volkris @volkris@qoto.org
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
Huh. Turns out AZ law does allow courts to reverse elections.
https://www.azleg.gov/viewdocument/?docName=https://www.azleg.gov/ars/16/00676.htm
Well, so much depends on actual implementation.
An impossible to implement law is just bluster. Annoying, yes, and maybe even expensive to the government trying to pursue it, but it's not clear Utah's law will be anything more than whistling into the wind.
It'd be like a city council outlawing gravity. That's a nice law they've got there, but...
So we'll see. Utah's law so far is little but a political stunt.
Oh no! They DIDN'T choose decentralization, and that's such an key point here.
ActivityPub chose to *centralize* around instances.
They chose a federated model, not a decentralized one.
Had they decentralized with key focus on users there's a good chance stuff like this wouldn't be such an issue.
@shansterable@c.im
Firstly, the profit incentive is absolutely alive and well in nationalized industries.
You think NASA employees work for free?
But to the point, it sounds like you're trying to have it both ways, saying the industry is already under the control of the federal government--just look at how badly the feds have screwed it up--but what we need now is to put it under the control of the federal government--they'll fix these problems.
No, I'd say the examples you've given here are great examples of why we SHOULDN'T nationalize the industry.
Trump removed regulations and Biden forced people to work, and that's through the regulatory and processes. Imagine what harm they'd do with direct command of the organizations.
Well not quite since most people have NO understanding of ActivityPub at all, much less a misunderstanding :)
For so many people, all they know is that they set their post to have a limited audience, and then magic happens, and then Wait, what? What do you mean people outside of the audience I set can see my post?
Anyway, my point is only to raise awareness of this issue as so many have said they've been caught off-guard by that lack of privacy here.
The source of that mis-expectation of privacy is a bit of a side topic, I suppose.
I just go back to the original title above saying that the purchase makes no sense unless it's part of something bigger.
Given Musk's track record, it makes sense to me without being part of something bigger.
So alright, maybe you do have circumstantial evidence to support the bigger, more complex theory, but at the same time we shouldn't dismiss the simple explanation since it makes sense as well.
Yep!
One difference, though, is that people coming from traditional social media platforms are used to having more of an expectation of privacy control than they have in Fediverse. No, not absolute expectation, but more.
Email has always been decentralized with the same lack of expectation of privacy. Social media has tended to be reliant on expectations of privacy from single, professionally run systems.
So in this system people have been surprised when their posts wind up in places they don't expect. That highlights the disconnect between understandings of privacy around here.
You say that, but I see so many people surprised by this.
I know for a fact that quite a lot of people are not aware because they tell me they're not.
Personally, this is one of my major gripes against the core design of ActivityPub. It didn't have to be this way, but choices were made to focus on instances instead of users.
A drum I beat as often as I can, because I think it's very important for people to realize, is that under #ActivityPub ALL privacy or audience restrictions are only suggestions.
Effectively, ALL bits of content are public, just with notations asking instances politely to only share them with certain audiences.
People writing content into #Fediverse need to be aware that what they're putting out there isn't as private as they might be expecting.
So if you write a private post to a certain group, it's entirely possible for some instance to ignore your privacy setting and blab the post to the whole world, or in other ways not act as expected with that.
Just be aware.
Wow, reading the article it sounds like they are misrepresenting the Taibbi quotes that they are presenting for themselves, for the sake of discrediting strawmen.
That's really something in an article that's supposedly about misrepresentations of fact.
So they misrepresent facts about what Taibbi has done in the course of accusing him of misrepresenting facts?
We are in such a weird place these days.
And that's not even getting into the issues around basic claims that, for example, Musk handpicked these journalists.
@shansterable@c.im
The problem is that nationalizing an industry puts it under the control of the president.
Don't like #Trump? Don't like #Biden? Whatever team you play for, to nationalize rail is to hand control of it over to that guy.
I'd rather not politicize rail like that, especially considering how badly such presidents bungle even their politicized jobs.
