Phil Landmeier @shuttersparks@qoto.org

Weird crank on Netflix: archeologists conspire to ignore or hide evidence of an advanced ancient civilization destroyed in an #ancientapocalypse

Actual archeologist: I painstakingly counted individual grains of pollen in the nasal cavity of this ancient skeleton to identify the last flower this person sniffed because I’m desperate to reconstruct past societies from whatever scraps of evidence are available to us

The charming doodles Darwin's kids scribbled all over the manuscript of "On the Origin of Species," published on this day in 1859 https://www.themarginalian.org/2016/04/06/charles-darwin-children-doodles-origin-of-species/

#map #cat

Elon Musk is now LITERALLY welcoming the Neo Nazis from The Daily Stormer back on Twitter who threatened to kill me. I sued these Neo Nazis in court and won $4.1 million dollars in damages (on paper.) Musk is a scumbag to allow these people on Twitter. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/neo-nazi-website-hit-4-1-million-defamation-penalty-n1016886

Inevitably, after the mass murders at Club Q in Colorado Springs, newsreaders are telling us solemnly that the city is in mourning. It should be, but we all know that there are many in that city and across the country who are delighted and gleefully anticipating more murders of gays, trans people, Jews, blacks, Asians, and on and on -- and that will happen, thanks to the twin evils of hatred and the proliferation of guns.

It is EXTREMELY URGENT that government agencies, emergency groups, and others who have over time become dependent on #Twitter to disseminate important announcements to the public, now move quickly to prepare alternative methods (which they really should have already).

It is clear that Musk's behavior is decimating Twitter as a reliable platform for reaching the public without interference, and since Musk now says he will let all hate speech and disinformation that is "not illegal or spam" be propagated on Twitter, even from previously suspended accounts, Twitter will now rapidly become of zero value as a source of trustworthy information on any topics.

DO NOT DELAY!

Greetings. "Social Media Is Probably Doomed" is a short essay that I wrote on my blog a bit less than two months ago. I think that it may be useful to repost here given current events. I of course don't expect everyone to agree with me, but I am very concerned about the path forward. Best, -L

"Social Media Is Probably Doomed"
Lauren Weinstein
4 October 2022

https://lauren.vortex.com/2022/10/04/social-media-is-probably-doomed

Social media as we've known it is probably doomed. Whether a decline in social media would on balance be good or bad for society I'll leave to another discussion, but the handwriting is on the wall for a major decline in social media overall.

As with most predictions, the timing and other details will surface in coming months and years, but the overall shape of things to come is not terribly difficult to visualize.

The fundamental problem is also clear enough. A vast range of entities at state, federal, and international levels are in the process of enacting, invoking, or otherwise planning a range of regulatory and other legal mandates that would apply to social media firms -- with many of these requirements being in direct and total opposition to each other.

The most likely outcome from putting these firms "between a rock and hard place" will be a drastic reduction of social media services provided, resulting in a massive decrease in ordinary persons' ability to communicate publicly, rather than the increase that various social media critics have been anticipating.

Let's very briefly review just some of the factors in the mix:

The political Right in the U.S. generally wants public postings to stay up, even if they contain racist or other hate speech or misinformation/disinformation. This is the outline of the push from states like Texas and Florida. Meanwhile, the Left and other states like California want more of the same sort of postings taken down even faster than they are now. Unless you can somehow provide different feeds on a posting by posting basis to users in different states (and what of VPN usage from other areas?), this creates an impossible situation.

Both the Left and Right hate Section 230, but for opposite reasons, relating to my point just above. Even the Biden White House has this wrong, arguing that cutting back 230 protections would force social media firms to more tightly moderate content, when in reality tampering with 230 would make hosting most UGC (User Generated Content) far too risky.

Elon Musk has proposed that Twitter carry any postings that aren't explicitly illegal or condoning violence. This suggests an increase in the kind of hate speech and disinformation that not only drives away many users, but also tends to cause enormous problems for potential advertisers and network infrastructure providers, who usually do not want to be associated with such materials. And then of course there's the EU -- which has its own requirements (much more robust than in the U.S.) for dealing with hate speech and misinformation/disinformation.

There are calls to strip Internet users of all anonymity, to require use of real names (tied to official IDs, perhaps through some third party mechanisms) based on the theory that this would reduce hate speech and other attack speech. Yet studies have shown that such abhorrent speech continues to flower even when real names are used, while forcing real names causes already marginalized persons and groups to be even further disadvantaged, often in dangerous ways. Is there a middle ground on this? Perhaps requiring IDs be known to a third party (in case of abuse) before posting to large numbers of persons is permitted, but still permitting the use of pseudonyms for those postings? Maybe, but it seems like a long shot. 

Concerns over posting of terrorist content, live streaming of shootings, and other nightmarish postings have increased calls for pre-moderation of content before it goes public. But at the massive scale of the large social media firms, it's impossible to see how this could be practical, for a whole range of reasons, unless the amount of content permitted from the public were drastically reduced.

