pino83

Social media poisoned society in a tricky way. Like some drug. Until now, people are addicted enough that even at HN, you cannot, have a deep and honest discussion about it. Discuss with chain smokers how healthy smoking is; it's going to be a very similar discussion.

And that doesn't even include the particular problems of "centralized" social media, where some oligarchs control which posts go up and which go down.

If you expect any particularly clever reaction from that society, for anything, you'll be quite disappointed. If you want that your friends constantly bug you with what they found on Instatoktube (a.k.a. 'indirect influencers') and not much more beyond that, this is absolutely what society can give you, though.

Yeah, people begin to understand... Nice...

I can remember times when, in FOSS forums or audiences like here, it was veeeery unpopular to not praise Facebook, Google, etc.

That's good news! You (<- i mean: people) make some actual progress!

PS: Well, I know, this isn't happening because you got smarter. There are some external factors that force you to understand. A bit more with every day. But, anyways; it's progress!

Everyone with a Meta account is either right-wing or a "useful idiot" (that's the common term, right?).

People give away our planet and our souls to Facebook since decades now. Everyone knew someone who was uncomfortable with that and who asked whether a little less Facebook wouldn't be more healthy. These ones got ignored.

So, well, I don't like fascists. But if Facebook now makes use of the fact that you gave our world to them, it's hard to blame them for that.

People failed in that regard. Not Facebook. They succeeded. People failed.

Is this basically the real story about Facebook, but fitted into some AI context to make it more exciting?

That's at least how it begins.

I'll maybe read some more of it in the evening...

I'll tell you a secret: I'm actually using only MS Edge on my corporate machine. Although some months ago they began to roll-out Firefox as well (for whatever reason).

I don't care. On that machine, there is NOTHING going on that I own (all of that is the IP of someone else).

Such a machine, with Windows, MS Teams, MS Whatsoever, Symantec Whatsoever, Cloud Office, Cloud Ticket System, Cloud Wiki, ..., ..., ... doesn't get more trustworthy just by using Firefox. They run a continuous MitM attack against all https connections that I make (and a lot of your employers do the same)!!! You can polish turds, but you cannot make that environment a trustworthy one.

I would never touch that machine for anything remotely "personal". On the other hand, for work, I don't care. I'll use the default browser, and if the default browser is MS Edge, I'll not spend ANY effort into working around it. That wouldn't be "passionate", but just stupid imho. YMMV of course depending on the employer and other factors.

And if there is a page full of ads, and it overwhelms me too much, well, I'll make a walk to the coffee machine and come back when I'm ready for it. It's that easy.

Good news for them.

For the first time in history, the Reddit community is actually useful. And they don't even have to change anything. Just be "the Reddit community". Always with a self confidence three levels higher than the underlying substance allows. Threads that go deeper and deeeeeper and deeeeeeeeeper without ever carrying anything of actual value.

Future scientist will find out: Most of the weaknesses AI has come from Reddit, Instagram and Youtube being part of the training material. Sure it makes the training material broader by a large degree. But not deeper, to say it nicely.

Maybe not everyone is happy with these stupid cat and mouse games.

> They have to choose, safe harbor provisioning or responsibility for the content.

Since two decades they decide what goes up and what goes down, by means of their algorithms. And basically nobody complained so far (well, around 12 people on earth did - one of them is me).

It was completely okay for you since then. It was never a big topic. You were absolutely fine with that.

And now they just went one step further and removed something completely because they disliked it (well, who knows how often they already did, but it just never went public enough?!).

... and that's not even stupid. Because they know one thing that some of you didn't realize yet: You'll have forgotten it in a week as soon as public attention moves to next week's big bummer.

why shouldn't it be up to Meta what content they remove from their website?

It's not even their fault that you misunderstand Facebook as a public space since two decades. It isn't. It never was. It's a commercial website. They let you upload your pointless vacation photos. That's basically it.

That's clear. But with using Facebook for public discourse, you flushed all ideas about democratic societies down the toilet. Democratic societies should have their public discourse in public places. Not in commercial walled gardens owned by some US maniacs.

But we are talking about Meta removing content from their own website, right?

In contrast to what people think, Facebook IS NOT public infrastructure.

If Meta removes some content from Meta website, and you don't like that, it's a you problem, right?

The opposite. Influencers need medication. Desperately. Against their stupid and dangerous sin. It would even help all the others around them.

The next cat and mouse game you are going to lose.

