If Instagram, WhatsApp and Snapchat remain in Facebook then it will be similar to Google / Alphabet considering Fitbit, Google Fibre and Waymo are subsidiaries of the Alphabet brand.
Facebook, Amazon etc....
- Thread starter Raoul
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Snapchat isn’t owned by Facebook / Meta.
Possibly. Unless Oculus becomes a big player, which seems to be the plan.
I mean the concept rather than this specific iteration. On a less VR/flashy level Slack has already changed the conventional notion of "the workplace" during the pandemic and that's here to stay. This VR stuff is just a few iterations down the road.
I can't see VR being a thing for the workplace for a very long time. I just don't see the utility of it. People who are working for home aren't going to use VR.
The online world is only going to grow, though.
The online world is only going to grow, though.
I'm sure Waymo are saying that's their plan too to be fair.
They've definitely got the best person to make Oculus work in Carmack, but as always he has been pretty outspoken about his employers decisions in the short term.
John Carmack Facebook Connect 2021 Keynote - YouTube
My feeling, based on some whispers I heard is that this is way bigger than what Waymo is for Alphabet. Alphabet’s top researchers are all in Brain or DeepMind. Facebook seems to plan to put their entire research department (strongest in the world after Google) under Oculus. Let’s see if this really happens or not.
I guess it's hard to tell... Skype was launched around 2003... I think I used a clunky version around 2005... if you had told me 15 years after due to some global pandemic I would have to run a multinational business via Skype I'd have thought you were crazy but here we are and it's kinda (within limitations ) worked... I don't think it's crazy to think k the meta workplace could also be a thing in the next decade ... that said I'm not sure it will need fb to materialise and I'm not sure beyond initial development what there place will be ... occulus is impressive when I have used it but I don't think it's beyond close replication so long term I'm not sure what fb have to separate them... that said they have a fek ton of cash and fek all morals so have a good a chance as anybody as figuring out a niche
I'm not sure the Skype comparison works, because Skype (or Zoom, Teams, whatever) already does everything VR could do, except better. Something being virtual does not improve it, it very likely just detracts from it. Sure, if we get to the point where VR is delivered through a chip in your head, then everything is going to change. But as long as VR involves having some kind of fairly expensive device on your head, it's always going to be mostly a gimmick (or with a very few specific uses).
Edit: Full disclosure, I do own a VR headset. I've had quite a lot of fun playing Beat Saber on it, but I can't imagine ever using it for anything work related. Or anything non-gaming related, for that matter, even though they have tried pushing stuff like watching movies with it. And even the games are very niche, and specifically made for VR.
How expensive / clunky will that headset be in a decade... because I'd its the same as now then yeah very limited... if its like wearing normal glasses the probably that's a game changer in its self
It wouldn't be quite like normal glasses, because you need some hardware in there, but I guess it's possible with time. I just don't see what the benefit would be for the workplace. I guess we could get to the point where you use it instead of a monitor, but then that's not really VR. And we saw what happened with Google Glass, that wasn't exactly a smashing success
I run a multi national company and having people working from home has for sure impacted comminucations... especially that have a 5 min chat with a colleague to see if something is a good idea or not
I can Imagine and environment where people can work from home bit can still get that connectivity with people being of great benefit
Not sure it will be via meta or somebody else but I can see it being more important as more flexible working takes off... particularly with intercontinental business and time zone differences some virtual environment could be really helpful
Not there yet but the idea has legs for sure
Thousands of those will be in Ireland too, it's a pity they are such a truly shitty company.
Yep, but at the level of the oasis if you've seen ready player one.
Correct. It's been happening for a few years but now it's being pushed more and more as the tech improves. There's a lack of imagination in here this would be in everyday use and for those saying it has no utility, or its easier to just zoom, etc... Have you actually tried it? To 3D sculpt? work out? Etc... It's better already but that will become apparent over time I can't be arsed to give examples right now.
I like mixed reality, I intend to pivot into this field as for me it's like the progression from web 1.0 to web 2.0 (so web 3.0). BUT... This is very transformational, we don't know what effect it's going to have on society and how we do things, what we find important going forward, how we work, hang out and communicate.
