beer (Lao Lee) has been part of ancient Chinese culture for 7,000 to 13,000 years. Similarly, people in the Andes region of South America have been brewing beer made from corn. Chicha It spans approximately 5,000 years.

Even though ancient methods of making alcohol have spread all over the world, people all brew drinks that contain the same amount of alcohol, a standard known as the “alcohol content.” Alcohol degree or ABV. Beverages can be brewed at a range of ABVs, but beer is preferred to be brewed at around 4% alcohol by volume, wine at 11%-16%, and stronger spirits at around 43%, 52%, 68%, and 75% alcohol by volume. However, scientists are yet to figure out the reason behind these universal ranges of ABV.

A team of Chinese researchers studied why people choose different alcohol strengths by looking at how water and ethanol molecules interact at different alcohol strengths. Alcoholic drinks contain a variety of molecules that add flavor, color and aroma, but the main molecules are water and ethanol. ethanolThese molecules are made of atoms such as hydrogen and oxygen. The atoms of the molecules are held together by electric forces, like two magnets, but the atoms between the two molecules also attract each other. Water and ethanol molecules are attracted to each other through their hydrogen and oxygen atoms. This process is called Hydrogen Bonding.

The team demonstrated how hydrogen bonds can hold water and ethanol in different orientations and Interaction AngleThey are devices that determine the structure of molecules, Hydrogen Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectrometer or H NMR. H NMR The machine can detect hydrogen atoms and determine what they are bonded to and what angle they form.

The research team created mixtures of water and ethanol ranging from 0% to 100% alcohol content and used H NMR to detect the change in the interaction angle between the two molecules. They found that as the alcohol content increased, the interaction angle decreased. It dropped from a 90° angle at 1% alcohol content to a 10° angle at 99% alcohol content. They noticed that this change was not smooth, but that the interaction angle decreased in stages. For example, the interaction angle was about 70° between 11% and 13% alcohol content, but suddenly dropped to 60° when the alcohol content reached 14% alcohol content. The research team noticed that these abrupt changes occurred across the preferred alcohol content ranges of alcoholic beverages around the world, as shown above.

The most common type of hydrogen bond that occurs between a hydrogen atom and an oxygen atom is Hydroxyl. Using 1 H NMR, the team found that these hydroxyl interactions produced a uniform 3D water molecular network at an interaction angle of 90°, forming tetrahedral structures. However, the hydroxyl interactions between ethanol molecules were nearly linear, and at an interaction angle of 0°, long chains were formed. As the alcohol content of the beverage increased, the tetrahedral structures and the long chain molecules competed with each other.

The team found that as the alcohol content increased, the number of hydroxyl interactions decreased stepwise, as did the interaction angle. The team concluded that alcoholic drinks with different alcohol content formed distinct mixtures of chain and tetrahedral interactions. Increasing the amount of ethanol molecules increased the number of chain interactions as the molecules found new preferred orientations.

Finally, the researchers investigated whether the amount of these chain and tetrahedral interactions altered the flavor when an alcoholic beverage was cooled or heated. When an 11% ABV beverage was cooled to 42°F (5°C), more hydroxyl interactions occurred. This cooling increased the number of chain interactions between water and ethanol molecules.

Next, the researchers hired professional and amateur beer tasters to test the flavor of cold and hot alcoholic beverages with 11% alcohol content. The tasters found that chilling low and high alcohol content beers produced even greater differences in the flavor of the alcohol, due to an increased number of chain reactions within these beverages.

On the other hand, when the researchers warmed the beverages to 104°F (40°C), the number of hydroxyl interactions remained consistently between 38% and 52% ABV. Professional and amateur beer tasters tasted the warmed alcoholic beverages at 38% and 52% ABV and could not detect any difference. The team concluded that warming these beverages resulted in similar amounts of chain interactions, so flavor was unaffected by the change in ABV. This difference in taste could explain why people prefer to drink warm sake and other alcoholic beverages at 38% ABV.

