Amid growing discontent among Reddit's moderators, the company has launched a "Mod Helper Program" to reward moderators who offer helpful advice to other moderators. TechCrunch reports: The Mod Helper Program is a tiered system that awards helpful moderators with trophies and flairs. Reddit users accrue karma by receiving upvotes and awards, and lose karma if they receive downvotes. The program rewards moderators who receive upvotes on comments in r/ModSupport. Comment karma earned in r/ModSupport will be rewarded with trophies that will "signal to other mods that you are a source of valuable information," the moderator support team announced on Thursday. Each rank awards unique trophies and flairs, ranging from "Helper" to "Expert Helper." Reddit launched a similar program in r/help earlier this year, which rewards users who accrue karma by responding to other users' requests.

Reddit also launched the Modmail Answer Bot, which automatically responds with relevant links to the site's Help Center. If the recommended articles don't answer a specific request, it will create a ticket that will be handled by a human admin. The bot is designed to streamline moderator requests so the admin team can focus on more complex issues. Additionally, Reddit is merging the moderator-specific Help Center with its sitewide one to ensure that support resources are "easy to find and accessible from the same location."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: Google has worked with Cameyo to give enterprise Chromebooks another way to run Windows applications using ChromeOS Virtual App Delivery. Cameyo is an enterprise company that offers a "Virtual App Delivery" (VAD) platform that can stream Windows, Linux, internal web, and SaaS applications to other devices. This offering is now getting tight integration with ChromeOS. These Windows apps appear like other icons in a Chromebook's launcher and taskbar. Behind the scenes, they are PWAs (Progressive Web Apps) that aim to blur their streamed nature with native file system integration. This includes letting users access local files and folders from within the virtual instances. Similarly, integration with the ChromeOS Clipboard Connector allows for local copy and paste.

When a user opens a specific file type, Cameyo makes it so that the appropriate virtual app launches. These virtual apps can be streamed from the cloud or on-premises data centers. Compared to full virtual desktop apps, this approach is said to "eliminate the infrastructure and licensing complexity." On the security front: "apps and devices are isolated from network resources and segmented by default so that users only access the apps and data they need to get their jobs done, all while eliminating the need to expose firewall and server ports to the open internet." ChromeOS Virtual App Delivery with Cameyo is available today as an enterprise offering. There is no consumer equivalent.

Mozilla has implemented the WebExtensions system in its browser, allowing Firefox users to import select extensions from other browsers like Chrome. gHacks reports: The feature, which is in testing at the moment, can be enabled by all users of the latest stable version of Firefox.

1. Load about:config in the browser's address bar.
2. Confirm that you will be careful to continue.
3. Search for browser.migrate.chrome.extensions.enabled.
4. Set the feature to True, which enables it.
5. Restart Firefox.

Mozilla has integrated it into the browser's import functionality, which users may use on first run or at any time from the Settings page. To do so, select Menu > Settings > Import Data (button), or load about:preferences#general in the browser's address bar and activate the import data button on the page. Select Chrome from the list, expand the available import options and make sure extensions are checked. Imports are usually limited to some data, such as bookmarks or the browsing history. Firefox is the first major browser, maybe the first browser at all, that adds extensions to the list of supported imports.

The feature is limited at the time to Google Chrome and select extensions. Even though Firefox and Chrome extensions use the same framework, WebExtensions, they are not compatible immediately. Firefox users who attempt to install extensions from Chrome's Web Store may notice that this is not working. Mozilla decided to create a list of extension pairs for extensions that are available on the Chrome Web Store and the Mozilla Add-ons Store. Instead of importing the Chrome extension directly, Firefox is installing the Firefox version of the extension from Mozilla's own extension store.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Teslarati: Tesla has won permit approval for its Diner and Drive-In Movie Supercharger in Los Angeles, according to documents seen by Teslarati from the LA Department of Building and Safety. Tesla has been teasing the possibility for several years of a drive-in movie theater and diner Supercharger site that would host 32 stalls, two screens to show famous movie clips, and a restaurant with rooftop seating. Initially, it was planned to be built on a series of lots in Santa Monica. However, the location was moved East to Hollywood and will now be placed on located at 7001 W. Santa Monica Boulevard. As the project has been moving through the normal regulatory processes, Tesla has been receiving some approvals and requests for corrections on many of its filed applications to begin construction at the Diner/Supercharger.