My advice for some of you that think it's nothing, is to pay attention. When sites like myspace & YouTube started no body could see that we'd end up with Instagram's, snapchat, and Only fans.... With a sizable part of the population 'living for the gram'. Think about how living for likes has shaped the younger generation and even the older? Relationships don't last as long as people are always comparing their own to the fake ones they see on line. Influence, YouTuber and cam performer are legit career choices... Depression off the charts? Fake news everywhere...
feck knows how this could end up, but certain scifi books and films are looking increasingly prescient right now.....
feck meta, but they aren't the only company doing this. Sony and Epic games are others. This is happening, so keep your eyes open and let's not sleep walk into something here.
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Well yeah
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I honestly don't get how they get away with it. Are there no employee protection laws covering extreme weather events?
Next day delivery is too great to give up.
Kellogs in a spot of bother as well.
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Note: This isn't Facebook/Amazon etc - it's a candle company, but I didn't know where else to put it. (Maybe we should have a 'Capitalism' thread).
Factory workers threatened with firing if they left before tornado, employees say
At least eight people died in the Mayfield Consumer Products candle factory. Its destruction has become a symbol of the tornado's ruinous power.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...hreatened-firing-left-tornado-employ-rcna8581
That would quickly turn into the most depressing thread in caf history.
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Keep in mind these are only allegations and reading some of the twitter replies, I can't help but think people do not understand much about marketing. One woman complaining about paying $1 per lead is laughably ignorant. Also, people should really understand how much it costs to do offline advertising and marketing and what the ROI is on things like Google or FB ads compared to old school methods like billboards, sending out direct mailers, paying for ads in the local newspapers, high school sports programs, etc. No doubt some small businesses, depending on their product/service, will not benefit the most from Google or FB ads but these replies are just so missing context and reality that I can't take that thread seriously. We'll have to see what actually turns up from these claims and if there is anything to them or not.
So Twitter has really increased the barriers lately to do some proper browsing without an account. To the extent that I might as well create an account just for browsing through tweets.
Anyone else who did the same?
Anyone else who did the same?
So Microsoft bought Activision Blizzard.
Big tech will dominate everything.
Big tech will dominate everything.
Ya, had a twitter account for a year and made like 5 posts.
Then a subreddit I wasted a ton of time in got banned, so now I waste a ton of time on twitter.
Moving this out of the Joe Rogan thread since it's more a general debate on Google than on the Rogan podcast episode
It's important to recognize this guy is not any more an expert on Google search than Rogan is an expert on vaccines. He's had a massive agenda against Google for a long time:
"An article in the New York Times from early 2012 points to a tiff the psychologist had with the company after his website was hacked. Google directed visitors not to go to his page until the malicious code was removed—and kept the warning up even after Epstein tried, apparently unsuccessfully, to clean up his security and begged Google to remove the label. Epstein threatened to sue the company for not removing the warning, explaining to the Times that he felt like he was yelling at a brick wall. Later that year, he published a series of articles in the Huffington Post about why Google should be regulated. For the next few years, he began to publish more regularly about how easily Google could throw an election, largely citing himself. Starting in 2016, he become a regular on Breitbart discussing the Google topic. "
So, there are a lot of misconceptions in your post. Google does not "cherry-pick" anything. Google's algorithm isn't developed by "a human", it evolved over two decades with thousands of the best computer scientists in the world working to improve it over time, the same way Toyota practices kaizen on their manufacturing model for cars. The best machine learning adjusts it, the latest being MUM which will be integrated in the next year. And then the algorithm receives adjustment by tens of thousands of quality raters. This guy simply does not understand how Google works at all or he does understand but it doesn't fit his agenda so he acts in bad faith to further his personal vendetta. While anyone can say "it's not perfect", dozens of very rich companies have tried to produce better search engines and failed miserably, from Microsoft's Bing to right-wing attempts like DuckDuckGo. There is a reason Google is so dominant and it's simply because their results have been far more relevant at showing the information people look for than every other competitor over the last 20 years.
So no, it's not "relying on a single source" to determine that the NY Times is a more trustworthy source than Breitbart or The Daily Caller. The algorithm itself would even rank Breitbart higher if more searchers were visiting Breitbart. The fact is, the algorithm will rank NY Times higher simply because far more people in the world consider the NY Times a much more reliable and trustworthy source than Breitbart. That's because, quite simply, it is a more reliable and trustworthy source than a far-right opinion site. This demand from many conservatives corners that anyone not showing or giving equal time to "both sides of an opinion" is simply nonsense. Not showing equal results to climate change deniers or anti-vaxxers isn't reflective of "bias", its reflective of scientific consensus. For political news, it's not that NY Times is 100% objectively unbiased, its that they are a far more reliable source of information than Breitbart. If NY Times tilts 10% one way, Breitbart tilts 100% to the other. It's not an equal degree of bias, not even close.
