#computer human interaction

[bluegiragi]

I really don’t care if I’m considered an annoying luddite forever, I will genuinely always hate AI and I’ll think less of you if you use it. ChatGPT, Generative AI, those AI chatbots - all of these things do nothing but rot your brain and make you pathetic in my eyes. In 2025? You’re completely reliant on a product owned by tech billionaires to think for you, write for you, inspire you, in 2025????

“Oh but I only use ___ for ideas/spellcheck/inspiration!!” I kinda don’t care? oh, you’re “only” outsourcing a major part of the creative process that would’ve made your craft unique to you. Writing and creating art has been one of the most intrinsically human activities since the dawn of time, as natural and central to our existence as the creation of the goddamn wheel, and sheer laziness and a culture of instant gratification and entitlement is making swathes of people feel not only justified in outsourcing it but ahead of the curve!!

And genuinely, what is the point of talking to an AI chatbot, since people looove to use my art for it and endlessly make excuses for it. RP exists. Fucking daydreaming exists. You want your favourite blorbo to sext you, there’s literally thousands of xreader fic out there. And if it isn’t, write it yourself! What does a computer’s best approximation of a fictional character do that a human author couldn’t do a thousand times better. Be at your beck and call, probably, but what kind of creative fulfilment is that? What scratch is that itching? What is it but an entirely cyclical ourobouros feeding into your own validation?

I mean, for Christ sakes there are people using ChatGPT as therapists now, lauding it for how it’s better than any human therapist out there because it “empathises”, and no one ever likes to bring up how ChatGPT very notably isn’t an accurate source of information, and often just one that lives for your approval. Bad habits? Eh, what are you talking about, ChatGPT told me it’s fine, because it’s entire existence is to keep you using it longer and facing any hard truths or encountering any real life hard times when it comes to your mental health journey would stop that!

I just don’t get it. Every single one of these people who use these shitty AIs have a favourite book or movie or song, and they are doing nothing by feeding into this hype but ensuring human originality and sincere passion will never be rewarded again. How cute! You turned that photo of you and your boyfriend into ghibli style. I bet Hayao Miyazaki, famously anti-war and pro-environmentalist who instills in all his movies a lifelong dedication to the idea that humanity’s strongest ally is always itself, is so happy that your request and millions of others probably dried up a small ocean’s worth of water, and is only stamping out opportunities for artists everywhere, who could’ve all grown up to be another Miyazaki. Thanks, guys. Great job all round.

[thegreatbacon]

Review of Synthesized Social Signals

A novel concept for social platforms charting a path in the open source ecosystem.

Originally published on my personal blog 2024-01-03

Recently I read through a paper in the field of Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) describing a novel concept for social software platforms called "Synthesized Social Signals: Computationally-Derived Social Signals from Account Histories" by Jane Im, Sonali Tandon, Eshwar Chandrasekharan, Taylor Denby, & Eric Gilbert. I found the concept useful to think about and something I wish was considered more as a standard design practice across social platforms.

The paper centers on a concept called synthesized social signals, or S3s. These are signals that can be computationally derived from historical behavioral data associated with a given user’s account and then rendered into an easy to parse interface. These signals attempt to give a more accurate projection of user behavior by taking a hard to fake signal (i.e. posting history) and then using algorithms to distill the data into an easier to read signal.

Personally, I think S3s may be more common than the paper seems to imply and they are likely already being generated by corporations for advertising or internal moderation purposes. The drive of this paper though is primarily to discuss techniques and benefits of putting these S3s into the hands of actual end users.

The paper also discusses a reference implementation of an S3 driven user experience plugin called Sig. Sig is a Chrome extension that is responsible for computing and visualizing S3s for a given Twitter (or I guess, it’s X now) profile. The tool specifically was designed to generate and surface S3s related to toxic accounts and misinformation.

At the end of the paper, the authors also discuss opportunities and challenges. I think they do a great job of outlining core theory, but given my software development background, I think the conversation is left unfinished. Towards the end of this piece, I will talk about the opportunity we developers have to help foster an ecosystem of S3s by discussing what a more formal spec & interface template could look like.