Fiber-optic cables that were damaged by a rockfall in an undersea canyon, resulting in slow internet connections in some parts of Africa, should be repaired next month by a specialized vessel, according to telecommunication companies. From a report: The West Africa Cable System that runs about 16,000 kilometers (9,950 miles) along the sea floor from Europe to southern Africa was damaged with other lines earlier this month. The 40-year-old cable-layer vessel Leon Thevenin, named after a French telegraph engineer, was moored in Cape Town this week, according to tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. It's capable of working in extreme conditions and in shallow or deep water, according to owner Orange Marine, a submarine telecommunications company. All South African networks are currently experiencing disruptions due to the damaged lines, said Anne-Caroline Tanguy, a spokeswoman at Cloudflare, a company that provides load balancing and analysis. The repairs are expected to be finished in September.

T-Mobile USA is cutting 7% of its staff, part of an effort to rein in costs as the company spends heavily to attract new subscribers in an increasingly competitive market. From a report: The move will affect about 5,000 positions, mostly corporate and back-office staff along with some technology roles, T-Mobile said in a regulatory filing. Retail and consumer-care experts won't be impacted. Chief Executive Officer Mike Sievert said in a letter to employees that the cost of attracting and retaining customers is "materially more expensive than it was just a few quarters ago." Building out the company's high-speed internet business and efforts in other areas "is not enough to deliver on these changing customer expectations going forward," he said.

samleecole shares a report from 404 Media, a new independent media company founded by technology journalists Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg, Samantha Cole, and Joseph Cox: On the Discord server for Mage Space, a popular platform for creating AI-generated images, is a list of channels where members share adult content. There are channels for furries, hardcore and softcore porn, and anime. At the bottom of the list is a channel named "other-nsfw" which includes a few distinct erotic genres that don't fit neatly into any of the others. Mostly, it's gore, violence, and bizarre, in hyperrealistic erotic imagery entirely generated by AI. The images people create, and the long, meandering prompts they write, are a rich text that could offer a glimpse into where sexuality in the internet age is taking us next, and how we're steering it.

There's no shortage of fetish content on the internet, which might make the above statement sound ridiculous and unbelievable. Online, fetishists find their people and set to work making more of what they like, whether it's elaborate role-playing cosplays of themselves as sexy airplanes, blueberries, or slime monsters. Sometimes it pushes the bounds of the sane and legal: crush, fart, and scat porn all thrive online, and snuff films have been popular since before the internet existed. But with the rise in popularity of generative AI, and wildly popular sites like Mage.Space that let users generate anything they set their minds to, the limits are literally our own imaginations. With that power, people are wrangling images out of the AI that are on the edge of what's popular, let alone possible in the porn world. "This conversation we're having is literally on the edge of knowledge, nobody's writing about this in academia right now," Thomas Brooks, assistant professor of psychology at New Mexico Highlands University, told me. "Everybody's still kind of caught up in deepfakes. And they haven't quite grappled with generative AI yet." "You, as the individual porn consumer, can now create your own special little fantasy and your own technological, disembodied sexuality," said Brooks, in what he refers to as gamified pornography. "There's an internal motivation to solve the puzzle and get the prize. But then there's an external motivation of, 'can I come up with this crazy thing to show my anonymous internet friends.'"

"We're letting technology become mediators of our different psychosocial expressions," Brooks added.

