#FreeSchool ⬅️ (see hashtag) @freeschool@qoto.org

Mastodon users?... Just u$ers f?

#Fediverse / #Mastodon Google #links 🔗 are $$$$'s for Google 💰 YouTube 💰 📊

AI article summary / best bits / skimmed sentences...

From source: "Are We Watching The Internet Die?"
https://www.wheresyoured.at/are-we-watching-the-internet-die/

+ [my added comments]

[About Reddit]
...millions of unpaid contributors made billions of posts so that CEO Steve Huffman could make $193 million in 2023 while laying off 90 people and effectively pushing third party apps off of the platform by charging exorbitant rates for API access,

Reddit also announced that it had cut a $60 million deal to allow Google to train its models on Reddit's posts, once again offering users nothing in return for their hard work.

[BUT LET'S FACE IT PEOPLE WILL DO THINGS THEY LOVE FOR FREE AND CAPITALISM CAPITALISES ON THAT - A HARD ONE TO SOLVE AS EVEN I DID OVERTIME FOR FREE AT WORK AND DIDN'T LEAVE TILL LATE OFTEN!! But not any more!"]

...ultra-rich technologists tricked their customers into building their companies for free.

[mentioned] Cory Doctorow's Enshittification theory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

Yet what's happening to the web is far more sinister than simple greed, but the destruction of the user-generated internet,

...

And it's slowly killing the internet.

⭐ Degenerative AI [great sub-title]

Generative AI models are trained by using massive amounts of text scraped from the internet, meaning that the consumer adoption of generative AI has brought a degree of radioactivity to its own dataset. As more internet content is created, either partially or entirely through generative AI, the models themselves will find themselves increasingly inbred, training themselves on content written by their own models which are, on some level, permanently locked in 2023, before the advent of a tool that is specifically intended to replace content created by human beings.

... Jathan Sadowski calls "Habsburg AI,"...so heavily trained on the outputs of other generative AIs that it becomes an inbred mutant, likely with exaggerated, grotesque features.

...as its models are trained on increasingly-identical content.

...generative features... immediately fed back into Azure's OpenAI models owned by its parent company Microsoft, which invested $10 billion in OpenAI in early 2023

Generative AI also naturally aligns with the toxic incentives created by the largest platforms.

Google makes up more than 85% of all search traffic and pays Apple billions a year to make Google search the default on Apple devices.

... a cottage industry of automation gurus are cashing in by helping others flood Facebook, TikTok and Instagram with low-effort videos that are irresistible to algorithms.

Generative AI is a perfect tool for soullessly churning out content to match a particular set of instructions — such as those that an algorithm follows — and while an algorithm can theoretically be tuned to evaluate content as "human," so can scaled content be tweaked to make it seem more human.

Google might pretend it cares about the quality of search results, but nothing about search's decade-long decline has suggested it’s actually going to do anything. Google's spam policies have claimed for years that scraped content (outright ripping the contents of another website) was grounds for removal from Google, but even the most cursory glance at any news search shows how often sites thinly rewrite or outright steal others' content.

As we speak, the battle that platforms are fighting is against generative spam, a cartoonish and obvious threat of outright nonsense, meaningless chum that can and should (and likely will) be stopped. In the process, they're failing to see that this isn't a war against spam, but a war against crap, and the overall normalization and intellectual numbing that comes when content is created to please algorithms and provide a minimum viable product for consumers.

We're watching the joint hyper-scaling and hyper-normalization of the internet, where all popular content begins to look the same to appeal to algorithms run by companies obsessed with growth.

... Quora, which now promotes ChatGPT-generated answers at the top of results),

I believe that their goal is to intrude on our ability to browse the internet, to further obfuscate the source of information while paying the platforms for content that their users make for free. Their eventual goal, in my mind, is to remove as much interaction with the larger internet as possible, summarizing and regurgitating as much as they can so that they can control and monetize the results as much as possible.

There's also no way to escape the fact that these hungry robots require legal plagiarism, and any number of copyright assaults could massively slow their progress.