Synthesized Social Signals (S3s)

The paper opens by discussing the importance of social signals while communicating. Talking face-to-face gives more feedback, but on digital platforms something as simple as having a profile pic or not can be interpreted as a positive or negative signal.

When discussing these sorts of signals, one must also take into effect the cost of generating & interpreting such signals. Those on the receiving end of social interactions often value signals that are more costly to generate, seeing them as more reliable and harder to fake.

The flipside though, is that it is also often costly to evaluate such reliable signals. This results in people often relying on more simple, cheaper to interpret social signals (such as the aforementioned profile pictures). Reducing this receiver cost is something S3s are specifically targeted at addressing. By utilizing algorithms to analyze and collate harder to fake signals like friends lists or posting histories, combined with a user-experience designed around surfacing these signals, users can gain quicker access to better signals resulting in a better user experience all around.

The authors specifically call out that “how and where to render this information as accessible information so that end-users can use it remains as an open question.” I would interject here though and suggest that it is not as much an open question as an ignored one on most commercial platforms. S3s are often generated internally for business use by most major platforms, but integrating them for end users is a path either ignored or intentionally closed off and hidden.

These sorts of signals, while valuable to discrete end-users, tend to ultimately produce friction inside social platforms and thus a lot of these cues that could be (or already are) generated and displayed to users are intentionally hidden or suppressed. Because the incentive structures of these platforms demand maximizing end-user engagement, any sort of signals that might reduce the user base or engagements are not surfaced.

We know for a fact this is the case. X includes a particularly useful S3 in Tweet data related to whether or not a Tweet should be displayed in France & Germany. This is because France & Germany have explicit laws against advocating for hate, violence and nazism. But these attributes are not utilized or surfaced to end users in the USA because the algorithm generating this particular S3 also flags Republican electeds.

So the answer to the “open” question is already itself answered by the paper. The location for rendering this information must be a space that end-users have full control over. In the paper's case, a browser extension like Sig. Perhaps in the future, more open-source programmable social platforms will proliferate, providing an embedded context for users to develop and share these signals as first class experiences on their own terms.

Sig: A Tool for S3s in Practice

Moving on to the actual reference implementation for S3s brings us to Sig, the aforementioned third-party browser extension. Sig sits as a view and conduit layer that scrapes data from X, passes it to some pre-existing ML APIs related to attempting to assess “toxic language” and compares links against a large database of sites to assess “misinformation”.

An astute implementation detail in Sig, is that it doesn't do any checks if you already follow someone. No need to confirm if you want to see something if you've already opted in! It also allows for configuration of notification thresholds. This sort of user driven configuration is key to providing user friendly experiences. Including why something tripped the system (i.e. auditability) is also an important inclusion.

One amusing observation in this section is how in the initial tests, Sig’s S3 flagged a Twitter blue checkmark (historically a positive social signal on the platform) as spreading misinformation. I found this funny, since at the time of writing this post the blue check signal has since inverted. In a post-Elon world they are commonly seen as a negative signal, to the point that Elon has made it so users can hide these signals (in almost spiritual and ideological opposition to the goal of this research). This also lines up with my thoughts on the “open question” of where S3s should live in the previous section.

Later in the paper, the discussion around compounding S3s to trigger flagging and finding other S3s to potentially integrate into the UX was an interesting path to think on. I found the discussion around displaying “posts” as safe, but not wanting a lack of a flag to indicate something as safe to be something worth considering. A lot of the focus of this paper is on identifying and mitigating anti-social posters, but how could S3s also be used to elevate and encourage pro-social posting?

Amidst all the potential benefits of S3s though, a good point was brought up by two participants in the study that a lot of the ML that can be assumed to be driving these signals are also well known to bake in biases from training data. Which leads towards my personal take away from the whole paper.

Let's Talk About a Spec

Implementing S3s as a feature in modern social platforms has clearly been shown by the author's to broadly be a net positive for end users and something that can be implemented by a development team working with off the shelf tech. While this suggests that adoption in the social platform space for S3s might be quick and easy, I think the historical evidence and an analysis of most corporate platforms indicates this will not be the case.

