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
... They voted to limit government power
They pointed out that the government did not have legal authority to be so authoritarian.
You've got a weird take on Nazis.
Yeah, reminds me of the issues with Mastodon hammering websites for image previews as posts circulated among instances.
I wouldn't be surprised if something of yours got boosted to a large followers list, causing every one of those instances to respond with a request to your instance, without you even knowing.
Maybe even a QT that's not being reported in a standard way back to you.
I'm sure it all varies widely by context and use case.
Very often it really doesn't matter one bit where some content came from; its value is in what it is, not from its source.
So it's really probably between individual producers and consumers of the media, to be sorted out by reading the wishes and applications.
@ray_saltrelli@mastodon.social
Yes, but I think you're overlooking that Meta can *already* do a ton of scraping due to the design of ActivityPub whether or not they launch Threads.
It's not going to be all that worse because we've been there since the first moment someone started using this protocol with such small regard to privacy controls.
Well, what kind of requests?
IPFS is really fairly misnamed as it's not so much a filesystem as a distributed database with some really powerful features to do things like build in native datatypes.
In fact, files are just one datatype for IPFS. It's basically the equivalent of storing a file in an SQL database.
Also, IPFS is tuned for smaller bits of data, not huge movie files and such.
All of that is to say, Yep! Using it to distribute scientific data like weather station readings is just about the perfect use case for it. It can present those small bits of data in semantically relevant ways.
@patrick_townsend
Oh, you're missing it, Mastodon and ActivityPub have the exact same issue you've identified with IPFS!
Content deletion on ActivityPub is exactly as unenforced as it is on IPFS.
Your instance broadcasts content out to other instances, and you can also broadcast a request for deletion, but the remote instances are under no obligation to actually honor the request nor prove that they have.
volkris
boosted
@openwebfriend@procial.tchncs.de
Why wouldn't opening their system to all of the content already being shared on Fediverse be sufficient incentive on its own? It's free content for their users, promoting their users to engage on their system.
It only takes several days of floor time if the rest of the Senate puts up with it.
They can vote to skip the floor time at any point.
Such suspension of the standing rules is common enough when the Senate wants to get something done.
@MJmusicinears @samhainnight
Do you have a good reference that goes into the law and the determination of it? I'm curious.
I'm especially curious as to whether those government officials simply have the law wrong, and so are creating a problem that's already been solved, making an unnecessary mess of things.
@Mikerotch75 if you're referring to the Electoral College voting for president, that's a different issue.
Either way, it's a political and legal issue, not a moral one.
No, I imagine those who'd feel the opposite of freedom--obligation to pay--would not be so on board...
Instead of trying to interfere in states' elections, the GOP would be on firmer philosophical and legal ground if it just expressed to the residents of those states that they were diluting their own votes with such choices.
If they decided it was worth it, then hey, so be it. They're their votes to use as they wish.
What people miss with this often repeated narrative is that #Bitcoin absolutely does not rely on energy and carbon-intensive digital mining. You could run a serious Bitcoin network on a couple of small solar panels and junked car batteries.
Instead, people choose for themselves to exchange energy for Bitcoin because they see it as more valuable than the energy. They spend more energy than Bitcoin requires because they see it as just that valuable.
So the idea of changing to a cleaner protocol doesn't really offer a solution since it's the people, not the protocol, burning so much carbon.
Ha, well for an honest reply to the joke question... :)
I'd say if it works, it's Mastodon. If it doesn't it's Fediverse!
If you use the edit function, Mastodon sends an ActivityPub message out saying the post has been edited, but who knows what other platforms are going to actually respect that message and reflect the edits.
Yay federation!
Despite what so many are reporting, that is not what's happening, and it's not part of how the US system works.
It makes for a dramatic story that gets clicks, but it's just factually wrong.
The rules of the Senate generally allow a majority to move forward on anything if they want to, even to end a filibuster.
The only reason Tuberville is being covered like this is because the rest of the senators that we elected are supporting this block, letting it continue, instead of voting against him.
I mean it's not up to the president to do something about it.
If anything is to be done it's by the folks we elected to represent us in Congress.
It's dangerous territory to talk about a president interfering in the judicial branch even if it's for some cause that we in the moment might get behind.
Technically, yes it is a challenging problem to address. No two ways about that.
But that's one reason I emphasize education. At the least I want users to know what they are getting into, and with the numbers of people I find surprised by it, clearly what we are doing so far to have warnings in UIs and such hasn't been enough.
The drama over Threads is bringing up that disconnect between privacy expectations and realities once again.
To be clear, I'm not talking about anything related to Meta. I'm referring to the longstanding issues of people posting things here without realizing that what they are posting has such little privacy guards around it.
It's just the core of how ActivityPub was designed, and there's not much to do about it at this point except make sure users are more informed about how it works.
Heck, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Meta is MORE trustworthy and well-behaved than many ActivityPub instances out there since they are under public and legal scrutiny, unlike some random instance running in someone's bedroom vacuuming up even audience restricted content for who knows what purpose.
I don't know that the intense focus on Meta would bring effective solutions that would also address the general issues.
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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