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
@mmeadway @nadezhda04 @stopgopfox@libretooth.gr @joshtpm
An issue is that a lot of these adjustments just end up kicking the can down the road. They may bend the graph a bit, but it still leads to insolvency at some point on the timeline.
We should be able to talk about major structural changes without accusing each other of trying to kill the system in the process of shifting it to a more sustainable model that won't eventually crash and burn during some future generation.
What in the world are you talking about?
The whole thing about capitalism is that there is a scarcity of resources, so all of the fucking around is constrained by the resources available to fund it.
So here's a technical point that I'm not at all sure about, but I believe the underlying protocols have features that would allow people to maintain identities separately from their instances.
At this point the applications like Mastodon and whatever else aren't really taking advantage of that separation, but I think it's actually in there.
The ActivityPub protocol stuff is pretty big and complicated so I can never remember every nook of it, but, I think I remember that separation being part of it.
@TCatInReality @bobwyman @lauren But let me build on that just a little bit.
The big problem with first past the post is that when I cast my vote I have to worry a whole lot about how my neighbor is casting his vote, I have to game things because I don't want my vote wasted on somebody that doesn't actually stand a chance of winning... maybe because other people aren't voting for that candidate because they don't want to waste their vote on someone who doesn't have a chance of winning... which obviously becomes circular and stupid pretty quickly 🙂
SO how do we mitigate this problem? By only having two candidates to vote for. By organizing ourselves behind two candidates supposedly diametrically opposed, and so we evolved a primary system with two major political parties.
Which is all to say that as much as people complain about the two-party system in the US, two few people realize that the two party system is merely the natural attempt to mitigate issues with our voting system.
The two party system is harsh medicine for a deeper problem. We should cure the deeper problem instead of spending so much time worrying about the mitigating mechanism.
Yes, but it's a double-edged sword.
Quantity versus quality.
A large instance full of stuff you're not interested in is probably not worth as much as a small instance focused on the things that you are interested in.
@FlopError@mstdn.party
So exactly how many conspiracy theories are you proposing there? Is it just one per platform, or multiple on each platform? And what about the others?
volkris
boosted
One of my blog posts got cited in a book and now I have to carefully migrate my URLS every 6 years when my other garbage needs a new home.
My reaction goes the other way: when I looked into Mastodon and the underlying ActivityPub protocol It struck me as exceedingly lacking in cleverness. It looked like a hodgepodge of existing web technologies mashed together instead of a real evolutionary leap. It could have been so much more.
But in the end, it may be good enough.
After all, with social media the hardest part is gaining critical mass. All of the big players, from Facebook to Twitter, none of them offered anything especially Earth shattering. They just had the population to be useful.
Anyway, to the point here, one of the axes that I grind is people being misled as to what this platform is actually offering. I just think we need to be more honest about things ranging from the lack of privacy through the lack of full decentralization.
A lot of the excitement around this platform is based on misunderstandings about what the platform actually is, and that's not good for anybody.
@InayaShujaat@mastodon.nz
Wow your responses are toxic.
No, I never used Twitter. Never liked that site myself.
But when people talk about the factors holding Fediverse back and you start cussin and yelling at people to leave, well...
Again, the post was making a decent point about the downsides of this platform, particularly the hostility, and your over the top hostile reactions just really confirm that point.
Mainly, I think you're projecting here.
Lots of different people want different things out of social media platforms, so just because you want one thing doesn't mean that's the right thing for all. There's more diversity here than that.
So I'd say we should focus on letting users shape their own experiences rather than dictating what should and shouldn't be available on the platform for all.
I shouldn't be shaping this platform for my wants any more than I think you should for you.
Empower users. Let them chose to engage with corporations or not.
After all, topically, some people like Superbowl Commercials, even if I've no interest in those.
So I appreciate being empowered to turn off the corporations when I'm not interested.
Right, because they're not interested in WHY corporations exist. They're just interested in their operation :)
Corporations, like insurance and ammonia production, play such a vital and underappreciated role in progressing society, enabling the creation of all sorts of things and promoting so many modern day efforts that would not otherwise be possible.
Even if people don't understand quite how they work.
I was going to compare them to sanitary sewers, but I think people DO recognize how important *those* are.
No, that's not historically or economically accurate.
Corporations mostly exist because I can't afford to buy a lathe on my own, but if we put our money together we could buy one together and start making things to sell. BUT, how do we trust each other? And how do we trust other strangers who like what we're doing and would throw in some cash to buy more lathes to expand the operation?
Corporations exist to give a legal framework for strangers pooling resources to accomplish some task, even if they don't know or trust each other.
House Republicans weren't just presenting them as victims, though, pointing out the messages where they looked all too happy to use government requests as excuses to do what they wanted to do.
This framing misses a lot of the story.
volkris
boosted
Elno has introduced a 4000 character limit for paid subscribers and the main reaction has been "Hell, no! Don't feed the trolls!" Most #Misskey and #Calckey instances, like blahaj.zone, have a 3000 character limit as standard, and no trolls. 💁♀️ No more 1/X #Mastodon & #Twitter threads, and posts are conviently collapsed so it doesn't effect the scrolling experience on your timeline ♥️ #fediverse #feditips
FWIW, another reason beside simple network effect is that lately I've been seeing so many posts with SO MANY hashtags that it's hard to wade through the annoying and uninteresting posts to get to interesting ones.
The Twitter algorithms at least help with that.
It seems to be getting worse here lately, having to scroll farther and farther to find anything interesting.
Well, I guess the key is that we need to be clear about what Fediverse does and doesn't promise.
It doesn't promise permanent operation of any particular instance, and it doesn't promise that history will be maintained forever.
You can rely on infrastructure for what it DOES promise; that just wasn't a feature it was promising.
(Personally, I really want people to realize that Fediverse doesn't promise privacy, as I think a lot of people are mislead on that, but that's a different topic)
@mmeadway @stopgopfox@libretooth.gr
The reason the tax limit on earnings exists is because benefits are tied to taxes, so without the limit the SSA would be paying even larger amounts out to rich people who we don't think need the help.
And no, this is the whole point: Congress DID NOT borrow surplus revenue from SSA, as that's not how the program is legally set up.
From the beginning SSA was legally required to deposit its surplus in the Treasury to be spent on other programs. That's not borrowing. It's depositing, and despite so many politicians' lies over the years (yes, I do believe they know better), that's how this was designed to operate.
I want to emphasize part of my point though: it's not voter INaction, but voter ACTION where we voters go to the polls and actively reelect representatives with their track records.
We don't just sit back and let it happen. We participate in the process of putting these individuals back in power even after they demonstrated how they would vote.
I don't know how many issues I see where friends will be excited to vote for some candidate even though I know that candidate contributed to some serious problem that the friend personally cares about.
We eagerly reelect the people who cause so many problems. Voter education is seriously lacking, but in the end, we get the government we vote for.
@InayaShujaat@mastodon.nz
Well I can't state it any better than the post did.
If I repeat the post I can only imagine you'd have the same reaction of being personally offended instead of recognizing the legitimate criticisms and observations of areas for improvement.
And really, your last line just illustrates one of the big failings that they tried to bring to light.
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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