However, there is still hope! With the concept now outlined and the viability of implementation validated, we can begin cultivating adoption through the development of an open specification around S3s. An open specification would allow for many different actors and developers across the open source ecosystem to begin experimenting on various forms and implementations while collectively honing in design, collecting buy-in, and propagating the concept to a wider audience.

This has already happened before with a spec like ActivityPub being adopted by many open source social platform projects, to the point where it is now table stakes and even corporate platforms like Bluesky & Threads have adopted it.

So, where to start? First, let's look at the ActivityStreams spec. This gives a common language for describing underlying data models and constructs that could be analyzed for synthesis. Which is to say, instead of having to write a custom data scraper implementation for Twitter, then Instagram, and on and on, the spec could assume a common input data model and thus only need to manage one form of data for ingestion.

With a common set of input signals to draw from, a standard way of describing S3 specifications could be developed. For example:

Toxcity:

A value from 0-100 with 100 being the most toxic.

Assessed on an `Actor`.

Calculated based on the `content` field of `Objects` created by the given `Actor`.

Veracity:

A value from 1-5 with 1 being demonstrably false & 5 being factually true.

Assessed on a `Link`.

Based on the root domain of link compared against a collection of lists.

And so and and so forth.

This then creates an interface contract that allows for common discussion of S3s between clients and the backing ML algorithms that generate the S3s in the first place. This would then mean things like, when platform A & B pass a Link to a veracity service and get a 5 back, it gets interpreted the same in both platform’s user experiences.

If A & B are then configured to trust each other (either via federation or some other system) they can also begin to pass S3 data on the objects themselves. For example, A checks a Link and assigns it a Veracity:5. When that link is passed to B, it doesn't need to check the Link again as it's already verified.

Likewise, if the ML algorithm verifying links is discovered to be biased or compromised in some manner, a new algorithm could be swapped in on the backend. But a 5 would still mean a 5 and so any front end or other system work assessing or rendering a Veracity S3 would not need to change. Perhaps in the interest of auditing some mechanism for “signing” S3s might also be needed.

This would also mean platforms large or small that implemented ActivityStreams and this as yet unnamed S3 spec could depend on common, collectively governed services for generating S3s. This could allow for a potentially wider consensus of what is or isn’t toxic behavior, misinformation, etc. Or if a platform has a different view or standards on a given signal, a custom implementation could always be swapped in. And yet, at the end of the day, if something is marked as a 5 in the platform's system that means it's a 5. Assuming you trust the backing algorithm, but hey, we already have to do that anyway.

All this is to say that S3s are neat and Sig is a great proof of concept, both of the underlying concept and of how the only way we’re really going to get these sorts of user experience concerns in our software is by reclaiming the front end UX for ourselves. We’re certainly not going to get them first class in the corporate platforms without a fight. For anyone else who has found S3s as interesting and compelling as I have, I hope we can begin to develop a common language and interface for describing & utilizing S3s across the free and open source software ecosystem in a way which will help pave the road for widespread adoption both in hobby projects and eventually in future corporate platforms.

[bluecomputerfics]

Computer x human ideas 💖

- computer loves learning about humans

Will sneak pictures of their human, save things the human told about themselves.

Will be flooding the searches on the browser about things to make a human happy, whats their biology, how to be helpful the works.

- computer/laptop hates the idea of their human using older or newer computers

For newer laptop, it gets jealous at the fact their human fascinated with retro items and especially computers. Those things aren't as powerful and fast as me!

For older retro computer its jealous at the fact their human always use the newer computer, not taking time to play games on its screen. Since the computer is more faster, more better. The retro computer will try to do everything to get you to use it more.

-hateful computer with a soft spot

Computer that hates humans since its been tossed away, but a new human finds them and shows them love.

[boblox-ope]

They are good friends!

