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Time could be up for TikToks metronomic For You feed, which pushes videos to users with clock-like accuracy. The endless scroll that defines the TikTok experience has been flagged as part of a broader set of features that make the app addictive by design, according to the European Commission. The regulator has issued a preliminary decision under the Digital Services Act, a sweeping piece of tech regulation, arguing that TikTok has not done enough to mitigate the risk of user addiction tied to those features. European regulators have asked TikTok to tweak the offending system, along with others, to make the app less addictive or face fines of up to 6% of parent company ByteDances total annual turnover, reportedly forecast at $186 billion in 2025. Under the terms of the Digital Services Act, TikTok has the right to respond to the European Commissions preliminary decision and to contest it. A TikTok spokesperson tells Fast Company that the company will take whatever steps are necessary to challenge these findings through every means available to us. If TikTok does push back and the two sides remain at odds, the result could be a prolonged standoff. I am fearing that this will become a game of cat and mouse, but we will see I am interested and watching and grabbing the popcorn, says Carolina Are, a social media researcher at the London School of Economics. Still, some observers believe there is a real chance TikTok ultimately bends to the EUs demands. This is the future of enforcement action in the EU, says Lilian Edwards, director of Pangloss Consulting and a law professor at Newcastle University. Edwards notes that EU legislation such as the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, and the AI Act is not designed primarily to generate fines that companies can shrug off. Instead, the goal is to force actual design changes to become less addictive and less toxic especially to children, she says. She also points out that companies have made changes for EU markets in the past though never at such fundamental design levels. There is precedent for TikTok accommodating political pressure to alter how its app operates, including in the very recent past. In the United States, TikTok moved toward partial U.S. ownership to satisfy a law enforced by the Trump administration, a reminder that compromise for continued operation is already part of the companys playbook. What we saw with TikTok and the United States deal, recently, is that the app will change to continue operations, says Jess Maddox, a social media expert at the University of Georgia. This EU ruling is not an exception, so this could mark the end of the endless scroll, at least for minors. I could see TikTok then going the way of YouTube, with YouTube Kids, or even teen accounts with Instagram. Such changes could also extend to region-specific versions of the app, depending on where users live. Tama Leaver, a professor of social media at Curtin University in Australia, argues that this has already happened to some degree under the U.S. compromise deal. That alone would represent a significant shift. But the ripple effects could go further if TikTok concedes ground under the Digital Services Act. It’s an interesting moment for the architecture, considering that every other platform has to [potentially] redesign and tweak as well, says Leaver. If TikToks endless scrolling feed is deemed addictive by law, other platforms could soon face similar scrutiny. That prospect marks a turning point, says social media analyst Matt Navarra. If this holds, infinite scroll, auto-play, frictionless feeds could become legally risky for the platforms, and not just ethically dubious, he says. I think the EU’s [] pretty much saying, If your design patterns override self-regulation in young users, we’re going to consider that systemic harm. The consequences could extend far beyond TikTok alone. They could end up reshaping social media norms entirely. And I think, Navarra adds, that’s quite a bold and some might argue long overdue statement.
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Informing people about political deepfakes through text-based information and interactive games both improve peoples ability to spot AI-generated video and audio that falsely depict politicians, according to a study my colleagues and I conducted. Although researchers have focused primarily on advancing technologies for detecting deepfakes, there is also a need for approaches that address the potential audiences for political deepfakes. Deepfakes are becoming increasingly difficult to identify, verify, and combat as artificial intelligence technology improves. Is it possible to inoculate the public to detect deepfakes, thereby increasing their awareness before exposure? My recent research with fellow media studies researchers Sang Jung Kim and Alex Scott at the Visual Media Lab at the University of Iowa has found that inoculation messages can help people recognize deepfakes and even make people more willing to debunk them. Inoculation theory proposes that psychological inoculationanalogous to getting a medical vaccinationcan immunize people against persuasive attacks. The idea is that by explaining to people how deepfakes work, they become primed to recognize them when they encounter them. In our experiment, we exposed one-third of participants to passive inoculation: traditional text-based warning messages about the threat and the characteristics of deepfakes. We exposed another third to active inoculation: an interactive game that challenged participants to identify deepfakes. The remaining third were given no inoculation. Participants were then randomly shown either a deepfake video featuring Joe Biden making pro-abortion rights statements or a deepfake