volkris @volkris@qoto.org

@antares but that goes back to the original post.

It said they might delay the transition to the thing they don't make, but they DO make it, just deeper in the supply chain.

So the picture being painted doesn't really hold together.

And that's not even getting into the electricity pathway to hydrogen, which the companies supposedly aren't involved in, so.

@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party no, no, if customers are suffering then it means they're paying to suffer, which doesn't make much sense.

If they're keeping their money then they're not customers.

And then they have money that they could pay you for a service that doesn't involve their suffering.

And that's how you compete.

@shrikant but this is the point where I start to feel like, Wait, what are we talking about again?

Is the AI going to engage in enshittification so so many say, or is their work going to be satisfactory? Are the AIs going to be indistinguishable from humans even in the "Mom wants to chat with Gloria about her kids while checking out" sense? Are we talking complete replacements for literal humans?

Because I don't actually think the last is on the table at this point, and the last is quite the opposite from the first.

I don't actually believe it's realistic that the robot is doing ALL possible tasks and outcompeting humans at all possible tasks.

And if they are, well, then we're moving into a phase of society where society can have better goods and services without anyone having to work, which is quite a shift.

@shrikant I'm in the world where I know an awful lot of restaurant industry workers who aren't exactly loving how hard their jobs are :)

Give them a robot to bus tables, roll napkins, manage the books, put in orders to restock the bar, and they'll be free to spend more time engaging with customers and doing the parts of the work that they actually do like.

And customers stand to benefit from that as well.

Think of AI as taking over tasks, not jobs. A ton of tasks stand to be replaced, yep, leaving the humans able to focus on the parts they'd rather be doing.

@shrikant but if the customers don't care, then they won't be suffering.

This gets into the age old issues of trying to push the general public into higher standards and more cultured preferences.

Like, why are people settling for Marvel movies and the Super Bowl when they can be watching opera and reading Shakespeare?

For that matter, why are people settling for the cruddy user experience that is Mastodon?

At some point it's worth remembering that there's a diversity of taste out there, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

If people want crap and I'm not particularly interested in giving them crap, well I probably should find something better to do anyway.

@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party you said customers will suffer.

It doesn't matter how cheaply a machine can run, it shouldn't be hard to outcompete an offer of suffering.

You seem to be overlooking the most important part of the equation here, the value offered to the customer.

If I offer to punch you in the nose, and assuming you don't want that, does it really matter how cheaply I can punch you in the nose using a robot?

You proposed that customers will suffer. Well, offer them something better than suffering.

@shrikant ha, I wonder if by creators you mean the programmers of the platform or the people creating content they post on the platform.

At first I read it the first way, but now I read it the second.

Anyway, my next move would be to study exactly how that might happen, because it seems unlikely, but even if true, such study would likely show ways that I could adjust to partner WITH the new reality, finding doors through which my own output would be improved by it.

If an AI can replace me in the role I do now with its downsides, I'd aim for a better role in the future, one without those downsides.

In other words, I'm happy to have been replaced by a dishwashing robot. I'm happy to use that new free time to go do better things while the dishwasher hums away in the kitchen.

@argv_minus_one@mstdn.party

But that severe enshittification means you have plenty of room to outcompete and offer a better alternative.

@shrikant

@n3wjack

It might be explained by the way ActivityPub was designed with content coming from Actors, which explicitly don't have to be individual humans.

So it's sort of like your Mastodon presence is one Actor while your blog is a separate Actor.

This kind of thing makes sense when you remember that ActivityPub was designed to be centered around instances and not users. Actors are basically how instances are crediting the sources of what they're publishing.

@liztai

@seanbala

Hey, an awful lot of Mastodon instances have tweaked the character limit to remove the low bar.

This one, qoto, is effectively unlimited in my experience.

You might want to consider joining one of those instances. After all, that helps signal to Mastodon devs that users want longer form capabilities.

@liztai

@JesseStone I've really not seen much evidence that Trump's endorsement carried much weight at all.

Landry has been a high profile Republican in a state that's pretty Republican-leaning these days, so while the win is larger than may be expected by a few points, it's not all that surprising, regardless of Trump.

I think it's a bad idea to overinflate the role Trump has among even Republicans, as his influence is even less among non-Republicans.

@Sprite oh sure, I was talking in terms of ideals.

In theory, by design, moderation is about me making sure my users get the experiences they want.

But yep, in reality that often translates to power tripping and admins putting their personal views first.

I think we're in agreement on this. It's something I criticize the design of Fediverse over, but it was design decision from long ago, and nobody asked me :)

But yeah, because blocking is done on the receiving instance side it wasn't necessary to involve the sending instance, and a feature to unnecessarily involve the banned person would be controversial.

@Sprite I could imagine two schools of thought on that.

(and I'm not saying one is right or not)

The other side is I imagine a ban represents an intention to disconnect, including the connection that would be required to let the person know they're banned.

That also avoids drama that a misbehaving user might stir up in response to the ban.

Technically, in this distributed system, banning is more about ignoring someone. Instances can't trust each other, so by keeping banning on the receiver side instead of the sender side, the ban-er has more control over the banning.

Moderation in the Fediverse is about making sure MY users on MY instance get the experience they want, regardless of what any other instance does.

It all comes down to the distributed structure here.

@adrianmorales I'd object to equating worth to a paycheck.

I'd say a person is worth more than their job, than their bank account, or how much they're paid for what they contribute to a business.

I think we should really watch out for promoting that connection.

@scopelmatt

Well, what did they post that was flagged, did it actually violate Community Guidelines, and why?

Sometimes even reputable organizations make mistakes with employees posting something that go against even the organizations' own policies.

@Sprite I don't think this is really possible in a distributed system like Fediverse since there isn't a centralized list of bans.

You'd have to go to every instance one by one asking if you're on their ban list, and since that list of instances is huge and changing by the day it's just not practical under the design of this system.

@Sprite I don't know if it would be a HUGE leap forward, but it's a case of might as well.

AFAIK, ActivityPub allows arbitrary fields to be added to the Profile object, so sites might as well add some sort of adult/nonadult tag (maybe not 18+ as ages of majority differ internationally).

It would be as useful as alcohol sites putting up splash screens checking users' ages before they access the website: No, not trustworthy, but checks the box for legal compliance.

And yes, some users might want to have their interactions skewed toward older folks, again yes, not trustworthy, but it would help some.

@sflorg being on the site isn't supporting it, though.

It's using it.

And adding more good content for other users of the site, which is a good thing.

It's about building up instead of tearing down.

@antares but then, an awful lot of electricity is generated using oil and gas.