Yes, I like the analogy. Even if you don't agree with "Nazi", it makes the illustration quite obvious:

There is a bar that scares you off so much that you wouldn't even go in. So there must be something fundamentally wrong with it. It's not just not your favorite beer, but you absolutely avoid even to enter. There must be a strong reason for that, right?

What people are then important enough to watch through the windows? I mean, at first, you just make a fool of yourself. Just imagine the analogy. That's exactly xcancel and friends, right? And then, don't forget: These people explicitly do not share your view in a matter fundamental and important enough for you to not enter the bar.

Are they friends? I can't imagine friendships with these differences really need that deep devotion.

Are they politicians? Maybe there are enough media around you that already preprocess the conversations at the Nazi bar for you?

Wider community (around your job, hobby, ...)? That's probably the most challenging one. But still, wouldn't it be definitely the goal to push them to better places? I know it's not a matter of a day or two, but why couldn't we at least agree on that goal, and then start acting in some way?

btw: This is not specific to X or Musk imho. There are other networks out there that aren't in control of such a madman today, but they share a lot of problematic properties.

Are these cat and mouse games (that you are about to lose atm) maybe an indicator that something is wrong with it?

Or should things be like that?

Not because this is also my opinion (I have a lot of opinions that people don't share, and I completely don't care, believe me!), but for deeper reasons, I'd love to understand why this is so unpopular, although it's absolutely what every sane person would do in everyday cases.

My only explanation would be to imagine all down-voters as chain smokers when they get involved into discussions whether smoking is a good thing.

A good idea would be: Make a decision. A trade-off.

Either these people are important enough to you, and you don't disfavor the platform soo much. Then visit that platform.

Or you dislike the platform so much that you even wonder why these people are there. You definitely don't want to be in contact with the platform. If so, then give up these people.

There's no free lunch, right? You also (typically) cannot buy steak, but then somehow not pay the money by showing some fake credit card. That would typically involve crime, right?

Make decisions, guys!!! Make decisions!

Your cat and mouse games are embarrassing...

And that doesn't get better in any way just by downvoting me. ;) ;) ;)

Well, there's X.com for that.

There is no reason for xcancel to exist.

Either you cancel X. Meaning: NOT consuming X content.

Or you just visit X.com.

Right? Right?

Heeey, our mobile networks are much less shitty than our railway services! :)

Anyways, in such cases, I would try to get more competent hardware, instead of proudly advertize it in my email signature. Also, yeah, she was as competent as our mobile networks or our railway. When I subscribed the contract, she was making fun of another tenant who failed transferring money and then came with lame excuses like 'the bank account number was invalid'. In a very unfriendly German rich grandma way of making fun. Turned out when I tried to transfer the first rent: The bank account number was invalid... Well... At least she was precise with the mobile phone she had (not so much with its spelling, though). :)

Okay, what other catchy term instead of "president" would you suggest?

But people (around me at least) feel bad when they have to compose an entire sentence full of words without any brand names or corporate names inside. They feel like being separated from their mother or like they lost basic orientation when not in each sentence there is "an uber", or "my instagram", or "a youtuber", "a whatsapp", ..., ..., ...

The email signature of my former landlord was like that:

..... Phone: 012345 I-Phone: 543210

Funnily, that wasn't some US girlie, but a German grandma. Maybe she got some bad US food on some journey and it made her brain rot away. Yessss, of course, as a bonus, it's a somewhat uncommon way spelling... But, yeah...

You let Facebook pass... What to expect?

If you'd take the Gates email and give them to my colleagues, saying "this was some random guy complaining about Windows", they'd all react along the lines of "Well, that's just an idiot who makes things up because he's bored and hates Windows. There are good reasons for everything he complained about. He just reports it in a quite dramatized way."

Gold is also absolutely silent. ;)

But I like it a lot... My personal fitness level is just enough to bring me to my car, though... ^^ And I know that's bad... Keep cycling! ;)

Then you are not a "biker". You just ride a motorcycle. (The most major) Part of being a biker is to disrupt with noise. Or why do the machines (typically) get louder and louder with the price tag? Because technology doesn't know a way to do better? Sure... Vote me down, but don't ask me to be naive. The major part of that hobby is to be unpleasantly loud in public spaces (the more people around the better).

Sure - they even unselfishly share all their noises with as much people as possible. As much as the engine can produce (i.e. better be a rich biker, then you can make your engine share a lot more or it).

The Internet began to break at the same day you gave it away to Jeff Zuckermusk.

NOW people start to complain. And it's quite transparent why. ;)