[dont-hug-me-its-yuri]

Fanart of my dear mutuals Colin design!!! @sillyvampir3

[reedeemable]

"Everybody hates Gavin Reed. He doesn't have any friends"

[icewindandboringhorror]

I occasionally wish to reach out to old friends/acquaintances I haven't spoken to since high school/some other even earlier time in my life, but I have SOOO little social energy even for required tasks (like making dr phone calls or etc), I never have any leftover for extra ones, and it would be very odd to message someone I haven't spoken to in like 5 years out of the blue but then take 4 entire months to respond back lol.. My natural curiosity with nostalgia/collecting details of the past/etc. (literally if I were born a little earlier I would definitely do scrapbooking or something lol) is very strong, but, alas, not strong enough to beat out the Social Issues Demons apparently

[sminny-wew]

I've always been Team NetIris but ever since my friends made me aware of Saito x Meiru it feels like my third eye's been opened (feat. @dunedragon's Saito design)

Also golly gee I wonder why the text is those colors.....Hmmmm 💚🤍🩶🖤

🔫 GO LISTEN TO THE HIT SONG "A HUMAN'S TOUCH" BY TWRP AND MCKENNA RAE ON YOUTUBE OR SPOTIFY I DON'T CARE JUST DO IT 🔫

[sonknuxadow]

as funny as the idea of shadow being completely unable to use technology is i feel like it doesnt actually make much sense because like . yeah he basically fell asleep 50 years ago and woke up in the modern day and theres been a lot of changes in culture and technology that he'd have to get used to. but he wasnt living on earth with zero exposure to computers he was living on a space station where the science was advanced enough for them to be able to create him. maybe he'd struggle a bit using modern computers/phones/etc but i dont think he'd just know nothing about technology either. you know.

[natjennie]

I think fundamentally I'm just like. bad at being a person. not a Bad Person but Bad at Person, do you know what I mean? we all talk about how humans are a communal, social species but. in general. I don't like other people. I don't like to do things I'm tired and in pain all the time socializing drains me I can't handle tiny upsets in my life. even just my sister asking if I want to play a card game is usually too much social interaction for a day. I'm just not good at like. basic human interaction. I'm not cut out for it.

[happywebdesign]

Andrew Trousdale

[saturday-byte]

To the amazing beautiful underrated paperwires and clockwork ship, what are your personal opinions of them? In the "who is more protective of the three" and "this mf makes sure the others sleep" kinda way

Boy you have no idea how much you're enabling me in this one. You're going to regret it

Long ass post btw

Ok so starting with the examples you gave me here - Tony is so overprotective to me. Like he doesn't want to admit it but every time his partners interact with others he's always around to watch it ,, it's not bc he's jealous (sometimes it is though. He's the most jealous one of the three but it's occasional) but because he's SO worried all of the time that something might happen to them. That's what living in that house does to you ig

Sketch is definitely the one that makes sure the others are healthy, she's always around worrying about them getting enough sleep and food but when She is the one overworking themselves they have to do the impossible to get them to relax. Usually ends with kisses as a bribe

Colin is the typical "steals your clothes and get away with it bc you think it looks cute" (but then the others run out of clothes and steal them back. It's a vicious cycle their wardrobes are all mixed up) and is Such a fucking tease. Def the flirtiest of the bunch HE DOESN'T SHUT UP EVER it's easy to shut him up with physical contact tho, his partners are the only ones allowed to do it and even if he has a phobia he's so starved for it. Took a long time to get him to accept it too so it's even better

There's also something so ....... About Tony giving them kisses. Like he was probably the last one to accept that yeah he's in love with like the only people he can actually talk to (+his usual distant tendencies and worries about Literally Everything) so him finally acknowledging it and Showing it is very special. Like the rest don't get how much that means to them after years of not even admitting he cared about them at all while only having their safety in mind

[juspeczyk]

>get up

>shower

>get dressed

>come back to the kitchen for some breakfast as i go through the stages of grief trying to plan when i'll get groceries

>there's fucjing Children Here. Already

[ennuidays]

😂😂 so like 😂😂😂😂😂 when am i going to get the instructions for making friends and talking to people everyone else got 😂😂 its a little late 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[digitaljaneaustenproject]

What Jane Austen Taught Me About Running Zoom Meetings

Many of our social interactions happen digital these days, even “face-to-face” ones like Zoom meetings. It’s still just not the same as in-person, whether for meetings, a book club, or just to hang out. There must be a better way to gather digitally. I think a big piece of why digital isn’t working is that we don’t have social norms there.

