If it's true that there's a bunch of FBI agents working at twitter, then it's time to disband the FBI and refer a whole bunch of them to local law enforcement for prosecution.
Forget about the political side of things for a minute. Twitter is in the middle of a lawsuit right now where they refused to take down child porn. They are actively defending refusing to take down child porn. If the FBI has infiltrated an organization at the same time that that organization is actively refusing to remove child porn, and is defending lawsuits to defend its right to not take down child porn after it's been reported, then those FBI agents are either complicit or actively colluding to make it happen.
Forget about the political side of things for a minute. Twitter is in the middle of a lawsuit right now where they refused to take down child porn. They are actively defending refusing to take down child porn. If the FBI has infiltrated an organization at the same time that that organization is actively refusing to remove child porn, and is defending lawsuits to defend its right to not take down child porn after it's been reported, then those FBI agents are either complicit or actively colluding to make it happen.
And another thing! (sorry)
If we cared as much about public transportation and sustainable transportation as we pretend to, we have another 100 year old technology that worked just fine forever -- the electric streetcar. for places you don't want to install tracks, another 100 year old technology: The trackless trolley. Not only could we make these relatively cheaply, we could do it using non-exotic materials we can get from the countries we live in instead of using slave labor to mine rare earth minerals in dictatorships!
Nooooo, we need some special super sexy battery bus with seven figures of fancy metals we have to mine with child slaves on the moon because who wants to use practical, proven technology when we can pretend the past didn't exist so we have to create everything using technology that may someday be there if only we just invest another 6 trillion dollars!
If we cared as much about public transportation and sustainable transportation as we pretend to, we have another 100 year old technology that worked just fine forever -- the electric streetcar. for places you don't want to install tracks, another 100 year old technology: The trackless trolley. Not only could we make these relatively cheaply, we could do it using non-exotic materials we can get from the countries we live in instead of using slave labor to mine rare earth minerals in dictatorships!
Nooooo, we need some special super sexy battery bus with seven figures of fancy metals we have to mine with child slaves on the moon because who wants to use practical, proven technology when we can pretend the past didn't exist so we have to create everything using technology that may someday be there if only we just invest another 6 trillion dollars!
The problem with "transitioning" is that it's all for show. These people don't care about the environment. If they did, they'd be pushing for the solutions we know work today. Instead they're chasing magic environmentalism boxes that don't work but "if only we could pour more money into this bet, maybe we'd win someday!"
If they cared, there'd be a hard push for hydroelectric in places that have the geography for it. Instead, there's been a hard push against hydroelectric.
In Canada, every province has geography that can support massive hydroelectric. British Columbia, Manitoba, and Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador are exclusively hydroelectric. Those four provinces have incredibly low power rates such that people don't bother burning fossil fuels to heat their homes, and a lot of industry that would otherwise burn fossil fuels for energy can use carbon neutral renewable electricity. Not only do these provinces create enough electricity to make it cheap and practical for themselves, they usually export green power to surrounding jurisdictions! Imagine that -- so much renewable power it spills into places around it that would otherwise be burning fossil fuels!
Meanwhile, Ontario has been chasing expensive and impractical solutions for decades. First nuclear which does provide electrical power but it's very expensive and there's lots of asterisks next to that "Carbon Neutral", and then wind and solar. Electricity rates have shot up so high that electricity is not an option at all for heating one's home in many cases, and many people who have electrical heat have installed fossil fuel burners in their homes. The "Global adjustment charge" that is paying for all this wind and solar has massively driven up power to the point that there's a huge boom in in-situ fossil fuel powered electric generators because it's cheaper to run generators at times than to pay the global adjustment charge.
"Maybe Ontario doesn't have the geography for it?" That's dumb (person in my head who argues with me sometimes). Northern Manitoba and Northern Quebec are extremely similar to Northern Ontario(incl. Northwestern Ontario), there's tons of places we could build dams. They just don't want to, because it's not a politically exciting solution.
But making people's lives better and installing proven century-old technology and making the whole world better thereby is boring, and magic environmentalism boxes get us butt pats from southern California, so to hell with it -- more solar!
If they cared, there'd be a hard push for hydroelectric in places that have the geography for it. Instead, there's been a hard push against hydroelectric.
