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The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

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Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#751
post #750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being spammed with every single thing a person posts, on any topic, any hour of the day, is a tech problem. No matter how accepting I am, that's a huge waste of time.

I would argue that's just a problem with how you spend your time. Most of this Twitter stuff IS a waste of time. It's not productive let's face it.

If I follow someone for a hobby, and I can have a computer filter out the posts that aren't relevant to that hobby, then it stops being a waste of time* and I'm done much sooner.

*(Unless you want to be unreasonably judgemental about hobbies. But even then, it would probably cut 80-90% of the waste and increase the enjoyment.)

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#752

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have no control over what other people do, think or say. What other stance can I take? Of course - individualism in a political sense means the rejection of collective action. It usually boils down to the belief that people's political actions should be limited to financial transactions - solving climate change by individuals recycling, solving food insecurity by individuals donating, that sort of thing. I knew y…

Taking a single thing I said without context is quite disingenuous. I suggest you re-read the comment to which you replied. Perhaps you'd like to revise your barely concealed and completely unfounded attack on the straw man you created around my comment.

Huh? I was just expanding on your comment about not knowing what people were expecting you to do about systemic problems - I wasn't attacking you. Do you mean the bit about conservative talking heads? I assumed that's who you meant when you were talking about the sand shovelers.

From your reaction I'm guessing the sand shovelers you think are scum are the "woke" people but I hope I'm wrong.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taking a single thing I said without context is quite disingenuous. I suggest you re-read the comment to which you replied. Perhaps you'd like to revise your barely concealed and completely unfounded attack on the straw man you created around my comment.

Huh? I was just expanding on your comment about not knowing what people were expecting you to do about systemic problems - I wasn't attacking you. Do you mean the bit about conservative talking heads? I assumed that's who you meant when you were talking about the sand shovelers. From your reaction I'm guessing the sand shovelers you think are scum are the "woke" people but I hope I'm wrong.

>Huh? I was just expanding on your comment about not knowing what people were expecting you to do about systemic problems - I wasn't attacking you.

That's as may be, but you focused on a single sentence ("I have no control over what other people do, think or say. What other stance can I take?") in my comment and ignored everything else I wrote.

You then deigned to forgive me (and 300+ million other people) my ignorance.

   ...a lack of familiarity with institutional or 
   systemic change made me think you might be 
   missing that option. That's not a criticism; it's 
   really common in the US.
How gracious of you.

I'll wait with bated breath for your next brilliant missive.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#754

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? I was just expanding on your comment about not knowing what people were expecting you to do about systemic problems - I wasn't attacking you. Do you mean the bit about conservative talking heads? I assumed that's who you meant when you were talking about the sand shovelers. From your reaction I'm guessing the sand shovelers you think are scum are the "woke" people but I hope I'm wrong.

>Huh? I was just expanding on your comment about not knowing what people were expecting you to do about systemic problems - I wasn't attacking you. That's as may be, but you focused on a single sentence ("I have no control over what other people do, think or say. What other stance can I take?") in my comment and ignored everything else I wrote. You then deigned to forgive me (and 300+ million other people) my ignoran…

I'm sorry if I offended you - I didn't mean for that to come across as patronising or as some kind of sanctimonious forgiving of sin, I was just wary that a lot of people tend to get their backs up around the topic of systemic problems and wanted to be clear that I wasn't attacking you. You did also literally say "what other stance could I take?" which I interpreted as meaning you didn't know your options for helping combat systemic problems.

> you focused on a single sentence [...] in my comment and ignored everything else I wrote.

I did address you saying the $20 thing was hyperbole, but I guess I'm not sure what you wanted me to add to the rest? You said you misinterpreted GP's comment - okay? What am I to add to that? It's not much of a prompt for discussion.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#755

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You keep avoiding explicitly saying what you mean. By scamming, do you mean the houses bought by Patrice Cullors? The ones she bought with the profits from her bestselling book, where there's no evidence donations were involved? The idea that progressives are creating a newly racialised world where before everything was meritocratic and equal opportunity /is/ the modern conservative line, and it's a lie. The whole re…

> Actively opposing programs designed to counteract racism, is supporting racism, you do realise that? Your accusation is weak. I disagree and I think a lot of programs are racist and should be opposed on that merit. I am not talking about outreach programs here. There are much more relevant factors why specifically black women might be underrepresented. If I generalize that to women, the reason is sexism. I don't be…

This is so pointless; every time I try to get a concrete example out of you, you pivot. First you dislike BLM but don't give a reason, then you dislike black girls code but then "have no problem with outreach programs", now you're vaguely hinting at affirmative action being racist because it considers race. Just figure it out yourself.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#756
post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing can be done, because the system is owned by the corrupt, which means that the system is corrupt. The only solution against this problem is violence. Despite what a lot of completely delusional and clueless morons believe, voting solves nothing as long as all parties are basically run by rich people and or paid career politicians. And I'm not even going to dive into the details. They're not necessary. You have…

I don't know what your political leanings are, but do you realize this is the position of the people who stormed the capitol building?

