421–430 of 531 posts
Typical ‘Back then xxx, we must yyy’ talk. No, you can’t, enjoy the freedom of average user to put his personal life on the internet, not think twice, create a market to exploit and exploiter to come. It is the essence of freedom on average, you wanted it for “everyone”.
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>It wasn't some trick pulled on them by corporations or Russians manipulating social media. I realize that may be hard to understand, but it is the truth! Don't we objectively know this is false? You can dispute the size of the effect, but both Russians and corporations absolutely ran large targeted misinformation and propaganda campaigns for the 2016 election, taking advantage of what you could call the user-hostile…
Let's get real. They weren't large campaigns; Russian firms/orgs (RT, really) hardly spent anything! So far the disclosed numbers are less than a 1/4 million; as opposed to the roughly $6.8 spent domestically. Billions and billions spent by U.S. actors as opposed to less than a million spent by Russian actors! Russian efforts are immaterial and likely were intended for commercial reasons rather than political ones. (…
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so I could not get access to content if my battery is low and I cannot mine cc ? or would I get access with "credit" so I would need to return "load" later?
I’m not sure, I’m just sketching out a solution to content monetization that might solve problems with current monetization schemes.
The part where the author tries to tie Brexit and the election of Donald Trump to the user-hostile web is bonkers. People, you have to understand this: There exists a large number of others out there who desperately want government reformed, want more localized control over their lives, and who voted accordingly. It wasn't some trick pulled on them by corporations or Russians manipulating social media. I realize that…
It is not as if forces hostile to Trump/Brexit were innocent of buying analytical data. The recent Senate hearings on Russian ad-buys were strangely incurious about, say, purchases from China. Were there any? Would they tell us?
Are there know cases where China recently meddled with foreign elections/governments?
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Indeed. I still recall watching this change firsthand. When i got my first modem, i was informed of a regional IRC channel on one of the big networks. And from that day onwards i would have my client set to connect to that channel, and fire it up alongside the email client right after the handshake completed. But at one point the channel died, and the cause of death was twofold. one part was the creation first genera…
Subreddits resemble IRC from that point of view - you just need to join the right one.
I recall having on the fly conversations about TV programs on IRC.
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> I do agree that not everything is imposed by evil corps, but hostile products don't necessarily fail by their own: cigarettes and junk foods are just one example of this. Cigarettes and junk foods are not hostile -- they are incredibly enticing. What they are is harmful (which is something different). Video, similarly, whether harmful or not, is very welcome by lots of people who strongly prefer it to reading.
What's enticing about cigarettes?
They're a great way to fidget, they go great with coffee, they look majestic on the big screen, and nicotine is extremely addictive.
Heck, whole movies and books, and poems and songs have been written about them in a positive light. And lots.
If it wasn't for the health concern people would still be smoking on airplanes and there would just be a small "non smoking" area (like in the 70s).
This is a good an informative essay. However, there's another element of "user-hostile" that I didn't see addressed (maybe I missed it in my haste?) -- that is the websites trying to control exactly how the content is consumed by the user. It seems increasingly that web content is being delivered in video form. That itself is hostile to some people. Some of us want the freedom to read (or scan quickly). But many of t…