The thing I find most baffling is the fact that these people who are complaining about how hard things are aren't even running their own instances. They're just coming to a website someone else is running for free without any advertising and complaining that it doesn't cater to them.
I hate to swing around the e word, but it kind of seems super entitled. "I have been here for 37 seconds, let me tell you what you are doing wrong on the platform you have been happily enjoying for the past few years"
I hate to swing around the e word, but it kind of seems super entitled. "I have been here for 37 seconds, let me tell you what you are doing wrong on the platform you have been happily enjoying for the past few years"
Completely different application of rules is a huge one. Over 150 days of violent riots causing hundreds of millions of dollars and including explosives attacks on courthouses, an attack on the Whitehouse that sent the president into a bunker, buildings burned down with innocent people inside, and occupation by a group claiming to be autonomous of the government were "mostly peaceful protests" and most people involved were released immediately. Contrast with j6 or the trucker convoy, it's clear not all people are treated equally under the law.
People leave corporate big tech for a place that is literally its opposite, and then they bitch that it's not big tech.
Guys! Big tech is that way! 👈 If that's what you want you can go back and have it!
Guys! Big tech is that way! 👈 If that's what you want you can go back and have it!
I find when I go into an exclusively right wing space I start to think "oh, I must be left wing" and when I go I to an exclusively left wing space I start to think "oh, I must be right wing"
Honestly, I would prefer not to throw in with either one entirely because you end up getting a whole bunch of weird baggage. It's like, if you agree that the government should really be balancing budgets then you also have to agree that children should be forced to pray to a religion they don't necessarily follow in schools. On the flip side, if you agree that we should be doing more to help the poor, you also have to believe that we should be trying to destroy the family. I'm sure that that works out very well for certain people who don't really want to have to think a whole lot about their political ideology, but I actually do want to think about my political ideology. I want to make decisions about what I support on the case by case basis and sometimes the things that I'm going to support are not going to be on the same "side".
So there's a fallacy out there saying that because you don't support one side or the other you don't have any strong opinions about anything, I think that's completely wrong. Just because you aren't walking in lockstep with a certain complete ideology that someone else developed does not mean that you don't have your own ideology consisting of strong opinions.
The thing is, if you look at the world and make your own decisions, you make a very poor pawn. Nuance and discussion amongst many people may come up with very good ideas, but it doesn't build an army -- and the powers that be want an army.
Honestly, I would prefer not to throw in with either one entirely because you end up getting a whole bunch of weird baggage. It's like, if you agree that the government should really be balancing budgets then you also have to agree that children should be forced to pray to a religion they don't necessarily follow in schools. On the flip side, if you agree that we should be doing more to help the poor, you also have to believe that we should be trying to destroy the family. I'm sure that that works out very well for certain people who don't really want to have to think a whole lot about their political ideology, but I actually do want to think about my political ideology. I want to make decisions about what I support on the case by case basis and sometimes the things that I'm going to support are not going to be on the same "side".
So there's a fallacy out there saying that because you don't support one side or the other you don't have any strong opinions about anything, I think that's completely wrong. Just because you aren't walking in lockstep with a certain complete ideology that someone else developed does not mean that you don't have your own ideology consisting of strong opinions.
The thing is, if you look at the world and make your own decisions, you make a very poor pawn. Nuance and discussion amongst many people may come up with very good ideas, but it doesn't build an army -- and the powers that be want an army.
I wonder if you could create a whole website who's sole purpose is just a route your Twitter through it, and place all the Twitter logos with Mastodon logos and replace any reference to Twitter with mastodon. Then they would just be posting to twitter, and what they wouldn't be able to see the name and they would have the perfect Mastodon that they've always wanted.
I recall around 2008, a lot of companies were complaining that financial regulations in Canada didn't allow "innovative" Fintech. They said we needed more flexibility. Seems to me flexibility is the flexibility to run comple scams...
