Morning,
We can start with this from yesterday. Not surprisingly no one in our gang of morons offered an explanation for the big correction in markets yesterday, so I’ve found us an explainer. I’m not saying this was the entire cause of it. I think most people know that much of the system is fake at this point and it’s patches over cracks over patches over holes, but this certainly contributed as such things do when systems aren’t robust.
Video explaining the Yen carry trade
Tweet - If you hate your algorithm you’re not doing the internet correctly. The alogorithm bends to your will. You are weak.
There is some truth to this. You obviously set the boundaries of the sort of information you want to see by specifically following people, that’s giving the system a starting point of where you are and it will feed similar to you. The more you engage (which is just looking at stuff for relative amounts of time as it’s most granular level) the more it uses that data to fine tune its targeting. It’ll also feed some of the opposite to you because it makes sense that you might engage with something you dislike, maybe get dragged into a two hour back and forth trying to win an argument with someone who you’ll never meet and might not even be real. There’s also strength in numbers because large accounts can signal boost information by sharing things, along with artificial boosting through paying or platforms that have government influence forcing the distortion of normal daily running. You have more control than you think though, but it’s a choice. You need to help the system feed what you want and constantly prune your activity and inputs. It’s part of the online literacy that I bang on about. I think the easiest way to prove this to yourself is go on TikTok, the algorithm there is next level, you’ll notice it changing what it feeds you just be deliberately staying longer - and by longer I mean milliseconds 😂 - on specific videos.
Video of convincing fake face mask
Worth a watch, I think many people know about this stuff, but it might wake a few up who aren’t aware as to how good this technology is now. There’s a good TED talk of the lady who used to make this stuff in the 80/90s for the CIA explaining it all. It’s not my bag but seeing as the one in this video is civvy off the shelf, I’d imagine the cutting edge stuff defies belief. The fact that there’s so much research now into identifying people by factors other than their face, such as gait recognition, tells me that to the people whose lives and jobs depend on identifying people, face recognition is easily beaten and they needed something else harder to fake. Of course the average person on the street would never have need of a way to ensure they weren’t recognised, obviously.