“A leverage point in avoiding toxoplasma, is the bridge people: people who are being rewarded for taking offense, and therefore select for the worst possible behavior of the outgroup. These people act as stressors, specifically triggering ideations of worst-case-scenarios. The fix here is removing these people from your feeds/circles of influence.” (tags: toxoplasmainternetragesocial-networks)
The socials are a handy way to stay in touch with friends, find out about dancing events (if they’re ever allowed again) and to get information direct from experts. They’re also an unrelenting cesspool of trolls, bots and undesireables. What to do?
Facebook
On my PC, FB Purity lets me filter on keyboards (I’ve chosen “trump” and “brexit”, as you can see). It can hide various types of update from your feed. I hide stuff like “Fred commented on this thing” (as FB friends sometimes like to argue with the undesirables), as well as adverts. You can also force the feed into chronological order rather than relying on Facebook’s algorithm to show you what it thinks you should see.
On my phone, I use Friendly for Facebook, which isn’t quite as good but does have the keyword filtering (“commented on” works as a filter) and, if you give them a donation, will also filter the adverts.
Secateur blocks people and optionally all their followers, unless you’re following them too. It’s adding to your Twitter blocklist, so once people are blocked, they’re blocked however you view Twitter. I guess there’s a risk that some decent people are following undesirables to keep an eye on them, but if it catches on, I can imagine people using separate accounts for that (of course, the undesirables can do the same trick, having one account for trolling and one for following, but they don’t seem to be yet). It wouldn’t be that hard to extend Tweak New Twitter to add a “Secateur” button to Twitter, either, I might look into that.
The next stage on from this, especially if the undesirables maintain accounts where they don’t follow other undesirables, would be the web of trust: only show replies from people you follow, people they follow, people the original tweeter follows, say.
Nitter is a free and open source alternative Twitter front-end focused on privacy. It’s an alternative website for which you don’t need Javascript enabled. It will also turn someone’s tweets into an RSS feed, useful if you just want to read them without signing up for Twitter.
“At 87, le Carré is publishing his 25th novel. He talks to John Banville about our ‘dismal statesmanship’ and what he learned from his time as a spy” (tags: spiesintelligenceMI5MI6le-carrepolitics)
Rebutting nonsense about the supposed publisher/platform distinction in Section 230 of the US’s Communications Decency Act. From the Cato Institute, so can’t be dismissed as leftist propaganda. (tags: lawcensorshipinternet)
“Scientists researching treatments for chronic fatigue syndrome say they face online abuse and harassment. Some are leaving the field. It’s a ‘new normal,’ they say, and patients may lose out.” (tags: researchculturepsychologyinternettrollingmedicine)
John Lanchester reviews 3 books on Facebook and Google, and comes to the conclusion that Facebook does things because it can, without considering whether it should. (tags: facebookadvertisingpsychologyInternetzuckerberggoogle)
“So I’ve been thinking for a while about the Discworld books, and how they can be divided up into three rough thematic phases; not based around the focal characters, but rather what the story is about.” (tags: discworldterry-pratchettbooksfantasy)
People don’t actually just stick to sites which match their political views, and their Facebook acquaintances don’t always share their politics. (tags: facebooksocietypoliticsinternet)
