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Anti-LGBTQ+ hate from religious conservatives and far-right extremists in the United States, and now in Australia, is a worrying trend.

It was shocking to see video of an attack on a peaceful LGBTQ+ protest outside a church in southwest Sydney where Mark Latham was speaking in the lead-up to the 2023 New South Wales election. Out gay politician Alex Greenwich has brought a defamation suit against Latham over an offensive homophobic tweet.

There are reports of increases in homophobic abuse and assaults on Sydneys Oxford Street. Drag queen storytime events have been targeted in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Last week, local councils in Victoria cancelled several events following threats from far-right activists.

These developments suggest that bigotry needs only to find the right conditions to turn into violence, and that the stigma against same-sex attraction and related gender identities can be invoked long after decriminalisation and de-pathologisation.

This wave of anti-LGBTQ+ hate has its cultural and technological origins in the US, where religious affiliation is higher than in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, England and Wales. Baseless claims that male same-sex attraction and drag performance are threats to children have more political traction in the US, as a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation there shows.

Yet the issues remain a concern in any jurisdiction where US news media has audiences and digital platforms operate.

My research in Representation, Resistance and the Digiqueer: Fighting for Recognition in Technocratic Times has examined the growth of far-right opposition to LGBTQ+ expression in Australia and the US in recent years. This extremism has been driven by a confluence of religion, nationalism, technology, commercialisation and sexual politics.

Notions of sexual purity, linked to nationhood by religious groups and far-right extremists, are circulated via the manosphere: an overlapping group of websites, online forums and blogs that promote masculinity and misogyny.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate estimates that anti-LGBTQ+ extremists are picking up followers at quadruple the rate since Elon Musk acquired Twitter.

Twitter and Facebook comprehensively failed to enforce community standards amid a surge in hateful online anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric triggered by Floridas Dont Say Gay or Trans Bill.

Anti-LGBTQ+ grooming rhetoric went viral on Twitter after the Colorado Springs shooting in November last year. Meta, which owns Facebook, has profited from advertisements directing child grooming rhetoric against the LGBTQ+ community and its allies. At least 59 advertisements promoting that rhetoric were served to users more than 2.1 million times.

The monetising of hate through YouTube includes the sale of mundane items such as sweatshirts and mugs adorned with homophobic slurs. YouTube profited from the vilification of gay journalist Carlos Maza by far-right YouTuber Steven Crowder, until the site eventually demonetised Crowders account.

Crowder is part of an assortment of scholars, media pundits and internet celebrities that has been termed the Alternative Influence Network. This network seeks to radicalise through social networking practices, promoting political ideologies on YouTube that range from mainstream versions of libertarianism and conservatism to overt white nationalism.

This agenda has been amplified through inadequate moderation of online hate by digital platforms, opportunistic politicians, and commercial exploitation of anti-LGBTQ+ hate by the angertainment industry programming characterised by anger, or which provokes anger in its audience.

The latest annual European Union review of online platforms compliance with the EUs code of disinformation bears this out. TikTok is the only platform to have improved on the timely removal of hate speech.

The polarisation of editorial positions within traditional news media has, at the same time, encouraged the online growth of partisan agendas. Polarisng misinformation can be a revenue generator. It can also undermine confidence in democratic elections and propagate climate denialism, feeding the misinformation and disinformation ecosystem.

This has occurred within a broader context of misinformation driven by domestic politicians and permissiveness by digital platforms towards hateful conduct.

It is in this context of ambiguity and baseless claims that hate against LGBTQ+ individuals and communities has thrived, under the auspices of a freedom of speech that does not strike a reasonable balance between expression and dignity.

Conservative Christian and far-right movements have sought to capitalise on the so-called Trump effect. This refers to the theory that the divisive rhetoric used by Donald Trump emboldens perpetrators of hate, thereby creating even more hate.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, groups that vilify the LGBTQ+ community represented the fastest-growing sector among hate groups in 2019, expanding from 49 in 2018 to 70 in 2019 a nearly 43% increase.

The US Capitol riot in January 2021 became a recruitment drive for some extremist groups. The anti-LGBTQ+ group the Proud Boys grew from 43 chapters in 2020 to 72 in 2022.

The increase in hate is occurring in a period when more and more people are identifying as something other than heterosexual.

In Australia, an estimated 11% of the population have a diverse sexual orientation or gender identity.

In the US, 7.1% of the adult population identify as one of these non-heterosexual identities, double the percentage from 2012. According to the same survey, roughly 20.8% of Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2003) and 10.5% of Millennials (born between 1981 and 1996) in the US identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual and/or transgender.

This visibility has become a double-edged sword. Communities have gained recognition through identity politics, but their visibility makes them a potential target for violence. Bigots know this, and that is why they often personalise their slurs.

At the same time, the rise of anti-LGBTQ+ hate has occurred despite and likely as a consequence of the decriminalisation of same-sex conduct in a growing number of jurisdictions, the expansion of legitimate categories of vulnerability enshrined in anti-discrimination law, and progress made on marriage equality.

The contradictory nature of the current hybrid ecosystem of old and new media illustrates this point. The rise of social media has created an environment in which there has never been greater opportunity for the diverse expression of sexual orientation and gender. At the same time, engaging in that expression means navigating the potential violence of the online world, and its manifestations in interpersonal violence.

What needs to be done to address the hate feedback loop? For a start, conservative groups that might have perceived themselves as the legitimate definers of state policy need to engage in challenging debates without resorting to hateful conduct.

Digital platforms also need to address online hate in a timely manner and their responses need to be coordinated across platforms. Transparency is needed to expose algorithmic decision-making processes that might perpetuate bias.

A better balance between fact-based reporting and opinion, and an emphasis on evidence-based reasoning, would also go some way to addressing unqualified freedom of speech claims.

At the same time, we need election campaigns that resonate with constituents lived experiences, not ones that resort to divisive political messaging. This has been evident in some recent elections in Australia, notably the 2018 state election in Victoria.

From a legal perspective, it is necessary to consider whether anti-vilification and incitement to violence legislation adequately addresses the broadening of non-heterosexual identification.

There are, for example, calls to reform anti-vilification legislation in Victoria. Exemptions from anti-discrimination laws that protect LGBTQ+ people from service and employment discrimination are the focus of the Australian Law Reform Commissions inquiry into exceptions for religious schools. Growing calls to revise Australias privacy legislation need to be heeded.

The origins of the anti-LGBTQ+ hate feedback loop are complex. But they are not insurmountable. Not addressing them will leave a growing number of people susceptible to violence, which diminishes us all.

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Our hybrid media system has emboldened anti-LGBTQ+ hate what can we do about it? - The Conversation Indonesia

Twitter, Facebook face competition from blockchain-based social media platforms. variety.com

Bluesky, a decentralised communications app, is posing a new competition to Elon Musk's Twitter. The app, which is backed by Twitter co-founder and twice-former CEO Jack Dorsey, is an alternative to centralised social media platforms.

Unlike Twitter and Facebook, decentralised social media platforms have no single owner or leader and are not beholden to commercial or financial interests. Decentralised projects are less likely to collect and sell users' data and less susceptible to censorship.

Bluesky has become popular in recent months, with 628,000 mobile downloads in April, a 606% rise from the previous month. However, Bluesky still lags far behind Twitter in total download volume.

Bluesky's emergence highlights how Dorsey is looking to disrupt what he helped create. In 2019, Bluesky was originally incubated within Twitter when Dorsey was still CEO.

The app runs on a decentralized networking technology called the AT Protocol, which could power future social apps, enabling people to maintain their identities across multiple apps. Other decentralised social projects that have been getting more attention include Mastodon, as well as Lens and Farcaster, which are both Twitter substitutes built on blockchains.

Decentralised platforms lack the algorithms that recommend particular content. They also don't sell ads or collect and sell user data, which are the traditional ways that social networks make money. However, the only drawback is scale, with Bluesky having only around 50,000 users and unclear financial plans.

Bluesky, which is currently invitation-only, could turn to subscriptions to monetize its operations. But the front-end apps built atop these decentralized platforms are often clunky, not professional-looking, or easy to use. The team hasn't given many hints on any financial plans, according to recent blog posts. The user experience is also another drawback, with the platform still being tested and developed.

The emergence of decentralised social media platforms provides an opportunity for people to be citizens of their platforms, with the ability to vote.

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen said that it all comes down to self-governance. "Weve kind of come to accept that we are subjects of a king, like Mark [Zuckerberg], or Elon [Musk], and we can either follow their rules or leave," Haugen said.

"And theres an interesting opportunity for people to be citizens of their platforms, having an ability to vote, but also having..."

Original post:
Twitter, Facebook face competition from blockchain-based social media platforms - Geo News

ANALYSIS: Whether its Facebooks News Feed or TikToks For You page, social media algorithms are constantly making behind-the-scenes decisions to boost certain content giving rise to the curated feeds weve all become accustomed to.

But does anyone actually know how these algorithms work? And, more importantly, is there a way to game them to see more of the content you want?

In broader computing terms, an algorithm is simply a set of rules that specifies a particular computational procedure.

In a social media context, algorithms (specifically recommender algorithms) determine everything from what youre likely to read, to whom youre likely to follow, to whether a specific post appears in front of you.

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Their main goal is to sustain your attention for as long as possible, in a process called optimising for engagement. The more you engage with content on a platform, the more effectively that platform can commodify your attention and target you with ads: its main revenue source.

