Lemmy and Mastodon.

You can definitely find solid content outside of tech and politics on Mastodon, although the scope tends to be more limited than what Twitter used to be (no idea what state it is now).

Need to check out BookWyrm.

The US made one is the real issue. 😆

People going through US immigration (I did this maybe ~20 years ago as a student) will just make a temp, low-use account or something similar.

Only read the abstract (Schmidt, the Google oligarch, is clearly unreliable), but this reads like AI doomer propaganda. It’s a propaganda technique to hype the dangers of AI in a bombastic manner in order to keep the grift going.

The Americans are definitely going to cut off StarLink, we don’t have any option even if OneWeb isn’t fully ready.

This is not new. I believe they’ve been doing this as far back as Obama (although it might have been less widespread back then).

For techbro ghouls (remember I mentioned scalability, exit etc.) moderation is “difficult” is because it is a cost centre and it has liability risks (they could in theory have to take responsibility for their actions such a dismissive, callous attitude towards moderation).

When moderation fails, you have situation such as FB contributing to mass killings in Myanmar.

While oligarchs like Zuckerberg feel confident enough on their hold on the system to say things like:

Earlier this week, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg told Vox that his company was well aware that critics say the social media platform has been used to spread misinformation and hate speech in Burma, explaining that this has “gotten a lot of focus inside the company.”

But what does this have to do with my original take on Rose and Ohanian?

That being said, we are still in the early phase of the “information age”.

IMO industrialization and rise of “modernity” (in the sense of a historical, sociology-political time period) were far more disruptive than what we have seen in the information age so far.

It is likely we still have to go through some sort of highlight disruptive events (the 21st century equivalent of WW1/WW2) before we come to terms with the pros/cons inherent to the information age.

I don’t think hope or fear, or someone getting rich or poor is really relevant in this case.

They first say:

Rose and Ohanian have now joined forces to “revive” the platform with a “fresh vision to restore the spirit of discovery and genuine community that made the early web a fun and exciting place to be,”

But then they go on to say:

So why now? It’s a combination of reasons, according to Rose, who says that the existing social media landscape has become toxic, messy, and riddled with misinformation — and AI is well-placed to address that. Just the “out of the box stuff,” is “insane,” Rose observes, noting there are “Google endpoints already where I don’t even have to mess with a model at all, where I can get sub 200 millisecond response times on any comment under about 300 characters and rated across 20 plus different vectors of of sentiment, so violence, toxicity, hate speech — you name it. Like, that just wasn’t possible five years ago.”

More broadly, says, Rose, “We’re at this other inflection point around AI and what it can do. And when you think about these big shifts, they require you to go and step back and revisit first principles and think about how you might change [a business] from the ground up, and that’s what Alexis and I and Justin [Mezzell],” who is a longtime collaborator of Rose and now Digg’s CEO, will be doing, he said.

It’s pretty clear that they are looking to build an AI enhanced social network, so why bring up “the spirit of discovery and genuine community?” That is not their goal, their goal is to leverage AI; without it, they would have never undertaken this initiative. No AI, no social network.

I will point out that I never mentioned anything about the utility of AI. It’s a tool, what comes out of it depends on how it is used.

I also don’t see on what basis one should assume a bunch of vapid techbro ghouls would be interested in building “something good”. Their goals revolve around scalability, unit economics and exit plans. If that’s not the case, surely they must have started a non-profit entity and/or implemented independent governance measures that would include stakeholders beyond themselves and investors.

Am I being unreasonable here?

It’s an AI pump and dump attempt.

“hey police, someone threw cheese at my car, I’m in fear for my life.”

This had me chuckling.

Don Ho is a stand up guy! Notepad++ is also a great piece of software.

Fireflaya disrupts da AI system!

• Beatboxing noises *

Remember Tay?

Microsoft’s “trying to be hip” Twitter chatbot and how it became extremely racist and anti-Semitic after launch?

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35890188

And this was back in 2016, almost a decade ago!

I think the world would be a better place if we collectively perma-banned all American digital services (while helping NGOs/open source projects relocate their infrastructure and legal organisations out of the US).

There would be a lot more competition, a wider variety of product offerings, more regional customisation, a bigger focus on long tail services.

It would be messy at first, but that’s the nature of a transition from an oligarch model to a competitive model.

While what I am saying may sound like a pipe dream or pettyness, but from my perspective everything starts from a small step.

And if you don’t live in the US (but are unfortunately impacted by their internal politics), you do have to take a more sober attitude towards their claimed commitment to democracy, free markets and rule of law.

It’s like we are living in some sort of satirical, absurdist play or novel about a dystopian future.