And showing search results is not even remotely akin to "brain-washing". That's extreme hyperbole that simply doesn't apply and shows a complete lack of scientific understanding of "brainwashing." The word "brain-washing" itself is loaded and based on fiction to begin with but the closest thing you get in reality is something like Robert Jay Lifton's work, whose book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism is generally considered the best on the subject. Nothing Google does come close to meeting these standards.
There is a reason this guy isn't publishing in peer-reviewed journals and professionals and professors that know what they're talking about consider him a quack. He only had one paper ever published in a peer-reviewed journal and it didn't prove what he claimed. He has never proven a connection between SERPs and behavior. He's asserted it but nothing in his "research" has come close to proving it as many professors and professionals have mentioned. He's made claims like “Google can take a 50/50 split among undecided voters and change it to a 90/10 split with no one knowing they have been manipulated" but nothing he has done has come close to proving that. If you agree with him then go ahead and link the research that you think proves his claims and I'll debunk it right here.
Remember this is a quack who has gone on Fox News to argue "in favor of teens getting married, pointing out that “Mary was 12 or 13 when she had Jesus, was she not?”
Here are just a few problems with this non-expert's methodology:
"The study — which was based on 95 participants in 24 US states — stated, in part, that when extrapolating from a 2015 study also authored by Epstein, at least 2.6 million votes might be "shifted" in favor of Clinton because of bias in Google's search results.
But the 2015 study's findings were based on asking US residents to cast hypothetical votes for candidates in Australia's 2010 prime ministerial election based on information they saw in Google search results.
Dr. Michael McDonald, an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida, expressed skepticism to Business Insider that Epstein's 2015 findings regarding Google's search rankings influencing American decisions about elections in Australia — a topic most American study participants would have little information about beforehand — could be applied directly to the US presidential elections.
"I'm not sure if this really applies to US elections where we have partisan politics going on and lots of other information that people have," McDonald said. "You don't need to look at the top of Google search results for your information about how you're going to cast your vote for president."
Justin Levitt, an associate dean for research and professor at Loyola Law School who focuses on constitutional law and the law of democracy, told Business Insider there were multiple points of contention with Epstein's 2017 findings, which have become the basis for the president's tweet on Monday. For one, Epstein wrote in his report that after the study was completed, results from participants using Google's email service, Gmail, were discarded, thus changing the number of eligible participants to a lower, undisclosed number.
Epstein said Gmail users were removed because some of their search queries appeared "automated" and, overall, those using Google's email service saw results that were far less biased than non-Gmail users.
"That's a weird methodological choice to take some of your results and throw them out after you've done the experiment because they seem to not fit your designed story," Levitt said. "That's something that sets off a bunch of red flags."
"his huge claim is based on monitoring the search results of just 21 undecided voters out of 95 voters for a 2017 white paper. In his submitted testimony, Epstein did provide seven pages of citations—but all of them are papers or op-eds he wrote or co-wrote himself. Only one of them—a 2015 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, about how biased results produced by search engines could have the ability to sway undecided voters—was peer-reviewed. Even that study didn’t demonstrate that this has actually happened."
(tons of red flags here from basing his claims on swaying 2.6 million votes from just monitoring 21 allegedly undecided voters to the fact all his citations are to his own non peer-reviewed work).
And then some I already linked but I'll just repeat for completeness since you never recognized their points:
"Another issue, other academics say, is that Epstein’s study did not establish a link between alleged bias in search results and voter behavior in 2016.
Epstein said he came to the conclusion of bias sufficient to affect 2.6 million to 10.4 million votes based on what he has found in studies of national elections outside the US, including the 2010 Australian prime minister election and a 2014 Indian legislative election.
In other words: Epstein did not test 2016 American voters to see if their Clinton-or-Trump choice had been changed by search results they got. He extrapolated from his previous studies."
“When Dr. Epstein says the effects are ‘huge’ and ‘more powerful’ than anything he has ever seen, I respectfully suggest that he needs to read the political science literature before making that claim,” Katherine Haenschen, a communications professor at Virginia Tech University who studies internet targeting on voter turnout, told Mother Jones this week. “Large-scale digital mobilization has basically failed to deliver sizable effects in terms of persuasion or turnout.” Never mind the fact that in Epstein’s study, it’s not clear what search terms were used by his participants, or what the “biased” search results were. In his research, Epstein graded search engines for bias, determining that mainstream news outlets like the New York Times dominated over conservative sources like Breitbart in Google’s results. Epstein doesn’t explain the context in which the searches were conducted—which is important to know, since the whole point of Google Search is that it personalizes results based on prior searches and the user’s location. Someone with a recent search history about guns in Tennessee will likely see different search results than someone with a recent search history about women’s health care in New York City. And a good study would take care to somehow sanitize or disclose each participant’s search environment before reaching any conclusions."