The team concluded that throughout human history, brewers and drinkers have relied on their tongues to find the right alcohol content and temperature needed to create beverages that involve water-ethanol polymer chain interactions. By learning the importance of hydrogen bonds and molecular interactions, the team hopes that future brewers and scientists will experiment with different ways to control these molecular interactions to create even more sophisticated and interesting flavors.


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Source: sciworthy.com

The lack of influence of Facebook on the UK general election | Technology

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Have you ever heard the story about a drunk man looking for his keys under a streetlight? After pacing back and forth for a while and rummaging through the floor, his friend asks him where he thinks he dropped his keys. He points to a dark spot across the street. “Then why don’t you look there?” his friend asks. He shrugs. “Because that’s where the light is.” It’s a good joke. Everyone laughs.

Let’s talk about online political advertising.

“Microtargeting” doesn’t exist anymore, explains The Guardian’s Jim Waterson.

Don’t expect to see Cambridge Analytica-style micro-targeting of political ads using personal information in this general election. The tactic is now seen by many as ineffective “bait” and is increasingly being blocked by social media platforms. Digital strategist Tom Edmonds said Facebook has banned political campaigns from using many of the tactics used in past elections. “If you run a campaign to 500 people, you’re not getting a ton of revenue, you’re just getting a ton of harassment,” he said.

Microtargeting was feared because of its potential negative effects on democracy — if you can target 1,000 different messages to 1,000 different demographics, the very notion of a single national conversation begins to break down — but in reality, microtargeting never really worked.

After all, the biggest competitor for a company like Cambridge Analytica was Facebook itself: the social network’s advertising tools make it less worthwhile to spend billions creating profiles and microtargeting individual voters when you can leave all the targeting decisions to Facebook itself. The social network allows advertisers to set “performance objectives.” [like sales, clicks, or signups]You set a spending limit and then you just sit back and wait for the company to do whatever it takes to maximize your profits. The company will also choose the best combination of words and images to increase your chances of success.

But Facebook can only help you so much. For example, if you’re creating ads for a particular candidate, who should you focus your time and money on? Those who are likely to win, or those who are sure to lose? If you answered the latter, you’d be better off working for the Conservative Party. From our article:

The strategy, known within the party as the “80/20” approach, involves concentrating all of its spending on the 80 seats it is most likely to lose in 2019 and the 20 seats it is most likely to gain.

Facebook’s ad spending reports show the party is pouring money into exactly these constituencies: Since January, more than half of the party’s spending on the social network has been directed to the 80 closest constituencies or those not held by the party at all.

A conference staff member speaks in front of Facebook’s demo booth at F8, Facebook’s annual developer conference in San Jose, California. Photo: Noah Berger/AP

We began monitoring meta ad spending to see if the reported “80/20 strategy” held up. It’s one thing to propose it two years before an election, but quite another to follow through with it just a month away.

But we also started monitoring Meta’s ad spending because we could. The company keeps a library of all political ads, publishes total spending, and requires residency verification before launching a new ad. This library has received a lot of criticism over the years, but at least it exists. Not only that, but the library has a powerful toolset that allows you to write your own software to query and answer questions more serious than “are there any interesting ads that someone paid for recently?”

But like a drunk person searching for his keys, it’s unlikely that this topic is actually on Facebook. Across large swaths of the country, conversations that once took place on public social networks have migrated to private channels, led by Meta’s WhatsApp. What’s left of Facebook itself is smothered in AI-generated rubbish and disconnected from reality by algorithmic tweaks that highlight “friends and family” content. That trend is doubly pronounced on Meta’s Twitter clone, Threads, which actively and openly downgrades any kind of political content.

Although conversations are growing on TikTok, the platform is difficult to cover: Observer research into digital campaigns has had to focus on the official TikTok feeds of political parties.