Along the same lines, I think a lot of people liked the old Star Trek and Star Trek TNG and DS9 (and yes, to an extent even Voyager and maybe Enterprise but I never really saw that one) because one of the big parts of the show is that the people on the screen are virtuous but not magically so. Big parts of the show were people sitting around talking about what is right because it isn't always immediately apparent, and depending on how you approach the problem you could end up with completely different answers to that question.
Contrast with today's media which unfortunately reflects today's culture. If there are questions about the virtue of an action, they're superficial rather than complex, and usually what is right is treated as black and white and self-evident, rather than grey and ambiguous.
In some ways, I suspect this is a negative consequence of a post-world war 2 culture. Because that one war was relatively straightforward where one side was seen as atrocious and the other basically wasn't, that became the mythologized. A few straightforward stories aren't bad, but when that is the default every time and we stop questioning ourselves it's a path to decadence.
Contrast with today's media which unfortunately reflects today's culture. If there are questions about the virtue of an action, they're superficial rather than complex, and usually what is right is treated as black and white and self-evident, rather than grey and ambiguous.
In some ways, I suspect this is a negative consequence of a post-world war 2 culture. Because that one war was relatively straightforward where one side was seen as atrocious and the other basically wasn't, that became the mythologized. A few straightforward stories aren't bad, but when that is the default every time and we stop questioning ourselves it's a path to decadence.
Watching homeward bound, that movie where the two dogs and the cat end up going on an adventure to try to find their masters.
One moment that made me really think was a scene where they finally got on the path to going home. Basically, they found a little girl and had a choice at that point: They could leave the little girl, or they could help the little girl find the adults, but helping the little girl had a good chance they'd be sent to the pound as strays.
In the movie, they chose to save the little girl despite the risk because it was the right thing to do.
It's hard to describe, but I felt like that moment is something we rarely see in movies anymore today: Instead of being the designated good guys and getting everything because they are the designated protaganist, they actually do a thing that is purely altruistic and carries significant risk of loss for themselves, showing virtue when it's not the best thing to do for them, but it's the right thing to do. The story then rewards that virtuous behavior with progress, and even though it's not logically sensible, it is emotionally resonant -- they *deserved* to get what they wanted because they're good, and so when their selfless deeds are unexpectedly rewarded, it packs an emotional punch.
I think this is what a lot of critics mean when they accuse modern protagonists of being unlikable. They get what they want because they are the designated protagonists, but they don't display active virtue besides just being generally inoffensive.
One moment that made me really think was a scene where they finally got on the path to going home. Basically, they found a little girl and had a choice at that point: They could leave the little girl, or they could help the little girl find the adults, but helping the little girl had a good chance they'd be sent to the pound as strays.
In the movie, they chose to save the little girl despite the risk because it was the right thing to do.
It's hard to describe, but I felt like that moment is something we rarely see in movies anymore today: Instead of being the designated good guys and getting everything because they are the designated protaganist, they actually do a thing that is purely altruistic and carries significant risk of loss for themselves, showing virtue when it's not the best thing to do for them, but it's the right thing to do. The story then rewards that virtuous behavior with progress, and even though it's not logically sensible, it is emotionally resonant -- they *deserved* to get what they wanted because they're good, and so when their selfless deeds are unexpectedly rewarded, it packs an emotional punch.
I think this is what a lot of critics mean when they accuse modern protagonists of being unlikable. They get what they want because they are the designated protagonists, but they don't display active virtue besides just being generally inoffensive.
I've been really impressed with Rex Murphy's writing as of late, though I don't know what that means exactly.
I think this is totally correct.
The actual unemployment rate is at record highs if you also look at the labour participation rate. Used to be like 90% of people were working, now it's like 60%. That means a huge number of people are consuming productivity but not producing anything themselves.
The actual unemployment rate is at record highs if you also look at the labour participation rate. Used to be like 90% of people were working, now it's like 60%. That means a huge number of people are consuming productivity but not producing anything themselves.
Although I'm on the record saying some pretty mean things about Elon Musk, the fact is he's following the tech startup playbook to the letter.
