volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@jargoggles

Cause: a person signs up for the platform that gives them the better experience for them

Effect: They receive the experience that's better for them

That's why people do it.

They don't care about the billionaires like you do. They have other interests.

So it's not that they just enjoy being controlled by billionaires--it's that they don't care about billionaires, but they DO care about the better experience they get on those platforms.

@forteller

@forteller no, it's more that people prefer systems that give them better user experiences and better match what they want out of social media, and not all of us share that consuming concern with billionaires.

Great, that's your crusade, your ax to grind on about.

But it's just not relevant to so many of us, so it doesn't enter into our decisionmaking.

It's just another form of celebrity gossip, and that's just not interesting to so many of us.

@aeva this reminds me of disputes from decades ago where the term software engineer ran into issues with longstanding legal rules built up around the term "engineer"..

I think the profession ran faster than governments noticed, and by the time they started to say something the term was already too far in use, so not being able to put that horse back in the barn, they had to change the law instead.

(Or just ignore the laws and leave them unenforced. It probably varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction)

Off the top of my head "technologist" might have been the existing term that best fit it, since that term is used similarly in the broader engineering world.

It doesn't have a good zing to it, though.

@eeyam the one where we recognize the importance of lifesaving surgery and see a way of making it more accessible to those in need?

And decide that we should at least consider it?

@jmaris from the description it doesn't sound defective in the first place, though.

I just didn't think that was the interesting part of the story.

As far as I can tell, this system wasn't a full autopilot AND the driver was warned that it wasn't full autopilot, so calling it defective because it didn't do what it wasn't supposed to be able to do doesn't really hold water.

It's like me buying a hammer from you and then complaining that it's defective because it can't turn a screw.

No, the driver ignored warnings and abused a tool, using it in a dangerous way it wasn't intended to work.

That's not a defect. That's a driver engaging in risky behavior.

@BeAware@social.beaware.live

Yeah, the way I frame it, Mastodon should be working on empowering readers to craft the experience they want, but over and over again Mastodon developers have avoided that option.

In this case it comes down to actively wanting others to shape your experience.

It's exactly backwards, and you capture it.

How do I, the commenter, know if you would want those replies or not? It leaves me guessing, and if I guess wrong then I'm negatively impacting your use of the site.

It's a bad plan.

@David

So is the spontaneity issue just a matter of making the UI easier to post from? Or is there something deeper in the way?

@DavidBHimself

@keremgo3d@masto.ai

I think it might be different for we who followed the long engineering work to get to this point.

And also we who work in related fields, who personally deal with so many of the challenges they're overcoming.

For example, I was in my machine shop last night doing some metalworking, and it makes it that much more amazing that they were able to even build this giant metal structure that was able to withstand the forces involved.

I think a lot of the people excited by this are the ones who know just how difficult it's been to reach each of these milestones, even if they don't look like much to some that aren't in the know.

@Mark_W_White

@jmaris apparently the ruling is sealed so we can't read it, but from the reporting this is merely saying that there's something to take to trial. It's not anything conclusive.

It's a weird case, though.

This is proof that Tesla knew the system was defective? Well you know what else is proof? The warnings that Tesla gave drivers not to rely on the system!

This one sounds like a driver choosing to ignore warnings.

@jupiter_rowland in the end the user chooses their own experience based on what client they choose to use.

If a user is very worried about being triggered by an image then they need to use a client with features that would hide all images.

It's not your responsibility to save a user from bad choices about which clients they choose to use.

@mnutty because the fewer words the better, lest you risk upsetting your confirmation bias with a more informed view of the world?

Really, it should be immediately clear why picking a single word out of a speech isn't a legitimate path toward understanding.

It's just childish.
@jensorensen

@GW@newsie.social I don't particularly disagree with that, though. I'd have minor quibbles, but I think that's largely the situation, at least one half of it.

@hulavikih I would frame that differently:

We give the craziest politicians the most publicity and attention.

We should stop doing that, and step one is recognizing the role we play in that culture!

@jensorensen I disagree.

As you can see from your screenshot and also confirm in video recordings, he went on to clarify what he was talking about with more specific complaints than merely the singling out of people of different political persuasions.

So with that included it changes his proposal, that he was going to prosecute people who "lie and cheat and steal on elections"

Yes, that's all part of the BS that he feeds his crowd, but it changes the line away from being just about prosecuting political groups, as it has been portrayed.

When I listened to the original audio and double checked it with the video right now, with his pacing I believe it should be regarded as one long sentence, not cut in half as so many have.

https://youtu.be/agAHZF3uPdE?si=qzMjGUVSBVOe9VdX

@mnutty

@kaffando but I would use Trump and MAGA as perfect examples to make my case!

The MAGA crowd existed before Trump. Trump just saw them, saw an opportunity to use them to enrich himself, and so he was a reflection of them, not the other way around.

I think a lot of people had been kind of sitting in echo chambers where they hadn't seen the MAGA type people growing in numbers and frustration for a decade, but I watched it. I saw it and I tried to warn other people about it.

If you watch unedited videos of Trump in friendly interviews and even on the campaign trail, often enough you'll see that he doesn't know what to do until he takes cues from the audience. Often he will make the most generic policy statement until the audience tells him what he is supposed to say, or he will sit kind of neutrally until the audience basically prompts him to do something stupid.

But yeah, Trump and MAGA is a great example of exactly what I'm saying: governments these days seem to often reflect the mood of people, not the other way around, which is why it's especially important to focus on people.

Even if you change the government, that doesn't mean it changes the people, see for example today with Trump and MAGA going strong even after the US changed its government :-)

@kaleb@social.coop I've heard it's already possible in ActivityPub even without new delegation functionality, but I've never understood how.

It seems really contrary to the basic model of the system that puts instances at the center of everything, not users. People complain about missing comments in comment threads in part because of that fundamental model, and it's just one sign that account portability across instances would be a tough ask.

I know AP does have cryptographic signatures involved in its operation, so maybe that's part of how it might work. Or I could also imagine bolt on functionality where there would be a home instance and a user using another instance would basically have all traffic forwarded to and from and through the home instance.

But it's hard to imagine a way of cleanly getting around the choice to make instances first class above users.

@jeffowski so what's your solution to that?

@kaffando I tend to think governments don't actually have that much control over how people act towards each other.

Kind of the opposite, governments these days seem to reflect their people, not the other way around.

Unfortunately it is a much simpler story to blame government for how people act. People are messy, so looking at bottom up causes are more complicated.

But more accurate.

@tcely I get that, but my practical concern of the moment is that fighting over the terminology of broken versus not broken, even if that is a valid and worthy thing to address in its own right,

I worry that that argument distracts from the task of addressing the practical problem of correcting users' mental models, so that they can use the platform more effectively and safely.

I agree that broken is not the best terminology for the guy to use, but I would rather focus on fixing the mental models than dying on the hill of whether software meets its design goals :-)