tripu @tripu@social.cleverlibre.org

Chatting with a friend about #SocialMedia, #BigTech and #privacy (someone sceptic of the #fediverse, alternative apps or services, and ways to monetise other than #surveillance, who downplays or ignores the need to protect data and fight against #advertising).
He points out that even when the software itself is free, servers are very expensive (thus the need to either pay a lot for services or, more commonly, sell your data & consume ads). I suspect that's a feeble argument, so I looked up how “expensive” each active user is to #Twitter.
In 2019, Twitter had ~330M active users, and reported operating expenses of ~$3B. So if each active user paid a mere $10 per year for the service, Twitter could afford to never share your data, never show anybody a single ad, never tinker maliciously with trends or timelines, and still have a net profit margin of ~6%.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-active-twitter-users/
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TWTR/twitter/financial-statements

#Remarkable2, tonight I have dreamt of your (for real)… when will you be mine!?

“What [#SocialMedia companies] sell are more and more accurate predictions of our behaviour to advertisers, and as that gets more refined, you really have as close as we've ever come to #advertising being a kind of sure thing, where it really works. Even there, most people won't necessarily care about that, because if you tell them:
‘Listen, the thing you really thought you wanted, and went out and bought — you were played by the company. The company placed an ad with #Facebook, and FB delivered it to you because you were the perfect target of that ad.’
I think the person can, at the end of the day, own all of that process and just subsume it with their satisfaction at having bought the thing they now actually want.
‘I wanted a new Prius. Right? I mean, it was time. I needed a new car.’”

— #SamHarris, #MakingSense podcast, https://samharris.org/podcasts/218-welcome-cult-factory/ [subscriber edition]

To mention #Fukushima in the same breath as #Hiroshima is like discussing controlled explosions in mines together with bombs planted by the IRA: completely different phenomena, derived from radically opposed approaches, with very different outcomes; both just happen to be related to the same area of research in science and technology.
#nuclear

…and here, #DouglasMurray urges the “silent majority” to stop being silent and to face the illiberal mob with courage.
I see a common pattern among the intelligent commentators.
#IdentityPolitics #woke

http://podcasts.joerogan.net/podcasts/douglas-murray-2

That explains why I just got a transfer of $18,160.23 and two hundred boxes of lollipops in the mail from you.

Here [subscriber edition], #JohnMcWhorter encourages honest #Americans to be brave to stand their ground against the mob of the “elect” (generally well-intentioned #progressives caught up in the new religion of #IdentityPolitics), to politely express disagreement, and to resist the urge to try to reason with them (it's futile) and instead let the petty scandal of the day dissolve by itself.

Listening to the conversation, I was thinking I should extend that pessimistic, if also liberating, piece of advice to my own country (#Spain) and to other topics beside #racism (#sexism, #EconomicInequality, #nationalism), and try to apply it myself — if nothing else, for my own sanity.

https://samharris.org/podcasts/217-new-religion-anti-racism/

Melomaniac like me?
Mistrustful like me of #Shazam and their use of your mic and your data?
Can't be bothered to keep an app just for identifying music you hear?

https://www.aha-music.com/ just helped me find
https://soundcloud.com/erasedtapes/rival-consoles-vibrations-on-a-string

@gasull
I think that within secular, liberal, parliamentary democracies, that distinction between monarchies and republics is moot. Switzerland could very well have a King and be as prosperous as it is, and I don't think replacing the King of Norway with a President would change much, either…

@gasull
I took that to mean that #capitalism and #markets tend inherently towards #cronyism *as long as there is central power to grab*, ie when there is a government to be lobbied and there are laws that can be distorted.
Of course among the different types of government, autarchies and oligarchies will be very crony (almost by definition), while democracies should be less corruptible. In anarcho-capitalist societies and minarchist states, on the other hand, capitalists simply would have no government institutions to bend to their will.
So the point, I think, is that if we want both capitalism and democracy, we have to be on guard against that danger.

This. This all the time.

On #FakeNews and #DeepFakes (and #PersonalResponsibility!):

“It's not really the #journalists that are being taken in by things. It's readers. […] The only solution that I could imagine is some kind of new norm by readers. That is, by consumers of media. Right now, I don't get a sense that people feel much shame when they find out that they've been had. If you share a video […] and it turned out not to be real, then: ‘yeah, too bad’. […] I would certainly like more of a burden to be placed on readers. That is, if you're not going to feel ashamed about that kind of thing, then I would hope that the people you shared it to, encourage you to feel that shame. […] I don't see the #media as being the problem here.”

— #GraemeWood, on the #MakingSense podcast (in the subscriber version)

https://samharris.org/podcasts/216-september-3-2020/