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Wyden, Senate Dems: VA must do more to prevent and correct abuse of veterans in higher education
Wyden and Colleagues Urge VA to Hold Colleges Receiving Post-9/11 GI Bill Benefits Accountable for Providing High-Quality Education and Preventing Abusive Tactics
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Senators Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., Senator Patty Murray, D-Wash., and 25 other Senate Democrats sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) calling for strengthened "oversight, enforcement, and accountability" of colleges receiving Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits to fulfill the "Principles of Excellence" Executive Order signed by President Obama in April 2012.
The VA's failure to use its full authority to hold colleges accountable has allowed some colleges, including large for-profit colleges, to engage in misleading and deceptive recruiting practices and to evade requirements in order to continue receiving Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits.
Senate HELP Committee Reports have shown examples of colleges that misrepresent the job prospects, transferability of credits, and accreditation status of their education and training programs, but VA has "inexplicably asserted that it lacks the authority" to limit or suspend Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits flowing to these schools. VA has also failed to put in place the tools it needs to properly protect veterans through robust oversight of colleges, including a risk-based program review process and ensuring consistent information is reported on the GI Bill Comparison Tool.
In the letter, the senators note VA's clear authority to suspend or restrict a school's receipt of benefits when another agency has a finding of deceptive or misleading practices, and encourage VA to collaborate with other federal and investigative agencies to address shared concerns of these practices and to stop taxpayer funds from flowing unchecked to institutions engaging in misconduct. Veteran and military service organizations have made similar calls on VA to crack down on colleges that prey on veterans.
"We have a responsibility to ensure that our veterans receive the high-quality educational opportunities they have earned," wrote the Senators. "We request that you provide a response by September 1, 2016, detailing the actions that VA will take under the Principles of Excellence EO to protect veterans and their families from bad actors in higher education, provide more meaningful consumer information, and crack down on abusive and misleading recruiting practices to ensure the federal government is not providing benefits to schools that do not serve the needs of the veterans they enroll."
The list of Senators also signing today's letter include: Senators Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., Cory Booker, D-N.J., Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Ben Cardin, D-Md., Tom Carper, D-Del., Bob Casey, D-Pa., Chris Coons, D-Del., Richard J. Durbin, D-Ill., Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Al Franken, D-Minn., Mazie K. Hirono, D-Hawaii, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., Bob Menendez, D-N.J., Barbara A. Mikulski, D-Md., Chris Murphy, D-Conn., Jack Reed, D-R.I., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I..
Today's letter is the fourth in a series of requests by Senate Democrats to strengthen college accountability and protect students using the Administration's authority under the Higher Education Act. Senate Democrats' efforts to improve college accountability began in April with a push to hold college accreditors responsible, and the department took steps toward that goal when it issued a staff recommendation last month to terminate the recognition of ACICS.
Senate Democrats also called for a strong and streamlined borrower defense rule, and the Department agreed when it issued a proposed rule last month that significantly improved upon the process to give relief to student loan borrowers who are the victims of unlawful and abusive practices in higher education.
And most recently, Senate Democrats called for action to protect servicemembers and veterans through a strengthened 90/10 rule. A loophole in federal law currently allows for-profit colleges to exceed the 90 percent federal revenue cap, known as the 90/10 rule, by enrolling servicemembers and veterans who have access to federal educational assistance.
Full text of the letter:
The Honorable Robert McDonald
Secretary of Veterans Affairs
810 Vermont Avenue, NW
Dear Secretary McDonald:
We have a responsibility to ensure that our veterans receive the high-quality educational opportunities they have earned. While we commend the progress that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has made in providing consumer protection measures for veterans using the Post-9/11 GI Bill, we urge VA to continue to strengthen oversight, enforcement, and accountability to make the promise of educational opportunity a reality for veterans nationwide.
In April 2012, President Obama signed Executive Order 13607 "Establishing Principles of Excellence for Educational Institutions Serving Service Members, Veterans, Spouses, and Other Family Members." This historic Executive Order (EO) was intended to correct troubling findings from two U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) staff reports. Those reports revealed deceptive and misleading practices employed by some for-profit colleges to recruit large numbers of veterans, such as the misrepresentation of job prospects, transferability of credits, accreditation status, and whether educational costs would be covered by their Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits. These practices have enabled colleges with dubious educational outcomes to evade regulatory requirements and employ abusive tactics in order to gain access to veterans' education benefits. Recent data show a significant increase in the number of Post-9/11 GI Bill beneficiaries since 2009 and a disproportionate number of veterans attending for-profit colleges when compared to civilian peers. With more than $4.8 billion in Post-9/11 GI Bill dollars flowing to colleges each year, VA must do more to hold unscrupulous colleges accountable for providing a high-quality education and preventing high-pressure recruitment tactics.
VA should collaborate more closely with other federal and investigative agencies to address shared concerns with misleading and deceptive recruiting practices—including the U.S. Departments of Education, Defense, and Justice, the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. A number of state Attorneys General have also initiated investigations, made findings, and settled charges against colleges for deceptive and misleading practices, even while those colleges continued to maintain access to veterans' education benefits. VA has inexplicably asserted that it lacks the authority to limit or suspend Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits flowing to these schools, and it even failed to immediately take action last year when the Department of Education suspended Title IV eligibility for Corinthian Colleges based on findings of falsified job placement rates.
As detailed in the white paper authored by the Veterans Legal Services Clinic at Yale Law School, VA has clear authority under 38 U.S.C. § 3696 et al. to suspend or otherwise restrict a school's receipt of benefits when another agency has a finding of deceptive or misleading practices. In fact, the statute explicitly prohibits VA from approving veterans' enrollment in courses or programs that use deceptive practices. Unfortunately, VA lacks a formal enforcement mechanism to remove a school from the Principles list as a result of VA findings by VA itself, by other federal agencies, from program reviews, or from findings as a result from complaints filed by students. VA must establish a clear process to protect veterans utilizing the Post-9/11 GI Bill and to stop taxpayer funds from flowing unchecked to colleges engaging in misconduct.
In identifying risks to students, VA currently relies only on a limited set of program reviews conducted in partnership with State Approving Agencies. The EO specifically sought to use resources more effectively by having VA conduct fewer—but more detailed—examinations of schools receiving education benefits using a risk-based approach. Unfortunately, State Approving Agencies have failed to adopt this method and program reviews subsequently avoid substantive matters and rarely reveal serious violations. VA should select schools for review based on an index of risk factors, such as rapid increases in veteran enrollment, high numbers of student complaints, increases in the amount of benefits per capita, high rates of loan defaults, high dropout rates, deficiencies identified by accreditors and state agencies, and deficiencies in VA program administration compliance.