It's incredibly difficult to make a model forget information, meaning that there may, at some point, be steps back in the development of models if datasets have to be reverted to previous versions with copyrighted materials removed.
It's incredibly difficult to make a model forget information, meaning that there may, at some point, be steps back in the development of models if datasets have to be reverted to previous versions with copyrighted materials removed.

Question everything they say. Don't accept that AI "might one day" be great.

Reject their marketing speak and empty fantasizing and interrogate the tools put in front of you, and be a thorn in their side when they try to tell you that mediocrity is the future.

You are not "missing anything.” These tools are not magic — they're fantastical versions of autocomplete that can't help but make the same mistakes it's learned from the petabytes of information it's stolen from others.

#FreeSchool #Answers = #BetterPractices #Human #Intelligence = #Humanism
#Freedom #Sentientism
--- vs. - --
#War #AI #BigTech #Capitalism #Commercialism #Greed #Profit #Abuse = Shallow-Understanding

Mastodon users?... Just u$ers?

Think of Fediverse as a drug.

I think every user gets a mental boost / a mental confirmation and witness from people who favourite signal or boost your work ⭐

There is literally a mental boost when you boost my stuff. (And I Thank you).

The world can literally run off these types of natural drugs and stimulations given to each other on Fediverse and extensions from that.

More local Fediverse eventually...
Probably we can becmoe more local and "in real life" again after all this online stuff gets it together and shows love. Even if the ratio is not 100%... just keep adding the %'s and watch as giving snowballs... and creativity grows more of the same in all directions of life...

👂 Being listened to and being heard IS WHAT WE CAN DO MUCH BETTER ON FEDI MORE THAN CRAPITALISM.

We do get heard here and can build more even if it's not 100%... keep snowballing the love.... and it will happen!

The world can literally run off this natural drug and stimulation more , often from giving and receiving praise on The Fediverse Network...

Fediverse as a love drug - share the love ya'll ✌️ 🕊️ ☮️

#Fediverse #Social #Media #Drugs #Online #Respect #Love #Mindset #FreeSchool

If you do something kind, make sure it doesn't expect anything in return (not even a thanks even though it probably happens) just so you protect your giving from any hard feelings either way things happen.

If you expect something conditionally from 'giving' or can't give it freely, be clearer with your exchanges *before*. It's possible to make a list or FAQ page from any history of problems just to manage future things better.
Thank you.

@gemlog Invidious may be coming back today... see https://social.tchncs.de/@invidious/112191317707645834

Tell me how peaceful you this Easter are if you are eating meat.

Animals slaughtered, born-to-die life, Maybe not even a big problem today but how often do you have meat and buy into that McDonald's type system of killing animals so quickly? Pig, Cow, Chicken?

What type of meat today?... Do you care about the animal's welfare?

📽️ Gary Yourofsky video -
talking to students giving them excellent logic and without pushing you into any -ism apart from the obvious caring-ism about animals that feel and don't want to be subjected to just slavery / killed for food.

Eat less of this cruel meat.
Eat less meat.

https://piped.kavin.rocks/watch?v=DXctC66tNyU

Caring as the main label for video, Answer could be less or maybe more: #veganism #vegetarian #vegan #diet towards #animal #welfare #Easter #food less #capitalism #industrial processing, LESS #consumerism

Perhaps accepting the 'mystery' of our existence is enough to be thankful for it and not going to extremes of religion, gods etc...
Not needing to make it any human story about X god or spirit.... just your own.

To say you don't believe in god is *almost* like saying you don't believe in mankind (even if you don't believe in any God or whatever) because it's similar mystery in it's creation... so you can choose either, both, none or one... but you personally like the idea and have faith in anything mentioned?

Do you believe in mankind and the mystery of where they came from?

How about both man or god to some level?... or is 0 faith for both?

----------------------------------
A SIDE QUOTE / SEMI-RELATED:
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“We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.”
― Richard Dawkins,

@garyackerman Perhaps this quote says that some things are above our heads of understanding and people can believe in that more than anything human created or interpreted as a previous story and make it for themselves in the now, even as a mystery and their own feeling from 'where they came from'.

