Before the end of 2022, TechRxiv published a paper by Natalia Molinero, in which the winner of the Singular Alumni Grants provides an intriguing ranking of the pollution caused by the main digital platforms.
We are often unaware when we consume digital content, but platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Zoom, Netflix, Instagram, TikTok, Spotify and Amazon are some of the platforms that Natalia includes in her ranking as some of the biggest polluters. These are applications that we have all used at some point or even on a daily basis, but unfortunately their infrastructure is not designed to be environmentally friendly.
Why and how to solve this issue is explained in the paper published in TechRxiv, which stresses that a first step could be to form new video compression standards, as it is this type of digital information that takes up the most space and pollutes the most. In addition, some suggestions are made as to what these video standards should be.
You can read Natalia Molinero’s full paper at the following link.