31–40 of 246 posts
I don't need to agree with every expert/leader, I just want to know what they think.
The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric. Speaking up used to be something you do to change someone's mind or yours. What's the point in speaking up if nobody does anything with what you said? The like button reprogrammed people. They started getting positive feedback for speaking in an echo chamber, for saying and doing things their audience al…
But there is a real need for some kind of post rating/ranking (like like/dislike button, or explicit point rating). Once you got to thousand-post threads the without ranking mechanisms interesting posts are lost in noise. I guess that effectiveness of these mechanisms is an important part of why people prefer one forum before others.
Now the article was only talking about twitter and social media, but I can't help react on the title since there really is no evidence at all of internet wanting to be fragmented. In fact it's just the opposite. - Not even the most hardcore people are using IRC anymore - All web hosting is now in the cloud - There's basically only two rendering engines left, of which one is at the moment extremely marginalized - GIT…
As for the cloud there are loads of clouds. Web sites can be moved. Same with git hosting which just provides a convenient place to store the repo and post meta data like issues. Moving from GitHub to Gitea or GitLab is usually pretty easy.
More and more people seem to be at least trying a less centralized approach. Personally I think we passed peak centralization in the middle 20-teens when there were just a few social platforms everyone used and federated stuff was primitive and new. We are well into the beginning of the unbundling phase.
The entire problem lies with the twisted motives of social media. They don't want to make you happy or feel good, they want money, at all costs which results in you being angry and toxic. I agree with this article in general, and think that its worth it to spend time arguing with people you care about rather some rando on twitter. community run communities will probably have a resurge, the problem is the tech barrier…
I believe one of the root causes is that the internet basically connected billions of people from many different cultures into one big pool without any arbiter mechanisms which is bound to get ugly fast. In this regard I agree with the article that the internet wants to be segmented. Mastodon will probably start with silos of similar thinking people but as it grows they too will run into culture clashes leading to groups of people being silenced. Then some other platform will come along to make smaller silos or tribes and this pattern will repeat.
If twitter dies, where do I find a site where I can follow at least one expert/leader in every major discipline/social/political-movement to get a sort of snapshot of what's happening in the world? I don't need to agree with every expert/leader, I just want to know what they think.
people keep a blog and you subscribe to the blog feed.
bonus point: it's completely free, you don't even need to give away your personal data and be forced to watch ads.
but it's 2023, realistically if Twitter dies these people will open a fediverse account that you can follow.
Now the article was only talking about twitter and social media, but I can't help react on the title since there really is no evidence at all of internet wanting to be fragmented. In fact it's just the opposite. - Not even the most hardcore people are using IRC anymore - All web hosting is now in the cloud - There's basically only two rendering engines left, of which one is at the moment extremely marginalized - GIT…
Nowadays if I need to spin up a chat with people I know I just give them a shell function that utilizes a self-hosted instance of devzat.
# uncensored chat using self hosted https://github.com/quackduck/devzat.git
# add to .bashrc or /etc/profile.d/functions.sh on a VM somewhere
function chat()
{
# make us a temporary nickname
Name=$(base64 /dev/urandom | tr -d '/+' | dd bs=12 count=1 2>/dev/null)
# make us a temporary throw away ssh key. key is our ID.
ssh-keygen -q -t rsa -b 2048 -N "" -C "${Name}" -f ~/.ssh/.chat_"${Name}"
# add +ssh-rsa in the event client restricts weaker ciphers
ssh -i ~/.ssh/.chat_"${Name}" -p 22 -4 -o "HostkeyAlgorithms +ssh-rsa" -o "PubkeyAcceptedKeyTypes +ssh-rsa" "${Name}"@23.239.0.70
rm -vf ~/.ssh/.chat_"${Name}" ~/.ssh/.chat_"${Name}".pub
}
The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric. Speaking up used to be something you do to change someone's mind or yours. What's the point in speaking up if nobody does anything with what you said? The like button reprogrammed people. They started getting positive feedback for speaking in an echo chamber, for saying and doing things their audience al…
1) "Speaking up" is just one of many forms of speech. Why is speaking up "the purpose of speech", or even the purpose of social media speech? 2) There are many reasons to speak up. One may be to organize like-minded people into an effective advocacy group. Another may just be to lament something that you can't change. 3) I'm not trying to be snarky, but do you have any examples of changing people's minds on HN or soc…
An advocacy group is ineffective if all its members have this mindset. With signaling mindset you have no chance to convince anyone of anything. I'd rather get someone thinking differently a little bit confused than lament something with people who think the same. It doesn't reinforce helplessness.
I have many anecdotes with somewhat low chance of moving opinions. Few people will admit changing their minds, but sometimes they will agree with you but still offer a weaker counterpoint of the opposing narrative.
You can't flip someone's opinion 180° on the internet, but you can get someone on the other side to acknowledge a counter point.
The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric. Speaking up used to be something you do to change someone's mind or yours. What's the point in speaking up if nobody does anything with what you said? The like button reprogrammed people. They started getting positive feedback for speaking in an echo chamber, for saying and doing things their audience al…
> The biggest problem is the like button. The like button is not only a bad metric - it's the worst possible metric But there is a real need for some kind of post rating/ranking (like like/dislike button, or explicit point rating). Once you got to thousand-post threads the without ranking mechanisms interesting posts are lost in noise. I guess that effectiveness of these mechanisms is an important part of why people…