I did that and it was a mess, with warnings about being unable to backup that I couldn't get rid of. I had to reinstall to try to turn off syncing, then remove again. But it's so integrated that my desktop is still under a OneDrive subfolder and it's still referenced in various places.
Is there a guide to completely removing this from Windows 11 cleanly?
You can disable so-called essential components and I believe it ships without almost any of the bloat. So essentially you could just take one drive out, or not have it in the first place. Or at least that's my hope
Interesting article, but in my experience it overstates the problem... at least for Facebook itself (I have zero interaction with Instagram, Threads, or VR).
I've gone back to Facebook for the last few months, and out of what it mentions, I've only seen like half of it, mostly in the comment sections.
Or to be more precise, for 2024 Q2, I'm seeing:
election disinformation - almost none
violent content
child sexual abuse material
hate speech - only in comments
fake news - almost none
crypto scams - a few
phishing - a few
hacking
romance scams - almost none
AI content - almost none
uncanny valley stuff
The article however forgot to include:
science deniers - a lot in open comments, very few in groups
religious zealots - in comments
political trolls - a few in comments
state-sponsored propagandists - a few in comments
general trolls - a few in comments
Still interesting how I get close to zero of these in my main feed.
there’s a level of disinvestment in Facebook
Disagree. Facebook has reached a "plateau of stability" where the current moderation tools keep enough people on the platform to make it profitable.
I've been actively reporting+blocking problematic content, and while about 99% of my reports end up in "no action was taken", it works wonders to keep my feed and group comments clean.
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NHS England has confirmed its patient data managed by blood test management organisation Synnovis was stolen in a ransomware attack on 3 June.Qilin, a Russian cyber-criminal group, shared almost 400GB of private information on their darknet site on Thursday night, something they threatened to do in order to extort money from Synnovis.
In a statement, NHS England said there is "no evidence" that test results have been published, but that "investigations are ongoing".
"Patients should continue to attend their appointments unless they have been told otherwise and should access urgent care as they usually would," NHS England said.A sample of the stolen data seen by the BBC includes patient names, dates of birth, NHS numbers and descriptions of blood tests, something cyber security expert Ciaran Martin told the BBC was "one of the most significant and harmful cyber attacks ever in the UK.
"There are also business account spreadsheets detailing financial arrangements between hospitals and GP services and Synnovis being taken.
The ransomware hackers infiltrated the computer systems of the company, which is used by two NHS trusts in London, and encrypted vital information making IT systems useless.As is often the case with cyber-criminals, they also downloaded as much private data as they could to further extort the company for a ransom payment in Bitcoin.It is not known how much money the hackers demanded from Synnovis or if the company entered negotiations.
But the fact Qilin has published some, potentially all, of the data means they did not pay.The cyber-attackers told the BBC on an encrypted messaging service they had deliberately targeted Synnovis as a way to punish the UK for not helping enough in an unspecified war.In NHS England's statement it said it "continues to work with Synnovis and the National Crime Agency".NHS England said it had set up a helpline to support people impacted by the attack and it will continue to share updates, but "investigations of this type are complex and take time".
I found this article quite interesting, as I deactivated my main Facebook account around the time the article asserts Facebook was still "trying" and only recently created a new account under a generic pseudonym to access all the community and small business information that is still locked entirely to the platform. Because I have basically nothing in my feed on this account, Facebook backfills it with "recommended" posts and I was pretty shocked at how universally terrible they are. I guess the algorithm uses my location and gender to generate these recommendations, since I've provided very little in the way of alternative information or interaction for it to use. As a result, my default feed is basically just a wall of misogynistic and highly sexualised slop and even the few genuine recommended posts (like backpackers looking for travelling buddies) are clearly being recommended because they feature young women with a bunch of older men thirsting over them in the comments.
Because I have basically nothing in my feed on this account, Facebook backfills it with "recommended" posts and I was pretty shocked at how universally terrible they are. [...] since I've provided very little in the way of alternative information or interaction for it to use
There is your problem.