According to The Information (paywalled), SpaceX is working with Cloudlfare to boost the performance of its satellite internet service Starlink. Reuters reports: The two companies are working on a way to increase Starlink's network of mini data centers around the globe that could help it deliver faster network speeds to its customers, the report said. According to SpaceX's website, Starlink users typically have download speeds between 25 and 220 Mbps, with the "majority" over 100 Mbps. Upload speeds range between 5 and 20 Mbps.

samleecole shares a report from 404 Media, a new independent media company founded by technology journalists Jason Koebler, Emanuel Maiberg, Samantha Cole, and Joseph Cox: Apple told a California legislator that it is formally supporting a right to repair bill in California, a landmark move that suggests big tech manufacturers understand they have lost the battle to monopolize repair, and need to allow consumers and independent repair shops to fix their own electronics. "Apple writes in support of SB 244, and urges members of the California legislature to pass the bill as currently drafted," Apple wrote to Susan Eggman, the sponsor of the bill, in a letter obtained by 404 Media. "We support SB 244 because it includes requirements that protect individual users' safety and security, as well as product manufacturers' intellectual property. We will continue to support the bill, so long as it continues to provide protections for customers and innovators."

This is a landmark shift in policy from Apple, the most powerful electronics manufacturer in the world and, historically, one of the biggest opponents of right to repair legislation nationwide. It means, effectively, that consumers have won. "If California votes yes and continues to raise the bar on electronics repair from other states, it's becoming obvious the fight is over, and that we've won," said Nathan Proctor, Senior Director of consumer rights group U.S. PIRG Campaign for the Right to Repair. "It's going to be show over for consumer electronics. There are other industries where this fight is going to continue, but if a strong bill passes in California, we're winning."

"I would think that passage in California means there'd be a lot of pressure on manufacturers to kind of set the line there and say 'no farther,' because we've now proven to them we can pass laws and change the ways they have to operate," Proctor added. "This shows state advocacy is a good way to deal with large problems that are hard to get through Congress. It shows you can really spread big tech thin if you have a real grassroots network behind you."

iFixit and TechCrunch first reported the news.

A new report from Business Insider (paywalled) describes how Google's employees were "frustrated" at Google's lack of progress when the Vision Pro was unveiled and provides a glimpse of what Google's current plans for an AR product are. Ars Technica reports: The BI report details how Google's latest dead project, Iris, "was beset by a constantly shifting strategy and lack of focus from senior leadership." After "conversations with seven current and former employees close to Google's AR efforts," Business Insider quotes a few of those anonymous employees, with one saying, "Every six months there was a major pivot in the program." At one point Google was working on a pair of custom silicon chips for the glasses' display and compute power and then gave up on the idea of custom chips. That work was apparently near completion, with one person saying, "I think it's weird when you convince yourselves you need to build custom silicon, and then you go and do that -- and then flush it down the toilet."

Display problems led the team to switch from regular eyeglasses to sunglasses and then back again, and the team couldn't settle on a color or monochrome display. Google showed off a pair of Iris glasses at Google I/O that could translate spoken language, then quickly canned the idea. You might think Bavor leaving in February would be good, considering how little traction the AR division managed in the marketplace, but apparently the executive's departure created a "state of chaos" in the division. Google's next AR pivot is a partnership with Samsung, another company that has dabbled in AR/VR for years yet has no current product line. Google, Samsung, and Qualcomm have already vaguely announced an Apple-fighting mixed-reality partnership in February. Plans to actually launch a headset were reportedly delayed in the wake of the Vision Pro unveiling due to the headset not being competitive. The new launch target is sometime around summer 2024, but the report says that "some employees are skeptical [that] will be enough time to launch a product that will wow the public."

