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
@Pat sounds like you have not talked to a lot of MAGA folks.
I have. I know quite a few of them personally.
Your claims here aren't in line with the discussions I've had with them, and honestly just sound like you are promoting negative stereotypes.
This is a little off-topic and axe-grindy, but:
I was just having an exchange with someone over the notion that #Fediverse is without algorithms.
But it DOES have an algorithm! Fediverse clients, like #Mastodon, tend to do a chronological display, which IS an #algorithm, just a really simplistic one that doesn't serve a lot of users particularly well.
The reason this is more than a pedantic point is because, as you say, it's a controversial topic but shouldn't be.
Should I propose an algorithm that would serve users better, I'd have to show its benefit, but also, I'd have to overcome the hurdle of it being an algorithm *when everyone is already using an algorithm*.
So it's an artificial controversy that stands in the way of improved algorithms to make user experiences better.
So yeah, I don't have an actual answer to your question, only a point that we have an attitude around here that prevents solutions to the problem you bring up. Grrrrr.
And stepping off my soapbox :)
To understand the state of #USPolitics, and US society more broadly, a person has to realize that the process against #Trump isn't merely two camps who want the guy found innocent or guilty after a weighing of the evidence.
No, it is as if there was a murder trial where one side believed they were having beers with the purported victim as the trial was going on.
It's not a matter of legal technicality or weighing preponderances of evidence or reasonable doubt; it's a matter of the country being divided over fundamental fact, here whether a person is alive or not.
It's not a political division. Sadly it's a reality division.
Jesus, Twitter was NEVER a good place for academia.
A short-form medium specifically limiting academics' abilities to explain the world is a terrible platform to embrace for that kind of thing.
It was only useful and engaging for content that was so superficial and bland that it could fit into the character limit without decent discussion capability.
Yes, I have feelings about this.
Good riddance.
So? Who cares who they are. Either their arguments are good or they're bad, regardless of who's doing the arguing.
This sort of ad hominem attack is really not healthy.
We absolutely are losing people because the algorithm here doesn't serve them well.
It's not lack of users. People reasonably criticize the platform for not showing them content that is on the platform, just not put in front of their eyes. So they wander off.
And what the bad guys do has no bearing on what we should do if we want this place to be better for users.
Oh I would simply say chronological (or reverse chronological) if that's what is being meant.
The point is that reverse chronological serves so many users really badly, and that drives off a lot of potential users.
To say "no algorithm" sets up this extra, unnecessary barrier to overcome to serve users better. At that point it becomes not enough to simply show a better algorithm, but you have to first convince a person to accept an algorithm at all *even as they are already accepting one* with reverse chronological.
It's no minor detail. It's a rhetorical block against making the platform better.
If you really like reverse chronological for your feed, great! It is such a simple algorithm that it shouldn't be a problem to keep as an option universally.
But so many users would be better served if they were empowered to choose a different algorithm that better matched their usage.
@alfredo_liberal@zirk.us
Well, I think the key is to be sad that this platform didn't serve them well enough to keep them around.
That's the way we push this platform to be better.
What happens behind the scenes is that the instance that you're leaving sends notifications to people who have subscribed to received those notifications.
And if you think about it, it has to be this way, or else I could set up another account and just claim to be you in your new home. The old instance has to be the one to send the notification to prove that it's legit.
Keep in mind that "show things in chronological order" is itself an algorithm.
But more importantly, I'd say if we want more people here, then the main thing we needs is exactly better algorithms that can empower users to have the experiences they want.
The people who want to see more news and the people who want to see less news are both better served by better algorithms that serve them those things.
Without better algorithms a lot of people are just not going to be interested in this platform because they're not being served by it.
No, this is about the people who follow you.
They won't know your new address without the redirect, kind of like needing the postal service to forward your mail to your new house.
Yeah, you export and import the list of people you follow, but it's the people looking for you that become the issue.
Oh wow!
That's bizarre to me, and I wonder how it plays out in practice.
It sounds like it takes laws designed to operate under state court rules and has them adjudicated under federal court rules, like taking a sports team and throwing it into a different sport.
To be clear, and this sounds like a small detail but it's actually practical and important, an ineligible person can win an election *even if he can't actually take office*.
Even if #Trump is ineligible to *be* president, he can still run, and we (well, the EC) can still elect him. It's just that he can't be seated, so presumably the elected VP would be seated instead, and the rest of the succession rules would proceed as laid out.
Nothing can stop Trump from winning except the election process deciding to elect someone else.
That's completely separate from eligibility to actually take office, though.
It's not the job of state election officials to undermine the ability of their voters to elect who they want to elect.
I think it's a case of waste being in the eye of the observer.
I think my neighbor wasted a ton of money on his fancy new TV, but to him, that TV is great and totally worth the money.
Same here. It's not wasted electricity if the person spending the resource gets the return he wants from it.
I don't see how a federal court can conduct a trial that's the state bringing criminal charges against a defendant under state laws.
And the DOJ website seems to confirm that:
"Criminal cases may not be brought under diversity jurisdiction. States may only bring criminal prosecutions in state courts, and the federal government may only bring criminal prosecutions in federal court. "
Redirection is part of ActivityPub, though.
If you know of someone existing on a certain instance, you have no choice but to go to that instance to find their new address if they move.
It's a fundamental part of Fediverse, can't be avoided.
I just really don't think people are as focused on news here as you think they are. Just different people looking for different things.
Heck, sometimes it sounds like people want to use these platforms to ESCAPE the news.
*hat
stupid typo
But just because something has been long recognized doesn't mean we know everything about it, or even enough about it to engage with it.
The two aren't mutually exclusive.
I think so many people miss that #Trump isn't simply a cause of socially bad things but is also the result of negative factors in the social environment, things that had been bubbling under the surface for years.
It's easy to hold Trump responsible for things in the same way that it's easy to promote all sorts of superstitious ideas: turning my had backwards simply makes my team do better!
But the reality is so much more complex.
Trump took advantage of complicated political and social undercurrents that we should have been addressing for years, but that we were dismissing.
To the extent that it doesn't matter what Trump does, that just reflects that this whole thing was never really about him in the first place. He was simply the suit onto which so much of the public projected their existing complaints.
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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