Serendipity35

It's not the metaverse. The fediverse is a network of interconnected social media servers from all over the world. Each server on the fediverse can be thought of as an independent platform with its users, content, and rules. Servers share information to enable people to connect and discover new things across the fediverse.

I was using Threads and changing my settings so that my posts there would not crosspost to the other Meta products Instagram and Facebook. I saw this note:

Threads has joined the fediverse, an open, global network of social media servers. If you decide to turn on sharing to the fediverse, people from different platforms (like Mastodon or Flipboard) can follow your Threads profile and see and engage with your posts even if they don’t have a Threads profile. Sharing to the fediverse is optional and only available to people 18 and over with public profiles. Threads is integrating with the fediverse in a phased approach that will add new features over time. It’s important to understand how sharing to the fediverse affects your privacy.

Meta doesn’t own the fediverse (or the metaverse, despite its name) and Threads is just one of many servers that has joined it.

The fediverse, short for "federated universe," is new enough to most users that there are still questions about whether or not it is good and safe. The fediverse can be a great option for those seeking more control over their social media experience, valuing privacy, and wanting to support decentralized technology. Safety depends on the specific instance and its policies. Users should carefully choose instances with good moderation practices and align with their values.

I'll admit I was unaware of what the fediverse means even though it was created in the early 2000s. The idea was that it could create greater connectivity and community, no matter which app they use. Other platforms that have joined the fediverse include Flipboard, Mastodon, PeerTube and others.

Meta on its privacy page about the fediverse says that one way to think about the fediverse is to compare it to email. You can send an email from a Gmail account to a Yahoo account because those services can communicate. Similarly, if you can post from Threads to the fediverse, a person who uses a Mastodon server can follow you and see and interact with your content directly from their server.
Unlike email, your fediverse conversations and profile are public and can be shared across servers.

Terms of service. That information you tend to avoid reading. Good example: Google's newly updated terms of service, which I found out about in an email last week. I decided to read them.

Their updated terms opens with "We know it’s tempting to skip these Terms of Service, but it’s important to establish what you can expect from us as you use Google services, and what we expect from you. These Terms of Service reflect the way Google’s business works, the laws that apply to our company, and certain things we’ve always believed to be true. As a result, these Terms of Service help define Google’s relationship with you as you interact with our services."

Here are a few items I noted:
Some things considered to be abuse on the part of users includes accessing or using Google services or content in fraudulent or deceptive ways, such as:
phishing
creating fake accounts or content, including fake reviews
misleading others into thinking that generative AI content was created by a human
providing services that appear to originate from you (or someone else) when they actually originate from us
providing services that appear to originate from us when they do not
using our services (including the content they provide) to violate anyone’s legal rights, such as intellectual property or privacy rights
reverse engineering our services or underlying technology, such as our machine learning models, to extract trade secrets or other proprietary information, except as allowed by applicable law
using automated means to access content from any of our services in violation of the machine-readable instructions on our web pages (for example, robots.txt files that disallow crawling, training, or other activities)
hiding or misrepresenting who you are in order to violate these terms
providing services that encourage others to violate these terms

Take that second item I highlighted about misleading others into thinking that generative AI content was created by a human, Does that mean that if I use their generative AI or some other provider's AI to help write a blog post that I put here with my name that I am violating their terms of service?

Though I would say that Google's Terms of Service is written in plain langauage that most readers should be able to understand, the implications of some of the terms are much harder to interpret.

NOTE: The Google Terms of Service (United States version) that I reference are effective May 22, 2024.
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Bias has always existed. It has always existed online. Now, with AI, there is another level of bias.

Bias generated by technology is “more than a glitch,” says one expert.

For example, why does AI have a bias against dark skin? It is because its data is scraped from the Internet, and the Internet is full of biased content.

This doesn't give AI a pass on bias. It is more of a comment or reflection on bias in general.

It is an important issue to cover but, unfortunately, I am not surprised to see a report covered with a BBC headline "More girls than boys exposed to harmful content online."

Teenage girls are more likely to be asked for nude photos online or be sent pornography or content promoting self-harm than boys, a report has found. The report is based on survey responses from around 6,500 young people, and they found that girls are "much more likely to experience something nasty or unpleasant online."

YouTube, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and TikTok were the most popular social media sites for both age groups, but more than three-quarters of 14-18-year-olds also used Instagram.

Many respondents reported spending significant amounts of time online. For instance, a third of 14-18-year-olds reported spending four hours or more online during a school day.  Almost two-thirds reported spending more than four hours online at weekends. One in five 14-18-year-olds said they spent more than seven hours a day online on weekends.

One example is that one in five children and young people who took part in the research said something nasty or unpleasant had recently happened to them online. The most common experience was that "mean or nasty comments" were made about them or sent to them. But there was a difference between boys and girls when it came to the type of nasty online experience they had. Girls were more likely to have mean or nasty comments made about them or rumors spread about them.

More than 5% of girls aged 14-18 said they had been asked to send nude photos or videos online or expose themselves, three times higher than the rate among boys. More than 5% of 14-18 year-old girls also said they had seen or been sent pornography, and twice as many girls as boys reported being sent "inappropriate photos" they had not asked for. More girls than boys also reported being sent content promoting suicide, eating disorders and self-harm.