TikTok is free; paid advertising by politicians or political parties isn’t allowed. But it won’t be easy. Social media teams will have to work harder to convince the app’s notoriously opaque algorithms to let their content flow organically to users’ phones. The more people who like, share, comment and repost a video, the better the chances. For smaller, more agile parties with smaller budgets, TikTok can feel like it has everything to win: views, engagement and people finally finding out they exist. Creators who know how to do it think Labour is off to a good start.

Election conversations are happening on TikTok — and there’s a lot of it, as the platform’s tightly curated algorithmic feed allows people of all ages to have their own discussions — but it’s nearly impossible to observe from the outside without using brute force techniques like tallying up views of videos tagged “snack.”

Of course, WhatsApp conversations are even worse: with end-to-end encryption and sparse public “channels,” doing data journalism tracking election chats is a dead end.

And then there’s AI. Suspicions remain that the rise of AI systems will have some impact on this election, but here, too, we have to look at where the light is. It’s very clear (and we’ve never really seen it before) that deepfake videos are circulating on Twitter, the platform now known as X. What’s invisible to us is that wavering voters are conversing with ChatGPT to try to decide where to type X, if that’s even happening in the first place.

In the UK, these questions feel largely academic; apart from personality-driven local elections, the final outcome feels more foregone than at any time in my life. But in the US, where voters go to the polls in five months’ time, the same questions will be asked. And the answers may hold the key to which side the coin falls.

So let’s go find them right away.

A wider texscape

Footage from the fake documentary “Olympics Has Fallen” produced by Russian influencer actor Storm-1679. Photo: Storm-1679/Microsoft Threat Analysis Center

  • by the way Deepfake According to Microsoft, the fake Tom Cruise video (pictured above) was used to spread disinformation about the Olympics.

  • Is the Internet Bad?. That is certainly Marbonot everything has been smooth sailing during the first nine months online.

  • Internal Google Database Tracking Privacy and Security Breaches Leaked to 404 MediaOne of the biggest threats is that YouTube employees could secretly check upcoming big video uploads to get information ahead of time.

  • Voters support raising the minimum age Social media The number of people using the app in the UK has risen to 16, according to a poll by The Guardian.

  • Microsoft’s “RecallA “clone of the Mac app Rewind” has been built into the OS. It has been described as a security “catastrophe”.The AI service stores everything a user has ever seen on a computer in a database to help answer questions for law students, which critics say makes it an attractive target for hackers.

Source: www.theguardian.com

The Surprising Influence of Your Skin on Your Well-being and Longevity

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woman applying body cream

Shutterstock/Rawpixel.com

In winter, the backs of your hands can become dry, red, and cracked. Maybe you find yourself applying more moisturizer. Otherwise, itching and pain can be a big hindrance.

Cracked skin is annoying and uncomfortable, but it's not as serious as something like high blood pressure. However, that assumption may not hold, as with skin aging.

Growing evidence suggests that skin damage can have knock-on effects on other parts of the body, causing inflammation, muscle and bone loss, and even cognitive decline. The more your skin deteriorates, the faster the rest of your skin ages. This new perspective means that our skin not only reflects the signs of aging, but also contributes to it. There's even preliminary evidence that taking better care of your skin may slow down the negative effects of aging and improve your overall health.

Our skin is one of the first areas of our body to show signs of aging. Especially in active areas such as the outer corners of the eyes, wrinkles may increase and age spots may appear. Although these changes may seem to be literally skin deep, the importance of the skin to the rest of the body should not be underestimated. “The skin is the largest organ in the body,” he says. wendy borag At Augusta University in Georgia, USA.

And it's not just the size. Skin is essential for survival. The outer layer of the epidermis is impermeable to water, so body fluids, the source of life, are not lost to the air. If someone causes damage to a large area…

Source: www.newscientist.com

“Rampant Misinformation: Preparing for AI’s Influence on Elections in the US” | US News

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AI elections are here.

This year, artificial intelligence-generated robocalls targeted New Hampshire voters during the January primary, posing as President Joe Biden and instructing them to stay home. This incident might be the initial attempt to interfere with a US election. The “deepfake” call was linked to two of his companies in Texas: Life His Corporation and Apple His Telecom.


