Yes, I am almost totally apathetic after being forced to sacrifice myself to protect the very same class/group of people who when they were younger, voted for and made the policies that got us into the messes we are in today (climate change, unaffordable homes/land, wars, etc.) for their own benefit. I'm glad Boomer Joe and Mary got to live their last few years together, but also a bit miffed that I and many of my generation have no future to speak of.
Do you think that we should stop people from speculating or entertaining these possibilities/scenarios? I wonder why we are so quick to silence and shut down people. It might not even be very long until we're the ones who are designated as crazies discussing similar things and end up being silenced as well even when we might be very justified (think of Hitler being in power. It would be morally righteous to be discussing such things and then planning to bring him and his people down). Thought crime should never be a thing. If people discussing something amongst themsleves leads to some people being radicalized and they do something bad, all we can do is be prepared for it. And trust me when I say that people like Soros and Pelosi have plenty of the means to defend themselves.
Your post is probably why we should regulate the algorithms they use. It's bullshit that they can influence what shows up on your feed, and then they blame you for it. "Oh, you must be the toxic one if all you see is toxicity..."
I think your projecting your own feelings onto the parent comment by adding "you must be toxic" to the beginning of that sentence. The only thing the parent commenter said is that the pattern of one's use can feed into the toxicity of their feed, without any judgment of that pattern per se. Nontoxic patterns that lead to toxicity exposure could be something as simple as "likes to read and post (non-toxically) about politics or social causes".
The takeaway of the parent comment was that there are plenty of ways to use FB, perhaps in constrained ways, that don't lead to toxicity and don't require leaving the platform.
Im not personally a big FB user, but have applied this very successfully to my Reddit and Twitter usage. I follow/subscribe to a very small number of very high-quality accts/subreddits, and am selective about when I read the comments. I'm able to derive a ton of value from this[1] pattern of usage without running into the bottomless pits of stupidity and malice that the average reddit/Twitter experience contains.
[1] including the holy grail: a political discussion forum full of a wide variety of viewpoints and populated solely by mental adults
I think you’re probably right about the intention of the original comment, but that doesn’t change the fact that it puts the responsibility on the user to change their habits to avoid toxic content, instead of on the platform.
These platforms use our conscious actions (what we like, who we follow) and our subconscious actions (how long we linger on particular posts, what kinds of posts keep us on the site longer than others) and produce something that is often toxic. You’re right that if you’re hyper conscious of your own interactions you can curate a peaceful feed, but idle browsing for anyone even slightly political is going to lead you down a rabbit hole.
That’s something the platform can change, and imo is something the platform is responsible for, since they’re the ones who made the ML algorithm that’s amplifying toxic content.
> it puts the responsibility on the user to change their habits to avoid toxic content, instead of on the platform.
Why do you think this is true? Taking action to control what you can of your own welfare is entirely orthogonal to and doesn't diminish at all the responsibility of other actors. It's just wallowing in self-destructive victimhood to pretend that you can't take self-protective action while still advocating just as strongly for actors like Facebook to be held responsible.
Ie, the leap you're describing from "you can use Facebook healthily" to "Facebook bears no responsibility for the unhealthy usage patterns of most of its users" is one that no one but you (and the commenter you're agreeing with) has made.
If someone is searching for Signal, what makes them see Messenger and decide to click that instead? I don't understand how this isn't throwing money into a fire.
Most people outside the tech bubble can't tell an ad from a search result.
They don't use ad blockers either, that's why banners saying "DOWNLOAD NOW" in flashing red letters work so well, leading them to download something completely different from that antivirus or PDF reader software they originally searched for.
Their target audience are the elderly and those who are illiterate in technology in general. I have personally seen people around me click the first result that shows up without even stopping to read what is written on it. They just assume that "I asked for Signal and it is Signal". That is the amount of trust they have. It is only when they get fooled do they go through multiple stages of confusion before they finally realize what is up: Hey why do I have this app? -> I never downloaded it -> Is this a virus? -> Have I been hacked? -> Let me ask my relative/friend who is a computer geek -> Oh it is something I download myself? -> Oh this isn't Signal? -> Oh okay I get it now -> Shall I uninstall it? -> Okay I'll uninstall.
There are some who skip this and just assume that the app they downloaded is Signal even if the app clearly says Facebook Messenger.
^ This is how scamsters take advantage of the elderly and those who do not have basic tech know-how. You'll be surprised to know that there are millions like that.
Hello, just wanted to let you know you should probably use a different word instead of "niggling", just to be safe in case some day in the future someone may find your post and try to cast you as a racist. Or worst, it may be detected by an algorithm and your post could be demerited based on that parameter and you would not know why. While niggling is a legitimate word and has no racist origin, people may construe it as insensitive because it might trigger someone due to the similarity to a certain word. Also, actual racists sometimes use a variation of niggling to refer to black children. Sorry that it has to be this way.
While I appreciate you taking the time to write this note, I don't think I will edit the word.
The fact that it sometimes is being used by racists gives me a little pause (that's basically how semantic shift happens, and there comes a point where the new meaning eclipses the old), but I have never come across it in that context, whereas I see it used in it's original meaning commonly (and in professional contexts).
If someone tries to cast a comment of mine in a technical thread as racist I don't think changing my language is going to help.
Similarly I'm not so invested in my imaginary internet points that being flagged by such a poor future algorithm concerns me. If HN got to that point, I would probably have lost interest in it long before.
I'm here for interesting, technical discussion. Not for the zeitgeist's culture wars that are engulfing all the other platforms. With the exception of recent threads (which considering the tumultuous events that are happening, I understand), I find HN to be a lovely corner of the old web where users try to read each other's content in good faith.
This is the one problem that torments me every time I am reminded of it.
Just today, once again, I tried doing the hack to make programs use the kdialog instead of the GTK filepicker. kdialog works, however none of the thumbnails are showing! Only the icons showing the filetype. I don't use a desktop environment, only a tiling window manager, so that's probably it. But what pains me is as much as I search, I don't know what the hell to install that will make the thumbnails work in the filepicker even though thumbnails work everywhere else.
Every time I must go through this, I want to cry. The linux community thinks they are so superior, yet they cannot implement this one little thing.
> I don't use a desktop environment, only a tiling window manager, so that's probably it.
I don't use the Linux desktop often, so perhaps this is an ignorant comment, but doesn't not using a DE require a certain amount of elbow grease anyway? If you wanted a more polished/less DIY experience, it seems to me that you should be using a DE.
So this is how Mozilla and EFF go down. All to dunk on a president that was already leaving in 11 days (miss me with your conspiracy theories about how a bunch of random people taking over one building would be a successful coup to keep Trump as the president lmao, children). Looks like these companies don't really stand for anything.