While we commend VA's work to finalize the Principles and to develop the GI Bill Comparison Tool, we believe that there is still much more to be done. The Tool allows students to compare potential educational options, provides some caution flags, and includes veteran-specific outcome information as required in Public Law 112-646, but the usefulness of the Tool continues to be impaired by overly broad definitions of completion of non-degree programs, by schools' failure to report complete and accurate information, by inconsistency in the caution flags, and by a lack of options for user feedback. In 2014, hundreds of educational institutions failed to report retention and graduation rates of first-time GI Bill students. The Tool also lacks specific information for veterans who are considering taking out loans to supplement their veterans' education benefits. While loan repayment rates, default rates, and average salaries after completion are available for the general population, similar statistics are not available to student veterans. VA must condition continued receipt of Post-9/11 GI Bill benefits on compliance with reporting requirements and continue to work with the U.S. Department of Education to ensure that this information can be made available.
Finally, it is important to protect veterans who might fall victim to deceptive and misleading recruiting efforts. Third-party "lead generators" continue to be widely used by some colleges seeking to enroll veterans with deceptive tactics. While VA has successfully trademarked the GIbill.com domain, many other internet-based domains and search terms continue to lead veterans to schools of questionable quality. VA needs to continue to increase efforts to halt the use of these sites through trademark claims and enforcement efforts.
Our country has a responsibility to act in the best interest of those who have served. We request that you provide a response by September 1, 2016, detailing the actions that VA will take under the Principles of Excellence EO to protect veterans and their families from bad actors in higher education, provide more meaningful consumer information, and crack down on abusive and misleading recruiting practices to ensure the federal government is not providing benefits to schools that do not serve the needs of the veterans they enroll. We look forward to working together to further ensure meaningful educational outcomes for our veterans and their families.


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Other News / Health & Safety
Workers evacuated from drifting vessel in North Sea
27/01/2016, 3:54 pm Updated: 28/01/2016, 6:20 am
Workers had to be evacuated from a drifting installation vessel in the North Sea, according to reports.
The Sea Worker vessel is used for installation of offshore wind turbines.
It was said to have broken away from its tugboat in the Danish part of the North Sea and began to drift "uncontrollably" towards shore due to strong winds.
Dong Energy said the rescue operation centre at Hvide Sande north of Esbjerg was informed at around midnight with the operation taking place in the early hours of this morning.
The crew of 15 were moved into rafts and later taken aboard the rescue ship Emilie Robin.
It's understood no injuries were reported.
There were no signs of damage either to the hull or that any oil had leaked from the vessel.
Video: Time-lapse shows Aasta Hansteen living quarters moved into place
Opportunity to 'reimagine' North Sea for net zero says OGTC chief
Taqa submits decommissioning plan for 30-year-old North Sea platform
Beaching of UK North Sea vessel in Bangladesh ruled as illegal
North Sea can be energy transition front-runner, report says

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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8 Best Ps5 Multiplayer Games That You Should Know Update 01/2023
Posted on May 19, 2022 by [email protected]
The PS5 has been a long time in the making, but we're finally ready. For those of you who got your hands on one, you might be wondering what the best PS5 multiplayer games are while you wait for the next Elder scrolls or Call of Duty.
It's true that there are a few multiplayer games already on the console that, in our opinion, are going to keep you busy until the next wave of big-name games come out.
If you think the PS5 doesn't have a lot of games, we want to show you that it doesn't. We want to show you that the PS5 has a lot of games, whether they're new games or games that have been improved. There have been a lot of great multiplayer games for the PS5 so far. These are the best of them so far.
1. Destruction AllStars
Developer: Lucid Games
Publisher: Sony Interactive Enterainment
Destruction Rocket League meets Twisted Metal and Fortnite in AllStars, which is also called Rocket League Twisted Metal and Fortnite. If we tried, we couldn't come up with an idea that crazy.
That's what the Lucid Games team did, though, and what they came up with was a 2021 game that had a lot of great ideas but was completely trashed by microtransactions, repetitive gameplay, and a lack of content.
Destruction Allstars was part of PlayStation Plus when it came out. When the service ends in April, it will cost $30. Sony had originally said that the game would cost $70. Even though that price is a lot less than that, it's still a lot of money for a game with so little gameplay.
However, almost everyone loves the game's core gameplay loop and mechanics. This has been a big help for a game that would have been forgotten without it. As long as you can get your hands on Destruction AllStars when they are on sale, you should. It's a chaotically styled cacophony of carnage that will keep you and your friends coming back again and again.
2. Override 2: Super Mech League
Developer: Modus Studios Brazil
Publisher: Modus Games
When Override 2: Super Mech League came out in 2020, it split people in two. Some critics said that the game not only didn't learn from its mistakes but also threw away some of the mechanics that made the game a surprise hit in the first place.
Override 2 was also praised by casual gamers for its fun gameplay, wide range of mechs, and ability to be played with friends.
Ironically, the party part of the game is where it both does well and doesn't do so well. When you fight with your friends in PvP, it's a lot of fun, but there's only one type of fight you can do.
Arena fighting games usually have a lot of different modes and options. Not having co-op integration for every setting is a big deal because it limits how much you can do. In some of the battles, you can't team up with your friends, which makes no sense and doesn't seem like a deliberate design choice.
Regardless, Override 2: Super Mech League is still one of the most fun casual games we've ever played on a console, so it's worth getting on sale.
3. CRSED: F.O.A.D
Developer: Darkflow Software
Publisher: Gaijin Distribution KFT
It was during this time that there were a lot of "rip-off" battle royale games that tried to cash in on the popularity of the genre. While most of these games were just for money, CRSED: F.O.A.D was made with a lot of love, which made it a good alternative to the big BR games.
When the game first came out, it was called "Cuisine Royale." Changing the name of the core game led to the change in the name of the game. When it first came out, CRSED: F.O.A.D was a parody of games like Fortnite and PUBG that used kitchen utensils. It was actually made as an April Fools' joke off of the engine that the squad-based MMO Enlisted uses.
However, the game was well-received enough that it was released as a stand-alone title. It eventually dropped the parody kitchen-based gimmick in favour of a comedic Battle Royale that isn't afraid to have fun with the genre.