That's just from a few responses. Basically, this guy has an axe to grind and that works for Breitbart and the right-wing media so even though no professors or professionals take this quack's papers seriously (except Trump of course), he gets a lot of airtime on heavily biased sites.
https://www.businessinsider.com/red-flags-in-trump-google-bias-millions-votes-report-2019-8
https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/robert-epstein-google-bias-conservative-bogus-trump.html
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/19/politics/trump-google-manipulated-votes-claim/index.html
That's your prerogative, just like some people take Joe Rogan's opinions on vaccines at face value or Jordan Peterson's on political science at face value.
It's important to recognize this guy is not any more an expert on Google search than Rogan is an expert on vaccines. He's had a massive agenda against Google for a long time:
"An article in the New York Times from early 2012 points to a tiff the psychologist had with the company after his website was hacked. Google directed visitors not to go to his page until the malicious code was removed—and kept the warning up even after Epstein tried, apparently unsuccessfully, to clean up his security and begged Google to remove the label. Epstein threatened to sue the company for not removing the warning, explaining to the Times that he felt like he was yelling at a brick wall. Later that year, he published a series of articles in the Huffington Post about why Google should be regulated. For the next few years, he began to publish more regularly about how easily Google could throw an election, largely citing himself. Starting in 2016, he become a regular on Breitbart discussing the Google topic. "
So, there are a lot of misconceptions in your post. Google does not "cherry-pick" anything. Google's algorithm isn't developed by "a human", it evolved over two decades with thousands of the best computer scientists in the world working to improve it over time, the same way Toyota practices kaizen on their manufacturing model for cars. The best machine learning adjusts it, the latest being MUM which will be integrated in the next year. And then the algorithm receives adjustment by tens of thousands of quality raters. This guy simply does not understand how Google works at all or he does understand but it doesn't fit his agenda so he acts in bad faith to further his personal vendetta. While anyone can say "it's not perfect", dozens of very rich companies have tried to produce better search engines and failed miserably, from Microsoft's Bing to right-wing attempts like DuckDuckGo. There is a reason Google is so dominant and it's simply because their results have been far more relevant at showing the information people look for than every other competitor over the last 20 years.
So no, it's not "relying on a single source" to determine that the NY Times is a more trustworthy source than Breitbart or The Daily Caller. The algorithm itself would even rank Breitbart higher if more searchers were visiting Breitbart. The fact is, the algorithm will rank NY Times higher simply because far more people in the world consider the NY Times a much more reliable and trustworthy source than Breitbart. That's because, quite simply, it is a more reliable and trustworthy source than a far-right opinion site. This demand from many conservatives corners that anyone not showing or giving equal time to "both sides of an opinion" is simply nonsense. Not showing equal results to climate change deniers or anti-vaxxers isn't reflective of "bias", its reflective of scientific consensus. For political news, it's not that NY Times is 100% objectively unbiased, its that they are a far more reliable source of information than Breitbart. If NY Times tilts 10% one way, Breitbart tilts 100% to the other. It's not an equal degree of bias, not even close.
And showing search results is not even remotely akin to "brain-washing". That's extreme hyperbole that simply doesn't apply and shows a complete lack of scientific understanding of "brainwashing." The word "brain-washing" itself is loaded and based on fiction to begin with but the closest thing you get in reality is something like Robert Jay Lifton's work, whose book Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism is generally considered the best on the subject. Nothing Google does come close to meeting these standards.
There is a reason this guy isn't publishing in peer-reviewed journals and professionals and professors that know what they're talking about consider him a quack. He only had one paper ever published in a peer-reviewed journal and it didn't prove what he claimed. He has never proven a connection between SERPs and behavior. He's asserted it but nothing in his "research" has come close to proving it as many professors and professionals have mentioned. He's made claims like “Google can take a 50/50 split among undecided voters and change it to a 90/10 split with no one knowing they have been manipulated" but nothing he has done has come close to proving that. If you agree with him then go ahead and link the research that you think proves his claims and I'll debunk it right here.
