To say there's no growing movement towards Nazi and anti-Jewish ideologies is to be willfully ignorant of the world around you.

Facebook, according to Wynn-Williams, sold advertisers on the fact that they could target young girls who post and then remove selfies from their services in order to market to demographics who were likely experiencing depression and negative feelings about their body image.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47594299

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

The first iPhone was 2007. Google Glass came out in 2013

I think it's obvious why given the way users interact with sites/apps on their devices vs on desktop (they want to make FB mobile as TikTok-like as possible), but it's really striking how much of Facebook on mobile is just a bunch of AI slop at this point. I see some creep in on desktop too, mostly within the Reels/Shorts section (same creators/videos on both platforms, that is), but to see my recommended feed content be so vastly different indicates a lot to me about how the algorithm interprets user behavior and a lot of Meta's thinking about mobile audiences.

EDIT: mind you I don't follow a single topic or favorite anything on the platform, the content being served/recommended to me is purely based (as far as I can tell) on gender/demographic info they know about me and user behavior.

It's like we all fell under the spell of a terminal endlessly printing output as some kind of measurement of progress.

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46916104

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

To what ends I'm still fuzzy on, but this discontinuation follows a pattern we've seen with this administration knee-capping or outright dismantling many of the ways this country spreads soft power such as through humanitarian services via USAID, broadcasts from Voice of America, ending international research opportunities and divesting us from the WHO, and doing everything possible to turn the US into a pariah in the eyes of NATO, just to name a few big changes.

  One day, a woman wrote to me on Signal, asking me not to respond. She lived alone, she messaged, and planned to die that weekend. Before she did, she wanted at least one person to understand: Trump had unraveled the government, and with it, her life.

  I called William, feeling panic rise like hot liquid in the back of my throat.

  He told me to stay calm. He told me to send the woman a list of crisis resources, starting with the 988 national suicide hotline. He told me to remember that reporters are not trained therapists or counselors, just human beings doing the best we can.

  “You should try to help, but whatever this woman does or doesn’t do, it may happen regardless of anything you say,” William said. “It’s not up to you.”

  I did what he said, then fell asleep refreshing the app, checking for a reply. The next morning, a message appeared below her name: “This person isn’t using Signal.”

The pushback against "institutional nutrition" has been a long time coming and is honestly welcomed as health and nutrition science have evolved from the days of telling us to avoid all fat and offering consumers "low calorie" processed foods that didn't do our bodies much good.

In the same way the bacon craze of the 2000s was a successful marketing effort from pork farmers, cattle farmers (and their lobbying groups) are now having a moment with beef and subsequent beef products. Good nutritional science has been pointing to many fats (but not all fats) actually being good for our diet, contrary to those old institutional guidelines, but there's a lot of nuance around adding fats back to a person's diet. Many aren't making the distinction between saturated vs unsaturated fat as well as UDL and LDL cholesterol that ends up in our bloodstream (one of those is not good for us!).

But in an era of memes, misinformation, and context collapse good luck trying to have that more complicated discussion with people when the nutritional aspect is brought up (the book is closed on the flavor debate of course, it's delicious)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46548787

Points: 71

# Comments: 15

I'm glad to see this announcement and despite the leadership in Washington right now I don't think these adjustment will be seen as too controversial by the American public. The recommendations are based on a lot of good nutritional science that's been out there for years, but the buck seems to stop at the conversation around fat.

They went to great lengths to remove the debate around good fat vs bad fat from this discussion. Even reading the report, emphasis is put on the discussion of why we use so many pressed oils in the food chain, but not why we phased lard and shortening out of the American diet.

"Eat real butter" is ostensibly a recommendation presented at the bottom of the webpage, but butter is not a healthy fat. Same with some people's obsession with frying in beef tallow, but the report doesn't want to dig into this distinction for obvious self interested reasons. They even recommend:

> When cooking with or adding fats to meals, prioritize oils with essential fatty acids, such as olive oil. Other options can include butter or beef tallow.

Which is a good recommendation. But no, you don't want to replace olive oil with butter or beef tallow. There's a lot of good nutrition science to back this up, but the report would prefer to not go there. Maybe "eat some butter" is appropriate, but unless the FDA wants to have an honest conversation around HDL and LDL cholesterol and saturated fats, I don't see this inverted pyramid doing too much good for overall population health (besides raising awareness)