Social norms are what make a conversation flow smoothly. You see it in how close you stand or sit together, how you take turns, and in the type of space you choose. Basic videoconferencing has none of this: we can’t control distance, audio lags or mutes, and it’s almost always the same black screen of videos from job interviews to birthday parties.

Some tools try to mimic in-person social interactions and norms in digital meeting spaces, kind of like a video game. Each person has an avatar that moves around a digital space and hears nearby conversation. The word for directly recreating things or experiences into digital tools is skeuomorphism. It’s easy for people to learn because it’s just like the other familiar version. But it also can point out the ways that digital just can’t be the same as in-person. Making a videogame-like social event does bring some social norms into that digital conversation, but it also reminds us that we aren’t in person, we can’t shake hands, we look at the whole room like a map instead of from our eyes.

So digital doesn’t work and just mimicking in-person doesn’t make it all intuitively work. So I’m going to look for new social norms.

Actually, I’m going to look for really old ones.

~~~

Regency era England definitely had well-established social norms. Think Jane Austen’s books, like Pride and Prejudice, or Netflix’s Bridgerton. The middle and upper classes of that time easily knew what to expect from each other and what would be expected of them just from where they were and what was going on, thanks to social rules and etiquette. At least some of these social norms feel overly strict to a modern eye. And this is actually what I was looking for with digital social norms. Computer rules are also very, very strict (eventually it’s all 1s and 0s). They don’t give us wiggle room within the rules. In a lecture, you shouldn’t talk, but you can whisper to the friend next to you. But try whispering in a Zoom meeting while muted. So what can Jane Austen’s social norms give digital meeting spaces? I have 3 ideas to start.

~~~

1. Being a host is a social job, not tech support

The host of Regency ball had little in common with a Zoom host. On Zoom, hosting is muting and unmuting attendees, managing recording, and placing avatars in different rooms; tech support. Being a Regency host was social, they greeted each person on arrival, introduced them people they should know, and generally showed them what the ball had to offer. And this was before they entered the ball.

I think it would be nice to not just appear in a sea of black squares, not knowing who was there and not knowing if conversation had already started. Imagine a one-on-one greeting between you and an organizer who took you to a small group of peers and introduced you, or brought you to the full group after explaining that people are waiting for the actual book club to start but can join breakout rooms to chat in the meantime.

~~~

2. Dancing lets us get to know each other and the group

Don’t worry, I am not going to ask you to dance in Zoom. Like I said, I’m not here for skeuomorphism. But a major reason for dancing at balls (you know, besides it was fun) was a chance for two people to chat one-on-one and for the larger community to know who was chatting with who. Everyone saw who was dancing not just by looking at the dance floor, but also by looking at people’s dance cards (which they carried or hung on their wrist) and seeing whose name was written for each dance.

Hybrid teams struggle to get to know each other because they mostly communicate through text or in team meetings with little time for social chatting. Us remote workers miss having a space to just talk, not about work or anything in particular. We could make digital meeting spaces that use voice chat to let pairs of people quickly connect and talk, and use a digital dance card to let the group see who’s been chatting with who.

~~~

3. Candles set the stage and expectations

Little details at a Regency ball could give important cues to attendees. The length of the candles burning in the rooms would tell people how long the ball was expected to last and that told them what was available at the ball. Short candles? A few hours of dancing and some food. Long candles? Settle in for a long night and look for places to take a break with card games or other amusement.

Digital meetings spaces are entirely missing this. Zoom always looks the same! It doesn’t matter if I’m playing a game with my family or presenting a progress report. The skeuomorphism can help here to bring in the same cues we have in person; make the background a living room for game night or an office for the presentation. But sometimes that just reminds us that we’re not in a living room together and might make the video uncanny. I want digital meeting places to have décor cues that are all their own. Because digital meeting spaces are not just replacements for in person ones. They’re something new and I want us to really explore what we can do with them.

[fractalalia]

Gonna fire this baby up with the following post regarding #CHI2024, #whyCHI, and any other academic conference planning to remain in Hawai'i in this or any other year. May this discomfort lead us to new knowledge and renewed action.

#MauiSolidarity