In Canada, every province has geography that can support massive hydroelectric. British Columbia, Manitoba, and Quebec, and Newfoundland and Labrador are exclusively hydroelectric. Those four provinces have incredibly low power rates such that people don't bother burning fossil fuels to heat their homes, and a lot of industry that would otherwise burn fossil fuels for energy can use carbon neutral renewable electricity. Not only do these provinces create enough electricity to make it cheap and practical for themselves, they usually export green power to surrounding jurisdictions! Imagine that -- so much renewable power it spills into places around it that would otherwise be burning fossil fuels!
Meanwhile, Ontario has been chasing expensive and impractical solutions for decades. First nuclear which does provide electrical power but it's very expensive and there's lots of asterisks next to that "Carbon Neutral", and then wind and solar. Electricity rates have shot up so high that electricity is not an option at all for heating one's home in many cases, and many people who have electrical heat have installed fossil fuel burners in their homes. The "Global adjustment charge" that is paying for all this wind and solar has massively driven up power to the point that there's a huge boom in in-situ fossil fuel powered electric generators because it's cheaper to run generators at times than to pay the global adjustment charge.
"Maybe Ontario doesn't have the geography for it?" That's dumb (person in my head who argues with me sometimes). Northern Manitoba and Northern Quebec are extremely similar to Northern Ontario(incl. Northwestern Ontario), there's tons of places we could build dams. They just don't want to, because it's not a politically exciting solution.
But making people's lives better and installing proven century-old technology and making the whole world better thereby is boring, and magic environmentalism boxes get us butt pats from southern California, so to hell with it -- more solar!
Southern Ontario is the only reason the balance of powers in Canada looks like it does, and to me Southern Ontario is culturally not Canadian, but New York.
It would be funny if they either taxed corporations like they taxed people (almost all income is income, pay for essentials with post-tax dollars), or if they taxed people like corporations (only the money left after paying essentials is taxed).
Most people act as if global digital communications started with the Internet, but it didn't. Prior to the Internet being widely commercially available, there were a number of commercial networks one could sign up for. The biggest were Compuserve, Prodigy, and America Online. They were proprietary, and if the stuff you wanted on one wasn't there, you'd have to just subscribe to another.
The Internet ended up growing in popularity, and the world wide web made things more accessible starting in 1991. Now, everything would live on one network.
Having a standardized platform that ISPs could compete on price, service quality, and so on caused a revolution such that today most people have numerous Internet connections. It was great for the consumer, and the companies made out OK, but they never had a chance to become massive world monopolies on Information.
I feel like this is analogous to where the Internet needs to be going in terms of services now. Instead of having massive monolithic platforms owned and operated by one company, we should have a shared protocol like ActivityPub that allows people to choose whichever service they desire, and then instead of competing by locking away content or users, sites would have to compete on UX, speed, brand, business model, or even moderation(There's no reason why the same AI moderation done to users couldn't block messages coming through the activitypub pathway just the same).
Yes, it means that you can't become the world's largest company by monopolizing a section of the population, but as we saw with the Internet, it means a huge explosion in overall investment and innovation since you can't just rest on your laurels just because you're self-sustaining.
The Internet ended up growing in popularity, and the world wide web made things more accessible starting in 1991. Now, everything would live on one network.
Having a standardized platform that ISPs could compete on price, service quality, and so on caused a revolution such that today most people have numerous Internet connections. It was great for the consumer, and the companies made out OK, but they never had a chance to become massive world monopolies on Information.
I feel like this is analogous to where the Internet needs to be going in terms of services now. Instead of having massive monolithic platforms owned and operated by one company, we should have a shared protocol like ActivityPub that allows people to choose whichever service they desire, and then instead of competing by locking away content or users, sites would have to compete on UX, speed, brand, business model, or even moderation(There's no reason why the same AI moderation done to users couldn't block messages coming through the activitypub pathway just the same).
Yes, it means that you can't become the world's largest company by monopolizing a section of the population, but as we saw with the Internet, it means a huge explosion in overall investment and innovation since you can't just rest on your laurels just because you're self-sustaining.
I'm also aware that if you're going between platforms you can export your user list as a csv file and import on the other side. I did something similar when I migrated from friendica to pleroma.
