Don Thompson @guardeddon@social.cleverlibre.org

“We notice you are using an ad blocker…”

Yes, and I notice you are using a few dozen trackers. Turn off the trackers and I will look at your ads. Until then, we are at an impass.

Boost if you're old enough to remember ZMODEM.

@idealaw

I don't think that AI generated gibberish is markedly different than $1 per hour SEO blogspam and content farm generated gibberish that we have now. Ultimately people will need to move to a web-of-trust model where the comments people see are in some way linked to the account of a human who's willing to be held accountable for the things they say.

Personally I don't even use Google anymore, because I know for a fact that the blogs that comprise all the search results do zero research and don't care if the things they say are true.

I think the solution for phone and email spam will be the same, it will be harder to float a new mailserver and possibly more expensive to send emails or make calls. 5c per call is nothing for a legitimate business, but adds up fast if you're spamming.

The challenge faced by science in the United States isn’t that scientists are awkward and bad at communication. It’s that we’re beset by propaganda and mass media channels funded by corrupt billionaires to sow confusion.

We need big, generously funded communications channels dedicated to verifiable reality. Scientists who are slightly better at talking isn’t going to cut it.

Twitter paying out $5 million to a few selected “creators” is just Musk handing out giant teddy bears to suckers in a rigged game of peach-basket. As Cory Doctorow puts it in @pluralistic:
“No one wins a giant teddy bear unless the carny wants them to win it. Why did the carny let the sucker win the giant teddy bear? So that he'd carry it around all day, convincing other suckers to put down five bucks for their chance to win one.” https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys

Remember when lots of journalists tried Mastodon but then found it too complicated, so they left? I think about that every time I read their 'analysis' of something

Such an important observation!

"Ad-driven social media platforms are willing to tolerate monumental volumes of abusive users [because] hate and fear drives engagement, and engagement drives ad impressions.

Mastodon is not an ad-driven platform. There is absolutely zero incentives to let awful people run amok in the name of engagement."

https://escapingtech.com/tech/opinions/i-was-wrong-about-mastodon-moderation.html

Ugh the worst time to need appliances.

"Our washer uses AI technology to..." oh fuck off, just fuck off

Bonus all-tiers Caturday post on Patreon featuring The Many Tales (Tails) of Totoro Life (and also murder)

https://www.patreon.com/posts/85984822

In light of growing moderation challenges at both #BlueSky and #Threads , here’s a @pluralistic classic:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/04/pick-all-three/

> The Moderator's Trilemma goes, "Large, diverse userbase; centralized platforms; don't anger users – pick any two."

> Rozenshtein proposes a solution: federation. De-siloing social media, breaking it out of centralized walled gardens and recomposing it as a bunch of small servers run by a diversity of operators with a diversity of content moderation approaches.

I’ve been looking at Obsidian as an alternative for Evernote. Looks like I will be able to migrate my various notes reasonably easily, but it’s the document management use-case I am struggling with.

I need a way to take pdf scans, ocr them to make them searchable, search them, and have a good UI to flick between the search results.

Evernote was great at this.

@weezmgk @freepeoplesfreepress

Early long-range radar systems used to use VHF before the band got too cluttered for that purpose.

So @freemo , you may have inadvertently designed a crude radar system. 🙂

This by @ethanz is as good as you would expect from him about Threads and semi-alternatives to Twitter https://ethanzuckerman.com/2023/07/07/competition-for-twitter-is-good-threads-thus-far-is-not/

Blue Marble projected onto a cube, using #blender.

The changes #Deutschlandticket has brought are *really important*

It's mostly a massive step forward

Work through some of the headaches - like complexity with bikes, or bringing along children, or subsidised tickets for some groups - and it's going to absolutely be a winner

73 days of #Deutschlandticket

I am in a webinar about it

40% of DG Regio's rail customers are using it

8% of people purchasing it are *new* to public transport

Massive increases in traffic on Sundays in particular

This is extraordinary stuff! 💪

@penguin42 @neil @ohmrun @matthew we abandoned the idea very early on (~2015 or so); the only reason we mentioned it at all was because we were thinking about telcos who are already legally obligated to implement LI (lawful intercept - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawful_interception). But given cryptographically safe LI is a contradiction in terms, we ditched it for the same reasons that we're campaigning against the OSB now.

@RussInCheshire why not just do it somewhere persistent, such as a blog that you own, and link to it from all the different Twitter-alikes? Keep control of your own content.

Sorry everyone, but I don't have time to do differently tailored versions for every social media platform. My main home is Threads (unless / until that fails or becomes as toxic as Twitter). I know, I know ... Zuckerberg. But he's gonna get your data anyway.

Anyway, I hope you can read it, but if not ... sorry, I don't have time to do it all over again on every platform.

I can see the value in proprietary apps and platforms that make it easy for users. I can also see the value in a well-kept turnpike or toll bridge.

But.

There is even greater value in open source, non-proprietary networks and protocols, just there is greater value in the public highway being open to all.

But law and policy, like politics, is the art of the possible.

Rather than building another bridge or road, removing the toll-booths on the current ones may be a good approach.