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Although most readers may not be interested in the sources, providing links to original research (or data, here) in commentaries on technical or scientific topics would be inexpensive, and useful for some.

On the cited trend, data may be accessed at https://web.archive.org/web/20250503204133/https://www.newyorkfed.org/research/college-labor-market#--:explore:unemployment (archived version; spreadsheet https://web.archive.org/web/20250504102104/https://www.newyorkfed.org/medialibrary/Research/Interactives/Data/college-labor-market/College-labor-data tab "unemployed" → difference "All workers" vs "Recent graduates").

E.g. the unemployment ratio between recent graduates vs all workers may be plotted for comparison

2/

On the other hand, the commentary (https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-ai-jobs-crisis-is-here-now) notes

"Firms are hiring fewer grads into white collar jobs, and using more AI. [...] Young grads are typically among the easiest to employ; they’re skilled, ambitious, and will work for cheap. Yet the recent grad-gap—the “difference between the unemployment of young college graduates and the overall labor force”—is higher than it’s been in four decades."

On the mentioned trend: https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F5892e347-e836-4fdd-8d2c-03d12393fe79_1300x1162.png
(see https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/04/job-market-youth/682641/)

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Commentary by @brianmerchant (noted by @baldur: https://toot.cafe/@baldur/114443358373790490)

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-ai-jobs-crisis-is-here-now

On the one hand, the so-called #GenerativeAI appears as "not yet the one-size-fits-all agent of job replacement its salesmen would like it to be—far from it. A recent SalesForce survey reported on by the Information show that only one-fifth of enterprise AI buyers are seeing good results, and that 61 % of respondents report a disappointing return on investment for AI or even none at all"

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#References (3)

[5] Hinds, J., Williams, E.J., Joinson, A.N., 2020. “It wouldn’t happen to me”: privacy concerns and perspectives following the Cambridge Analytica scandal. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 143, 102498+. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2020.102498
(free access version: https://hdl.handle.net/1983/f6b54d4c-8afc-4aa2-a859-1699501e5d2f)

#DOI

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#References (2)

[3] Heawood, J., 2018. Pseudo-public political speech: democratic implications of the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Information Polity 23 (4), 429–434. https://doi.org/10.3233/IP-180009

[4] Dawson, J., 2021. Microtargeting as information warfare. The Cyber Defense Review 6 (1), 63–80. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26994113

#DOI

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#References

[1] Cadwalladr, C., Graham-Harrison, E., 2018. Revealed: 50 million Facebook profiles harvested for Cambridge Analytica in major data breach. The Guardian 89yba+. https://purl.org/INRMM-MiD/z-IZIKUI4L

[2] The Guardian, 2018. Cambridge Analytica whistleblower: “We spent $1m harvesting millions of Facebook profiles”. In: YouTube. Google Inc., California, United States. https://purl.org/INRMM-MiD/z-ZJTHYRXE

#PersistentURL

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Hinds et al. [5] found "that people believe that they are resistant to persuasive communications, they lack understanding of how targeted advertising works, and do not realise that their privacy can be violated through subtle, indirect ways (via their own and others’ data)"

"lacked understanding [...] that their personal information could be inferred from others within their networks. [...] all participants believed they would be immune to any attempts to persuade/influence their behaviour"

6/

Christopher Wylie [2]
"And then they see that and they click it [...] until they start to think something differently [...] you are whispering in the ear of each and every voter and you may be whispering one thing to this voter and another thing to another voter"

"if you want to change politics you first have to change culture because politics flows from culture. [...] if you want to change culture, you first have to understand what the units of culture are. People are the units of culture"

5/

Christopher Wylie on the technique (video [2]) "to combine microtargeting, which had existed in politics, [...]" by adding "new constructs from psychology so that we wouldn't just be targeting you as a voter, we would be trageting you as a personality" [...]

"we will then be collecting a lot of data on people so that we could build a psychological profile of each voter" [...]
"Whatever we think this target profile will be receptive to, we will create content on the Intenet for them to find"

4/

[4] continues noting: "microtargeting allows individual-level messaging to be deployed to influence voting behavior and is able to be leveraged for more insidious dis/misinformation"

"The main difference between political microtargeting and military information operations is who is doing the targeting and who is the target"

"In advertising, the goal is to motivate someone to [...] take action related to the sale of a product. What happens when these tools are used for darker purposes?" [4]

3/

[4] on "the alarm over targeted influence operations enabled by #SocialMedia companies since at least 2016":

"less understood is the digital #surveillance economy underlying these platforms and how this economic structure of trading free access for data collection about individuals’ lives poses a national #security threat"

Citing Shoshana Zuboff definition of "surveillance capitalism [which] unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioral data" [4]

2/

A manipulation technique also known as "microtargeting": "a type of personalised communication that involves collecting information about people, and using that information to show them targeted political advertisements" [3].