If you're tired of Fortnite or Warzone, we think you should download this game. It's a stylish alternative to the big games out there, and it's free to play on both PS4 and PS5.
4. DIRT 5
Developer: Codemasters
Publisher: Codemasters
You should already know about DIRT 5. Probably, you already know what you're getting. This is the eighth DIRT game in 14 years.
This game gives you a lot of different types of racing and vehicles, as well as a career mode that lets you work hard. It doesn't make any big changes to the series in a good way, but it's still a good racing game that you can play for a while.
Because of this, DIRT 5 is very much a farewell to the franchise as fans know it. A company called Codemasters was bought by the game company EA, leaving the future of the game series in question when it comes to the level of support and quality.
You should buy DIRT 5 if you've been a fan of the DIRT series in the past. If nothing else, it's worth it.
5. Temtem
Developer: Crema
Publisher: Humble Games
It has been a long time since Pokémon fans have been asking for an official MMO. In Spain, the development team at Crema has already beat Game Freak to it.
There isn't a lot more to Temtem than that, but there doesn't need to be. It's an MMO game that lets you collect creatures. The development team says it was inspired by Pokémon.
That doesn't mean it tries to copy the style of Pokémon, because that's not true at all. Temtem has a unique sound to it. It has a unique world and animations, and in most cases, they're better than what Game Freak has been putting out in the last few years.
There is a big difference in how well the game runs on PS5 and Switch hardware. Temtem is already a very fun and promising game, even though it's still in the early stages.
6. Fortnite
There must be a place for Fortnite on this list of things to do. Even though it came out in 2017, this battle royale game is still one of the best multiplayer games to play with friends whenever you want. Maybe you'll secure a Victory Royale and get yourself that season's glider as a reward, or you might just have a lot of fun trying.
If you have a PS5, you can play Fortnite in up to 4K and 60FPS, and the DualSense controllers add a little something extra to the game. Besides, it's also free to play, which is always a good thing when you want to get your friends to play a game without having to spend any money on it.
7. Call Of Duty: Warzone
In the battle royale genre, Call of Duty: Warzone is another game that's been around a long time. In this game, players can choose from a variety of multiplayer modes and head to either Verdansk or Rebirth Island to fight it out to be the last team left alive. It's all out war, and even the most casual players will start to get competitive.
There isn't yet an update for Warzone that takes full advantage of the PS5's power. It can be played and is free, and Activision has added in PS5 perks like high-res texture packs to at least make things look a little better than they did on the PS4.
8. No Man's Sky
You can play No Man's Sky on the PS5 with a new update that takes advantage of new-gen consoles. 'The Next Generation' update brings the procedurally generated worlds of this survival game to new heights. It has better audio, 60FPS, and haptic controls, to name a few.
Explore and fight your way through these worlds and their epic landscapes like never before with up to 32 people in multiplayer mode. As a bonus, people who already own the PS4 version of the game can get the PS5 version for free.
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We're delighted to announce that STRRR TV have centred their most recent episode in their series of interviews around Nelly Ben Hayoun.
STRRR TV are paving the way as the future of horizon-expanding television. They create content focusing on superstars and brilliant newcomers hailing from the world of music, art, design, film, and fashion as they present their favourite clips and films through the nearly unlimited archives of the Internet. Each meticulously crafted episode presents a self-portrait of the selector, which allows us new insight into their life and work.
Now in it's fifth season previous guests have included Giles Peterson, Friedrich Liechtenstein & Hans Ulrich Obrist.
In her episode, Nelly talks about her favourite video clips and how they've inspired her, from the first time Michael Jackson did the moonwalk on stage to Fischli and Weiss' THE WAY THINGS GO.
To watch the full interview please click here.


The simplest 'test', the simplest 'rule of thumb', is to say that whatever ISN'T the system is consciousness. This is like the spinning totem in Inception – it will tell us whether we're trapped in a simulation or not! It will tell us whether we're hallucinating or not! It will tell us whether we're in the state of 'waking sleep' or not! Alternatively, we could say that whatever isn't the system is genuinely real and not a delusion. Or we could say that whatever isn't the system is 'who we really are in ourselves'. If it's the system then it's not us – it's the 'make-believe' us, it's the phony 'who we are'. If it's the system then we trapped in 'someone else's idea of who we are', we're trapped in 'someone else's game' (only it's not 'someone else' really because everyone else is of course in the same boat that we are!).
The system is a matrix or framework of logically linked-up possibilities.
The system is a self-consistent set of inferences that we make on the basis of a certain standpoint or starting-off point that the 'rules of the game' prevent us from examining (the 'game' in question being the system itself).
We can examine the contents of the logical matrix, the self-consistent set of inferences very thoroughly indeed, and we can go ahead and make lots and lots of very precise and totally unambiguous statements about the various elements or possibilities that make it up, but we can only do this at the price of not being able to examine (or say anything meaningful about) the key assumptions that the whole edifice rests upon.
This is a bit of an odd thing to consider therefore! It's extremely odd. What we have here is a totally seamless, logically-coherent system, a system that is made up of possibilities that we can make absolutely definite statements about but we can enjoy the infallible predictability (or certainty) that is provided by the set-up only if we turn a blind eye to the way in which the whole thing hinges upon a fixed point which is itself quite unverifiable. We can be as sure as anything regarding what is 'true or not true' within the framework that has been provided for us (the framework is made up of the binary logic of YES versus NO, In versus Out, True versus False) but we can't apply this same logical rigour to the statement or rule that the framework in question rests upon. The limitation that is built into the system is therefore that we can't say whether the fundamental assumptions that we have had to make in order to have the system are 'true or not true'.
So what this means of course is that all our so-called 'rigour' is actually nonsensical – it isn't worth a damn. The system of positive knowledge that we have obtained with our rigour is only worth something if the founding axioms are true, if the fixed standpoint is true, and there is no way to determine this. We have pointed out that there is no way that we can say anything about the basis upon which framework stands from the viewpoint of that same framework. We can try, but we won't get very far! We can for example try to say that our starting-off point, our basis is 'true'. We can easily assert this, but our assertion carries no weight. There is an error in the argument and the error is that we can only assert anything to be either true or not true, valid or not valid, when we take it for granted that our basis for making assertions (of whatever kind) is itself valid. If however we are asserting that our basis for making assertions (or our basis for evaluating whether any particular assertion is true or false) 'is true' then we have got caught in loop – we are assuming that our base-line assumptions are true in order to logically determine whether these same assumptions are true or not! The only way we can ever be sure of anything is if we first assume that our basis or criterion for determining certainty is valid but when we unwisely try to assert that our criterion for determining truth or falsehood is itself 'perfectly true' the whole argument immediately becomes redundant. We can never say anything about the assumptions we have had to make in order to have the ground to make logical statements about the world – that is the necessary blind-spot of the whole system.
