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Marking Sensitive because not everyone wants to see US political stuff 

@nonproductive

Well firstly, keep in mind that you are sort of making an ad hominem attack. You are attacking the person instead of the argument.

But to answer your question, the US has systems of appeals so that even if a particular judge does misbehave there are other levels to address such misbehavior.

@Popehat @GottaLaff @TonyStark

@jay

Well I guess that kind of gets tricky in the scene where people are so opposed to algorithms.

Mastodon uses the algorithm of the fire hose just throwing all of the content at the user, well, here's a bunch of content, and it gets thrown at the user.

It's giving the people what they ask for, for better or worse.

@uspolitics

It's a weird headline seeing as this is an executive branch matter, so talking about the legislative branch is kind of off topic.

@lilly

I think it's so important that we need to establish a norm where users have the power and instance operators only block other instances as a nuclear option, as a last resort where the instance is a threat to the fundamental infrastructure of the system.

Normatively I highlight that if an instance operator blocks some other instance, that deprives their users of the agency to decide for themselves whether they want that block to happen or not.

I really think that should have been more user-oriented instead of instance oriented, but through our norms we can partially address that decision.

volkris boosted

(please boost)
Okay...... WHY is our instance fediblocked in the first place? and why does that include our matrix instance getting removed from joinmatrix because "they decided to deem us as controversial"??
Our instance is a non-extremist, leftist comfy instance that accepts everyone, we have nearly 1000 users and I don't really understand why we are getting blocked everywhere. The worst thing is that there is no reason behind this and nobody is able to give us a single reason about why the """"council"""" decided to block us. This is stupid.
I'm considering buying a new domain at this point. We've been on fedi with based.social and miruku.cafe since 2020, and I've been using fedi since 2018 and this is just nonsense, I'm really pissed off. (meow)

@shsbxheb@fosstodon.org

From Biden's own mishandling of classified documents through accusations that he participated in bribery schemes, there are some really questionable stuff going on with the guy.

Maybe all of it is false. Maybe all of it can be explained away. But it is at least questionable, and worth looking into.

@dangillmor

@DanielCha

But that's exactly my question, HOW is it incompatible?

I was looking for specifics as to your disagreement, and just saying it's incompatible doesn't support your argument.

How specifically is it incompatible? That's what I'm asking about.

@dangillmor

I mean it's apples and oranges. The one does not have to do with the other.

Are people willing to reelect Biden even though he has done some really questionable things? I don't know. We will find out. That's why we have elections

@lauren

Yeah, but however we want to judge it, for better or worse, this seems to be how humans are.

Just based on real world experience, it's an empirical question, whether we like it or not, and I don't like it, a whole lot of business and correspondence and organization and progress is made when humans meet in person, often with booze involved.

Again I reiterate that I don't like this observation, but it seems to be pretty solid in my experience and also in the experiences of so many others who keep going back to this well

It is what it is even though you and I might not like it to be this way. And we can't deny it just because we wish it was otherwise.

@DanielCha

Well that's what I'm trying to ask you! 🙂

I'm trying to ask you where you think the majority ruling went wrong, so why do you think this is wrong?

@lauren

Personally, I am a country person.
I don't like cities. I find them claustrophobic and noisy and generally annoying. But my personal preferences aside, I appreciate that there is a certain economy of scale that seems to benefit from a certain level of urban density, the exact same sort of thing that gives rise to academic conferences getting together in person.

It is irrational, but a bunch of academics all drinking wine and getting a little toasted together does lead to progress.

So that's just how humans are. Whether I like it or not, whether it is good for our mental or physical health or not, that is just how humans are wired.

A zoom meeting is just no substitute for a couple dozen people talking amongst themselves in person in a room.

Literally last week I was unofficially officially required to join a little work party among a bunch of different people to celebrate the end of a project, and you could just see the gears turning for the next project as these people met in person to discuss the past and talk about the future.

It's just how humans are wired, whether we like it or not.

@DanielCha

But that is not what the ruling said.

The ruling did not read "adjacent wetlands" out of the statute, but rather as dissenting opinions emphasized, it found that "adjacent" had a less binding meaning.

So no, that argument doesn't hold any water

@lauren

Logically I would agree with you.

But I think that human irrationality means that I have to accept that the world doesn't quite follow that theory.

And the biggest ax that I have to grind in this way is the inefficiency of large cities, that run into huge scaling problems. Why do they exist? Why do we accept the cost of supporting large cities with dense populations when we could shoulder the cost of those populations in more efficient, smaller communities?

Well, I think the research shows that there are these irrational factors whereby humans derive value out of being packed together so closely. And that is regardless of technology.

In my ideal world humans would be more efficient and not drive benefit from such costly side factors like overly large cities or face to face time in the workplace, but we are stuck with the humans we are stuck with :-)

Humans are going to spend resources on office buildings, huge cities, and the super bowl, and that's just part of human nature, whether I like it or not, and I don't, but there you go.

So it sounds like @heatherlynn8571 is so protective of their foregone conclusions that they don't stop to engage and realize that their assumptions about other people are wrong.

That's a shame.

@danwentzel

@lauren

I don't think it's a stark true or false question.

Some level of in person face time has huge benefits, but the marginal advantage drops off quite quickly.
So one day a week in the office or even one day every other week can have huge benefits, but every day in the office ends up having the marginal costs soaring past the marginal benefits.

Consider the existence of academic conferences. They are expensive, and time-consuming, and take a ton of time, and yet academic societies around the world keep having them. Why? Because as irrational as it may be, humans do experience progress from seeing each other in person.

I don't believe these tech companies are stupid or looking to throw money away on the costs of having people come to their offices. I think they actually do see the benefits from people showing up in person.

They are the ones with skin in the game, so I tend to defer to their decisions to spend their resources in this way

@lauren

Yes, yes, this is social media, where we yell at clouds 🙂

But what I'm saying, behind the wording, is that if you are living under the threat of a regulatory hammer being dropped on you if the people in power don't like what you do, then you're not exactly free, you are being threatened only one step removed from the specific threat of jail time or other penalty.

@lauren

So just based on your own framing , I would not say they have the right, I would say they have permission.

IF, as you say, it's a possibility that regulators might get involved and act against them should they behave in ways that those in power don't like, I wouldn't call that a right, I would call it behavior that is being tolerated for now.

At the moment these platforms seem to have a level of permission to operate so long as they don't let it get out of hand in the eyes of those in power. That's a very different picture from platforms having the right to empower users to speak to each other willy nilly.

If these platforms are operating under threat of regulation, which is the situation you are presenting, then they don't really have the right. They are doing their best to serve us while looking over their shoulders fearful of regulatory hammers coming down on them.

@nico

Meh, charging third parties to take advantage of their own computation doesn't strike me as going crazy.

@lauren

If you're saying there will be consequences then that sounds to me like they don't have the right.

If they had such a right then they wouldn't have to be concerned about consequences from regulators, since a right is generally understood as something that regulators can't intrude upon.

If Google has a right to return this information to YT then regulators have no place to regulate that right.

@heatherlynn8571

Well that's nice, so don't vote for them. *shrug*

That's your vote to use any way you want.

@danwentzel

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