👻 The Generation of the Dispirited

I attended my first in-person security event in 3 years last week. Quebec City's Hackfest is Canada's biggest offensive security event. I took part in the Capture The Flag contest. It was fantastic. My team finished 6th out of 44. I was relieved to see that despite working in a non-technical role, I still had some hacking chops!

There were remote Hackfests during the pandemic. But it's just not the same as in-person. As a matter of fact, I skipped most of the conference because I wanted to speak with members of my community! I spent time in villages or catching up with old acquaintances.

Online socializing has its limits. My favourite essay of the week from Novum explores how the internet accelerated certain trends of urbanization and modernism. Traditional social activities such as neighbourhood parties have all but disappeared. Church attendance has never been this low. Young adults work less.

Depression and anxiety reached record proportions that cannot be explained merely by increased awareness.

Yet at the same time, teenagers consume less alcohol and start drinking much later. Teen pregnancies are the lowest they have ever been.

Perhaps the most shocking statistic, a staggering 27% of males report having no sexual partners between the age 18 and 30.

This "dispirited generation" looks exactly as what you think it does: a bunch of confined, lonely people guzzling on online content which makes them feel miserable.

🤬 Social Media Algorithms as the Root Cause

Such articles normally infuriate me. They always seem to cater to baby boomers' nostalgia and condescension. I also do not relate! Ever since I was 13 years old I joined online communities. My first one was a professional wrestling discussion forum back in the early 200s! I made friends online. I learned many of my most valuable skills online. My neighbours are shallow.

So, what gives? The problem, as is often the case, can be seen in Facebook's evolution. Frequent readers may feel I keep hammering on Facebook. I believe this social media has been foundational in how people evolved online since the ascension of the smartphones. For the majority of humans, Facebook has been the interface to the internet.    

The irony is Facebook's core mission is to foster thriving online communities. Listen to any Mark Zuckerberg talk. He keeps repeating the vision: "building global communities", and "bringing people closer together". It's right there!

But then there is business.

The Facebook feed algorithm was not built to maximize "communities". It optimizes engagement. What engagement? The desire to stay on Facebook! Nothing drives engagement more than emotional, spectacular content. And the most addictive emotion is anger, or self-righteousness, which both trigger the same dopamine rush.

Before I left Facebook in 2014, I was amazed to see otherwise rational people sharing a headline by some pundit by captioning it: "Look at that asshole!" And they were thinking they were making their cause progress!

🤗 Better Communities

It's becoming increasingly clear to me that those ad-fed aggregators' current business models are toxic. They isolate rather than unify. The solution, as the article points out, is better communities.

It's possible. I joined a role-playing games community 3 years ago. 5,000 people on the Discord server. While I'm more of a lurker, I have seen people openly share about relationships, depression, anxiety, sexuality, and trans rights. Exchanges in a respectful and helpful manner. People play virtual Dungeons and Drsgons with friends they've never met. Gatherings happen around the United States every month. This is spirited.

I say it all the time. If you are not paying for the product you are the product. Online business models must change. This means we have to pay creators directly for content and access to communities. We must "vote with our dollars". Facebook sells our attention and gives nothing in return to creators. No wonder countries such as Australia force Facebook to have revenue-sharing deals with new agencies!

It also means each of us has a responsibility to reach out to our entourage to prevent them from festering in algor0thm-fueled rages. Parents face immense stakes. Alcohol and promiscuity might be down in youths but danger lingers.

Yes, the in-person community is just not the same as online ones. But online doesn't have to be this echo-chamber of horrors.

🥊 Quick Hits

• The Big Tech Hiring Slowdown Is Here and it will Hurt. Meta, Google, Amazon and Microsoft hired over 92,000 people in the past year alone - more than every layoff combined in 2022. The hiring freeze will put tremendous pressure on junior engineers and new grads. Changing jobs will become riskier in the next year.
• Apple tightens its grip on the App Store some more. The giant will ask for its 30% tax on ads bought through the store as well as NFTs. I wish Apple would recognize being greedy about such an obscene cut. Yes, the App Store delivers a service to users by being secure and convenient. But not worth 30% of the price. Especially now that it's becoming riddled with ads...
• With inflation rates of 86% of its local currency, Turkey finds solace in cryptocurrencies. I will keep tracking these out. The common thread seems to be government and central banks' instability. A volatile but global currency becomes more interesting when faced with bad internal policies. Full Story.
• Popular privacy-focused search engine DuckDuckGo now offers its browser for Mac. Yes, DuckDuckGo does not have the same relevance as Google (it's powered by Bing, it should tell you all you need to know). Yet as a frequent user I find that about 80-90% of my queries can be served with the "reasonable good" alternative. With Google's search page evolving slowly towards a weird magazine-like display, DuckDuckGo will become a refuge for people who want to find content online without being bombarded. I don't see much value in the browser when Firefox, Brave and Opera all play in the same "privacy-focused" field but with better features.

🎯Passkeys Will Kill Passwords - Finally

Microsoft, Google and Apple, makers of the operating systems that power nearly all consumer devices, agreed to use passkey from the FIDO Standard. The hardware-based devices will use Type II (something you have) and Type III (something you are) authentication. No passwords. Password attacks make up at least 70% of breaches, according to the latest Verizon Data Breaches Report. What does this mean to you? First, no more storing your passwords in a notepad. Second, if you receive a phishing e-mail redirecting you to apple-auth.evil.com then the passkey will not work, because it is bound to the apple.com domain. Full story.

Wait, I AM the Fido Standard!

🗣️Elon Musk Finally Buys Twitter and Meta Stock Crashes

If I was the world's richest person, I would probably do the same move as Musk did with Twitter. Though I wouldn't call myself Chief Twit. We desperately need better communities, and it starts with social media algorithms that cease to polarize. Twitter at its best is a treasure trove of information.

I remember early Covid, Twitter was hands down the best source of information. While healthcare authorities were still going on about wiping your groceries, Twitter had already demonstrated aerosol transmission. We still needed to drive 30 minutes to a testing clinic while Twitter was pressuring governments to distribute rapid home test kits. This is the Twitter we need.

Ironically, I checked back some accounts I used to follow in 2o20 and the researchers either moved back to their usual fields of interest or went completely off the rails in zero-covid conspiracy theories. Algorithms must not create the conditions for the latter to emerge.

🎧 Meta's VR Gambit Makes the Stock Crash

Speaking of horrible polarization, Meta held an earnings call that was met with a 25% stock dip. Meta is now worth its lowest since 2016. Investors don't buy the whole VR thing.

I read some positive takes on the situation, with people praising the founder's willingness to take a risk on his vision and not focus on the quarterly earnings. While yes, this bold action should be praised in business, Zuckerberg is backing the wrong horse.

As long as VR forces people to wear stupid plastic things on their head that messes up their hair, it will fail to take off. It's not about realism or quality of experience. It's about people feeling they look ridiculous!

🎧 Quote of the Week