"Fail fast" -- isn't this what he's doing? Making big changes immediately and iterating rather than bothering to wait until things are perfectly planned? Arguably it's a better strategy for a website than a car manufacturer or a spaceship company or a medical implant manufacturer.
"Fail fast" -- isn't this what he's doing? Making big changes immediately and iterating rather than bothering to wait until things are perfectly planned? Arguably it's a better strategy for a website than a car manufacturer or a spaceship company or a medical implant manufacturer.
I think their automated moderation systems would be just fine sitting before the activitypub interface and allowing or blocking incoming posts, so moderation probably wouldn't be a huge problem, it's just more stuff to moderate.
At that point the big thing would be selling users on a better UX to justify the advertising and tracking. With a capital on-hand, dedicated people working on it, and all the other perks of being a big corp, I think they could make the argument successfully for a lot of customers. It wouldn't be unprecedented.
The big problem is that if they succeed, then it's probable they come in and break everyone else's toys.
One thing I was thinking about though is that federation doesn't really make much sense for these companies if you believe their numbers. The Fediverse has about 6M users, and many of those users are unplatformable for a corporation. Why reach out to such a tiny number of users if you're claiming to have 100M users on your platform aline?
At that point the big thing would be selling users on a better UX to justify the advertising and tracking. With a capital on-hand, dedicated people working on it, and all the other perks of being a big corp, I think they could make the argument successfully for a lot of customers. It wouldn't be unprecedented.
The big problem is that if they succeed, then it's probable they come in and break everyone else's toys.
One thing I was thinking about though is that federation doesn't really make much sense for these companies if you believe their numbers. The Fediverse has about 6M users, and many of those users are unplatformable for a corporation. Why reach out to such a tiny number of users if you're claiming to have 100M users on your platform aline?
Thinking about it, it's possible I've been talking to what I thought the post was about rather than what it actually was about, and that was unfairly tilted by the barrage of "The fediverse will never be a good platform because it isn't enough like big tech" posts and I got annoyed, combined with posting too early before my coffee kicked in.
Felt good to write as a "take that!" to the people who are doing that, but it's possible I misread things.
Felt good to write as a "take that!" to the people who are doing that, but it's possible I misread things.
I'm certainly open to find out I'm overreacting and would happily accept it if I'm proven wrong.
It just seems to me that it's like aristocrats leaving the castle and complaining that the masses in the countryside are out there living like barbarians -- "They don't even have a single brigade of knights guarding their homes! Can you imagine!"
It just seems to me that it's like aristocrats leaving the castle and complaining that the masses in the countryside are out there living like barbarians -- "They don't even have a single brigade of knights guarding their homes! Can you imagine!"
It's sort of a dumb criticism. The fediverse has the most marginalized groups on it. It has the groups that have been kicked off of all the big Tech sites. It has the people whose only opportunity to feel safe on the internet was to roll their own servers and build their own.
Seems to me that your complaint is that the most privileged people in the world today can't come over and exercise their privilege. They can't get special treatment. They can't pull a big handle and have the people that they hate exiled.
I've been seeing this criticism a lot. I think it's a valid one. It's a very good reason that all of those people who come to this open source distributed platform and aren't privileged should take that to heart, and they should return to Big Tech, where they can continue their privileged life as one of the special people. And when the marketing departments decide that they aren't special people anymore, history show repeat itself, and perhaps then when they are truly marginalized they can come back.
Seems to me that your complaint is that the most privileged people in the world today can't come over and exercise their privilege. They can't get special treatment. They can't pull a big handle and have the people that they hate exiled.
I've been seeing this criticism a lot. I think it's a valid one. It's a very good reason that all of those people who come to this open source distributed platform and aren't privileged should take that to heart, and they should return to Big Tech, where they can continue their privileged life as one of the special people. And when the marketing departments decide that they aren't special people anymore, history show repeat itself, and perhaps then when they are truly marginalized they can come back.