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
@Imoptimal you have that backwards.
The more those platforms integrate with Fediverse, the more of us they can monetize. They would GAIN all of us, not lose their own users.
Remember, every single thing you post here can be sold for profit even easier since it's broadcast without even terms of service for the companies to worry about.
But the ActivityPub protocol is inefficient and expensive to implement on scale.
It might very well be the cruddiness of the design of this platform that's saving it from the future you're concerned about.
@jrm4 the problem is that we don't know what Musk's end goal with Twitter is.
You can't judge how effective someone has been unless you know what they're aiming for.
It seems clear that Musk wants serious changes for Twitter, and we see a lot of changes there, but without seeing inside his head and knowing the goal we can't know if the changes are going in his direction.
I don't personally think he's a mastermind, but that's a different issue.
@Rush to put it simply, every instance with more than one user is a centralized collection of users.
And there are plenty of instances with more than one user.
@3dogcouch maybe.
Keep in mind that the sort of outfit who breaks and pushes this sort of story have a reputation for not telling the whole story, for pushing a sensationalized narrative to get clicks.
So it's hard for us to say what the legal status really is since we don't have all of the info.
@me again, that it's even a question in the first place is part of what makes the difference.
Would mastodon.social defederate the Coca Cola instance? MAYBE the answer is resoundingly no (though it might be yes), but when the marketing department is meeting in a conference room and this possibility even comes up, that's something they never had to deal with when they contracted for normal webhosting services.
So it's a difference that's negative if anything, and that needs to be appreciated.
There's no way "Well, we might be defederated" is a positive consideration. There's only downside with it, even if you and I believe it's unlikely from that one instance.
Beyond that, it's not so unlikely from other instances!
So I can understand why this is offputting to companies.
When you talk about S2S you're actually highlighting centralization.
Users are corralled into instances. Those servers become central points of failure; users are under the thumbs of server administrators; all interaction with the system is collected into inboxes and outboxes there on the servers.
ActivityPub is designed to be centralized around servers. When you mention server 2 server communication, you're emphasizing exactly that centralization.
@dsfgs @Mastodon
@mnutty you're simply, factually, wrong.
The House was perfectly free to elect a Speaker who didn't show fealty to Trump. Democrats, who I'm sure we can agree don't show that, decided to back the Republican nutjobs, but if they hadn't done that a moderate Speaker could have been elected.
Those voting patterns themselves disprove your claim here.
As for the hysterical claims about the future of democracy in the US, realize that it's not a call the president has the authority to make.
The parties making both claims rely on Americans' civic ignorance to promote their own interests. Americans more familiar with the rules and ways of the US government know those lines don't hold water.
@Alan right, but it's silly to go back to the gun's origin centuries ago to figure out the origin of this modern gun.
It's like saying this nuclear icebreaker ship wasn't designed to break ice seeing as the first boat ever devised, back in ancient history, was designed as a ferry.
The argument is just daft.
@mnutty but they don't.
@Alan it's painting with an overly broad brush to claim that guns are designed to kill people.
That's just not factually solid ground.
Yes, some are, but not all.
@Alan so Madison had in mind more of a convenient rental deal in mind?
I really don't know where you're going with this reasoning. It sounds pretty post hoc.
@thomas_decker I think what you're really seeing is a better sorting out of what is actually settled law.
It's that just declaring a law to be settled doesn't make it so, so law that has always been on shaky ground despite proponents insisting that it is settled is being called out as such and reevaluated.
If anything this reinforces the notion of settled law and binding precedent by emphasizing what it means to be that.
A lot of unsettled law is being called out for being actually unsettled, while actually settled law benefits from that.
@MaRY1Fem to emphasize it, there's a huge difference between the speaker of the house and the majority leader, and I sure wish we could separate those two positions in our minds.
It should be the majority leader spearheading campaigns like these, not the speaker.
But whatever, it's there political issue to sort out.
@luckytran I mean, it's a reflection of the way government agencies lost the faith of the public through their actions during the pandemic and in the aftermath after reporting uncovered a whole bunch of sketchy stuff.
If they wanted to maintain their credibility and power they probably should have conducted themselves in more transparent, more science-based, more objective -based ways. But they didn't.
Authoritarians misbehaved and now the public is increasingly skeptical of authority. It's so completely predictable. Yay democracy.
@georgetakei takes like these are so moronically black and white.
@msaunders and I completely and utterly disagree with that approach.
It strikes me that the approach is one that makes a mistake of confusing technological and social problems, looking for social solutions to technological problems and technological solutions to social problems.
I don't think it's good for the platform, and I myself would have no interest in it.
I think the platform would be much better focusing on empowering users than empowering any sort of group, because the group think is what got us to the complaints about Twitter, etc, in the first place.
The lyrics of the song escape me this evening, but welcome the new boss, same as the old boss?
To answer @me 's comment (the thread is not on my instance),
You're asking why Fediverse participation would be different from normal corporate hosting, and then you bring up questions about defederation, and I'd say those questions do a pretty good job of saying why it would be different.
Going from a legal, reliable relationship with one professional company to a system where unknown amateurs around the world can impact your reach is a really big jump.
@Miro_Collas I mean, friends waiving debts between them isn't that weird.
@manton except, people blame Biden for economic problems we've been having.
His campaign did try to reframe that narrative over the last month or so with a long series of high profile events, but it didn't really change things.
The public blames Biden for economic problems, and that means it's not a strength he can rest a solid campaign on.
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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