Show newer

I'm seeing the "Don't write a programming language" article shared all over the place.

I say, No! Make one, it's endless fun, it covers so many disciplines, it's more akin to art and design than programming, and community-wise, it's a good way to find like-minded folks! You should definitely try your hand at it at least once or twice.

This whole gamification of scores as a measure of worth and access to opportunity dehumanizes students into performing monkeys chasing answers that will score rather than knowledge.

Nothing to be proud of.

Show thread

-, state of the world, hopelessness 

it looks like all the bad things are happening at the same time:
- highest wave of covid so far
- US leading the western world into inflation
- Canada oppressing its own citizens for supporting a peaceful protest
- Putin invading Ukraine

It feels like the western world is going to collapse any day now, and the only thing left will be China...

>PornHub bans Russian IPs
>"Wow BASED Pornhub"
>Currently trending on PornHub

Yeah it's really nice of them to promote videos of Ukrainian women being sexually exploited. That will show the Russians.

oh, seems some people on 4chan were right about stuff, it's down :)

and don't be mistaken, the war is the best thing that could happen for the west. another enemy to keep for the rest of our lives, right after omicron more or less fixed covid.

this will be the reason for everything in the forseeablle future, it already always were "russian hackers". it might be russian cyber-ops, but attribution is always vague at best for stuff on the net.

oil and gas getting expensive? russia to blame. internet and cryptography (and cryptocurrency) gets heavily regulated? only because russia! etc. ad nauseam. western governments can literally do anything now and blame it on the new old enemy.

"russian misinformation". lol, lmao.

_any_ news outlet is misinformation, that's the job of news. everything is agitprop.

e.g. i wonder what things happen just now in the west that get buried by war in the ukraine news.

Here's why penalizing "off-platform behavior" doesn't work:

1) Necessity. There's not any. Banning something from happening *on* your platform makes sense, because you are liable for it. You are not liable for what is done off your platform, so there's no need to police it. If you're spending money to police it, one has to wonder what ulterior motive is behind that spending.

2) Attribution. It's really hard. Moderators have quotas to meet, and have to keep average ticket handle times low. It's trivial to create an account on some other website with a target's username and start Doin' An Extremism.

The cops fall for it all the time; I've spent three weeks in jail after someone took 5 minutes to make an email account with one of my alternate usernames, and issue a bomb threat from it. If the police can't tell the difference, do you really think an overworked, underpaid moderator is going to? Get real.

3) Context. It's important. What's considered normal banter in, for example, a video game ("I'm gonna come kill you!") could be seen as a violent threat without context. Maybe an exterminator bragged on his LinkedIn about "killing over a million of the annoying things," and there's likely similar examples for hundreds if not thousands of hobbies/industries. Twitter has had this problem before, in fact it's happened to both me and an Elite Dangerous player. Only the latter got his account back.

This dovetails with point 2; Moderators typically would only have a screenshot of the reported "off-platform" behavior. At best, they would have a link to it, but remember that when following that link, they're viewing it as any other internet user, so insights they normally have as a moderator, won't be present.

4) The Future. Your users cannot predict it. If penalization for "off-platform behavior" becomes the norm, then it becomes necessary for all users, on all services, to abide by the most restrictive rules of any service that they ever plan to use, including services that may not have even been created yet.

If you think penalizing "off-platform" behavior is a good idea, switch the roles around a bit. Imagine if Walmart (or your store of choice) didn't like *your* social media posts and decided to ban you from their stores. Not some nebulous concept of an out-group member you want to see punished for existing. YOU and YOUR beliefs.

Remember point 4. Even if you're sure you're 100% clean today, what's in vogue can change quickly.

In closing, I'd like to add that if Discord is serious about removing from their platform, anybody who has had anything to do with child grooming, they're *definitely* not gonna have enough moderators to do background checks on every user who gets reported. Because they're gonna have to toss out like 90% of their moderation staff.

you know, i'd really like to believe the "russia evil - west good" memery of our media. would be much more comfortable not having to question the narrative all the time (it at least happens automatically as inner monologue).

the problem is the west has fucked up so many times by doing evil things and lying about it that i consider every version 100% bullshit by now.

allende? killed by us goons for actually building a not shitty socialist country.

weapons of mass destruction in irak? well, sorry, we must have shelled that region back to stone age for nothing!

german NSU? whoops sorry, agencies were involved all the time.

gladio? don't worry about the right wing sleeper cells all over europe!

literally goes on forever. i might as well believe the other sides version and certainly would be not farther from the truth than with believing western media.

It just occurred to me that we should be putting out a women’s magazine

I’m going to see if there’s anything out there that is along the lines of what I am thinking
Show older
Qoto Mastodon

QOTO: Question Others to Teach Ourselves
An inclusive, Academic Freedom, instance
All cultures welcome.
Hate speech and harassment strictly forbidden.