One of the earliest social media feed algorithms came from Facebook in the mid-2000s. It can be summarised in one sentence:

Sort all of the users friend updates including photos, statuses and more in reverse chronological order (newer posts first).

Since then, algorithms have become much more powerful and nuanced. They now take myriad factors into consideration to determine how content is promoted. For instance, Twitters For You recommendation algorithm is based on a neural network that uses about 48 million parameters!

Imagine a hypothetical user named Basil who follows users and pages that primarily discuss space, dog memes and cooking. Social media algorithms might give Basil recommendations for T-shirts featuring puppies dressed as astronauts.

Elisa Ventur/UNSPLASH

Algorithms have become much more powerful and nuanced. They now take myriad factors into consideration to determine how content is promoted.

Although this might seem simple, algorithms are typically black boxes that have their inner workings hidden. Its in the interests of tech companies to keep the recipe for their secret sauce, well, a secret.

Trying to game an algorithm is like trying to solve a 3D box puzzle without any instructions and without being able to peer inside. You can only use trial-and-error manipulating the pieces you see on the outside, and gauging the effects on the overall state of the box.

Even when an algorithms code is revealed to the public such as when Twitter released the source code for its recommender algorithm in March its not enough to bend them to ones will.

Between the sheer complexity of the code, constant tweaks by developers, and the presence of arbitrary design choices (such as explicitly tracking Elon Musks tweets), any claims of being able to perfectly game an algorithm should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Matt Slocum/AP

Trying to game an algorithm is like trying to solve a 3D box puzzle.

TikToks algorithm, in particular, is notoriously powerful yet opaque. A Wall Street Journal investigation found it uses subtle cues, such as how long you linger on a video to predict what youre likely to engage with.

That said, there are some ways you can try to curate your social media to serve you better.

Since algorithms are powered by your data and social media habits, a good first step is to change these habits and data or at least understand how they may be shaping your online experience.

1. Engage with content you trust and want more of

Regardless of the kind of feed you want to create, its important to follow reliable sources. Basil, who is fascinated by space, knows they would do well to follow NASA and steer clear of users who believe the Moon is made of cheese.

Unsplash

There are some ways you can try to curate your social media to serve you better.

Think critically about the accounts and pages you follow, asking questions such as Who is the author of this content? Do they have authority in this topic? Might they have a bias, or an agenda?

The higher the quality of the content you engage with, the more likely it is that youll be recommended similarly valuable content (rather than fake news or nonsense).

Also, you can play to the ethos of optimising for engagement by engaging more (and for longer) with the kind of content you want to be recommended. That means liking and sharing it, and actively seeking out similar posts.

2. Be stingy with your information

Secondly, you can be parsimonious in providing your data to platforms. Social media companies know more about you than you think from your location, to your perceived interests, to your activities outside the app, and even the activities and interests of your social circle!

If you limit the information you provide about yourself, you limit the extent to which the algorithm can target you. It helps to keep your different social media accounts unlinked, and to avoid using the Login with Facebook or Login with Google options when signing up for a new account.

3. Use your settings

Adjusting your privacy and personalisation settings will further help you avoid being microtargeted through your feed.

The Off-Facebook Activity setting allows you to break the link between your Facebook account and your activities outside of Facebook. Similar options exist for TikTok and Twitter.

Ad blockers and privacy-enhancing browser add-ons can also help. These tools, such as the open-source uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger, help prevent cookies and marketing pixels from following your browsing habits as you move between social media and other websites.

Gregory Bull/AP

You shouldnt let tech giants bottom line dictate how you engage with social media.

4. Get (dis)engaged

A final piece of advice is to simply disengage with content you dont want in your feed. This means:

So, hypothetically, could Basil unfollow all users and pages unrelated to space, dog memes and cooking to ultimately starve the recommender algorithm of potential ways to distract them?

Well, not exactly. Even if they do this, the algorithm wont necessarily forget all their data: it might still exist in caches or backups. Because of how complex and pervasive algorithms are, you cant guarantee control over them.

Nonetheless, you shouldnt let tech giants bottom line dictate how you engage with social media. By being aware of how algorithms work, what theyre capable of and what their purpose is, you can make the shift from being a sitting duck for advertisers to an active curator of your own feeds.

Marc Cheong is a Senior Lecturer of Information Systems at Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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Four ways to take control of social media algorithms to get the ... - Stuff

(CBS DETROIT) - The ban on using phones while driving is heading closer to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's desk after Senate passed three House Bills Wednesday.

The amended bills expand on the state's texting and driving ban and would prohibit drivers from using or holding a mobile device while operating a vehicle. It was passed in House on May 2.