One thing we can say about the underlying, taken-for-granted rules (the assumptions that underpin the whole exercise) is that they possess the peculiar property of taking up no space. The underlying rules or assumptions occupy no space, and neither does the framework or matrix of possibilities that we construct on this basis. This is easy to show. We know that a definite (i.e. 'black-and-white') statement contains no space – if it did then it wouldn't be definite. Since every position in the defined matrix of possibilities that is the logical framework is capable of being exhaustively definable in terms of black-and-white statements, this means that the matrix as a whole (i.e. the logical system) also contains zero space in it. The same argument applies for rules – if a rule contained any space at all, any 'leeway' at all, then of course it couldn't be a rule. The whole thing about a rule is that it specifies exactly and whatever is specified exactly always contains zero space. So both the basis (which is a set of rules) and the structure which is built upon (or extrapolated from) the rules that constitute the basis occupy zero space, contain zero space. The logical system is predicated upon zero space, and so of course no space can ever come out of it. Positive reality is (of course) by its very nature quintessentially 'spaceless'. 'Negative reality' – on the other hand – is the same thing as 'intrinsic space'.
Another way of getting at this is to say that our underlying assumptions – whatever they are – have to be static. If they weren't then they wouldn't be assumptions! We can't have such a thing as 'open-ended assumptions' – if we were going to make open-ended assumptions then we might as well not bother assuming anything in the first place since open-ended assumptions are the same thing as 'no assumptions'! Anything that is closed (anything that contains only a fixed or predetermined number of possibilities) occupies no space, as we have already argued. Space is openness, space is when we don't decide in advance what is going to happen, what is going to be there. When we decide in advance what's going to happen, what's going to be there is the absence of any space. In positive reality things have to be what they have been concretely nominated as being and that is the end of the matter. It's final, it's conclusive, it's definitive, and that's why we say that there is no space in positive reality.
All of this clarifies our understanding of what 'the system' is. So far we have said that the system is a virtual development of a starting-off point that contains no space and this means that there's no space in the 'virtual development' either. A rough and ready analogy of this is to say that our starting-off point is like a single playing card that we go on to develop into a whole pack of cards, which we can then use to play all sorts of games. But the rub here is that the full pack of cards doesn't contain any more possibilities than the original card did. A pack of cards isn't an open space, it's a closed set of possibilities and as such the only type of uncertainty that it contains is the trivial sort. Trivial uncertainty means that we can never actually get anywhere new – we can only ever have the illusion of new stuff happening, not the reality of it. To get somewhere new we need radical uncertainty and radical uncertainty isn't to be found in the logical system (which is equivalent to what David Bohm calls the system of thought) any more than it is to be found in a pack of playing cards.
This isn't what we are debating here however; we're not discussing cosmology but psychology. It is irrelevant (as far as our argument is concerned, at least!) whether the universe is a simulation or not because all simulations exist in time and time itself is part and parcel of that very same simulation. We never really depart from 'base reality', in other words – we CAN'T depart from 'base reality' because there's nowhere else to go! Our original point was that whatever isn't the system (or the simulation) is consciousness, that whatever isn't the system (or the simulation) is 'who we really are'. These are – as we have said – equivalent statements. Now if everything is the system /simulation and that's all there is, then this would mean that there's no such thing as consciousness. This would mean that there is no 'I' outside the system, no 'I' that is misrepresented or over-simplified within the system. We don't need psychology in this case – we only need mechanics, as G. I. Gurdjieff says. The there is however a problem with the proposition that 'there is only the system' (although it's one that we can't usually see). The problem is that there's no such thing as the system – it's just a kind of self-validating hallucination. When we say that the system has no space in it, no leeway in it, this is just another way of saying that it doesn't exist.
The possibility that maybe the universe is founded upon absolute laws, laws that are written into the very structure of reality itself, isn't really a possibility at all. We can argue why there can't be such a thing as a positive reality quite easily. 'Negative reality' (or space) is really just another way of talking about the possibility of free movement; as we have already said, 'space' equals 'freedom'. Or as we could also say, 'the absence of bias equals freedom'. That's what space is – the absence of any biasing factors, the absence of any rules. The argument that we're making is therefore that for there to be any bias, any rule, any structure or framework, there first has to be the freedom for that bias, that rule, that structure or freedom to be there. We could of course try to argue it the other way – we could say that there has to be a bias for there to be a bias, that there has to be a rule saying that there must be a rule. But this is simply putting the problem off – by doing this all that happens is that we enter into an infinity of tortoises upon tortoises! It's like saying 'God created the universe' as an answer to why there is anything, why there is something rather than nothing. When we do this we're just trying to give ourselves a reason not to question anything, which is what we always do. That's what we're always trying to do – cover up the underlying abyss of uncertainty, the void we are always poised over. No matter how many times we put the problem off its still going to be there waiting for us and the 'problem' is how the bias or rule gets to be there?
What we're saying is that the bias or rule is there because it's free to be there, not because it has to be there! If the bias has to be there then there's no freedom in the picture and this lack of freedom leads to an infinite logical regress, whereas if the bias is 'free to be either there or not there' then this is the same as saying that there's no rule saying that it has to be there and so there is no regress. If the bias is free to be either there or not there then there's no bias in relation to the bias, there is 'zero bias' and 'zero bias' is simply another way of talking about space. To say that 'a rule doesn't have to be there' seriously undermines the rule however – the whole point of a rule is that there's no way around it, no leeway for there to be any possibility other than the one that is specified. In order for a rule to function as a rule for us therefore we need to turn a blind eye to the way in which the rule doesn't actually have to be there. We have to turn a blind eye to the way in which it was freely chosen, the way in which it's only there because we agree for it to be there. It's not that there's no freedom or openness in the equation therefore – it's just that we are constitutionally blind to it! And it's not just that we're constitutionally blind to freedom / openness either; we very much invested (invested to the hilt) in NOT seeing it. If we became aware of freedom and openness then at the same time we'd be aware that we're not who we're playing the game of pretending we are, and this happens to be a game that we don't even know we're playing!