The impact of deepfake calls on voter turnout remains uncertain, but according to Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of Public Citizen, a group advocating for government oversight, the potential consequences are significant. Regulating the use of AI in politics is crucial.

Events mirroring what might occur in the US are unfolding around the globe. In Slovakia, fabricated audio recordings may have influenced an election, serving as a troubling prelude to potential US election interference in 2024, as reported by CNN. AI developments in Indonesia and India have also raised concerns. Without robust regulations, the US is ill-prepared for the evolving landscape of AI technology and its implications for elections.

Despite efforts to address AI misuse in political campaigns, US regulations are struggling to keep pace with AI advancements. The House of Representatives recently formed a task force to explore regulatory options, but partisan gridlock and regulatory delays cast uncertainty on the efficacy of measures that will be in place for this year’s election.

Without safeguards, the influence of AI on elections hinges on voters’ ability to discern real from fabricated content. AI-powered disinformation campaigns can sow confusion and undermine electoral integrity, posing a threat to democracy.

Manipulating audio content with AI raises concerns due to its potential to mislead with minimal detection capabilities, unlike deepfake videos. AI-generated voices can mimic those known to the recipient, fostering a false sense of familiarity and trust, which may have significant implications.

…

Source: www.theguardian.com

The influence of ancient Neanderthal DNA on modern daily routines

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Recent research has revealed a link between Neanderthal genetics and the tendency of some modern humans to wake up early. The study traces back to the interbreeding of modern humans and Neanderthals in Eurasia and suggests that genetic variation in Neanderthals influences the circadian rhythms of modern human descendants. Credit: SciTechDaily.com

A new paper has been published in a magazine Genome biology and evolutionAccording to a paper published by Oxford University Press, genetic material from Neanderthal ancestors may have contributed to the tendency of some people today to be “early risers” – the type of people who find it easier to get up early and go to bed. I discovered that there is a possibility that

Human evolution and genetic adaptation

All anatomically modern humans trace their origins to Africa about 300,000 years ago, where environmental factors shaped many of their biological characteristics. About 70,000 years ago, the ancestors of modern Eurasian humans began migrating into Eurasia, where they encountered a variety of new environments, including high latitude regions with large seasonal fluctuations in sunlight and temperature.

But other hominins, such as Neanderthals and Denisovans, lived in Eurasia for more than 400,000 years. These archaic humans diverged from modern humans about 700,000 years ago, and as a result, our ancestors and archaic humans evolved under different environmental conditions. This led to the accumulation of strain-specific genetic variation and phenotypes. When humans came to Eurasia, they interbred with archaic humans from the continent. This created the possibility for humans to acquire genetic variations already adapted to these new environments.

Genes of ancient humans and characteristics of modern humans

Although previous studies have shown that many of the archaic ancestors of modern humans are not beneficial and have been removed by natural selection, some archaic hominin variants that remain in human populations has shown evidence of adaptation. For example, archaic genetic variation is thought to be associated with differences in hemoglobin levels, immune resistance to new pathogens, levels of skin pigmentation, and fat composition among Tibetans at high altitudes.

Changes in patterns and levels of light exposure have biological and behavioral effects that lead to evolutionary adaptations. Scientists have extensively studied the evolution of circadian adaptations in insects, plants, and fish, but humans have been less well studied. The Eurasian environment where Neanderthals and Denisovans lived for hundreds of thousands of years is located at higher latitudes and has more variable daylight hours than where modern humans evolved before leaving Africa. So the researchers investigated whether there was genetic evidence for differences in circadian clocks between Neanderthals and modern humans.

Research methods and findings

The researchers defined a set of 246 circadian genes using a combination of literature searches and expert knowledge. They found hundreds of genetic variations unique to each strain that can affect genes involved in the circadian clock. Using artificial intelligence techniques, they identified 28 circadian genes that contain mutations that could alter splicing in archaic humans and that may be differentially regulated between modern and archaic humans. identified 16 circadian genes.