According to the report, Samsung wants to follow its usual strategy and "build a headset device similar to Apple's Vision Pro." The project is apparently code-named "Moohan," and if you couldn't already guess from this lineup of companies, it will run Android. Despite acquiring hardware companies like the Micro-LED manufacturer Raxiom and smart glasses-maker North, Google now wants to "pivot to software" and follow the Android model. The partnership with Samsung makes Moohan the most likely project to actually hit the market, but Google still has two other competing XR projects. Raxiom also is apparently still around and works under Paul Greco, Magic Leap's former chief technology officer. Iris' software work has moved to "a new team" and is being turned into a software project codenamed "Betty" that Google wants to pitch to other manufacturers. Samsung doesn't want any of these other parts of Google or other hardware competitors to be privy to its Vision Pro clone, so the three teams are all firewalled off from each other and have to compete for resources. One current employee described the whole situation as "a weird bureaucratic mess."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said Tuesday automakers can comply with a Massachusetts Right to Repair law, reversing a previous directive to ignore the state legislation. Massachusetts's Right to Repair law was a ballot initiative that passed overwhelmingly in 2020. The law requires auto manufacturers that sell cars in the state to equip vehicles with a standardized open data platform so that owners and independent mechanics can access telematics data for repairs, maintenance and diagnostics. In June 2023, NHTSA told automakers they needn't comply with the law, citing hacking concerns. The agency claimed sharing vehicle data would enable criminals to steal data or take control of cars remotely.

NHTSA now says the law can roll out, with some caveats. Automakers can safely share diagnostic data with independent mechanics using short-range wireless technology. Long-range wireless signals, though, could potentially allow hackers to send dangerous commands to moving vehicles. The auto safety agency also said automakers should be allowed "a reasonable period of time" to put the technology in place. "[The U.S. Department of Transportation] strongly supports the right to repair and is eager to promote consumers' ability to choose independent or DIY repairs without compromising safety to themselves or others on our nation's roads," said Ben Halle, director of public affairs at USDOT. "The clarifications contained in the exchange of letters between state and federal partners ensure a path forward to promote competition and give consumers more options, while mitigating a dangerous risk to safety."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Associated Press: Pennsylvania's Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that the state police can't hide from the public its policy on how it monitors social media. Advocates for civil liberties cheered the decision. The law enforcement agency had argued that fully disclosing its policy for using software to monitor online postings may compromise public safety. All four Democratic justices supported the majority decision, which said the lower Commonwealth Court went beyond its authority in trying to give the state police another attempt to justify keeping details of the policy a secret. Tuesday's order appears to end a six-year legal battle.

Justifying what the majority opinion described as heavy or complete redactions on every page of the nine-page regulation, the head of the state police's bureau of criminal investigations argued that greater transparency about the policy would make its investigations less effective. The state Office of Open Records held a private review of the blacked out material and and ruled that making the policy public would not be likely to harm investigations, calling the social media policy processes strictly internal and administrative in nature. Redacted sections addressed the use of open sources, what approval is required, when to go undercover and use an online alias and how to verify information. State police also blacked out the entire section on using social media for employment background investigations.

A panel of three Republican Commonwealth Court judges reversed the Office of Open Records' ruling that the policy should be disclosed without redactions, saying in May 2018 that the state police investigations chief based his analysis about the risk of exposure on his own extensive experience. The majority decision issued Tuesday said Commonwealth Court should not have given the state police a new opportunity to lay out the supposed public safety risks. The majority ruled that Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know Law does not permit Commonwealth Court to order additional fact-finding not sought by state police. Andrew Christy, a lawyer with the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said the ruling "sort of puts law enforcement on the same playing field as all government agencies. If they have a legal justification to keep something secret, then they have to put forth sufficient evidence to justify that."

"Ultimately that relies on the voters understanding what law enforcement is doing so that then, through their elected representatives, they can rein them in when they're acting in a way that doesn't comport with what the public wants," Christy said.

According to Windows Central, Microsoft might be bringing AI capabilities to a handful of Windows 11 apps, including Photos, Snipping Tool, and Paint. "Some of this functionality will require dedicated hardware, such as an NPU (neural processing unit) or VPU (vision processing unit,) while others may not," notes the report. From the report: For the Photos app, Microsoft is working on an AI functionality that would allow the app to identify objects or people in photos and enable the ability to cut out and paste those elements elsewhere. This is a functionality that iOS and Android have had for some time, so it's no surprise to hear that Microsoft is also working to bring it to Windows.

Regarding the Snipping Tool, my sources say the company wants to incorporate OCR (optical character recognition) technology to enable Windows to identify text in screenshots for faster clipboard copying. Microsoft is also working on bringing OCR to the Camera app, allowing users to select text in a photo taken on the device.