Remember this is a quack who has gone on Fox News to argue "in favor of teens getting married, pointing out that “Mary was 12 or 13 when she had Jesus, was she not?”
Here are just a few problems with this non-expert's methodology:
"The study — which was based on 95 participants in 24 US states — stated, in part, that when extrapolating from a 2015 study also authored by Epstein, at least 2.6 million votes might be "shifted" in favor of Clinton because of bias in Google's search results.
But the 2015 study's findings were based on asking US residents to cast hypothetical votes for candidates in Australia's 2010 prime ministerial election based on information they saw in Google search results.
Dr. Michael McDonald, an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida, expressed skepticism to Business Insider that Epstein's 2015 findings regarding Google's search rankings influencing American decisions about elections in Australia — a topic most American study participants would have little information about beforehand — could be applied directly to the US presidential elections.
"I'm not sure if this really applies to US elections where we have partisan politics going on and lots of other information that people have," McDonald said. "You don't need to look at the top of Google search results for your information about how you're going to cast your vote for president."
Justin Levitt, an associate dean for research and professor at Loyola Law School who focuses on constitutional law and the law of democracy, told Business Insider there were multiple points of contention with Epstein's 2017 findings, which have become the basis for the president's tweet on Monday. For one, Epstein wrote in his report that after the study was completed, results from participants using Google's email service, Gmail, were discarded, thus changing the number of eligible participants to a lower, undisclosed number.
Epstein said Gmail users were removed because some of their search queries appeared "automated" and, overall, those using Google's email service saw results that were far less biased than non-Gmail users.
"That's a weird methodological choice to take some of your results and throw them out after you've done the experiment because they seem to not fit your designed story," Levitt said. "That's something that sets off a bunch of red flags."
"his huge claim is based on monitoring the search results of just 21 undecided voters out of 95 voters for a 2017 white paper. In his submitted testimony, Epstein did provide seven pages of citations—but all of them are papers or op-eds he wrote or co-wrote himself. Only one of them—a 2015 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, about how biased results produced by search engines could have the ability to sway undecided voters—was peer-reviewed. Even that study didn’t demonstrate that this has actually happened."
(tons of red flags here from basing his claims on swaying 2.6 million votes from just monitoring 21 allegedly undecided voters to the fact all his citations are to his own non peer-reviewed work).
And then some I already linked but I'll just repeat for completeness since you never recognized their points:
"Another issue, other academics say, is that Epstein’s study did not establish a link between alleged bias in search results and voter behavior in 2016.
Epstein said he came to the conclusion of bias sufficient to affect 2.6 million to 10.4 million votes based on what he has found in studies of national elections outside the US, including the 2010 Australian prime minister election and a 2014 Indian legislative election.
In other words: Epstein did not test 2016 American voters to see if their Clinton-or-Trump choice had been changed by search results they got. He extrapolated from his previous studies."
“When Dr. Epstein says the effects are ‘huge’ and ‘more powerful’ than anything he has ever seen, I respectfully suggest that he needs to read the political science literature before making that claim,” Katherine Haenschen, a communications professor at Virginia Tech University who studies internet targeting on voter turnout, told Mother Jones this week. “Large-scale digital mobilization has basically failed to deliver sizable effects in terms of persuasion or turnout.” Never mind the fact that in Epstein’s study, it’s not clear what search terms were used by his participants, or what the “biased” search results were. In his research, Epstein graded search engines for bias, determining that mainstream news outlets like the New York Times dominated over conservative sources like Breitbart in Google’s results. Epstein doesn’t explain the context in which the searches were conducted—which is important to know, since the whole point of Google Search is that it personalizes results based on prior searches and the user’s location. Someone with a recent search history about guns in Tennessee will likely see different search results than someone with a recent search history about women’s health care in New York City. And a good study would take care to somehow sanitize or disclose each participant’s search environment before reaching any conclusions."
That's just from a few responses. Basically, this guy has an axe to grind and that works for Breitbart and the right-wing media so even though no professors or professionals take this quack's papers seriously (except Trump of course), he gets a lot of airtime on heavily biased sites.
https://www.businessinsider.com/red-flags-in-trump-google-bias-millions-votes-report-2019-8
https://slate.com/technology/2019/08/robert-epstein-google-bias-conservative-bogus-trump.html
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/19/politics/trump-google-manipulated-votes-claim/index.html
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Zuckerberg really is lost
He's looking for a way back to his home planet.