The point that we have been making is that freedom has to come first. We have to have freedom before we can have the lack of freedom. We have to have freedom before we can have determinate structure, before we can have rules, before we can have the system. First we have to be free to make the rule – then, and only then – we can go ahead and make it. We have to be free in order to give away our freedom, in other words! Or we could say that we have first to be free in order to play the game of pretending that the absence of freedom (or absence of space) actually is freedom, and that true freedom itself doesn't exist.


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Why would intelligent people, with access to massive amounts of computer power which could be doing something useful, want to bring their brainpower to bear on the problems of creating and exploring mythical landscapes? Why, when your computer could be earning its keep balancing your checking account, are you forcing it to control a game in which you battle fierce monsters in labyrinthine caverns, envoke magic spells, and uncover vast hordes of Elven gold?
The answer is obvious. Using your computer for serious things all the time is just plain boring. Trekking across alien landscapes, chopping up people with broadswords and axes, haggling with quasihumanoid creatures in off-world taverns, seems to many people a much better way to spend their time and their computer power.
If you want to add this kind of excitement to your computer, this book is for you.
Adventure games-with or without a computer-have not been with us for long. It was just over a decade ago, in 1974, when the fantasy game Dungeons and Dragons was released. D " D (as it quickly became known) triggered an explosion of interest in role-playing games.
Fantasy games grew out of war games, which began life in the final years of the 18th Century as training exercises for real-life army commanders. After the First World War, many people took to playing war games as a hobby, reenacting famous battles and rewriting history as they played.
People all over the States were playing war games, forming into clubs which came together only to do battle. In Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, a war gaming club made a slight departure from the norm, and started an explosion which is still reverberating around the world.
A team from this club, under Gary Gygax, devised a set of war game rules which set the clashes in a mythological, medieval setting where magic worked, dragons flew, and treasure in abundance lay around waiting to be claimed. The rules were published as Chainmail.
This was the first part of the mixture which brought fantasy gaming to critical mass. The second part was provided by Dave Arneson in Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota, who decided to set his battles in an underground dungeon. He used the Chainmail rules to manage the clashes his players had with wizards, warlocks and the rest. Dave and Gary, it appears, then got together to create a dungeon/gameplaying scenario called Greyhawk. They codified the rules, and put them together in a little book, and tried to have it published.
None of the established game companies were interested, so in 1974 Gygax formed a company-Tactical Studies Rules (TSR)-to publish the rules himself, under the name Dungeons and Dragons. The first printing sold out in less than 12 months.
Dungeons and Dragons fed a widespread hunger which had been primed by the success, in the previous decade, of such books as Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. D " D succeeded beyond the developers' wildest expectations, with over a million sets of the rules-which gradually became more coherent and more complex as feedback from players was incorporated into new editions-sold in the next six years. But this was just the start.
It seemed inevitable that computers would get in on the act at some stage. Computer memory is the ideal tool for keeping track of the complicated rules, situations, and inventories that are part of fantasy games.
Back in the dim, dark days of the immediate past-before the era of microcomputers-access to computers was restricted and expensive. The only way you could use a computer was via a time-sharing system. You communicated with a vast, remote computer, via a noisy teletype keyboard. The computer was dealing-apparently simultaneously with scores, perhaps hundreds, of other users. It talked back to you by printing on the teletype. It was slow, inconvenient, and unless you were lucky to be able to access such a computer from work or college. very expensive. Access charges around $80 to $100 an hour were not unusual. Pretty obviously, this meant that game-playing and game-writing on computers was a pastime very few had the opportunity to pursue.
Two programmers (Will Crowther and Don Woods) got around the expense problem simply by appropriating computer time-which should have been used for such mundane tasks as aiding with the statistical analysis of the results of physics experiments-and using it for their own entertainment.
Working in the language Fortran (a forerunner of the BASIC language on your microcomputer), Crowther and Woods entered into history by writing the program Adventure. It was a mammoth work, plunging the player into a vast underground labyrinth which could take months to solve. Hundreds of thousands of man-hours were lost across the country as computer personnel neglected their work in obsessive drives to work their way through the underground labyrinth.
The original Adventure, and similar programs which followed it, demanded big, big computer memories. Memory was expensive in those days, and the first microcomputers had amounts which seem niggardly to us now. Scott Adams, an Adventure admirer, decided he would make the program fit into a TRS-80. Predictably, scornful laughter greeted his announcement of this grandiose aim.
Fortunately, Scott succeeded, and on that base has built what is probably the world's leading computer adventure software company (Adventure International). The Adams material is available for most popular computers, and its usefulness is enhanced by a "difficulty rating" which is printed on each pack. Pirate Adventure is the easiest. The difficulty ratings go from beginner to medium difficulty and end up with the daunting "Advanced Adventurers Only Need Apply."
Once Adams had shown it was possible to squeeze an adventure into the mini-memory of a microcomputer, many others followed. Groups of users formed clubs to share ideas on solving problems.
Some of the most fanatical of these groups are those involved in the adventure program Zork (and, more recently, Zork II and Zork III), produced originally by a computer group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Most adventure games (including those in this book) invite the player to either enter a single letter (such as "N" meaning the player wishes to move north) or a two-word verb/noun phrase (such as SLAY DRAGON) to tell the computer what to do next. Zork and many other recent adventures accept multiple-statement inputs such as GET THE AXE AND DROP THE LAMP THEN GO NORTH. The Zork group publishes hint sheets and maps, and even bumper stickers (HONK IF YOU LOVE ZORK?).
There are several "classic" concepts which lie behind the development of adventure programs. I've tried to incorporate all of them into this book, so the ideas you pick up here can easily be applied to adventures from other sources.
First, a computer adventure is, in essence, a puzzle or series of puzzles. The puzzles are invented by the programmer, and must be solved by the player. The original Adventure and the Adams products are good examples of this.
When playing a computer adventure you must first discover the vocabulary the program will accept and understand, and then use this to explore your environment. Early adventures made much of battling monsters, gathering treasure and solving odd puzzles, such as trying to guess the code word which the "troll guarding the twisty bridge" would accept to let you pass.
The puzzles in my programs are far simpler than those you'll meet in commercial adventures, but serve as good training ground for your later explorations.