And this is just a partial list. 

For social media to have any real value and practicality, it can't operate on a reasonable basis when every state, every country may demand a different and conflicting set of rules. While there are certainly some politicians and leaders who do understand these issues in considerable depth, many others don't worry about whether their technical demands are practical or what the collateral damage would be, only whether they're good for votes come the next election.

And now we reach that part of this little essay where I'm expected to announce my preferred solution to this set of problems. Well dear readers, I've got nothing for you. I don't see any practical solutions for these dilemmas. The issues are in direct conflict and opposition, and there is no obvious route toward their reconciliation or harmonization. 

So I can do little more here than push the needle into the red zone, sound the storm warnings, and try to point out that the paths we're taking -- absent some almost unimaginable changes in the current patterns -- are rocketing us rapidly toward a world of social media that will likely briefly flare brightly and then go dark, like an incandescent light bulb at the end of its life, turned on just one too many times.

This analogy isn't perfect of course, and there will continue to be some forms of social media under any circumstances. But the expected experience seems most likely to become increasingly constrained over time, along with all other aspects of publicly accessible user-provided materials -- the incredible shrinking content.

As I said earlier, nobody knows how long this process will take. It won't happen overnight. But we'll have taken the path into this wilderness of our own free will, eyes wide open.

Please don't forget to turn off the lights on your way out.

--Lauren--

🦅
The magnificent view recorded by the camera attached to the eagle's back
#birds #wildlife #nature #naturelovers #animals #videos #beautiful Via enezator on twitter

50 WAYS TO LEAVE YOUR TWITTER

You just pin your last tweet, Pete,
Request your archive, Clive,
You don’t need a blue tick, Vic,
Just get yourself free.

Hop on the tusk, Gus,
You don’t need to delete much,
Except your DMs, Jen,
And get yourself free.

Use Debirdify, Di,
Provide some alt tags, Mags,
Add a content warning, Tim,
To post sensitively.

Remember to boost, Ruth
You don't need to deny truth,
Just drop off the perch, Dirk,
And get yourself free.
#VerseThurday #TwitterMigration #FediTips

Not long ago white people discussed having same-race spaces because white women (and white men) were afraid of being in the same spaces as Black men. Then we moved to straight people being forced to shower with gay people. Today transphobic folks are using the same argument.

Virtual Reality is important -- but Meta's "Metaverse" is a mess. Meta/Facebook are undergoing significant layoffs, and the actual extent to which this is related to CEO Zuckerberg's "Metaverse" push is unclear.

What is clear though, is that his Metaverse emphasis may turn out to be one of the worst decisions in tech business history.

Virtual reality -- even at this early stage -- is amazing. The Meta (formerly Oculus/Facebook) Quest headsets are miracles of 21st century technology. It's really impossible to explain to someone who hasn't experienced it directly what VR on these platforms is actually like. "Extraordinary" doesn't even come close.

However, there probably aren't a lot of people who want to live in these headsets -- even if over time they become significantly smaller and lighter -- pretty much all day long. And use for a large part of the day is a foundational assumption of Meta's Metaverse. Nor are there obvious benefits in most cases to interacting with coworkers in that virtual space, vis-a-vis in-person or conventional work at home video meetings and the like.

It's difficult to see how the Metaverse can fly as other than a novelty, except in limited educational, industrial and medical applications, for example. A very, very expensive novelty for Meta and its employees.

Again, that's not to say that virtual reality won't massively impact future lives. It will. Today's systems will appear unbearably crude when viewed from the future. Sci-Fi is replete with tales of how virtual reality -- especially via direct brain interfacing -- might pretty much destroy society entirely -- or perhaps save it.

But that's not where we are now, or in the short or medium-term. And the current Metaverse hype is not really helping much to advance practical virtual reality applications, when it has most people laughing at Zuckerberg's VR avatars.

They are pretty hilarious at that. -L

#VirtualReality #Facebook #Quest #Meta #VR #Oculus

These brave men and women risked their lives to report on enemy activity during WWII using this crude suitcase radio and Morse key. Photographed at the WWII museum in New Orleans, LA

ham radio family history. this is my French great uncle, Georges Destuilliers, amateur radio call sign F8DF. the family lore is that my grandfather F8CW, his brother in law, got him into ham radio. the photos of him at the controls are from 1926. i love that he seems to be in slippers. the QSL card is from 1929. some of these photos survived in a suitcase through WWII even though my grandparents fought in the resistance and moved a lot. #hamradio #amateurradio #qslcard #history

On this day, I am thankful that I am not a turkey.

When I get to 100,000 followers on Mastodon I will officially bring Mastodons back from extinction.

Boost and favorite this post to help make this happen ASAP.

Today is Thanksgiving Day, and it is also the National Day of Mourning, which remembers the genocide of millions of Native Americans and their ongoing erasure today.

In giving thanks today, let us also reflect and act to stop the ongoing genocide of America's Indigenous Peoples.