When an information-hungry platform like Google or Meta asks you to fill out your preferences "to serve you more relevant content"... they are not lying. I mean, it's also to select ads that will pay more for your attention, but the thing with the content algorithm is, if you don't give it data, then it will ass-u-me that you're statistically most likely to engage with content that is getting most engaged... by people who have also not provided it any data.
The problem with that cohort, is it not only includes the few people with legitimate security concerns, but also those who got dark secrets to hide, and/or are using "incognito" browser mode to look for porn.
I don't like to give too much info about myself, but I also don't want to get stuff intended for the "average horny fanatics" group, so I try to give enough data for the algorithm to put me into a group that makes more sense to me.
And it works. The strongest signal you can send to the algorithm, is blocking content you don't want to see. It's amazing how quickly modern algorithms learn to avoid showing me most porn, politics, or religious content, and instead show me science and humor. They still send like 1% of trash my way, clearly checking whether I'll maybe engage with it, but report+block works wonders.
It's not a "problem", as such. As I said, I created the account to view the pages and groups of small businesses and organisations that have no other online presence. I don't use it for the doomscroll algorithm. This was just my observation of what kind of content is targeted towards males in my location by default.
But it's not exactly a "default", it's more of a "demographic with little data"... and I bet it's small enough that the algorithm is showing exactly the content most of its members are looking for. It's somewhat of a sad reflection on the state of privacy, when keeping things private becomes a segmenting parameter.
Really great article, and thanks for posting the text of it.
Facebook is weird for me because it triggers my FOMO, but then if I use it all I see are a ton of random things with the most toxic people in the world living in the comments.
And similarly I just realized why my friends on instagram use stories and not posts, because for the most part stories is the only place I see content from people I know anymore (and again the FOMO).
I really relate to the sentence at the end, “there are people there but they don’t know why and most of what they are seeing is scammy or weird.”
Really great article, and thanks for posting the text of it.
You're welcome. It was their daily free article to email subscribers. I can't afford to pay a subscription fee for full access but I find the combination of their mailing list + podcast is a good way to keep up to date with their investigations.
I left Facebook in 2014, having had to rejoin because in that era, you had to have an account to get a job. Which is another topic but worth keeping in mind.
If I don't know why I'm somewhere, I leave. Rave, website, bar ... these are all the same questions, just with less external pressure because you aren't the product in the other two situations.
China is simultaneously destroying the environment for profit and investing too much money in green technology?
A distinctive feature of purchase subsidies for BEV in China, however, is that they are paid out directly to manufacturers rather than consumers and that they are paid only for electric vehicles produced in China, thereby discriminating against imported cars.
That's an interesting way to spin subsidies on the production of electric vehicles. Why would China pay companies in other countries to produce cars?
That sounds a bit contradictory but there's an important details. Part of the accusation seems to be about picking winners, ie giving subsidies to specific companies rather than the sector as a whole.
The anti-subsidy investigation has been intended to confirm the Commission’s allegations that manufacturers of battery electric vehicles (BEV) in China benefit from countervailable – i.e. specific and advantageous to the receiving companies – subsidies
If that's true then a tweak to subsidies might technically solve the issue without changing the EU-China competition balance.
IMHO the EU should focus on carbon border tax, and on doing it quickly and efficiently. The idea is taxing import from countries that don't tax pollution, or at least less than the EU does, to make competing companies subject to similar emissions tax/regulation.
Damn, they really overfit their music models. With image generation and text prediction it's very hard to prove a direct connection, but with four or five of those songs it's unmistakable that the original songs were used to generate the music output
I wonder what the effect will be of fixing the models' overfitting. I'm guessing it'll generate worse music, or they would've done so already.
Quite sad that it took the music industry to notice before any lawsuits with a chance of succeeding got off the ground.
In hot weather, I use silica gel neck wraps, which slowly release water to keep you cool (if soggy). I really want to try making an equivalent out of sodium sulphate gel and see how it compares.
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