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US politics/SCOTUS 

Curious about the ramifications of the recent decision. Does it mean that I, as an atheist website designer, can refuse to create wedding websites with religious references? (This would not be based on the actual religion of the partners, only the content of the site.) Or what if I want to create websites for only same-sex couples? Must I have a sincerely-held religious belief to this effect or can I simply exercise my right to not speak in certain situations?

I always had a distaste for Pinterest since it required you to login to view things, while didn't. Now Pinterest doesn't require login (just found this out today, I'll admit) and Twitter does.

@Hikitile well, my previous comment here made it so I guess it was just a temporary thing? Actually, I wonder if there's a difference between top-level comments and replies to other comments.

@Hikitile Test reply from Mastodon (because it seems that my previous reply to a Kbin "article" was not federated?)

@Otome-chan Hm, I thought this would be accounted for already. Both are presented to the Fediverse as "@[name]@[instance]", right? I wonder if Lemmy has the same problem...

@test Seems like posts from Mastodon and similar Fediverse applications appear in the "microblog" in Kbin, which I guess makes sense, but I'm still not sure about this dichotomy.

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Test post from Mastodon to the "Threadiverse" (Kbin) @test

Don't tell people "it's easy", and six more things KBin, Lemmy, and the fediverse can learn from Mastodon

privacy.thenexus.today/kbin-le

Reddit's strategy of antagonizing app writters, moderators, and millions of redditors is good news for reddit alternatives like KBin and Lemmy. And not just them! The fediverse has always grown in waves and we're at the start of one.

Previous waves have led to innovation but also major challenges and limited growth. It's worth looking at what tactics worked well in the past, to use them again or adapt them and build on them. It's also valuable to look at what went wrong or didn't work out as well in the past, to see if there are ways to do better.

Here's the current table of contents:

* I'm flashing!!!!!
* But first, some background

1. Don't tell people "it's easy"
2. Improve the "getting-started experience"
3. Keep scalability and sustainability in mind
4. Prioritize accessibility
5. Get ready for trolls, hate speech, harassment, spam, porn, and disinformation
6. Invest in moderation tools
7. Values matter

* This is a great opportunity – and it won't be the last great opportunity

privacy.thenexus.today/kbin-le

#kbin #lemmy #fediverse @fediversenews@venera.com @fediverse@kbin.social @fediverse@lemmy.ml

Today released much of the code used for their recommendation algorithm blog.twitter.com/engineering/e

An machine-learning system relies on both an algorithm and training data so I wonder exactly what insights can be gained from what's been made public (I'm definitely not an expert in this area so I invite corrections and clarifications here). Regardless, it's an unusual level of transparency for a major social-media platform.

@collectedoverspread I'm not sure if it has an official name, other than like "missing the point".

It needs a bit more to be a good argument: it implies that a law won't do X amount of good; ok fine – the obvious thing you need to examine is how much good, <X, *will* it do, then? And weight that against the costs. So it's like just the first part of a coherent argument, at best.

@squirrel @eff How is EFF "glorifying" TikTok? It's entirely possible to object to TikTok and also oppose this legislation.

And "vendor lock-in"? Care to elaborate on this?

Is there a name for that stupid argument that goes something like, "There's no point in outlawing X because criminals who are intent on breaking the law a will find a way to get X anyway"? As if making X illegal won't make it harder to access, including to would-be criminals?

Yes, this remark is primarily motivated by recent events in the news (USA) but there are so many other things where this sort of argument comes up. I don't mean to say I support every sort of restriction that this is meant to argue against, but it's a poor argument most of the time.

COVID-19 and news media bias 

I'm inclined to say that something similar happened with Donald Trump's possible connections to Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign and early in his presidency, which is another thing that led to lots of accusations of media bias. I think the "fake consensus" there came about from the news reporting on people's *claims* of collusion which led to this view being amplified.

(Somewhat related: "The Media Very Rarely Lies" by Scott Alexander in Astral Codex Ten astralcodexten.substack.com/p/ )

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COVID-19 and news media bias 

"The media's lab leak fiasco" by Matthew Yglesias in Slow Boring slowboring.com/p/the-medias-la

I'll admit, this is what finally convinced me that there was something wrong with how mainstream news media in the US covered the "lab-leak" hypothesis regarding COVID-19 early in the pandemic. I don't subscribe to the sort of "I told you so" attitude that some seem to have (there's still no real conclusion about whether a lab contributed to the pandemic, and "the" lab-leak hypothesis is a misnomer as it can encompass a wide variety of claims), but it lays out exactly how certain early lab-leak claims got mangled into conspiracy theories.

Michael Knowles and "Eradication" 

(I wrote "soup of the day" instead of "order of the day" lol)

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Michael Knowles and "Eradication" 

"CPAC Speaker Calls for Eradication of 'Transgenderism' — and Somehow Claims He’s Not Calling for Elimination of Transgender People" by Peter Wade and Patrick Reis in Rolling Stone rollingstone.com/politics/poli

I'm sorry, but what in the world is "not a real ontological category" supposed to mean? Obviously it exists as a category, even if people may disagree on the exact definition.

Honestly, I think "genocide" is hyperbolic, but you could say the same thing about "eradication." Hyperbole has been the soup of the day for years, and frankly I'm tired of it.

Can we sit down and talk about actual policy and take a moment to actually consider how it will affect people? (I'm questioning whether I'm part of the problem here by talking about this instead of the actual legislation that has been proposed in various US states recently that affect transgender people.)

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