#Human #History #God #Religion #Faith in #Mankind ?

@gemlog The YouTube advert filter "Invidious" needs to be updated at the moment so alternatives here in this post in the meantime to try- very simple best first!: 🚀

https://piped.video/

✔️ Invidious could add this alternative link to their pinned post until it's fixed in spirit of filtering YouTube!

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Also a list of browser extensions below which try do similar ( adverts and bad code from youtube.com direct links) to something better / more private...
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https://alternativeto.net/browse/search/?q=invidious

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Best browser extension is probably LibRedirect extension:
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https://alternativeto.net/software/libredirect/about/

redirects YouTube, Twitter, Instagram [many things] to alternative privacy friendly frontends and back-ends.

YouTube icon YouTube ➡️ Piped Invidious, FreeTube, Yattee
Music ➡️ Beatbump, Hyperpipe
X icon X ➡️ Nitter
TikTok icon TikTok ➡️ ProxiTok icon ProxiTok
Reddit icon Reddit ➡️ Libreddit icon Libreddit, teddit icon teddit
Imgur icon Imgur ➡️ rimgo icon rimgo
Wikipedia icon Wikipedia ➡️ Wikiless icon Wikiless
Medium icon Medium ➡️ Scribe.rip icon Scribe.rip
Quora icon Quora ➡️ Quetre icon Quetre
IMDb icon IMDb ➡️ libremdb icon libremdb
Reuters icon Reuters ➡️ Neuters
PeerTube icon PeerTube ➡️ SimpleerTube
LBRY icon LBRY ➡️ Librarian icon Librarian

#Invidious Redirection + Anti-Advertising #Software #OpenSource

#Privacy friendly frontends and backends

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Other notes
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see @invidious account or the same Invidious comments by Invidious volunteers/TheFrenchGhosty:

https://social.tchncs.de/@invidious/112189922194978750

https://social.tchncs.de/@invidious/112184892221966052

@Npars01 @inquiline@union.place
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-hour_contract

In a mass population of people who are desperate it makes total sense by Capitalism to exploit them as many people are surplus now anyway to system (over-crowding / previous false boosts of economy) so until the population naturally reduces (like talking about animals) from such ways of death / cheating people to supply those in power with free / desperate labor... then makes sense to 'use' them (abuse them),.
And then when demand is not high enough, capitalism can change to something else with a bit more of a carrot! 🥕

It is almost perfect in it's own bad way. Bare minimals.

We need food and / or work... worst is not having either and then one usually can think more on these things (but in reality yes better think about it now).

It's always been about starvation somewhere, didn't even after WWII, perhaps balance just go heavier on one side and now finally might return back to 'equality' or real 0 as all wealth should / would if people don't take care of things or do their history homework earlier... and together!

Said with care, #FreeSchool

If you focus on #war (even as news) you can fall into the trap of perpetuating it (by not looking to using better practices of respect / friendship and love for being alive / not increasing anything else but "sharing" the bad news constantly).

#war #news vs. positive construction in (y)our life(lives).

Building something better vs. sharing the bad / negative world.

#Independence #War #Taiwan #Indigenous #Tribes #Freedom

“The only possibility for Taiwan to truly achieve independence from China’s grasp is, in theory, only to first allow the Indigenous tribes of Taiwan to establish an independent nation named ‘Formosa,’” said Chuan-ju Cheng, an associate professor of Indigenous studies at the Taipei University of Education, alluding to the name the Portuguese gave the island when they sailed past it.

After that, “the Han people of Taiwan could join the new state,” added Cheng, who is herself a member of the Truku nation in the Hualien mountains to the island’s east.

Most of Taiwan’s Indigenous tribes still live in those mountains, which make up 60 percent of the island’s topography. Neither Dutch, Portuguese nor Spanish sailors and merchants ever conquered these heights or established full control over its people. The same goes for imperial China, which never controlled much more than outposts by the western shores. Only Japanese conquerors at the dawn of the 20th century succeeded in annexing or acquiring all the native land.

Opinion / Source: By Alexander Görlach, March 31, 2024