The thing is, the Court lays its argument out in public so we can all see them for ourselves, although far too few actually bother to read them.
Instead of attacking motivations and family members we should be simply sitting down and reading the arguments, identifying places where we believe they have gone astray.
This obsession with family drama over logic and reason and law is pretty unhealthy and antisocial.
Right, but the problem is the leap that's interpreting a call for peace as being a threat.
The ironic thing is that often enough they're the people who make that leap who end up being the source of the threat, since it's their interpretation.
Just be aware that you're playing into their hands, giving them exactly the reach that they're planning and counting on.
If you believe it to be for the best considering that, then fine. But just realize that in the process you're promoting them.
Musk is known for being impulsive and capricious.
So Occam's Razor would suggest that his purchase was just one more example of the pattern of behavior that he's known for.
This comes across as a huge stretch, a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, when the guy was probably simply doing exactly what he was saying, buying the platform mainly for the heck of it.
No need to overthink and reach for this sort of sensational drama... or clickbait.
Agreed!
And that's exactly part of why I think we need to be pushing back against wanting financial service providers, not to mention others, to impose particular concepts of morality in their business.
No I don't think we are at cross purposes. We're talking about the same issues, looking at the same analyses.
You say Bitcoin is without worth, but your own sources are showing directly how much Bitcoin is worth to people. You say it's not been adopted but your source is illustrating very directly how much adoption there has been.
I guess if your purpose is to ignore reality, all right fine, we are at cross purposes. I am not particularly interested in doubling down on those fictions, no matter how many clicks they may get for opinion writers just trying to get sensationalized articles out there.
But if you want to talk about what is really happening in the world, which I assume you do, then we have the same purpose, and your article shows just how valuable Bitcoin is to its adopters.
Whether you care about facts or not, I guess that's up to you.
Right, but this is the reality crashing in :)
This is not a paradise without gatekeepers, where the best ideas go viral as decided by everyone collectively.
No, realistically this is a place where gatekeeping is available to instance owners who want to shape conversations as they think best, and hopefully they will be right, and similarly they can put their fingers on the scales to amplify what they think are the best ideas, regardless of the collective.
Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, we should be honest about it being the reality.
And in part this is very important to make sure those actors aren't abusing their power over the platform.
We've seen GOP senators defy leadership plenty, much to the consternation of Republicans through the country.
From John McCain through Mitt Romney, even recent history has examples debunking the narrative of GOP congresspeople being particularly loyal... or organized.
So the story that senators stand with leadership is a pretty weak one. Like you said, they'd only have needed to sway a few.
Regardless, though, Obama ceded his opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice as he voluntarily chose to press the Garland nomination even after it was clearly dead in the water.
Under Senate rules it's not up to any one senator, not even the Majority Leader, as to whether a nominee would be confirmed or not. The entire Senate has a say.
IF the Senate actually supported the nominee they could have brought a motion to the floor and got on with it. That they didn't shows that they didn't actually support him.
We really need to call these politicians out when they point fingers and try to shift blame to high profile figures for things that are within their own power.
But regardless, it's the president's responsibility to find a nominee that the Senate will approve. We need to remember that it was Obama's failure, as per the way the system is set up.
I think the most pressing and fundamental problem of the day is that people lack a practically effective means of sorting out questions of fact in the larger world. We can hardly begin to discuss ways of addressing reality if we can't agree what reality even is, after all.
The institutions that have served this role in the past have dropped the ball, so the next best solution is talking to each other, particularly to those who disagree, to sort out conflicting claims.
Unfortunately, far too many actively oppose this, leaving all opposing claims untested. It's very regressive.
So that's my hobby, striving to understanding the arguments of all sides at least because it's interesting to see how mythologies are formed but also because maybe through that process we can all have our beliefs tested.
But if nothing else, social media platforms like this are chances to vent frustrations that on so many issues both sides are obviously wrong ;)
Joined Dec 2022
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