That includes talking on the phone, sending or receiving a text, recording or viewing a video or reading and posting to a social networking site.

The ban would not apply to those operating commercial vehicles or school buses, as well as law enforcement officers and first responders in emergency situations and public utility employees and contractors.

Use of phones would be allowed when making an emergency call to police, fire and health care providers, or using a hands-free system.

When finally approved, the amendments could take effect on June 30.

According to the crash data from Michigan State Police, there were 16,543 crashes in 2021 involving distracted driving, an increase from 14,326 crashes in 2020. Officials say fatal distracted driving crashes increased by 14% from 2020 to 2021.

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Michigan Senate passes ban on use of phones while driving - CBS News

Companys Evo Fleet video system was recognized at NAFA Fleet Management Associations 2023 Innovations Showcase

Lenexa, KS, April 26, 2023 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Digital Ally, Inc. (NASDAQ: DGLY) (the Company), which develops, manufactures, and markets advanced video recording products and other critical safety products for law enforcement, emergency management, fleet safety and event security, today announced its EVO Fleet video system has been recognized by its peers as part of the 2023 NAFA Fleet Management Association Innovations Showcase.

The Innovations Showcase took place at FAFSAs 2023 Institute and Expo in Baltimore, MD, April 17-19.

We appreciate this recognition from NAFA members and were proud of our engineers, technical support and sales staffs for their tireless work in developing the EVO Fleet video system, said Brody Green, President of Digital Ally, adding, The release of EVO Fleet demonstrates our heritage of innovation and continued commitment to fleet safety and security.

Digital Allys newest fleet video system, utilizing the latest innovations in telematics technology, is being released to great excitement across both current and new customer bases. Compact in form factor yet rich in features, the EVO Fleet Vehicle Camera offers artificial intelligence providing immediate driver-assist feedback by recognizing pedestrians, distracted or drowsy driving, and lane drifting.

EVO Fleet Features:

-Up to 1TB of Storage-Live GPS Tracking-A.I Interface with real time alerts and notifications-1080P HD recording at 30 FPS-Can record up to 4 streams of video simultaneously-4G LTE connectivity-Video on Demand

About NAFA Fleet Management Association

NAFA is the worlds largest membership association for individuals who manage the vehicular fleet and mobility responsibilities for their employers. NAFA propels the fleet and mobility profession through its world-class certification, education, advocacy, and peer-networking programs. It is an essential element of success for individuals involved in the profession.

NAFA has more than 2,000 individual fleet manager members who come from corporations, public safety (law enforcement, fire departments), education (universities and K-12 school systems), governments agencies (federal, state, municipal, provincial), utilities, and any other entity that uses vehicles in its normal conduct of business or needs to move people or goods from one place to another.

About Digital AllyDigital Ally Companies (NASDAQ: DGLY) through its subsidiaries, is engaged in video solution technology, human & animal health protection products, healthcare revenue cycle management, ticket brokering and marketing, event production and jet chartering. Digital Ally continues to add organizations that demonstrate the common traits of positive earnings, growth potential, innovation and organizational synergies.

For additional news and information please visit http://www.digitalally.com or follow Digital Ally Inc. social media channels here:

Facebook|Instagram|LinkedIn|Twitter

Contact InformationBrody Green, PresidentStanton Ross, CEOTom Heckman, CFODigital Ally, Inc.913-814-7774info@digitalallyinc.com

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements are based largely on the expectations or forecasts of future events, can be affected by inaccurate assumptions, and are subject to various business risks and known and unknown uncertainties, a number of which are beyond the control of management. Therefore, actual results could differ materially from the forward-looking statements contained in this press release. A wide variety of factors that may cause actual results to differ from the forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, the following: whether the Companywill be able to maintain or expand its share of the markets in which it competes with the EVO Fleet video system; whether the Company will make a global impact with its technology innovations; whether the Company will be able to adapt its technology to new and different uses, including being able to introduce new products; competition from larger, more established companies with far greater economic and human resources; its ability to attract and retain customers and quality employees; the effect of changing economic conditions; whether the technology referenced in this release will work as anticipated and meet the needs of the Companys customers; and changes in government regulations, tax rates and similar matters. These cautionary statements should not be construed as exhaustive or as any admission as to the adequacy of the Company's disclosures. The Company cannot predict or determine after the fact what factors would cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated by the forward-looking statements or other statements. The reader should consider statements that include the words "believes", "expects", "anticipates", "intends", "estimates", "plans", "projects", "should", or other expressions that are predictions of or indicate future events or trends, to be uncertain and forward-looking. The Company does not undertake to publicly update or revise forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Additional information respecting factors that could materially affect the Company and its operations are contained in its annual report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022, filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Read more here:
Digital Ally Announces Industry Innovation Recognition - GlobeNewswire