Lastly, my sources say Microsoft has also been experimenting with bringing generative AI to the Windows 11 Paint app. Users could ask Paint to create a canvas based on criteria set out by the user, similar to how Bing Image Creator currently works. Sources say the Paint AI integration will be based on that same Bing technology.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau blasted social media giant Meta on Monday over its decision to block local news as wildfires continue to force thousands of Canadians from their homes. "Right now in an emergency situation, where up-to-date local information is more important than ever, Facebook is putting corporate profits ahead of people's safety, ahead of quality local journalism. This is not the time for that," he said during a stop at the Island Montessori Academy in Cornwall, P.E.I. on Monday morning. "It is so inconceivable that a company like Facebook is choosing to put corporate profits ahead of ensuring that local news organizations can get up-to-date information to Canadians and reach them where Canadians spend a lot of their time -- online, on social media, on Facebook."

Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has blocked Canadians from viewing news from Canadian outlets in response to the Liberal government passing its Online News Act, Bill C-18, in June. Google has threatened similar action. The law forces large social media platforms to negotiate compensation for Canadian news publishers when their content is shared. As a result, content from news providers in the North -- including CBC, the local newspaper The Yellowknifer and digital broadcaster Cabin Radio -- is being blocked and people can't access or share information from news sources on Facebook and Instagram, two of the most popular social media sites. In a statement sent to CBC News last week, the company said it's sticking to its position. It also said government sites and other sources that disseminate information aren't subject to the ban. "This is Facebook's choice," said Trudeau. "We're simply saying that in a democracy, quality local journalism matters. And it matters now more than ever before, when people are worried about their homes, worried about communities, worried about the worst summer for extreme weather events we've had in a long, long time."

Meanwhile, Meta spokesperson David Troya-Alvarez said: "People in Canada are able to use Facebook and Instagram to connect to their communities and access reputable information, including content from official government agencies, emergency services and non-governmental organizations." Meta says it has activated a "Safety Check" feature that allows users to mark on their profile they're safe from the wildfires.

A draft agreement between TikTok and the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) to avoid a ban would have given U.S. agencies unprecedented access to TikTok's facilities and servers. "Many of the concessions the government asked of TikTok look eerily similar to the surveillance tactics critics have accused Chinese officials of abusing," reports Gizmodo. "To allay fears the short-form video app could be used as a Chinese surveillance tool, the federal government nearly transformed it into an American one instead." The draft of the deal was obtained by Forbes. From a report: Forbes reports that the draft agreement, dated Summer 2022, would have given the US government agencies like the Department of Justice and Department of Defense far more access to TikTok's operations than that of any other social media company. The agreement would let agencies examine TikTok's US facilities, records, and servers with minimal prior notice and veto the hiring of any executive involved with leading TikTok US data security organization. It would also let US agencies block changes to the app's terms of service in the US and order the company to subject itself to various audits, all on TikTok's dime, per Forbes. In extreme cases, the agreement would allow government organizations to demand TikTok temporarily shut off functioning in the U.S..

The draft document, which Gizmodo could not independently verify, is reportedly around 100 pages long and contains comments sent between attorneys representing ByteDance, TikTok's Chinese-owned parent company, and CFIUS. The agreements, if accepted as written at the time, would open TikTok's U.S. operations up to supervision by a number of external third-party auditors and source code inspectors. ByteDance leaders, whom US lawmakers and whistleblowers have accused of maintaining close connections with The Chinese Communist Party, would be excluded from some security-related decisions involving the US version of the app.

Provisions described in the guidelines weren't always agreed on by both parties. In several instances, according to Forbes, TikTok's attorneys pushed back against terms that would let the government alter what types of user data ByteDance employees could view. Another point of disagreement emerged when the government reportedly asked for limitless veto power over TikTok's future contracts. At one point, TikTok reportedly altered language that would have allowed government officials to demand changes to the apps recommendations algorithm if it promoted content the agencies disagreed with. A TikTok spokesperson said in a statement: "As has been widely reported, we've been working with CFIUS for well over a year to implement a national security agreement and have invested significant resources in implementing a firewall to isolate U.S. user data. Today, all new protected U.S. user data is stored in the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure in the U.S. with tightly controlled and monitored gateways. We are doing more than any peer company to safeguard U.S. national security interests."

