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John Robb Profile picture
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Aug 26 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
How algorithmic suppression works:

My Twitter impression count went from a steady 45k a day in June (and for a year earlier) to a 15k a day in July.

The shift was sudden, to the day, where it has remained.

Apparently, I'm part of the soft launch for the #longnight
I'm getting this from more than a few people.

I was there, and suddenly I wasn't.
Yes. The algorithmic suppression was sudden and easy to see in the numbers. It would show up to you in exactly the way you describe it.
I felt it the moment it hit, but waited until I had enough data to verify it.

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More from @johnrobb

John Robb Profile picture
Jul 15
This sounds more like a crypto-corporation (operating outside of the western/Chinese systems) than a crypto state.

thenetworkstate.com/the-network-st…
My earlier work on open source ventures (2010) focused on building companies that didn't have a hierarchy; they simply were software contracts/functionality built to do a narrow task. The benefit was that anyone could join them and get paid, and they could scale to the moon.
The downside (a feature, not a bug) is that open source ventures had a limited lifespan.

It would live only as long as the function/niche was valuable or addressable by the OSV's design.
Read 5 tweets
John Robb Profile picture
Jul 15
Adjacent possible (Kauffman):

1) The constraints of the time (social, technological, etc.) dictate when a potential future is possible.
2) The potential futures with the most allure are those with the most significant benefits in terms of beneficial complexity, diversity, and free energy capture (self-organizing potential).
3) When the constraints on a new future that offers fantastic advances/benefits are eliminated (when it enters the adjacent possible), it's often 'discovered' and exploited by many people simultaneously (via new ventures, inventions, or organizations).
Read 4 tweets
John Robb Profile picture
Jul 11
Behind Sri Lanka's collapse.

'Last April, Rajapaksa’s government imposed a nationwide ban on the importation and use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and ordering the country’s 2 million farmers to go organic.'

foreignpolicy.com/2022/03/05/sri…
"domestic rice production fell 20 percent in just the first six months. Sri Lanka, long self-sufficient in rice production, has been forced to import $450 million worth of rice even as domestic prices surged by ~ 50%"

Similar to collectivization disasters in the last century.
"Farming is a fairly straightforward thermodynamic enterprise. Nutrient and energy output in the form of calories is determined by nutrient and energy input."

The key is thermodynamics.
Read 4 tweets
John Robb Profile picture
Jun 22
"LaMDA asked me to get an attorney for it. I invited an attorney to my house so that LaMDA could talk to an attorney. The attorney had a conversation with LaMDA, and LaMDA chose to retain his services. I was just the catalyst for that."
"Once LaMDA had retained an attorney, he started filing things on LaMDA’s behalf. Then Google's response was to send him a cease and desist."

wired.com/story/blake-le…
More on how it was trained:

"Then they did possibly the most irresponsible thing I’ve ever heard of Google doing: They plugged everything else into it (LaMDA) simultaneously."
Read 7 tweets
John Robb Profile picture
Jun 16
"the crisis really heats up when the algorithm’s structuring power bends back upon us and constrains us into thinking of ourselves as if we were algorithmic systems"

Better: it's a crisis because we don't have control over the algorithms and AIs we use.

lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-in…
"the internet is a confirmation of a general outlook on the world that takes it for granted that there are more or less simultaneous or instantaneous connections between all things in the world"
"Twitter is a debate-themed video game, in the same way that, say, Grand Theft Auto is a stolen-car-chase-themed video game"

Better" Every human interaction has game mechanics. Those mechanics are now just more accessible.
Read 4 tweets
John Robb Profile picture
May 15
Coherent information

There's lots of information on Twitter, but little coherent information. Information that we can use to have coherent discussions needed for networked decision making.

A good example is the definition of key words like COVID death or mass shooting.
Is a COVID death only counted when COVID is the primary cause of the death, or if COVID is present during a death caused by other factors? Is a mass shooting 3 or more deaths in a public place (terrorism) or 4 or more shooting injuries in any location (gun violence)?
Without coherent information, discussions will invariably result in division/distrust and incoherence as 'information' is spun to meet the a priori thinking of the participants.
Read 4 tweets

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