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
Yep!
One difference, though, is that people coming from traditional social media platforms are used to having more of an expectation of privacy control than they have in Fediverse. No, not absolute expectation, but more.
Email has always been decentralized with the same lack of expectation of privacy. Social media has tended to be reliant on expectations of privacy from single, professionally run systems.
So in this system people have been surprised when their posts wind up in places they don't expect. That highlights the disconnect between understandings of privacy around here.
You say that, but I see so many people surprised by this.
I know for a fact that quite a lot of people are not aware because they tell me they're not.
Personally, this is one of my major gripes against the core design of ActivityPub. It didn't have to be this way, but choices were made to focus on instances instead of users.
A drum I beat as often as I can, because I think it's very important for people to realize, is that under #ActivityPub ALL privacy or audience restrictions are only suggestions.
Effectively, ALL bits of content are public, just with notations asking instances politely to only share them with certain audiences.
People writing content into #Fediverse need to be aware that what they're putting out there isn't as private as they might be expecting.
So if you write a private post to a certain group, it's entirely possible for some instance to ignore your privacy setting and blab the post to the whole world, or in other ways not act as expected with that.
Just be aware.
Wow, reading the article it sounds like they are misrepresenting the Taibbi quotes that they are presenting for themselves, for the sake of discrediting strawmen.
That's really something in an article that's supposedly about misrepresentations of fact.
So they misrepresent facts about what Taibbi has done in the course of accusing him of misrepresenting facts?
We are in such a weird place these days.
And that's not even getting into the issues around basic claims that, for example, Musk handpicked these journalists.
@shansterable@c.im
The problem is that nationalizing an industry puts it under the control of the president.
Don't like #Trump? Don't like #Biden? Whatever team you play for, to nationalize rail is to hand control of it over to that guy.
I'd rather not politicize rail like that, especially considering how badly such presidents bungle even their politicized jobs.
The thing is, the Court lays its argument out in public so we can all see them for ourselves, although far too few actually bother to read them.
Instead of attacking motivations and family members we should be simply sitting down and reading the arguments, identifying places where we believe they have gone astray.
This obsession with family drama over logic and reason and law is pretty unhealthy and antisocial.
Right, but the problem is the leap that's interpreting a call for peace as being a threat.
The ironic thing is that often enough they're the people who make that leap who end up being the source of the threat, since it's their interpretation.
Just be aware that you're playing into their hands, giving them exactly the reach that they're planning and counting on.
If you believe it to be for the best considering that, then fine. But just realize that in the process you're promoting them.
Musk is known for being impulsive and capricious.
So Occam's Razor would suggest that his purchase was just one more example of the pattern of behavior that he's known for.
This comes across as a huge stretch, a tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, when the guy was probably simply doing exactly what he was saying, buying the platform mainly for the heck of it.
No need to overthink and reach for this sort of sensational drama... or clickbait.
Agreed!
And that's exactly part of why I think we need to be pushing back against wanting financial service providers, not to mention others, to impose particular concepts of morality in their business.
No I don't think we are at cross purposes. We're talking about the same issues, looking at the same analyses.
You say Bitcoin is without worth, but your own sources are showing directly how much Bitcoin is worth to people. You say it's not been adopted but your source is illustrating very directly how much adoption there has been.
I guess if your purpose is to ignore reality, all right fine, we are at cross purposes. I am not particularly interested in doubling down on those fictions, no matter how many clicks they may get for opinion writers just trying to get sensationalized articles out there.
But if you want to talk about what is really happening in the world, which I assume you do, then we have the same purpose, and your article shows just how valuable Bitcoin is to its adopters.
Whether you care about facts or not, I guess that's up to you.
Right, but this is the reality crashing in :)
This is not a paradise without gatekeepers, where the best ideas go viral as decided by everyone collectively.
No, realistically this is a place where gatekeeping is available to instance owners who want to shape conversations as they think best, and hopefully they will be right, and similarly they can put their fingers on the scales to amplify what they think are the best ideas, regardless of the collective.
Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing, we should be honest about it being the reality.
And in part this is very important to make sure those actors aren't abusing their power over the platform.
We've seen GOP senators defy leadership plenty, much to the consternation of Republicans through the country.
From John McCain through Mitt Romney, even recent history has examples debunking the narrative of GOP congresspeople being particularly loyal... or organized.
So the story that senators stand with leadership is a pretty weak one. Like you said, they'd only have needed to sway a few.
Regardless, though, Obama ceded his opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice as he voluntarily chose to press the Garland nomination even after it was clearly dead in the water.
Under Senate rules it's not up to any one senator, not even the Majority Leader, as to whether a nominee would be confirmed or not. The entire Senate has a say.
IF the Senate actually supported the nominee they could have brought a motion to the floor and got on with it. That they didn't shows that they didn't actually support him.
We really need to call these politicians out when they point fingers and try to shift blame to high profile figures for things that are within their own power.
But regardless, it's the president's responsibility to find a nominee that the Senate will approve. We need to remember that it was Obama's failure, as per the way the system is set up.
Personally, I think designing the system around instance owners was an unfortunate decision, so I'm critical of that. But it is what it is.
It paints a pretty different picture, though, from attention democracy when users have to choose which instance owner to be subject to, or become an owner themselves with all of those drawbacks.
I just don't want to oversell a dream.
This place isn't nearly so democratic and gatekeeper free. The power imbalances are still front and center, even if you might say they're not as bad as somewhere else.
Another issue for niche forums is cost. They may have the financial resources for managing their little group, but ActivityPub requires significant resources and adds significant overhead, that the little group of people might not be interested in affording.
And then there's the issue of niche groups showing ads on their sites to fund their servers. ActivityPub risks undermining that source of revenue.
I'm not saying one way or the other since it's definitely a case by case decision to make.
Although I will say this is one place the overhead and cost of ActivityPub comes up, so I'm critical of that.
Ruthless GOP power plays? Democrats' strategic missteps shaped the court today.
From RBG's strategic retirement plan through Obama's insistence on nominating Garland, who could not pass confirmation, the ball was in their court, and we need to hold those people accountable for their errors.
Anyway, blocking future expansion also protects the Court from legislative interference once the pendulum has swung the other way.
That's the advantage of it being a constitutional amendment and not a simple law.
Well, keep in mind that this isn't necessarily true.
#Fediverse delivers a firehose of content around to the different instances, but the people running the instances decide for themselves what to do with it, whether to show it to users, which users to show it to, etc.
There absolutely ARE gatekeepers, as many here embrace and promote deferation and blocking of users. And there's nothing stopping a instance owner from accepting money from an advertiser to promote certain content.
Fediverse is just the communication technology. The instance owners are in charge.
I think it's important to be really aware of what this is and isn't.
Maybe it's for the best that we don't look to unelected private actors, particularly those with power over finances and abilities to act as gatekeepers to financial tools, to don the hats of police?
Yeah, when the bank owner isn't telling people what they can and can't do with their money, some people will do bad things with it.
But that's for law enforcement to address through transparent channels that respect due process. It shouldn't be for Jack Dorsey to go vigilante and take the law into his own hands.
Coffee, but my personal anecdotes are hardly significant.
These articles are about people #Bitcoin mining, right? Every one of those miners is an adopter who is not only engaging in trade using Bitcoin but is finding the currency so valuable that they're willing to pay both fixed and variable costs to acquire more.
The narratives complaining about Bitcoin mining are necessarily highlighting the adoption and value of the system.
It reminds me of the old line: Nobody goes there anymore--it’s too crowded.
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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