We've seen time and time again that people assume that their ideals are the majority so they call for democracy because they think their ideals would be the winners if everyone got to vote on it.
The hard part about freedom is accepting that others have it, and the hard thing about democracy is that a lot things you'd like done aren't what most people want.
It takes real grit to realize these things and call for real freedom and democracy anyway.
The hard part about freedom is accepting that others have it, and the hard thing about democracy is that a lot things you'd like done aren't what most people want.
It takes real grit to realize these things and call for real freedom and democracy anyway.
lmfao The tool for rebels and those challenging authoritarianism?
There's nobody twitter hates more than the common man just wanting to be left alone to live their lives without someone walking past and sticking a knife in their back because someone who looked like them stole a sheep 200 years ago.
There's nobody twitter hates more than the common man just wanting to be left alone to live their lives without someone walking past and sticking a knife in their back because someone who looked like them stole a sheep 200 years ago.
You shut up!
lolakitty69 and I are going to be together, just as soon as I grab my credit card and sign up for her website!
She's not too bright, but she's so nice and she's so pretty!
lolakitty69 and I are going to be together, just as soon as I grab my credit card and sign up for her website!
She's not too bright, but she's so nice and she's so pretty!
They took down the tire swing from the pepper tree.
They have no children of their own, you see.
They have no doggos, and they have no frens
And their moms are dying, and what about all those packages they send?
They have no children of their own, you see.
They have no doggos, and they have no frens
And their moms are dying, and what about all those packages they send?
Once you get into an organizational structure, there's an important thing to understand: Even people in power only have so many levers. I became a supervisor where I worked once, and the workers thought I had all this power to tell everyone from the CEO on down to the customer to fuck off, and the reality is I had the power to do exactly what both my bosses and my staff would let me do. There was some latitude, but you can make decisions within a certain range of options, you can't just do whatever you want and expect to stay in charge.
The same applies to a CEO, even of a private company. Being a CEO doesn't mean you're God. It means you have a lot of power, but it also means you have the power to really break things.
So if you take over a big tech site, you have a lot to balance. You have an existing userbase that we know will leave if you mess things up too much. You have advertisers can easily leave. You have business partners that are essential, everywhere from real estate companies to datacenter providers to ISPs to payment processors and employee support companies such as insurance companies and paycheque processing companies. Even employees, to a degree. You an fire some of them, but you can't fire everyone. At some point someone needs to actually accomplish something, and at some point someone needs to know the proprietary information about how the site works. Then there's the government, the sword of damocles that hangs on a particularly thin thread when we're talking about global megacorporations that are not loved by anyone -- Once you end up in the government's crosshairs, good luck.
To me, this means we shouldn't expect that much from #twitter as #elonmusk takes over. Continuing to fight for decentralized libre solutions is the only way we can be assured that the people who run our services have our best interests in mind, because we will be those people.
The same applies to a CEO, even of a private company. Being a CEO doesn't mean you're God. It means you have a lot of power, but it also means you have the power to really break things.
So if you take over a big tech site, you have a lot to balance. You have an existing userbase that we know will leave if you mess things up too much. You have advertisers can easily leave. You have business partners that are essential, everywhere from real estate companies to datacenter providers to ISPs to payment processors and employee support companies such as insurance companies and paycheque processing companies. Even employees, to a degree. You an fire some of them, but you can't fire everyone. At some point someone needs to actually accomplish something, and at some point someone needs to know the proprietary information about how the site works. Then there's the government, the sword of damocles that hangs on a particularly thin thread when we're talking about global megacorporations that are not loved by anyone -- Once you end up in the government's crosshairs, good luck.
To me, this means we shouldn't expect that much from #twitter as #elonmusk takes over. Continuing to fight for decentralized libre solutions is the only way we can be assured that the people who run our services have our best interests in mind, because we will be those people.
That's a great point. Who cares if someone we don't know uses a social technology? As long as the people we know use it, we're good.
And the flipside of that is that if enough of the people we know stop using some big tech solution and move to open distributed solutions, it doesn't matter how many users are here or there, the people who count are where you need them to be.
And the flipside of that is that if enough of the people we know stop using some big tech solution and move to open distributed solutions, it doesn't matter how many users are here or there, the people who count are where you need them to be.