dismalnow
@dismalnow - Codeberg
@dismalnow - Lemmy
@dismalnow - Mastodon
@dismalnow - Pixelfied
all this malicious compliance is delicious!
Indeed.
If Reddit Inc’s tactic is to pry open private subs and inject patsy mods, then there is only one thing left to do: deface them to destroy their utility.
steam should be about water vapor,
piracy should be about swashbuckling
/pics is already nothing but “sexy pics of John Oliver”
/gifs is similar
Right or wrong, one thing I know about the US legal system is that your best option when they know who you are is to be as unremarkable as possible.
There’s almost always another way to be punished for noncompliance - and if it doesn’t exist, it will be invented and implemented before tomorrow’s breakfast.
Best to keep paying until it’s settled in court.
Companies start out with a simple plan to generate revenue via providing a service worth paying for, but they all end up falling victim to Goodhart’s law.
Social media is an interesting case study in how the pursuit of perpetually increasing profits through metrics can make them become oblivious to the fact they don’t really produce any useful product, and that they are wholly reliant upon charity to survive.
They only care if revenue go up and cost go down - so instead of creating legitimate value for those who feed them content, they psychopathically take the path of least resistance and lie about the metrics.
The fact that anything a company says is believed is baffling, but that’s a separate discussion.
I have had reply notifications off on reddit due to the pedantic, combative, “talk at you” atmosphere that metastisized over the years - so I was pleasantly surprised.
IMO - the first thing you should do with new software or services is go over the settings because the defaults are likely not for your benefit.
Opt-in philosophy > opt-out. You want it? You enable it.
Checking that the settings aren’t going to own your firstborn is a should task, but I’m lazy too. :D
“talk at you” atmosphere
There’s probably already a common term for this, but I use that terminology.
“Talking at you” instead of “talking to you” is where a responding comment isn’t necessarily off topic, but it’s also not directed at you. “Talk at you” style commenting is purposed to leverage what you’ve said for pushing an agenda, or as a writing prompt - often due to where your comment is positioned. Any response which doesn’t coincide with the user’s agenda doesn’t receive any sort of organic response.
It seemed that “talking at you” grew to be the general mode of conversation on reddit as it grew too big. Organic conversations rarely occur because people end up just shouting their opinion into the void, competing for visibility by hanging their agenda on the most visible and tangentially relevant comment in a thread, or just plain shitposting the same dumb thing that is likely to generate imaginary internet points.
Hope that makes sense. heh
This has become the prevailing opinion for most of the tech-savvy folks that I know, but it’s gaining traction with a wider audience.
Having steeped in corpo-climate for two decades, it’s naïve to say that the C-Suite has ever maintained a realistic perspective on the business that they run; but it is baffling to me that corporations like Reddit have completely lost sight of their actual product - a clearinghouse of perpetually donated content - and seem to believe that their platform cannot be easily duplicated, or made obsolete nearly overnight.
It’s exciting to be an insider as new paradigms like the fediverse become more widely known. If the last week is any indicator, there is a non-zero chance that ultra-capitalist hubris will be punished.
As for monopolies… they are inherently bad because of the lack of motivation to innovate, or improve. You have no other option, and no ability to create one.
I don’t want to stray too far from the topic, but I feel like I need to address the mention of the internet as a monopoly.
If you’re talking about TCP/IP, it’s just a protocol that the most widely used - but others exist, and outperform it in their niches.
The internet is a collection of technologies that are owned and operated by thousands of companies. All have competition in their arenas.
ISPs have constructed local fiefdoms - but there are nearly always multiple services that one can use. Backbone companies own the major routes, but you can almost always go around one if it misbehaves. Myriad email providers, websites, etc exist to offer choices, as well.
Categorically, the internet can not be or become a monopoly. It’s core purpose is to provide as many avenues as possible to connect machines to AVOID monopolization.
@ivanafterall @IsThisLemmyOpen
Ron White explains this quite well.
“We’re all gay. It’s just to what extent.”
“That’s bullshit, man, I ain’t gay at all!”
“Yeah, you are and I’ll prove it. Do you like porn?”
“Yeah, I love porn, you know that.”
“So you only watch two women together?”
“No, I’ll watch a man and a woman making love.”
“Do you like the guy to have a tiny, half-flaccid penis?”
“No , I like big, hard, throbbing co…I did not know that about myself.”
Correct me if I’m misunderstanding, as federation is a newish concept for me.
As the instances of the verse are currently structured, geography-centric communities would be difficult to organize. (In my cursory searches, I’m having trouble locating stuff like lemmy.co.us.)
But one thing that I sorely miss about the old days was that you could call in to a bbs, or visit a forum populated by “locals” and discuss all manner of topics.
Would definitely be happy to learn how wrong I am!