This indicates that there may be functional differences between the circadian clocks of ancient and modern humans. Eurasian modern humans and Neanderthal ancestors interbred, so some humans may have acquired circadian variation from Neanderthals.

To test this, the researchers studied a large population of hundreds of thousands of people in the UK Biobank and found that introgressed genetic mutations (mutations that passed from Neanderthals to modern humans) could affect wakefulness and sleep. We investigated whether there is a relationship with physical preference for. They discovered a number of introgressed mutants that affected sleep preferences, and most surprisingly, they found that these mutants consistently increased morningness, or the tendency to rise early. This suggests a directional influence on this trait and is consistent with adaptations to high latitudes observed in other animals.

Increased morning time in humans is associated with a shortened circadian clock period. This may be beneficial at high latitudes, as it has been shown that sleep and wakefulness can be coordinated more quickly with external timing cues. Shortening of the circadian period is required to synchronize with the long summer light period at high latitudes in Drosophila, and selection for a shorter circadian period results in the latitudinal period decreasing with increasing latitude in natural Drosophila populations. There is a latitudinal gradient in which the

Therefore, the bias toward morningness in introgressed mutants may indicate selection for shortened circadian periods in populations living at high latitudes. The tendency to be a morning person may have been evolutionarily beneficial to our ancestors who lived in the high latitudes of Europe, and would have been a Neanderthal genetic trait worth preserving.

“By combining ancient times, DNA“After extensive genetic and artificial intelligence research in modern humans, we discovered substantial genetic differences in the circadian systems of Neanderthals and modern humans,” said John, lead author of the paper.・A. Capra said.

“And by analyzing Neanderthal DNA fragments that remain in the genomes of modern humans, we discovered surprising trends, many of which affect the regulation of circadian genes in modern humans. These effects are primarily in the consistent direction of increasing Neanderthal tendencies.” Morning people. This change is consistent with the effects of living at high latitudes on animals’ circadian clocks, which may allow them to adjust more quickly to changing seasonal light patterns.

“Our next steps include applying these analyzes to more diverse modern human populations and investigating the effects of the Neanderthal variants we identified on circadian clocks in model systems. and applying similar analyzes to other potentially adaptive traits.”

Reference: “Archaic Introgression Shaped Human Circadian Traits” by Keila Velazquez-Arcelay, Laura L Colbran, Evonne McArthur, Colin M Brand, David C Rinker, Justin K Siemann, Douglas G McMahon, John A Capra, December 14, 2023 , Genome biology and evolution.
DOI: 10.1093/gbe/evad203

Source: scitechdaily.com

Alexis Ohanian Remains a ‘Techno-Optimist’ Despite Social Media’s Influence on Society

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Does Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian have any regrets about his creation? The entrepreneur and founder of venture fund Seven Seven Six spoke at an event at the University of Virginia, where he asserted a rather negative view of the current social media environment and the creator economy. The environment, he says, is one in which everyone is “very trained and now conditioned to just getting likes, retweets and upvotes…More optimistic We want to be, and we see it happening before our eyes. Still, he ultimately described himself as a “techno-optimist.” This is a clear nod to a16z general partner Marc Andreessen’s recent accusation that technology can solve all problems.

“He is guilty as charged,” Ohanian said at the hearing. interview With Kara Swisher. “I think the pendulum will swing back. We’re thinking even faster than we think.” To understand the world, we need better platforms than we have today. He theorized that a war in the Middle East could even be a turning point because it is “so clear” that something is needed.

As you may recall, the founder notably resigned from Reddit’s board in 2020, citing disagreements over moderation and a desire to police the community on violence and hate. It was a moment when he seemed to be thinking about what his platform had brought him. At the time, he called for his board seat to be replaced by a black director. The company agreed and appointed Y Combinator partner Michael Seibel as its first black board member.