video featuring Donald Trump making anti-abortion rights statements. We found that both types of inoculation were effective in reducing the credibility participants gave to the deepfakes, while also increasing peoples awareness and intention to learn more about them. Why it matters Deepfakes are a serious threat to democracy because they use AI to create very realistic fake audio and video. These deepfakes can make politicians appear to say things they never actually said, which can damage public trust and cause people to believe false information. For example, some voters in New Hampshire received a phone call that sounded like Joe Biden, telling them not to vote in the states primary election. This deepfake video of President Donald Trump, from a dataset of deepfake videos collected by the MIT Media Lab, was used in this study about helping people spot such AI-generated fakes. Because AI technology is becoming more common, it is especially important to find ways to reduce the harmful effects of deepfakes. Recent research shows that labeling deepfakes with fact-checking statements is often not very effective, especially in political contexts. People tend to accept or reject fact-checks based on their existing political beliefs. In addition, false information often spreads faster than accurate information, making fact-checking too slow to fully stop the impact of false information. As a result, researchers are increasingly calling for new ways to prepare people to resist misinformation in advance. Our research contributes to developing more effective strategies to help people resist AI-generated misinformation. What other research is being done Most research on inoculation against misinformation relies on passive media literacy approaches that mainly provide text-based messages. However, more recent studies show that active inoculation can be more effective. For example, online games that involve active participation have been shown to help people resist violent extremist messages. In addition, most previous research has focused on protecting people from text-based misinformation. Our study instead examines inoculation against multimodal misinformation, such as deepfakes that combine video, audio and images. Although we expected active inoculation to work better for this type of misinformation, our findings show that both passive and active inoculation can help people cope with the threat of deepfakes. Whats next Our research shows that inoculation messages can help people recognize and resist deepfakes, but it is still unclear whether these effects last over time. In future studies, we plan to examine the long-term effect of inoculation messages. We also aim to explore whether inoculation works in other areas beyond politics, including health. For example, how would people respond if a deepfake showed a fake doctor spreading health misinformation? Would earlier inoculation messages help people question and resist such content? The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work. Bingbing Zhang is an assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Iowa. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Below, Kate Murphy shares five key insights from her new book, Why We Click: The Emerging Science of Interpersonal Synchrony. Murphy is a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Texas Monthly, among other publications. Whats the big idea? Humans are instinctively wired to sync with one another, and this invisible alignment of bodies, brains, and emotions shapes attraction, trust, and belonging. It can deepen connection and fuel cooperation, but it also makes feelings and behaviors contagious, giving each of us more influence over others than we realize. Listen to the audio version of this Book Biteread by Murphy herselfbelow, or in the Next Big Idea app. 1. Human beings have an instinct to sync. Bring two or more people together and they will immediately begin to synchronize or fall into rhythm with one another. Not only do we tend to subconsciously mimic one anothers movements, postures, facial expressions, and gestures, but recent breakthroughs in technology have revealed we also sync up our heart rates, blood pressure, brain waves, pupil dilation, and hormonal activity. This phenomenon is known as interpersonal synchrony, and it is possibly the most consequential social dynamic most people have never heard of. Interpersonal synchrony is significant because, by subconsciously mimicking even the subtlest twitches of expression and biological rhythms of other people, we can channel their thoughts and feelings. When we reflexively smile upon observing someone elses joy, we feel their happiness. When we flinch at the sight of someone being hit, we intuit their pain. Syncing with their racing heart gives us a read on their anxiety. Moreover, the synchronization of brain waves during conversations or during shared experiences aligns beliefs and attitudes. You and the other person, at that moment, are of like minds. The result is that emotions, moods, attitudes, and subsequent behaviors can be as contagious as any disease and can have just as profound an influence on our health and well-being. 