Facebook has studied extremism on their platform and they disagree:
> The high number of extremist groups was concerning, the presentation says. Worse was Facebook’s realization that its algorithms were responsible for their growth. The 2016 presentation states that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and that most of the activity came from the platform’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” algorithms: “Our recommendation systems grow the problem.”
I really don't know how you solve this problem because finding people like you is like the #2 reason you even join a social network. Same with IRL social networks. I can't even imagine how much worse my life without the online queer community, it only exists at all because these kinds of algorithms connect people who would never find each other IRL because of fear and physical separation.
Plus this is a very narrow interpretation of the problem. The public discourse issues comes from friends, family, friends-of-friends sharing and spreading articles from the news, obviously fake rage-bait memes, and generally just having an audience for their opinions.
“We are relying on very fragile systems. We depend on Devine's ancient iphone 5 for navigation and for weather, and today it developed this weird bug, which scared me. My phone died early on in this trip, I'm not sure why. As I was charging it off a rechargeable battery one night, it began vibrating and would not stop! Then, I couldn't charge it anymore and the battery went flat. We've got an older phone with Navionics and Iridium mail as backup, but I worry, as I hate depending on these flimsy, buggy devices. I am angry that we didn't plan this better. We talk a lot about over-reliance on tech, yet we keep making mistakes. Though in truth, we had 3 working phones and we did not think it possible that all 3 would fail at the same time. Our safety is tied to the working of these devices and it is scary. It is dumb and I am angry.“
5 years experience web development/full stack/mobile here. 29 years old. I’ve never had a salaried job in my life. I’m able to pull down $150/hr for a couple months a year (8 hour days), $125/hr for another 6 months full time, then take a couple months off and I’m making a decent salary when it all shakes out. That’s fully remote and working for friends or friends of friends, occasionally taking a contract with a mega FAANG corp for a while, but usually working the contract with a buddy.
If you’re savvy, good at networking and self motivated, you can make money which is comparable to most full time jobs. Just gotta be careful about the taxes and make sure you save for the lean times.
I have a similar story, but my rates aren’t quite that great. What part of the country are you in and what stacks are you writing in for contracts that pay at that level? I tend to top out around 100/hr in the Midwest, just short of that post covid.
Not the OP, but the best 'tax tips' come from a tax professional in your region.
I'm in the US, and use a payroll service to pay myself a regular salary. The payroll service deducts and pays appropriate taxes and paperwork. I then also make estimated quarterly tax payments as well, to deal with any estimated overage I may earn/owe. I then pay a tax professional to reconcile everything at the start of the tax season.
Meet with a tax professional. Meet with 2 or 3. Find someone you're comfortable with who has clients like you. Or... find people like you and get referrals as to who they use.
Personally I have an offset account against my mortgage and stockpile funds there. Then live well within my means so I can handle tax when it arrives. Someone who doesn't naturally live within their means could estimate in advance and push money to a separate account to isolate it.
Don't you have to pay estimated taxes anyways? Or do you just mean within the quarter between estimated tax payments? (I am salaried and already just budget by quarter for everything)
Where I live, a salaried person will have tax automatically withheld and paid to authorities by their employer each week/fortnight. Someone self-employed usually has an estimate they pay quarterly or monthly, and then adjustments at the end of the financial year if the situation has varied from the estimate. I'm just saying I stockpile between tax bills (holding the cash against my mortgage to minimise interest) and my general style of living/spending means I can just redraw from the mortgage to make tax payments.
You don’t _have_ to pay estimated taxes. If you choose not to you just pay a penalty at tax time (essentially interest on what you didn’t pay throughout the year). It’s up to you to decide if it’s worth it. I freelanced for a few years and just paid the penalty because I didn’t want to spend time thinking about taxes more than once a year. For how much I was making at the time I was fine with this trade off.
