> YouTube recommendations can be delightful, but they can also be dangerous. The platform has a history of recommending harmful content — from pandemic conspiracies to political disinformation — to its users, even if they’ve previously viewed harmless content.
What part of this is untrue?
And again, you're saying "getting rid of it" without evidence. It's a study. It does not mention banning anything, anywhere. If the argument is that they should not study this because it might lead to bans in the future then you're being pro-censorship in order to promote anti-censorship which doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
> they're looking for banning content they disagree with (i.e. censorship).
That's an extremely unfair read of the situation. The extension doesn't even ban anything. It is a research project attempting to understand why the YouTube algorithm recommends the videos it does. Whether or not you think Plandemic (a nonsense conspiracy theory video) should be banned or not you can still see research into the YouTube algorithm as a worthwhile endeavour.
I agree that ascribing human behaviours to (particularly animal) biology is shaky. But the changes going on in teenage years (ie puberty) lead me to think teenage rebellion isn’t just cultural.
What you're saying is that Android has undeletable apps because Android was created in such a way that it allows undeletable apps. Which is circular logic.
And the issue here is pretty clearly that users have to resort to adb to disable these apps. Why does Android force this? There is no reason, it could easily be built into the Android GUI.
I look at it this way: the entire industry was utterly cutthroat (still is, in many ways). If Bill Gates/MS didn't do what they did, I believe another company would have. That doesn't mean they are utterly innocent, but in terms of effect on my life, I'm not convinced an MS-less life would be that different.
On the other hand, if Bill Gates doesn't spend money curing diseases in the third world I'm not at all convinced that someone else would come along and fill in that space. After all, they could very easily match him today with all the work there is to do.
> They can't be throttling based on user-agent... right?
It can be, but not for the motives many would assume. I can imagine them white-listing clients that they've thoroughly tested with advanced functionality, and blocking it for others.
I'm not for a second suggesting this is a wise course of action, but I also really don't think it's a cynical attempt to make Linux a less viable platform. It's just cover-your-ass behaviour for a corporate-focused product.
User agent sniffing is usually a bad shortcut for feature detection, and little more.
Not sure about right or wrong but the potential for abuse is too high, IMO.
There was a history of cab drivers in NYC refusing to pick up black customers - when Uber came to town one of the first questions was "can drivers see my photo", which they can't until they accept the ride IIRC. I don't see this situation as being too different.
I think that maybe tomjen3 is reacting to the (oft-repeated) idea that anyone who says that they don't want kids simply hasn't realised that they're wrong.
I don't doubt that the majority of people want kids. I imagine that at some point hormones will kick in that make me want to, but it hasn't happened. So, the idea of having children is awful, as far as I'm concerned. Yet I am told again and again that "one you look into their eyes...". What if you're wrong, though? Having a child is a one-way street, I'd hate to have one and then realise I don't have the same satisfaction about it that others do.
I think that's an overwhelmingly negative perspective. Facebook was (for me, at least) a draw initially because it wasn't drowning in crap like MySpace was. It was a locked down experience, and everyone benefitted from it. In all honesty, I don't see this as a dramatic move away from that idea.
This is an isolated incident. "Irrelevant or Inappropriate" sounds like a euphemism for spam- if Facebook is fighting comment spam then I applaud them. Their algorithm just isn't quite right yet. No story here.
"Is this censorship?" Are false positives on a spam filter censorship?