ML2 @mathlover@social.cleverlibre.org

Somewhere in Brussels, the Commission is holding an emergency meeting….#DSA https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/19/business/twitter-musk-trump-reinstate/index.html

Algorithms aren't the enemy. Chronological feeds don't scale and the signal-to-noise ratio will plummet if this ever gets popular. The real problems with today's algorithmic feeds are non-transparency, lack of choice, and optimizing for engagement instead of healthy discourse.

Open-source is a perfect opportunity to fix all this. Have there been any efforts to create a Mastodon instance with a (community governed) ranking algorithm? Is that technically feasible? Or is the idea simply anathema?

The US government still isn’t sure about #Elon Musk’s #Twitter

"Sources close to the situation told Bloomberg that the government’s asking for more details about Musk’s private agreements with the international investors who hold stakes in the company, which include Saudi Arabia’s Prince Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud and the Qatar Investment Authority. Musk’s business dealings in both Ukraine and China have also drawn concern."

https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/19/23468283/us-government-elon-musk-twitter-investigation-investors-ftc-cfius

The vile and toxic shit I've been dealing with from outtside of QOTO has put my stress levels to a point I've never expiernced before... It is effectively my health both mental and physical. I am having trouble sleeping, and is very quickly moving from anxiety to depression to a point where it is very dangerous for my health..

My blood pressure is so high right now it would be enough to get me admitted to the emergency room alone.

The really messed up part is if all these lies and toxicity wind up killing me these people are so horrible they would probably dance on my grave....

Frankly im not sure where to go from here. But I do want to say thank you foe the overwhelming support from so many of you, it helps.

Almost 180k new users joined #mastodon yesterday, a new record. This third #twitterMigration wave happened after Musk's Twitter 2.0 ultimatum to #Twitter workers. Each wave is stronger than the previous one. Here is my updated plot showing the three consecutive waves.

@TechNews This is alarmist and clickbait. 800x sounds like an insane increase until you realize that it's only 2.8% of the tested people that had any signs of potential (very mild) myocardial inflammation. Half of the people of those 2.8% had normal tropin values in their blood after only 4 days. So I think we'll be OK.

I don’t understand why people think Mastodon is difficult. It seems pretty straightforward, and the separate servers are no biggie. I’m enjoying this fresh start here, like moving to a new apartment!

Very useful information for US-based mastodon mods https://twitter.com/rahaeli/status/1593819064161665024

Great article.

"Musk thinks he bought a tech company, but he’s actually bought a community of users, and that's where its value lies..."

So says Prof Paul Bernal - Professor of Information Technology Law at the University of East Anglia School of Law.

https://eastangliabylines.co.uk/why-elon-musk-the-chief-twit-is-in-trouble/

Here's something worth quote-tooting: @leo reminds us that Spotify, Audible, iHeart, et al are trying to do to podcasting what Twitter's centralization did to public discourse online. https://twit.social/@leo/109366086440250076

A lot of folk lamenting "lack of reach" on Mastodon, but apparently failing to question what their own desire for said "reach" really means. Maybe a big ol' ego reset is just what the Internet needs

I have my own (managed by masto.host) #Mastodon instance since 4 years.

On a typical day it handles 20.000 tasks (pushing new toots, synchronising, cleaning up etc).

Yesterday it went to 500.000 tasks.

And that's just one simple single-user instance. It's almost magical how the federated, distributed network of all ActivitiyPub instances managed to survive that brutal Tsunami of yesterday.

In short: We are ready for a new and better future, free from centralised gatekeepers.

Meaningful #climate action isn’t just about cooling off the planet. It will:

✔️Promote food, energy, & water security
✔️ Protect public health
✔️ Conserve biodiversity
✔️ Address ocean acidification
✔️ Promote justice & equity
✔️ Provide economic opportunities
✔️ Prevent the emergence new diseases
✔️ Foster a more sustainable & resilient future

There’s still time. 🌍 Not much.

How the story ends: Musk reinstates Trump after a 52/48 vote. Trump tweets once, the resulting outrage causes a traffic surge, which the now horribly under resourced site can't cope with, it falls over and no one is left to get it back online. Trump kills Twitter.

As the Amazing Criswell put it, we are all interested in the future, because that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.

"In 2012, computer theorist Ben Goertzel proposed what he called the “robot university student test”, arguing that an AI capable of obtaining a degree in a same ways as a human should be considered conscious.

Goertzel’s idea – an alternative to the more famous “Turing test” – might have remained a thought experiment were it not for the successes of AIs employing natural language processing (NLP): most famously, GPT-3, the language model created by the OpenAi research laboratory."

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/nov/19/full-on-robot-writing-the-artificial-intelligence-challenge-facing-universities

The E-Book Wars - https://www.npr.org/2022/11/09/1135639385/libraries-publishers-ebooks-e-books-macmillan-protest-amazon-bezos details of the sad story of how publishers betrayed #libraries and readers as they went digital can be found in my #WalledCulture; free #ebook versions here - https://walledculture.org/the-book/

The people who know nothing about tech are like

“OMG why is this simple twitter app had that many employees?
1- They could have used one Microsoft Excel file for twitter database.
2- Venmo for payroll.
3- Security badges are unnecessary because the code is not a physical object, therefore you cannot steal”

#TwitterDown #Twitter

#Mastodon features that #Twitter doesn’t have:

* Temporary muting (e.g. for a day)
* Self-verified URLs in the profile
* Hiding spoilers etc. via content warnings
* URLs must start with protocols (fewer false positives, e.g. in code).
* Everyone can edit posts (in v4+).
* No ads (which doesn’t come for free = donate if you can afford it)

More obscure: I like that you can search for post URLs to “transfer” them between accounts.

Using this platform made me realise how I came to accept exposure to cruelty & hostility as part of the deal of being able to talk to you. The clicks algorithm is not necessarily our connection master. How refreshing to be reminded of that.