The United Nations' proposed Global Digital Compact will exclude technical experts as a distinct voice in internet governance, ignoring their enormous contributions to growing and sustaining the internet, according to ICANN and two of the world's regional internet registries. From a report: The Global Digital Compact is an effort to "outline shared principles for an open, free and secure digital future for all." The UN hopes the compact will address issues such as digital inclusion, internet fragmentation, giving individuals control over how their data is used, and making the internet trustworthy "by introducing accountability criteria for discrimination and misleading content." But ICANN, the Asia Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), and the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) worry that recent articulations of the Compact suggest it should use a tripartite model for digital cooperation with three stakeholder groups: the private sector, governments, and civil society. That's dangerous, ICANN and co argue, because technical stakeholders would lose their distinct voice.

They've therefore co-signed and published a document criticizing the Compact as it stands today. "The technical community is not part of civil society and it has never been," the document states, citing outcomes of the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) -- a UN event staged in 2003 and 2005 that defined a multi-stakeholder internet governance framework. 2015's WSIS+10 event affirmed that strategy. "This model excludes the technical community as a distinct component, and overlooks the unique and essential roles played by that community's members separately and collectively," DNS overlord ICANN and the registries added.

Key members of Google's old guard have been shifting roles or leaving the company as it searches for its new identity. From a report: The changes encompass high-profile executives such as finance chief Ruth Porat, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki and employee No. 8, Urs Holzle, among others. Some say they have left their roles for a new challenge and others have left to seek opportunities in artificial intelligence. In February, Wojcicki -- one of the most prominent women in Silicon Valley -- announced that she was stepping back after nine years at the helm of the Google-owned platform that grew to be the world's most popular video service. She had been at Google for more than 25 years, after famously lending her garage to Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page to use as their first office.

While she'll still be in an advisory role at Google, she said she wanted to "start a new chapter." Wojcicki wasn't the only executive to leave YouTube. Robert Kyncl, the chief business officer for 12 years, stepped away to become CEO of Warner Music Group at the beginning of the year. In March, CapitalG founder and longtime Google employee David Lawee stepped down from his role after 17 years at Alphabet, saying he wanted to explore new areas of interest and spend more time with his family

S&P 500 groups from a burrito maker to a cruise-ship operator tout promise of emerging technology. From a report: The rapid rise of artificial intelligence has sparked excitement in industries from fast food to theme parks, with executives rushing to show how they will be among beneficiaries of the new technology. Analysis of their regulatory filings, however, suggests much of the talk is only talk. Almost 40 per cent of companies in the blue-chip S&P 500 index have mentioned AI or related terms in earnings calls in the latest financial quarter, according to data from Alphasense. Less than one in six -- 16 per cent -- mentioned it in their corresponding regulatory filings, highlighting how AI has yet to make a material impact for the vast majority of companies.

"The joke out there was that all you had to do last quarter was say 'AI' and your stock would pop immediately," said Bryant VanCronkhite, a senior portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments, the $550bn asset manager. "Some companies are saying they're doing AI when they're really just trying to figure out the basics of automation. The pretenders will be shown up for that at some point," he said.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Political polarization in the US has become a major issue, as Republicans and Democrats increasingly inhabit separate realities on topics as diverse as election results and infectious diseases. [...] Now, a team of researchers has tested whether social media can potentially help the situation by getting people with opposite political leanings talking to each other about controversial topics. While this significantly reduced polarization, it appeared to be more effective for Republican participants. The researchers zeroed in on two concepts to design their approach. The first is the idea that simply getting people to communicate across the political divide might reduce the sense that at least some of their opponents aren't as extreme as they're often made out to be. The second is that anonymity would allow people to focus on the content of their discussion, rather than worrying about whether what they were saying could be traced back to them.