Reddit has since also banned several toxic communities, including r/donaldtrup, in the wake of the violence at the U.S. Capitol, but Ohanian said the site has “definitely gotten better” since then, and that the business He also said that he had improved.

But when it comes to social media as a whole, of which Reddit will be a part, Ohanian said social media brings out “the worst parts of human nature in many ways.” Additionally, he is concerned that with any leaderboards the platform has, people have a desire to be first and want to win, which can lead to situations where misinformation can be spread. I announced.

“There’s so much pressure to be number one right now, and UGC (user-generated content) always wins. But that doesn’t mean it’s always true. But it becomes the epicenter of the conversation. And what percentage of our population is going to really seriously take a breath and say, “Let me stop doomscrolling, and people can do the work and integrate it and then help me react.” Do I want to say, “Let’s just wait until it happens?” he continued.

“Also, we are deeply involved in all these storylines, whether they come from traditional media, user-generated ones, or posts on Telegram groups on our phones. We’re overwhelmed, we’re overloaded, and unfortunately that appeals to our worst instincts,” Ohanian added.

Part of the problem with how social media platforms were developed had to do with how companies originally developed them. For example, Ohanian said Reddit grew out of running his site online, a forum in college where he believed the community felt just as real as offline. He said when Reddit became a multibillion-dollar business with hundreds of millions of users, he never imagined the site would one day become so influential. That idea would be “ridiculous,” he says. And he never could have imagined that his startup would be so successful as to influence elections and democracy.

“It takes a level of delusion that even I, as a first-time CEO, can’t think to think, “Oh my god, I’m going to be this successful, that I can have such a huge impact on our democracy,” he said. Stated. . “Was that a blind spot? Of course,” he admitted.

Ohanian noted that another part of the problem is that there are more people online today than early technology founders imagined. While he’s happy to see greater access to technology, it also comes with many complications.

“I don’t like the idea that the Internet, which I’m so nostalgic about, was actually an ivory tower,” he said, but on the other hand, he said, we’re exposed to more people in real time. said. More than we could have imagined. And that can pit people against each other and against their different versions of the truth — even if their version of the truth believes in something as far-fetched as the Earth is flat, he said. He cited one example that has supporters on Reddit.

On the other hand, he said, getting platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Reddit to take on the responsibility of verifying truth and accuracy is a challenge. Ohanian also described TikTok as a “weapon of the Chinese government” that is very good at “giving us what we want, when we want”, meaning it is always a fountain of truth. He also said that there is no limit.

If anything, Ohanian credits Twitter (now called X) with devising the best moderation system ever.

“I personally think community notes are a good thing. It’s the best instrument I’ve ever seen. And frankly, I wish we had thought of it in the first place. I think so,” he said.

Still, he championed the notion that platforms like the X could become town squares.

“The public square is [analogy]…I feel depressed. I mean, if you mean the public square, I mean, what? Is it a town or a city? If you’re in charge, you’re the mayor. But there are no democratic elections,” Ohanian said. “You’re the CEO. So you’re like a king? If you want to lean into the town square, fine. Just own it and say, yeah, this is the town square and I’m Just say that there is an endless dictator, a tyrant.”

Despite the challenges and urgency of social media, Ohanian believes there is still hope in terms of social impact. For example, he noted that the founders his fund 776 invests in are much smarter and more aware of the issues than they were at their age. Perhaps the next platform will still be addictive, but in a way that “doesn’t disrupt democracy further,” he mused.

He also believes that if everything on social media is perfectly curated for us, our brains will start craving things that aren’t. “I think live gatherings and in-person experiences will return. The bright side of this is that I hope we can reconnect with our humanity and the things that no amount of AI can replace.”

“I’m trying to be an optimist about it,” Ohanian added. “And I think we still have a way to go, but we’re fighting a very, very powerful human thing. And if we can solve that, we’ll have a very good outcome. Because we… Because you can see that they have more in common than they don’t have,” he said.

Source: techcrunch.com