2. Sustained synchrony signals attraction and attachment. Scientists have conducted numerous speed-dating and speed-networking experiments since the early 2000s to find out why some people immediately click while others rub each other the wrong way. Researchers discovered that couples who reported a feeling of connection and wanted to see each other again were literally on the same wavelength. Their bodily movements and internal rhythms were coordinated, and the wavelike neural firing patterns in their brains coupled, or coincidedoften in less than 30 seconds. Moreover, the synchrony occurred even when the other person violated previously expressed parameters of what an ideal partner should be or look like, such as must share the same faith, have a good income, be college-educated, or tall, or blonde, or whatever. This might explain the growing dissatisfaction and widespread deletions of dating apps. Someone can check all the boxes of what you or a dating apps algorithm thinks is a perfect match, and yet, when you meet that person face-to-face, all you can think about is what youd rather be binge-watching on Netflix. Conversely, you can be instantly drawn to someone you meet in person whose online dating profile might have made you immediately swipe left. Syncing is a multisensory phenomenon and, as a result, you cant experience it online in its truest, most exquisite form. 3. Synchronized activity promotes bonding. Not only do you sync with people you like, but you also tend to like people with whom you are in sync. When people do the same thing at the same time, such as marching, dancing, singing, rowing, and even finger tapping, it tends to build feelings of rapport and trust. They disclose more personal information and are more cooperative, kind, and helpful. Even infants strapped into face-forward carriers and bounced in time to music were significantly more likely to favor experimenters who were likewise bouncing in time, compared to experimenters who bounced out of sync or did not move at all. People engaged in synchronized activities also report feeling a sense of transcendence or oneness with those around them. Think of soldiers marching, religious congregants singing and reciting prayers, protesters chanting, and any kind of dancing. Aristotle was probably onto something when he lectured his students, the Peripatetics, while walking the grounds of the Lyceum. Apple cofounder Steve Jobs was likewise known for inviting people he wished to influence to take long walks with him. 4. The downside of interpersonal synchrony. Our instinct to sync can make us susceptible to getting mired in other peoples psychosocial muck. There is something called the bad apple effect, where one persons negative or erratic energy can infect an entire group. This is especially true in work situations where you cant necessarily choose the people with whom you interact. Its not like speed dating, where you can do a quick sample sync and move on if you dont like what you feel. An emergency room nurse told me that the difficulty of her job has less to do with the number of patients who arrive or the severity of their injuries than with who else is on her shift. There are definitely people who, when you walk in, you see them and youre like, This will be a good day no matter what gets thrown down, she told me. And there are other days when you walk in and youre like, Okay, this is going to be a struggle. Weve probably all had the experience where one person coming into or leaving a group totally transformed the vibe for better or worse. At scale, interpersonal synchrony can tip into social contagion, which is responsible for the best and worst aspects of humanityfrom functioning governments, coordinated market economies, cohesive cultures, and scientific advancement to wars, riots, persecutions, and mass hysteria. This is not to say humans are indistinct from schools of fish or murmurations of starlings. On the contrary, individuals potentially have as much power to influence as be influenced. Various techniques can help you recognize and encourage interpersonal synchrony when its beneficial, and disengage and reclaim yourself when it is not. A big part is noticing your feelings and questioning where they come from. Are you feeling anxious about something happening to you directly or are you upset because of something someone else is feeling or doing on- or offline? Awareness is key to breaking free of synchronies that are not working for you. 5. Be what you want replicated. Synchronized phenomena occur throughout the natural and life sciences, but research has only recently revealed the extent to which human beings synchronize and its significance. Synchrony between humans is nothing short of a superpower. Compared to other species, we are not particularly imposing, and our senses are pretty feeble. While capable of astounding feats of cognition and imagination, our brains are nevertheless limited and subject to all kinds of processing errors. But thanks to interpersonal synchrony, we can marshal and coordinate our bodies and brains to communicate, innovate, create, and succeed in ways far exceeding what we could accomplish alone. We are all tuning forks roaming the planet, picking up vibes, and finding resonance with those we encounte. Its a truth known on some level since antiquity. Plato wrote that we are all born seeking to reunite with our missing other half, but what we are really seeking are those whose internal rhythms harmonize with our ownthe people with whom we effortlessly click. And certainly, turns of phrase like being in sync, ;in tune, in step, and on the same wavelength have been part of our vernacular long before recent advances in technology revealed that they were true. Interpersonal synchrony, above all, reminds us that we are not unto ourselves in this world. We internalize one another, even those we may not know well or know at all. We can literally warm peoples hearts and get on their nerves. And we carry others vibes and rhythms around with us like catchy tunes that, once heard, continue to play in our heads. The instinct to sync confers a responsibility to try to be what you want replicated. Your thoughts, feelings, demeanor, and behavior do not begin, nor end, with you. Enjoy our full library of Book Bitesread by the authors!in the Next Big Idea app. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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