Computer adventurers soon learned that stable environments produced far more satisfactory adventures than did those in which the relationship between rooms, and the scenery, changed at the whim of the computer's random number generator. By stable, I mean an environment which has an inner consistency, and which-most importantly-can be mapped.
There is an immense amount of satisfaction to be gained from deducing the layout of the land in which you find yourself, and then in "wandering around it," checking out your map. All the environments in this book can be mapped.
The techniques discussed in this book for adventure development will not only help you create your own adventures, but should give you a number of ideas to help you solve adventures written by others.
Many educators bemoan the fact that little computer software of a truly educational nature has been developed. I believe that there is much educational value in the development and solving of adventure programs. Writing in the magazine Popular Computing (December 1983, pp. 147-150), Dr. Peter Owens, an English professor at South-eastern Massachusetts University, says that he has found that adventure games "satisfy a couple of requirements that give them validity as educational exercises." He then cites the engagement of thinking skills and the fact that the challenge of using imaginative approaches to problems can teach techniques which can be applied to real-life experiences.
So, there is an added bonus to adventure gaming. I think now it is time we buckled on our armor, conjured up a few soul-protection spells, and went down into the dungeons.
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Council Newsroom
Limerick undergoing "cultural revolution" - Limerick 2020 and award successes lauded by Mayor
Members of the Limerick 2020 bid team at Colbert Station, Limerick. L-R: Sheila Deegan, Mary Conlon, Kathleen Turner, Evelyn Noonan, Kathy O'Grady, Dominique Bouchard and Mike Fitzpatrick. Picture: Munster Images
Limerick City and County Council's support for the local arts and culture sector has been doubly recognised in recent days with the success of A Giant's Journey at the 2015 Chambers Ireland Excellence in Local Government Awards and Limerick's inclusion on the shortlist of candidate cities to host the European Capital of Culture designation in 2020.
On Friday, the Limerick 2020 bid team made its official presentation to an international panel of adjudicators from European Capital of Culture and was later informed it had been shortlisted for consideration in the next stage of the process. The judging panel will again meet during mid-2016 to recommend which Irish city will be the European Capital of Culture 2020 alongside a city in Croatia.
Meanwhile, A Giant's Journey - one of the centrepiece events of Limerick National City of Culture 2014 - was named overall winner of the 'Festival of the Year' award in the 2015 Chambers Ireland Excellence in Local Government scheme. Performed by the Royal de Luxe street theatre company and supported by hundreds of local volunteers, the event attracted more than 200,000 people on to the streets of the city over three days in September 2014.
A Giant's Journey was one of five Council projects shortlisted for an award in the year's competition, which acknowledges and encourages best practice and constructive initiatives by local authorities.
Cllr. Liam Galvin, Mayor of the City and County of Limerick congratulated Limerick City and County Council on its double success, adding that the Local Authority's contribution to the promotion of arts and culture in Limerick "is reaping dividends for the local community and Limerick's reputation."
Mayor Galvin said Limerick is undergoing "a cultural revolution, which in years to come will be reflected upon as one of the landmark, transformative periods in its long and illustrious history."
"Limerick today is a vibrant, melting pot of different cultures and traditions and this has complemented the city's growing status as a modern, thriving community. The breadth and scale of cultural activity and the manner in which this activity has been supported and nurtured by the Council, has led to national and international acclaim which is a source of pride for everyone in Limerick," said Mayor Galvin.
"The achievements of recent days are testament to the hard work and expertise of the staff of the Council as well as the huge amount of time, energy and resources being invested by the local community to promoting Limerick," said Conn Murray, Chief Executive, Limerick City and County Council.
"I particularly want to congratulate the Limerick2020 team led by director Mike Fitzpatrick and Limerick Arts Officer Sheila Deegan who designed and presented the 80 page European Capital of Culture documentation for Friday's meeting with adjudicators. The successful inclusion on the shortlist of candidate cities is a tribute to their hard work and to the work of so many others throughout Limerick in recent years to promote Limerick as a truly culturally rich city," he added.
Limerick 2020,
Limerick City and County Council,


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5 Things posted Jan 24, 2023 @ 08:00am by Josh Duncan
Start your day off right with five things you need to know this morning.
Five things you need to know
1. Another California mass shooting kills 7
Another seven people are dead after California's third mass shooting in as many days. As the state still reeled from the weekend shooting in Monterey Park that killed 10 people, another seven were gunned down by a 67-year-old suspect in Half Moon Bay on Monday. The suspect was arrested and police are still trying to figure out a motive.
Seven people were killed in a mass shooting at two locations in the coastal northern California city of Half Moon Bay, and the suspect was arrested after driving to a police parking lot, apparently attempting to turn himself in, officials said https://t.co/4UKj0AcW3x 1/5 pic.twitter.com/vBRyjcWws5
— Reuters (@Reuters) January 24, 2023
2. Five billion people at increased risk of death due to trans fat: WHO
A new report from the World Health Organization claims that five billion people are at an increased risk of heart disease and death due to trans fat. The report says that governments need to do more to ban industrially-produced fats, which clog arteries and are commonly found in cooking oils, spreads, packaged foods and baked goods.
'A toxic chemical that kills': WHO says health of 5 billion people at risk from trans fat https://t.co/X0tQuvFdGA pic.twitter.com/fqLA3lBwSk
— CTV News (@CTVNews) January 23, 2023
3. Tim Allen denies flashing Pamela Anderson on set of "Home Improvement"
Tim Allen has responded to allegations by Pamela Anderson that he once flashed the young actress on the set of "Home Improvement." Anderson said the incident happened in 1991, when she was 23 and Allen was 37. She alleges that he opened his robe and quickly flashed her, saying that it was only fair because he had seen her naked. Allen said that it never happened and he would "never do such a thing."
Tim Allen is refuting Pamela Anderson's claim that he flashed her on the set of #HomeImprovement. pic.twitter.com/pXxWrtRnNI
— E! News (@enews) January 23, 2023
4. Doomsday Clock now at 90 seconds to midnight
The Doomsday Clock has been reset. This morning, atomic scientists revealed their latest estimate on how close they believe humanity is in 2023 to annihilation due to existential threats like nuclear war and climate change. It is now 90 seconds to midnight, a 10 second decrease from the last update in 2020.
"We move the Clock forward, the closest it has ever been to midnight. It is now, 90 seconds to midnight." #DoomsdayClock https://t.co/vNLOCAAx5E pic.twitter.com/Wg4l8fZUU0
— Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (@BulletinAtomic) January 24, 2023
5. Oscar nominations revealed
The Academy has revealed its Oscar nominations for 2023. Leading the way is "Everything Everywhere All at Once," which got a whopping 11 nominations including Best Picture. Many are expecting the film to clean up at the prestigious awards show in March.
