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
You're overlooking the realities of executive branches.
It doesn't matter what courts say if the key parts of the picture aren't even in the jurisdiction of law enforcement in the first place.
The legislature in California can pass a law outlawing jaywalking on New York streets, but regardless of what any court says, California's governor won't be having cops stopping pedestrians in CA that are crossing NY streets because there are no NY streets in CA.
Even if the law is passed unanimously with bipartisan approval, there still aren't any NY streets in CA, so the law is irrelevant from the get-go, as there's nothing the executive is physically able to enforce.
Laws can only be enforced if law enforcement can reach the people involved, regardless of any theoretical or abstract issues.
Exactly, and to be clear I'm not saying federation instead of decentralization is a bad idea or a bad compromise. We just need to recognize its pros and cons, that it is a compromise.
In this particular case federation means handing content to untrusted third parties and asking them politely to respect visibility notations. That's fine so long as everyone is aware it's based on voluntary compliance.
Had the system been designed around decentralized users instead of federated instances we could have cut out the third party. But that's not the compromise they settled on.
Right, but these are different governments with different designs, different enforcement mechanisms, different legal realities.
Different checks and balances, different notions of federalism, free speech rights codified, statutory realities, legal precedents... I could go on and on.
A state can pass whatever laws it wants. Often enough the just-enacted laws will be instantly irrelevant as if they outlawed the next morning's rising of the sun.
An unenforceable statute is just that.
So let's see what happens.
There's a good chance this will be nothing but a political stunt--paid for by the public--in the end.
That's not the critical part for enabling the scheme, though. The state would need a way to enforce it, and that would be difficult.
All the firms in the world trying to sell verification services won't matter if nobody bothers going to them because the law is unenforceable in the first place.
@J12t@social.coop
Well, just as #ActivityPub is based on other standards like ActivityStreams, perhaps the place to standardize usage of ActivityPub is in a separate standard that makes use of ActivityPub.
Huh. Turns out AZ law does allow courts to reverse elections.
https://www.azleg.gov/viewdocument/?docName=https://www.azleg.gov/ars/16/00676.htm
Well, so much depends on actual implementation.
An impossible to implement law is just bluster. Annoying, yes, and maybe even expensive to the government trying to pursue it, but it's not clear Utah's law will be anything more than whistling into the wind.
It'd be like a city council outlawing gravity. That's a nice law they've got there, but...
So we'll see. Utah's law so far is little but a political stunt.
Oh no! They DIDN'T choose decentralization, and that's such an key point here.
ActivityPub chose to *centralize* around instances.
They chose a federated model, not a decentralized one.
Had they decentralized with key focus on users there's a good chance stuff like this wouldn't be such an issue.
@shansterable@c.im
Firstly, the profit incentive is absolutely alive and well in nationalized industries.
You think NASA employees work for free?
But to the point, it sounds like you're trying to have it both ways, saying the industry is already under the control of the federal government--just look at how badly the feds have screwed it up--but what we need now is to put it under the control of the federal government--they'll fix these problems.
No, I'd say the examples you've given here are great examples of why we SHOULDN'T nationalize the industry.
Trump removed regulations and Biden forced people to work, and that's through the regulatory and processes. Imagine what harm they'd do with direct command of the organizations.
Well not quite since most people have NO understanding of ActivityPub at all, much less a misunderstanding :)
For so many people, all they know is that they set their post to have a limited audience, and then magic happens, and then Wait, what? What do you mean people outside of the audience I set can see my post?
Anyway, my point is only to raise awareness of this issue as so many have said they've been caught off-guard by that lack of privacy here.
The source of that mis-expectation of privacy is a bit of a side topic, I suppose.
I just go back to the original title above saying that the purchase makes no sense unless it's part of something bigger.
Given Musk's track record, it makes sense to me without being part of something bigger.
So alright, maybe you do have circumstantial evidence to support the bigger, more complex theory, but at the same time we shouldn't dismiss the simple explanation since it makes sense as well.
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.
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
volkris's choices:
