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
I think your last paragraph has some important distinctions related to instance admins versus their own users if they defederate.
When this kind of thing comes up so many people focus on instance level blocking and moderation, that makes decisions for users, instead of ways of empowering users to shape their own experiences based on their own perspectives.
So when you talk about choosing between following which group of people, it just makes me think of how that might really translate to following the groups of users who have been allowed by their instances to participate more fully in the Fediverse system, forcing those users to choose as well, and it just sounds like a big old mess to me.
If we focus on empowering users instead then that does a lot to unwind those tricky social dynamics.
I think you might be echoing my own observation that so many people are getting so upset about Threads without Knowing what substantial issues they are actually getting upset about. I don't think they understand the problems that they are yelling so loudly about.
But I also wanted to say that ActivityPub is built on an awful lot of trusting of other instances, so that Mastodon must be as well.
For example, respecting of post audience and deletion requests are all based on trusting the remote instances to do the right thing and honor those requests.
And I think more users need to realize that as they put their content into this system.
To be clear, the underlying ActivityPub protocol and the Fediverse as a whole is perfectly able to do QT.
It's just that Mastodon specifically has refused to honor it, even though some particular instances like mine have added it as a tweak.
@antifawarlord @astrojuanlu @J12t@social.coop
I mean, with the way ActivityPub is designed they are probably already mining the shit out of the platform regardless of whether they actually make a bridge for their users or not.
AP is just really not a privacy focused system.
Varied experiences is one of those things that's either a bug or a feature depending on where one stands.
The idea of users having completely different experiences is a problem when some of the experiences are lackluster, BUT, on the optimistic side (maybe a theoretical side) that also frees UIs to give users different experiences they'd prefer.
I do like the idea of application developers tailoring their UIs to the needs of different users, empower users to look for the experience they want, even if it's different from someone else.
That being said, yep, it is a problem that many of these applications are struggling to really fulfill that promise.
I think so.
The focus on instances instead of real decentralization by focusing on users is one of the big criticisms I have about ActivityPub, one of the reasons this platform just isn't so interesting to me.
It was a development decision made long in the past, though, so it is what it is.
Well, this is a bit more complex because scaling in ActivityPub is mainly based on number of instances, not number of users.
A post shared with 10 or 100 users on a single instance really takes about the same amount of processing, as opposed to the same users on 100 different instances, each instance having to be contacted individually to broadcast the post.
Presumably Meta would set up its service as either one or at least the minimal number of instances, so the scaling wouldn't be as unworkable.
Well, account migration is not really part of ActivityPub underlying the Fediverse.
So Threads will almost certainly not have such a feature because Fediverse itself doesn't really have such a feature.
Yep. It's determined by the people that we elect, so we probably need to stop electing and then reelecting the individual representatives that so badly fail us.
Either way, we vote for the people who decide if justices are misbehaving, so if they're judging wrong, well again, we should probably stop electing the same people to keep failing the same way.
@Svetlana2@mastodon.social
volkris
boosted
Is distributed computing dying, or just fading into the backdrop?
There seems to be much less excitement about distributed computing these days.
Well they are. The justices face impeachment should they misbehave in office.
They only keep their jobs so long as our elected representatives let them.
@Svetlana2@mastodon.social
Why can't self-driving cars be cited for traffic violations?
Certainly the traffic cameras automatically issuing violations don't stop to see whether there is a human behind the wheel.
Each car is owned and operated by someone, whether that operation involves a human on board or not.
Well I think it's the kind of thing where there's no perfect solutions, just different options each with its own pluses and minuses.
Just to throw out one downside to this suggestion, one off the top of my head, any official who knows his job is ending has less incentive to do good work to keep the job.
In this case, heaven forbid there was a justice all-too-willing to misbehave in office but for the threat of impeachment to hold them between the lines, a threat that basically disappears through the course of that final term.
But then yep, it could be that this proposal is the worst one but for all the others :)
I wonder what state experiments with their courts would show empirically.
@CarlG314 @BrennanCenter
Ha! I laugh because of how many people are spending so much time obsessed with these reports of wealth.
These folks probably like their money because they can exchange it for goods and services.
The audience here is obsessed with that wealth for other, less directly beneficial reasons.
It strikes me that while that dramatic headline might get Slate some clicks, Occam's Razor would council us to consider that there was no such conspiracy; Biden simply never had that legal authority in the first place.
Legislative procedure and reading of statute isn't as exciting as these stories of sabotage, but they're important when it comes to holding politicians accountable and not letting them distract with shiny rhetoric.
To be clear, the ruling did not limit federal authority to protect wetlands.
It pointed out that the feds never had the authority that they were claiming, as Congress did not grant it to them.
Congressional Democrats had all the time in the world to grant that authority if it was so needed, and they declined.
Yes! I often thought some of the lesser known songs on Some Nights had a distinctive Queen-for-a-new-generation vibe to them.
But how much could be explained by underdiagnosis of a group notorious for being skeptical of facets of modernity?
Just because you don't diagnose it doesn't mean it's not there.
Ha! Well right, these newer allegations are more directly tied to the actual governmental position, while the previous ones were more about what somebody was doing in their personal life.
Just out of curiosity, is the web client really so lacking on tablets?
It seems like these days web technology is so well developed that maybe we don't need a lot of these apps in the first place, especially with the lock-in they can bring.
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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