'Everything Everywhere All at Once' leads the #Oscars nominations, with 11. pic.twitter.com/7I2uX787uk
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) January 24, 2023
Send your comments, news tips, typos, letter to the editor, photos and videos to [email protected].


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Q: XAMPP apache with stand alone MySQL I installed XAMPP to run PHP from eclipse. I have a standalone MySQL server that I use it from another java program. I want the apache server inside XAMPP to use this standalone MySQL instead of the default one. How can i achieve this?

A: When you are in the Xampp-controlpanel you can select the tools to start. If you have installed a standalone mysql-server, it is usually registered as a server (xampp regognizes that!). In you PHP-Application you just have to connect to this server (Address: Localhost and the username/password from your server)
Just dont start the xampp-server, start your own one.

A: Just don't start XAMPP's MySQL Server. Apache or PHP does nothing else than connecting to localhost and MySQL's standard port.

A: If you have a conflict, when you try to use one or another MySQL Server, it is a big "chance" to have them both opened.
You can check this by "right-click" on My Computer, and select "Manage". There go to "Services and applications" and you can see which one is running.
If both are running you can stop the one you don't wanna use.
Hope this help.
P.S. You may wanna use WAMPP, because it has a better graphical interface, and much more usefully shortcuts.

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


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Horizon: Zero Dawn Goes Gold, Photo Mode Announced
By Damien Lawardorn February 4, 2017
Guerrilla Games's upcoming open-world RPG, Horizon: Zero Dawn, has officially gone gold, alongside confirmation that the game will feature a photo mode.
Taking to Twitter earlier this week, the studio's Managing Director Hermen Hulst announced that the PlayStation 4 exclusive has ended active production ahead of its February 28 release date. Shortly beforehand, the studio's official Twitter page revealed that the game will include a photo mode, taking advantage of the game's beautiful, expansive vistas and striking aesthetic. Unfortunately, details on how expansive the photo mode will be are not yet forthcoming.
The developer also announced that protagonist Aloy will be voiced by prolific voice actress Ashly Burch, perhaps best known for her role as Chloe Price in 2015's Life is Strange.
With the game now finished, the development team is able to begin work on other projects, whether that is downloadable content, or an entirely new game. With Horizon: Zero Dawn, Sony and Guerrilla Games have so far bucked the trend of announcing additional content before release, with no mention of a season pass or any standalone expansions yet forthcoming. The developer has traditionally taken a low-key approach to post-release expansion of their games, releasing only a handful of maps for each entry in the Killzone series.
Some members of the press recently had the chance to go hands-on with the title, and the reception has so far been almost overwhelmingly positive, praising the ambition, storytelling, world-building, and gameplay depth.
Guerrilla Games also recently released a story trailer for the title, providing at the overarching conflict and some of the the friends and foes that Aloy will come across in her journey.
Horizon: Zero Dawn was recently chosen as one of OnlySP's most anticipated games of 2017, and plenty more details on the game can be found in our preview.
The game will be available from February 28, exclusive on PlayStation 4.
Hermen Hulst
Damien Lawardorn
Damien Lawardorn is an aspiring novelist, journalist, and essayist. His goal in writing is to inspire readers to engage and think, rather than simply consume and enjoy. With broad interests ranging from literature and video games to fringe science and social movements, his work tends to touch on the unexpected. Damien is the former Editor-in-Chief of OnlySP. More of his work can be found at https://open.abc.net.au/people/21767
Future Mafia III Expansions Detailed, First Due in March
OnlySP Week in Review – Feb. 5, 2017


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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


text:
Intelligence Unit
Nonresident Fellowship Program
"We work to make the political campaigning environment more trustworthy, transparent and comprehensible for people."
"We work to make the political campaigning environment more trustworthy, transparent and comprehensible for people."
Jun 21, 2022 Digital Transformation
Photo by mohamed_hassan / Pixabay - https://pixabay.com/it/vectors/social-media-marketing-facebook-6134993/
Disinfo Talks is an interview series with experts that tackle the challenge of disinformation through different prisms. Our talks showcase different perspectives on the various aspects of disinformation and the approaches to counter it. In this installment we talk with Sam Jeffers, Co-Founder of "Who Targets Me", which monitors the use of online political ads in real time and provides analysis of their intended impact.
Tell us a bit about yourself. What do you do? How did you become involved with disinformation?
I spent seven years working in and around digital campaigns (the Obama campaigns of 2008-2012, campaigns in France, India, Brazil, the UK and Ireland), trying to work with progressive political parties to get their message across and win elections. I left my job in 2016, but one question clearly emerged from that 2016 cycle of elections (both Brexit and Trump): "What's the power of social media, and particularly, of social media advertising to influence people in election campaigns?" In response to that, I joined forces with a colleague to build a tool to try to work out what was going on in real time and to reverse-engineer local advertising strategies. To me, the most interesting part is less about seeing malign actors causing trouble, but instead how to make the political campaigning environment more trustworthy, more transparent and more comprehensible for people. Political campaigns in the digital age are full of technique, cleverness and persuasive people trying to get an advantage over their opponents. Crowdsourced data collection allows us to see things through people's eyes in real time: What's the balance of the different information that people see? How much right-wing advertising do they see relative to left-wing advertising? How much do they see from candidates as opposed to parties? How much do they see on some topics relative to others? How much are they targeted because they are active within a political party rather than simply being courted as prospective voters? That gives us a plenty of different ways of thinking about putting up new guardrails around democratic processes.
What are some of the key questions that you've been focusing on?
One question that we are looking at is the actual frequency of political advertisement. In 2016, there was this myth that people were flooded with political advertisement. However, outside of an election period, political advertising is usually less than 1% of all Facebook advertising. When election periods roll around, it might be about 15%. People will notice political advertisements, they will be a relatively frequent part of their newsfeed, but for a short period of time. The second question varies a lot by country to country and obviously, by electoral system: What breeds of campaign do people see? Do they see content from only one party? Do they see it skewed in a particular direction or the breadth of the whole political spectrum campaigning? How polarized is their view? Finally, what happens to people when they face "weird" content? Usually it is not state actors directly running destabilizing disinformation campaigns using advertising, but rather domestic actors who aren't very keen on showing who they are. Political parties mostly play by the same rules. If we're talking about housing one day, the next party will be talking about housing the next day to criticize the other party. There'll be this flow, whereas non-party actors will just throw unusual, destabilizing issues into the mix (without saying who they are, or who's funding them). Since there are no guardrails in most democracies when it comes to money and advertising, we need to think hard about how we invest in the institution of electoral processes and democracy in order to build up trust.