I don't have a leaning. I also don't care if it was their position.

If you trust your government, no matter where you live, then you're a fool.

Period.

The fact that there's assholes out there who abuse this fact for an attempt to make things even worse isn't my problem. The fact that there's people like you, who draw a connection, is just as bad.

I'm not from the US. This horrendously broken logic, where you associate people with each other based on their thoughts, thus basically destroying ideas, isn't mine.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#757

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, we shouldn't discount the algorithms put in place by people; but we should also keep in mind that those algorithms only operate based on inputs from people. If the outputs the algorithms are giving you are not desirable, then it is solely the fault of the people who are feeding that algorithm in the way they are, etc and so forth. Algorithms are not sentient nor have agency over the results of their actions. We…

Algorithms are designed, evaluated and impoved by organizations, so are not a point of blame at all. They’re not accidentally putting divisive stuff to the top, the analytics, devs and management all surely see the consequences and decide that the algos are aligned with the business .

Many Organizations generally are within some sort of competitive landscape - companies in the market, non profits with donations, city and state govts for tax base. So they all will optimize for effectiveness towards some metric to some degree, restricted by whatever fear of backlash or consequences they may have.

No one is going to approve a ‘say anything as long as it bumps ratings immediately’ algorithm, but almost everyone is going to try to do at least what the top competitor seems to be doing.

Which is algorithmic/ML based engagement optimization, with some kind of ‘but not the most controversial if it’s literally nazis’ type filter for things with too much political blowback (aka calls for insurrection), or legal issues (child porn).

If you look, it’s literally almost everywhere now. And earlier they didn’t even have the ‘not literally nazi’s’ filter.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#758
post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think so - my impression is that it’s feed algorithms pushing the most incendiary topics to people because they get the most engagement. Nothing gets people going like someone saying something divisive or controversial after all. So pretty soon most of the feed is divisive bullshit.

Not to quote taco girl too overly much; but how about both? Algorithms require input to give you output, right? So even if you are correct that badly created algoritms are to blame, we still have the people who fall for the algorithms outputs because they are feeding it the inputs. To put it simply, it all goes back to the calculator/computer quote in regard to their users. They are only as smart as the person using…

Not quite.

If 99 out of 100 users input not-BS, and 1 user inputs BS, but the algorithm picks the 1 users BS input and feeds it to the other 99 first so they get angry and yell at each other over the 1 BS input together - that is a historically unique situation.

If it does it at scale for cheap, that is also a historically unique situation.

If it does it without a human being directly involved in the choosing and pushing process (and feeling bad potentially!), that is also a historically unique situation.

If someone sees all 100 users posts together, it’s easy to see the BS is BS. If the BS post goes to the top of the feed and is the first thing they see, and the normal posts either don’t show up, or only a few of them show up? That is a completely different experience for the consumer of the media.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#759
post #700

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I'm saying is that the parties understand the makeup of independents insofar as they know there are so few true independents, that it doesn't really matter what they think. In today's era, you get much more bang for your buck by convincing your own partisans to make it to the polls. My broader point is that contrary to what the article implies, "Unaffiliated Voter != A voter who is open to voting for either part…

> that it doesn't really matter what they think That sounds pretty clearly in contradiction with the Declaration of Independence and the subsequent United States Constitution and the subsequent United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Well, regardless of how things should work, that's how they do work. I know some folks who've worked for politicians over the years and it's pretty transactional. For instance, it's fairly common for feedback from constituents to get prioritized based on voting history (among other things like political influence). If you reach out to an elected official, one of their staff will often check the voter rolls. If you're not registered to vote, or if you are and you haven't voted in a long time, don't expect your complaint to get much attention.

Re: The new silent majority: People who don't tweet

#760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is not what I said. Go back and read the original post. It's amazing how strangers on the internet can just star gaze and determine my gender, sexuality, race and so on. It's less amazing how often wrong they are. I'd really take a moment and think whether predicting someones identity is aligned with your ethical beliefs on those topics. If you want to fight straw men, please have the courtesy of doing it in pri…

To be completely fair, if you're not a straight white man and people are regularly mistaking you for a straight white man, that generally means only one thing: you're on the wrong side of history. And no, I think you should think a bit harder about what it is you said and how you said it. It's easy to claim that isn't what you meant, but you've yet to provide any concrete examples of what you mean, which I called you…

> try and justify using a slur

Wait, what slur? I'm lost.

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