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Mysterious meme gets Tech Twitter to clamor for invite to app that doesn't exist

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Re: Mysterious meme gets Tech Twitter to clamor for invite to app that doesn't exist

#51
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had to look it up. It's another social media play like Gab that uses "free speech" to mean "pro alt right." Every one of their product screenshots is of a pro-Trump story. EDIT: https://parler.com/auth/access

I think what people actually need, and probably would want, is a less free speech alternative. Like, you're banned from being rude, crass, or offensive. In general, I like the idea of free speech, but to my intuition "free speech" seems like philosophers daring to go anywhere their minds will take them regardless of mainstream norms, political correctness, or commonly held beliefs. In practice, "free speech" is just…

This post seems absolutely crazy to me. If you look at history, one (if not the) main usage of censorship is as a tool for the powerful to oppress their opponents. Ideas that go against established institutions are often by their very nature offensive. Book burnings and similar atrocities such as Entartete Kunst aren't some hypothetical dreamed up by paranoid philosophers, they are real things that happened, are happening and will happen.

I think there are ways to deal with jerks without limiting free speech (e.g. user customizable filtering of content, so people can themselves decide whether to view content they think is objectionable), but if there wasn't I think you have to at the very least recognize that there is a very real cost attached to curtailing free speech.

Re: Mysterious meme gets Tech Twitter to clamor for invite to app that doesn't exist

#52
post #3

The statement is the most interesting part, in my opinion: https://xn--mp8hai.fm/statement >In a strange way, this sort of became an anti-statement against what we’d all seen on tech Twitter. We’re a diverse, ragtag group of young technologists tired of the status quo tech industry, and thought that we could make the industry think a bit more about its actions. Despite calls-to-action like that “It’s Time to Build” e…

> Despite calls-to-action like that “It’s Time to Build” essay we’ve all read

So is this 'team' building something real or offering an sustainable alternative? Being snippy on social media is an even more rampant way to do nothing while patting yourself on the back about progress.

Besides, there's rarely ever seems to be a shortage of navel gazing and satire written about Silicon Valley.

Re: Mysterious meme gets Tech Twitter to clamor for invite to app that doesn't exist

#53

For me - a guy who runs an emoji domain registration site - I've been sort of waiting for the right project to take off, so it becomes, like, a thing. Will this finally be our moment? (I wish I could put a shrug emoji in here...)

Would ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ work?

[deleted]

Re: Mysterious meme gets Tech Twitter to clamor for invite to app that doesn't exist

#54

Ugh, BI mangles the emoji badly: the breadcrumb turns each emoji into two of U+FFFE REPLACEMENT CHARACTER, which suggests something turns it into UTF-16 (that accursed encoding that ruined Unicode by making the always-doomed UCS-2 live longer even though the just about uniformly superior UTF-8 was already available, and which persists in distressingly many languages), then tries to turn it into UTF-8 by iterating thr…

One more reminder that UTF-16 should go away and everyone should use UTF-8 everywhere [1].

[1] http://utf8everywhere.org/

Re: Mysterious meme gets Tech Twitter to clamor for invite to app that doesn't exist

#55
post #52
post #3

The statement is the most interesting part, in my opinion: https://xn--mp8hai.fm/statement >In a strange way, this sort of became an anti-statement against what we’d all seen on tech Twitter. We’re a diverse, ragtag group of young technologists tired of the status quo tech industry, and thought that we could make the industry think a bit more about its actions. Despite calls-to-action like that “It’s Time to Build” e…

> Despite calls-to-action like that “It’s Time to Build” essay we’ve all read So is this 'team' building something real or offering an sustainable alternative? Being snippy on social media is an even more rampant way to do nothing while patting yourself on the back about progress. Besides, there's rarely ever seems to be a shortage of navel gazing and satire written about Silicon Valley.

> most of the industry (from product teams to VC) still stays obsessed with exclusive social apps that regularly ignore — or even silence — real needs faced by marginalized people all over the world, and exclude these folks from the building process. As an industry, we need to do better.

Yes? Promoting social equality imo is building something real. More real than hover cars and spaceships.

Read: real as impact on the world.

Re: Mysterious meme gets Tech Twitter to clamor for invite to app that doesn't exist

#56

I'm pretty sure that emoji combination was in use for quite a while before this happened. Actually, when I saw it around Twitter I assumed it was people just referencing that or using it for its slightly surreality…

The article explains the origin of the emoji: https://youtu.be/9Od6y_Kgj3s

Re: Mysterious meme gets Tech Twitter to clamor for invite to app that doesn't exist

#57
The lyrics from the music video that first created the emoji combo is pretty much this group’s thesis:

>Stop blaming twitter. Stop blaming black men. Just because you not getting chose.

https://youtu.be/9Od6y_Kgj3s

Twitter, blm, exclusivity building hype from people who aren’t getting chosen to join. Honestly pretty eloquent.

Re: Mysterious meme gets Tech Twitter to clamor for invite to app that doesn't exist

#59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was more of a case of "Donate money to these causes and see what happens". Not fraud

I'd say it's borderline fraud. They've been retweeting app screenshots with that emoji combination on it[0], retweeting people saying someone took their "username on that emoji app"[1], and directly tweeted "we’ll see what we can do about an invite" if people donated and sent receipts. And now they're using this publicity to gain employment and sell merchandise. This team mislead people to "support causes" and is now…

You're missing a lottt of context here, bud

Re: Mysterious meme gets Tech Twitter to clamor for invite to app that doesn't exist

#60
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say it's borderline fraud. They've been retweeting app screenshots with that emoji combination on it[0], retweeting people saying someone took their "username on that emoji app"[1], and directly tweeted "we’ll see what we can do about an invite" if people donated and sent receipts. And now they're using this publicity to gain employment and sell merchandise. This team mislead people to "support causes" and is now…

You're missing a lottt of context here, bud

If you'd like to provide it, I'm all ears.
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