davehtaylor

“U.S. District Judge John Broomes suggested in his ruling Tuesday that the Biden administration must now consider whether forcing compliance remains “worth the effort.””

YES, yes it fucking is worth it. JFC these ghouls

On a policy level, if we are to bring about a more harmonious Internet (and civil society), we will likely have to tackle wealth inequality and make our political institutions more democratic.

Really burying the lede there.

Another big factor is a lack of moderation, as well as the things that get platformed. People sit and stew in a broth of violent, hateful rhetoric all day long because platforms not only allow that kind of content, but massively profit from it. We seriously need social media companies, podcast apps, YouTube and other video hosting sites, etc. to step the fuck up and deplatform misinformation, disinformation, bigotry, hatemongering, and ragebait. Do not give it light. Do not give it oxygen. Smother it. Ban it. And be extremely aggressive about it. You wanna cry about censorship? Go ahead. But the first amendment doesn’t apply to private companies, and you are also free to setup your own website/service/app/whatever and spew your own bile there.

We further need social media companies to change their algorithms to prevent them from rewarding inflammatory posts. People want to have millions of followers and be big stars on the web, and ragebait, lies, and misinformation are perfect ways to do that. It’s gets you to the top of the heap because there’s no such thing as a “bad” click. You still watched it. You still replied (even if to refute it). And that gave it a boost. That shit has to stop. The entire social landscape is built on top of this inflammatory foundation.

Exactly.

Also far, far more often than not, when someone talks about “corrupt banking systems” they’re about two steps away from quoting The Protocols.

It’s all Libertarian/anarcho-captialist pablum, pushed by people who think society was a bad idea

It’s SO much easier and quicker to say than L-G-B-T-Q-I-A+. When in company that I know its ok with it, I just say “queer community”, but I know not everyone has accepted the reclamation of that word. Which I get. I’m totally good with queer, but hearing the f-slur sets off my fight-or-flight responses

I have such a mess of opinions about Drag Race. I’m glad that it brought the idea of drag to the mainstream so that people understand that drag performers aren’t the kind of monsters that right wingers make them out to be. But in a lot of ways, I feel like it’s done more harm than good to the trans community. With the constant conflation between trans and drag, and also the fact that Ru Paul is a fucking asshole who’s not at all supportive of the trans community, it’s hard to see it in a positive light.

I also just hate reality competition shows, especially in a scene that should be so much more supportive and uplifting and cooperative, rather than competitive.

Some of the pictures people see of the big book burning fests that happened in Germany in the 1930s weren’t generalized events. One of them was the Nazis specifically destroying the works of Magnus Hirschfeld, who ran the Institute for Sexual Research, that studied sexuality and gender issues and provided the earliest instances of gender affirming care. They sacked the institute, destroyed it, and burned all of the material there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnus_Hirschfeld

This is to say: trans people have always been here. And nearly a century later, the destruction of this institute has been widely forgotten.

And people don’t even realize that cis people have it too! My BiL was recently talking about taking Cialis and Testosterone. I have a niece that just got breast implants and other cosmetic procedures. People going through menopause take hormones. Cis children with precocious puberty take puberty blockers so they don’t have to go through that at 8 or 9 years old. And cis people don’t have the self-reflection to realize that these are all gender-affirming care.

Because federation is a mess, and doesn’t really solve the problem. There’s no quick elevator pitch that non-technical people can understand, on-boarding is painful, and even if you as the publisher understand it, your audience may not.

Exactly.

SCOTUS justices need to be elected and have term limits. Give them three total 4 year terms max.

EDIT: I know this would take a Constitutional amendment to change, which given our current political climate, is functionally impossible

1. The largest code contributors to Linux are corporate contributions
2. Regular people who contribute to OSS do so as a passion project, as a hobby, and have other unrelated jobs that pay the bills. Those people still have to make a living, they’re just not doing it from their software contributions. Journalism isn’t a hobby and you can’t work a day job and still be an effective journalist. News orgs don’t come together as hobby projects.

I’m not defending advertising. I hate it and think it’s ruined the web. I’m just addressing the analogy here wrt Linux.

How do we welcome these contributions while lowering risk?

We don’t. These contributions should not be welcomed. At all. And they bring nothing BUT risk.

Hear fucking hear.

This has nothing to do with realizing the technology promise of the 90s, or “lowering barriers to entry,” or user freedom, and everything to do with clear-cutting the entire technology scene. Handing everything over to LLMs isn’t the way to fight the corps, because they’re going to take those same tools, and destroy incalculable numbers of developer careers, destroy software quality, and anything else they can, just so they can pad their bottom line. And we will be significantly worse off for it.

Also, I am so fucking sick of language like “I don’t want this power to be constrained to a priesthood who know the secret language of coding.” OP sounds like those people who think artists are “gatekeeping” art, and that AI image generators are “democratizing” art. It’s so fucking disingenuous and gross. No one is gatekeeping anything. Anyone can pick up a pencil, or download a free drawing app and make art. Just like anyone can follow countless numbers of free YouTube vids and online tutorials to learn how to be an Android dev. There’s no fucking priesthood or soldier at the gate preventing anyone from doing anything.

This whole article is nothing but AI/LLM apologietics wrapped up in FLOSS language.