Do you see an interaction between the tactics that you're describing and disinformation as it's being perceived by the public, politicians, and researchers? Where is the connection?
I worry about blurring the boundaries between disinformation and information that people just don't like. This is a question of: What's harmful versus what's illegal? Where are the boundaries of free expression online? Everything is getting very blurred and mixed up, and runs the risks of being used for political advantage by different groups of people. What is it about social media that says that we need to get the far-right speech off platforms? It's a really complicated question. There's often this tendency, particularly with people who come into disinformation space from the campaigning side, saying "this shouldn't be on the Internet" without a clear basis of criteria for "why not?". It's similar to what we see with political advertising: Some people argue that online political advertising should be banned entirely. Yet, there are opportunities in digital campaigning that can be good for democracy. We should work out how to foster those while putting up sufficient guardrails to make it harder for people who want to abuse and misuse them. We need to get to a place where we're much more concrete, understanding the probabilistic nature of a digital campaign. We're never going to solve it perfectly. There is no consensus about the fundamental principles that should guide us in determining what people should be able to do in democracies.
Some legal scholars are skeptical regarding the approach of criminalizing fake news or censoring the Internet, arguing this could cause more harm than good. That it's a slippery slope.
I agree. A lot of what we focus on is "volume." I know that some free speech scholars consider this angle as well. The idea is that the Internet has just so much stuff on it, right? If you went back 25 years, you could pretty much model everyone's media environment; pick the number of newspapers that would land on people's desk in the morning, the TV channels, and radio stations. Today, the sheer volume different content that one is exposed to during a day is incomprehensible. There's just too much content. Particularly with advertising, one of the things that we recommend is that there should be fewer ads. At the moment, the only accountability system is people like us, who do large-scale programmatic, quantitative analysis of online political advertisements.
Have you observed any specific trends that are related to the pandemic?
One place where the pandemic has clearly mattered, is in eliminating in-person campaigning in a lot of countries. The expectation was that in the absence of in-person campaigning, people would spend their money online. Indeed, in some of the 2020 elections, even more money was spent online than was expected because there were no door-to-door solicitations. The Biden campaign, for example, invested heavily in Facebook ads because the Democrats weren't going to do their normal big mobilization work. There have been some interesting minor policy changes made by platforms. For example, very early on in the pandemic, Facebook banned adverts for masks, due to the huge proliferation of Chinese mask companies trying to get people to panic and buy masks, vastly inflating the prices. There's no one who told them "you must ban" mask advertising and "now you must unban it," but they have to make these judgment calls based on media pressure balanced with public health advice. It has been interesting to try to understand whether or not platforms respond to events in a trustworthy way.
Regarding content-banning and the question of platform regulation, who determines what is allowed? Who sets the boundaries for platforms?
I certainly think that we've reached the phase where we're now talking about what regulation might look like. It is now an accepted idea that the platforms are unregulated and that they need to be brought down in size. I'm always torn regarding the wider conversation about that. What are the right mechanisms? You get people talking about it from a privacy and a data-collection perspective. Other people talk about the monopoly and breaking up the companies. Some people talk about content regulation. We've tried to focus narrowly on political advertising, though it is actually a broad topic. There are a many things that governments could do. The problematic issue is the amount of money spent on political advertising. It's very hard to persuade someone who just won an election, having spent a million dollars on Facebook, that those million dollars shouldn't have been spent in the first place and that we need new rules. There is some opportunity for government regulation, but at the same time, there's a lot of room for platforms to innovate, to design safer environments, better tools and better integrity and security policies. It will most probably be a mixed approach in the end, but I would like to see government starting to take more of a lead.
Can you elaborate on what regulations platforms can introduce? What type of regulation is missing? Do you see the situation changing? What would it take for politicians to be more proactive on this matter?
The types of policies that we're in favor of are strong "know your customer" checks for political advertising. The question of who is buying substantial sums of political advertising on a platform should be verifiable and auditable. Governments should worry about someone showing up with a million dollars and spending it very quickly. Regulators should be concerned about that happening and try and create a safeguard against random actors. Our view is that you should ban social features overall from paid advertising and restore it back to the accountability system that democracies have established over hundreds of years. In addition to taking off social features, we suggest reducing the number of consecutive ads that people can run, adding limits on some types of targeting and providing more transparency. Specific transparency reporting is needed about moderation processes, and data standards (i.e. what data should be published, how different types of organizations can get access to that data, and what they can do with it). These feel like measures that the platforms are unlikely to put forward themselves and therefore some government initiative is necessary.
Currently, it seems that two camps have emerged, with the platforms on one side (who are in a defensive position about how to manage the PR around response to the criticisms), and their critics on the other side, ranging from mildly critical to "burn it all down," "jail the executives," and the like. As of now, I'm not sure that dialogue between the two sides is possible. Nevertheless, the scenario where Facebook will not exist two years from now seems very unlikely, so dialogue is vital. There needs to be some middle path that at least tries to say, "Look, we have ideas too about how you might make your platforms better" and then for the platforms to say: "We are listening in a reasonably transparent way to those ideas, we have tried some of them in the past, they didn't work for these reasons, we would like to try these ones, can you help us?" This would require agreeing that no one has a monopoly on wisdom in this space, and that we all need to find a way of moving forward. I do increasingly worry that the whole thing is so broken that basically it's a Twitter argument between people who work for platforms and people who don't work for them, which is not a conducive environment to advance viable solutions. I am not sure how, or who could bridge this gap between the parties, but it seems to me that there needs to be some mediation efforts. It is important to deescalate and to be careful not to drive the debate into a deadlock.
This Interview is published as part of the Media and Democracy in the Digital Age platform, a collaboration between the Israel Public Policy Institute (IPPI) and the Heinrich Böll Foundation.
The opinions expressed in this text are solely that of the author/s and/or interviewee/s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Heinrich Böll Foundation and/or of the Israel Public Policy Institute (IPPI).
Topics: DisinfoTalks, Disinformation
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