[3] on #microtargeting:
- "it exploits personal data [...]
- conceals its true nature [...]
- allows [...] to make incompatible promises to different segments of the electorate". Potentially targeting #CognitiveBiases by opaque/foreign #misinformation & #disinformation

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In 2018, on March 17 the so called "#CambridgeAnalytica Files" were published by the Observer (Guardian Media Group, https://web.archive.org/web/20180318014456/https://www.theguardian.com/news/series/cambridge-analytica-files).

The journalistic investigation by Carole Cadwalladr and Emma Graham-Harrison [1] discussed one of the first examples of digital social engineering in the context of potentially subverting democratic processes via #SocialMedia and #MachineLearning techniques with custom #manipulation of each accessible individual elector.

Overview in the video [2].

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In Europe, in the context of Internet Archive Europe @stichtinginternetarchive (https://www.internetarchive.eu/brewster-kahle-on-the-future-of-internet-archive-europe-highlights-from-the-14-march-borrel/ ), @brewsterkahle underlined the concept of "Public/Collective Intelligence" noting "the importance of freely accessible knowledge across cultural and linguistic barriers"

As #redundancy of #DigitalPreservation infrastructure is becoming more and more vital, how the @stichtinginternetarchive will be able to potentially support part of this redundancy may matter even more

17/

The interview (https://www.kqed.org/news/12031980/what-happens-if-the-internet-archive-goes-dark ) to @brewsterkahle continues:

"those who control the past control the present, those who control the present control the future. The idea of a #library is part of an ecosystem of how society remembers. That’s how it thinks of itself. If you were to erase the #InternetArchive and the libraries, which is in many ways happening now, then we will live in a danger of having people be able to recast what happened"

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@brewsterkahle interview (noted by @remixtures https://tldr.nettime.org/@remixtures/114196771823446685)

https://www.kqed.org/news/12031980/what-happens-if-the-internet-archive-goes-dark

"The bigger picture [...] and the real contest is not about money, it’s actually about control. Can #libraries own anything in the digital world? Is there digital ownership?" [...] " The average life of a web page is 100 days before it’s changed or deleted. If we do not actively collect them and preserve them and keep them accessible, we’re living in the memory [hole] universe of #GeorgeOrwell"

15/

Following the full recovery after the cyberattack to @internetarchive on October 2024 and the current increasing attacks to #DigitalPreservation and #KnowledgeFreedom, worst-case scenarios unfortunately are no longer unthinkable. While planning, maybe they should be considered as entirely possible instead.

The context is changing, and preserving our fragile #DigitalCulture may require an ever-deeper awareness of the possible failures for core foundations until recently taken for granted

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2025/feb/20/bolivia-chiquitania-wildfires-climate-crisis-drought-food-shortages-health-disease-women-sexual-violence

*[Bolivians] battle food shortages and health issues after [40,000 square miles] of forest and farmland burned last year.* By comparison, the notorious and destructive "camp" fire in northern California burned 240 square miles, and the Eaton fire in Altadena burned around 22 square miles.

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On short-term diversification of #science digital infrastructure, by @hildabast:
https://absolutelymaybe.plos.org/2025/02/14/what-if-we-cant-rely-on-pubmed/

@petersuber cites [5] within a wider perspective:
https://fediscience.org/@petersuber/114049325508464883

#References

[4] Cromer, A., 1993. Uncommon sense: the heretical nature of science. Oxford University Press, New York, United States. ISBN 978-0-19-508213-5
https://archive.org/details/uncommonsenseher0000crom/page/204/mode/2up?q=%22science+is+a+new+factor+in+human+existence+that+goes+against+the%22

[5] Goodman, D., 2025. Science must step away from nationally managed infrastructure. The Transmitter. https://doi.org/10.53053/XHFX8483

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@neuralreckoning further comments [5]

"In the short term, we should try to use a more diverse range of services located in multiple countries. [...] In the longer term, we need to build out robust infrastructure [...] Any single point of failure makes #science fragile. Instead, we need multiple organizations across as many countries as possible, collectively providing access to overlapping data and services, so that the loss of any one or several of these doesn’t stop us from doing science"