The researchers realized that they couldn't have any sort of control over conversations on existing social networks. So, they built their own application and hired professionals to do the graphics, support, and moderation. [...] People were randomly assigned to a few conditions. Some didn't use the app at all and were simply asked to write an essay on one of the topics under consideration (immigration or gun control). The rest were asked to converse on the platform about one of these topics. Every participant in these conversations was paired with a member of the opposing political party. Their partners were either unlabeled, labeled as belonging to the opposing party, or labeled as belonging to the same party (although the latter is untrue). Both before and after use of the app, participants answered questions about their view of politicized issues, members of their own party, and political opponents. These were analyzed in terms of issues and social influences, as well as rolled into a single index of polarization for the analysis.

The conversations appeared to have an effect, with polarization lowered by about a quarter of a standard deviation among those who engaged with political opponents that were labeled accordingly. Somewhat surprisingly, conversation partners who were mislabeled had a nearly identical effect, presumably because they suggested that a person's own party contained a diversity of perspectives on the topic. In cases where no party affiliation was given, the depolarization was smaller (0.15 standard deviations). The striking thing is that most of the change came from Republican participants. There, polarization was reduced by 0.4 standard deviations. In contrast, Democratic participants only saw it drop by 0.1 standard deviations -- a change that wasn't statistically significant. The error bars of the two groups of party members overlapped, however, so while large, it's not clear what this difference might tell us. The researchers went back and ran the conversations through sentiment analysis and focused on people whose polarization had dropped the most. They found that their conversation partners used less heated language at the start of the conversation. So it appears that displaying respect for your political opponents can still make a difference, at least in one-on-one conversations. While the conversations had a larger impact on people's views of individual issues, it also influenced their opinion of their political opponents more generally, and the difference between the two effects wasn't statistically significant. The findings have been published in the journal Nature Human Behavior.

William Brady writes via The Conversation: People are increasingly interacting with others in social media environments where algorithms control the flow of social information they see. Algorithms determine in part which messages, which people and which ideas social media users see. On social media platforms, algorithms are mainly designed to amplify information that sustains engagement, meaning they keep people clicking on content and coming back to the platforms. I'm a social psychologist, and my colleagues and I have found evidence suggesting that a side effect of this design is that algorithms amplify information people are strongly biased to learn from. We call this information "PRIME," for prestigious, in-group, moral and emotional information. In our evolutionary past, biases to learn from PRIME information were very advantageous: Learning from prestigious individuals is efficient because these people are successful and their behavior can be copied. Paying attention to people who violate moral norms is important because sanctioning them helps the community maintain cooperation.

But what happens when PRIME information becomes amplified by algorithms and some people exploit algorithm amplification to promote themselves? Prestige becomes a poor signal of success because people can fake prestige on social media. Newsfeeds become oversaturated with negative and moral information so that there is conflict rather than cooperation. The interaction of human psychology and algorithm amplification leads to dysfunction because social learning supports cooperation and problem-solving, but social media algorithms are designed to increase engagement. We call this mismatch functional misalignment.

One of the key outcomes of functional misalignment in algorithm-mediated social learning is that people start to form incorrect perceptions of their social world. For example, recent research suggests that when algorithms selectively amplify more extreme political views, people begin to think that their political in-group and out-group are more sharply divided than they really are. Such "false polarization" might be an important source of greater political conflict. Functional misalignment can also lead to greater spread of misinformation. A recent study suggests that people who are spreading political misinformation leverage moral and emotional information -- for example, posts that provoke moral outrage -- in order to get people to share it more. When algorithms amplify moral and emotional information, misinformation gets included in the amplification. Brady cites several new studies on this topic that have demonstrated that social media algorithms clearly amplify PRIME information. However, it's unclear if this amplification leads to offline polarization.

Looking ahead, Brady says his team is "working on new algorithm designs that increase engagement while also penalizing PRIME information." The idea is that approach would "maintain user activity that social media platforms seek, but also make people's social perceptions more accurate," he says.